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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| Overland to India : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
182 OVERLAND TO INDIA
CHAP.
occurs in the combination Mian-desht, one of the stations on the Meshed road, it is quite appropriate, signifying simply " in the middle of the plain."
The Persian word shun, which means salt, is never used here for desert, but in Central Asia is synonymous with kevir. In Persia it occurs only in combination with a substantive, as, for instance, Ab-i-shur, Rudkhaneh-i-shur, Shur-ab, Shur-gez, etc. It is, then, in Persia an adjective, but in Central Asia a substantive. Polak mentions the 0 word shurtsar for salt desert, and makes it synonymous with kevir.l
Sand is called rig- in Persian, and wherever this word i occurs on the map one may be sure that there are belts 1 of dunes. Rigistan = place of sand ; Rig--i jin = sand desert g of spirits ; Rig-an = sandhills.
Most common of all are the terms kevir and lut, but on g the etymology of these words opinions differ. Morier ~ speaks of the Darya-i-kebir, " the great sea," which St. g John corrects to " lake of salt mud." According to him, kuweer means " salt swamp." Richardson translates the word caveer by " salt ground where nothing grows." I Fraser gives the meaning " salt desert, whether wet or dry."
Lord Curzon refers to Consul - General Houtum- Schindler's various attempts to find a plausible derivation. ' Schindler says that kevir is a salt swamp or a salt desert. ! Some authors have derived the word from the Persian t gdv, hollow or depression, synonymous with gôd or gôdal, but hollows may be fruitful, while a kevir is always a salt i desert entirely devoid of vegetation. " The origin of the I word Kavir is perhaps the Arabic Kafr, Kafreh (pl. Kufûr), I which is the ordinary appellation for the deserts of Arabia I and Africa. The word is seldom met with in older 1
authors." 2 ~
Major Sykes supposes that the word comes from the Arabic kafr, and says that this word is still used unchanged in certain parts of Persia to denote desert. This circumstance is just what makes this derivation improbable in my
1 Persien, das Land und seine Bewohner, vol. ii. p. 365.
2 Proceedings of the Roy. Geogr. Soc. vol. x. (1888), p. 628, note.
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