444 Sino-Iranica 



call it Batiec Indi, which means 'melon of India/ and Avicenna so calls 

 it in many places." 1 Nor does Persian herbuz, 2 Middle Persian harbojlna 

 or xarbuzak (literally, " donkey-cucumber ") favor the assumption of 

 an indigenous origin. VAmbery 3 argues that Turkish karpuz or harbuz 

 is derived from the Persian, and that accordingly the fruit hails from 

 Persia, though the opposite standpoint would seem to be equally 

 justifiable, and the above interpretation may be no more than the 

 outcome of a popular etymology. But Vamb6ry, after all, may be right; 

 at least, by accepting his theory it would be comparatively easy to 

 account for the migration of the water-melon. In this case, Persia 

 would be the starting-point from which it spread to the Turks of Central 

 Asia and finally to China. 4 A philological argument may support the 

 opinion that the Turkish word was derived from Persia: besides the 

 forms with initial guttural, we meet an alternation with initial dental, 

 due to phonetic dissimilation. The Uigur, as we know from the Uigur- 

 Chinese vocabulary, had the word as karpuz; but the Mongols term the 

 water-melon tarbus. Likewise in TurkI we have tarbuz, but also qarpuz. 

 This alternation is not Mongol-Turkish, but must have pre-existed in 

 Persian, as we have tarambuja in Neo-Sanskrit, and in Hindustani 

 there is xarbuza and tarbuza (also tarbuz and tarmus), and correspondingly 

 tarbuz in West-Tibetan. In Pu§tu, the language of the Afghans, we 

 have tarbuja in the sense of "water-melon," and xarbuja designating 

 various kinds of musk-melon. 6 Through Turkish mediation the same 

 word reached the Slavs (Russian arbUz, 6 Bulgarian karpHz, Polish 

 arbuz, garbuz, harbuz) and Byzantines (Greek mpTrovoia) , and Turkish 

 tribes appear to have been active in disseminating the fruit east and 

 west. 



It would therefore be plausible also that, as stated by Joret, 7 the 

 fruit may have been propagated from Iran to India, although the 

 date of this importation is unknown. From Indian sources, on the other 

 hand, nothing is to be found that would indicate any great antiquity of 

 the cultivation of this species. Of the alleged Sanskrit word chayapula, 



1 C. Markham, Colloquies by Garcia da Orta, p. 304. 



2 From which Armenian xarpzag is derived. 



8 Primitive Cultur des turko-tatarischen Volkes, pp. 217-218. 



4 Vamb^ry, of course, is wrong in designating Persia and India as the mother- 

 country of this cultivation. The mother-country was ancient Egypt or Africa in 

 a wider sense. 



8 H. W. Bellew, Report on the Yusufzais, p. 255 (Lahore, 1864). 



6 In the dialects of northern Persia we also find such forms as arhuz and arhoz 

 (J. de Morgan, Mission en Perse, Vol. V, p. 212). 



7 Plantes dans l'antiquite\ Vol. II, p. 252. 



