IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
IRANIAN MINERALS-CORAL, BEZOAR 525
Sasanian Persia;' and it is stated in the 'rang Annals that Persia pro-. duces coral not higher than three feet.2 There is no doubt that Persian corals have found their way all over Asia; and many of them may still be preserved by Tibetans, who prize above all coral, amber, and turquois. The coral encountered by the Chinese in Ki-pin (Kashmir)3 may also have been of Persian origin. Unfortunately we have no information on the subject from ancient Iranian sources, nor do we know an ancient Iranian name for coral. Solinus informs us that Zoroaster attributed to coral a certain power and salubrious effects;4 and what Pliny says about coral endowed with sacred properties and being a preservative against all dangers, sounds very much like an idea emanating from Persia. Persian infants still wear a piece of coral on the abdomen as a talisman to ward off harm;5 and, according to Pliny, this was the practice at his time, only that the branches of coral were hung at the infant's neck.
The Chinese word for coral, o ' ° an-hu, *san-gu (Japanese san-go), possibly is of foreign origin, but possibly it is not.'' For the present there is no word in any West-Asiatic or Iranian language with which it could be correlated. In Hebrew it is ra'mot, which the Seventy transcribes payo9 or translates ,u€TÉwpa. The common word in New Persian is marjan (hence Russian maman); other designations are birbâl, xuruhak or xurohak, bussad or bissad (Arabic bessed or bussad). In Armenian it is bust.?
91. The identification of Chinese /2'o-so (*bwa-sa) with Persian
pâzahr or pâdzahrs ("bezoar," literally, "antidote"), first proposed by HIRTH,9 in my opinion, is not tenable, although it has been indorsed
' Cou Su, Ch. 5o, p. 6; Sul Su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b; regarding coral in Fu-lu-ni, see above, p. 521, note 9.
a
T'ai su, Ch. 221 B, p. 6 b. The Liai Su (Ch. 54, p. 14 b) attributes to Persia
coral-trees one or two feet high.
3 Ts'ien Han Su, Ch. 96 A, p. 5. This passage (not Hou Han Su, Ch. 118, as stated by HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 226, after Bretschneider) contains the earliest mention of the word . an-hu.
4 Habet enim, ut Zoroastres ait, materia haec quandam potestatem, ac propterea quidquid inde sit, ducitur inter salutaria (II, 39, § 42).
SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 166.
s According to BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, Vol. VI, p. 16), "it seems not to be a Chinese name."
Cf. PATKANOV, The Precious Stones according to the Notions of the Armenians (in Russian), p. 52.
3 P,zand padazahar (see HÜBSCHMANN, Persische Studien, p. 193). STEINGASS gives also panzahr. The derivation from bad " wind " (H. FÜHNER, Janus, Vol. VI, 1901, p. 317) is not correct.
9 Lander des Islam, p. 45.
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