538 SlNO-lRANICA 



nian, loan-word from Persian, apribtm); hence Arabic ibarisam or 

 ibrisam; Pamir dialects war sum, warsiim, Sugni wre%om, etc.; Afghan 

 wresam. 1 Certain it is that we have here a type not related to any 

 Chinese word for "silk." In this connection I wish to register my utter 

 disbelief in the traditional opinion, inaugurated by KLAPROTH, that 

 Greek ser (" silk- worm "; hence Seres, Serica) should be connected with 

 Mongol sirgek and Manchu sirge ("silk"), the latter with Chinese se 

 M. 2 My reasons for rejecting this theory may be stated as briefly as 

 possible. I do not see how a Greek word can be explained from Mongol 

 or Manchu, languages which we merely know in their most recent 

 forms, Mongol from the thirteenth and Manchu from the sixteenth 

 century. Neither the Greek nor the Mongol-Manchu word can be 

 correlated with Chinese se. The latter was never provided with a final 

 consonant. Klaproth resorted to the hypothesis that in ancient dialects 

 of China along the borders of the empire a final r might (peut-ttre) have 

 existed. This, however, was assuredly not the case. We know that the 

 termination V JS, so frequently associated with nouns in Pekingese, is 

 of comparatively recent origin, and not older than the Yuan period 

 (thirteenth century) ; the beginnings of this usage may go back to the 

 end of the twelfth or even to the ninth century. 3 At any rate, it did not 

 exist in ancient times when the Greek ser came into being. Moreover, 

 this suffix 'r is not used arbitrarily: it joins certain words, while others 

 take the suffix tse -?, and others again do not allow any suffix. The 

 word se, however, has never been amalgamated with 'r. In all probabil- 

 ity, its ancient phonetic value was *si, sa. It is thus phonetically im- 

 possible to derive from it the Mongol-Manchu word or Korean sir, 

 added by Abel-Remusat. I do not deny that this series may have its 

 root in a Chinese word, but its parentage cannot be traced to se. I do 



1 HUBSCHMANN, Arm. Gram., p. 107; HORN, Neupers. Etymologic, No. 65. 

 The derivation from Sanskrit k$auma is surely wrong. Bulgar ibrisim, Rumanian 

 ibriSin, are likewise connected with the Iranian series. 



2 Cf. KLAPROTH, Conjecture sur 1'origine du nom de la soie chez les anciens 

 (Journal asiatique, Vol. I, 1822, pp. 243-245, with additions by ABEL-REMUSAT, 

 245-247); Asia polyglotta, p. 341; and Me"moires relatifs a 1'Asie, Vol. Ill, p. 264. 

 Klaproth's opinion has been generally, but thoughtlessly, accepted (HIRTH, op. 

 tit., p. 217; F. v. RICHTHOFEN, China, Vol. I, p. 443; SCHRADER, Reallexikon, p. 757). 

 PELLIOT (T'oung Pao, 1912, p. 741), I believe, was the first to point out that Chinese 

 se was never possessed of a final consonant. 



3 See my note in T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 77; and H. MASPERO, Sur quelques textes 

 anciens de chinois parle", p. 12. Maspero encountered the word mao'r (" cat ") in a text 

 of the ninth century. It hardly makes any great difference whether we conceive V 

 as a diminutive or as a suffix. Originally it may have had the force of a diminutive, 

 and have gradually developed into a pure suffix. Cf. also P. SCHMIDT, K istorii 

 kitaiskago razgovornago yazyka, in Sbornik stat'ei professorov, p. 19 (Vladivostok, 

 1917). 



