394 Sino-Iranica 



Emperor T'ai Tsun that all tributary nations should present their 

 choicest vegetable products. Yuan Wen j£ 3fc, an author of the Sung 

 period, in his work Wen yu kien p'ih §£ M PU W, 1 states that the spinach 

 (po-lin) comes from (or is produced in) the country Ni-p'o-lo (Nepal) 

 in the Western Regions. 2 The Kia yu pen ts'ao, compiled in a.d. 1057, 

 is the first Materia Medica that introduced the spinach into the pharma- 

 copoeia. 3 



The colloquial name is po ts'ai ^ ^S ("po vegetable"), po being 

 abbreviated for po-lin. According to Wan £i-mou 3: ft 8& (who died 

 in 1 591), in his Kwa susu J&WL (Dft, the current name in northern China 

 is £*♦ ken ts'ai # $k £& ("red-root vegetable"). The Kwan k'unfan p'u 

 uses also the term yih-wu ts'ai ("parrot vegetable"), named for the 

 root, which is red, and believed to resemble a parrot. Aside from the 

 term Pose ts'ai, the Pen ts'ao kan mu H i* gives the synonymes huh 

 ts'ai SI^ ("red vegetable") and yah ^ ts'ai ("foreign vegetable"). 

 Another designation is lan-hu ts'ai ("coral vegetable"). 



A rather bad joke is perpetrated by the Min §u ffi #, a description 

 of Fu-kien Province written at the end of the sixteenth or beginning of 

 the seventeenth century, where the name po-lin is explained as $t It 

 po leh ("waves and edges"), because the leaves are shaped like wave- 

 patterns and have edges. There is nothing, of course, that the Chinese 

 could not etymologize. 5 



There is no account in the traditions of the T'ang and Sung periods 

 to the effect that the spinach was derived from Persia; and in view of 

 the recent origin of the term "Persian vegetable," which is not even 

 explained, we are tempted at the outset to dismiss the theory of 

 a Persian origin. Stuart 6 even goes so far as to say that, "as the Chinese 

 have a tendency to attribute everything that comes from the south- 

 west to Persia, we are not surprised to find this called Pose ts'ao, 'Per- 



1 Ch. 4, p. lib (ed. of Wu yin Hen, 1775). 



2 9i Kk Hi M W. % 3 $£ 13- This could be translated also, "in the 

 Western Regions and in the country Ni-p'o-lo." 



3 Ci wu min U t'u k'ao, Ch. 4, p. 38 b. 



« Ch. 8, p. 87 b. 



6 Of greater interest is the following fact recorded in the same book. The 

 spinach in the north of China is styled "bamboo (cu ^f) po-lin," with long and 

 bitter stems; that of Fu-kien is termed "stone (U ^3) po-lin," and has short and 

 sweet stems. — The Min $u, in 154 chapters, was written by Ho K'iao-yuan -fpT ll? 

 jH from Tsin-kian in Fu-kien; he obtained the degree of tsin U in 1586 (cf. Cat. of 

 the Imperial Library, Ch. 74, p. 19). 



8 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 417. 



