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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
THE PISTACHIO 247
The Persians appeared to the ancients as terebinth-eaters, and this title seems to have developed into a sort of nickname : when Astyages, King of the Medians, seated on his throne, looked on the defeat of his men through the army of Cyrus, he exclaimed, "Woe, how brave are these terebinth-eating Persians!' According to Polyaenus,2 terebinthoil was among the articles to be furnished daily for the table of the Persian kings. In the Bûndahisn, the pistachio-nut is mentioned together with other fruits the inside of which is fit to eat, but not the outside.' "The fruits of the country are dates, pistachios, and apples of Paradise, with other of the like not found in our cold climate.i'
Twan C`en-si 1 i A, in his Yu yan tsa tsu'= , written
about A.D. 86o and containing a great amount of useful infdrmation on the plants of Persia and Fu-lin, has the following:—
"The hazel-nut (Corylus heterophylla) of the Hu (Iranians), styled a-yüe ßp7 )i , grows in the countries of the West.' According to the statement of the barbarians, a-yüe is identical with the hazel-nuts of the Hu. In the first year the tree bears hazel-nuts, in the second year it bears a-yüe."s
C`en Si , who in the K`ai-plan period (A.D. 713-741)
wrote the Materia Medica Pen ts'ao i i * Ç n 1, states that "the fruits of the plant a-yüe-hunß7 Ai are warm and acrid of flavor, non-poisonous, cure catarrh of the bowels, remove cold feeling, and make people stout and robust, that they grow in the western countries, the barbarians saying that they are identical with the hazel-nut of the Hu M T. During the first year the tree bears hazel-nuts, in the second year it bears a-yüe-hun."
Li San 1 1, in his Hai yao pen ts'ao * (second half of the
eighth century), states, "According to the Nan lou ki ) I gis by
Sü Piao the the Nameless Tree (wu min mu ':" = i 7(C) grows in the
mountainous valleys of Lin-nan (Kwan-tun) . Its fruits resemble in appear-
ance the hazel-nut, and are styled Nameless Fruits (wu min tse A
1 Nicolaus of Damaskus (first century B.c.), cited by HEHN, Kulturpflanzen,
P. 424.
2 Strategica, IV. III, 32.
3 These fruits are walnut, almond, pomegranate, coconut, filbert, and chestnut. See WEST, Pahlavi Texts, Vol. I, p. 103.
4 MARCO Polo, Yule's edition, Vol. I, p. 97.
5 The editions of the Yu yan tsa tsu write RI, "in the gardens of the West";
but the T'u . u tsi d'en (section botany, Ch. 311) and Ci wu min N l'u k'ao, in repro-
ducing this text, offer the reading N , which seems to me preferable.
Yu yan tsa tsu Z, Ch. 1o, p. 3 b (ed. of Tsin tai pi §14).
7 This work is quoted in the Ts'i min yao Su, written by Kia Se-niu under the Hou Wei dynasty (A.D. 386-534).
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