Persian Textiles — Brocades 489 



twenty smaller ones, so that they could be accommodated on twenty 

 camels, and were presented once in three years by the Arabs to the 

 Kirgiz. The two nations had a treaty of mutual alliance, shared also 

 by the Tibetans, and guaranteeing protection of their trade against the 

 brigandage of the Uigur. 1 The term hu kin i$ ^ ("brocades of the Hu," 

 that is, Iranians) is used in the Kwan yU ki Mf J8£ IS 2 with reference to 

 Khotan. 3 The Iranian word for these textiles, though not recognized 

 heretofore, is also recorded by the Chinese. This is & tie, anciently 

 *d2iep, dziep, diep, dib, 4 being the equivalent of a Middle-Persian form 

 *dib or *dep, 5 corresponding to the New-Persian word dibd ("silk bro- 

 cade," a colored stuff in which warp and woof are both made of silk), 

 dibah ("gold tissue"), Arabicised dibadZ ("vest of brocade, cloth of gold"). 

 The fabric as well as the name come from Sasanian Persia, and were 

 known to the Arabs at Mohammed's time. 6 The Chinese term occurs 

 as a textile product of Persia in the Sui §u (Ch. 83, p. 7 b ). At a much 

 earlier date it is cited in the Han Annals (Hou Han iw, Ch. 116, p. 8) 

 as a product of the country of the Ai-lao in Yun-nan. This is not 

 surprising in view of the fact that at that period Yun-nan, by way of 

 India, was in communication with Ta Ts'in: in a.d. 120 Yuh Yu Tiao 

 W. $3 M, King of the country T'an W, presented to the Chinese em- 

 peror musicians and jugglers, who stated that "they had come from 

 the Mediterranean M ©, which is the same as Ta Ts'in, and that 

 south-west from the Kingdom of T'an there is communication with 

 Ta Ts'in." The commentator of the Han Annals refers to the Wai kwo 

 cwan $V 19 i$ 7 as saying that the women of Cu-po ft W (Java) make 

 white tie and ornamented cloth ^£ ffi. The character JfJ po ("silk"), 

 preceding the term tie in the Han Annals, represents a separate item, and 



1 T'an Sw, Ch. 217 B, p. 18; T'ai p'in hwan yil ki, Ch. 199, p. 14. Cf. Deveria, 

 in Centenaire de l'Ecole des Langues Orientales, p. 308. 



; Ch. 24, p. 7 b. Regarding the various editions of this work, see p. 251. 



8 Likewise in the Sung Annals with reference to a tribute sent from Khotan 

 in 961 (Chavannes and Pelliot, Traite" manich^en, p. 274). Regarding Persian 

 brocades mentioned by mediaeval writers, see Francisque-Michel, Recherches sur 

 le commerce, la fabrication et l'usage des 6toffes de soie d'or et d'argent, Vol. I, 

 PP- 315-317. Vol. II, pp. 57-58 (Paris, 1852, 1854). 



4 According to the Yi ts'ie kin yin i (Ch. 19, p. 9 b), the pronunciation of the 

 character tie was anciently identical with that of §|§ (see No. 70), and has the fan 

 ts'ie tl $H; that is, t'iap, *diab, d'ab. The T'an iu Si yin (Ch. 23, p. I b) indicates 

 the same fan ts'ie by means of ^ i$. The phonetic element J§ serves for the 

 transcription of Sanskrit dvipa (Pelliot, Bull, de l'Ecole frangaise, Vol. IV, p. 357). 



5 A Pahlavi form depdk is indicated by West (Pahlavi Texts, Vol. I, p. 286); 

 hence Armenian dipak. 



6 C. H. Becker, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. I, p. 967. 



7 Cf. Journal asiatique, 1918, II, p. 24. 



