198 Sino-Iranica 



Kamchatka, and the Amur region, and flowers upon the melting of the 

 snow in early spring. 1 According to the Pen ts'ao kan mu, 2 the plant 

 is first mentioned by C'en Ts'an-k'i of the T'ang period as growing in 

 the country Hi f&, and came from Nan-tun $t M (in Korea). Li Si-cen 

 annotates that by Hi the north-eastern barbarians should be under- 

 stood. Wan Hao-ku 3: jft ii, a physician of the thirteenth century, 

 remarks that the name of the plant was originally hiian 5£ hu-su, but 

 that on account of a taboo (to avoid the name of the Emperor Cen-tsun 

 of the Sung) it was altered into yen-hu-su; but this explanation cannot 

 be correct, as the latter designation is already ascribed to C'en Ts'an-k'i 

 of the T'ang. It is not known whether hu in this case would allude to 

 the provenience of the plant from Korea. In the following example, 

 however, the allusion to Korea is clear. 



The mint, W ffi po-ho, *bak-xa (Mentha arvensis or aquatica), occurs 

 in China both spontaneously and in the cultivated state. The plant 

 is regarded as indigenous by the Chinese, but also a foreign variety is 

 known as hu pa-ho (*bwat-xa) #! ^ jlfi. 3 C'en §i-liaft ffl> ~il It, in his 

 Si sin pen ts'ao 'ffc'144^, published in the tenth century, introduced 

 the term wu i$| pa-ho, "mint of Wu" (that is, Su-cou, where the best 

 mint was cultivated), in distinction from hu pa-ho, "mint of the Hu." 

 Su Sun, in his T'u kin pen ts'ao, written at the end of the eleventh 

 century, affirms that this foreign mint is similar to the native species, 

 the only difference being that it is somewhat sweeter in taste; it grows 

 on the border of Kian-su and Ce-kian, where the people make it 

 into tea; commonly it is styled Sin-lo M H po-ho, "mint of Sinra" 

 (in Korea). Thus this variety may have been introduced under the 

 Sung from Korea, and it is to this country that the term hu may refer. 



Li §i-2en relates that Sun Se-miao 3% M> 28, in his Ts'ien kin fan 

 *r & jfr, 4 writes the word ^ W fan-ho, but that this is erroneously due 

 to a dialectic pronunciation. This means, in other words, that the first 

 character fan is merely a variant of ^, 5 and, like the latter, had the 

 phonetic equivalent *bwat, bat. 6 



1 Hanbury, Science Papers, p. 256. 



2 Ch. 13, p. 13. 



' The word po-ho is Chinese, not foreign. The Persian word for "peppermint" 

 is pudene, pudina, budenk (Kurd punk) ; in Hindi it is pudlna or pudinekd, derived 

 from the Persian. In Tibetan (Ladakh) it is p'o-lo-lin; in the Tibetan written lan- 

 guage, byi-rug-pa, hence Mongol jirukba; in Manchu it is farsa. 



* See below, p. 306. 



6 As Sun Se-miao lived in the seventh century, when the Korean mint was not 

 yet introduced, his term fan-ho could, of course, not be construed to mean "foreign 

 mint." 



• In T'oung Pao (1915, p. 18) Pelliot has endeavored to show that the char- 



