Note 17 — Chapter X · The Mother-goddess of China and Japan

It is difficult to identify the cassia tree of Chinese religious literature. “The Chinese word Kwei occurs at an early date, but it is a generic term for Lauraceæ; and there are about thirteen species of Cassia, and about sixteen species of Cinnamomum in China. The essential point is that the ancient texts maintain silence as to cinnamon; that is, the product from the bark of the tree. Cinnamomum cassia is a native of Kwan-si, Kwan-tun, and Indo-China; and the Chinese made its first acquaintance under the Han, when they began to colonize and to absorb southern China.” The first description of this tree goes no farther back than the third century. “It was not the Chinese, but non-Chinese peoples of Indo-China who first brought the tree into civilization, which, like all other southern cultivations, was simply adopted by the conquering Chinese.”17 It has been suggested that the cinnamon bark was imported into Egypt from China as far back as the Empire period (c. 1500 B.C.) by Phœnician sea-traders.18 Laufer rejects this theory.19 Apparently the ancient Egyptians imported a fragrant bark from their Punt (Somaliland, or British East Africa). At a very much later period cinnamon bark was carried across the Indian Ocean from Ceylon.