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
SESAME AND FLAX 295
been pointed out, the plant is indigenous also in northern Persia, and must have been cultivated there from ancient times, although we have no information on this point from either native documents or Greek authors.'
BRETSCHNEIDER2 says that "flax was unknown to the ancient Chinese; it is nowadays cultivated in the mountains of northern China (probably also in other parts) and in southern Mongolia, but only for the oil of its seeds, not for its fibres; the Chinese call it hu ma (` foreign hemp') ; the Pen ts`ao does not speak of it; its introduction must be of more recent date." This is erroneous. The Pen tstao includes this species under the ambiguous term hu ma; and, although the date of the introduction cannot be ascertained, the event seems to have taken place in the first centuries of our era.
At present, the designation hu ma appears to refer solely to flax. A. HENRYS states under this heading, "This is flax (Linum usitatissimum), which is cultivated in San-si, Mongolia, and the mountainous parts of Hu-pei and Se-6`wan. In the last two provinces, from personal observation, flax would seem to be entirely cultivated for the seeds, which are a common article in Chinese drug-shops, and are used locally for their oil, utilized for cooking and lighting purposes." In another paper,4 the same author states that Linum usitatissimum is called at
Se-è'wan, . an a ma al Jâ 5 ("mountain sap-hemp "), and
that it is cultivated in the mountains of the Patun district, not for the fibre, but for the oil which the seed yields.
Chinese hu ma has passed into Mongol as xuma (khuma) with the meaning "sesame,' and into Japanese as goma, used only in the sense of Sesamum indicum,7 while Linum usitatissimum is in Japanese ama or ilinen-ama.8
Yao Min-hwitigh OA a, in his book on Mongolia (Mon-ku file mentions hu ma among the products of that country. There are several wild-growing species of Linum in northern China and Japan,— ya ma
JORET, Plantes dans l'antiquité, Vol. II, p. 69.
2 Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 204.
3 Chinese Jute, p. 6 (publication of the Chinese Maritime Customs, Shanghai, 1891).
Chinese Names of Plants, p. 239 (Journal China Branch Royal As. Soc., Vol. XXII, 1887).
The popular writing , according to the Pen ts'ao kai mu, is incorrect.
6 KOVALEVSKI, Dictionnaire mongol, P. 934.
7 MATSUMURA, NO. 2924. 6 Ibid., No. 1839.
9 Ch. 3, p. 41 (Shanghai, 1907).
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