Berthold Laufer and Persian Language

Abstract

The eminent German orientalist Berthold Laufer is best known for his extensive research on Chinese civilization. Having received his Ph.D. in Oriental Languages from the University of Leipzig, he travelled to China and Tibet to conduct extensive research on various aspects of Chinese culture and art, and became known as one of the great sinologists of his day. Among his many works is a collection called Sino-Iranica (1919) in which Laufer discusses the cultural interactions between Iran and China in ancient times in various articles, often in the field of botany and mineralogy. Although this study is above all a historical-civilizational study in the field of natural sciences, it nevertheless has benefits in the field of language as a means of transmitting culture. One of Laufer's efforts at Sino-Iranica is to identify the Persian names of plants and minerals by his extensive knowledge of the Chinese language and the methods of recording the loan-words in Chinese, and thus the transferring of material components of Iranian civilization to China from the 2nd century BC to the 14th century. In this article, we review some of the linguistic knowledge about Iranian plants that Laufer acquired during his studies of Chinese texts, and show the importance of his work both in the field of the influence of Iranian languages and in the field of Iranian cultural and civilizational impact on ancient Chinese civilization.

Keywords

• botany
• china
• chinese transliterations
• laufer
• sino-iranica