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
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486 SING-IRANICA
that the character men should be pronounced in this case a man, that the name of the tree is ( * (thus written in the Nan fan ts'ao mu Zwan), and that the southerners, because they articulate 3Z like Tg, have substituted the latter. This is a perfectly satisfactory explanation. The Ku kin cu,' however, has preserved a transcription in the form
*i-mule-i or *bu (wu), which must have belonged to the
language of Kiao-6ou ß'I1 (Tonking), as the product hailed from there.
Compare Khmer male pen and Cam mökid (" ebony," Diospyros eben-aster) .2
Ebony was known in ancient Babylonia, combs being wrought from this material.' It is mentioned in early Egyptian inscriptions as being brought from the land of the Negroes on the upper Nile. Indeed, Africa was the chief centre that supplied the ancients with this precious wood.' From Ethiopia a hundred billets of ebony were sent every third year as tribute to Darius, king of Persia. Ezekiel5 alludes to the ebony of Tyre. The Periplus (36) mentions the shipping of ebony from Barygaza in India to Ommana in the Persian Gulf. Theophrastus,6 who is the first to mention the ebony-tree of India, makes a distinction between two kinds of Indian ebony, a rare and nobler one, and a common variety of inferior wood. According to Pliny,' it was Pompey who displayed ebony in Rome at his triumph over Mithridates; and Solinus, who copies this passage, adds that it came from India, and was then shown for the first time. According to the same writer, ebony was solely sent from India, and the images of Indian gods were sometimes carved from this wood entirely, likewise drinking-cups.' Thus the ancients were acquainted with ebony as a product of Africa and India at a time when Indo-China was still veiled to them, nor is any reference made to the far east in any ancient western account of the subject. The word itself is of Egyptian origin: under the name heben, ebony formed an important article with the country Punt. Hebrew hobnim is related to this word or directly borrowed from it, and Greek É'f3Evos is derived from Semitic. Arabic-Persian 'abnûs is taken as a loan from the Greek, and Hindi dbanicsa is the descendant of abnùs.
1 Ch. c, p. 1 b. The product is described as coming from Kiao-Zou, being of black color and veined, and also called "wood with black veins" (wu wen mu).
2 AYMONIER and CABATON, Dictionnaire dam-français, p. 366. = HANDCOCK, Mesopotamian Archæology, p. 349. d Herodotus, III, 97.
5 XXVII, 15.
6 Hist. plant., IV. iv, 6.
7 XII, 4, § 20.
8 Solinus, ed. MOMMSEN, pp. 193, 221.
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