Scented Protection: Saffron's Transcultural Premodern History

Abstract

abstract: Propelled by the flourishing Silk Road, a wide range of aromatics entered the Sinitic world from India, Southeast Asia, and Persia in the first millennium ce. This article offers a cultural biography of saffron ( yujin xiang ), a plant of Kashmiri and Persian origins that was imported into the Sinitic world starting in the fifth century. By studying a nexus of medical writers, Buddhist monks, traders, and envoys who participated in the circulation and deployment of saffron, I explore the process of knowledge-making that endowed the aromatic with assorted uses in Tang society. To understand and utilize the fragrant substance, Chinese actors regularly aligned it with preconceived notions in their own cultural repertoire. I argue that the transmission of saffron and its associated knowledge across cultural spheres was a dynamic process of negotiation between the novel and the classical, the foreign and the domestic, the exotic and the familiar. 摘要: 本文呈現了絲綢之路上鬱金香的跨文化史。這種來源於克什米爾和波斯地區的名貴香料在唐代社會被賦予多種用途。通過探討醫者、僧侶、商人和使節如何傳播、理解和使用鬱金香，本文展示了與此香料相關的新知識是在域外與本土文化的不斷互動中產生的。