Liquid Storax -- Zhao Rugua (1225 CE)

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Zhao Rugua on Liquid Storax (suhe xiang you 蘇合香油)

Su-ho-hiang-yu [suhe xiang you] comes from the countries of the Ta-shï [Arabs]. Its aroma and taste are, on the whole, similar to those of tu-nau [du'nou] (dammar). Richness and freedom from sediment are the first requisites in a good sample.

Foreigners commonly use it to rub their bodies with, and the natives of Fu-kien use it in like fashion when afflicted with paralysis [da feng] (大風). It is mixed with juan-hiang [ruan xiang] (軟香 or “incenses of delicate aroma”), and may be used in medicine.

Note by Hirth & Rockhill

The present day su-ho-hiang-yu or “sweet oil of storax”, or su-ho-yu [suhe you] “storax oil”, which occurs in commerce in China, is a product of the Liquidambar orientalis, L., of Asia Minor. The storax of the ancients, which became known to the Chinese in the early part of the Christian era as a product of Ta-ts’in [Da qin, the Roman Empire], and the name ofwhich (), they may have mutilated into su-ho [suhe], was a solid gum, and appears to have been a product of the Styrax officinalis, which is still common in Syria. Sui-shu [Sui shu], 83.16a mentions su-ho as a product of Po-ssï [Posi](Persia). Apparently the storax sent to China in those early days was very largely adulterated, for Liang-shu [Liang shu], 54.17a, (covering the first half of the sixth century), says that in Western Asia (Ta-ts’in) “storax (su-ho) is made by mixing and boiling the juice of various fragrant trees and that it is not a natural product. It is further said that the inhabitants of Ta-ts’in gather su-ho (plant, or parts of it), squeeze out its juice, and thus make a balm or ointment (); they then sell this drug to the traders of other countries; it thus goes through many hands before reaching China, and when arriving here, it is not so very fragrant.” See Hirth, China and Roman Orient, 41, 47, 263-266.

D. Hanbury, Science Papers, 143, has conclusively shown that the drug now used in China is imported into Bombay from Aden, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, being probably brought thither from Alexandria. He has also established by comparison its identity with the substance known as Liquid Storax, obtained from the Liquidambar orientalis, L., in Asia Minor. Bretschneider, Botanicon Sinicum, III, 465.

The Hiang-p’u [Xiang pu], a Treatise on perfumes of the eleventh century, makes the remark that su-ho-yu is a kind of tu-nau-hiang [du'nou xiang] or dammar. Bretschneider, op. cit., 464. The Su-chön-liang-fang [Suchen liangfang] (蘇沉良方), also of the eleventh century, says (1.13b): “The su-ho-hiang of the present day is like hard wood, of a dark red colour. There is also su-ho-yu which is like birdlime.” This su-ho-hiang may well have been the classical or solid storax.

Our author, in the first part of his work, mentions liquid storax as a product of Baghdad. Asia Minor (Lu-meï, Rum) and of Ki-tz’ï-ni (Ghazni). The Huan-yü-chï [Huanyu zhi] (寰宇志 of the tenth century) says that su-ho-yu was produced in An-nan [Annam, Vietnam] and San-fo-ts’i [Sanfoqi, Srivijaya]. Bretschneider, Bot. Sinic., III, 464. It is likely that this was the resin of the Liquidambar altingiana, Bl. Of Java, called in Malay rasamala. Pön-ts’au [Bencao], 34.54, gives the Sanskrit name of su-ho-yu as turushka [du lu se jian] (咄魯瑟劍), which, according to Monier Williams, Sansk. Engl. Dict., is Indian olibanum. See supra, p. 196 [Frankincense], n. 1.

The expression ta-föng [dafeng] is actually used in the province of Fu-kien [Fujian] as a term for paralysis of either the body or limbs.

- Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, trans. and annot.
Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chï (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911), Part II, chapter 7, pp. 200-201.