INTRODUCTION 189 



games, and musical instruments. 1 The manuscript dealing with the 

 fauna of Iran is ready, but will appear in another article the object of 

 which is to treat all foreign animals known to the Chinese according 

 to geographical areas and from the viewpoint of zoogeography in 

 ancient and modern times. My notes on the games (particularly polo) 

 and musical instruments of Persia adopted by the Chinese, as well as 

 a study of Sino-Iranian geographical and tribal names, must likewise 

 be reserved for another occasion. I hope that the chapter on the titles 

 of the Sasanian government will be welcome, as those preserved in the 

 Chinese Annals have been identified here for the first time. New 

 results are also offered in the notice of Persian textiles. 



As to Iranian plants of which the Chinese have preserved notices, 

 we must distinguish the following groups: (i) cultivated plants actually 

 disseminated from Iranian to Chinese soil, (2) cultivated and wild 

 plants of Iran merely noticed and described by Chinese authors, (3) drugs 

 and aromatics of vegetable origin imported from Iran to China. The 

 material, as far as possible, is arranged from this point of view and in 

 chronological order. The single items are numbered. Apart from the 

 five appendices, a hundred and thirty-five subjects are treated. At 

 the outset it should be clearly understood that it is by no means the 

 intention of these studies to convey the impression that the Chinese 

 owe a portion of their material culture to Persia. Stress is laid on the 

 point that the Chinese furnish us with immensely useful material for 

 elaborating a history of cultivated plants. The foundation of Chinese 

 civilization with its immense resources is no more affected by these 

 introductions than that of Europe, which received numerous plants 

 from the Orient and more recently from America. The Chinese merit 

 our admiration for their far-sighted economic policy in making so 

 many useful foreign plants tributary to themselves and amalgamating 

 them with their sound system of agriculture. The Chinese were think- 

 ing, sensible, and broad-minded people, and never declined to accept 

 gratefully whatever good things foreigners had to offer. In plant- 

 economy they are the foremost masters of the world, and China presents 

 a unique spectacle in that all useful plants of the universe are cultivated 

 there. Naturally, these cultivations were adopted and absorbed by a 

 gradual process : it took the Chinese many centuries to become familiar 

 with the flora of their own country, and the long series of their herbals 

 (Pen ts'ao) shows us well how their knowledge of species increased 

 from the T'ang to the present time, each of these works stating the 



1 Iranian influences on China in the matter of warfare, armor, and tactics have 

 been discussed in Chinese Clay Figures, Part I. 



