494 Sino-Iranica 



In the T'ang Annals we read that in the beginning of the period 

 K'ai-yuan (a.d. 713-741) the country of K'ah (Sogdiana), an Iranian 

 region, sent as tribute to the Chinese Court coats-of-mail, cups of rock- 

 crystal, bottles of agate, ostrich-eggs, textiles styled yiie no, dwarfs, 

 and dancing-girls of Hu-siian $] W. (Xwarism). 1 In the Ts'efu yuan kwei 

 the date of this event is more accurately fixed in the year 718. 2 The 

 Man $u, written by Fan Co of the T'ang period, about a.d. 860, 3 men- 

 tions yiie no as a product of the Small P'o-lo-men /b ^ ft PI (Brah- 

 mana) country, which was conterminous with P'iao HI (Burma) and 

 Mi-6'en (*Midzen) ffl E5. 4 This case offers a parallel to the presence 

 of tie in the Ai-lao country in Yiin-nan. 



The Annals of the Sung mention yiie no as exported by the Arabs 

 into China. 5 The Lin wai tai ta, e written by Cou K'u-fei in 11 78, men- 

 tions white yiie-no stuffs in the countries of the Arabs, in Bagdad, and 

 yiie-no stuffs in the country Mi fH. 



Hirth 7 was the first to reveal the term yiie no in Cao Zu-kwa, who 

 attributes white stuffs of this name to Bagdad. His transcription, yiit- 

 nok, made on the basis of Cantonese, has no value for the phonetic 

 restoration of the name, and his hypothetical identification with cut- 

 tanee must be rejected; but as to his collocation of the second element 

 with Marco Polo's nac, he was on the right trail. He was embarrassed, 

 however, by the first element yiie, "which can in no way be explained 

 from Chinese and yet forms part of the foreign term." Hence in his 

 complete translation of the work 8 he admits that the term cannot as 

 yet be identified. His further statement, that in the passage of the 

 T'an iw, quoted above, the question is possibly of a country yiie-no 

 (Bukhara), rests on a misunderstanding of the text, which speaks only 

 of a textile or textiles. The previous failures in explaining the term 

 simply result from the fact that no serious attempt was made to restore 



1 Cf. Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux, pp. 136, 378, 

 with the rectification of Pelliot {Bull, de I'Ecole frangaise, Vol. IV, 1904, p. 483). 

 Regarding the dances of Hu-siian, see Kin H hwiyiian kiao k'an ki j£ if^ "H" Jfc $t 

 Wl 12 (p. 3), Critical Annotations on the Kin si hwi yuan by Li Sah-kiao ^£ h ^ 

 of the Sung (in Ki fu ts*un §u, t'ao 10). 



2 Chavannes, T'oung Pao, 1904, p. 35. 



3 See above, p. 468. 



* Man $u, p. 44 b (ed. of Yiin-nan pei Sen ci). Regarding Mi-5'en, see Pelliot, 

 Bull, de I'Ecole frangaise, Vol. IV, p. 171. 



6 Sun U, Ch. 490; and Bretschneider, Knowledge possessed by the Chinese 

 of the Arabs, p. 12. Bretschneider admitted that this product was unknown to him. 



6 Ch. 3, pp. 2-3. 



7 Lander des Islam, p. 42 (Leiden, 1894). 



8 Chau Ju-kua, p. 220. 



