504 Sino-Iranica 



the Chinese. F. de Mely 1 argues that nao-Sa is written ideographically, 

 and that the text of the Pen ts'ao kan mu adds, "II vient de la province 

 de Chen-si; on le tire d'une montagne d'ou il sort continuellement des 

 vapeurs rouges et dangereuses et tres difficile a aborder par rapport a 

 ces m£mes vapeurs. II en vient aussi de la Tartarie, on le tire des 

 plaines ou il y a beaucoup de troupeaux, de la m£me facon que le 

 salpetre de houssage; les Tartares et gens d'au dela de la Chine salent 

 les viandes avec ce sel." Hence F. de Mely infers that the Persians, on 

 their part, borrowed from the Chinese their nao-Sa, to which they added 

 the ending dzer, as in the case of the bezoar styled in Persian badzeher. 2 

 The case, however, is entirely different. The term nao-la is written 

 phonetically, not ideographically, as shown by the ancient transcription 

 iH ^ in the Sui Annals (see below) and the variant Ml ffi (properly 

 nun-fa, but indicated with the pronunciation nao-Sa) f also the syno- 

 nymes ti yen %K IS ("salt of the barbarians") and Pei-t'in ia At JS ffi 

 ("ore of Pei-t'ih," in Turkistan), which appear as early as the Sung 

 period in the T'u kin pen ts'ao of Su Sun, allude to the foreign origin of 

 the product. The term is thus plainly characterized as a foreign loan 

 in the Pen ts'ao kan mu. This, further, is brought out by the history of 

 the subject. The word is not found in any ancient Chinese records. 

 The Chinese learned about nao-la in Sogdiana and Kuca for the first 

 time during the sixth century a.d. The Pen ts'ao of the T'ang period is 

 the earliest pharmacopoeia that mentions it. Su Kuh H #, the reviser 

 of this work, and the author of the Cen lei pen ts'ao, know of but one 

 place of provenience, the country of the Western Zuh M ■?& (F. de 

 Mely's "Tartary"). It is only Su Sun S£ ^ of the Sung period, who 

 in his T'u kin pen ts'ao remarks, "At present it occurs also in Si-lian 

 and in the country Hia [Kan-su] as well as in Ho-tuh [San-si], Sen-si, 

 and in the districts of the adjoining regions" 'T'M'ilHS^i^^ 

 I^H^jlm^Pi^W^ [note the additions of 4* "at present" and 

 iff "also"]. And he hastens to add, "However (#S), the pieces coming 

 from the Western Zuh are clear and bright, the largest having the size 

 of a fist and being from three to five ounces in weight, the smallest 



1 L'Alchimie chez les Chinois (Journal asiatique, 1895, II, p. 338) and Lapidaire 

 chinois, p. li. 



2 All this is rather lack of criticism or poor philology. The Persian word in 

 question is pazahr, literally meaning "antidote" (see below, p. 525). Neither this 

 word nor nusadir has an ending like dzer, and there is no analogy between the two. 



3 According to the Pie pen lu #!] 7^ £fe, cited in the Cen lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 5, 

 p. 10, ed. of 1587), the transcription nun-la should represent the pronunciation of 

 the Hu people; that is, Iranians. Apparently it was an Iranian dialectic variation 

 with a nasalized vowel u. It is indicated as a synonyme of nao-Sa in the Si yao er 

 ya of the T'ang period (see Beginnings of Porcelain, p. 115). 



