RICE 



26. While rice is at present a common article of food of the Persian 

 people, being particularly enjoyed as pilau, 1 it was entirely unknown 

 in the days of Iranian antiquity. No word for "rice" appears in the 

 Avesta. 2 Herodotus 3 mentions only wheat as the staple food of the 

 Persians at the time of Cambyses. This negative evidence is signally 

 confirmed by the Chinese annals, which positively state that there is 

 no rice or millet in Sasanian Persia; 4 and on this point Chinese testi- 

 mony carries weight, since the Chinese as a rice-eating nation were 

 always anxious to ascertain whether rice was grown and consumed by 

 foreign peoples. Indeed, the first question a travelling Chinese will 

 ask on arrival at a new place will invariably refer to rice, its qualities 

 and valuations. This is conspicuous in the memoirs of Can K'ien, 

 the first Chinese who travelled extensively across Iranian territory, 

 and carefully noted the cultivation of rice in Fergana (Ta-yuan), fur- 

 ther for Parthia (An-si), and T'iao-ci (Chaldaea). The two last-named 

 countries, however, he did not visit himself, but reported what he had 

 heard about them. In the Sasanian epoch, Chinese records tell us 

 that rice was plentiful in Kuca, Kasgar (Su-lek), Khotan, and Ts'ao 

 (Jagucfe) north of the Ts'un-lin; 8 also in Si (Tashkend). 6 On the 

 other hand, Aristobulus, a companion of Alexander on his expedition 

 in Asia and author of an Alexander biography written after 285 B.C., 

 states that rice grows in Bactriana, Babylonia, Susis, and in lower 

 Syria; 7 and Diodorus 8 likewise emphasizes the abundance of rice in Susi- 



1 T'oung Pao, 19 16, p. 481. \ 



2 Modi, in Spiegel Memorial Volume, p. xxxvn. 



3 in, 22. 



* Wei $u, Ch. 102, pp. 5 b-6 a; Cou Su, Ch. 50, p. 6. Tabari (translation of 

 Noldeke, p. 244) mentions rice among the crops taxed by Khusrau I (a.d. 531-578); 

 but this is surely an interpolation, as in the following list of taxes rice is not men- 

 tioned, while all other crops are. Another point to be considered is that in Arabic 

 manuscripts, when the diacritical marks are omitted, the word birinj may be read 

 as well naranj, which means "orange" (cf. Ouseley, Oriental Geography of Ebn 

 Haukal, p. 221). 



6 Sui Su, Ch. 83, pp. 5 b, 7 b. 



* T'ai p'in hwan yii ki, Ch. 1 86, p. 7 b. 



* Strabo, XV. 1, 18. 

 8 xix, 13. 



372 



