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218 COTTON. 11,23
(5iL M ?il); *^® second quality is called fan-pu or aforeign cloths (^ :j^);
the third «tree-cotton» or mu-mien (:^ j^); the fourth M-pu (^ ^).
These textures are sometimes dyed in various colours and brightened with
strange patterns. The pieces measure up to five or six feet in breadth.
ISTote.
All the first part of this article is substantially a quotation from Ling-wai-tai-ta, 6,12-is,
the only change made by our author being that Chou K'fl-fei compares cotton to willow-down
Oriental or herbaceous cotton (Gossypium herbaceum, Linn.), which de Candolle, op. cit.,
323, thinks is indigenous to Sindh, and which was called IcarpSsa in Sanskrit, was in general use 10
throughout India in the Vedic times. The Greeks first learnt of it by the expedition of Alexander;
they retained its Indian name, calling it xapTrauo?. By the end of the first century of our era
cotton, both raw and manufactured, formed one of the staples of trade between the ports on the
western coast of India, Egypt, and the Greek world. See M" Or indie, 52, 64, 108, 113, and Strabo,
XV, I, 20, 21. Cotton was introduced into Nineveh about 700 B. C; it was called «wool-tree». 15
Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol., Dec. 1909, 339.
It would seem that cotton and cotton fabrics first reached China from Central Asia, for
the earliest name given them in Chinese, po-{oT pai-)tie, is certainly borrowed from one of the Tnrki
languages. The two characters composing the name yo-t4e(s ^3 or pi SS^) furnish no sense
in Chinese, and the use of different but homophonous characters to write it, point to its being a 20
foi'eign word. The nearest equivalent seems to be the Jagatai Turki word for cotton paJckta (A.Xsb).
See Radloff, Worterbuch d. Tiirk-Dialecte, IV, 1138. Conf. Gerini, Eesearches, 243, u. 2.
Strangely enough the earliest recorded use of the word po-tie which has come down to us
relates to a country lying to the south-west of China, and it is applied to a hempen fabric. H6u-
Han-shu, 116,18'' says that the Ai-lau aborigines (then in Yiin-nan) manufactured ^o-iSie, which a 25
later history (V\rel-shu, 101,28'') tells us was a textile fabric of hemp, which was called in
their language lan-Jcan. V^e have to come down to the sixth century of our era to find a reference
to cotton in Turkestan. Liang-shu, 54,si*, says that «in K'au-chang (Turfan) there grew in
great abundance a plant the fruit of which resembled a silk cocoon. In the cocoon is a silky
substance like fine hemp (^OT ^jm) which is called po-tie-tzi (^ HS -?*). The natives 30
weave it into a cloth which is soft and white, and which they send to the markets (of China).»
Its use was not so general in Turkestan in the sixth century but that we find in Yen-ki in
Eastern Turkestan the people using silk cocoons as wadding for clothes. Wei-shu, 102,7*-
The pilgrim Fa-hi6n, who travelled in India in the beginning of the fifth century, calls
the cotton fabrics of the country po-tie in the only passage of his Fo-kuo-ki in which he refers to 35
them (26,27 of Legge's edit., 79 of his translation). Conf also, China Keview, XIX, 192.
A century later occurs the first use of anew term for cotton, Tcu-pei ("db ^) or Tei-pei
(^S ^ ), which is the Malay word Jcapas (the Sanskrit karpasa), still in use throughout the Indian
Archipelago, from Macassar to Sumatra, to designate Gossypium herbaceum. This reference occurs
in Liang-shu, 5l,i5% where it is said of the people of P'o-li (^ 5^|J
north coast of Sumatra 40
or Southern Malay Peninsula?): «the people of this country wear M-pet as a breech-clout (ijlPj)
or to make sarongs (^ ^)-'' ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ 7^^^ of the p'u-twng period (A. D. 523) a mission
from this country to the court of the Liang brought, among other presents, some lci-p€i, and
probably introduced the use of the term; as to the material itself, the Chinese did not perceive,
apparently, that it was the same as po-tie. Conf. Nan-shi, 78,2*. 45
The great traveller Huan-tsang in the early part of the seventh century, describing the
dress of the people of India, says they wore clothing of Uau-shi-ye ('I'^ ^ 5pK) — which he
also chinesefies into ch'au-hia (^ ^ literally ablush of the Courts), both terms transcribing
Sanskrit Jcausheya «silken stuff»— and also clothing of tie-pu (@S^ ^ «cloth of (po-)tie»). He
makes nowhere mention of the term karpasa, nor does he use the Chinese ku-pei or M-pei. See 50
B