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0279 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 279 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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t

THE CARROT   453

descriptive formation is sufficient to show that the cultivated carrot was foreign to the Hindu. Also W. AINSLIE1 justly concludes, "Carrots appear to have been first introduced into India from Persia."

According to SCHWEINFURTH,2 Daucus carota should display a very peculiar form in Egypt,— a sign of ancient cultivation. This requires confirmation. At all events, it does not prove that the carrot was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians. Neither Loret nor Woenig mentions it for ancient Egypt.

In Greek the carrot is o ra4vX -cvos (hence Syriac istaf lin) . It is mentioned by Theophrastus3 and Pliny;' Savicos or Saû►cov was a kind of carrot or parsnip growing in Crete and used in medicine; hence NeoGreek Sacrci (" carrot "), Spanish dauco. A. DE CANDOLLE5 is right in saying that the vegetable was little cultivated by the Greeks and Romans, but, as agriculture was perfected, took a more important place.

The Arabs knew a wild and a cultivated carrot, the former under the name neh. el or nehsel,6 the knowledge of which was transmitted to them by Dioscorides,7 the latter under the names jezer, sefanariya (in the dialect of Magreb zorudiya), and sabdhia.8 The Arabic word dauku or dûqû, derived from Greek Sakos, denotes particularly the seed of the wild carrot.'

JoRET10 presumes that the carrot was known to the ancient Iranians. The evidence presented, however, is hardly admissible: Daucus maximus which grows in Western Persia is only a wild species. This botanical fact does not prove that the Iranians were acquainted with the cultivated Daucus carota. An Iranian name for this species is not known. Only in the Mohammedan period does knowledge of it spring up in Persia; and the Persians then became acquainted with the carrot under the Arabic name jazar or jezer, which, however, may have been derived from Persian gazar (gezer). It is mentioned under the Arabic name in the Persian pharmacopoeia of Abu Mansur," who apparently copied from Arabic sources. He further points out a wild species under the

1 Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 57.

2 Z. f. Ethnologie, Vol. XXIII, 1891, p. 662.

3 Hist. plant., IX. xv, 5.

4 XX, 15.

5 Géographie botanique, p. 827.

G L. LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. III, p. 380.

7 LECLERC, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 353.

8 LECLERC, ibid., and p. 367.

9 LECLERC, ibid., p. 138.

10 Plantes dans l'antiquité, Vol. II, p. 66.

11 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 42.

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