The Malayan Po-Se — Alum 475 



and Ta Ts'in. J. L. Soubeiran 1 says, "L'alun, qui £tait tire" primitive- 

 ment de la Perse, est aujourd'hui importe" de l'Occident." F. de Mely 2 

 translates the term Pose ts'e fan by "fan violet de Perse." All this is 

 wrong. Hirth 3 noted the difficulty in the case, as alum is not produced 

 in Persia, but principally in Asia Minor. Pliny 4 mentions Spain, 

 Egypt, Armenia, Macedonia, Pontus, and Africa as alum-producing 

 countries. Hirth found in the P l ei wen yiin fu a passage from the Hai 

 yao pen ts'ao, according to which Pose fan $k.M !£ ("Persian alum," 

 as he translates) comes from Ta Ts'in. In his opinion, " Persian alum" 

 is a misnomer, Persia denoting in this case merely the emporium from 

 which the product was shipped to China. The text in question is not 

 peculiar to the Hai yao pen ts'ao of the eighth century, but occurs at a 

 much earlier date in the Kwan cou ki M 'J'H Ifi, an account of Kwan- 

 tuh, written under the Tsih dynasty (a.d. 265-419), when the name of 

 Persia was hardly known in China. This work, as quoted in the Cen 

 lei pen ts'ao, h states that kin sien 4£ H fan ("alum with gold threads") 

 is produced ^fe in the country Po-se, and in another paragraph that the 

 white alum of Po-se {Pose pai fan) comes from Ta Ts'in. 6 The former 

 statement clearly alludes to the alum discolored by impurities, as still 

 found in several localities of India and Upper Burma. 7 Accordingly 

 the Malayan Po-se (for this one only can come into question here) 

 produced an impure kind of alum, and simultaneously was the transit 

 mart for the pure white alum brought from western Asia by way of 

 India to China. It is clear that, because the native alum of Po-se was 

 previously known, also the West-Asiatic variety was named for Po-se. 

 A parallel to the Pose fan is the K'un-lun fan, which looks like black 

 mud. 8 



61. The Wu lu ^1 $ifc, written by Can Po §H $& in the beginning of 

 the fourth century, contains the following text on the subject of "ant- 

 lac" iyi tsi Ji &) : 9 "In the district of Ku-fuh Wi M. (in Kiu-cen, Ton- 



1 Etudes sur la matiere medicale chinoise (Min£raux), p. 2 (reprint from 

 Journal de pharmacie et de chimie, 1866). 



2 Lapidaire chinois, p. 260. 



* Chinesische Studien, p. 257. 



4 xxxv, 52. 



5 Ch. 3, p. 40 b. 



6 Also in the text of the Hai yao pen ts'ao, as reproduced in the Pen ts'ao kan mu 

 (Ch. 11, p. 15 b), two Po-se alums are distinguished. 



7 Watt, Commercial Products of India, p. 61. 



8 Pen ts'ao kan mu, I. c. 



9 T'ai p'in hwan yti ki, Ch. 171, p. 5. 



