INTRODUCTION 187 



rigid phonetic principles is the essential point, and means much more 

 than any haphazardly made guesses at identification. Thus Mu-lu 

 /fCB, name of a city on the eastern frontier of An-si (Parthia), 1 has 

 been identified with Mouru (Muru, Merw) of the Avesta. 2 Whether 

 this is historically correct, I do not wish to discuss here; from an his- 

 torical viewpoint the identification may be correct, but from a phonetic 

 viewpoint it is not acceptable, for Mu-lu corresponds to ancient *Muk- 

 luk, Mug-ruk, Bug-luk, Bug-rug, to be restored perhaps to *Bux-rux. 3 

 The scarcity of linguistic material on the Iranian side has imposed 

 certain restrictions: names for Iranian plants, one of the chief subjects 

 of this study, have been handed down to us to a very moderate extent, 

 so that in many cases no identification can be attempted. I hope, 

 however, that Iranian scholars will appreciate the philological con- 

 tributions of the Chinese to Iranian and particularly Middle-Persian 

 lexicography, for in almost every instance it is possible to restore with 

 a very high degree of certainty the primeval Iranian forms from which 

 the Chinese transcriptions were accurately made. The Chinese scholars 

 had developed a rational method and a fixed system in reproducing 

 words of foreign languages, in the study of which, as is well known, 

 they took a profound interest; and from day to day, as our experience 

 widens, we have occasion to admire the soundness, solidity, and con- 

 sistency of this system. The same laws of transcription worked out 

 for Sanskrit, Malayan, Turkish, Mongol, and Tibetan, hold good also 

 for Iranian. I have only to ask Iranian scholars to have confidence in 

 our method, which has successfully stood many tests. I am convinced 

 that this plea is unnecessary for the savants of France, who are the 



is, Dik-lat, Dik-rat), which has passed into Greek Tiypijs and Ti-ypis and Elamite 

 Ti-ig-ra (A. MEILLET, Grammaire du vieux perse, p. 72). It will thus be seen that 

 the Chinese transcription * Dak-rat corresponds to Babylonian Dik-rat, save the 

 vowel of the first element, which cannot yet be explained, but which will surely be 

 traced some day to an Iranian dialect. The T'ai p'in hwan yil ki (Ch. 185, p. 19) 

 gives four geographical names of Persia, which have not yet been indicated. The 

 first of these is the name of a city in the form | | j Ho-p'o-kie, *Hat(r, 1)- 

 bwa-g'iat. The first two elements *Har-bwa correspond to Old Persian Haraiva 

 (Babylonian Hariva), Avestan Haraeva, Pahlavi *Harew, Armenian Hrew, the 

 modern Herat. The third element appears to contain a word with the meaning 

 "city." The same character is used in j fit ^!] Kie-li-pie, *G'iat-li-b'iet, name of a 

 pass in the north-eastern part of Persia; here *g'iat, *g'iar, seems to represent 

 Sogdian yr, *?ara ("mountain"). Fan-tou ^Hf or j 5G (Ts'ien Han $u, Ch. 96 A), 

 anciently *Pan-tav, *Par-tav, corresponds exactly to Old Persian Par0ava, Middle 

 Persian Par0u. 



1 Hou Han $u, Ch. 116, p. 8 b. 



2 HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, p. 143. 



8 Cf. also the observation of E. H. PARKER (Imp. and As. Quarterly Review, 

 1903, p. 154), who noticed the phonetic difficulty in the proposed identification. 



\ 



