436 Sino-Iranica 



connected with our Fu-lin word, which at any rate represents a loan- 

 word. 



There is another Fu-lin word which has not yet been treated cor- 

 rectly. The T'ang Annals, in the account of Fu-lin (Ch. 221), mention 

 a mammal, styled ts'un If, of the size of a dog, fierce, vicious, and 

 strong. 1 Bretschneider, 2 giving an incorrect form of the name, has 

 correctly identified this beast with the hyena, which, not being found 

 in eastern Asia, is unknown to the Chinese. Ma Twan-lin adds that 

 some of these animals are reared, 3 and the hyena can indeed be tamed. 

 The character for the designation of this animal is not listed in K'ah-hi's 

 Dictionary; but K'an-hi gives it in the form U 4 with the pronunciation 

 Men (fan-tsHe j£ %&, sound equivalent Hi), quoting a commentary to 

 the dictionary Er ya, which is identical with the text of Ma Twan-lin 

 relative to the animal ts'un. This word Men (or possibly hilan) can be 

 nothing but a transcription of Greek vaiva, hyaena, or vaivrj. On the 

 other hand, it should be noted that this Greek word has also passed as 

 a loan into Syriac; 5 and it would therefore not be impossible that it 

 was Syrians who transmitted the Greek name to the Chinese. This 

 question is altogether irrelevant; for we know, and again thanks to 

 Hirth's researches, that the Chinese distinguished two Fu-lin, — the 

 Lesser Fu-lin, which is identical with Syria, and the Greater Fu-lin, the 

 Byzantine Empire with Constantinople as capital. 6 Byzantine Greek, 

 accordingly, must be included among the languages spoken in Fu-lin. 



As to the origin of the name Fu-lin, I had occasion to refer to Pel- 

 liot's new theory, according to which it would be based on Rom, 

 Rum. 7 I am of the same opinion, and perfectly in accord with the 

 fundamental principles by which this theory is inspired. In fact, this 

 is the method followed throughout this investigation: by falling 

 back on the ancient phonology of Chinese, we may hope to restore 

 correctly the prototypes of the Chinese transcriptions. Pelliot starts 

 from the Old-Armenian form Hrom or HrOm, 8 in which h represents 



1 Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, pp. 60, 107, 220. 



2 Knowledge possessed by the Ancient Chinese of the Arabs, p. 24. 



3 Hirth (op. cit., p. 79) translates, "Some are domesticated like dogs." But 

 the phrase f£[ $»J following W ^ ^ forms a separate clause. In the text printed 

 by Hirth (p. 115, Q 22) the character ~j] is to be eliminated. 



4 Thus reproduced by Palladius in his Chinese-Russian Dictionary (Vol. I, 

 p. 569) with the reading silan. 



6 R. P. Smith, Thesaurus syriacus, Vol. I, col. 338. 



Cf. Hirth, Journal Am. Or. Soc, Vol. XXXIII, 1913, pp. 202-208. 



7 The Diamond (this volume, p. 8). Pelliot's notice is in Journal asiatique, 

 1914, I, pp. 498-500. 



8 Cf. HtfBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 362. 



