dioscorea

In the ancient China, the various states were locked in a tangled fight. A small state was defeated by a big state. Only several thousand of the soldiers survived and retreated into the mountain.

dioscorea

As there were no foods supplies in the mountain, the big state thought that small one would surrender sooner on later

One year had passed and there were no movement of the small state in the mountain. The officers and soldiers of the big state thought that the men in the mountain had been starved to death.

One night, there suddenly appeared a strong army in the mountain.They charged towards the battalion of the big state.

The soldiers of the big state had been at ease for one year and were caught unprepared. So the small state recaptured the territory.

The big state was very curious and tried to find out what the small state had taken as foods in the mountain.

It turned to be that there was a kind of plant of which the flowers were white and the root was very thick in the mountain. The soldiers of the small state just took them as food. They termed it as “shan-yu” (what found in the mountain) because they found it in the mountain when they ran out of food.

However people found that the plant had the actions of invigorating spleen and stomach, and supplementing lung and kidney, and was suitable for treating spleen vacuity and diarrhea, etc.

Since then people took it as herb and termed it “shan-yao” i.e., dioscorea .