THE CUCUMBER 



9. Another dogma of the Changkienomaniacs is that the renowned 

 General should have also blessed his countrymen with the introduction 

 of the cucumber (Cucumis sativus), styled hu kwa $j jU. ("Iranian 

 melon") or hwan kwa lit JR ("yellow melon"). 1 The sole document 

 on which this opinion is based is presented by the recent work of Li 

 Si-Sen, 2 who hazards this bold statement without reference to any older 

 authority. Indeed, such an earlier source does not exist: this bit of 

 history is concocted ad hoc, and merely suggested by the name hu kwa. 

 Any plants formed with the attribute hu were ultimately palmed off on 

 the old General as the easiest way out of a difficult problem, and as a 

 comfortable means of saving further thought. 



Li Si-cen falls back upon two texts only of the T'ang period, — the 

 Pen ts'ao H i, which states that the people of the north, in order to avoid 

 the name of Si Lo 15 Wi (a.d. 273-333), wno was oi Hu descent, tabooed 

 the term hu kwa, and replaced it by hwan kwa; 3 and the Si i lu #Hft§ifc 

 by Tu Pao $1 H, who refers this taboo to the year 608 (fourth year 

 of the period Ta-ye of the Sui dynasty). 4 If this information be correct, 

 we gain a chronological clew as to the terminus a quo: the cucumber 

 appears to have been in China prior to the sixth century a.d. Its culti- 

 vation is alluded to in the Ts'i min yao iw from the beginning of the 

 sixth century, provided this is not an interpolation of later times. 5 



According to Engler, 8 the home of the cucumber would most prob- 

 i 



1 Bretschneider, Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 21 (accordingly adopted by 

 de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 266); Stuart, Chinese Materia 

 Medica, p. 135. In Japanese, the cucumber is ki-uri. 



2 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 28, p. 5 b. 



8 A number of other plant-names was hit by this taboo (cf . above, p. 298) : thus 

 the plant lo-lo f^ ^ (Ocimum basilicum), which bears the same character as SiLo's 

 personal name, as already indicated in the Ts'i min yao Su (see also Si wu ki yuan, 

 Ch. 10, p. 30 b; Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 5, p. 34; and Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, 

 p. 22 b). He is said to have also changed the name of the myrobalan ho-li-lo (below, 

 p. 378) into ho-tse fSf J*. There is room for doubt, however, whether any of these 

 plants existed in the China of his time; the taboo explanations may be makeshifts 

 of later periods. 



4 This is the Ta ye Si i lu (Records relative to the Ta-ye period, 605-618)1 

 mentioned by Bretschneider (Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 195). The Pen ts'ao kan mu 

 (Ch. 22, p. 1) quotes the same work again on the taboo of the term hu ma (p. 288), 

 which in 608 was changed into kiao ma ^ j§jc. 



6 Cf. Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 5, p. 43. 



6 In Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 323. 



300 



