

43. Fresh Light on the Word ‘‘ Scarlet,’’ 
By Dr. E. D. Ross. 
I have recently come across a form of the much-discussed 
word scarlet in a Chinese- Persian Vocabulary, one of a series of 
ten vocabularies contained in a MS., dated 1549, belonging to the 
Library of University College, London, 
In the Chinese-Persian list, under the section dealing with 
clothing, stuffs, gon etc., W e find phonetically written, in the 
Chinese, the word 1 Sa: ha-la, hia in the Persian transcription, 
becomes Sa-ka-la- 
he position a the word in the list between two words, both 
signifying silks of piece kinds, seems to throw a little new 
light on its original mean 
There are several foane of the word to be found in Persian 
and Arabic Dictionaries, the commonest being: Sakallat, Siklat, 
Saklatin, and Saklata. 
Dozy in his Su ae auz Dictionnaires Arabes defines the 
word Saklatuin as follows:—‘‘Sorte d’étoffe de soze brochée- 
d’or'; celle qu’on fabclaanie & Bagdad jouissait d’une grande 
Uae Au moyen age ce mot avait cours dans toute 
uro 
The 
he following passage from Edrisi seems to support this 
‘i Afisetrd (Almaria) was a Mussulman city at the time “ot 
the Moravidae. It was then a place of great industry, and 
reckoned among others, 800 silk looms, where they manufactured 
costly robes, brocades, the stuffs known as saklutun .... and 
; siveral other silk tissues.” 
viier allusion to the word occurs in Baihaki (1040) 
oe ii, 148): ‘* The robes were brought in, consisting of valu- 
ble frocks of saklatin of various colours.” 
‘ geres Chinese literature there are several allusions to the word 
a-~ 
Bretschneider i in the second volume of his “ Medieval Resear- 
ches from Western Asiatic Sources’ i has two mnterestiny poms 
nine pieces of green sa-ha-la ... . 

1 The word immediately preceding Sa-ha-la in ol Chinese-Persian list 
is Chin-hsin, meaning silk embroidered (with gold or silver). 
