Iranian Minerals — Sal Ammoniac 505 



reaching the size of a finger and being used for medical purposes." 1 

 It is accordingly the old experience that the Chinese, as soon as they 

 became acquainted with a foreign product, searched for it on their own 

 soil, and either discovered it there, or found a convenient substitute. 

 In this case, Su Sun plainly indicates that 'the domestic substitute was 

 of inferior quality; and there can be no doubt that this was not sal 

 ammoniac, which is in fact not found in China, but, as has been demon- 

 strated by D. Hanbury, 2 chloride of sodium. As early as the eighteenth 

 century it was stated by M. Collas 3 that no product labelled nao-to 

 in Peking had any resemblance to our sal ammoniac. 



H. E. Stapleton, 4 author of a very interesting study on the employ- 

 ment of sal ammoniac in ancient chemistry, has hazarded an etymo- 

 logical speculation as to the term nao-Sa. Persian nuladur appears to 

 him to be the Chinese word nau-Sa, suffixed by the Persian word daru 

 ("medicine"), 5 and the Sanskrit navasdra would also seem to be simply 

 the Chinese name in a slightly altered form. H. E. Stapleton is a 

 chemist, not a philologist; it therefore suffices to say that these specu- 

 lations, as well as his opinion "that the syllables nau-$a appear to be 

 capable of complete analysis into Chinese roots," 6 are impossible. 



The Hindustani name can by no means come into question as the 

 prototype of the Chinese term, as proposed by F. P. Smith 7 and T. 

 Waiters; 8 for the Chinese transcription was framed as early as the 

 sixth century a.d., when Hindustani was not yet in existence. The 

 Hindustani is simply a Persian loan-word of recent date, as is 

 likewise Neo-Sanskrit naiqadala; while Sanskrit navasdra, navasddara, 

 or narasdra, the vacillating spelling of which betrays the character 

 of a loan-word, is traceable to a more ancient Iranian form (see 

 below). 



In the Sui iw 9 we meet the term in the form HI ^ nao-Sa, stated to 



1 See also Pen ts'ao yen i, Ch. 6, p. 4 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan). 



2 Science Papers, pp. 217, 276. 



3 M6moires concernant les Chinois, Vol. XI, 1786, p. 330. 



* Sal Ammoniac: a Study in Primitive Chemistry (Memoirs As. Soc. Bengal, 

 Vol. I, 1905, pp. 40-41). 



5 He starts from the popular etymology nils' daru ("life-giving medicine"), 

 which, of course, is not to be taken seriously. 



6 Even if this were the case, it would not tend to prove that the word is of 

 Chinese origin. As is now known to every one, there is nothing easier to the Chinese 

 than to transcribe a foreign word and to choose such characters as will convey a 

 certain meaning. 



7 Contributions toward the Materia Medica of China, p. 190. 



8 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 350. 

 3 Ch. 83, pp. 4 b and 5 b. 



