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
482 SING-IRANICA
A M."' According to Ma Ci, it grows in southern China, and, according to Su Sun, in the marshes of Lin-nan; thus it must have been introduced between the Tang and Sung dynasties. In regard to the name, which is no doubt of foreign origin, Li Si-ben observes that its significance is as yet unexplained. Certainly it is not Iranian, nor is it known to me that Amomum occurs in Persia. On the contrary, the plant has been discovered in Burma, Siam, Camboja, and Laos.' Therefore Li San's Po-se obviously relates again to the Malayan Po-se; yet his addition of Si-hai and Si-dun is apt to raise a strong suspicion that he himself confounded the two Po-se and in this case thought of Persia. I have not yet succeeded in tracing the foreign word on which the Chinese transcription is based, but feel sure that it is not Iranian. The present colloquial name is ts'ao ga den * t.3
66. There is a plant styled T p`o-to-te, *bwa-ra-tik, or
p`o-to-lo, *bwa-ra-lak(lok, lek), not yet identified. Again our earliest source of information is due to Li San, who states, "P `o-lo-te grows in the countries of the Western Sea (Si-hai) and in Po-se. The tree resembles the Chinese willow; and its seeds, those of the castor-oil plant (pei-ma tse, Ricinus communis, above, p. 403) ; they are much used by druggists."4 Li Si-ben regards the word as Sanskrit, and the elements of the transcription hint indeed at a Sanskrit name. It is evidently Sanskrit bhallcitaka, from which are derived Newari pâlâla, Hindustani belatak or bhelâ, Persian baleidur, and Arabic belâdur (GARCIA: balader) . Other Sanskrit synonymes of this plant are aruska, bijapâdapa, viravrksa, vi$âsyâ, and dahana. It is mentioned in several passages of the Bower Manuscript.
This is the marking-nut tree (Semecar pus anacardium, family Anacardiaceae), a genus of Indian trees found throughout the hotter parts of India as far east as Assam, also distributed over the Archipelago as far as the Philippines' and North Australia. It does not occur in Burma or Ceylon, nor in Persia or western Asia. The fleshy receptacle bearing the fruit contains a bitter and astringent substance, which is universally used in India as a substitute for marking-ink. The Chinese
Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 14, p. 13 b.
2 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 38. LOUREIRO (so-xa-mi) mentions it for Cochin-China (PERROT and HURRIER, Mat. méd. et pharmacopée sino-annamites,
P. 97).
3 Ci wu min . i t`u k`ao, Ch. 25, p. 72.
4 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 35, p. 7; Cen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 5, p. 14 b. In the latter work Li Sun attributes the definition " Western Sea and Po-se" to Sû Piao, author of the Nan cou ki.
6 M. BLANCO, Flora de Filipinas, p. 216.
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