The Malayan Po-Se — Aloes 481 



over the maritime route to Canton. Aloes was only imported to Persia, 1 

 but it is not mentioned by Abu Mansur. The two names sebr zerd 

 and sebr sugutri ( = Sokotra), given by Schlimmer, 2 are of Arabic and 

 comparatively modern origin; thus is likewise the alleged Persian word 

 alwd. The Persians adopted it from the Arabs; and the Arabs, on their 

 part, admit that their alua is a transcription of the Greek word CC.X617. 3 

 We must not imagine, of course, that the Chinese, when they first re- 

 ceived this product during the T'ang period, imported it themselves 

 directly from the African coast or Arabia. It was traded to India, and 

 from there to the Malayan Archipelago; and, as intimated by Li Sun, 

 it was shipped by the Malayan Po-se to Canton. Another point over- 

 looked by Hirth is that Aloe vera has been completely naturalized in 

 India for a long time, although not originally a native of the country. 4 

 Garcia da Orta even mentions the preparation of aloes in Cambay 

 and Bengal. 5 Thus we find in India, as colloquial names for the drug, 

 such forms as alia, ilva, eilya, elio, yalva, and aliva in Malayan, which 

 are all traceable to the Arabic-Greek alua, alwd. This name was picked 

 up by the Malayan Po-se and transmitted by them with the product to 

 the Chinese, who simply eliminated the initial a of the form aluwa 

 or aluwe and retained luwe. 6 Besides lu-wei, occur also the transcriptions 

 18. or tH # nu or no hwi, the former in the K'ai-pao pen ts x ao of the Sung, 

 perhaps suggested by the Nu-fa country or to be explained by the 

 phonetic interchange of / and n. It is not intelligible to me why 

 Hirth says that in the Ming dynasty lu-wei "was, as it is now, 

 catechu, a product of the Acacia catechu (Sanskrit khadira)." No 

 authority for this theory is cited; but this is quite impossible, as 

 catechu or cutch was well known to the Chinese under the names 

 er-Va or haVr-Va? 



65. A plant, fS ffi #} so-fa-mi, *suk-sa-m'it(m'ir), Japanese 

 SukuSamitsu (Amomum villosum or xanthioides) , is first mentioned by Li 

 Sun as "growing in the countries of the Western Sea (Si-hai) as well as 

 in Si-2uh © ~$L and Po-se, much of it coming from the Nan-tun circuit 



1 W. Ouseley, Oriental Geography of Ebn Haukal, p. 133. 



* Terminologie, p. 22. 



3 Leclerc, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. 367. 



* G. Watt, Commercial Products of India, p. 59. 



8 C. Markham, Colloquies, p. 6. 



8 Waiters (Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 332), erroneously transcrib- 

 ing lu-hui, was inclined to trace the Chinese transcription directly to the Greek 

 aloe; this of course, for historical reasons, is out of the question. 



7 See Stuart, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 2; and my Loan- Words in Tibetan, 

 No. 107, where the history of these words is traced. 



