In default of precise information as to the native country of the species, accessory means, linguistic and historical, of proving an Asiatic origin, are of some interest. Ritter gives them carefully; I will content myself with an epitome. The Sanskrit name of the sugar-cane was _ikshu_, _ikshura_, or _ikshava_, but the sugar was called _sarkara_, or _sakkara_, and all its names in our European languages of Aryan origin, beginning with the ancient ones—Greek, for example—are clearly derived from this. This is an indication of Asiatic origin, and that the produce of the cane was of ancient use in the southern regions of Asia with which the ancient Sanskrit-speaking nation may have had commercial dealings. The two Sanskrit words have remained in Bengali under the forms _ik_ and _akh_.[767] But in other languages beyond the Indus, we find a singular variety of names, at least when they are not akin to that of the Aryans; for instance: _panchadara_ in Telinga, _kyam_ in Burmese, _mia_ in the dialect of Cochin-China, _kan_ and _tche_, or _tsche_, in Chinese; and further south, among the Malays, _tubu_ or _tabu_ for the plant, and _gula_ for the product. This diversity proves the great antiquity of its cultivation in those regions of Asia in which botanical indications point out the origin of the species. The epoch of its introduction into different countries agrees with the idea that its origin was in India, Cochin-China, or the Malay Archipelago. The Chinese were not acquainted with the sugar-cane at a very remote period, and they received it from the West. Ritter contradicts those authors who speak of a very ancient cultivation, and I find most positive confirmation of his opinion in Dr. Bretschneider’s pamphlet, drawn up at Pekin with the aid of all the resources of Chinese literature.[768] “I have not been able to discover,” he says, “any allusion to the sugar-cane in the most ancient Chinese books (the five classics).” It appears to have been mentioned for the first time by the authors of the second century before Christ. The first description of it appears in the _Nan-fang-tsao-mu-chuang_, in the fourth century: “The _chê chê, kan-chê_ (_kan_, sweet, _chê_, bamboo) grows,” it says, “in Cochin-China. It is several inches in circumference, and resembles the bamboo. The stem, broken into pieces, is eatable and very sweet. The sap which is drawn from it is dried in the sun. After a few days it becomes sugar (here a compound Chinese character), which melts in the mouth.... In the year 286 (of our era) the kingdom of Funan (in India, beyond the Ganges) sent sugar as a tribute.” According to the _Pent-Sao_, an emperor who reigned from 627 to 650 A.D., sent a man into the Indian province of Behar to learn how to manufacture sugar.