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0237 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 237 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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THE FIG   41I

scription of Hindustani afljir," as affirmed by Hirth, but of New Persian anjir or enjir, the Hindustani (as well as Sanskrit anjira) being simply borrowed from the Persian; Bukhara injir, Afghan intsir; Russian indiaru.

  1.  Fu-lin a   ti-ni or ti-ten _ or IN (*ti-tsen, *ti-ten) ; the latter
    variant is not necessarily to be rejected, as is done by Hirth. Cf. Assyrian tittu (from *tintu) ; Phoenician tin; Hebrew ti'nu, te'endh,' Arabic tin, tine, tima; Aramaic ts'intd, tenta, tena; Pahlavi tin (Semitic loan-word) . The Semitic name is said to have taken its starting-point from south-eastern Arabia, where also, in the view of the botanists, the origin of fig-culture should be sought; but in view of the Assyrian word and the antiquity of the fig in Assyria,' this theory is not probable. There is no doubt that the Chinese transcription answers to a Semitic name; but that this is the Aramaic name, as insisted on by Hirth in favor of his theory that the language of Fu-lin should have been Aramaic, is not cogent. The transcription ti-ni, on the contrary, is much nearer to the Arabic, Phoenician, and Hebrew forms.3

  2.     * 4 (or better mac) yu-Van-po, *u-dan-pat(par), *u-dan-
    bar = Sanskrit udambara (Ficus glomerata) .4 According to Li gi-6en, this name is current in Kwain-tun.

  3.  °: 'lE A wu hwa kwo ("flowerless fruit "),b Japanese ikiku. The erroneous notion that the fig-tree does not bloom is not peculiar to Albertus Magnus, as Hirth is inclined to think, but goes back to times of antiquity, and occurs in Aristotle and Pliny.' This wrong observation arose from the fact that the flowers, unlike those of most fruit-trees, make no outward appearance, but are concealed within the

1 In the so-called histories of the fig concocted by botanists for popular consumption, one can still read the absurdity that Latin ficus is to be derived from Hebrew feg. Such a Hebrew word does not exist. What does exist in Hebrew, is the word pag, occurring only in Canticle (ii, 13), which, however, is not a general term for the fig, but denotes only a green fig that did not mature and that remained on the tree during the winter. Phonetically it is impossible to connect this Hebrew word with the Latin one. In regard to the fig among the Semites, see, above all, the excellent article of E. LEVESQUE in the Dictionnaire de la Bible (Vol. II, col. 2237).

2 E. BONAVIA, Flora of the Assyrian Monuments, p. 14.

It is surprising to read Hirth's conclusion that "ti-ni is certainly much nearer the Aramean word than the Greek o v ci [better cri,Kod for fig, or EPwebs for caprificus." No one has ever asserted, or could assert, that these Greek words are derived from Semitic; their origin is still doubtful (see SCHRADER in Hehn, Kulturpflanzen,

p. Ioo).

4 Fan yi min yi tsi, Ch. 8, p. 5.

Also other fruits are described under Ch. 16, pp. 58-60). The terms under 4 and

in his Tien lu Si yüt «a (Ch. A, p. 6 xvi, 39.

this name (see ei wu min Si t`u k`ao, 5 are identified by Kao Si-ki i

6o, published in 1690, ed. of Swo lin).