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
FENUGREEK
5o. In regard to the fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum, French fenugrec), Chinese hu-lu-pa (Japanese koroha) i}la E , STUART' states without further comment that the seeds of this leguminous plant were introduced into the southern provinces of China from some foreign country. But BRETSCHNEIDER2 had correctly identified the Chinese name with Arabic hulba (xulba) . The plant is first mentioned in the Pen ts'ao of the Kia-yu period (A.D. 1056-64) of the Sung dynasty,
where the author, Can Yü-si A , says that it grows in the prov-
inces of Kwan-tun and Kwei-cou, and that, according to some, the species of Lin-nan represents the seeds of the foreign lo-po (Raphanus sativus), but that this point has not yet been investigated. Su Sun, in his T'u kin pen ts'ao, states that "the habitat of the plant is at present in Kwan-tun, and that in the opinion of some the seeds came from Hai-nan and other barbarians; passengers arriving on ships planted the seeds in Kwan-tun (Lin-wai), where the plant actually grows, but its seeds do not equal the foreign article; the seeds imported into China are really good." Then their employment in the pharmacopoeia is discussed.3 The drug is also mentioned in the Pen ts'ao yen i.4
The transcription hu-lu-pa is of especial interest, because the element hu forms part of the transcription, but may simultaneously imply an allusion to the ethnic name Hu. The form of the transcription shows that it is post-Tang; for under the Tang the phonetic equivalent of the character }I was still possessed of an initial guttural, and a foreign element xu would then have been reproduced by a quite different character.
The medical properties of the plant are set forth by Abu Mansur in his Persian pharmacopoeia under the name hulbat.5 The Persian name
1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 442.
2 Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 65.
a STUART (1. c.) says wrongly that the seeds have been in use as a medicine since the Tang dynasty; this, however, has been the case only since the Sung. I do not know of any mention of the plant under the Tang. This negative documentary evidence is signally confirmed by the transcription of the name, which cannot have been made under the T'ang.
Ch. 12, p. 4 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
5 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 47. Another Persian form is hulya. In Armenian it is hu/bd or hulbe (E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 183). See algo LECLERC, Traité
446
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