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
552 SING-IRANICA
judging from what Steingass says, is not exactly known. The Arabic author, further, has a .ah-sin' (" Chinese king "), described as a drug in the shape of small, thin, and black tabloids prepared from the sap of a plant. It is useful as a refrigerant for feverish headache and inflamed tumors. It is reduced to a powder and applied to the diseased spot.' Leclerc annotates that, according to the Persian treatises, this plant originating from China, as indicated by its name, is serviceable for headache in general. Dimaski, who wrote about 1325, ascribes . ah-ani to the island of Cankhay in the Malayan Archipelago, saying that its leaves are known under the name "betel."2 STEINGASS, in his Persian Dictionary, explains the term as "the expressed juice of a plant brought from China, good for headaches." I do not know what plant is understood here.
According to Ibn al-Baitâr, the mango (Arabic anbâ) is found only in India and China.' This is Mangifera indica (family Anacardiaceae), a native of India, and the queen of the Indian fruits, counting several hundreds of varieties. Its Sanskrit name is eimra,
known to the Chinese in the transcription an-lo, *am-la(ra).
Persian amba and Arabic anbâ are derived from the same word. During the Tang period the fruit was grown in Fergana.4 Malayan manga (like our mango) is based on Tamil mangas, and is the foundation of the Chinese transcription mun a . The an-lo tree is first mentioned for Cen-la (Camboja) in the Sui Annals,' where its leaves are compared with those of the jujube (Zizyphus vulgaris), and its fruits with those of a plum (Prunus tri flora) .
Isak Ibn Amrän says, "Sandal is a wood that comes to us from China."6 Santalum album is grown in Kwan-tun to some extent, but it is more probable that the sandal-wood used in western Asia came from India (cf. Persian &andein, candal, Armenian ëandan, Arabic sandal, from Sanskrit candana) .
Antâ,ki notes the xalen tree ("birch") in India and China; and Ibn al-Kebir remarks that it is particularly large in China, in the country of the Ras (Russians) and Bulgâx, where are made from it vessels and plates which are exported to distant places; the arrows made of this wood are unsurpassed. According to Qazwini and Ibn
1 Ibid., p. 314.
2 G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs à l'Extrême-Orient, p. 381.
3 LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. II, P. 471. Cf. Ibn Batuta, ed. of DEFRÉMERY and SANGUINETTI, Vol. III, p. 127; YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 553.
4 T'ai p`in hwan yü ki, Ch. 181, p. 13 b. b Sui Su, Ch. 82, p. 3 b.
6 LECLERC, Op. cif., p. 383.
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