278 Sino-Iranica 



They take out of them the seed, which they call Nardan, wherewith 

 they drive a great trade, and the Persians make use of it in their 

 sawces, whereto it gives a colour, and a picquant tast, having been 

 steep 'd in water, and strain'd through a cloath. Sometimes they boyl 

 the juyce of these Pomegranates, and keep it to give a colour to the 

 rice, which they serve up at their entertainments, and it gives it withall 

 a tast which is not unpleasant. . . . The best pomegranates grow in 

 Jescht, and at Caswin, but the biggest, in Karabag." 



Mirza Haidar mentions a kind of pomegranate peculiar to Baluris- 

 tan (Kafiristan), sweet, pure, and full-flavored, its seeds being white 

 and very transparent. 1 



"Grapes, melons, apples, and pomegranates, all fruits, indeed, are 

 good in Samarkand." 2 The pomegranates of Khojand were renowned 

 for their excellence. 3 The Emperor Jahangir mentions in his Memoirs 

 the sweet pomegranates of Yazd and the subacid ones of Farrah, and 

 says of the former that they are celebrated all over the world. 4 J. 

 Crawfurd 5 remarks, "The only good pomegranates which, indeed, 

 I have ever met with are those brought into upper India by the cara- 

 vans from eastern Persia." 



The Yu yan tsa tsu 6 states that the pomegranates of Egypt ty)%W. 

 (Wu-se-li, *Mwir-si-li, Mirsir) 7 in the country of the Arabs (Ta-si, 

 *Ta-d2ik) weigh up to five and six catties. 



Also in regard to the pomegranate we meet the tradition that its 

 introduction into China is due to General Can K'ien. In the same 

 manner as in the case of the walnut, this notion looms up only in 

 post-Han authors. It is first recorded by Lu Ki ^ SI, who lived under 

 the Western Tsin dynasty (a.d. 265-313), in his work Yii ti yiln lu 

 H K? § ilF. This text has been handed down in the TsH min yao $u 

 of Kia Se-niu of the sixth century. 8 There it is said that Can K'ien, 

 while an envoy of the Han in foreign countries for eighteen years, 

 obtained Vu-lin %£ $v, this term being identical with nan-H-liu $c 75 

 t§?. This tradition is repeated in the Po wu ci 9 of Can Hwa and in the 



1 Elias and Ross, Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 386. 



2 A. S. Beveridge, Memoirs of Babur, p. 77. 



8 Ibid., p. 8. They are also extolled by Ye-lu C'u-ts'ai (Bretschneider, Mediae- 

 val Researches, Vol. I, p. 19). 



* H. M. Elliot, History of India as told by Its Own Historians, Vol. VI, p. 348 . 



6 History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 433. 

 8 81 ft Ch. 10, p. 4 b (ed. of Tsin tai pi Im). 



7 Old Persian Mudraya, Hebrew Mizraim, Syriac Mezroye. 



8 Ch. 4, p. 14 b (new ed., 1896). 



• See above, p. 258. 



