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
| IRANO-SINICA-PAPER | 559 |
indeed, has always been more common. Hirth's supposition of a former pronunciation kok cannot be accepted; but, even did this alleged kok exist, I should continue to disbelieve in the proposed etymology of the Persian-Arabic word. There is no reason to assume that, because paper was adopted by the Arabs and Persians from the Chinese, their designation of it should hail from the same quarter. I do not know of a foreign language that was willing to adopt from the Chinese any designation for paper. Our word comes from the Greek-Latin papyrus; Russian bumaga originally means "cotton," being ultimately traceable to Middle Persian pambak.' The Tibetans learned the technique of paper-making from the Chinese, but have a word of their own to designate paper (.og-bu) . So have the Japanese (kami) and the Koreans (muntsi). The Mongols call paper tsagasun (Buryat tseiraso, sârahan), a purely Mongol word, meaning "the white one." Among the Golde on the Amur I recorded the word xausal. The Lolo have 1'o-i, the Annamese bia, the Cam baa, baar, or biar, the Khmer credas, which, like Malayan kertas, is borrowed from Arabic kirtas (Greek
x cprns).2 As stated, the Persian-Arabic word is borrowed from a Turkish language: Uigur kagat or kagas; Tuba, Lebed, Kumandu, Comanian kagat; Kirgiz, Karakirgiz, Taran6i, and Kazan kagaz. The origin of this word can be explained from Turkish; for in Lebed, Kumandu, and S'or, we have kaga§ with the significance "tree-bark."
I need not repeat here the oft-told story of how the manufacture of paper was introduced into Samarkand by Chinese captives in A.D. 751. Prior to this date, as has been established by Karabacek, Chinese paper was imported to Samarkand as early as 65o-1, again in 707.3 Under the Sasanians, Chinese paper was known in Persia; but it was a very rare article, and reserved for royal state documents.'
25. Another form in which paper reached the Persians was paper money. It is well known that the Chinese were the originators of
1 See above, p. 49o.
2 S. FRAENKEL, Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen, p. 245.
Cf. HOERNLE, Journal Roy. As. Soc., 1903, p. 670. I regret being unable to accept his general result that the Arabs or Samarkandis should be credited with the invention of pure rag-paper (p. 674). This had already been accomplished in China, and indeed was the work of Tsai Lun. I expect to come back to this problem on another occasion. With all respect for the researches of Karabacek, Wiesner, and Hoernle, I am not convinced that the far-reaching conclusions of these scholars are all justified. We are in need of more investigations (and less theorizing), especially of ancient papers made in China. There are numerous accounts of many sorts of paper, hitherto unnoticed, in Chinese records, which should be closely studied.
According to Masudi (B. DE MEYNARD, Les Prairies d'or, Vol. II, p. 202); see also E. DROUIN, Mémoire sur les Huns Ephthalites, p. 53 (reprint from Le Mus ion, 1895).
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