394 SlNO-lRANICA 



Emperor T'ai Tsuh that all tributary nations should present their 

 choicest vegetable products. Yuan Wen A 3$C, an author of the Sung 

 period, in his work Wen yu kien p'in US f$ M Jrly states that the spinach 

 (po-lin) comes from (or is produced in) the country Ni-p'o-lo (Nepal) 

 in the Western Regions. 2 The Kia yu pen ts'ao, compiled in A.D. 1057, 

 is the first Materia Medica that introduced the spinach into the pharma- 

 copoeia. 3 



The colloquial name is po ts'ai t^S ("po vegetable"), po being 

 abbreviated for po-lin. According to Wan Si-mou : 1iir (who died 

 in 1591), in his Kwa su su JR IS S, the current name in northern China 

 is Pi ken ts*ai ffi ffi 3S (" red-root vegetable"). The Kwan k'unfan p*u 

 uses also the term yin-wu ts*ai ("parrot vegetable"), named for the 

 root, which is red, and believed to resemble a parrot. Aside from the 

 term Po-se ts'ai, the Pen ts'ao kan mu &' i* gives the synonymes hun 

 ts'ai &C3K ("red vegetable") and yan ff ts'ai ("foreign vegetable"). 

 Another designation is $an-hu ts'ai ("coral vegetable"). 



A rather bad joke is perpetrated by the Min $u ISJ S, a description 

 of Fu-kien Province written at the end of the sixteenth or beginning of 

 the seventeenth centttry, where the name po-lin is explained as Jfe It 

 po len ("waves and edges"), because the leaves are shaped like wave- 

 patterns and have edges. There is nothing, of course, that the Chinese 

 could not etymologize. 5 



There is no account in the traditions of the T'ang and Sung periods 

 to the effect that the spinach was derived from Persia; and in view of 

 the recent origin of the term "Persian vegetable," which is not even 

 explained, we are tempted at the outset to dismiss the theory of 

 a Persian origin. STUART G even goes so far as to say that, "as the Chinese 

 have a tendency to attribute everything that comes from the south- 

 west to Persia, we are not surprised to find this called Po-se ts*ao, 'Per- 



1 Ch. 4, p. ii b (ed. of Wu yin Hen, 1775). 



2 ft 5ft ffi B % H ^ H H- This could be translated also, "in the 

 Western Regions and in the country Ni-p'o-lo." 



3 Ci wu min Si /' k'ao, Ch. 4, p. 38 b. 



4 Ch. 8, p. 87 b. 



6 Of greater interest is the following fact recorded in the same book. The 

 spinach in the north of China is styled "bamboo (cu ft) po-lin," with long and 

 bitter stems; that of Fu-kien is termed "stone (Si ^J) po-lin," and has short and 

 sweet stems. The Min Su, in 154 chapters, was written by Ho K'iao-yuan $5 ^ 

 JH from Tsin-kian in Fu-kien; he obtained the degree of tsin Si in 1586 (cf. Cat. of 

 the Imperial Library, Ch. 74, p. 19). 



8 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 417. 



