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
INDIGO 371
places, a dye-stuff of similar virtues is made from tien n(the indigenous Polygonum tinctorium)."I Li Si-cen holds the opinion that the Persian
ts`in tai was the foreign /an-tien n (Indigofera tinctoria). It must not
be forgotten that the genus Indigofera comprises some three hundred species, and that it is therefore impossible to hope for exact identifications in Oriental records. Says G. WATT2 on this point, "Species of Indigofera are distributed throughout the tropical regions of the globe (both in the Old and New Worlds) with Africa as their headquarters. And in addition to the Indigoferas several widely different plants yield the self-same substance chemically. Hence, for many ages, the dye prepared from these has borne a synonymous name in most tongues, and to such an extent has this been the case that it is impossible to say for certain whether the nila of the classic authors of India denoted the self-same plant which yields the dye of that name in modern commerce." "Indigo," therefore, is a generalized commercial label for a blue dye-stuff, but without botanical value. Thus also Chinese indigo is yielded by distinct plants in different parts of China.3
It is singular that the Chinese at one time imported indigo from Persia, where it was doubtless derived from India, and do not refer to India as the principal indigo-producing country. An interesting article on the term ts`iri tai has been written by HIRTH.4
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 16, p. 25 b.
2 Commercial Products of India, p. 663.
3 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 2I2.
4 Chinesische Studien, pp. 243-258.
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