350 SlNO-lRANICA 



yield, under the parasitic influence of insects or otherwise, a sweet fluid 

 called "manna." This is regularly collected and, like honey, enters more 

 largely than sugar into the pharmaceutical preparations of the Hindu. 



The silicious concretion of crystalline form, found in the culms or 

 joints of an Indian bamboo (Bambusa arundinacea) and known as 

 tabashir, is styled in India also " bamboo manna," decidedly a 

 misnomer. On the other hand, a real manna has sometimes been 

 discovered on the nodes of certain species of bamboo in India. 1 The 

 subject of tabashir has nothing to do with manna, nor with Sino-Iranian 

 relations; but, as the early history of this substance has not yet been 

 correctly expounded, the following brief notes may not be unwelcome. 2 

 Specimens of tabashir, procured by me in China in 1902, are in the 

 American Museum of Natural History in New York. 3 



We now know that tabashir is due to an ancient discovery made in 

 India, and that at an early date it was traded to China and Egypt. 

 In recent years the very name has been traced in the form tabasis 

 (rd/Sacris) in a Greek papyrus, where it is said that the porous stone is 

 brought down [to Alexandria] from [upper] Egypt: the articles of 

 Indian commerce were shipped across the Red Sea to the Egyptian 

 ports, and then freighted on the Nile downward to the Delta. 4 The 

 Indian origin of the article is evidenced, above all, by the fact that the 

 Greek term tabasis (of the same phonetic appearance as Persian tabaSir) 

 is connected with Sanskrit tavak-ksira (or tvak-ksira; ksira, " vegetable 

 juice"), and permits us to reconstruct a Prakrit form taba&ra; for the 

 Greek importers or exporters naturally did not derive the word from 

 Sanskrit, but from a vernacular idiom spoken somewhere on the west 

 coast of India. Or, we have to assume that the Greeks received the 

 word from the Persians, and the Persians from an Indian Prakrit. 6 



The Chinese, in like manner, at first imported the article from India, 

 calling it "yellow of India" (Tien-tu hwan ^ * 36). It is first men- 

 tioned under this designation as a product of India in the Materia 

 Medica published in the period K'ai-pao (A.D. 968-976), the K*ai pao 



1 See G. WATT, Agricultural Ledger, 1900, No. 17, pp. 185-189. 



2 The latest writer on the subject, G. F. KUNZ (The Magic of Jewels and Charms, 

 pp. 233-235, Philadelphia, 1915), has given only a few historical notes of mediaeval 

 origin. 



3 Cat. No. 70, 13834. This is incidentally mentioned here, as Dr. Kunz states 

 that very little of the material has reached the United States. 



4 H. DIELS, Antike Technik, p. 123. 



6 The Persian tabasir is first described by Abu Mansur (ACHUNDOW, p. 95), 

 and is still eaten as a delicacy by Persian women (ibid., p. 247). In Armenian it is 

 dabaSir. 



