Ṣīnīya is spoken of thus in the Latāifo'l-ma'ārif of al-Th'ālibī, ed. De Jong, Leyden, 1867, a book written in A.D. 990. "The Arabs were wont to call all elegant vessels and the like Sīnīya (i.e. Chinese), whatever they really were, because of the specialty of the Chinese in objects of vertu; and this usage remains in the common word ṣawānā (pl. of ṣīnīya) to the present day."
So in the Tajāribo'l-Omam of Ibn Maskowaih (Fr. Hist. Ar. ii. 457), it is said that at the wedding of Mamūn with Būrān "her grandmother strewed over her 1000 pearls from a sīnīya of gold." In Egypt the familiar round brass trays used to dine off, are now called ṣīnīya (vulgo ṣanīya), [the ṣīnī, ṣenī of N. India] and so is a European saucer.
The expression ṣīnīyat al ṣīn, "A Chinese ṣīnīya," is quoted again by De Goeje from a poem of Abul-shibl Agānī, xiii. 27. [See [SNEAKER].]
[CHINA-BEER, s. Some kind of liquor used in China, perhaps a variety of saké.
[1615.—"I carid a jarr of China Beare."—Cocks's Diary, i. 34.]
CHINA-BUCKEER, n.p. One of the chief Delta-mouths of the Irawadi is so called in marine charts. We have not been able to ascertain the origin of the name, further than that Prof. Forchhammer, in his Notes on the Early Hist. and Geog. of Br. Burma (p. 16), states that the country between Rangoon and Bassein, i.e. on the west of the Rangoon River, bore the name of Pokhara, of which Buckeer is a corruption. This does not explain the China.
CHINA-ROOT, s. A once famous drug, known as Radix Chinae and Tuber Chinae, being the tuber of various species of Smilax (N. O. Smilaceae, the same to which sarsaparilla belongs). It was said to have been used with good effect on Charles V. when suffering from gout, and acquired a great repute. It was also much used in the same way as sarsaparilla. It is now quite obsolete in England, but is still held in esteem in the native pharmacopœias of China and India.
1563.—"R. I wish to take to Portugal some of the Root or Wood of China, since it is not a contraband drug....
"O. This wood or root grows in China, an immense country, presumed to be on the confines of Muscovy ... and because in all these regions, both in China and in Japan, there exists the morbo napolitano, the merciful God hath willed to give them this root for remedy, and with it the good physicians there know well the treatment."—Garcia, f. 177.
c. 1590.—"Sircar Silhet is very mountainous.... China-Root (chob-chīnī) is produced here in great plenty, which was but lately discovered by some Turks."—Ayeen Akb., by Gladwin, ii. 10; [ed. Jarrett, ii. 124].