416 Sino-Iranica 



Schlimmer 1 says that Olea europaea is largely cultivated by the 

 inhabitants of Mendjil between Besht and Ghezwin in Persia, and 

 that the olives are excellent; nevertheless the oil extracted is very bad 

 and unfit to eat. The geographical distribution of the tree in Iran 

 has well been traced by F. Spiegel. 2 



The word tsH-Vun has been perpetuated by the lexicographers of 

 the Emperor K'ien-lun (1736-95). It makes its appearance in the 

 Dictionary of Four Languages, in the section "foreign fruit." 3 For 

 the Tibetan and Mongol forms, one has chosen the transcriptions 

 Pi-tun siu (transcribing tse -?*) and Utun jimin respectively; while it is 

 surprising to find a Manchu equivalent ulusun, which has been correctly 

 explained by H. C. v. d. Gabelentz and Sakharov. In the Manchu- 

 Chinese Dictionary TsHn wen pu hui, published in 1771, we find the 



fact be correct, is that a wild olive once occurred in the Pliocene of Italy, which 

 certainly does not exclude the idea and the well-established historical fact that the 

 cultivated olive was introduced into Italy from Greece in historical times. The 

 notice of Pliny (xv, 1) weighs considerably more in this case than any alleged 

 palasontological wisdom, and the Pliocene has nothing to do with historical times 

 of human history. The following is truly characteristic of Engler's uncritical stand- 

 point and his inability to think historically: "Since the fruits of the olive-tree are 

 propagated by birds, and in many localities throughout the Mediterranean the con- 

 ditions for the existence of the tree were prepared, it was quite natural also that the 

 tree settled in the localities suitable for it, before the Oriental civilized nations 

 made one of the most important useful plants of it." If the birds were the sole 

 propagators of the tree, why did they not carry it to India, the Archipelago, and 

 China, where it never occurred? The distribution of the olive shows most clearly 

 that it was brought about by human activity, and that we are confronted with a 

 well-defined geographical zone as the product of human civilization, — Western 

 Asia and the Mediterranean area. There is nothing in Engler like the vision and 

 breadth of thought of a de Candolle, in whose Origin of Cultivated Plants we read 

 (p. 280), "The question is not clearly stated when we ask if such and such olive- 

 trees of a given locality are really wild. In ^ woody species which lives so long and 

 shoots again from the same stock when cut off by accident, it is impossible to know 

 the origin of the individuals observed. They may have been sown by man or birds 

 at a very early epoch, for olive-trees of more than a thousand years old are known. 

 The effect of such sowing is a naturalization, which is equivalent to an extension 

 of area. The point in question is, therefore, to discover what was the home of the 

 species in very early prehistoric times, and how this area has grown larger by dif- 

 ferent modes of transport. It is not by the study of living olive-trees that this can 

 be answered. We must seek in what countries the cultivation began, and how it 

 was propagated. The more ancient it is in any region, the more probable it is that 

 the species has existed wild there from the time of those geological events which took 

 place before the coming of prehistoric man." Here we meet a thinker of critical 

 acumen, possessed of a fine historical spirit, and striving for truth nobly and honestly; 

 and there, a dry pedant, who thinks merely in terms of species and genera, and is 

 unwilling to learn and to understand history. 



1 Terminologie, p. 406. 



2 Eranische Altertumskunde, Vol. I, pp. 257-258. 



3 Appendix, Ch. 3, p. 10. 



