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
436 SINO-IRANICA
connected with our Fu-lin word, which at any rate represents a loan-word.
There is another Fu-lin word which has not yet been treated correctly. The 'rang Annals, in the account of Fu-lin (Ch. 221), mention a mammal, styled ts`un V, of the size of a dog, fierce, vicious, and strong.' BRETSCHNEIDER,2 giving an incorrect form of the name, has correctly identified this beast with the hyena, which, not being found in eastern Asia, is unknown to the Chinese. Ma Twan-lin adds that some of these animals are reared,' and the hyena can indeed be tamed. The character for the designation of this animal is not listed in K`an-hi's Dictionary; but K`an-hi gives it in the form it4 with the pronunciation hien (fan-ts `ie *, sound equivalent 14), quoting a commentary to the dictionary Er ya, which is identical with the text of Ma Twan-lin relative to the animal ts`un. This word hien (or possibly hiian) can be nothing but a transcription of Greekvaiva, hyaena, or vaivrl. On the other hand, it should be noted that this dreek word has also passed as a loan into Syriac;5 and it would therefore not be impossible that it was Syrians who transmitted the Greek name to the Chinese. This question is altogether irrelevant; for we know, and again thanks to Hirth's researches, that the Chinese distinguished two Fu-lin,— the Lesser Fu-lin, which is identical with Syria, and the Greater Fu-lin, the Byzantine Empire with Constantinople as capital.' Byzantine Greek, accordingly, must be included among the languages spoken in Fu-lin.
As to the origin of the name Fu-lin, I had occasion to refer to Pelliot's new theory, according to which it would be based on Rom, Rûm.7 I am of the same opinion, and perfectly in accord with the fundamental principles by which this theory is inspired. In fact, this is the method followed throughout this investigation: by falling back on the ancient phonology of Chinese, we may hope to restore correctly the prototypes of the Chinese transcriptions. Pelliot starts from the Old-Armenian form Hrom or Hrom,' in which h represents
1 HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, pp. 6o, 107, 220.
2 Knowledge possessed by the Ancient Chinese of the Arabs, p. 24.
3 HIRTH (op. cit., p. 79) translates, "Some are domesticated like dogs." But
the phrase ~~ following forms a separate clause. In the text printed •
by Hirth (p. 115, Q 22) the character ~j is to be eliminated.
4 Thus reproduced by PALLADIUS in his Chinese-Russian Dictionary (Vol. I, p. 569) with the reading süan.
6 R. P. SMITH, Thesaurus syriacus, Vol. I, col. 338.
6 Cf. HIRTH, Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXIII, 1913, pp. 202-208.
7 The Diamond (this volume, p. 8). PELLIOT'S notice is in Journal asiatique, 1914, I, Pp- 498-50o.
8 Cf. Ht BSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 362.
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