Chapter One - Rosemary and the Contest of the Caos

Summary

ROSEMARY, A FRAGRANT evergreen herb native to theMediterranean, appeared in Chinese history onlybriefly briefly in the format of writings by Cao PiPi 曹丕, Cao Zhi 曹植, and their followers. Theshort-lived career of this exotic herb witnessed thepower struggle between the aforementioned brothers,and disappeared when the fight was over, leaving usvivid pictures of each individual's attitudestowards their own rivalry and foreign cultures.

Rosemary started its journey in China with itsmysterious name, midie迷迭, or meidet, thereconstructed pronunciation of the Later Han(25–220). Rosemary or rosmarinus officinalis in Latin, isderived from “ros,” meaning dew, and “marinus,”meaning sea. Its common names include Sea Dew, RosMaris, Rosmarine, and Rosemarie. According toPedanius Dioscorides (d. 90), a Greek pharmacologistand botanist, rosmarinus was the same as libanotis, due to theirsimilar odours. The Greek term libanotis is close to labiatae, an alternativename for mint, the mentheae (lamiaceae) tribe of plants, of whichrosemary is a member.6 Mint was known as menta or mentha in Latin, minthe in Greek, and mi-ta in Linear B.7 As theearliest attested written form of Greek, Linear Bdisappeared during the late Bronze Age, but itcontinued to influence the Greek language, and mighthelp us to understand the connection between anunidentified substrate language of the ancientMediterranean and Chinese rosemary mei-det.

The linguistic connection might also be the result ofthe encounter between Greekspeaking Macedonianmerchants and the Chinese court. According toClaudius Ptolemy (100–160), a Roman geographer, MaesTitanus, a Macedonian who spoke Greek and was aRoman citizen, once arranged a team of commercialagents to go to Central Asia. In 100 ce, at a tradeoutpost on the Kushan frontier known as the StoneTower (Tashkurgan), Maes and his team happened to bechosen by chance by Han agents to represent theirdistant homeland to the imperial court. They mighthave referred to themselves as Macedonians, so thename of their homeland, a region previously unknownto China, was translated by the Chinese scribes asmengqi doule 蒙奇兜勒(Macedonian–Tyre).