226 Sino-Iranica 



Hirth 1 endorsed Kingsmill. No one gave a real demonstration of the 

 case. Tomaschek argued that the dissemination of the vine in Central 

 Asia is connected with Macedonian-Greek rule and Hellenic influence. 

 This is decidedly wrong, for the vine grows spontaneously in all north- 

 ern Iranian regions; and its cultivation in Iran is traceable to a great 

 antiquity, and is certainly older there than in Greece. The Greeks 

 received vine and wine from western Asia. 2 Greek (36rpvs, in all likeli- 

 hood, is a Semitic loan-word. 3 It is highly improbable that the people 

 of Fergana would have employed a Greek word for the designation of 

 a plant which had been cultivated in their dominion for ages, nor is 

 there any evidence for the silent admission that Greek was ever known 

 or spoken in Fergana at the time of Can K'ien's travels. The influence 

 of Greek in the Iranian domain is extremely slight: nothing Greek has 

 as yet beeij found in any ancient manuscripts from Turkistan. In 

 my opinion, there is no connection between p % u-Vao and fiorpvs, nor 

 between the latter and Iranian *budawa. 



It is well known that several species of wild vine occur in China, in 

 the Amur region, and Japan. 4 The ancient work Pie In is credited with 

 the observation that the vine (p'u-fao) grows in Lun-si (Kan-su) , Wu-yuan 

 3l 0. (north of the Ordos), and in Tun-hwan (in Kan-su). 6 Li Si-cen 

 therefore argues that in view of this fact the vine must of old have existed 

 in Lun-si in pre-Han times, but had not yet advanced into Sen-si. It 

 is inconceivable how Bretschneider 6 can say that the introduction of 

 the grape by Can K'ien is inconsistent with the notice of the grape in 

 the earliest Chinese materia medica. There is, in fact, nothing alarming 

 about it: the two are different plants; wild vines are natives of northern 



1 Fremde Einflusse in der chin. Kunst, p. 28; and Journal Am. Or. Soc, 

 Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 146. Hirth's arguments are based on unproved premises. The 

 grape-design on the so-called grape mirrors has nothing to do with Greek or Bactrian 

 art, but comes from Iranian-Sasanian art. No grape mirrors were turned out under the 

 Han, they originated in the so-called Leu-c'ao period from the fourth to the seventh 

 century. The attribution "Han" simply rests on the puerile assumption made in 

 the Po ku Vu lu that, because Can K'ien introduced the grape, the artistic designs 

 of grapes must also have come along with the same movement. 



1 Only a "sinologue" could assert that the grape was "originally introduced 

 from Greece, vid Bactria, about 130 B.C." (Giles, Chinese Dictionary, No. 9497). 



8 Muss-Arnolt, Transactions Am. Phil. Assoc, Vol. XXIII, 1892, p. 142. 

 The variants in spelling pdarpvxos, /36rpuxo$, plainly indicata the status of a loan- 

 word. In Dioscorides (in, 120) it denotes an altogether different plant, — Chen- 

 opodium botrys. 



* The Lo-lo of Yun-nan know a wild grape by the name ko-p'i-ma, with large, 

 black, oblong berries (P. Vial, Dictionnaire francais-lolo, p. 276). The grape is 

 te-mu-se-ma in Nyi Lo-lo, sa-lu-zo or sa-io-10 in Ahi Lo-lo. 



' Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 33, p. 3. 



8 Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, p. 438. 



