IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
IRANIAN MINERALS—LITHARGE, GOLD 509
in the silver and copper foundries of Kwan-tun and Fu-kien. It is further mentioned briefly in the Pen is `ao yen i of '1'6,1 which maintains
that the kind with a color like gold is the best.
According to Ya.qût, mines of antimony, known under the name
razi, litharge, lead, and vitriol, were in the environs of Donbawend or Demawend in the province of Kirmâ.n.2 In the Persian pharmacopoeia
of Abu Mansur, the medicinal properties of litharge are described under the Arabicized name murdeisanj, to which he adds the synonymous term murtak.3 Pegoletti, in the fourteenth century, gives the word with a popular etymology as morda sangue.4 The Dictionary of Four Languages' correlates Chinese mi-t`o-sen with Tibetan gser-zil (literally,
"gold brightness"),6 Manchu 6ircan, and Mongol jildunur.7
8i. PALLADIUS8 offers a term tse-mo kin with the meaning
"gold from Persia," no source for it being cited. In the Pen ts`ao kan
mu,9 the tse-mo kin of Po-se (Persia) is given as the first in a series of five kinds of gold of foreign countries,10 without further explanation.
The term occurs also in Buddhist literature: CHAVANNES11 has found it in the text of a Jdtaka, where he proposes as hypothetical translation, "un amas d'or raffiné rouge." It therefore seems to be unknown what
the term signifies, although a special kind of gold or an alloy of gold is
apparently intended. The kin cu 7k '112 says that the first
quality of gold, according to Chinese custom, is styled tse-mo kin (written as above) ; according to the custom of the barbarians, however, yan-mai PA . From this it would appear that tse-mo is a Chinese term, not a foreign one.
1 Ch. 5, p. 6 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
2 BARBIER DE MEYNARD, OP. cit., p. 237.
ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 139. This form goes back to Middle Persian murtak or murtak.
4 YULE, Cathay, new ed., Vol. III, p. 167.
5 Ch. 22, p. 71.
6 JAESCHKE, in his Tibetan Dictionary, was unable to explain this term.
7 KOVALEVSKI, in his Mongol Dictionary, explains this word wrongly by "mica."
$ Chinese-Russian Dictionary, Vol. II, p. 203.
9 Ch. 8, p. i b.
10 The four others are, the dark gold of the eastern regions, the red gold of Lin-yi, the gold of the Si-zun, and the gold of Can-6`en (Camboja). The five kinds of foreign gold are mentioned as early as the tenth century in the Pao ts`an lun
q({Q
11 Fables et contes de l'Inde, in Actes du XIV° Congrès des Orientalistes, Vol. I, 1905, p. 103.
12 Ch. 36, p. 18 b (ed. Wu-6`afn, 1877). See p. 622.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.