RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811
160

NOTES AND QUERIES

at home in China. The Portuguese were doubtless responsible, together with Chinese merchants involved in the South Seas trade2. It became almost immediately popular and spread up and down the coast; it made a substantial contribution not only to the Chinese diet but also to China's economy. When I sailed on a freighter from China to the Mediterranean in September 1925, I was astonished to find that we took on 2,000 tons of peanuts in Tsing-tao, and sold them in Marseilles.

In closing, it may be added that another early name for the peanut is Ch'ang-shêng kuo*, fruit of eternal life. One enthusiastic commentator, who called himself Yü-so-Wêng‡A (the old man in a grass coat), wrote: "If the lo-hua-shêng is constantly eaten you will give birth to many sons." This may help to explain part of its popularity in the one-time land of filial piety.

Columbia University

L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH

NOTES

#

In all fairness it must be pointed out that Professor Hirosato Iwai of the Toyo Bunko holds that there are two earlier references to the peanut: one by Li Kao and another by Chia Ming (1180-1251) which he admits is dubious, and who flourished in the fourteenth century, dying at the age of 106 sui. Professor Ho informs me, however, that he considers neither text reliable.

2 It is worth noting that Lin Hsi-yüan#, a native of T'ung-an, Fukien, who graduated as chin-shih in 1517 and who became one of the largest shipowners and overseas-merchants of his day, wrote in his Wên-chi4, or collected works, on the Portuguese traders who frequented the China coast in the years 1521-51: "The Fo-lang-chi who came brought their local pepper, sapan-wood, ivory, thyme-oil, aloes, sandal-wood, and all kinds of incense in order to trade with our borderers." (C. R. Boxer, South China in the Sixteenth Century, 1953, xxiii.) Alas! that there is no mention of the peanut.

SOME LOAN-WORDS IN CANTONESE

In Vol. 4 of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1964) there appeared an interesting note on "Loan-words in the Chinese Language" by Mr. K. M. A. Barnett. While sharing the author's enthusiasm for this kind of study and supporting his call for a chronology of the introduction into China of all plants whose names are qualified by the
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241
20

L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH

the number as 9,881 pên). In addition, the Wu-ying-tien press in the palace printed with movable type 286 works known only in manuscript in the YLTT. From this point on the story of the YLTT makes generally sad reading. The librarians of the Hanlin Academy during the next one hundred years must have been pretty careless in their custodial duties, for, by 1894, according to an entry in the diary of the statesman Wêng T'ung-ho (1830-1904), hardly more than 800 pên were left. During the siege of the legation quarter six years later, the Chinese made an attempt to storm the British legation by setting fire to the Hanlin, immediately to the north of the legation compound. Thousands of books in the library were consumed in the blaze, but many too were picked up by Europeans, Americans, and Japanese in the legation quarter, and either taken to their homelands, or, in the case of the British minister, returned to the authorities in Peking. In the troubles incident to the overturn of the Manchus (1911), others were dispersed; so that by 1912, when Aurousseau made his report, he recorded only sixty pên in the Metropolitan Library and four in the library of the Ministry of Education.

Today the situation is much better, as there has been an effort to reproduce and make generally available copies of the volumes which have found their way to major collections, mostly public, such as the Library of Congress, the British Museum, the Bodley, the Toyo Bunko, the National Library of Peking, and the National Central Library. These include the volumes returned to the mainland by the authorities in the USSR in the flush of post World War II friendship: eleven volumes delivered in 1951 and fifty-three in 1954. The learned world now has available for study two facsimile editions of extant works, one brought out in Peking in 1960 in 730 chüan under the sponsorship of Kuo Mo-jo (1892-), and a second issued in Taipei in 1962 in 742 chüan, edited by Yang Chia-lo (1913-). Several lists of surviving volumes of the YLTT have been published, the latest being that of the venerable Japanese scholar, Iwai Hirosato, in a festschrift published in his honor: Tenseki ronshū (Tokyo 1964), 1-70. His census lists 799 chüan. A few others have come to light which he did not include. In September 1963 The British Museum Quarterly announced the acquisition of one volume containing chüan 6933 and 6934, a gift from the estate of Captain Francis Garden Poole, who
================================================================================