440 Sino-Iranica 



The man who introduced the fruit into China proper was Hun Hao 

 $c fiS (a.d. 1090-1155), ambassador to the Kin or Jurei, among whom he 

 remained for fifteen years (1129-43). In his memoirs, entitled Sun mo 

 ki wen t& iH $S W, he has the following report: 1 "The water-melon 

 (si kwa) is in shape like a flat Acorus (p'u W), but rounded. It is very 

 green in color, almost blue-green. In the course of time it will change 

 into yellow. This Cucurbitacea (Vie 1&£) resembles the sweet melon (Hen 

 kwa ^ft JR, Cucumis melo), and is sweet and crisp. 2 Its interior is filled 



China during his lifetime (that is, prior to the year 949), we might justly assume 

 that his secretary Hu Kiao must have possessed knowledge of this fact, and would 

 hardly speak of the fruit as a novelty. Further, the alleged introduction of the 

 fruit by Siao Han conflicts with the tradition that this importation is due to Huh 

 Hao in the twelfth century (see above). It would be nothing striking, of course, if, as 

 the fruit was cultivated by the Kitan, several Chinese ambassadors to this people 

 should have carried the seeds to their country; but, as a rule, such new acquisitions 

 take effect without delay, and if Siao Han had imported the seeds, there was no 

 necessity for Huh Hao to do so again. Therefore it seems preferable to think either 

 that the text of the above quotation is corrupted, or that the tradition, if it existed, 

 is a subsequent makeshift or altogether erroneous. 



1 Not having access to an edition of this work, I avail myself of the extract, as 

 printed in the Kwan k'iinfan P'u (Ch. 14, p. 17 b), the texts of which are generally 

 given in a reliable form. 



2 In regard to the melon (Cucumis melo), A. de Candolle (Origin of Cultivated 

 Plants, p. 261) says with reference to a letter received from Bretschneider in 1881, 

 "Its introduction into China appears to date only from the eighth century of our 

 era, judging from the epoch of the first work which mentions it. As the relations 

 of the Chinese with Bactriana, and the north-west of India by the embassy of 

 Chang-Kien, date from the second century, it is possible that the culture of the 

 species was not then widely diffused in Asia." Nothing to the effect is to be found in 

 Bretschneider's published works. In his Bot. Sin. (pt. II, p. 197) he states that all 

 the cucurbitaceous plants now cultivated for food in China are probably indigenous 

 to the country, with the exception of the cucumber and water-melon, which, as their 

 Chinese names indicate, were introduced from the West. In the texts assembled 

 in the Pen ts'ao kan mu regarding tien kwa,\no allusion is made to foreign origin. 

 Concerning the gourd or calabash (Lagenariu vulgaris), A. de Candolle (I. c, 

 p. 246) states after a letter of Bretschneider that "the earliest work which mentions 

 the gourd is that of Tchong-tchi-chou, of the first century before Christ, quoted in 

 a work of the fifth or sixth century." This seems to be a confusion with the Cun 

 Su $u of the T'ang period (Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 79). The gourd, of 

 course, occurs in ancient canonical literature (Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 198). The history 

 of this and other cucurbitaceous plants requires new and critical investigation, the 

 difficulty of which is unfortunately enhanced by a constant confusion of terms in 

 all languages, the name of one species being shifted to another. It means very little, 

 of course, that at present, as recently emphasized again by H. J. Spinden (Pro- 

 ceedings Nineteenth Congress of Americanists, p. 271, Washington, 1917), Lagenaria 

 is distributed over the New and Old Worlds alike; the point is, where the centre of the 

 cultivation was (according to A. de Candolle it was in India; see, further, Asa Gray, 

 Scientific Papers, Vol. I, p. 330), and how it spread, or whether the wild form had a 

 wide geographical range right from the beginning, and was cultivated independently 

 in various countries. In view of the great antiquity of the cultivation both in India 

 and China, the latter assumption would seem more probable; but all this requires 

 renewed and profound investigation. 



