The Water-Melon 445 



which A. de Candolle introduces as evidence for the early diffusion 

 of the cultivation into Asia, I cannot find any trace. The Sanskrit 

 designations of the water-melon, ndfdmra ("mango of the Nata"?), 

 godumba, tarambuja, sedu, are of recent origin and solely to be found in 

 the lexicographers; while others, like kalinga (Benincasa cerifera), orig- 

 inally refer to other cucurbitaceous plants. Watt gives only modern 

 vernacular names. 



Chinese si kwa has been equated with Greek cinba by Hirth, 1 who 

 arbitrarily assigns to the latter the meaning "water-melon." This 

 philological achievement has been adopted by Giles in his Chinese 

 Dictionary (No. 6281). The Greek word, however, refers only to the 

 cucumber, and the water-melon remained unknown to the Greeks of 

 ancient times. 2 A late Greek designation for the fruit possibly is ire-jruv, 

 which appears only in Hippocrates. 3 A. de Candolle 4 justly remarked 

 that the absence of an ancient Greek name which may with certainty 

 be attributed to this species seems to show that it was introduced into 

 the Graeco-Roman world about the beginning of the Christian era. 

 The Middle and Modern Greek word xwrov£a or Kapirovaia, derived 

 from Persian or Turkish, plainly indicates the way in which the By- 

 zantine world became acquainted with the water-melon. There is, 

 further, no evidence that the Greek word (tikvcl ever penetrated into 

 Asia and reached those peoples (Uigur, Kitan, Jur&) whom the Chinese 

 make responsible for the transmission of the water-melon. The Chinese 

 term is not a transcription, but has the literal meaning "western melon"; 

 and the "west" implied by this term does not stretch as far as Greece, but, 

 as is plainly stated in the Wu tai H, merely alludes to the fact that the 

 fruit was produced in Turkistan. Si kwa is simply an abbreviation 

 for Si yii kwa W fi£ ift; that is, "melon of Turkistan." 5 



According to the Yamato-honzo 6 of 1709, water-melons were first 

 introduced into Japan in the period Kwan-ei (1624-44). 



1 Fremde Einnusse in der chinesischen Kunst, p. 17. 



2 A. de Candolle, G6ographie botanique, p. 909. 



8 Even this problematic interpretation is rejected by L. Leclerc (Traite - des 

 simples, Vol. I, p. 239), who identifies the Greek word with the common gourd. 

 Leclerc's controversy with A. de Candolle should be carefully perused by those 

 who are interested in the history of the melon family. 



* Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 264. 



5 Illustrations of Chinese water-melon fields may be seen in F. H. King, Farm- 

 ers of Forty Centuries, pp. 282, 283. 



• Ch. 8, p. 3. 



