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
498 SING-IRANICA
so that the Chinese reference to Samarkand becomes intelligible. The Chinese reports of sa-ha-la in India, Ormuz, and Aden, however, evidently refer to European broadcloth, as does also Tibetan sag-lad.'
The Ain-i Akbari speaks of suklât (sagalât) of Ram (Turkey), Farangi (Europe), and Purtagâli (Portugal) ; and the Persian word is now applied to certain woollen stuffs, and particularly to European broadcloth.
The Persian words sakirlât and sagalât are not interrelated, as is shown by two sets of European terms which are traced to the two Persian types : sakirlât is regarded as the ancestor of " scarlet " (med. Latin scarlatum, scarlata; Old French escarlate, New French écarlate, Middle English scarlat, etc.) ; saglâtan or siglâtûn is made responsible for Old French siglaton, Provençal sisclaton (twelfth century), English obs. ciclatoun (as early as 1225), Middle High German ciclât or siglât. Whether the alleged derivations from the Persian are correct is a debatable point, which cannot be discussed here; the derivation of siglaton from Greek 'malts (cyclas), due to Du Cange, is still less plausible.2 Dr. Ross (l.c.) holds that "the origin of the word scarlet seems to be wrapped in mystery, and there seems to be little in favor of the argument that the word can be traced to Arabic or Persian sources."
76. Toward the close of the reign of Kao Tsun A , , better known as Wen C`en ( A (A.D. 452-465) of the Hou Wei dynasty (386-532), the king of Su-le (Kashgar) sent an emissary to present a garment (k4âya) of gakyamuni Buddha, over twenty feet in length. On examination, Kao Tsun satisfied himself that it was a Buddha robe. It proved a miracle, for, in order to get at the real facts, the Emperor had the cloth put to a test and exposed to a violent fire for a full day, but it was not consumed by the flames. All spectators were startled and spell-bound.3 This test has repeatedly been made everywhere with asbestine cloth, of which many examples are given in my article "Asbestos and Salamander."4 The Chinese themselves have recognized without difficulty that this Buddha relic of Kashgar was made of an asbestine material. In the Lu c'an kun §i. kti,5 a modern work,
1 See Loan-Words in Tibetan, No. 119.
2 Cf. also F.-MICHEL, Recherches sur le commerce etc., des étoffes de soie, Vol. I, pp. 233-235. The Greek word in question does not refer to a stuff, but to a robe (Kv aets, "round, circular," scil., EcrOis, "a woman's garment with a border all round it "). Cycladatus in Suetonius (Caligula, LII) denotes a tunic with a rich border.
3 Wei Su, Ch. 102, p. 4 b.
4 T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 299-373.
6 Ed. of Ts'in cao ran ts'un Su, p. 4o (see above, p. 346). On p. 41 b there is a notice of fire-proof cloth, consisting of quotations from earlier works, which are all contained in my article.
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