[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to the plants ginseng and shang-luh—see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 et seq.; also Kumagusu Minakata, Nature, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p. 608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The fact that the Chinese make use of the Syriac word yabruha (vide supra) suggests the source of these Chinese legends.]
[365] As Maspero has specifically mentioned ("Dawn of Civilization," p. 166).
[366] "Die Alraune als altägyptische Zauberpflanze," Zeitsch. f. Ægypt. Sprache, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.
[367] "Le nom hiéroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Eléphantine," Revue Égyptologique, XIe Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.
[368] It is quite possible that the use of the name "hæmatite" for this ancient substitute for blood may itself be the result of the survival of the old tradition.
[369] It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct properties of didi: (a) its magical life-giving powers, and (b) its sedative influence.
[370] In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical question.
[371] For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the British Medical Journal, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.
[372] Even in Egypt itself didi may be replaced by fruit in the more specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou didst put grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann ("Religion of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning: "thou didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by analogy with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of didi, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two meanings.
[373] In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud like a woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice (saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 134).