540 SING-IRANICA
("yellow plum ").1- Both fruits are referred to in Pahlavi literature (above, pp. 192, 193).
As to the transplantation of the Chinese peach into India, we have an interesting bit of information in the memoirs of the Chinese pilgrim Hüan Tsai).2 At the time of the great Indo-Scythian king Kaniska, whose fame spread all over the neighboring countries, the tribes west of the Yellow River (Ho-si in Kan-su) dreaded his power, and sent hostages to him. Kaniska treated them with marked attention, and assigned to them special mansions and guards of honor. The country where the hostages resided in the winter received the name Cinabhukti ("China allotment," in the eastern Panj ab) . In this kingdom and throughout India there existed neither pear nor peach. These were planted by the hostages. The peach therefore was called cinani ("Chinese fruit ") ; and the pear, cinareijaputra ("crown-prince of China"). These names are still prevalent.3 Although Hüan Tsan recorded in A.D. 630 an oral tradition overheard by him in India, and relative to a time lying back over half a millennium, his well-tested trustworthiness cannot be doubted in this case: the story thus existed in India, and may indeed be traceable to an event that took place under the reign of Kaniska, the exact date of which is still controversial.' There are mainly two reasons which prompt me to accept Hüan Tsan's account. From a botanical point of view, the peach is not a native of India. It occurs there only
1 In the Pamir languages we meet a common name for the apricot, Minjan ceri, Waxi ciwdn or coon (but Sarigoli nã S, Signi nazi). The same type occurs in the Dardu languages (jui or ji for the tree, jarote or jorote for the fruit, and juru for the ripe fruit) and in Kâçmiri (tser, tser-kul); further, in West-Tibetan cu-li or to-li, Balti su-ri, Kanauri cul (other Tibetan words for "apricot" are loam-bu, a-. u, and Sa-rag, the last-named being dried apricots with little pulp and almost as hard as a stone). KLAPROTH (Journal asiatique, Vol. II, 1823, p. 159) has recorded in Bukhara a word for the apricot in the form tserduli. It is not easy to determine how this type has migrated. TOMASCHEK (Pamir-Dialekte, p. 791) is inclined to think that originally it might have been Tibetan, as Baltistan furnishes the best apricots. For my part, I have derived the Tibetan from the Pamir languages (T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 82). The word is decidedly not Tibetan; and as to its origin, I should hesitate only between the Pamir and Dardu languages.
2 Ta rail Si yü ki, Ch. 4, p. 5.
8 There are a few other Indian names of products formed with "China": cinapi. a (" minium "), cinaka (" Panicum miliaceum, fennel, a kind of camphor "), Iinakarpüra (" a kind of camphor "), cinavanga ("lead").
4 Cf. V. A. SMITH, Early History of India, 3d ed., p. 263 (I do not believe with Smith that "the territory of the ruler to whose family the hostages belonged seems to have been not very distant from Kashgar"; the Chinese term Ho-si, at the time of the Han, comprised the present province of Kan-su from Lan-6ou to An-si); T. WATTERS, On Yûan Chwang's Travels, Vol. I, pp. 292-293 (his comments on the story of the peach miss the mark, and his notes on the name Cina are erroneous; see also PELLIOT, Bull. de l'Ecole française, Vol. V, p. 457).
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