SUGAR 



28. The sugar-cane (Saccharum officinarum) is a typically Indian 

 or rather Southeast-Asiatic, and merely a secondary Iranian culti- 

 vation, but its history in Iran is of sufficient importance to devote here 

 a few lines to this subject. The Sui Annals 1 attribute hard sugar 

 (H-mi ^ 31*, literally, "stone honey") and pan-mi ^r 31* ("half honey") 

 to Sasanian Persia and to Ts'ao (Jaguda). It is not known what kind 

 of sugar is to be understood by the latter term. 2 Before the advent 

 of sugar, honey was the universal ingredient for sweetening food-stuffs, 

 and thus the ancients conceived the sugar of India as a kind of honey 

 obtained from canes without the agency of bees. 3 The term U-mi first 

 appears in the Nan fan ts'ao mu cwan, A which contains the first de- 

 scription of the sugar-cane, and refers it to Kiao-cl (Tonking) ; according 

 to this work, the natives of this country designate sugar as H-mi, which 

 accordingly may be the literal rendering of a Kiao-£i term. In a.d. 285 

 Fu-nan (Camboja) sent lu-1'6 ft M ("sugar-cane") as tribute to China. 5 

 It seems that under the T'ang sugar was also imported from Persia 

 China; for Moh Sen, who wrote the Si liao pen ts'ao in the second 

 alf of the seventh century, says that the sugar coming from Po-se 

 ersia) to Se-6'wan is excellent. Su Kun, the reviser of the T'an pen 

 ts'ao of about a.d. 650, extols the sugar coming from the Si Zun, which 

 may likewise allude to Iranian regions. Exact data as to the introduc- 

 tion and dissemination of the sugar-cane in Persia are not available. 

 E. O. v. Lippmann 6 has developed an elaborate theory to the effect that 



1 Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b. \ 



2 It is only contained in the Sui Su, not in the Wei Su (Ch. 102, p. 5 b), which 

 has merely Si-mi. The sugar-cane was also grown in Su-le (Kashgar): T'ai p'ifi 

 hwan yii ki, Ch. 181, p. 12 b. 



3 Pliny, xii, 17. 



4 Ch. 1, p. 4. 



6 This word apparently comes from a language spoken in Indo-China; it is already 

 ascribed to the dictionary Swo wen. Subsequently it was replaced by kan "fj* 

 ("sweet") I'd or kan sp Id, presumably also the transcription of a foreign word. 

 The Nan Ts'i Su mentions lu-1'6 as a product of Fu-nan (cf. Pelliot, Bull, de VEcole 

 frangaise, Vol. Ill, p. 262). In C'i-t'u ffi J* (Siam) a wine of yellow color and fine 

 aroma was prepared from sugar and mixed with the root of a Cucurbitacea (Sui Su, 

 Ch. 82, p. 2 b). 



6 Geschichte des Zuckers, p. 93 (Leipzig, 1890); and Abhandlungen, Vol. I, 

 p. 263. According to the same author, the Persians were the inventors of sugar- 

 refining; but this is purely hypothetical. 



376 



