SUGAR 



28. The sugar-cane (Saccharum officinarum) is a typically Indian 

 or rather Southeast-Asiatic, and merely a secondary Iranian culti- 

 vation, but its history in Iran is of sufficient importance to devote here 

 a few lines to this subject. The Sui Annals 1 attribute hard sugar 

 (Si-mi ^ U, literally, " stone honey") and pan-mi 3* 3* ("half honey") 

 to Sasanian Persia and to Ts'ao (Jaguda). It is not known what kind 

 of sugar is to be understood by the latter term. 2 Before the advent 

 of sugar, honey was the universal ingredient for sweetening food-stuffs, 

 and thus the ancients conceived the sugar of India as a kind of honey 

 obtained from canes without the agency of bees. 3 The term Si-mi first 

 appears in the Nan fan ts'ao mu cwan* which contains the first de- 

 scription of the sugar-cane, and refers it to Kiao-<H (Tonking) ; according 

 to this work, the natives of this country designate sugar as Si-mi, which 

 accordingly may be the literal rendering of a Kiao-ci term. In A.D. 285 

 Fu-nan (Camboja) sent lu-lo H M (" sugar-cane") as tribute to China. 5 



It seems that under the T'ang sugar was also imported from Persia 

 to China; for Mon Sen, who wrote the Si liao pen ts*ao in the second 

 half of the seventh century, says that the sugar coming from Po-se 

 (Persia) to Se-c'wan is excellent. Su Kun, the reviser of the T'an pen 

 ts*ao of about A.D. 650, extols the sugar coming from the Si Zun, which 

 may likewise allude to Iranian regions. Exact data as to the introduc- 

 tion and dissemination of the sugar-cane in Persia are not available. 

 E. O. v. LiPPMANN 6 has developed an elaborate theory to the effect that 



1 Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b. 



2 It is only contained in the Sui Su, not in the Wei Su (Ch. 102, p. 5 b), which 

 has merely Si-mi. The sugar-cane was also grown in Su-le (Kashgar): T'ai p'in 

 hwan yu ki, Ch. 181, p. 12 b. 



8 Pliny, xii, 17. 



4 Ch. i, p. 4. 



6 This word apparently comes from a language spoken in Indo-China; it is already 

 ascribed to the dictionary $wo wen. Subsequently it was replaced by kan ~fj* 

 ("sweet") Id or kan ^ 0, presumably also the transcription of a foreign word. 

 The Nan Ts'i Su mentions lu-lo as a product of Fu-nan (cf . PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole 

 frangaise, Vol. Ill, p. 262). In C'i-t'u ffi i (Siam) a wine of yellow color and fine 

 aroma was prepared from sugar and mixed with the root of a Cucurbitacea (Sui Su, 

 Ch. 82, p. 2 b). 



6 Geschichte des Zuckers, p. 93 (Leipzig, 1890); and Abhandlungen, Vol. I, 

 p. 263. According to the same author, the Persians were the inventors of sugar- 

 refining; but this is purely hypothetical. 



376 



