Chau Ju-Kua - University of Oregon Libraries

11,27 PEPPER, 223
following year, carts drawn by oxen being used to transport them to the
market. The grain cannot stand the sun, but stands rain; therefore crops are
but poor after dry weather, whereas heavy rainfalls may double the ordinary
yield of the harvest.
6 (Note. Some say that most of the pepper comes from the country of
Wu-li-pa (^ ^ f^), in Nan-p'i, and that the produce bought by the
foreign traders in Sho-p'o comes from Wu-li-pa) ^
Notes.
1) The term tsiau was applied by the Chinese in the classical period to Zanthoxylon, of
10 which more than a dozen species are known in China. Bretschneidcr, Bot. Sinic, II,
323. Hu-tsiau, our Piper nigrum, literally 'Western Asian tsiau' is first mentioned, it would
appear, in the Hou-Han-shu, 118,12'', where it figures as a product of T'ien-chu (India). Later
on it occurs in the V\rei-shu, 102,ia°' and the Sui-shu 83,i6*, as a product of Po-ssii (i. e., it was
brought to China by Persian traders from India); they also mention pi-po (S. i^), iu Sanskrit
15 pippali, or along peppera.
Yu-yang-tsa-tsu, ISjO** says: aHu-tsiau comes from Mo-k'ie-to (i. e., Magadha, or Central
India), where it is called mo-li-chi (S^ ^§ "jy" Sanskrit maricha). The plant is a creeper, at
first very flexible. The leaves are an inch and a half long, they grow on stems two by two, on
either side of the stem. They open at dawn and close up at night, rolling up when closed. The
20 seeds are between the leaves; in shape they are like the tsiau (Chinese pepper). When they are
good they have a pungent taste. They are picked in the sixth moon (August-September). At the
present day people in China who eat meat cooked in foreign style ("jTO ^^ pjj '^l) all make
use of it.»
Of the long pepper, the same work (18,io*) says that it comes from Magadha, where it is
25 called pi-po-U CBB j^ ^j^), and that in the country of Fu-lin it is called a-li-ho-t'o ([JfJ"
^^ ppf P^)- On *^^ localities here mentioned and the pepper trade, see more particularly,
supra, pp. 70, 78, 83, and on the great profits of the pepper trade in our author's time, supra,
p. 78. Crawfurd, op. cit., I, 482 et seq. says that to enable the vine to bear first it must be
trained on some tree or pole. There are two crops which, in point of time, are, extremely irre-
80 gular, and in some situations run into each other in such a manner that the reaping is pursued
nearly throughout the year. The mutilated paragraph in our text is made clear by this remark.
Crawfurd, Hist. Indian Archipelago, III, 358, says that pepper is principally obtained
on the north-eastern coast of the Archipelago, at Patani, Tringanu and Kalentan; in the straits
on the island of Lingen, also at Achin, Tikao, Bencoolen, Padang and the country of the Lam-
35 pongs. That of Penang and the west coast of Sumatra is the best.
2) This paragraph is printed in the text in the form of a foot-note. It is due presumably
to the editor Li T'iau-ytian, as the name Wu-li-pa— in Cantonese Mo-li-pat,—-is not used by our
author, for whom the Malabar country was Nan-p'i. It is just possible that the dependency of
Nan-p'i which appears in his work (supra, pp. 88, 90, n. 8) under the name of Ma-li-mo (in Amoy
40 dialect Ma-li-bwat) is Malabar. Even then he does not speak of pepper being a product of Nan-p'i,
presumably because nearly, if not all, the pepper trade of China in his days was with the Indian
Archipelago.
It is noteworthy that Ch6u K'u-fei is the first Chinese author to mention pepper as a
product of the Indian Archipelago; the Arab traders of the ninth and tenth centuries speak
45 only of the pepper of India. Ibn Khordadbeh knew that pepper was produced in Ceylon, but his
information went no farther; the one source of supply was, for him, Malabar. As showing the great
importance of the Chinese pepper trade in Marco Polo's time, that traveller tells us (II, 186), that
he ((heard it stated by one of the Great Kaan's officers of customs that the quantity of pepper