IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
280 SING-IRANICA
are the particular places where the pomegranate thrives. Su Sun of the Sung period states that the pomegranate was originally grown in the Western Countries (Si yü N me), and that it now occurs everywhere; but neither he nor any other author makes a positive statement as to the time and exact place of origin. The Yao slit lun, Pen ts'ao and Pen ts`ao yen ii give merely a botanical notice, but nothing of historical interest.
The pomegranate ( i-liu) is mentioned in the "Poem on the Capital
of Wu" gl liiS .rt by Tso Se A ,11, who lived in the third century under
the Wu dynasty (A.D. 222-28o). Pan Yo 'j L , a poet of the fourth
century A.D., says, "Pomegranates are the most singular trees of the empire and famous fruits of the Nine Provinces.' A thousand seedcases are enclosed by the same membrane, and what looks like a single seed in fact is ten."
The Tsin Luit nan k`i kü tt ("Annotations on
the Conditions of the period Lun-han [A.D. 397-402] of the Tsin Dynasty ") contains the following note:3 "The pomegranates (nan gi liu) of the district Lin-yuan FiG in Wu-lin A H4 are as large as cups; they are not sour to the taste. Each branch bears six fruits."
Lu Hui rtfl of the Tsin dynasty, in his Ye lun ki 144 ?4s states
that in the park of Si Hu i Î there were pomegranates with seeds as
large as cups, and they were not sour. Si Hu or Si Ki-luis Vd, ruled
from A.D. 335 to 349, under the appellation T'ai Tsu k Mt of the Hou Cao dynasty, as "regent celestial king" (kü-. e tien wan), and shifted
the capital to Ye, the present district of Lin-Cara , in the pre-
fecture of Can-te in Ho-nan.6
The pomegranate is mentioned in the Ku kin nu 4 ,7 written by Tsui Pao n during the middle of the fourth century, with reference to the pumelo tit (Citrus grandis), the fruit of which is compared in shape with the pomegranate. The Ts`i min yao . u (l.c.) gives rules for the planting of pomegranates.
1 Ch. 18, p. 7 (ed. of Lu Sin-plan); the other texts see in Cen lei pen ts`ao, 1. c.
2 jL i, the ancient division of China under the Emperor Yù.
3 T'ai p`in yü Ian, Ch. 97o, p. 4 b. Regarding the department of records styled k`i kü cu, see The Diamond, p. 35. In the Yüan kien lei han (Ch. 402, p. 2) the same text is credited to the Sun Su.
4 In Hu-nan Province.
5 Ed. of Wu yin tien, p. 12.
6 Regarding his history, see L. WIEGER, Textes historiques, pp. 1095—I Too. BRETSCHNEIDER'S (Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 2II) note, that, besides the Ye bun ki of Lu Hui, there is;another work of the same name by Si Hu, is erroneous; Si Hu is simply the "hero" of the Ye Sun ki.
7 Ch. c, p. I (ed. of Han Wei ts`un Su or Ki fu ts`urn Su). Cf. also below, p. 283.
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