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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520 SING-IRANICA
Yün-nan Province.' In this text, the term pi tien-tse EF 3- is employed. T'an Ts`ui2 says that turquoises (pi Lien) are produced in the Mon-yan t`u-se .11* ± Al of Yün-nan. In the Hin-nan fu ci
j / ,3 the gazetteer of the prefecture of Hin-nan in southern Sen-si, it is said that pi t`ien (written MI) were formerly a product of this locality, and mined under the Tang and Sung, the mines being closed in the beginning of the Ming. This notice is suspicious, as we hear of pi-tien or tien-tse neither under the T'ang nor the Sung; the term comes into existence under the Yüan.4
88. 1 kin tsin (" essence of gold ") appears to have been the term
for lapis lazuli during the T'ang period. The stone came from the famous mines of Badaxsâ,n.5
At the time of the Yüan or Mongol dynasty a new word for lapis lazuli springs up in the form lan-ri I . The Chinese traveller C`an Te, who was despatched in 1259 as envoy by the Mongol Emperor Mangu to his brother Hulagu, King of Persia, and whose diary, the Si .i ki, was edited by Liu Yu in 1263, reports that a stone of that name is found on the rocks of the mountains in the south-western countries of Persia. The word lan-C `i is written with two characters meaning "orchid" and "red," which yields no sense; and BRETSCHNEIDERG is therefore right in concluding that the two elements represent the transcription of a foreign name. He is inclined to think that "it is the same as landshiwer, the Arabic name for lapis lazuli." In New Persian it is lâ vard or ldjvard (Arabic ldzvard) . Another Arabic word is linej, by which the cyanos of Dioscorides is translated.' An Arabic form lanjiver is not known to me.
"There is also in the same country [Badashan] another mountain, in which azure is found; 'tis the finest in the world, and is got in a vein like silver. There are also other mountains which contain a great amount of silver ore, so that the country is a very rich one." Thus runs
1 Ta Min i run 6i, Ch. 86, p. 8.
2 Tien hai yü hen U, 1799, Ch. I, p. 6 b (ed. of Wen yin lou yü ti ts`un su). See above, p. 228. T'u-se are districts under a native chieftain, who himself is subject to Chinese authority.
3 Ch. II, p. II b (ed. of 1788).
4 The turquois has not been recognized in a text of the Wei si wen kien ki of 1769 by G. SouLIé (Bull. de l'Ecole française, Vol. VIII, p. 372), where the question is of coral and turquois used by the Ku-tsun (a Tibetan tribe) women as ornaments;
instead of yuan-song, as there transcribed, read lü sun Si a e .
5 CHAVANNES, Documents sur les Tou-kiue, p. 159; and T'oung Pao, 1904, p. 66.
Chinese Recorder, Vol. VI, p. 16; or Mediœval Researches, Vol. I, p. 151.
7 LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. III, p. 254.
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