304 SlNO-lRANICA 



In its appearance it is like lan-lin-tun 10 1 %., 1 but greener. When 

 dried and powdered, it tastes like cinnamon and pepper. The root is 

 capable of relieving colds." 2 The Fun Si wen kien ki* adds that hun-t'i 

 came from the Western Countries (5* yu). 



Hun-t'i is a transcription answering to ancient *gwun-de, and 

 corresponds to Middle Persian gandena, New Persian gandand, Hindi 

 gandand, Bengali gundina (Sanskrit mleccha-kanda, "bulb of the bar- 

 barians")? possibly the shallot (Allium ascalonicum; French echalotte, 

 ciboule) or A. porrum, which occurs in western Asia and Persia, but not 

 in China. 4 



Among the vegetables of India, Huan Tsan 5 mentions $ fi hun-t'o 

 (*hun-da) ts'ai. JULIEN left this term untranslated; SEAL did not know, 

 either, what to make of it, and added in parentheses kandu with an 

 interrogation-mark. WATTERS G explained it as "kunda (properly the 

 olibanum-tree)." This is absurd, as the question is of a vegetable culti- 

 vated for food, while the olibanum is a wild tree offering no food. More- 

 over, hun cannot answer to kun; and the Sanskrit word is not kunda, 

 but kundu or kunduru. The mode of writing, hun, possibly is intended 

 to allude to a species of Allium. Huan Tsan certainly transcribed a 

 Sanskrit word, but a Sanskrit plant-name of the form hunda or gunda 

 is not known. Perhaps his prototype is related to the Iranian word 

 previously discussed. 



1 The parallel text in the Ts'efu yuan kwei (Ch. 970, p. 12) writes only lin-tun. 

 This plant is unidentified. 



2 T'an hut yao, Ch. 100, p. 3 b; and Ch. 200, p. 14 b. 



3 Ch. 7, p. i b (above, p. 232). 



4 A. DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, pp. 68-71; LECLERC, Traite" 

 des simples, Vol. Ill, pp. 69-71; ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. 113, 258. Other 

 Persian names are tdrd and kawar. They correspond to Greek vp&crov, Turkish 

 prdsa, Arabic kurdt. The question as to whether the species ascalonicum or porrum 

 should be understood by the Persian term gdnddnd, I have to leave in suspense and 

 to refer to the decision of competent botanists. SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 21) 

 identifies Persian gdnddnd with Allium porrum; while, according to him, A. ascalon- 

 icum should be musir in Persian. VULLERS (Lexicon persico-latinum, Vol. II, p. 1036) 

 translates the word by "porrum." On the other hand, STUART (Chinese Materia 

 Medica, p. 25), following F. P. Smith, has labelled Chinese hiai $J, an Allium 

 anciently indigenous to China, as A. ascalonicum. If this be correct, the Chinese 

 would certainly have recognized the identity of the foreign hun-t'i with hiai, provided 

 both should represent the same species, ascalonicum. Maybe also the two were 

 identical species, but differentiated by cultivation. 



6 Ta T'an si yu ki, Ch. 2, p. 8 b. 



6 On Yuan Chwang's Travels, Vol. I, p. 178. 



