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IRANIAN MINERALS—BEZOAR   527

Even as early as the Tang period, the term p`o-so merely denotes a stone. It is mentioned in a colophon to the P`in ts`ilan . an kü ts`ao mu

ki r i1 (ß rte- * 1E by Li Te-yü   ig (A.D. 787-849) as a curious
stone preserved in the P`o-so Pavilion south of the C`an-tien R. MI in Ho-nan.

Yada or jada, as justly said by Pelliot, is a bezoar; but what attracted the Chinese to this Turkish-Mongol word was not its character as a bezoar, but its rôle in magic as a rain-producing stone. Li

Si-cen I has devoted a separate article to it under the name fr   ca-ta,
and has recognized it as a kind of bezoar; in fact, it follows immediately his article on the Chinese bezoar (niu-hwan) .2

The Persian word was brought to China as late as the seventeenth century by the Jesuits. Pantoja and Aleni, in their geography of the world, entitled Ci fan wai ki,3 and published in 1623, mention an animal of Borneo resembling a sheep and a deer, called pa-tsa'r 1E 441 f4,4 in the abdomen of which grows a stone capable of curing all diseases, and highly prized by the Westerners. The Chinese recognized that this was a bezoar.5 Bezoars are obtained on Borneo, but chiefly from a monkey (Simla longumanis, Dayak buhi) and hedgehog. The Malayan name for bezoar is guliga; and, as far as I know, the Persian word is not used by the Malayans.' The Chinese Gazetteer of Macao mentions "an animal like a sheep or goat, in whose belly is produced a stone capable

1 Pen ts'ao han mu, Ch. 50 B, p. 15 b.

s There is an extensive literature on the subject of the rain-stone. The earliest Chinese source known to me, and not mentioned by Pelliot, is the K'ai yuan tien pao i si l fj 5tX3M by Wan Zen-yü ]E /Leg of the Tang (p. 20 b).

Cf. also the SW K`ien Su   , written by Can Cu , A. in 18o5 (Ch. 6, p. 8,
ed. of Yüe ya ran ts'un Su). The Yakut know this stone as sata (BOEHTLINGK, Jakut. Wörterbuch, p. 153); Pallas gives a Kalmuk form sddan. See, further, W. W. ROCK-HILL, Rubruck, p. 195; F. v. ERDMANN, Temudschin, p. 94; G. OPPERT, Presbyter Johannes, p. 1o2; J. RUSKA, Steinbuch des Qazwini, p. 19, and Der Islam, Vol. IV, 1913, pp. 26-3o (it is of especial interest that, according to the Persian mineralogical treatise of Mohammed Ben Mansur, the rain-stone comes from mines on the frontier of China, or is taken from the nest of a large water-bird, called surxab, on the frontier of China; thus, after all, the Turks may have obtained their bezoars from China); VÂMBÉRY, Primitive Cultur, p. 249; POTANIN, Tangutsko-Tibetskaya Okraina Kitaya, Vol. II, p. 352, where further literature is cited.

3 Ch. 1, p. II (see above, p. 433)•

This form comes very near to the pajar of Barbosa in 1516. Cf. the Lu can kun si k'i (above, p. 346), p. 48-

6 Regarding the Malayan beliefs in bezoars, see, for instance, L. BOUCHAL in Mitt. Anthr. Ges. Wien, 190o, pp. 179-180; BECCARI, Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo, p. 327; KREEMER in Bijdr. taal- land- en volkenkunde, 1914, p. 38; etc.