362 SING-IRANICA
when the Mongols introduced the condiment into China under that name, while they styled the root IS yin-&n. In modern Mongol, the name of the product is .ingun, which is borrowed from the Tibetan word mentioned below.
In the Tibetan dialect of Ladakh, asafoetida is called hin or sip.' The name sip or sup was reported by FALCONER, who was the first to discover in 1838 Ferula narthex in western Tibet on the slopes of the mountains dividing Ladakh from Kashmir.2 The word sip, however, is not generally Tibetan, but only of local value; in all probability, it is not of Tibetan origin. The common Tibetan word is .in-kun, which differs from the Iranian and Indian terms, and which, in view of the fact that the plant occurs in Tibetan regions, may be a purely Tibetan formation.
Finally it may be mentioned that, according to BoRSZCZOw,3 Scorodosma is generally known to the inhabitants of the Aralo-Caspian territory under the name sasyk-karai or keurök-kurai, which means as much as "malodorous rush." The Bukharans call it sasyk-kawar or simply kawar.
' RAMSAY, Western Tibet, p. 7.
Transactions Linnean Soc., Vol. XX, pt. I, 1846, pp. 285-291. 3 Op. cii., p. 25.
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