The Walnut 269 



Hu $§ people gather these nuts in abundance, and send them to the 

 Chinese officials, designating them as curiosities ^ H. As to their 

 shape, they are thin and pointed; the head is slanting like a sparrow's 

 beak. If broken and eaten, the kernel has a bitter taste resembling that 

 of the pine-seeds of Sin-ra $f M %k -J 1 . 1 Being hot by nature, they are 

 employed as medicine, and do not differ from the kernels of northern 

 China." 



The Pet hu lu 2 likewise mentions the same variety of glandular wal- 

 nut (pHen ho-Vao) as growing in the country Can-pei £ ^, shaped 

 like the crescent of the moon, gathered and eaten by the Po-se, 3 having 

 a very fine fragrance, stronger than the peach-kernels of China, but of 

 the same effect in the healing of disease. 



The species here described may be identical with Juglans catha- 

 yensis, called the Chinese butternut, usually a bush, but in moist 

 woods forming a tree from twelve to fifteen metres tall; but I do not 

 know that this plant occurs in any Malayan region. With reference to 

 Can-pi, however, it may be identical with the fruit of Canarium com- 

 mune (family Burseraceae), called in Malayan kanari, in Javanese kenari. 

 J. Crawfurd, 4 who was not yet able to identify this tree, offers the 

 following remarks: "Of all the productions of the Archipelago the one 

 which yields the finest edible oil is the kanari. This is a large handsome 

 tree, which yields a nut of an oblong shape nearly of the size of a walnut. 

 The kernel is as delicate as that of a filbert, and abounds in oil. This 



Can-pi is a Malayan territory probably to be located on Sumatra. For this reason 

 I am inclined to think that Can-pi r!j ^ is identical with Can-pei 41 W^ '< that is. 

 Jambi, the capital of eastern Sumatra (Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua, pp. 65, 

 66; see further Groeneveldt, Notes on the Malay Archipelago, pp. 188, 196; and 

 Gerini, Researches on Ptolemy's Geography, p. 565; Lin wai tai la, Ch. 2, p. 12). 

 From a phonetic point of view, however, the transcription r^j ^, made in the 

 T'ang period, represents the ancient sounds *£an-pit, and would presuppose an 

 original of the form *cambit, 2ambir, or jambir, whereas ^L is without a final con- 

 sonant. The country Can-pei is first mentioned under the year a.d. 852 (^ 4* sixth 

 year), when Wu-sie-ho ^J ffi JH& and six men from there came to the Chinese Court 

 with a tribute of local products (T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 177, p. 15 b). A second 

 embassy is on record in 871 (Pelliot, Bull, de I'Ecole frangaise, Vol. IV, p. 347). 



1 Pinus koraiensis Sieb. et Zucc. (J. Matsumura, Shokubutsu mei-i, pp. 266-267, 

 ed. 1915), in Japanese losen-matsu ("Korean pine"); see also Stuart, Chinese 

 Materia Medica, p. 333. Sin-ra (Japanese Sin-ra, Siraki) is the name of the ancient 

 kingdom of Silla, in the northern part of Korea. 



2 Ch. 3, p. 5 (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan). 



3 Wi $ft certainly is here not Persia, for the Pet hu lu deals with the products 

 of Kwari-tuh, Annam, and the countries south of China (Pelliot, Bull, de I'Ecole 

 francaise, Vol. IX, p. 223). See below, p. 468. The Pel hu lu has presumably served 

 as the source for the text of the Lin piao lu i, quoted above. 



* History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 383. 



