Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c6.52

v1.c6.52

were assigned to Eastern Xia. Under an imperial order, they went to Yuezhou, and successfully made sugar with cane.” The *Xin tang shu: xi yu lie zhuan* (*New Book of the Tang Dynasty: Miscellaneous Records of the Western Regions*) mentions that Emperor Taizong sent envoys to visit India’s Magadha region and learn the method for making sugar. Further, Yangzhou’s cane was used to make Chinese sugar, “whose colour and taste were better than that of the Western Regions”. Its quality exceeded that of Indian sugar. Descriptions about the Indian method for making sugar at the back of *Dunhuang Fragments* P.3303 mentions that five Indian regions in the west make three kinds of cane sugars, and two of them can be used to make the best granulated sugar and ‘śakkara’. Leaves of sugar canes are cut off, each section is then cut into five inches in length, and then all are put into a large wooden mortar pulled by a bull. The method for juicing canes was same as that of extraction using the *Kolhu* (ox-driven pestle) device recorded in traditional Indian literature. The so-called “sha ge leng” (‘śakkara’) was the same as ‘she…jia luo (śarkarā’)’ mentioned in the Tang Buddhist character book entitled *Tang-Fan liang yu shuang dui ji* (*Collections interfacing in two languages – Tang and Sanskrit*). This meant ‘shi mi’ (refined sugar) was the transliteration of ‘śarkarā’ in Sanskrit. Refined sugar (white sugar) was used in medical prescriptions or dietetic therapies in the Tang Dynasty. The *Shi liao ben cao* (*Dietetic Materia Medica*) of the Tang Dynasty states that the refined sugars (white sugars) “from Middle Sichuan and Persia were superior. Eastern Wu also had sugar, which was inferior to those in the two places.” The refined sugar had the function of “eliminating hot membrane and brightening eyes”. Indian medical books and their translated versions propagated in the Western Regions in the Tang and Sui Dynasties, such as the *Bao wei er xie ben* (*the Bower Manuscript*), *Yi li jing hua* (*Siddhasra*) and *Qipo shu* (*Jivaka-pustaka*) refer to medical prescriptions with granulated sugar and refined sugar which undoubtedly promoted the propagation of the method for making sugar in China. However, the pharmaceutical scope of granulated sugar became narrower and narrower from the Tang Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties and it basically turned into pure edible food. After the Indian method for making sugar was introduced in China, Chinese craftsmen over a long time continuously improved and perfected it. He Qiaoyuan of Ming Dynasty’s *Min shun an chan zhi* (*Records of Southern Products in Fujian*) describes the decolourising method in the Yuan Dynasty, which improved sugar quality greatly. Similar technology for making sugar was seen in various kinds of references such as in Fang Yizhi’s *Wu li xiao zhi* (*Physics Knowledge*). Song Yingxing’s *Tian*