National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0414 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 414 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000248
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

588   SING-IRANICA

AINSLIE,' the plant was brought to India from Persia, where it is common, by Sir John Malcolm. This is quite possible; but the fact cannot be doubted that the basil was known in India at a much earlier date, for we have a variety of Sanskrit names for it. Also G. WATT' holds that the herb is indigenous in Persia and Sind. It is now cultivated throughout tropical India from the Panjab to Burma.

The Chinese name of Ocimum basilicum is to-lo   (*la-lak) .
It is first described in the Ts`i min yao u of the sixth century, where it is said that Si Lo (273-333) tabooed the name (on account of the identity of the second character with that in his own name, cf. above,

p. 298) and changed it into lan hian go If; but Tao Hun-kin (451-536) mentions it again as to-lo, and gives as popular designation Si-wan-mu

ts`ai L   - r` è ("vegetable of the goddess Si-wan-mu"). The Ts`i

min yao . u cites an older work Wei hun fu sü 4L Q   (" Preface to

the Poems of Wei Hun ") to the effect that the plant to-lo grows on the hills of the K`un-lun and comes from the primitive culture of the Western Barbarians (" N 2 2.1) . This appears to be an allusion to foreign origin; nevertheless an introduction from abroad is not hinted at in any of the subsequent herbals. Of these, the Pen ts'ao of the Kia-yu period (105 6-64) is the first which speaks of the basil as introduced into the materia medica. The name to-lo has no meaning in Chinese, and at first sight conveys the impression of a foreign word. Each of the two elements is most frequent in transcriptions from the Sanskrit. In fact, one of the Sanskrit names of the basil is kardlaka (or kardla), and Chinese *la-lak (*ra-lak) corresponds exactly; the first syllable ka- is sometimes dropped in the Indian vernaculars.3 If this coincidence is fortuitous, the accident is extraordinary; but it is hardly possible to believe in an accident of this kind.

There is, further, a plant }' 4?   J fou-lan-to-lo, *fu (bu)-lan-la-lak,
solely mentioned by C'en Ts`an-k`i of the eighth century as growing in Sogdiana (K`an) and resembling the hou-p`o) *1' (Magnolia hypoleuca), Japanese h5-no-ki.4 The Pen tstao kcal mu has therefore placed this notice as an appendix to hou-p`o. This Sogdian plant and its name remain unidentified. At the outset it is most improbable that a Magnolia is involved; this is a typical genus of the far east, which to my knowledge has not yet been traced in any Iranian region. BOISSIER'S

1 Materia Indica, Vol. II, P. 424.

2 Dictionary, Vol. V, p. 441.

3 Cf. for instance kakinduka ("Diospyros tomentosa")— Uriya kendhu, Bengal, kend.

4 Gen lei pen ts`ao, Ch. 12, Q. 56 b; Pen ts`ao kan mu, Ch. 35 A, p. 4; STUARTI Chinese Materia Medica, p. 255.