The Malayan Po-Se — Ebony 485 



that the designation "Allium of the Hu" is a misnomer, and that the 

 plant in question has nothing to do with the Hu in the sense of Iranians, 

 nor with Persia. The Po-se of Ma Ci, referred to above, in fact repre- 

 sents the Malayan Po-se. 



68. In the Pen ts'ao kan mu, a quotation is given from the Ku kin 

 Zu> which is not to be found in the accessible modern editions of this 

 work. The assertion is made there with reference to that work that 

 ebony Mi 3C >fc is brought over on Po-se ships. It is out of the question 

 that Po-se in this case could denote Persia, as erroneously assumed by 

 Stuart, 1 as Persia was hardly known under that name in the fourth 

 century, when the Ku kin lu was written, or is supposed to have been 

 written, by Ts'ui Pao; 2 and, further, ebony is not at all a product of 

 Persia. 3 Since the same work refers ebony to Kiao-cbu (Tonking), it 

 may be assumed that this Po-se is intended for the Malayan Po-se; but, 

 even in this case, the passage may be regarded as one of the many 

 interpolations from which the Ku kin lu has suffered. 



Chinese wu-men ^li (*u-mon), "ebony" (timber of Diospyros 

 ebenum and D. melanoxylon) is not a transcription of Persian dbnus, 

 as proposed by Hirth. 4 There is no phonetic coincidence whatever. 

 Nowhere is it stated that the Chinese word is Persian or a foreign word 

 at all. There is, further, no evidence to the effect that ebony was ever 

 traded from Persia to China; on the contrary, according to Chinese 

 testimony, it came from Indo-China, the Archipelago, and India; 

 according to Li Si-Sen, from Hai-nan, Yun-nan, and the Southern Bar- 

 barians. 6 The speculation that the word had travelled east and west 

 with the article from "one of the Indo-Chinese districts," is untenable; 

 for the ebony of western Asia and Greece did not come from Indo- 

 China, but from Africa and India. The above Chinese term is not a 

 transcription at all : the second character men is simply a late substitu- 

 tion of the Sung period for the older ]$C, as used in the Ku kin £u, wu wen 

 meaning "black-streaked wood." In the Pen ts'ao kan mu 6 it is said 



1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 253. 



2 Persia under the name Po-se is first mentioned in a.d. 461, on the occasion of 

 an embassy sent from there to the Court of the Wei (compare above, p. 471). 



3 It was solely imported into Persia (W. Ouseley, Oriental Geography of Ebn 

 Haukal, p. 133). 



* Chau Ju-kua, p. 216. 



6 The Ko ku yao lun (Ch. 8, p. 5 b; ed. of Si yin Man ts'un Su) gives Hai-nan, 

 Nan-fan ("Southern Barbarians"), and Yun-nan as places of provenience, and 

 adds that there is much counterfeit material, dyed artificially. The poles of the tent 

 of the king of Camboja were made of ebony (Sui Su, Ch. 82, p. 3). 



6 Ch. 35 b, p. 13. 



