GALBANUM 



23. There is only a single Chinese text relative to galbanum, which 

 is contained in the Yu yah tsa tsu, 1 where it is said, "P'i-ts'i 1*$ J ^ 

 (*bit-dzi, bir-zi, bir-zai) is a product of the country Po-se (Persia). 

 In Fu-lin it is styled f 1 ill $J 4 han-p'o-li-Va (*xan-bwi5-li-da). 8 The 

 tree grows to a height of more than ten feet, with a circumference of 

 over a foot. Its bark is green, thin, and extremely bright. The leaves 

 resemble those of the asafcetida plant (a-wei), three of them growing 

 at the end of a branch. It does not flower or bear fruit. In the west- 

 ern countries people are accustomed to cut the leaves in the eighth 

 month; and they continue to do this more and more till the twelfth 

 month. The new branches are thus very juicy and luxuriant; without 

 the trimming process, they would infallibly fade away. In the seventh 

 month the boughs are broken off, and there is a yellow sap of the 

 appearance of honey and slightly fragrant, which is medicinally em- 

 ployed in curing disease." 



Hirth has correctly identified the transcription pH-tsH with Persian 

 birzai, which, however, like the other Po-se words in the Yu yah tsa tsu, 

 must be regarded as Pahlavi or Middle Persian; 4 and the Fu-lin han- 

 p'o-li-t'a he has equated with Aramaic xelbdnita, the latter from Hebrew 

 xelbendh, one of the four ingredients of the sacred perfume (Exodus, 

 xxx, 34-38). This is translated by the Septuaginta xo^fio.vr] and by 

 the Vulgate galbanum. The substance is mentioned in three passages 



J Ch. 18, p. 11 b. 



2 Hirth, who is the first to have translated this text (Journal Am. Or. Soc. 

 Vol. XXX, p. 21), writes this character with the phonetic element )§f, apparently 

 in agreement with the edition of the Tsin tai pi Su; but this character is not author- 

 ized by K'an-hi, and it is difficult to see how it could have the phonetic value p'i; 

 we should expect ni. The above character is that given by K'an-hi, who cites under 

 it the passage in question. It is thus written also in the Min hian p'u fe ^ §Jjf by 

 Ye T'ih-kwei |j£ $3: £| (p. 10, ed. of Hian yen Is'un Su) and in the Pen ts'ao kan 

 mu (Ch. 33, p. 6), where the pronunciation is explained by J5'J *biet. The editors 

 of cyclopaedias were apparently staggered by this character, and most of them 

 have chosen the phonetic man, which is obviously erroneous. None of our 

 Chinese dictionaries lists the character. 



1 The Pen ts'ao kan mu (I. c.) annotates that the first character should have 

 the sound ^ lo, *dwat, which is not very probable. 



4 There are also the forms ptrzed, barzed (Leclerc, Traite des simples, Vol. I, 

 p. 201), berzed, barije, and bazrud; in India bireja, ganda-biroza. Another Persian 

 term given by Schlimmer (Terminologie, p. 294) is weli. 



363 



