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
BRASSICA
32. Of the two species of mustard, Brassica or Sinapis juncea and S. alba, the former has always been a native of China (kiai I). The latter, however, was imported as late as the Tang period. It is first mentioned by Su Kun in the Pen ts'ao of the Tang (about A.D. 650) as coming from the Western Zun (Si 2un),1 a term which, as noted, frequently refers to Iranian regions. In the Su pen tstao * q, published
about the middle of the tenth century by Han Pao-sen We we
find the term ' hu kiai ("mustard of the Hu"). C`en Ts`an-k`i of
the Tang states that it grows in Tai-yüan and Ho-tun M. A (San-si), without referring to the foreign origin. Li Si-cent annotates that this cultivation comes from the Hu and Zun and abounds in Su (Se-6`wan), hence the names hu kiwi and .0 kiai ("mustard of Se-c`wan ") , while the common designation is pai kiai ("white mustard"). This state of affairs plainly reveals the fact that the plant was conveyed to China over the land-route of Central Asia, while no allusion is made to an oversea transplantation. As shown by me on a previous occasion,3 the Si-hia word si-na ("mustard") appears to be related to Greek sinapi, and was probably carried into the Si-hia kingdom by Nestorian missionaries, who, we are informed by Marco Polo, were settled there. The same species was likewise foreign to the Tibetans, as is evidenced by their designation "white turnip" (yuns-kar) . In India it is not indigenous, either: WATT4 says that if met with at all, it occurs in gardens only within the temperate areas, or in upper India during the winter months; it is not a field crop.
This genus comprises nearly a hundred species, all natives of the north temperate zones, and most of them of ancient European cultivation (with an independent centre in China) .
Abu Mansur' distinguishes under the Arabic name karnab five kinds of Brassica,— Nabathœan, Brassica silvestris, B. marina, B. cypria
1 The same definition is given by T'an Sen-wei in his d`en lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 27, p. 15).
2 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 12.
3 T `oung Pao, 1915, p. 86.
4 Commercial Products of India, p. 176.
5 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. IN,.
380
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