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0249 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 249 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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s   1+   Y1   it

CASSIA PODS AND- CAROB   423

.amb, Byzantine Greek Xiapuliµß€p, XEaraµl-0); and it is a Middle-Persian variation of this type that is hidden in the " Persian " transcription of the Yu yan tsa tsu, hu-ye-yen-mo f ff St, anciently *xut (xur) -ya-diem (diem) -m'wak (bäk, bäx) . The prototype to be restored may have been *xaryadiambax. There is a New-Persian word for the same tree and fruit, bakbar. It is also called kâbuli (" coming from Kabul ").

The Fu-lin name of the plant is PiltIttta-li-kfa,

go-vaS. I. LoEwi does not give an Aramaic name for Cassia fistula, nor does he indicate this tree, neither am I able to find a name for it in the relevant dictionaries. We have to take into consideration that the tree is not indigenous to western Asia and Egypt, and that the Arabs transplanted it there from India (cf. the Arabic terms given above, "Indian carob," and "Indian cucumber"). The Fu-lin term is evidently an Indian loan-word, for the transcription *a-ri-go-vaS corresponds exactly to Sanskrit ârgvadha, answering to an hypothetical Aramaic form *arigbada or *arigfada. In some editions of the Yu yan tsa tsu, the Fu-lin word is written a-li or a-i f a, *a-ri-vaS. These would likewise be possible forms, for there is also a Sanskrit variant ârevata and an Indian vernacular form ali (in Panjäbi).

The above texts of C`en Ts`an-k`i and Twan C`en-Si, author of the Yu yan tsa tsu, give occasion for some further comments. PELLIOT2 maintained that the latter author, who lived toward the end of the ninth century, frequently derived his information from the former, who wrote in the first part of the eighth century;3 from the fact that C`en in many cases indicates the foreign names of exotic plants, Pelliot is inclined to infer that Twan has derived from him also his nomenclature of plants in the Fu-lin language. This is by no means correct. I have carefully read almost all texts preserved under the name of C`en (or his work, the Pen ts`ao i i) in the Cen lei pen ts`ao and Pen tstao kaû mu, and likewise studied all notices of plants by Twan; with the result that Twan, with a few exceptions, is independent of C`en. As to Fu-lin names, none whatever is recorded by the latter, and the above text is the only one in which the country Fu-lin figures, while he gives the plant-name solely in its Sanskrit form. In fact, all the foreign names noted by C`en come from the Indo-Malayan area. The above case shows plainly that Twan's information does not at all depend on C`en's

1 Aramaeische Pflanzennamen.

2 T`oung Pao, 1912, P. 454.

3 The example cited to this effect (Bull. de l'Ecole française, Vol. IV, p. 113o) is not very lucky, for in fact the two texts are clearly independent.