494 SlNO-lRANICA 



In the T'ang Annals we read that in the beginning of the period 

 K'ai-yiian (A.D. 713-741) the country of K'afi (Sogdiana), an Iranian 

 region, sent as tribute to the Chinese Court coats-of-mail, cups of rock- 

 crystal, bottles of agate, ostrich-eggs, textiles styled yue no, dwarfs, 

 and dancing-girls of Hu-suan $3 JS (Xwarism). 1 In the Ts'efu yuan kwei 

 the date of this event is more accurately fixed in the year 7i8. 2 The 

 Man $u, written by Fan Co of the T'ang period, about A.D. 86o, 3 men- 

 tions yue no as a product of the Small P'o-lo-men /h 31 ii P5 (Brah- 

 mana) country, which was conterminous with P'iao JH (Burma) and 

 Mi-c"'en (*Mid2en) 9f 15. 4 This case offers a parallel to the presence 

 of tie in the Ai-lao country in Yiin-nan. 



The Annals of the Sung mention yue no as exported by the Arabs 

 into China. 5 The Lin wai tai ta, G written by Cou K'u-fei in 1178, men- 

 tions white yile-no stuffs in the countries of the Arabs, in Bagdad, and 

 yile-no stuffs in the country Mi IS. 



HiRTH 7 was the first to reveal the term yue no in Cao Zu-kwa, who 

 attributes white stuffs of this name to Bagdad. His transcription yiit- 

 nok, made on the basis of Cantonese, has no value for the phonetic 

 restoration of the name, and his hypothetical identification with cut- 

 tanee must be rejected; but as to his collocation of the second element 

 with Marco Polo's nac, he was on the right trail. He was embarrassed, 

 however, by the first element yue, " which can in no way be explained 

 from Chinese and yet forms part of the foreign term." Hence in his 

 complete translation of the work 8 he admits that the term cannot as 

 yet be identified. His further statement, that in the passage of the 

 T*ah $u, quoted above, the question is possibly of a country yile-no 

 (Bukhara), rests on a misunderstanding of the text, which speaks only 

 of a textile or textiles. The previous failures in explaining the term 

 simply result from the fact that no serious attempt was made to restore 



1 Cf. CHAVANNES, Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux, pp. 136, 378, 

 with the rectification of PELLIOT (Bull, de VEcole frangaise, Vol. IV, 1904, p.^483). 

 Regarding the dances of Hu-suan, see Kin Si hwiyuan kiao k'an ki ^ ^ 'ft 7G $ 

 ^ ffi (p- 3). Critical Annotations on the Kin Si hwi yuan by Li San-kiao ^ J^ ^ 

 of the Sung (in Ki fu ts'un Su, t'ao 10). 



2 CHAVANNES, T'oung Pao, 1904, p. 35. 



3 See above, p. 468. 



4 Man Su, p. 44 b (ed. of Yun-nan pei ten li). Regarding Mi-S'en, see PELLIOT, 

 Bull, de VEcole frang aise, Vol. IV, p. 171. 



5 Sun Si, Ch. 490; and BRETSCHNEIDER, Knowledge possessed by the Chinese 

 of the Arabs, p. 12. Bretschneider admitted that this product was unknown to him. 



6 Ch. 3, pp. 2-3. 



7 Lander des Islam, p. 42 (Leiden, 1894). 



8 Chau Ju-kua, p. 220. 



