IRANO-SINICA CINNAMON 543 



not acquainted with any Cassia trees of the south. Certainly there was 

 no Chinese navigation and sea-trade at that time. The Chinese word 

 kwei ft (*kwai, kwi) occurs at an early date, but it is a generic term for 

 Lauraceae; and there are about thirteen species of Cassia, and about 

 sixteen species of Cinnamomum ,'m China. The essential point is that the 

 ancient texts maintain silence as to cinnamon; that is, the product from 

 the bark of the tree. Cinnamomum cassia is a native of Kwaii-si, Kwan- 

 tun, and Indo-China ; and the Chinese made its first acquaintance under 

 the Han, when they began to colonize and to absorb southern China. 

 The first description of this species is contained in the Nan fan ts*ao 

 mu cwan of the third century. 1 This work speaks of large forests of this 

 tree covering the mountains of Kwan-tun, and of its cultivation in 

 gardens of Kiao-ci (Tonking) . It was not the Chinese, but non-Chinese 

 peoples of Indo-China, who first brought the tree into cultivation, which, 

 like all other southern cultivations, was simply adopted by the con- 

 quering Chinese. The medicinal employment of the bark (kwei p*i 

 &) is first mentioned by T'ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536), and probably 

 was not known much earlier. It must be positively denied, however, 

 that the Chinese or any nation of Indo-China had any share in the 

 trade which brought cinnamon to the Semites, Egyptians, or Greeks 

 at the time of Herodotus or earlier. The earliest date we may assume 

 for any navigation from the coasts of Indo-China into the Indian Ocean 

 is the second century B.C. 2 The solution of the cinnamon problem of 

 the ancients seems simpler to me than to my predecessors. First, there 

 is no valid reason to assume that what our modern botany understands 

 by Cassia and Cinnamomum must be strictly identical with the products 

 so named by the ancients. Several different species are evidently in- 

 volved. It is perfectly conceivable that in ancient times there was a 

 fragrant bark supplied by a certain tree of Ethiopia or Arabia or both, 

 which is either extinct or unknown to us, or, as Fee inclines to think, 

 a species of Amyris. It is further legitimate to conclude, without forc- 

 ing the evidence, that the greater part of the cinnamon supply came from 

 Ceylon and India, 3 India being expressly included by Strabo. This, at 

 least,' is infinitely more reasonable than acquiescing in the wild fantasies 

 of a Schumann or Muss-Arnolt, who lack the most elementary knowl- 

 edge of East-Asiatic history. 



6. The word " China " in the names of Persian and Arabic products, 



1 The more important texts relative to the subject are accessible in BRET- 

 SCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, No. 303. 



2 Cf. PELLIOT, T'oung Pao, 1912, pp. 457-461. 



3 The Malabar cinnamon is mentioned by Marco Polo (YULE'S ed., Vol. II, 

 p. 389) and others. 



