The Walnut 257 



There is a tradition to the effect that the walnut was introduced 

 into China by General Can K'ien. 1 This attribution of the walnut to 

 Can K'ien, however, is a purely retrospective thought, which is not 

 contained in the contemporaneous documents of the Han Annals. There 

 are, in fact, as we have seen, only two cultivated plants which can 

 directly be credited to the mission of Can K'ien to the west, — the 

 grape and the alfalfa. All others are ascribed to him in subsequent 

 books. Bretschneider, in his long enumeration of Can-K'ien plants, 2 

 has been somewhat uncritical in adopting the statements of such a 

 recent work as the Pen ts'ao kah mu without even taking pains to ex- 

 amine the sources there referred to. This subject requires a renewed 

 critical investigation for each particular plant. As regards the walnut, 

 Bretschneider was exposed to singular errors, which should be rectified, 

 as they have passed into and still prominently figure in classical botani- 

 cal and historical books of our time. According to Bretschneider, the 

 walnut was brought from K'iang-hu ifi SH, and "K'iang" was at the 

 time of the Han dynasty the name for Tibet. There is, of course, no 

 such geographical name as "K'iah-hu"; but we have here the two 

 ethnical terms, "K'ian" and "Hu," joined into a compound. More- 

 over, the K'iah (anciently *Gian) of the Han period, while they may 

 be regarded as the forefathers of the subsequent Tibetan tribes, did 

 not inhabit the country which we now designate as Tibet; and the term 

 "Hu" as a rule does not include Tibetans. What is said in this respect 

 in the Pen ts'ao kah mu 3 is vague enough : it is a single sentence culled 

 from the T % u kin pen ts x ao H M. ^ W of Su Sun M $& (latter part of 

 the eleventh century) of the Sung period, which reads, "The original 

 habitat of this fruit was in the countries of the K'ian and the Hu" 

 (jft. l& ^ ffi j& fifl). Any conclusion like an introduction of the walnut 

 from "Tibet" cannot be based on this statement. 



Bretschneider's first victim was the father of the science of historical 

 and geographical botany, A. de Candolle, 4 who stated, referring to 

 him as his authority, "Chinese authors say that the walnut was 

 introduced among them from Tibet, under the Han dynasty, by Chang- 



1 The first to reveal this tradition from the Pen ts'ao kan mu was W. Schott 

 (Abh. Berl. Akad., 1842, p. 270). 



1 Chinese Recorder, 1871, pp. 221-223; and Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 25. Likewise 

 Hirth, T'oung Pao, Vol. VI, 1895, p. 439. Also Giles (Biographical Dictionary, p. 12) 

 connects the walnut with Can K'ien. 



8 Ch. 30, p. 16. 



4 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 427. 



