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0053 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 53 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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THE GRAPE-VINE   227

China, but have never resulted in a cultivation; the cultivated species (Vitis vinifera) was introduced from Iran, and never had any relation to the Chinese wild species (Vitis bryoniaefolia). In a modern work,

Mun ts`üan tsa yen   â ,1 which gives an intelligent discussion
of this question, the conclusion is reached that the species from Fergana is certainly different from that indigenous to China. The only singular point is that the Pie lu employs the Ferganian word p`u-t`ao with reference to the native species; but this is not an anachronism, for the Pie lu was written in post-Christian times, centuries after Can Kien; and it is most probable that it was only the introduced species which gave the impetus to the discovery of the wild species, so that the latter received the same name.'

Another wild vine is styled yin-yüg A (Vitis bryoniaefolia or

V. labrusca), which appears in the writings of T`ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536) and in the rail pen ts`ao of Su Kun, but this designation has reference only to a wild vine of middle and northern China. Yen Si-ku (A.D. 579-645), in his Ktan miu cen su 143 ironically remarks that regarding the yin-yü as a grape is like comparing the ci tp (Poncirus trifoliate) of northern China with an orange (kü tea) ; that the yin-yü, although a kind of p`u-t`ao, is widely different from the latter; and that the yin-yü of Kian-nan differs again from the yin-yü of northern China. H1RTH's theory,' that this word might represent a transcription of New Persian angur, is inadmissible. We have no right to regard Chinese words as of foreign origin, unless these are expressly so indicated by the Chinese philologists who never fail to call attention to such borrowing. If this is not the case, specific and convincing reasons must be adduced for the assumption that the word in question cannot be Chinese. There is no tradition whatever that would make yin-yü an Iranian or a foreign word. The opposite demonstration lacks any sound basis: New Persian, which starts its career from the end of the tenth century, could not come into question here, but at the best Middle Persian, and angur is a strictly New-Persian type. A word like angur would have been dissected by the Chinese into and-gut (guy), but not into an-I-uk; moreover, it is erroneous to suppose that final k can transcribe final r;5 in Iranian transcriptions,. Chinese final k corresponds to Iranian k, g, or the spirant x. It is further inconceivable that the Chinese might

1 T `u Su tsi c `en, xx, Ch. 113.

2 Compare the analogous case of the walnut. 8 Ch. 8, p. 8 b (ed. of His pee ts`un Su).

4 Fremde Einfliesse in der chinesischen Kunst, p. 17.

5 Compare above, p. 214.