«38 Sino-Iranica 



wine in the same manner as for grape-wine. Certain it is that distillation 

 is a Western invention, and was unknown to the ancient Chinese. 1 

 Li &i-5en fails to inform us as to the time when the distillation of grape- 

 wine came into existence. If this process had become known in China 

 under the T'ang in connection with grape-wine, it would be strange if 

 the Chinese did not then apply it to their native spirits, but should have 

 waited for another foreign impulse until the Mongol period. On the 

 other hand, if the method due to the Uigur under the T'ang merely 

 applied to fermented grape-wine, we may justly wonder that the Chinese 

 had to learn such a simple affair from the Uigur, while centuries earlier 

 they must have had occasion to observe this process among many 

 Iranian peoples. It would therefore be of great interest to seize upon 

 a document that would tell us more in detail what this method of 

 manufacture was, to which the T'ang history obviously attaches so 

 great importance. It is not very likely that distillation was involved; 

 for it is now generally conceded that the Arabs possessed no knowledge 

 of alcohol, and that distillation is not mentioned in any relevant litera- 

 ture of the Arabs and Persians from the tenth to the thirteenth cen- 

 tury. 1 The statement of Li Si-cen, that distillation was first practised 

 under the Mongols, is historically logical and in keeping with our 

 present knowledge of the subject. It is hence reasonable to hold (at 

 least for the present) also that distilled grape-wine was not made 

 earlier in China than in the epoch of the Yuan. Mon Sen of the T'ang 

 says advisedly that grapes can be fermented into wine, and the recipe 

 of the Sung does not allude to distillation. 



In the eighteenth century European wine also reached China. A 

 chest of grape-wine figures among the presents made to the Emperor 

 K'ah-hi on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in 171 5 by the Jesuits 

 Bernard Kilian Stumpf, Joseph Suarez, Joachim Bouvet, and Domini- 

 cus Parrenin. 8 



P. Osbeck, 4 the pupil of Linn6, has the following notice on the 

 importation of European wine into China: "The Chinese wine, which 

 our East India traders call Mandarin wine, is squeezed out of a fruit 

 which is here called Pausio,* and reckoned the same with our grapes. 



*Cf. Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 155; J. Dudgeon, The Beverages of 

 the Chinese, pp. 19-20; Edkins, China Review, Vol. VI, p. 211. The process of 

 distillation is described by H. B. Gruppy, Samshu-Brewing in North China {Journal 

 China Branch Roy. As. Soc, Vol. XVIII, 1884, pp. 163-164). 



1 E. O. v. Lippmann, Abhandlungen, Vol. II, pp. 206-209; cf. also my remarks 

 in American Anthropologist, 191 7, p. 75. 



1 Cf. Wan Sou Sen tien f$ H #£ J&, Ch. 56, p. 12. 



4 A Voyage to China and the East Indies, Vol. I, p. 315 (London, 1771). 



* Apparently a bad or misprinted reproduction of P'u-t'ao. 



