476 Sino-Iranica 



king) 1 there are ants living on coarse creepers. The people, on examin- 

 ing the interior of the earth, can tell the presence of ants from the soil 

 being freshly broken up; and they drive tree-branches into these spots, 

 on which the ants will crawl up, and produce a lac that hardens into a 

 solid mass." Aside from the absurd and fantastic notes of Aelian, 2 this is 

 the earliest allusion to the lac-insect which is called in Annamese con 

 mdi, in Khmer kandier, in Cam mil, mur, or muor? The Chinese half- 

 legendary account 4 agrees strikingly with what Garcia reports as the 

 Oriental lore of this wonder of nature: "I was deceived for a long 

 time. For they said that in Pegu the channels of the rivers deposit mud 

 into which small sticks are driven. On them are engendered very large 

 ants with wings, and it is said that they deposit much lacre 5 on the 

 sticks. I asked my informants whether they had seen this with their 

 own eyes. As they gained money by buying rubies and selling the cloths 

 of Paleam and Bengal, they replied that they had not been so idle as 

 that, but that they had heard it, and it was the common fame. After- 

 wards I conversed with a respectable man with an enquiring mind, who 

 told me that it was a large tree with leaves like those of a plum tree, and 

 that the large ants deposit the lacre on the small branches. The ants 

 are engendered in mud or elsewhere. They deposit the gum on the 

 tree, as a material thing, washing the branch as the bee makes honey; 

 and that is the truth. The branches are pulled off the tree and put in 

 the shade to dry. The gum is then taken off and put into bamboo joints, 

 sometimes with the branch." 6 



In the Yu yah tsa tsu 7 we read as follows: "The tse-kuh tree ^ £# 3 

 $$ has its habitat in Camboja (Cen-la), where it is called Wl H lo-k'ia, 

 *lak-ka (that is, lakka, lac). 9 Further, it is produced in the country 



1 Regarding this locality, cf. H. Maspero, Etudes d'histoire d'Annam, V, p. 19 

 {Bull, de I'Ecole francaise, 1918, No. 3). \ 



2 Nat. Anim., iv, 46. There is no other Greek or Latin notice of the matter. 



8 Cf. Aymonier and Cabaton (Dictionnaire cam-francais, p. 393), who trans- 

 late the term "termite, pou de bois, fourmi blanche." 



4 Much more sensible, however, than that of Aelian. 



6 The Portuguese word for "lac, lacquer," the latter being traceable to lacre. 

 The ending -re is unexplained. 



8 C. Markham, Colloquies, p. 241. 



7 Ch. 18, p. 9. 



8 The Pai-hai edition has erroneously the character §ffi. 



9 From Pali lakha (Sanskrit lak^a, laktaka) ; Cam lak, Khmer lak; Siamese rak 

 (cf. Pallegoix, Description du royaume Thai, Vol. I, p. 144). We are thus en- 

 titled to trace the presence of this Indian word in the languages of Indo-China 

 to the age of the T'ang. The earliest and only classical occurrence of the word is in 

 the Periplus (Ch. 6: X&wcos). Cf. also Prakrit lakka; Kawi and Javanese laka; 

 Tagalog lakha. 



