CHIVE, ONION, AND SHALLOT 



10. Although a number of alliaceous plants are indigenous to China, 1 

 there is one species, the chive (Allium scorodoprasum; French rocambole), 

 to which, as already indicated by its name hu swan #1 m or hu j$J 

 ("garlic of the Hu, Iranian garlic"), a foreign origin is ascribed by the 

 Chinese. Again, the worn-out tradition that also this introduction 

 is due to Can K'ien, is of late origin, and is first met with in the 

 spurious work Po wu U, and then in the dictionary T'an yiin of the middle 

 of the eighth century. 2 Even Li Si-oen 3 says no more than that "people 

 of the Han dynasty obtained the hu swan from Central Asia." It seems 

 difficult, however, to eradicate a long-established prejudice or an error 

 even from the minds of scholars. In 191 5 I endeavored to rectify it, 

 especially with reference to the wrong opinion expressed by Hirth in 

 1895, that garlic in general must have been introduced into China 

 for the first time by Can K'ien. Nevertheless the same misconception 

 is repeated by him in 191 7, 4 while a glance at the Botanicon Sinicum 6 

 would have convinced him that at least four species of Allium are of 

 a prehistoric antiquity in China. The first mention of this Central- 

 Asiatic or Iranian species of Allium is made by T'ao Huh-kifi 

 (a.d. 45 1-536) , provided the statement attributed to him in the Ceh lei pen 

 ts'ao and Pen ts'ao kah mu really emanates from him. 6 When the new 

 Allium was introduced, the necessity was felt of distinguishing it from the 

 old, indigenous Allium sativum, that was designated by the plain root- 

 word swan. The former, accordingly, was characterized as ta swan 

 ^C ffii ("large Allium"); the latter, as siao /h swan ("small Allium"). 

 This distinction is said to have first been recorded by T'ao Huh-kin. 

 Also the Ku kin lu is credited with the mention of hu swan; this, how- 

 ever, is not the older Ku kin cu by Ts'ui Pao of the fourth century, but, 

 as expressly stated in the Pen ts'ao, the later re-edition by Fu Hou 



1 Cf. Voung Pao, 1915, pp. 96-99. 



2 Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, No. 244. 



* Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 6 b. 



* Journal Am. Or. Soc, Vol. XXXVII, p. 92. 



6 Pt. II, Nos. 1-4, 63, 357-360, and III, Nos. 240-243. 



6 The Kin kwei yao Ho (Ch. c, p. 24 b) of the second century a.d. mentions hu 

 swan, but this in all probability is a later interpolation (above, p. 205). 



302 



