SESAME AND FLAX 



6. In A. DE CANDOLLE'S book 1 we read, "Chinese works seem to 

 show that sesame was not introduced into China before the Christian 

 era. The first certain mention of it occurs in a book of the fifth or sixth 

 century, entitled Ts*i min yao $u. Before this there is confusion between 

 the name of this plant and that of flax, of which the seed also yields an 

 oil, and which is not very ancient in China." Bretschneider is cited as 

 the source for this information. It was first stated by the latter that, 

 according to the Pen ts'ao, hu ma $! K (Sesamum orientate) was brought 

 by Can K'ien from Ta-yuan. 2 In his "Botanicon Sinicum" 3 he asserts 

 positively that hu ma, or foreign hemp, is a plant introduced from west- 

 ern Asia in the second century B.C. 4 The same dogma is propounded 



by STUART. 5 



All that there is to this theory amounts to this. T'ao Hun-kin 

 (A.D. 451-536) is credited in the Pen ts'ao kan mu Q with the statement 

 that "huma 81 jft ('hemp of the Hu') originally grew in Ta-yuan 

 (Fergana) ^ ^ 3^C ^E, 7 and that it hence received the name hu ma 

 ('Iranian hemp')." He makes no reference to Can K'ien or to the time 

 when the introduction must have taken place; and to every one 

 familiar with Chinese records the passage must evoke suspicion through 

 its lack of precision and chronological and other circumstantial evi- 

 dence. The records regarding Ta-yuan do not mention hu ma, nor 

 does this term ever occur in the Annals. Now, T'ao Hun-kin was a 

 Taoist adept, a drug-hunter and alchemist, an immortality fiend; he 

 never crossed the boundaries of his country, and certainly had no 

 special information concerning Ta-yuan. He simply drew on his 

 imagination by arguing, that, because mu-su (alfalfa) and grape sprang 



1 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 420. 



2 Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 222; adopted by HIRTH, Toung Pao, Vol. VI, 1895, 

 p. 439, and maintained again in Journal Am. Or. Soc., 1917, p. 92. 



3 Pt. II, p. 206. 



4 Ibid., p. 204, he says, however, that the Pen ts'ao does not speak of flax, and 

 that its introduction must be of more recent date. This conflicts with his statement 

 above. 



5 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 404. 



6 Ch. 22, p. i. Likewise in the earlier Gen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 24, p. I b. 



7 This tradition is reproduced without any reference in the Pen ts'ao yen i of 

 1116 (Ch. 20, p. i, ed. of Lu Sin-yuan). 



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