NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE OF FU-LIN 



48. The preceding notes on Fu-lin plants have signally confirmed 

 Hirth's opinion in regard to the language of Fu-lin, which was Aramaic. 

 There now remains but one Fu-lin plant-name to be identified. This is 

 likewise contained in the Yu yah tsa tsu. 1 The text runs as follows: — 



"The p'an-nu-se ^*ili§ $§ tree has its habitat in Po-se (Persia), 

 likewise in Fu-lin. In Fu-lin it is styled k'un-han ffl ft. The tree is 

 thirty feet high, and measures from three to four feet in circumference. 

 Its leaves resemble those of the si $uh iftfl $? (the Banyan tree, Ficus 

 retusa). It is an evergreen. The flowers resemble those of the citrus, 

 kii tSj and are white in color. The seeds are green and as large as a 

 sour jujube, swan tsao §§ 31 (Diospyros lotus) . They are sweet of taste 

 and glossy (fat, greasy) . They are eatable. The people of the western 

 regions press oil out of them, to oint their bodies with to ward off 

 ulcers." 



The transcription p % an-nu-se answers to ancient *bwan-du-sek; 

 and k'iin-han, to ancient g'win-xan. Despite a long-continued and 

 intensive search, I cannot discover any Iranian plant-name of the type 

 bandusek or wandusek, nor any Aramaic word like ginxan. The botanical 

 characteristics are too vague to allow of a safe identification. Never- 

 theless I hope that this puzzle also will be solved in the future. 2 



In the Fu-lin name a-li-k'ii-fa we recognized an Indian loan-word in 

 Aramaic (p. 423). It would be tempting to regard as such also the 

 Fu-lin word for "pepper" *a-li-xa-da H M ffi P£ (a-li-ho-t'o), which 

 may be restored to *alixada, arixada, arxad; but no such word is known 

 from Indian or in Aramaic. The common word for " pepper " in Aramaic 

 is filfol (from Sanskrit pippala) . In certain Kurd dialects J. de Morgan 3 

 has traced a word alat for "pepper," but I am not certain that this is 



1 Ch. i8, p. 10 b. 



2 My colleague, Professor M. Sprengling at the University of Chicago, kindly 

 sent me the following information: "Olive-oil was used to ward off ulcers (see 

 Winer, Bibl. Realwortb., Vol. II, p. 170; and Krauss, Archaeologie des Talmud, 

 Vol. I, pp. 229, 233, 683). Neither in Krauss nor elsewhere was I able to find the 

 name of an oil-producing tree even remotely resembling ginxan. There is a root 

 qnx ('to wipe, to rub, to anoint'). It is theoretically possible that gis pronounced 

 voiced and thus becomes a guttural g, and that from this root, by means of the 

 suffix -an, may be derived a noun *qlnxan, *ginxan to which almost any significance 

 derived from 'rubbing, anointing* might be attached. But for the existence of such 

 a noun or adjective I have not the slightest evidence." 



3 Mission scientifique en Perse, Vol. V, p. 132. 



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