IMPORTANCE AND HISTORY 



J S 



I. 



is indicated by the absence of characteristic Asiatic names, CHAP, 

 the names now in use often combining an indication of the 

 route of introduction with the vernacular for the particular 

 corn of the country. 



A recent bibliographer {Lacy, i) considers that though it 

 is no longer a disputed question that maize is of American 

 origin, " the possibility of its having been known in the East 

 before the discovery of America by Columbus is by no means 

 closed ". She revives the alleged mention of rous (a name 

 treated as synonymous with ble de Turguie or maize) by 

 one of two Persian historians of the fifteenth century, of which 

 Bonafous, in his monumental work on maize, admits that the 

 translation " if it is exact, would leave no doubt that maize 

 was known in the Old World before the discovery of the 

 New ". Bonafous finally dismissed the reference, having failed 

 to trace it back, but Miss Lacy points out that this may have 

 been due to an incorrect citation to Mirkond (1433-98) in- 

 stead of to Khondemir (1 475-1 534), grandson of Mirkond, who 

 wrote "at almost the same time as Mirkond . . . and whose 

 best known work, the ' Khelasse-al-Akhbar,' is very nearly 

 identical in subject-matter with Mirkond's History of the 

 World, the ' Rauzet-al-safa ' ". 



Quoting Mirkond, or perhaps Khondemir, Herbelot, to 

 whom Bonafous refers as " Le celebre orientaliste d'Herbelot," 

 states that Rous, from whom Russia has taken its name, the 

 eighth son of Japhet, son of Noah, sowed in all the islands 

 of the River Volga, which empties into the Caspian Sea, " le 

 bled which we call de Turguie, and which the Turks still call 

 to-day, in their language, by the name of rous and boulgar" . 

 In this connection, however, it is instructive to note that the 

 modern Persian names for maize are ghendum, gandumi-mak- 

 kak (i.e. Mecca corn), and haldah. 1 The mere fact (if it should 

 be proven a fact) that the name Mi de Turguie was used in 

 one place for rous (whatever that may have been) and in an- 

 other for maize is no indication that the two were one and 

 the same thing ; for example, the word corn means wheat in 

 England, maize in America, and the grain most commonly 



1 The word haldah, according to Meninski (Lex. Arab., Pcrs., Turk. 1780), 

 was a name for " frumentum sarracenicum," i.e. Sarracens' corn, also pointing 

 to its western origin. 



