Irano-Sinica — Peach, Cinnamon 541 



in a cultivated state, and does not even succeed well, the fruit being 

 mediocre and acid. 1 There is no ancient Sanskrit name for the tree; nor 

 does it play any rdle in the folk-lore of India, as it does in China. Fur- 

 ther, as regards the time of the introduction, whether the reign of 

 Kaniska be placed in the first century before or after our era, it is 

 singularly synchronous with the transplantation of the tree into western 

 Asia. 



5. As indicated by the Persian name dar-llnl or dar-lln ("Chinese 

 wood" or "bark"; Arabic dar ?lni), cinnamon was obtained by the 

 Persians and Arabs from China. 2 Ibn Khordadzbeh, who wrote between 

 a.d. 844 and 848, is the first Arabic author who enumerates cinnamon 

 among the products exported from China. 3 The Chinese export cannot 

 have assumed large dimensions: it is not alluded to in Chinese records, 

 Cao Zu-kwa is reticent about it. 4 Ceylon was always the main seat of 

 cinnamon production, and the tree {Cinnamomum zeylanicum) is a native 

 of the Ceylon forests. 5 The bark of this tree is also called dar-cini. It 

 is well known that cassia and cinnamon are mentioned by classical 

 authors, and have given rise to many sensational speculations as to the 

 origin of the cinnamon of the ancients. Herodotus 6 places cinnamon in 

 Arabia, and tells a wondrous story as to how it is gathered. Theo- 

 phrastus 7 seeks the home of cassia and cinnamomum, together with 

 frankincense and myrrh, in the Arabian peninsula about Saba, Had- 

 ramyt, Kitibaina, and Mamali. Strabo 8 locates it in the land of the 

 Sabasans, in Arabia, also in Ethiopia and southern India; finally he has 

 a "cinnamon-bearing country" at the end of the habitable countries 

 of the south, on the shore of the Indian ocean. 9 Pliny 10 has cinnamomum 

 or cinnamum grow in the country of the Ethiopians, and it is carried 

 over sea on rafts by the Troglodytae. 



1 C. Joret, Plantes dans l'antiquite\ Vol. II, p. 281. 



* Leclerc, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, pp. 68, 272. The loan-word darilenik 

 in Armenian proves that the word was known in Middle Persian (*dar-i £gnik) ; cf . 

 Hubschmann, Armen. Gram., p. 137. 



* G. Ferrand, Textes relatifs a l'Extreme-Orient, p. 31. 



4 Schoff (Periplus, p. 83) asserts that between the third and sixth centuries 

 there was an active sea-trade in this article in Chinese ships from China to Persia. 

 No reference is given. I wonder from what source this is derived. 



8 De Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 146; Watt, Commercial Prod- 

 ucts of India, p. 313. 



8 in, 107, in. 



7 Hist, plant., IX. IV, 2. 



8 XV. iv, 19; XVI. IV, 25; XV. I, 22. 

 9 1, iv, 2. 



10 xii, 42. 



