IRANIAN MINERALS, METALS, AND PRECIOUS STONES 



78. V$ i& hu-lo, *xu-lak, perhaps also *fu-lak, *fu-rak, a product of 

 Persia, 1 which is unexplained. In my opinion, this word may cor- 

 respond to a Middle Persian *furak = New Persian biirak, bur a, Arme- 

 nian porag ("borax"). Although I am not positive about this identifica- 

 tion, I hope that the following notes on borax will be welcome. It is 

 well known that Persia and Tibet are the two great centres supplying 

 the world-market with borax. The ancient Chinese were familiar with 

 this fact, for in the article on Po-se (Persia) the T'ai p'in hwan yii ki 1 

 states that "the soil has salty lakes, which serve the people as a substi- 

 tute for salt " (H W N *& A ft ■ Bfc) . Our own word "borax " (the x is 

 due to Spanish, now written borraj) comes from Persian, having been 

 introduced into the Romanic languages about the ninth century by 

 the Arabs. Russian burd was directly transmitted from Persia. Like- 

 wise our "tincal, tincar" (a crude borax found in lake-deposits of 

 Persia and Tibet) is derived from Persian tinkdr, tankdl, 3 or tangar, 

 Sanskritized fankana, {anka, fanga, fagara;* Malayan tingkal; Kirgiz 

 ddndkdr, Osmanli tdngar} Another Persian word that belongs to this 

 category, $ora ("nitre, saltpetre"), has been adopted by the Tibetans 

 in the same form $o-ra, although they possess also designations of their 

 own, ze-ts'wa, ba-ts'wa ("cow's salt"), and is'a-la. The Persian word is 

 Sanskritized into sordka, used in India for nitre, saltpetre, or potassium 

 nitrate. 6 



79. The relation of Chinese nao-la ("sal ammoniac, chloride of 

 sodium") 7 to Persian nulddir or naulddir is rather perspicuous; never- 

 theless it has been asserted also that the Persian word is derived from 



1 Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b. 

 ■ Ch. 185, p. 19. 



* It is not a Tibetan name, as supposed by Roediger and Pott (Z.f. K. Mori., 

 Vol. IV, p. 268). 



* These various attempts at spelling show plainly that the term has the status 

 of a loan-word, and that the Sanskrit term has nothing to do with the name of the 

 people who may have supplied the product, the T&yyavot. in the Himalaya of 

 Ptolemy (Yule, Hobson-Jobson, p. 923). How should borax be found in the 

 Himalaya ! 



5 Klaproth, M6moires relatifs a l'Asie, Vol. Ill, p. 347. 



6 See, further, T'oung Pao, 1914, pp. 88-89. 



7 D. Hanbury, Science Papers, pp. 217, 276. 



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