Introduction of Glazes into China 125 



that is, Iranian or Persian and Egyptian, pottery. This conclusion 

 directly results from the documentary evidence which the ancient 

 authors have left us. It will be demonstrated at the same time that 

 the substance murra, of which the murrine vases were made, cannot 

 have been a mineral of any sort. 



The Latin word murra (less correctly murrha, myrrha), from which 

 the adjectives murreus (murrheus, rn.yrrh.eus) and murrinus are derived, 

 was adopted from the Greek morrion (in Pausanias) and the adjectival 

 form murrinos, used in the Periplus. 1 The real significance of this 

 word is as yet unexplained. Certain it is that it is neither Latin nor 

 Greek, but was handed down from the Orient with the objects which 

 it served to designate. Roloff was the only one to attempt an ex- 

 planation of the peculiar term by inviting attention to a Russian word, 

 murava, which denotes "glazed pottery." The defenders of the 

 mineralogical hypothesis have naturally rejected this point of view 

 without giving reasons why it should not be acceptable. 2 Yet this 

 opinion is worthy of serious consideration. If it can be proved that 

 the murrines were glazed pottery vessels, there is a great deal of prob- 

 ability in the conviction that the word murra applies to their most 

 striking feature, the glaze. The Russian word pointed out by Roloff 

 indeed exists. It is recorded in all good Russian dictionaries. Vladi- 

 mir Dal, 3 the eminent Russian lexicographer, notes it in the forms 

 murdva, muravd, and mur, with a dialectic variant mtlrom (or miirom'),* 

 used in the Governments of Pskov and Tver, and interprets it as the 

 glaze applied to the surface of a pottery vessel. Besides this word, the 

 Russian language avails itself of the loan-word glazur (derived from 

 German Glasur) and the indigenous word-formation poliva for the 

 connotation of the same idea. The words mur and murava, not to 

 be found in any other Slavic or European language, are not derived 

 from any Slavic stem, but, like other Russian culture-words, are bor- 

 rowings from an Iranian language. The onomasticon of Ancient 

 Iranian is but imperfectly preserved; and the word mur a or murra, 

 which has doubtless existed in that language, has not been handed 

 down to us in an Iranian literary monument; although a survival of 

 it, in all probability, is preserved in Persian mdri, milri, or muril, 



1 The readings tnorrinos, myrrinus, also occur (see the edition of B. Fabricius, 

 pp. 42 and 90) ; but murrinos merits preference. 

 * F. Thiersch, /. c, p. 457. 



1 Dictionary of the Living Great-Russian Language, Vol. II, col. 939 (in Russian 

 only). 



4 The accent after m is intended to express the palatalization of the labial nasal 

 m (soft or mouillS m.) 



