486 Sino-Iranica 



that the character men should be pronounced in this case M man, 

 that the name of the tree is 3&C ?fC (thus written in the Nan fan ts'ao mu 

 ftjuah), and that the southerners, because they articulate 3C like fil, 

 have substituted the latter. This is a perfectly satisfactory explanation. 

 The Ku kin Zu, 1 however, has preserved a transcription in the form 

 It /fC H *i-muk-i or Hf *bu (wu), which must have belonged to the 

 language of Kiao-cou ^ } M (Tonking) , as the product hailed from there. 

 Compare Khmer mak pen and Cam mokia ("ebony," Diospyros eben- 

 aster) . 2 



Ebony was known in ancient Babylonia, combs being wrought from 

 this material. 3 It is mentioned in early Egyptian inscriptions as being 

 brought from the land of the Negroes on the upper Nile. Indeed, Africa 

 was the chief centre that supplied the ancients with this precious wood. 4 

 From Ethiopia a hundred billets of ebony were sent every third year 

 as tribute to Darius, king of Persia. Ezekiel 5 alludes to the ebony of 

 Tyre. The Periplus (36) mentions the shipping of ebony from Barygaza 

 in India to Ommana in the Persian Gulf. Theophrastus, 6 who is the 

 first to mention the ebony -tree of India, makes a distinction between two 

 kinds of Indian ebony, a rare and nobler one, and a common variety of 

 inferior wood. According to Pliny, 7 it was Pompey who displayed 

 ebony in Rome at his triumph over Mithridates; and Solinus, who copies 

 this passage, adds that it came from India, and was then shown for the 

 first time. According to the same writer, ebony was solely sent from 

 India, and the images of Indian gods were sometimes carved from this 

 wood entirely, likewise drinking-cups. 8 Thus the ancients were ac- 

 quainted with ebony as a product of Africa and India at a time when 

 Indo-China was still veiled to them, nor is any reference made to the 

 far east in any ancient western account of the subject. The word itself 

 is of Egyptian origin: under the name jieben, ebony formed an important 

 article with the country Punt. Hebrew hobntm is related to this word or 

 directly borrowed from it, and Greek e'(3tvos is derived from Semitic. 

 Arabic-Persian 'abniis is taken as a loan from the Greek, and Hindi 

 abanusa is the descendant of abniis. 



1 Ch. c, p. 1 b. The product is described as coming from Kiao-cou, being of 

 black color and veined, and also called "wood with black veins" {wu wen mu). 



2 Aymonier and Cabaton, Dictionnaire cam-frangais, p. 366. 



3 Handcock, Mesopotamian Archaeology, p. 349. 



4 Herodotus, in, 97. 



5 xxvn, 15. 



6 Hist, plant., IV. IV, 6. 



7 xn, 4, § 20. 



8 Solinus, ed. Mommsen, pp. 193, 221. 



