THE CORIANDER 



8. The Po wu U, faithful to its tendencies regarding other Iranian 

 plants, generously permits General Can K'ien to have also brought back 

 from his journey the coriander, hu swi tft ^ (Coriandrum sativum). 1 

 Li Si-cen, and likewise K'an-hi's Dictionary, repeat this statement 

 without reference to the Po wu li* and of course the credulous com- 

 munity of the Changkienides has religiously sworn to this dogma. 3 

 Needless to say that nothing of the kind is contained in the General's 

 biography or in the Han Annals. 4 The first indubitable mention of the 

 plant is not earlier than the beginning of the sixth century a.d.; that 

 is, about six centuries after the General's death, and this makes some 

 difference to the historian. 5 The first Pen ts'ao giving the name hu-swi 

 is the Si liao pen ts'ao, written by Mon Sen in the seventh century, 

 followed by the Pen ts'ao H i of C'en Ts'an-k'i in the first half of the 

 eighth century. None of these authors makes any observation on 

 foreign introduction. In the literature on agriculture, the cultivation 

 of the coriander is first described in the Ts'i tnin yao lu of the sixth 

 century, where, however, nothing is said about the origin of the plant 

 from abroad. 



An interesting reference to the plant occurs in the Buddhist dic- 

 tionary Yi ts'ie kin yin i (I.e.), where several variations for writing 



1 This passage is not a modern interpolation, but is of ancient date, as it is cited 

 in the Yi ts'ie kin yin i, Ch. 24, p. 2 (regarding this work, see above, p. 258). Whether 

 it was contained in the original edition of the Po wu li, remains doubtful. 



1 Under $J ("garlic") K'an-hi cites the dictionary "Tan yun, published by Sun 

 Mien in a.d. 750, as saying that the coriander is due to Can K'ien. 



3 Bretschneider, Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 221, where the term hu-swi is 

 wrongly identified with parsley, and Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 25; Hirth, T'oung Pao, 

 Vol. VI, 1895, p. 439. 



4 The coriander is mentioned in several passages of the Kin kwei yao lio by 

 the physician Can Cun-kin of the second century a.d.; but, as stated above (p. 205), 

 there is no guaranty that these passages belonged to the original edition of the 

 work. "To eat pork together with raw coriander rots away the navel" (Ch. c, 

 p. 23 b). "In the fourth and eighth months do not eat coriander, for it injures the 

 intellect " (ibid., p. 28). "Coriander eaten for a long time makes man very forgetful; 

 a patient must not eat coriander or hwan-hwa ts'ai 3f ^6 ^j| (Latnpsana 

 apogonoides) ," ibid., p. 29. 



6 An incidental reference to hu swi is made in the Pen ts'ao kan tnu in 

 the description of the plant kuan er (see Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., pt. II, 

 No. 438), and ascribed to Lu Ki, who lived in the latter part of the third century 

 a.d. In my opinion, this reading is merely due to a misprint, as there is preserved no 

 description of the hu-swi by Lu Ki. 



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