t$o Sino-Iranica 



gwan, gwana, for Pistacia mutica (or P. terebinthus, var. mutica); this 

 form comes nearest to the Chinese transcription. 



While a compound *agoz-van(vun), that is, "nut of pistachio," as 

 far as I know, has not yet been traced in Iranian directly, its existence 

 follows from the Chinese record of the term. An analogy to this com- 

 pound is presented by Kurd kizvan, kezvan, kazu-van, kasu-van ("pista- 

 chio" or "terebinthus-tree"). 1 



The Honzo kdmoku keimo (Ch. 25, fol. 24), written by Ono Ranzan 

 /J» I? W tfj, first published in 1804, revised in 1847 by IguSi Bosi # 

 n !|? £,, his grandson, mentions the same plant ffl ft 'W- -J", which 

 reads in Japanese agetsu-konU. He gives also in Kana the names 

 fusudasiu or fusudasu. 2 He states, "The plant is not known in Japan 

 to grow wild. It used to come from foreign countries, but not so at 

 present. A book called Zdkyohi furoku % ffc 2& Pft $& mentions this 

 plant, stating that agetsu-konH is the fruit of the tree £'a mu M Js 

 (in Japanese sakuboku)." 3 



1 A. Jaba, Dictionnaire kurde-francais, p. 333. Cf. above the kasu-dan of 

 Kaempfer. 



* These terms are also given by the eminent Japanese botanist Matsumura 

 in his Shokubutsu mei-i (No. 2386), accompanied by the identification Pistacia 

 vera. 



* This tradition is indeed traceable to an ancient Chinese record, which will be 

 found in the Cen lei pen ts'ao of 1108 (Ch. 12, p. 55, ed. of 1583). Here the question 

 is of the bark of the san or Va tree flffl ;fv fj£, mentioned as early as the sixth century 

 in the Kwan li Hf ^ of Kwo Yi-kun as growing in wild country of Kwah-nan 

 ^ f$3 (the present province of Kwah-tun and part of K wan-si), and described in a 

 commentary of the Er ya as resembling the mulberry-tree. This, of course, is a wild 

 tree indigenous to a certain region of southern China, but, as far as I know, not yet 

 identified, presumably as the ancient name is now obsolete. The Nan lou ki by 

 Su Piao (see above) says that the fruits of this tree are styled wu min tse $H ^ J- 

 (" nameless fruits"); hence the conclusion is offered by T'an Sen-wei, author of the 

 Cen lei pen ts'ao, that this is the tree termed a-yile-hun by the Persians (that is, a cul- 

 tivated Pistacia). This inference is obviously erroneous, as the latter was introduced 

 from Persia into China either under the T'ang or a few centuries earlier, while the 

 san or Va tree pre-existed spontaneously in the Chinese flora. The only basis for this 

 hazardous identification is given by the attribute "nameless." A solution of this 

 problem is possible if we remember the fact that there is a wild Pistacia, Pistacia 

 chinensis, indigenous to China, and if we identify with it the tree san or Va; then it 

 is conceivable that the wild and the imported, cultivated species were correlated 

 and combined under the same popular term wu min. Matsumura (op. cit., No. 

 2382) calls P. chinensis in Japanese orenju, adding the characters ^ f^. The word 

 lien refers in China to Melia azedarach. The modern Chinese equivalent for P. 

 chinensis is not known to me. The peculiar beauty of this tree, and the great age to 

 which it lives, have attracted the attention of the indefatigable workers of our 

 Department of Agriculture, who have already distributed thousands of young trees to 

 parks throughout the country (see Yearbook of the U. S. Department of Agriculture 

 1916, p. 140, Washington, 191 7). In the English and Chinese Standard Dictionary, 

 the word "pistachio" is rendered by fei HI, which, however, denotes a quite dif- 



