IRANO-SINICA MINERALS, METALS 555 



not held up by bandits; also his baggage in which the stone is hidden is 

 safe from attack, and its wearer rises in the esteem of his fellow-mates. 1 

 I do not know what Chinese stone is understood here. 



20. It is well known that the Chinese have a peculiar alloy of copper 

 consisting of copper 40.4, zinc 25.4, nickel 31.6, iron 2.6, and occa- 

 sionally some silver and arsenic. It looks white or silver-like in the 

 finish, and is hence called pai-t'un (" white copper")- In Anglo-Indian 

 it is tootnague (Tamil tutundgum, Portuguese tutanaga). 2 It is also 

 known to foreigners in the East under the Cantonese name paktung. 

 It is mentioned as early as A.D. 265 in the dictionary Kwan ya 9t 5S, 3 

 where the definition occurs that pai-t'un is called wu 4 . 



This alloy was adopted by the Persians under the name xar-clm 

 (Arabic xdr-sim) . 4 The Persians say that the Chinese make this alloy 

 into mirrors and arrowheads, a wound from which is mortal. 5 Vullers 

 cites a passage from the poet Abu al Ma'am, "One who rejects and 

 spurns his friend pierces his heart with xdr-slni." Qazwinl speaks of 

 very efficient lance-heads and harpoons of this metal. The Persians 

 have further the term isfidruj, which means "white copper," and which 

 accordingly represents a literal rendering of Chinese pai-t*uh. More- 

 over, there is Persian sepidmi (Arabic isbiaddri, isbdddrlti)\ that is, 

 "whitish in appearance." English spelter (German s planter, speauter, 

 spialter, Russian Spiauter), a designation of zinc, is derived from this 

 word. 6 Bimasqi, who wrote about 1325, explains ocdr-sml as a metal 

 from China, the yellow color of copper being mixed with black and 

 white; the mirrors imported from China, called "mirrors of distortion, " 

 are made from this alloy. It is an artificial product, hard, and fragile; 

 it is injured by fire, after being wrought. Qazwmi adds that no other 

 metal yields a ring equalling that of this alloy, and that none is so suit- 

 able for the manufacture of large and small bells. 7 



21. In the thirteenth century the Arabs became acquainted with 

 saltpetre, which they received from China; for they designate it as 



1 RusKA, ibid., p. 21. 



2 Cf. YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 932. This, of course, is a misnomer, as the 

 Indian word, connected with Persian tutiya (above, p. 512), in fact refers to zinc. 



3 Ch. 8 A, p. 1 6 (ed. of Kifu ts'un $u). 



4 Literally, "stone of China." Spanish kazini is derived from the Arabic word. 

 6 STEINGASS, Persian Dictionary, p. 438. 



6 It seems also that the Persian word is the source of the curious Japanese term 

 sabari or sahari, which denotes the white copper of the Chinese. The foreign char- 

 acter of this product is also indicated by the writing jjjfl iff fj|. 



7 Cf. E. WIEDEMANN, Sitzber. Phys.-Med. Soz. ErL, Vols. XXXVII, 1905, 

 pp. 403-404; and XLV, 1913, p. 46; R. DOZY, Supplement, Vol. I, p. 857. 



