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
| 406 | SINO-IRANICA |
province of Gujarat from Persia, where they grow in dry and arid places between rocks; they are as bitter as colocynth, and there is no fear that children will amuse themselves by eating them.'
What WATTERS2 has stated about the almond is for the greater part inexact or erroneous. " For the almond which does not grow in China the native authors and others have apparently only the Persian name which is Bâdân. This the Chinese transcribe pa-tan A s or E f and
perhaps also, as suggested by Bretschneider, pa-lan .." First, the
Persian name for the almond is btidâm; second, the Chinese characters given by Watters are not apt to transcribe this word, as the former series answers to ancient *pat-dam, the latter to *pa-dan. Both A and i only had an initial labial surd, but never a labial sonant, and for this reason could not have been chosen for the transcription of a foreign ba in the Tang period, when the name of the almond made its début in China. Further, the character Li , which was not possessed of a final labial nasal, would make a rather bad reproduction of the required element dam. In fact, the characters given by Watters are derived from the Pen tstao kan mu,3 and represent merely a comparatively modern readjustment of the original form made at a time when the transposition of sonants into surds had taken effect. The first form given by Watters, as stated in the Pen tstao itself, is taken from the Yin . an den yao (see p. 236), written by Ho Se-hwi during the Yiian period; while the second form is the work of Li Si-6m, as admitted by himself, and accordingly has no phonetic value whatever.4 Indeed, we have a phonetically exact transcription of the Iranian term, handed down from the Tang period, when the Chinese still enjoyed the possession of a well-trained ear, and, in view of the greater wealth of sounds then prevailing in their speech, also had the faculty of reproducing them with a fair degree of precision. This transcription is presented by
p`o-tan, *bwa-dam, almond (Amy gdalus communis or Prunus amygdalus), which actually reproduces Middle Persian vadam, New Persian bc-iddm (Kurd badem, beïv and baïf, "almond-tree") .5 This term,
1 TAVERNIER, Travels in India, Vol. I, p. 27.
2 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 348.
3 Ch. 29, p. 4. Hence adopted also by the Japanese botanists (MATSUMURA, No. 2567), but read amendo (imitation of our word).
4 He further gives as name for the almond hu-lu-ma ja. = Persian xurmâ
(khurmâ), but this word properly refers to the date (p. 385). From the Ta Min i run ci (Ch. 89, p. 24), where the almonds of Herat are mentioned, it appears that hu-lu-ma (xurmâ) was the designation of a special variety of almond, "resembling a jujube and being sweet."
5 The assertion of STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 40), that pa-tan may refer to some country in Asia Minor or possibly be another name for Persia, is erroneous.
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