Sino-Iranica - The Search For Mecca

Introduction 189
games, and musical instruments. 1 The manuscript dealing with the
fauna of Iran is ready, but will appear in another article the object of
which is to treat all foreign animals known to the Chinese according
to geographical areas and from the viewpoint of zoogeography in
ancient and modern times. My notes on the games (particularly polo)
and musical instruments of Persia adopted by the Chinese, as well as
a study of Sino-Iranian geographical and tribal names, must likewise
be reserved for another occasion. I hope that the chapter on the titles
of the Sasanian government will be welcome, as those preserved in the
Chinese Annals have been identified here for the first time. New
results are also offered in the notice of Persian textiles.
As to Iranian plants of which the Chinese have preserved notices,
we must distinguish the following groups: (1) cultivated plants actually
disseminated from Iranian to Chinese soil, (2) cultivated and wild
plants of Iran merely noticed and described by Chinese authors, (3) drugs
and aromatics of vegetable origin imported from Iran to China. The
material, as far as possible, is arranged from this point of view and in
chronological order. The single items are numbered. Apart from the
five appendices, a hundred and thirty-five subjects are treated. At
the outset it should be clearly understood that it is by no means the
intention of these studies to convey the impression that the Chinese
owe a portion of their material culture to Persia. Stress is laid on the
point that the Chinese furnish us with immensely useful material for
elaborating a history of cultivated plants. The foundation of Chinese
civilization with its immense resources is no more affected by these
introductions than that of Europe, which received numerous plants
from the Orient and more recently from America. The Chinese merit
our admiration for their far-sighted economic policy in making so
many useful foreign plants tributary to themselves and amalgamating
them with their sound system of agriculture. The Chinese were think-
ing, sensible, and broad-minded people, and never declined to accept
gratefully whatever good things foreigners had to offer. In plant-
economy they are the foremost masters of the world, and China presents/
a unique spectacle in that all useful plants of the universe are cultivated
there. Naturally, these cultivations were adopted and absorbed by a
gradual process : it took the Chinese many centuries to become familiar
with the flora of their own country, and the long series of their herbals
(Pen ts'ao) shows us well how their knowledge of species increased
from the T'ang to the present time, each of these works stating the
1 Iranian influences on China in the matter of warfare, armor, and tactics have
been discussed in Chinese Clay Figures, Part I.