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
IRANO-SINICA-MINERALS, METALS 555
not held up by bandits; also his baggage in which the stone is hidden is safe from attack, and its wearer rises in the esteem of his fellow-mates.'
I do not know what Chinese stone is understood here.
It is well known that the Chinese have a peculiar alloy of copper consisting of copper 40.4, zinc 25.4, nickel 31.6, iron 2.6, and occasionally some silver and arsenic. It looks white or silver-like in the finish, and is hence called pai-t`un (" white copper ") . In Anglo-Indian it is tootnague (Tamil tutunâgum, Portuguese tutanaga) .2 It is also known to foreigners in the East under the Cantonese name paktung.
It is mentioned as early as A.D. 265 in the dictionary Kwan ya itty3
where the definition occurs that pai-t`icn is called wu .
This alloy was adopted by the Persians under the name xâr-Zini (Arabic xâr-sini) .4 The Persians say that the Chinese make this alloy into mirrors and arrowheads, a wound from which is mortal.' Vullers cites a .passage from the poet Abu al Ma`ani, " One who rejects and spurns his friend pierces his heart with xâr-in'." Qazwini speaks of very efficient lance-heads and harpoons of this metal. The Persians have further the term isfidruj, which means "white copper," and which accordingly represents a literal rendering of Chinese pai-t`un. Moreover, there is Persian sepidrûi (Arabic isbiadâri, isbâdârih) ; that is, "whitish in appearance." English spelter (German spiauter, speauter, spialter, Russian . piauter), a designation of zinc, is derived from this word.' Dimasgi, who wrote about 1325, explains xâr-ini as a metal from China, the yellow color of copper being mixed with black and white; the mirrors imported from China, called "mirrors of distortion, " are made from this alloy. It is an artificial product, hard, and fragile; it is injured by fire, after being wrought. Qazwini adds that no other metal yields a ring equalling that of this alloy, and that none is so suitable for the manufacture of large and small bells.'
In the thirteenth century the Arabs became acquainted with saltpetre, which they received from China; for they designate it as
1 RUSKA, ibid., p. 21.
2 Cf. YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 932. This, of course, is a misnomer, as the Indian word, connected with Persian tictiya (above, p. 512), in fact refers to zinc.
$ Ch. 8 A, p. 16 (ed. of Ki fu ts`un Su).
'Literally, "stone of China." Spanish kazini is derived from the Arabic word. 6 STEINGASS, Persian Dictionary, p. 438.
6 It seems also that the Persian word is the source of the curious Japanese term sabari or sahari, which denotes the white copper of the Chinese. The foreign char-
acter of this product is also indicated by the writing 471 PR
~à•
Cf. E. WIEDEMANN, Sitzber. Phys.-Med. Soz. Erl., Vols. XXXVII, 1905, pp. 403-404; and XLV, 1913, p. 46; R. DOZY, Supplément, Vol. I, Q. 857.
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