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Ij^l INDIA. 113^
MalaLar Christian, as may also have been the Persian «heretic» (^\> ^) who accompanied
him on his journey *^
to China.
2) Quotation from Ch6u K'U-fcJ, in his notes on Ta-ts'in (see supra, p. 108, note 9). The
holy water here referred to must he that taken from the well Zemzem at Mecca. Ming-shi, in
its account of Mecca, says: «Behind the tomb of Ma-ha-ma (Mohammed) there is a well, the water
of which is limpid and sweet. People who start on the sea voyage use to take along with them
some water from this well, for it has the property of appeasing the waves in time of storm when
sprinkled over thesea». Bretschneider, Med..Eesearches, II, 303. San-ts'ai-t'u-hui (Pi6n-i-tien,
G8 Sec. T'i6n-fang) attributes the same property to the water from the well of Ishmael (o) fi
lb
jK0))
or Hagar's well, this is the well Zemzem, according to mohammedan tradition.
2) The portion of this paragraph in quotation marks is taken from Tu Yu's T'ung-tien
(see supra, p. IDS, note 14). Hou Han-shu, 118,12», mentions among the products of India elephants,
rhinoceros, tortoise-shell, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead and tin, sugar (^ ^), pepper,
ginger, black salt, fine cloth, handsome rugs called t'a-tong — Liang-shu, 54,16*' says the usual
ll exports from India were rhinoceros (horns), ivory, leopards (skins), marmot (? skins), tortoise-
j
shell, huo-ts'i (j/^ ^), gold, silver, gold embroidered skin rugs, fine hemps (cloth?), po-iii
(muslin), fine fur garments and t'a-tong (ru-gs). «Huo-ts'i, it adds, is like talc, its colour is like
dark gold, it is brilliant. When cleaved it is as thin as a cicada's wing; when put together the
..pieces look like silver gauzes. Huo-ts'i appears to be a foreign word; the substance referred to
20 may be isinglass. According to Porter Smith, Contrib. mater, med., 129, it is lapis-lazuli.
^
4) This paragraph was compiled from a number of earlier Chinese writers, largely from
T'ang-shu, 221A,i7 et seqq. According to tbe Nan-fang-ts'au-mu-chuang, I, 4, sM-mi is cane-
sugar. At the time that work was written, third century A. D., China got all her supply of sugar,
from Tongking and southern Indo-China, wTiere the sugar-cane appears to have been indigenous.
25 See de Candolle, Origine des plantes cultiv^es, 122—127. It was cultivate'd also in India as
early as the first or second century of our era, as we have seen by the reference made to it in
the Hou Han-shu in the previous note. By the sixth century its use must have been general in
Central Asia, for Sui-shu, 83, mentions that sugar came from various countries of Central Asia
and of the Sassanian empire. In the first half of the seventh century the cane was cultivated in
30 Central China, at Yang-ch6u (iter J>U in Kiang-su), but the Chinese did not know the process
of making sugar. Somewhere about A. D. 637 the Eiriperor T'ai-tsung sent a mission to Magadha
(i. e.. Central India) to learn the method of boiling sugar, and called the attention of his people
to the superiority of the Chinese cane. T'ang-shu, 221A,i9''.
At about the same time Htian-tsang mentioned among the articles of food of the people
35 of India sha-t'ang (vl? /|© agranulated sugar») and sJi'i-mi. He also stated that Gandhara had
much sugar-cane (^^ and produced (or exported [jH )sfe?-mi. Si-yfi-ki, 2,lo^ 15*. — On
J0)
sugar and sugar-cane in ancient India, see Lassen, Indische Alterthumsk., I, 317 et seqq.
Sui-shu, 83, makes mention of another kind of sugar, or product of sugar, called pan-mi
4i )• I ^ can find no explanation of this term which, literally translated, means «half-honey».
40 Concerning the remarks about, the trade relations of T'ien-chu, H6u Han-shu, 118,io''
already referred to its trade with Ta-ts'in, and Liang-shu, 54,17* stated that Central T'ien-chu
had much sea-trade with Ta-ts'in, An-si (Parthia), Fu-nan, Ji-nan and Kialu-chi (i. e., Indo-China
generally). Our author quotes from T'ang-shu, 22lA,i7''.
Cowries were not the only medium of exchange in India even in the first centuries of our
45 era. H6u Han-shu, 118,io'' states that the Indians used coins of gold and silver; the ratio was
10 to 1. Hflan-tsang says «in the commerce of the country gold and silver coins, cowries and
small pearls are the media of exchangea. Watters, On Yuan-chuang's Travels, 1, 178.
The awooden ox» and the ((gliding horse» were, according to San-kuo-chii (Shu, 5,i3,i5),
contrivances for facilitating the transport of provisions of armies, and were invented in the third
50 century by the great Chinese general Chu-ko Liang. Conf. Mayers, Chinese Header's Manual,
s. v. Chu-ko Liang. I can find no explanation oifei-t'i, literally ((flying laddersn, or of ii-taur
literally ((earth roads, saps».
* 8
'