Alfalfa 213 



will no doubt supply the correct form of this word. We have to be 

 mindful of the fact that the speech of those East-Iranian tribes, the 

 advance-guard of Iran proper, with whom the Chinese first came in 

 contact, has never been committed to writing, and is practically lost 

 to us. Only secluded dialects may still harbor remnants of that lost 

 treasure. We have to be the more grateful to the Chinese for having 

 rescued for us a few words of that extinct language, and to place *buksuk 

 or *buxsux on record as the ancient Ferganian appellation of Medicago 

 sativa. The first element of this word may survive in Sariqoll (a Pamir 

 dialect) wux ("grass"). In WaxI, another Pamir idiom, alfalfa is 

 styled wujerk; and grass, wiiL "Horse" is ya$ in WaxI, and vurj in 

 Sariqoll. 1 



Bretschneider 2 was content to say that mu-su is not Chinese, 

 but most probably a foreign name. Watters, in his treatment of 

 foreign words in Chinese, has dodged this term. T. W. Kingsmill 8 

 is responsible for the hypothesis that mu-su "may have some connec- 

 tion with the M7761K17 PoTavrj of Strabo." This is adopted by the Chinese 

 Dictionary of Giles.* This Greek designation had certainly not pene- 

 trated to Fergana, nor did the Iranian Ferganians use a Greek name 

 for a plant indigenous to their country. It is also impossible to see 

 what the phonetic coincidence between *muk-suk or *buk-suk and 

 medike is supposed to be. 



The least acceptable explanation of mu-su is that recently pro- 

 pounded by Hirth, 6 who identifies it with a Turkish burfak, which is 

 Osmanli, and refers to the pea. 8 Now, it is universally known that a 

 language like Osmanli was not in existence in the second century B.C., 

 but is a comparatively modern form of Turkish speech; and how Can 

 K'ien should have picked up an Osmanli or any other Turkish word for 

 a typically Iranian plant in Fergana, where there were no Turks at that 

 time, is unintelligible. Nor is the alleged identification phonetically 

 correct: Chinese mu, *muk, *buk, cannot represent bur, nor can su, 



1 Cf. R. B. Shaw, On the Ghalchah Languages (Journal As. Soc. Bengal, 1876, 

 pp. 221, 231). According to Tomaschek (op. cit., p. 763), this word is evolved from 

 *bharaka, Ossetic bairag ("good foal"). 



2 Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, p. 404. 



8 Journal China Branch Roy. As. Soc, Vol. XIV, 1879, p. 19. 



4 No. 8081, wrongly printed MeSiK-rj. The word Pot&vt) is not connected with 

 the name of the plant, but in the text of Strabo is separated from Mij5ik^»> by eleven 

 words. Mij5i/c^ is to be explained as scil. w6a, "Medic grass or fodder." 



6 Journal Am. Or. Soc, Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 145. 



6 Kara burlak means the "black pea" and denotes the vetch. 



