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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

504   SINO-IRANICA

the Chinese. F. DE MÉLY1 argues that nao-§a is written ideographically, and that the text of the Pen ts`ao kan mu adds, " Il vient de la province de Chen-si; on le tire d'une montagne d'où il sort continuellement des vapeurs rouges et dangereuses et très difficile à aborder par rapport à ces mêmes vapeurs. Il en vient aussi de la Tartane, on le tire des plaines où il y a beaucoup de troupeaux, de la même façon que le salpêtre de houssage; les Tartares et gens d'au delà de la Chine salent les viandes avec ce sel." Hence F. de Mély infers that the Persians, on their part, borrowed from the Chinese their nao-. a, to which they added the ending dzer, as in the case of the bezoar styled in Persian badzeker.2

The case, however, is entirely different. The term nao-. a is written phonetically, not ideographically, as shown by the ancient transcription

in the Sui Annals (see below) and the variant fa 0 (properly nun-§a, but indicated with the pronunciation nao-.§a) ;3 also the syno-

nymes ti yen %''   (" salt of the barbarians") and Pei-t`in .§a 4L g 4
("ore of Pei-t`in," in Turkistan), which appear as early as the Sung period in the ru kin pen tstao of Su Sun, allude to the foreign origin of the product. The term is thus plainly characterized as a foreign loan in the Pen ts`ao kan mu. This, further, is brought out by the history of the subject. The word is not found in any ancient Chinese records. The Chinese learned about nao-.§a in Sogdiana and Kuèa for the first time during the sixth century A.D. The Pen tea() of the Tang period is the earliest pharmacopoeia that mentions it. Su Kuh S, the reviser of this work, and the author of the Cen lei pen ts`ao, know of but one place of provenience, the country of the Western Zun A (F. de Mély's "Tartary ") . It is only Su Sun g g of the Sung period, who in his ru kin pen ts`ao remarks, "At present it occurs also in Si-lian and in the country Hia [Kan-su] as well as in Ho-tun [San-si], Sen-si, and in the districts of the adjoining regions" 4` NAKIEIRMA

14I   A' t [note the additions of   " at present " and
YS "also "]. And he hastens to add, "However (s), the pieces coming from the Western Zuh are clear and bright, the largest having the size of a fist and being from three to five ounces in weight, the smallest

1 L'Alchimie chez les Chinois (Journal asiatique, 1895, II, p. 338) and Lapidaire chinois, p. LI.

2 All this is rather lack of criticism or poor philology. The Persian word in question is pâzahr, literally meaning "antidote" (see below, p. 525). Neither this word nor nusfadir has an ending like dzer, and there is no analogy between the two.

3 According to the Pie pen cu N1 4 it, cited in the Cat lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 5, p. 10, ed. of 1587), the transcription nun-Sa should represent the pronunciation of the Hu people; that is, Iranians. Apparently it was an Iranian dialectic variation with a nasalized vowel u. It is indicated as a synonyme of nao-. a in the Si yao er ya of the Tang period (see Beginnings of Porcelain, p. 115).