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
THE DATE—PALM 391
was made in the Sasanian empire: in the tax laws of Khosrau I (A.D. 531-578), four Persian date-palms were valued and taxed equally with six common ones.' As already remarked, the Wei and Sui Annals attribute the date to Sasanian Persia, and the date is mentioned in Pahlavi literature (above, p. 193). At present dates thrive in the low plains of Kerman and of the littoral of the Persian Gulf; but the crops are insufficient, so that a considerable importation from Bagdad takes place.'
A. DE CANDOLLE3 asserts, "No Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in western India
are not very ancient. The Indian climate does not suit the species."
There is the Sanskrit name kharjûra for Phoenix sylvestris, that already occurs in the Yajurveda.4 This is the wild date or date-sugar palm,
which is indigenous in many parts of India, being most abundant in
Bengal, Bihar, on the Coromandel Coast, and in Gujarat. The edible date (P. dactylifera) is cultivated and self-sown in Sind and the southern
Panjab, particularly near Multan, Muzaffargarh, the Sind Sagar Doab, and in the Trans-Indus territory. It is also grown in the Deccan and Gujarat.' Its Hindi name is khajûra, Hindustani khafür, from Sanskrit kharjûra. It is also called sindhi, seindi, sendri, which names allude to its origin from Sind. Possibly Sanskrit kharjûra and Iranian khurma(n), at least as far as the first element is concerned, are anciently related.
1 NOLDEKE, Tabari, p. 245.
2 SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 175.
s Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 303.
4 MACDONELL and KEITH, Vedic Index, Vol. I, p. 215.
6 G. WATT, Commercial Products of India, pp. 883, 885.
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