482 Sino-Iranica 



:2c M 3=L . " l According to Ma Ci , it grows in southern China, and, accord- 

 ing to SuSun,in the marshes of Lin-nan; thus it must have been intro- 

 duced between the T'ang and Sung dynasties. In regard to the name, 

 which is no doubt of foreign origin, Li Si-cen observes that its significance 

 is as yet unexplained. Certainly it is not Iranian, nor is it known to me 

 that Amomum occurs in Persia. On the contrary, the plant has been 

 discovered in Burma, Siam, Camboja, and Laos. 2 Therefore Li Sun's 

 Po-se obviously relates again to the Malayan Po-se; yet his addition of 

 Si-hai and Si-2un is apt to raise a strong suspicion that he himself 

 confounded the two Po-se and in this case thought of Persia. I have 

 not yet succeeded in tracing the foreign word on which the Chinese 

 transcription is based, but feel sure that it is not Iranian. The present 

 colloquial name is ts'ao ia Zen jf£ #£ C 3 



66. There is a plant styled §1 it # p'o-lo-te, *bwa-ra-tik, or §1 ft 

 W) p'o-lo-lo, *bwa-ra-lak(lok, lek), not yet identified. Again our 

 earliest source of information is due to Li Sun, who states, "P'o-lo-te 

 grows in the countries of the Western Sea (Si-hai) and in Po-se. The 

 tree resembles the Chinese willow; and its seeds, those of the castor-oil 

 plant (pei-ma tse, Ricinus communis, above, p. 403) ; they are much used 

 by druggists." 4 Li Si-cen regards the word as Sanskrit, and the elements 

 of the transcription hint indeed at a Sanskrit name. It is evidently 

 Sanskrit bhalldtaka, from which are derived Newarl pdldla, Hindustani 

 belatak or bheld, Persian balddur, and Arabic beladur (Garcia : balador) . 

 Other Sanskrit synonymes of this plant are aruska,bijapadapa,viravTksa, 

 visdsyd, and dahana. It is mentioned in several passages of the Bower 

 Manuscript. 



This is the marking-nut tree {Semecarpus anacardium, family Ana- 

 cardiaceae), a genus of Indian trees found throughout the hotter parts 

 of India as far east as Assam, also distributed over the Archipelago as 

 far as the Philippines 5 and North Australia. It does not occur in Burma 

 or Ceylon, nor in Persia or western Asia. The fleshy receptacle bear- 

 ing the fruit contains a bitter and astringent substance, which is uni- 

 versally used in India as a substitute for marking-ink. The Chinese 



1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 14, p. 13 b. 



2 Stuart, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 38. Loureiro (so-xa-mi) mentions it 

 for Cochin-China (Perrot and Hurrier, Mat. med. et pharmacop£e sino-annamites, 

 P- 97). 



3 Ci wu min li t'u k'ao, Ch. 25, p. 72. 



4 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 35, p. 7; Cen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 5, p. 14 b. In the latter 

 work Li Sun attributes the definition "Western Sea and Po-se" to Sii Piao, author 

 of the Nan lou ki. 



5 M. Blanco, Flora de Filipinas, p. 216. 



