Iranian Minerals — Bezoar 527 



Even as early as the T'ang period, the term p'o-so merely denotes 

 a stone. It is mentioned in a colophon to the P'in ts'iian San kil ts'ao mu 

 kitf&lUJg^fctZby Li Te-yu ^£§l& (a.d. 787-849) as a curious 

 stone preserved in the P'o-so Pavilion south of the C'ah-tien it WL in 

 Ho-nan. 



Yada or jada, as justly said by Pelliot, is a bezoar; but what at- 

 tracted the Chinese to this Turkish-Mongol word was not its char- 

 acter as a bezoar, but its role in magic as a rain-producing stone. Li 

 Si-Sen 1 has devoted a separate article to it under the name t^ -§• Za-ta, 

 and has recognized it as a kind of bezoar; in fact, it follows immediately 

 his article on the Chinese bezoar (niu-hwan) . 2 



The Persian word was brought to China as late as the seventeenth 

 century by the Jesuits. Pantoja and Aleni, in their geography of the 

 world, entitled Cifah wai ki, 3 and published in 1623, mention an animal 

 of Borneo resembling a sheep and a deer, called pa-tsaW ffi ft HI, 4 in 

 the abdomen of which grows a stone capable of curing all diseases, and 

 highly prized by the Westerners. The Chinese recognized that this was 

 a bezoar. 5 Bezoars are obtained on Borneo, but chiefly from a monkey 

 (Simia longumanis, Dayak buhi) and hedgehog. The Malayan name 

 for bezoar is guliga; and, as far as I know, the Persian word is not used 

 by the Malayans. 6 The Chinese Gazetteer of Macao mentions "an 

 animal like a sheep or goat, in whose belly is produced a stone capable 



1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 50 B, p. 15 b. 



2 There is an extensive literature on the subject of the rain-stone. The earliest 

 Chinese source known to me, and not mentioned by Pelliot, is the K'ai yuan t'ien 

 poo i h ffl X % 51 5& % by Wan 2en-yu ]£ fc M of the T'ang (p. 20 b). 

 Cf. also the Sii K'ien $u |ff jjfr ^, written by Can Cu 3H fff in 1805 (Ch. 6, p. 8, 

 ed. of Ytie ya Van ts'un Su). The Yakut know this stone as sata (Boehtlingk, Jakut. 

 Worterbuch, p. 153); Pallas gives a Kalmuk form sadan. See, further, W. W. Rock- 

 hill, Rubruck, p. 195; F. v. Erdmann, Temudschin, p. 94; G. Oppert, Presbyter 

 Johannes, p. 102; J. Ruska, Steinbuch des Qazwlnl, p. 19, and Der Islam, Vol. IV, 

 1913, pp. 26-30 (it is of especial interest that, according to the Persian mineralogical 

 treatise of Mohammed Ben Mansur, the rain-stone comes from mines on the frontier 

 of China, or is taken from the nest of a large water-bird, called surxab, on the frontier 

 of China; thus, after all, the Turks may have obtained their bezoars from China); 

 Vambery, Primitive Cultur, p. 249; Potanin, Tangutsko-Tibetskaya Okraina 

 Kitaya, Vol. II, p. 352, where further literature is cited. 



3 Ch. 1, p. 11 (see above, p. 433). 



4 This form comes very near to the pajar of Barbosa in 15 16. 



6 Cf. the Lu Ian kun H k'i (above, p. 346), p. 48. 



6 Regarding the Malayan beliefs in bezoars, see, for instance, L. Bouchal in 

 Mitt. Anthr. Ges. Wien, 1900, pp. 179-180; Beccari, Wanderings in the Great 

 Forests of Borneo, p. 327; Kreemer in Bijdr. taal- land- en volkenkunde, 1914, 

 p. 38; etc. 



