THE DATE-PALM 



35. The Chinese records of the date-palm (Phoenix dactylifera) 

 contain two points that are of interest to science: first, a contribution 

 to the geographical distribution of the tree in ancient times; and, 

 second, a temporary attempt at acclimating it in China. The tree is 

 not indigenous there. It is for the first time in the T'ang period that 

 we receive some information about it; but it is mentioned at an earlier 

 date as a product of Sasanian Persia in both the Wei iw and Sui $u, 

 under the name tsHen nien tsao ^ &£ 3t (" jujubes of thousand years," 

 the jujube, Zizyphus vulgaris, being a native of China). 1 In the Yu yan 

 tsa tsu, 2 the date is styled Pose tsao $t $f 31 ("Persian jujube"), with 

 the observation that its habitat is in Po-se (Persia), or that it comes 

 from there. 3 The Persian name is then given in the form 5H M k'u-man, 

 *k'ut(k'ur)-man, which would correspond to a Middle Persian *xurman 

 (*khurmang), Pazand and New Persian xurma, that was also adopted 

 by Osmanli and Neo-Greek, xovpiias ("date") and Kovpnaorja. ("date- 

 palm"), Albanian korme* The T'an £w 5 writes the same word $1 ^ 

 hu-mah, *gu5(gur)-mah, answering to a Middle-Persian form *gurman 

 or *kurmah. The New-Persian word is rendered ^ w M k'u-lu(ru)-ma 

 in the Pen ts y ao kan mu; 6 this is the style of the Yuan transcriptions, 7 



1 This name was bestowed upon the tree, not, as erroneously asserted by[HiRTH 

 (Chau Ju-kua, p. 210), "evidently on account of the stony hardness of the dates on 

 reaching China," but, as stated in the Pen ts'ao kan mu (Ch. 31, p. 8), owing to the 

 long-enduring character of the tree ^ $$ ^ ft" ^\ -{{£,. The same explanation 

 holds good for the synonyme wan sui tsao ("jujube of ten thousand or numerous 

 years "). Indeed, this palm lives to a great age, and trees of from one to two hundred 

 years old continue to produce their annual crop. 



2 Ch. 18, p. 10. 



8 The same term, Po-se tsao, appears in a passage of the Pei hu lu (Ch. 2, p. 9 b), 

 where the trunk and leaves of the sago-palm {Sago rumphii) are compared with those 

 of the date. 



4 In Old Armenian of the fifth century we have the Iranian loan-word arntav, 

 and hence it is inferred that the x of Persian was subsequently prefixed (HtJBSCH- 

 mann, Persische Studien, p. 265; Armen. Gram., p. in). The date of the Chinese 

 transcriptions proves that the initial * existed in Pahlavi. 



8 Ch. 221 b, p. 13. 



8 Ch. 31, p. 21. It is interesting to note that Li 5i-5en endeavors to make out 

 a distinction between k'u-man and k'u-lu-ma by saying that the former denotes the 

 tree, the latter the fruit; but both, in his opinion, are closely allied foreign words. 



7 The T'ang transcription, of course, is not "probably a distorted transcription 

 of khurma," as asserted by Bretschneider (Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 266), but, on 

 the contrary, is very exact. 



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