306 Sino-Iranica 



fix approximately the date as to when the pea became known to the 

 Chinese. Thus he quotes the Ts'ien kin fan X 4£ ^ of the Taoist 

 adept Sun Se-miao $£ JS jII, 1 of the beginning of the seventh century, as 

 mentioning the term hu tou with the synonymes tsHh siao tou and ma-lei. 

 The Ye Zuh ki 2 of the fourth century a.d. is credited with the statement 

 that, when Si Hu tabooed the word hu t$l, the term hu tou was altered 

 into kwo tou 10 2. ("bean of the country," "national bean"). Accord- 

 ing to Li Si-cen, these passages allude to the pea, for anciently the 

 term hu tou was in general use instead of wan tou. He further refers to 

 the T'an H M it as saying that the pi tou comes from the Westerta 

 2un and the land of the Uigur, and to the dictionary Kwan ya by Can 

 Yi (third century a.d.) as containing the terms pi tou, wan tou, and liu 

 tou i§ it. It would be difficult to vouchsafe for the fact that these 

 were really embodied in the editio princeps of that work; yet it would 

 not be impossible, after all, that, like the walnut and the pomegranate, 

 so also the pea made its appearance on Chinese soil during the fourth 

 century a.d. There can be no doubt of the fact that it was cultivated in 

 China under the T'ang, and even under the Sui (a.d. 590-617). In the 

 account of Liu-kiu (Formosa) it is stated that the soil of the island is 

 advantageous for the cultivation of hu tou. 3 Wu K'i-tsun 4 contradicts 

 Li Si-cen's opinion, stating that the terms hu tou and wan tou apply to 

 different species. 



None of the Chinese names can be regarded as the transcription of 

 an Iranian word. Pulse played a predominant part in the nutrition of 

 Iranian peoples. The country Si (Tashkend) had all sorts of pulse. 5 

 Abu Mansur discusses the pea under the Persian name xulldr and the 

 Arabic julban. 6 Other Persian words for the pea are nujud and gergeru 

 or xereghan. 1 



A wild plant indigenous to China is likewise styled hu tou. It is 

 first disclosed by C'en Ts'an-k'i of the T*ang period, in his Pen ts'ao H i, 

 as growing wild everywhere in rice-fields, its sprouts resembling the 

 bean. In the Ci wu mih H Vu k'ao 8 we meet illustrations of two wild 



1 Regarding this author, see Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature, pp. 97, 99; 

 Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 43; L. Wieger, Taoisme, le canon, pp. 142, 143, 

 182; Pelliot, Bull, de I'Ecolefrangaise, Vol. IX, pp. 435-438. 



* See above, p. 280. 

 *SuiSu, Ch. 81, p. 5 b. 



* Ci wu tnin Si Vu k'ao, Ch. 2, p. 150. 

 8 T'ai p'in hwan yii ki, Ch. 186, p. 7 b. 



6 Achundow, Abu Mansur, pp. 41, 223. 



T The latter is given by Schlimmer (Terminologie, p. 464). 



8 Ch. 2, pp. 11, 15. 



