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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
298 SING-IRANICA
the character swi are given, also the synonymes hian ts`ai
("fragrant vegetable") and hian sun 'i .1 In Kiarn-nan the plant
was styled hu swi a, also hu ki , the pronunciation of the
latter character being explained by k`i, *gi. The coriander belongs
to the five vegetables of strong odor (p. 303) forbidden to the geomancers and Taoist monks.'
I have searched in vain for any notes on the plant that might elucidate its history or introduction; but such do not seem to exist, not even in the various Pen ts'ao. As regards the Annals, I found only a single mention in the Wu Tai ßi3 where the coriander is enumerated among the plants cultivated by the Uigur. In tracing its foreign origin, we are thrown back solely on the linguistic evidence.
The coriander was known in Iran: it is mentioned in the Bûndahisn.4 Its medical properties are discussed in detail by Abu Mansur in his Persian pharmacopoeia. SCHLIMMER6 observes, "Se cultive presque partout en Perse comme plante potagère; les indigènes le croient antiaphrodisiaque et plus spécialement anéantissant les érections." It occurs also in Fergana.' It was highly appreciated by the Arabs in their pharmacopoeia, as shown by the long extract devoted to it by Ibn al-Baitar.8 In India it is cultivated during the cold season. The Sanskrit names which have been given on p. 284, mean simply "grain," and are merely attributes,' not proper designations of the plant, for which in fact there is no genuine Sanskrit word. As will be seen below, Sanskrit kustumburu is of Iranian origin; and there is no doubt in my mind that the plant came to India from Iran, in the same manner as it appears to have spread from Iran to China.
or hu-swi, *ko(go)-swi (su), appears to be the transcription
of an Iranian form *koswi, koswi, goswi. Cf. Middle Persian gogniz;
1 Two dictionaries, the Tse yuan ;L and Yzin lioU , are quoted in this
text, but their date is not known to me. As stated in the Pen is ` ao Si i and .Si wu lei yuan (Ch. I o, p. 3o; above, p. 279), the change from hu swi to hian swi was dictated by a taboo imposed by Si Lo fWI (A.D. 273-333), who was himself a Hu (cf. below, p. 300); but we have no contemporaneous account to this effect, and the attempt at explanation is surely retrospective.
2 Pen ts'ao lean mu, Ch. 26, p. 6 b; and STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 28.
3 Ch. 74, p. 4.
4 Above, p. 192.
5 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 112.
6 Terminologie, p. 156.
S. KORZINSKI, Vegetation of Turkistan (in Russian), p. 51.
8 L. LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. III, pp. 17o-174.
9 Such are also the synonymes srik$mapatra, tikinapatra, tikmaphala (" with leaves or fruits of sharp taste").
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