1 88 Sino-Iranica 



most advanced and most competent representatives of the sinological 

 field in all its varied and extensive branches, as well as in other domains 

 of Oriental research. It would have been very tempting to summarize 

 in a special chapter the Chinese method of transcribing Iranian and to 

 discuss the phonology of Iranian in the light of Chinese contributions. 

 Such an effort, however, appears to me premature at this moment: 

 our knowledge of Sino-Iranian is in its infancy, and plenty of fresh 

 evidence will come forward sooner or later from Turkistan manuscripts. 

 There is no doubt that many hundreds of new Iranian terms of various 

 dialects will be revived, and will considerably enrich our now scanty 

 knowledge of the Iranian onomasticon and phonology. In view of the 

 character of this publication, it was necessary to resort to a phonetic 

 transcription of both ancient and modern Chinese on the same basis, 

 as is now customary in all Oriental languages. The backwardness of 

 Chinese research is illustrated by the fact that we slavishly adhere to 

 a clumsy and antiquated system of romanization in which two and 

 even three letters are wasted for the expression of a single sound. My 

 system of transliteration will be easily grasped from the following com- 

 parative table. 



OLD STYLE PHONETIC STYLE 



ttg A 



Ch I 



CV r 



j & (while j serves to indicate the palatal 



I h $ sonant, written also dh). 



Other slight deviations from the old style, for instance, in the 

 vowels, are self-explanatory. For the sake of the numerous compara- 

 tive series including a large number of diverse Oriental languages it 

 has been my aim to standardize the transcription as far as possible, 

 with the exception of Sanskrit, for which the commonly adopted method 

 remains. The letter x in Oriental words is never intended for the 

 combination ks, but for the spirant surd, sometimes written kh. In 

 proper names where we are generally accustomed to kh, I have allowed 

 the latter to pass, perhaps also in other cases. I do not believe in super- 

 consistency in purely technical matters. 



The linguistic phenomena, important as they may be, form merely 

 a side-issue of this investigation. My main task is to trace the history 

 of all objects of material culture, pre-eminently cultivated plants, 

 drugs, products, minerals, metals, precious stones, and textiles, in their 

 migration from Persia to China (Sino-Iranica), and others transmitted 

 from China to Persia (Irano-Sinica). There are other groups of Sino- 

 Iranica not included in this publication, particularly the animal world, 



