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 SPINACH 397
more deeply divided, and that it rises less from the ground.' A. DE CANDOLLE states that "spinach has not yet been found in a wild state, unless it be a cultivated modification of Spinacia tetandra Steven, which is wild to the south of the Caucasus, in Turkistan, in Persia, and in Afghanistan, and which is used as a vegetable under the name of gamum." The latter word is apparently a bad spelling or misreading for Persian .omin or ûmin (Armenian zomin and gamin), another designation for the spinach.
The spinach is not known in India except as an introduction by the English. The agriculturists of India classify spinach among the English vegetables.' The species Spinacia tetrandra Roxb., for which RoxBURGH3 gives the common Persian and Arabic name for the spinach, and of which he says that it is much cultivated in Bengal and the adjoining provinces, being a pot-herb held in considerable estimation by the natives, may possibly have been introduced by the Mohammedans. As a matter of fact, spinach is a vegetable of the temperate zones and alien to tropical regions. A genuine Sanskrit word for the spinach is unknown.4 Nevertheless Chinese po-lin, *pwa-lin, must represent the transcription of some Indian vernacular name. In Hindustani we have palak as designation for the spinach, and palan or palak as name for Beta vulgaris, Pustu pâlak,5 apparently developed from Sanskrit pâlanka, pâlankya, palakyû, pâlakyâ, to which our dictionaries attribute the meaning "a kind of vegetable, a kind of beet-root, Beta bengalensis"; in Bengali palan.' To render the coincidence with the Chinese form complete, there is also Sanskrit Palakka
1 Perhaps related to Atriplex L., the so-called wild spinach, chiefly cultivated in France and eaten like spinach. The above description, of course, must not be construed to mean that the cultivated spinach is derived from the so-called wild spinach of the Nabathæans. The two plants may not be interrelated at all.
2 N. G. MUKERJI, Handbook of Indian Agriculture, 2d ed., p. 300 (Calcutta, 1907); but it is incorrect to state that spinach originally came from northern Asia. A. DE CANDOLLE (op. cit., p. 99) has already observed, "Some popular works repeat that spinach is a native of northern Asia, but there is nothing to confirm this supposition."
3 Flora Indica, p. 718.
A. BoROOAH, in his English-Sanskrit Dictionary, gives a word râkaprabheda with this meaning, but this simply signifies "a kind of vegetable," and is accordingly an explanation.
5 H. W. BELLEW, Report on the Yusufzais, p. 255 (Lahore, 1864).
e Beta is much cultivated by the natives of Bengal, the leaves being consumed in stews (W. ROXBURGH, Flora Indica, p. 26o). Another species, Beta maritima, is also known as "wild spinach." It should be remembered that the genus Beta belongs to the same family (Chenopodiaceae) as Spinacia.
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