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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

rigid phonetic principles is the essential point, and means much more than any haphazardly made guesses at identification. Thus Mu-lu * , name of a city on the eastern frontier of An-si (Parthia),' has been identified with Mount (Muni, Merw) of the Avesta.2 Whether this is historically correct, I do not wish to discuss here; from an historical viewpoint the identification may be correct, but from a phonetic viewpoint it is not acceptable, for Mu-lu corresponds to ancient *Mukluk, Mug-ruk, Bug-luk, Bug-rug, to be restored perhaps to *Bux-rux.a The scarcity of linguistic material on the Iranian side has imposed certain restrictions: names for Iranian plants, one of the chief subjects of this study, have been handed down to us to a very moderate extent, so that. in many cases no identification can be attempted. I hope, however, that Iranian scholars will appreciate the philological contributions of the Chinese to Iranian and particularly Middle-Persian lexicography, for in almost every instance it is possible to restore with a very high degree of certainty the primeval Iranian forms from which the Chinese transcriptions were accurately made. The Chinese scholars had developed a rational method and a fixed system in reproducing words of foreign languages, in the study of which, as is well known, they took a profound interest; and from day to day, as our experience widens, we have occasion to admire the soundness, solidity, and consistency of this system. The same laws of transcription worked out for Sanskrit, Malayan, Turkish, Mongol, and Tibetan, hold good also for Iranian. I have only to ask Iranian scholars to have confidence in our method, which has successfully stood many tests. I am convinced that this plea is unnecessary for the savants of Fiance, who are the

is, Dik-lat, Dik-rat), which has passed into Greek Tlypns and Tlypis and Elamite Ti-ig-ra (A. MEILLET, Grammaire du vieux perse, p. 72). It will thus be seen that the Chinese transcription *Dak-rat corresponds to Babylonian Dik-rat, save the vowel of the first element, which cannot yet be explained, but which will surely be

traced some day to an Iranian dialect.—The T'ai   hwan yü ki (Ch. 185, p. 19)
gives four geographical names of Persia, which have not yet been indicated. The first of these is the name of a city in the form * 4 AR,Ho-p'o-kie, *Hat(r, 1)bwa-g'iat. The first two elements *Har-bwa correspond to Old Persian Haraiva (Babylonian Hariva), Avestan Haraëva, Pahlavi *Harëw, Armenian Hrew,—the modern Herat. The third element appears to contain a word with the meaning

"city." The same character is used in   sa »1 Kie-li-pie, *G'iat-li-b'iet, name of a
pass in the north-eastern part of Persia; here *g'iat, *g'iar, seems to represent

Sogdian yr, *.yara ("mountain"). Fan-tou * or   Ye (Ts'ien Han Su, Ch. 96 A),
anciently *Pan-tav, *Par-tav, corresponds exactly to Old Persian Parûava, Middle Persian ParOu.

1 Hou Han Su, Ch. 116, p. 8 b.

2 HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, p. 143.

$ Cf. also the observation of E. H. PARKER (Imp. and As. Quarterly Review, 1903, p. 154) , who noticed the phonetic difficulty in the proposed identification.