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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

PERSIAN TEXTILES-BROCADES   491

is specially named. Po-tie, further, appears in India;' and as early as

A.D. 430 Indian po-tie was sent to China from Ho-lo-tan   on Java.'
According to a passage of the Kiu T `an hu,3 the difference between kupei (Sanskrit karpdsa)4 and po-tie was this, that the former was a coarse,

1 Nan Si, Ch. 78, p. 7 a.

2 Sun Su, Ch. 97, p. 2 b.

= Ch. 197, p. I b, indicated by PELLIOT (Bull. de l'Ecole française, Vol. III, p. 269).

' It is evident that the transcription ku-pei is not based directly on Sanskrit karpdsa; but I do not believe with WATTERS (Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 440) and HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 218) that Malayan kdpas is at the root of the Chinese form, which, aside from the lack of the final s, shows a peculiar vocalism that cannot be explained from Malayan. Of living languages, it is Bahnar köpaih ("cotton ") which presents the nearest approach to Chinese ku-pei or ku-pai. It is therefore my opinion that the Chinese received the word from a language of Indo-China.

The history of cotton in China is much in need of a revision. The following case is apt to show what misunderstandings have occurred in treating this subject. Ku-tun (*ku-dzun, *ku-dun) i V; is the designation of a cotton-like plant grown

in the province of Kwei-6ou    ; the yarn is dyed and made into pan pu   .

This is contained in the Nan Yüe ci {j   ts, by Sen Hwai-yûan   tl   of the
fifth century (Pen ts'ao kart mu, Ch. 36, p. 24). SCHOTT (Altaische Studien, III, Abh. Berl. Akad., 1867, pp. 137, 138; he merely refers to the source as "a description of southern China," without citing its title and date), although recognizing that the question is of a local term, proposed, if it were permitted to read kutun instead of kucun, to regard the word as an indubitable reproduction of Arabic qu(un, which resulted in the coton, cotton, kattun, etc., of Europe. MAYERS then gave a similar opinion; and HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 219), clinging to ,a Fu-6ou pronunciation ku-tün (also WATTERS, Essays, p. 440, transcribes ku-tun), accepted the alleged derivation from the Arabic. This, of course, is erroneous, as in the fifth century there was no Arabic influence on China, nor did the Arabs themselves then know cotton. It would also be difficult to realize how a plant of Kwei-6ou could have been baptized with an Arabic name at that or any later time. Moreover, ku-tun is not a general term for "cotton" in Chinese; the above work remains the only one in which it has thus far been indicated. Ku-tun, as Li Si-den points out, is a

tree-cotton 7f   (Bombax malabaricum), which originated among the Southern

Barbarians (Nan Fan [   ), and which at the end of the Sung period was trans-

planted into Kian-nan. It is very likely that, as stated by STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 197), the cotton-tree was known in China from very ancient times, and that its product was used in the manufacture of cloth before the introduction of the cotton-plant (Gossypium herbaceum). In fact, the same work Nan yüe ci reports, "None of the Man tribes in the kingdom Nan-6ao rear silkworms, but they merely

obtain the seeds of the so-/o (*sa-la)   la tree, the interior of which is white and
contains a floss that can be wrought like silk and spun into cloth; it bears the name

so-/o lun swan f'   -   1,3h ." The Fan yü ci fl   , of Cu Mu yiX 0. of the Sung
period alludes to the same tree, which is said to be from thirty to fifty feet in height. The Ko ku yao bun (Ch. 8, p. 4 b; ed. of Si yin hüan ts`un Su) speaks of cotton stuffs

(_ ; tou-lo= Sanskrit tûla) which come from the Southern Barbarians, Tibet (Si-fan), and Yûn-nan, being woven from the cotton in the seeds of the so-lo tree, resembling velvet, five to six feet wide, good for making bedding and also clothes.

The Tien hi writes the word   ik (G. Soul,' t, Bull. de l'Ecole française, Vol. VIII,
p. 343). Sa-la is the indigenous name of the tree; sa-la is still the Lo-lo designation