National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

SINO-IRANICA

and people P`o-lo-men on the border of Burma, the Po-se likewise on the border of Burma, and the Malayan K`un-lun. In the first half of the eighth century, accordingly, we find the Malayan Po-se as a seafaring people trading with the Chinese at Canton. Consequently also the alleged "Persian" settlement on the south coast of Hainan, struck by the traveller, was a Malayan-Po-se colony. In view of this situation, the further question may be raised whether the pilgrim Yi Tsin in A.D. 671 sought passage at Canton on a Persian ship.' This vessel was bound for Palembang on Sumatra, and sailed the Malayan waters; again, in my opinion, the Malayan Po-se, not the Persians, are here in question.

The Malayan Po-se were probably known far earlier than the Tang period, for they appear to have been mentioned in the Kwait written

before A.D. 527. In the Hiait p`u   of Huh C`u A of the Sung,'
this work is quoted as saying that &u hiait IL 4 (a kind of incense)3 is the sap of a pine-tree in the country Po-se in the Southern Sea. This Po-se is well enough defined to exclude the Iranian Po-se, where, moreover, no incense is produced.4

The same text is also preserved in the Hai yao pen ts`ao of Li San of the eighth century,' in a slightly different but substantially identical wording: "2u hiait grows in Nan-hai [the countries of the Southern Sea] : it is the sap of a pine-tree in Po-se. That kind which is red like cherries and transparent ranks first." K`ou Tsun-Si, who wrote the Pen ts'ao yen i in A.D. I116, says that the incense of the Southern Barbarians (Nan Fan) is still better than that of southern India. The Malayan Po-se belonged to the Southern Barbarians. The fact that these, and not the Persians, are to be understood in the accounts relating

to incense, is brought out with perfect lucidity by C'en C`en   i C,
who wrote the Pen ts`ao pie two *# YJ! fa in A.D. 1090, and who says, "As regards the west, incense is produced in India (T`ien-Cu) ; as re-

1 CHAVANNES, Religieux éminents, p. x16; J. TAKAKUSU, I-Tsing, p. xxvIII.

2 Ed. of Teals Sun ts'un u, p. 5.

3 Not necessarily from Boswellia, nor identical with frankincense. The above text says that zru Mail is a kind of hün-lu. The latter is simply a generic term for incense, without referring to any particular species. I strictly concur with PELLIOT (T'oung Pao, 1912, p. 477) in regarding hün-lu as a Chinese word, not as the transcription of a foreign word, as has been proposed.

4 If hün lu is enumerated in the Sui Xu among the products of Persia, this means that incense was used there as an import-article, but it does not follow from this that "it was brought to China on Persian ships" (HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 196). The "Persian ships," it seems, must be relegated to the realm of imagination. Only from the Mohammedan period did really Persian ships appear in the far east. The best instance to this effect is contained in the notes of Hwi Cao of the eighth

century (HIRTH, Journal Am. Or. Soc., 1913, p. 205).

6 Pen ts`ao kan mu, Ch. 34, p. 16.

470

4