藏红花是欧亚大陆古代特别贸易商品,它有着数千年的栽培和使用历史,也是古代东西方文明交往交流、使得欧亚世界自古以来即呈现"技术和文化上为一个整体"的重要见证.长期以来,人们对它的名称、来源等存在许多误解.通过系统梳理和研究古希腊、圣经希伯来、梵、希腊-罗马化时期埃及、拉丁、波斯、阿拉伯以及藏、汉等欧亚世界主要一手历史文献和其他证据,发现藏红花自爱琴海地区起源,其名称实际存在两个源头,即源自古希腊语的Crocus系统,与源自中古波斯-阿拉伯语的Saffron系统.考察藏红花的名实及源流,也能在一定程度上大致勾勒出20世纪以前存在于欧亚大陆上的以藏红花为主的传播与贸易通道,即"藏红花之路"(Road of Saffron).
Crocus and Saffron:Names and Facts
Saffron,a costly flavoring,medicine and dye,has been cultivated and used for more than three thousand five hundred years in the Eurasian world.However,the plant has been widely misunderstood in terms of its naming,origin,growing areas and uses.This article aims to map out how the names of saffron in the dozens of major Eurasian languages evolved,based on historical literatures in ancient Greek,Biblical Hebrew,Sanskrit,Egyptian(of Greco-Roman Egypt),Old Aramaic(Old Syriac),Latin,Persian,Arabic,Tibetan and Chinese.Saffron,although proved to have originated from the Aegean region,was named after two sources,one from crocus in ancient Greek,and saffron in Persian-Arabic.As an important transfer station on the road of saffron transmission and trade between South Asia,Inner Asia and East Asia,the Tibetan Plateau had contact with saffron significantly;its names in Tibetan and Chinese have also been influenced by the above-mentioned two systems.Clarifying the difference between the naming and facts,between origins and spreading,also contributes to connecting the dots of a passage that existed before 20th century,on which commodities represented by saffron were traded.We may call it the Road of Saffron.
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