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0052 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 52 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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226   SING-IRANICA

HIRTH1 endorsed Kingsmill. No one gave a real demonstration of the case. Tomaschek argued that the dissemination of the vine in Central Asia is connected with Macedonian-Greek rule and Hellenic influence. This is decidedly wrong, for the vine grows spontaneously in all northern Iranian regions; and its cultivation in Iran is traceable to a great antiquity, and is certainly older there than in Greece. The Greeks received vine and wine from western Asia.' Greek ßôTpvs, in all likelihood, is a Semitic loan-word.' It is highly improbable that the people of Fergana would have employed a Greek word for the designation of a plant which had been cultivated in their dominion for ages, nor is there any evidence for the silent admission that Greek was ever known or spoken in Fergana at the time of Can Ktien's travels. The influence of Greek in the Iranian domain is extremely slight: nothing Greek has as yet been found in any ancient manuscripts from Turkistan. In my opinion, there is no connection between p`u-t`ao and ßôTpvs, nor between the latter and Iranian *budawa.

It is well known that several species of wild vine occur in China, in the Amur region, and Japan.' The ancient work Pie lu is credited with the observation that the vine (p`u-t`ao) grows in Lun-si (Kan-su) , Wu-yüan

1,0 (north of the Ordos), and in Tun-hwan (in Kan-su) .5 Li Si-ben therefore argues that in view of this fact the vine must of old have existed in Lun-si in pre-Han times, but had not yet advanced into Sen-si. It is inconceivable how BRETSCHNEIDER6 can say that the introduction of the grape by Can Ktien is inconsistent with the notice of the grape in the earliest Chinese materia medica. There is, in fact, nothing alarming about it: the two are different plants; wild vines are natives of northern

1 Fremde Einflüsse in der chin. Kunst, p. 28; and Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 146. Hirth's arguments are based on unproved premises. The grape-design on the so-called grape mirrors has nothing to do with Greek or Bactrian art, but comes from Iranian-S .sänian art. No grape mirrors were turned out under the Han, they originated in the so-called Leu-6`ao period from the fourth to the seventh century. The attribution " Han " simply rests on the puerile assumption made in the Po ku t'u lu that, because Cain K`ien introduced the grape, the artistic designs of grapes must also have come along with the same movement.

2 Only a "sinologue" could assert that the grape was "originally introduced from Greece, via Bactria, about 130 B.C." (GILES, Chinese Dictionary, No. 9497).

3 MUSS-ARNOLT, Transactions Am. Phil. Assoc., Vol. XXIII, 1892, p. 142. The variants in spelling ß&QTpvxos, 136-rpvxos, plainly indicate the status of a loan-word. In Dioscorides (iii, 12o) it denotes an altogether different plant,—Chenopodium botrys.

4 The Lo-lo of Yün-nan know a wild grape by the name ko-p`i-ma, with large, black, oblong berries (P. VIAL, Dictionnaire français-lolo, p. 276). The grape is ze-mu-se-ma in Nyi Lo-lo, sa-lu-zo or sa-io-zo in Ahi Lo-lo.

6 Pen ts`ao kati mu, Ch. 33, p. 3. 6 Bot. Sin., pt. III, p. 438.