The Grape-Vine 227 



China, but have never resulted in a cultivation; the cultivated species 

 (Vitis vinifera) was introduced from Iran, and never had any relation 

 to the Chinese wild species (Vitis bryoniaefolia) . In a modern work, 

 Mun ts'iian tsa yen It M. ft H", 1 which gives an intelligent discussion 

 of this question, the conclusion is reached that the species from Fergana 

 is certainly different from that indigenous to China. The only singular 

 point is that the Pie lu employs the Ferganian word p'u-Vao with refer- 

 ence to the native species; but this is not an anachronism, for the Pie lu 

 was written in post-Christian times, centuries after Can K'ien; and it 

 is most probable that it was only the introduced species which gave the 

 impetus to the discovery of the wild species, so that the latter received 

 the same name. 2 



Another wild vine is styled yin-yii H JL (Vitis bryoniaefolia or 

 V. labrusca), which appears in the writings of T'ao Hun-kin (a.d. 

 451-536) and in the T'an pen ts'ao of Su Kun, but this designation has 

 reference only to a wild vine of middle and northern China. Yen Si-ku 

 (a.d. 579-645), in his K'an miu leh su ^!J H£ IE f&, 3 ironically remarks 

 that regarding the yin-yii as a grape is like comparing the U #* (Poncirus 

 trijoliata) of northern China with an orange (kii fj|); that the yin-yii, 

 although a kind of p'u-t'ao, is widely different from the latter; and that 

 the yin-yii of Kian-nan differs again from the yin-yii of northern China. 

 Hirth's theory, 4 that this word might represent a transcription of 

 New Persian angur, is inadmissible. We have no right to regard Chinese 

 words as of foreign origin, unless these are expressly so indicated by the 

 Chinese philologists who never fail to call attention to such borrowing. 

 If this is not the case, specific and convincing reasons must be adduced 

 for the assumption that the word in question cannot be Chinese. There 

 is no tradition whatever that would make yin-yii an Iranian or a foreign 

 word. The opposite demonstration lacks any sound basis: New Persian, 

 which starts its career from the end of the tenth century, could not come 

 into question here, but at the best Middle Persian, and angur is a 

 strictly New-Persian type. A word like angur would have been dis- 

 sected by the Chinese into an-\-gut (gur), but not into an-\-uk; more- 

 over, it is erroneous to suppose that final k can transcribe final r; 6 

 in Iranian transcriptions, Chinese final k corresponds to Iranian fe, 

 g, or the spirant x. It is further inconceivable that the Chinese might 



1 T'u Su tsi Ve*, xx, Ch. 113. 



2 Compare the analogous case of the walnut. 

 8 Ch. 8, p. 8 b (ed. of Hu pei Is'uA Su). 



4 Fremde Einflusse in der chinesischen Kunst, p. 17. 

 • Compare above, p. 214. 



