406 Sino-Iranica 



province of Gujarat from Persia, where they grow in dry and arid 

 places between rocks; they are as bitter as colocynth, and there is no 

 fear that children will amuse themselves by eating them. 1 



What Watters 2 has stated about the almond is for the greater part 

 inexact or erroneous. "For the almond which does not grow in China 

 the native authors and others have apparently only the Persian name 

 which is Badan. This the Chinese transcribe pa-tan A $1 or EL JL and 

 perhaps also, as suggested by Bretschneider, pa-lan IE $f ." First, the 

 Persian name for the almond is badam; second, the Chinese characters 

 given by Watters are not apt to transcribe this word, as the former 

 series answers to ancient *pat-dam, the latter to *pa-dan. Both A 

 and EL only had an initial labial surd, but never a labial sonant, and 

 for this reason could not have been chosen for the transcription of a 

 foreign ba in the T'ang period, when the name of the almond made its 

 d£but in China. Further, the character EL, which was not possessed 

 of a final labial nasal, would make a rather bad reproduction of the 

 required element dam. In fact, the characters given by Watters are 

 derived from the Pen ts'ao kan tnu, 3 and represent merely a comparative- 

 ly modern readjustment of the original form made at a time when 

 the transposition of sonants into surds had taken effect. The first form 

 given by Watters, as stated in the Pen ts % ao itself, is taken from the 

 Yin San Zen yao (see p. 236), written by Ho Se-hwi during the Yuan 

 period; while the second form is the work of Li Si-Sen, as admitted by 

 himself, and accordingly has no phonetic value whatever. 4 Indeed, we 

 have a phonetically exact transcription of the Iranian term, handed 

 down from the T'ang period, when the Chinese still enjoyed the pos- 

 session of a well-trained ear, and, in view of the greater wealth of sounds 

 then prevailing in their speech, also had the faculty of reproducing 

 them with a fair degree of precision. This transcription is presented by 

 §1 $£ p'o-tan, *bwa-dam, almond (Amygdalus communis or Prunus 

 amygdalus), which actually reproduces Middle Persian vadam, New 

 Persian badam (Kurd badem, be'iv and baif, "almond-tree")- 5 This term, 



1 Ta vernier, Travels in India, Vol. I, p. 27. 



2 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 348. 



* Ch. 29, p. 4. Hence adopted also by the Japanese botanists (Matsumura, 

 No. 2567), but read amendo (imitation of our word). 



4 He further gives as name for the almond hu-lu-ma %£. $H M. = Persian xurma 

 (khurma), but this word properly refers to the date (p. 385). From the Ta Min i 

 t'un li (Ch. 89, p. 24), where the almonds of Herat are mentioned, it appears that 

 hu-lu-ma (xurma) was the designation of a special variety of almond, "resembling 

 a jujube and being sweet." 



6 The assertion of Stuart (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 40), that pa-tan may refer 

 to some country in Asia Minor or possibly be another name for Persia, is erroneous. 



