A Study On Lapis-lazuli And The East And The West Economic-cultural Relations

Lapis-lazuli is a kind of natural gem stone which quite similar in shape, color and size to Sapphires and Turquoise. The object that we are talking about once had played an very important role in the history of The East and The West economic-cultural exchanges. It has been a long time that a number of scholars of foreign and China have been made great efforts on the study of lapis-lazuli from different angles such as geology, philology and archaeology as well. There for, they stated that the traditional lapis-lazuli sources were not within Chinese territory. However, though, efforts were made, but a systematic studies and satisfying achievements on the subject have not been presented yet.Fortunetly, we have sufficient historical materials from Chinese sources and Latest archaeological discoveries for the study of lapis-lazuli and The economic-culture exchanges between The East and the west in the historical times. We are quite certain that, according to the historical materials, The western Region of China, what's now Xinjiang was an important source of lapis-lazuli.Lapis-lazuli, Just like silk and jade played an important role in the history of The East-west economy and cultural exchanges. We also know precisely that, Various names of lapis-lazuli, can be found in historical documents of Chinese sources. For instance, "金碧", "bi liuli" "璆琳" and "liu li" in three different Chinese characteristics. One of the famous Chinese geologist Zhang Hong Qian shows as a result of textual research that "liuli" "Qiulin" and "Jinxing she "are the different Chinese names of Lapis-lazuli. 《Ci yuan》 give us a very crucial evidence for the study of one of the names of Lapis-lazul; "liuli"gem stone ,also called "fei liu li"(吠琉璃). "Fei liu li "derived from the Sanskirt Language.What we see a striking linguistic evidence in 《Persian-Chinese Dictionary》 is that;Lajvard (n),lapis-lazuli, sky-blue, Lajvard farangi; great blue, lazurite. It tell us a linguistic link between The Sanskirt and Persian, languages. It is very obvious that ,The sanskirt and Persian languages once were closely related languages in historical times. The word "fei"has some characteristics related to Indo-Europian languages such as Sanskirt, Prakrite and Persian. With the help of linguistic analysis, we can assume The word "Fei" comes form "parsa", the name of the peoples who had lived in Iran and the place as well. So we have strong evidence to support the idea that The name "feiliuli" can be understood or translated as "The Persian liuli", precisely, "The Persian lapis-lazuli".The various names of lapis-lazuli in different languages are shown as below:1, Lapis-lazuli (青金石)The American scholar shuffer says "suisui"("sjet-sjet"in old Chinese) was a traditional name of lapis-lazuli.2, Ding lan (靛蓝): blue dyestuff 《ciyuan》3, Boddha head blue(佛头青): Lapis-lazuli powder 《A study of Tang Exotics》4, Lan chun qing(兰群青): Natural lapis-lazuli 《A study of Tang Exotics》 ,5, Jinjing(金精): Loufer holds the idea that it refers to lapis-lazuli in Tang dynasty 《Sina-Irania》.6,Lan Chi(兰赤): lapis-lazuli is written as "lan chi" in the time of Yuan dynasty. AV Brenshtam says, The Arabic name "land shiver" is likely as same as "lanchi", 《Sino-Irania》.7, king blue(帝青): According to the legends Sakyamuni's hair dyed inblue ,that was the name "King blue", derived from.8, Qing Pu: Tibetan name of "liuli", and "Ting Tor" is the name of Lapis-Lazuli.9, mumen: An another Tibetan name of lapis-lazuli. "Nomin" for Lapis-lazuli in Mongolian and Manchu.10, Naqewar: It could be the name of Lapis-lazuli on Mid Uyghur language in 13 century, Surprisingly, We could also find a word "shirshir" for Agate, This seemingly derived from the word "srjet-srjet"which was a name of lapis-lazuli in the time of Tang dynasty. Phonetically, it can be totally related to "shirshir" which was Lapis-lazuli.11, Azur kok boyighi: Azure blue,《chinese-Uyghur Medical Dictionary》12, Azur boyighi...