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224 CIIBEBS. — ASA-FOETIDA. 11,27-28
introduced daily for consumption into the city of Kinsay amounted to 43 loads, each load being
equal to 223 lbs.» And in another passage (II, 217) he says «And I assure you that for one
shipload of pepper that goes to Alexandria or elsewhere, destined for Christendom, there come a
hundred such, aye and more too, to this haven of Zaytun». Duarte Barbosa, op. cit, 206,
mentions also the great quantity of pepper used in China. See on the pepper trade in the Middle
Ages, Heyd, Hist, du Commerce, II, 658.
28.
CUBEBS ($. m »
Pi-tong-kHe come from a plant of creeping habits, which blossoms in
the spring and bears fruit in the summer, resembling the hHm-niu-tzi (^ lo
^ y*), with a white flower and black seeds, which are packed up after
being dried in the sun. It is grown in Su-ki-tan in Sho^p'o.
Note.
Pon-ts'au-kang-mu, 32,i2, says that pi-tonff-h'ie is a foreign word, and that the form
pi-ling-h'ie (^j^ ) also occurs. It [^ ^Jj
adds that it belongs to the same family as hu-isiau. 15
The cubeb (Piper cubeba), called in Javanese liurmikus, and in Malay lada barekor or
«pepper with a tails, is, like the common black pepper, the product of a vine, a native of Java,
and grows there only. Crawfurd, Hist. Indian Archipelago, I, 465. See also Hanbury, Science
papers, 246 et seq.
E'ien-niu-tz'i is Pharbitis triloba, according Bretschneider, Bot. Sinic, II, 89, 193. It is 20
Ipomoea hederacea or Pharbitis Nil, according to Porter Smith, Materia medica, 170.
29.
ASA-FOETIDA (psf M)-
A-wei comes from the country of Mu-kii-lan (^j^ ^ M)
^'^ *^^ Ta-shi
country. The tree is not a very high or large one, but the resin exudes freely 25
from its bark. The natives wind a piece of string round a twig, remove its
tip, and cover it with a bamboo tube which fills with resin. This bamboo
tube is broken up in the winter, when the resin is gathered and packed in
skin bags.
Some say that this resin is so poisonous that people do not dare to 30
come near it themselves, but, when the drug has to be gathered, tie up a
sheep at the foot of the tree and shoot arrows at it from a distance. The
poison of the resin then drops upon the sheep, which dies of it, and its
decayed flesh turns into asa-foetida. T do not know which of the two accounts
is correct; meanwhile they are both placed here on record. 35