LXXX. CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF FUJU…

LXXX. CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF FUJU

On leaving Cuju, which is the last city of the kingdom of Kinsay, you enter the kingdom of FUJU, and travel six days in a south-easterly direction through a country of mountains and valleys, in which are a number of towns and villages with great plenty of victuals and abundance of game. Lions, great and strong, are also very numerous. The country produces ginger and galingale in immense quantities, insomuch that for a Venice groat you may buy fourscore pounds of good fine-flavoured ginger. They have also a kind of fruit resembling saffron, and which serves the purpose of saffron just as well.{1}

And you must know the people eat all manner of unclean things, even the flesh of a man, provided he has not died a natural death. So they look out for the bodies of those that have been put to death and eat their flesh, which they consider excellent.{2}

Those who go to war in those parts do as I am going to tell you. They shave the hair off the forehead and cause it to be painted in blue like the blade of a glaive. They all go afoot except the chief; they carry spears and swords, and are the most savage people in the world, for they go about constantly killing people, whose blood they drink, and then devour the bodies.{3}

Now I will quit this and speak of other matters. You must know then that after going three days out of the six that I told you of you come to the city of KELINFU, a very great and noble city, belonging to the Great Kaan. This city hath three stone bridges which are among the finest and best in the world. They are a mile long and some nine paces in width, and they are all decorated with rich marble columns. Indeed they are such fine and marvellous works that to build any one of them must have cost a treasure.{4}

The people live by trade and manufactures, and have great store of silk [which they weave into various stuffs], and of ginger and galingale. {5} [They also make much cotton cloth of dyed thread, which is sent all over Manzi.] Their women are particularly beautiful. And there is a strange thing there which I needs must tell you. You must know they have a kind of fowls which have no feathers, but hair only, like a cat’s fur.{6} They are black all over; they lay eggs just like our fowls, and are very good to eat.

In the other three days of the six that I have mentioned above{7}, you continue to meet with many towns and villages, with traders, and goods for sale, and craftsmen. The people have much silk, and are Idolaters, and subject to the Great Kaan. There is plenty of game of all kinds, and there are great and fierce lions which attack travellers. In the last of those three days’ journey, when you have gone 15 miles you find a city called UNKEN, where there is an immense quantity of sugar made. From this city the Great Kaan gets all the sugar for the use of his Court, a quantity worth a great amount of money. [And before this city came under the Great Kaan these people knew not how to make fine sugar; they only used to boil and skim the juice, which when cold left a black paste. But after they came under the Great Kaan some men of Babylonia who happened to be at the Court proceeded to this city and taught the people to refine the sugar with the ashes of certain trees.{8}]

There is no more to say of the place, so now we shall speak of the splendour of Fuju. When you have gone 15 miles from the city of Unken, you come to this noble city which is the capital of the kingdom. So we will now tell you what we know of it.

NOTE 1.—The vague description does not suggest the root turmeric with which Marsden and Pauthier identify this “fruit like saffron.” It is probably one of the species of Gardenia, the fruits of which are used by the Chinese for their colouring properties. Their splendid yellow colour “is due to a body named crocine which appears to be identical with the polychroite of saffron.” (Hanbury’s Notes on Chinese Mat. Medica, pp. 21–22.) For this identification, I am indebted to Dr. Flückiger of Bern. [“Colonel Yule concludes that the fruit of a Gardenia, which yields a yellow colour, is meant. But Polo’s vague description might just as well agree with the Bastard Saffron, Carthamus tinctorius, a plant introduced into China from Western Asia in the 2nd century B.C., and since then much cultivated in that country.” (Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc. I. p. 4.)—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—See vol. i. p. 312.

NOTE 3.—These particulars as to a race of painted or tattooed caterans accused of cannibalism apparently apply to some aboriginal tribe which still maintained its ground in the mountains between Fo-kien and Che-kiang or Kiang-si. Davis, alluding to the Upper part of the Province of Canton, says: “The Chinese History speaks of the aborigines of this wild region under the name of Mân (Barbarians), who within a comparatively recent period were subdued and incorporated into the Middle Nation. Many persons have remarked a decidedly Malay cast in the features of the natives of this province; and it is highly probable that the Canton and Fo-kien people were originally the same race as the tribes which still remain unreclaimed on the east side of Formosa.”[1] (Supply. Vol. p. 260.) Indeed Martini tells us that even in the 17th century this very range of mountains, farther to the south, in the Ting-chau department of Fo-kien, contained a race of uncivilised people, who were enabled by the inaccessible character of the country to maintain their independence of the Chinese Government (p. 114; see also Semedo, p. 19).

[“Colonel Yule’s ‘pariah caste’ of Shao-ling, who, he says, rebelled against either the Sung or the Yüan, are evidently the tomin of Ningpo and zikas of Wênchow. Colonel Yule’s ‘some aboriginal tribe between Fo-kien and Che-kiang’ are probably the zikas of Wênchow and the siapo of Fu-kien described by recent travellers. The zikas are locally called dogs’ heads, which illustrates Colonel Yule’s allophylian theories.” (Parker, China Review, XIV. p. 359.) Cf. A Visit to the “Dog-Headed Barbarians” or Hill People, near Fu-chow, by Rev. F. Ohlinger, Chinese Recorder, July, 1886, pp. 265–268.—H. C.]

NOTE 4.—Padre Martini long ago pointed out that this Quelinfu is KIEN-NING FU, on the upper part of the Min River, an important city of Fo-kien. In the Fo-kien dialect he notices that l is often substituted for n, a well-known instance of which is Liampoo, the name applied by F. M. Pinto and the old Portuguese to Ningpo.

[Mr. Phillips writes (T. Pao, I. p. 224): “From Puchêng to Kien-Ning-Foo the distance is 290 li, all down stream. I consider this to have been the route followed by Polo. His calling Kien-Ning-Foo, Que-lin-fu, is quite correct, as far as the Ling is concerned, the people of the city and of the whole southern province pronounce Ning, Ling. The Ramusian version gives very full particulars regarding the manufactures of Kien-Ning-Foo, which are not found in the other texts; for example, silk is said in this version to be woven into various stuffs, and further: ‘They also make much cotton cloth of dyed thread which is sent all over Manzi.’ All this is quite true. Much silk was formerly and is still woven in Kien-Ning, and the manufacture of cotton cloth with dyed threads is very common. Such stuff is called Hung Lu Kin ‘red and green cloth.’ Cotton cloth, made with dyed thread, is also very common in our day in many other cities in Fuh-Kien.”—H. C.]

In Ramusio the bridges are only “each more than 100 paces long and 8 paces wide.” In Pauthier’s text each is a mile long, and 20 feet wide. I translate from the G. T.

Martini describes one beautiful bridge at Kien-ning fu: the piers of cut stone, the superstructure of timber, roofed in and lined with houses on each side (pp. 112–113). If this was over the Min it would seem not to survive. A recent journal says: “The river is crossed by a bridge of boats, the remains of a stone bridge being visible just above water.” (Chinese Recorder (Foochow), August, 1870, p. 65.)

NOTE 5.—Galanga or Galangal is an aromatic root belonging to a class of drugs once much more used than now. It exists of two kinds: 1. Great or Java Galangal, the root of the Alpinia Galanga. This is rarely imported and hardly used in Europe in modern times, but is still found in the Indian bazaars. 2. Lesser or China Galangal is imported into London from Canton, and is still sold by druggists in England. Its botanical origin is unknown. It is produced in Shan-si, Fo-kien, and Kwang-tung, and is called by the Chinese Liang Kiang or “Mild Ginger.”

[“According to the Chinese authors the province of Sze-ch’wan and Han-chung (Southern Shen-si) were in ancient times famed for their Ginger. Ginger is still exported in large quantities from Han k’ou. It is known also to be grown largely in the southern provinces.—Galingale is the Lesser or Chinese Galanga of commerce, Alpinia officinarum Hance.” (Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc. I. p. 2. See Heyd, Com. Levant, II. 616–618.)—H. C.]

Galangal was much used as a spice in the Middle Ages. In a syrup for a capon, temp. Rich. II., we find ground-ginger, cloves, cinnamon and galingale. “Galingale” appears also as a growth in old English gardens, but this is believed to have been Cyperus Longus, the tubers of which were substituted for the real article under the name of English Galingale.

The name appears to be a modification of the Arabic Kulíjan, Pers. Kholinján, and these from the Sanskrit Kulanjana. (_Mr. Hanbury; China Comm.-Guide_, 120; Eng. Cycl.; Garcia, f. 63; Wright, p. 352.)

NOTE 6.—The cat in question is no doubt the fleecy Persian. These fowls,—but white,—are mentioned by Odoric at Fu-chau; and Mr. G. Phillips in a MS. note says that they are still abundant in Fo-kien, where he has often seen them; all that he saw or heard of were white. The Chinese call them “velvet-hair fowls.” I believe they are well known to poultry-fanciers in Europe. [Gallus Lanatus, Temm. See note, p. 286, of my edition of Odoric.—H. C.]

NOTE 7.—The times assigned in this chapter as we have given them, after the G. Text, appear very short; but I have followed that text because it is perfectly consistent and clear. Starting from the last city of Kinsay government, the traveller goes six days south-east; three out of those six days bring him to Kelinfu; he goes on the other three days and at the 15th mile of the 3rd day reaches Unken; 15 miles further bring him to Fuju. This is interesting as showing that Polo reckoned his day at 30 miles.

In Pauthier’s text again we find: “Sachiez que quand on est alé six journées, après ces trois que je vous ay dit,” not having mentioned trois at all “on treuve la cité de Quelifu.” And on leaving Quelinfu: “Sachiez que es autres trois journées oultre et plus xv. milles treuve l’en une cité qui a nom Vuguen.” This seems to mean from Cugui to Kelinfu six days, and thence to Vuguen (or Unken) three and a half days more. But evidently there has been bungling in the transcript, for the es autre trois journées belongs to the same conception of the distance as that in the G. T. Pauthier’s text does not say how far it is from Unken to Fuju. Ramusio makes six days to Kelinfu, three days more to Unguem, and then 15 miles more to Fuju (which he has erroneously as Cãgiu here, though previously given right, Fugiu).

The latter scheme looks probable certainly, but the times in the G. T. are quite admissible, if we suppose that water conveyance was adopted where possible.

For assuming that Cugiu was Fortune’s Chuchu at the western base of the Bohea mountains (see note 3, ch. lxxix.), and that the traveller reached Tsun-ngan-hien, in two marches, I see that from Tsin-tsun, near Tsun-ngan-hien, Fortune says he could have reached Fu-chau in four days by boat. Again Martini, speaking of the skill with which the Fo-kien boatmen navigate the rocky rapids of the upper waters, says that even from Pu-ch’eng the descent to the capital could be made in three days. So the thing is quite possible, and the G. Text may be quite correct. (See Fortune, II. 171–183 and 210; Mart. 110.) A party which recently made the journey seem to have been six days from Hokeu to the Wu-e-shan and then five and a half days by water (but in stormy weather) to Fu-chau. (Chinese Recorder, as above.)

NOTE 8.—Pauthier supposes Unken, or Vuguen as he reads it, to be Hukwan, one of the hiens under the immediate administration of Fu-chau city. This cannot be, according to the lucid reading of the G. T., making Unken 15 miles from the chief city. The only place which the maps show about that position is Min-ts’ing hien. And the Dutch mission of 1664–1665 names this as “Binkin, by some called Min-sing.” (Astley, III. 461.)

[Mr. Phillips writes (T. Pao, I. 224–225): “Going down stream from Kien-Ning, we arrive first at Yen-Ping on the Min Main River. Eighty-seven li further down is the mouth of the Yiu-Ki River, up which stream, at a distance of eighty li, is Yiu-Ki city, where travellers disembark for the land journey to Yung-chun and Chinchew. This route is the highway from the town of Yiu-Ki to the seaport of Chinchew. This I consider to have been Polo’s route, and Ramusio’s Unguen I believe to be Yung-chun, locally known as Eng-chun or Ung-chun, a name greatly resembling Polo’s Unguen. I look upon this mere resemblance of name as of small moment in comparison with the weighty and important statement, that ‘this place is remarkable for a great manufacture of sugar.’ Going south from the Min River towards Chinchew, this is the first district in which sugar-cane is seen growing in any quantity. Between Kien-Ning-Foo and Fuchau I do not know of any place remarkable for the great manufacture of sugar. Pauthier makes How-Kuan do service for Unken or Unguen, but this is inadmissible, as there is no such place as How-Kuan; it is simply one of the divisions of the city of Fuchau, which is divided into two districts, viz. the Min-Hien and the How-Kuan-Hien. A small quantity of sugar-cane is, I admit, grown in the How-Kuan division of Fuchau-foo, but it is not extensively made into sugar. The cane grown there is usually cut into short pieces for chewing and hawked about the streets for sale. The nearest point to Foochow where sugar is made in any great quantity is Yung-Foo, a place quite out of Polo’s route. The great sugar manufacturing districts of Fuh-Kien are Hing-hwa, Yung-chun, Chinchew, and Chang-chau.”—H. C.]

The Babylonia of the passage from Ramusio is Cairo,—Babylon of Egypt, the sugar of which was very famous in the Middle Ages. Zucchero di Bambellonia is repeatedly named in Pegolotti’s Handbook (210, 311, 362, etc.).

The passage as it stands represents the Chinese as not knowing even how to get sugar in the granular form: but perhaps the fact was that they did not know how to refine it. Local Chinese histories acknowledge that the people of Fo-kien did not know how to make fine sugar, till, in the time of the Mongols, certain men from the West taught the art.[2] It is a curious illustration of the passage that in India coarse sugar is commonly called Chíní, “the produce of China,” and sugar candy or fine sugar Misri, the produce of Cairo (Babylonia) or Egypt. Nevertheless, fine Misri has long been exported from Fo-kien to India, and down to 1862 went direct from Amoy. It is now, Mr. Phillips states, sent to India by steamers viâ Hong-Kong. I see it stated, in a late Report by Mr. Consul Medhurst, that the sugar at this day commonly sold and consumed throughout China is excessively coarse and repulsive in appearance. (See Academy, February, 1874, p. 229.) [We note from the Returns of Trade for 1900, of the Chinese Customs, p. 467, that during that year 1900, the following quantities of sugar were exported from Amoy: Brown, 89,116 piculs, value 204,969 Hk. taels; white, 3,708 piculs, 20,024 Hk. taels; candy, 53,504 piculs, 304,970 Hk. taels.—H. C.]

[Dr. Bretschneider (Hist. of Bot. Disc. I. p. 2) remarks that “the sugar cane although not indigenous in China, was known to the Chinese in the 2nd century B.C. It is largely cultivated in the Southern provinces.”—H. C.]

The fierce lions are, as usual, tigers. These are numerous in this province, and tradition points to the diversion of many roads, owing to their being infested by tigers. Tiger cubs are often offered for sale in Amoy.[3]

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] “It is not improbable that there is some admixture of aboriginal blood in the actual population (of Fuh-Kien), but if so, it cannot be much. The surnames in this province are the same as those in Central and North China.... The language also is pure Chinese; actually much nearer the ancient form of Chinese than the modern Mandarin dialect. There are indeed many words in the vernacular for which no corresponding character has been found in the literary style: but careful investigation is gradually diminishing the number.” (Note by Rev. Dr. C. Douglas.)

[2] Note by Mr. C. Phillips. I omit a corroborative quotation about sugar from the Turkish Geography, copied from Klaproth in the former edition; because the author, Hajji Khalfa, used European sources; and I have no doubt the passage was derived indirectly from Marco Polo.Return to passage

[3] Note by Mr. G. Phillips.Return to passage

LXXXI. CONCERNING THE GREATNESS OF THE CITY OF FUJU

Now this city of Fuju is the key of the kingdom which is called CHONKA, and which is one of the nine great divisions of Manzi.{1} The city is a seat of great trade and great manufactures. The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan. And a large garrison is maintained there by that prince to keep the kingdom in peace and subjection. For the city is one which is apt to revolt on very slight provocation.

There flows through the middle of this city a great river, which is about a mile in width, and many ships are built at the city which are launched upon this river. Enormous quantities of sugar are made there, and there is a great traffic in pearls and precious stones. For many ships of India come to these parts bringing many merchants who traffic about the Isles of the Indies. For this city is, as I must tell you, in the vicinity of the Ocean Port of ZAYTON,{2} which is greatly frequented by the ships of India with their cargoes of various merchandize; and from Zayton ships come this way right up to the city of Fuju by the river I have told you of; and ’tis in this way that the precious wares of India come hither.{3}

The city is really a very fine one and kept in good order, and all necessaries of life are there to be had in great abundance and cheapness.

NOTE 1.—The name here applied to Fo-kien by Polo is variously written as Choncha, Chonka, Concha, Chouka. It has not been satisfactorily explained. Klaproth and Neumann refer it to Kiang-Ché, of which Fo-kien at one time of the Mongol rule formed a part. This is the more improbable as Polo expressly distinguishes this province or kingdom from that which was under Kinsay, viz. Kiang-Ché. Pauthier supposes the word to represent Kien-Kwé, “the Kingdom of Kien,” because in the 8th century this territory had formed a principality of which the seat was at Kien-chau, now Kien-ning fu. This is not satisfactory either, for no evidence is adduced that the name continued in use.

One might suppose that Choncha represented T’swan-chau, the Chinese name of the city of Zayton, or rather of the department attached to it, written by the French Thsiuan-tchéou, but by Medhurst Chwanchew, were it not that Polo’s practice of writing the term tchéu or chau by giu is so nearly invariable, and that the soft ch is almost always expressed in the old texts by the Italian ci (though the Venetian does use the soft ch).[1]

It is again impossible not to be struck with the resemblance of Chonka to “CHUNG-KWÉ” “the Middle Kingdom,” though I can suggest no ground for the application of such a title specially to Fo-kien, except a possible misapprehension. Chonkwé occurs in the Persian Historia Cathaica published by Müller, but is there specially applied to North China. (See Quat. Rashid., p. lxxxvi.)

The city of course is FU-CHAU. It was visited also by Friar Odoric, who calls it Fuzo, and it appears in duplicate on the Catalan Map as Fugio and as Fozo.

I used the preceding words, “the city of course is Fu-chau,” in the first edition. Since then Mr. G. Phillips, of the consular staff in Fo-kien, has tried to prove that Polo’s Fuju is not Fu-chau (Foochow is his spelling), but T’swan-chau. This view is bound up with another regarding the identity of Zayton, which will involve lengthy notice under next chapter; and both views have met with an able advocate in the Rev. Dr. C. Douglas, of Amoy.[2] I do not in the least accept these views about Fuju.

In considering the objections made to Fu-chau, it must never be forgotten that, according to the spelling usual with Polo or his scribe, Fuju is not merely “a name with a great resemblance in sound to Foochow” (as Mr. Phillips has it); it is Mr. Phillips’s word Foochow, just as absolutely as my word Fu-chau is his word Foochow. (See remarks almost at the end of the Introductory Essay.) And what has to be proved against me in this matter is, that when Polo speaks of Fu-chau he does not mean Fu-chau. It must also be observed that the distances as given by Polo (three days from Quelinfu to Fuju, five days from Fuju to Zayton) do correspond well with my interpretations, and do not correspond with the other. These are very strong fences of my position, and it demands strong arguments to level them. The adverse arguments (in brief) are these:

(1.) That Fu-chau was not the capital of Fo-kien (“chief dou reigne”).

(2.) That the River of Fu-chau does not flow through the middle of the city (“por le mi de cest cité”), nor even under the walls.

(3.) That Fu-chau was not frequented by foreign trade till centuries afterwards.

The first objection will be more conveniently answered under next chapter.

As regards the second, the fact urged is true. But even now a straggling street extends to the river, ending in a large suburb on its banks, and a famous bridge there crosses the river to the south side where now the foreign settlements are. There may have been suburbs on that side to justify the por le mi, or these words may have been a slip; for the Traveller begins the next chapter—“When you quit Fuju (to go south) you cross the river.”[3]

Touching the question of foreign commerce, I do not see that Mr. Phillips’s negative evidence would be sufficient to establish his point. But, in fact, the words of the Geog. Text (i.e. the original dictation), which we have followed, do not (as I now see) necessarily involve any foreign trade at Fu-chau, the impression of which has been derived mainly from Ramusio’s text. They appear to imply no more than that, through the vicinity of Zayton, there was a great influx of Indian wares, which were brought on from the great port by vessels (it may be local junks) ascending the river Min.[4]

[Mr. Phillips gives the following itinerary after Unguen: Kangiu = Chinchew = Chuan-chiu or Ts’wan-chiu. He writes (T. Pao, I. p. 227): “When you leave the city of Chinchew for Changchau, which lies in a south-westerly, not a south-easterly direction, you cross the river by a handsome bridge, and travelling for five days by way of Tung-an, locally Tang-oa, you arrive at Changchau. Along this route in many parts, more especially in that part lying between Tang-oa and Changchau, very large camphor-trees are met with. I have frequently travelled over this road. The road from Fuchau to Chinchew, which also takes five days to travel over, is bleak and barren, lying chiefly along the sea-coast, and in winter a most uncomfortable journey. But few trees are met with; a banyan here and there, but no camphor-trees along this route; but there is one extremely interesting feature on it that would strike the most unobservant traveller, viz.: the Loyang bridge, one of the wonders of China.” Had Polo travelled by this route, he would certainly have mentioned it. Pauthier remarks upon Polo’s silence in this matter: “It is surprising,” says he, “that Marco Polo makes no mention of it.”—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—The G. T. reads Caiton, presumably for Çaiton or Zayton. In Pauthier’s text, in the following chapter, the name of Zayton is written Çaiton and Çayton, and the name of that port appears in the same form in the Letter of its Bishop, Andrew of Perugia, quoted in note 2, ch. lxxxii. Pauthier, however, in this place reads Kayteu, which he develops into a port at the mouth of the River Min.[5]

NOTE 3.—The Min, the River of Fu-chau, “varies much in width and depth. Near its mouth, and at some other parts, it is not less than a mile in width, elsewhere deep and rapid.” It is navigable for ships of large size 20 miles from the mouth, and for good-sized junks thence to the great bridge. The scenery is very fine, and is compared to that of the Hudson. (Fortune, I. 281; Chin. Repos. XVI. 483.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Dr. Medhurst calls the proper name of the city, as distinct from the Fu, Chinkang (Dict. of the Hok-keen dialect). Dr. Douglas has suggested Chinkang, and T’swan-kok, i.e. “Kingdom of T’swan” (chau), as possible explanations of Chonka.

[2] Mr. Phillips’s views were issued first in the Chinese Recorder (published by Missionaries at Fu-Chau) in 1870, and afterwards sent to the R. Geo. Soc., in whose Journal for 1874 they appeared, with remarks in reply more detailed than I can introduce here. Dr. Douglas’s notes were received after this sheet was in proof, and it will be seen that they modify to a certain extent my views about Zayton, though not about Fu-chau. His notes, which do more justice to the question than Mr. Phillips’s, should find a place with the other papers in the Geog. Society’s Journal.Return to passage

[3] There is a capital lithograph of Fu-chau in Fortune’s Three Years’ Wanderings (1847), in which the city shows as on a river, and Fortune always so speaks of it; e.g. (p. 369): “The river runs through the suburbs.” I do not know what is the worth of the old engravings in Montanus. A view of Fu-chau in one of these (reproduced in Astley, iv. 33) shows a broad creek from the river penetrating to the heart of the city.Return to passage

[4] The words of the G. T. are these: “Il hi se fait grant mercandies de perles e d’autres pieres presiose, e ce est por ce que les nés de Yndie hi vienent maintes con maint merchaant qe usent en les ysles de Endie, et encore voz di que ceste ville est prés au port de Caiton en la mer Osiane; et illuec vienent maintes nés de Indie con maintes mercandies, e puis de cest part vienent les nés por le grant flum qe je voz ai dit desoure jusque à la cité de Fugui, et en ceste mainere hi vienent chieres cousse de Indie.”Return to passage

[5] It is odd enough that Martini (though M. Pauthier apparently was not aware of it) does show a fort called Haiteu at the mouth of the Min; but I believe this to be merely an accidental coincidence. The various readings must be looked at together; that of the G. T. which I have followed is clear in itself and accounts for the others.Return to passage

LXXXII. OF THE CITY AND GREAT HAVEN OF ZAYTON

Now when you quit Fuju and cross the River, you travel for five days south-east through a fine country, meeting with a constant succession of flourishing cities, towns, and villages, rich in every product. You travel by mountains and valleys and plains, and in some places by great forests in which are many of the trees which give Camphor.{1} There is plenty of game on the road, both of bird and beast. The people are all traders and craftsmen, subjects of the Great Kaan, and under the government of Fuju. When you have accomplished those five days’ journey you arrive at the very great and noble city of ZAYTON, which is also subject to Fuju.

At this city you must know is the Haven of Zayton, frequented by all the ships of India, which bring thither spicery and all other kinds of costly wares. It is the port also that is frequented by all the merchants of Manzi, for hither is imported the most astonishing quantity of goods and of precious stones and pearls, and from this they are distributed all over Manzi.{2} And I assure you that for one shipload of pepper that goes to Alexandria or elsewhere, destined for Christendom, there come a hundred such, aye and more too, to this haven of Zayton; for it is one of the two greatest havens in the world for commerce.{3}

The Great Kaan derives a very large revenue from the duties paid in this city and haven; for you must know that on all the merchandize imported, including precious stones and pearls, he levies a duty of ten per cent., or in other words takes tithe of everything. Then again the ship’s charge for freight on small wares is 30 per cent., on pepper 44 per cent., and on lignaloes, sandalwood, and other bulky goods 40 per cent., so that between freight and the Kaan’s duties the merchant has to pay a good half the value of his investment [though on the other half he makes such a profit that he is always glad to come back with a new supply of merchandize]. But you may well believe from what I have said that the Kaan hath a vast revenue from this city.

There is a great abundance here of all provision for every necessity of man’s life. [It is a charming country, and the people are very quiet, and fond of an easy life. Many come hither from Upper India to have their bodies painted with the needle in the way we have elsewhere described, there being many adepts at this craft in the city.{4}]

Let me tell you also that in this province there is a town called TYUNJU, where they make vessels of porcelain of all sizes, the finest that can be imagined. They make it nowhere but in that city, and thence it is exported all over the world. Here it is abundant and very cheap, insomuch that for a Venice groat you can buy three dishes so fine that you could not imagine better.{5}

I should tell you that in this city (i.e. of Zayton) they have a peculiar language. [For you must know that throughout all Manzi they employ one speech and one kind of writing only, but yet there are local differences of dialect, as you might say of Genoese, Milanese, Florentines, and Neapolitans, who though they speak different dialects can understand one another.{6}]

And I assure you that the Great Kaan has as large customs and revenues from this kingdom of Chonka as from Kinsay, aye and more too.{7}

We have now spoken of but three out of the nine kingdoms of Manzi, to wit Yanju and Kinsay and Fuju. We could tell you about the other six, but it would be too long a business; so we will say no more about them.

And now you have heard all the truth about Cathay and Manzi and many other countries, as has been set down in this Book; the customs of the people and the various objects of commerce, the beasts and birds, the gold and silver and precious stones, and many other matters have been rehearsed to you. But our Book as yet does not contain nearly all that we purpose to put therein. For we have still to tell you all about the people of India and the notable things of that country, which are well worth the describing, for they are marvellous indeed. What we shall tell is all true, and without any lies. And we shall set down all the particulars in writing just as Messer Marco Polo related them. And he well knew the facts, for he remained so long in India, and enquired so diligently into the manners and peculiarities of the nations, that I can assure you there never was a single man before who learned so much and beheld so much as he did.

NOTE 1.—The Laurus (or Cinnamomum) Camphora, a large timber tree, grows abundantly in Fo-kien. A description of the manner in which camphor is produced at a very low cost, by sublimation from the chopped twigs, etc., will be found in the Lettres Edifiantes, XXIV. 19 seqq.; and more briefly in Hedde by Rondot, p. 35. Fo-kien alone has been known to send to Canton in one year 4000 piculs (of 133⅓ lbs. each), but the average is 2500 to 3000 (ib.).

NOTE 2.—When Marco says Zayton is one of the two greatest commercial ports in the world, I know not if he has another haven in his eye, or is only using an idiom of the age. For in like manner Friar Odoric calls Java “the second best of all Islands that exist”; and Kansan (or Shen-si) the “second best province in the world, and the best populated.” But apart from any such idiom, Ibn Batuta pronounces Zayton to be the greatest haven in the world.

Martini relates that when one of the Emperors wanted to make war on Japan, the Province of Fo-kien offered to bridge the interval with their vessels!

ZAYTON, as Martini and Deguignes conjectured, is T’SWAN-CHAU FU, or CHWAN-CHAU FU (written by French scholars Thsiouan-tchéou-fou), often called in our charts, etc., Chinchew, a famous seaport of Fo-kien about 100 miles in a straight line S.W. by S. of Fu-chau. Klaproth supposes that the name by which it was known to the Arabs and other Westerns was corrupted from an old Chinese name of the city, given in the Imperial Geography, viz. TSEU-T’UNG.[1] Zaitún commended itself to Arabian ears, being the Arabic for an olive-tree (whence Jerusalem is called Zaitúniyah); but the corruption (if such it be) must be of very old date, as the city appears to have received its present name in the 7th or 8th century.

Abulfeda, whose Geography was terminated in 1321, had heard the real name of Zayton: “Shanju” he calls it, “known in our time as Zaitún”; and again: “Zaitún, i.e. Shanju, is a haven of China, and, according to the accounts of merchants who have travelled to those parts, is a city of mark. It is situated on a marine estuary which ships enter from the China Sea. The estuary extends fifteen miles, and there is a river at the head of it. According to some who have seen the place, the tide flows. It is half a day from the sea, and the channel by which ships come up from the sea is of fresh water. It is smaller in size than Hamath, and has the remains of a wall which was destroyed by the Tartars. The people drink water from the channel, and also from wells.”

Friar Odoric (in China, circa 1323–1327, who travelled apparently by land from Chin-kalán, i.e. Canton) says: “Passing through many cities and towns, I came to a certain noble city which is called Zayton, where we Friars Minor have two Houses.... In this city is great plenty of all things that are needful for human subsistence. For example, you can get three pounds and eight ounces of sugar for less than half a groat. The city is twice as great as Bologna, and in it are many monasteries of devotees, idol-worshippers every man of them. In one of those monasteries which I visited there were 3000 monks.... The place is one of the best in the world.... Thence I passed eastward to a certain city called Fuzo.... The city is a mighty fine one, and standeth upon the sea.” Andrew of Perugia, another Franciscan, was Bishop of Zayton from 1322, having resided there from 1318. In 1326 he writes a letter home, in which he speaks of the place as “a great city on the shores of the Ocean Sea, which is called in the Persian tongue Cayton (Çayton); and in this city a rich Armenian lady did build a large and fine enough church, which was erected into a cathedral by the Archbishop,” and so on. He speaks incidentally of the Genoese merchants frequenting it. John Marignolli, who was there about 1347, calls it “a wondrous fine sea-port, and a city of incredible size, where our Minor Friars have three very fine churches; ... and they have a bath also, and a fondaco which serves as a depôt for all the merchants.” Ibn Batuta about the same time says: “The first city that I reached after crossing the sea was ZAITÚN.... It is a great city, superb indeed; and in it they make damasks of velvet as well as those of satin (Kimkhá and Atlás), which are called from the name of the city Zatúníah; they are superior to the stuffs of Khansá and Khánbálik. The harbour of Zaitún is one of the greatest in the world—I am wrong; it is the greatest! I have seen there about an hundred first-class junks together; as for small ones, they were past counting. The harbour is formed by an estuary which runs inland from the sea until it joins the Great River.”

[Mr. Geo. Phillips finds a strong argument in favour of Changchau being Zayton in this passage of Ibn Batuta. He says (Jour. China Br. R. A. Soc. 1888, 28–29): “Changchow in the Middle Ages was the seat of a great silk manufacture, and the production of its looms, such as gauzes, satins and velvets, were said to exceed in beauty those of Soochow and Hangchow. According to the Fuhkien Gazetteer, silk goods under the name of Kinki, and porcelain were, at the end of the Sung Dynasty, ordered to be taken abroad and to be bartered against foreign wares, treasure having been prohibited to leave the country. In this Kinki I think we may recognise the Kimkha of IBN BATUTA. I incline to this fact, as the characters Kinki are pronounced in the Amoy and Changchow dialects Khimkhi and Kimkhia. Anxious to learn if the manufacture of these silk goods still existed in Changchow, I communicated with the Rev. Dr. TALMAGE of Amoy, who, through the Rev. Mr. Ross of the London Mission, gave me the information that Kinki was formerly somewhat extensively manufactured at Changchow, although at present it was only made by one shop in that city. IBN BATUTA tells us that the King of China had sent to the Sultan, five hundred pieces of Kamkha, of which one hundred were made in the city of Zaitún. This form of present appears to have been continued by the Emperors of the Ming Dynasty, for we learn that the Emperor Yunglo gave to the Envoy of the Sultan of Quilon, presents of Kinki and Shalo, that is to say, brocaded silks and gauzes. Since writing the above, I found that Dr. HIRTH suggests that the characters Kinhua, meaning literally gold flower in the sense of silk embroidery, possibly represent the mediæval Khimka. I incline rather to my own suggestion. In the Pei-wen-yun-fu these characters Kien-ki are frequently met in combination, meaning a silk texture, such as brocade or tapestry. Curtains made of this texture are mentioned in Chinese books, as early as the commencement of the Christian era.”—H. C.]

Rashiduddin, in enumerating the Sings or great provincial governments of the empire, has the following: “7th FUCHÚ.—This is a city of Manzi. The Sing was formerly located at ZAITÚN, but afterwards established here, where it still remains. Zaitún is a great shipping-port, and the commandant there is Boháuddin Ḳandári.” Pauthier’s Chinese extracts show us that the seat of the Sing was, in 1281, at T’swan-chau, but was then transferred to Fu-chau. In 1282 it was removed back to T’swan-chau, and in 1283 recalled to Fu-chau. That is to say, what the Persian writer tells us of Fújú and Zayton, the Chinese Annalists tell us of Fu-chau and T’swan-chau. Therefore Fuju and Zayton were respectively Fu-chau and T’swan-chau.

[In the Yuen-shi (ch. 94), Shi po, Maritime trade regulations, it “is stated, among other things, that in 1277, a superintendency of foreign trade was established in Ts’uän-chou. Another superintendency was established for the three ports of K’ing-yüan (the present Ning-po), Shang-hai, and Gan-p’u. These three ports depended on the province of Fu-kien, the capital of which was Ts’üan-chou. Farther on, the ports of Hang-chou and Fu-chou are also mentioned in connection with foreign trade. Chang-chou (in Fu-kien, near Amoy) is only once spoken of there. We meet further the names of Wen-chou and Kuang-chou as seaports for foreign trade in the Mongol time. But Ts’üan-chou in this article on the sea-trade seems to be considered as the most important of the seaports, and it is repeatedly referred to. I have, therefore, no doubt that the port of Zayton of Western mediæval travellers can only be identified with Ts’uän-chou, not with Chang-chou.... There are many other reasons found in Chinese works in favour of this view. Gan-p’u of the Yuen-shi is the seaport Ganfu of Marco Polo.” (Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. pp. 186–187.)

In his paper on _Changchow, the Capital of Fuhkien in Mongol Times_, printed in the Jour. China B. R. A. Soc. 1888, pp. 22–30, Mr. Geo. Phillips from Chinese works has shown that the Port of Chang-chau did, in Mongol times, alternate with Chinchew and Fu-chau as the capital of Fuh-kien.—H. C.]

Further, Zayton was, as we see from this chapter, and from the 2nd and 5th of Bk. III., in that age the great focus and harbour of communication with India and the Islands. From Zayton sailed Kúblái’s ill-fated expedition against Japan. From Zayton Marco Polo seems to have sailed on his return to the West, as did John Marignolli some half century later. At Zayton Ibn Batuta first landed in China, and from it he sailed on his return.

All that we find quoted from Chinese records regarding T’swan-chau corresponds to these Western statements regarding Zayton. For centuries T’swan-chau was the seat of the Customs Department of Fo-kien, nor was this finally removed till 1473. In all the historical notices of the arrival of ships and missions from India and the Indian Islands during the reign of Kúblái, T’swan-chau, and T’swan-chau almost alone, is the port of debarkation; in the notices of Indian regions in the annals of the same reign it is from T’swan-chau that the distances are estimated; it was from T’swan-chau that the expeditions against Japan and Java were mainly fitted out. (See quotations by Pauthier, pp. 559, 570, 604, 653, 603, 643; Gaubil, 205, 217; Deguignes, III. 169, 175, 180, 187; Chinese Recorder (Foochow), 1870, pp. 45 seqq.)

When the Portuguese, in the 16th century, recovered China to European knowledge, Zayton was no longer the great haven of foreign trade; but yet the old name was not extinct among the mariners of Western Asia. Giovanni d’Empoli, in 1515, writing about China from Cochin, says: “Ships carry spices thither from these parts. Every year there go thither from Sumatra 60,000 cantars of pepper, and 15,000 or 20,000 from Cochin and Malabar, worth 15 to 20 ducats a cantar; besides ginger (?), mace, nutmegs, incense, aloes, velvet, European goldwire, coral, woollens, etc. The Grand Can is the King of China, and he dwells at ZEITON.” Giovanni hoped to get to Zeiton before he died.[2]

The port of T’swan-chau is generally called in our modern charts Chinchew. Now Chincheo is the name given by the old Portuguese navigators to the coast of Fo-kien, as well as to the port which they frequented there, and till recently I supposed this to be T’swan-chau. But Mr. Phillips, in his paper alluded to at p. 232, asserted that by Chincheo modern Spaniards and Portuguese designated (not T’swan-chau but) Chang-chau, a great city 60 miles W.S.W. of T’swan-chau, on a river entering Amoy Harbour. On turning, with this hint, to the old maps of the 17th century, I found that their Chincheo is really Chang-chau. But Mr. Phillips also maintains that Chang-chau, or rather its port, a place formerly called Gehkong and now Haiteng, is Zayton. Mr. Phillips does not adduce any precise evidence to show that this place was known as a port in Mongol times, far less that it was known as the most famous haven in the world; nor was I able to attach great weight to the arguments which he adduced. But his thesis, or a modification of it, has been taken up and maintained with more force, as already intimated, by the Rev. Dr. Douglas.

The latter makes a strong point in the magnificent character of Amoy Harbour, which really is one of the grandest havens in the world, and thus answers better to the emphatic language of Polo, and of Ibn Batuta, than the river of T’swan-chau. All the rivers of Fo-kien, as I learn from Dr. Douglas himself, are rapidly silting up; and it is probable that the river of Chinchew presented, in the 13th and 14th centuries, a far more impressive aspect as a commercial basin than it does now. But still it must have been far below Amoy Harbour in magnitude, depth, and accessibility. I have before recognised this, but saw no way to reconcile the proposed deduction with the positive historical facts already stated, which absolutely (to my mind) identify the Zayton of Polo and Rashiduddin with the Chinese city and port of T’swan-chau. Dr. Douglas, however, points out that the whole northern shore of Amoy Harbour, with the Islands of Amoy and Quemoy, are within the Fu or Department of T’swan-chau; and the latter name would, in Chinese parlance, apply equally to the city and to any part of the department. He cites among other analogous cases the Treaty Port Neuchwang (in Liao-tong). That city really lies 20 miles up the Liao River, but the name of Neuchwang is habitually applied by foreigners to Ying-tzŭ, which is the actual port. Even now much of the trade of T’swan-chau merchants is carried on through Amoy, either by junks touching, or by using the shorter sea-passage to ’An-hai, which was once a port of great trade, and is only 20 miles from T’swan-chau.[3] With such a haven as Amoy Harbour close by, it is improbable that Kúblái’s vast armaments would have made rendezvous in the comparatively inconvenient port of T’swan-chau. Probably then the two were spoken of as one. In all this I recognise strong likelihood, and nothing inconsistent with recorded facts, or with Polo’s concise statements. It is even possible that (as Dr. Douglas thinks) Polo’s words intimate a distinction between Zayton the City and Zayton the Ocean Port; but for me Zayton the city, in Polo’s chapters, remains still T’swan-chau. Dr. Douglas, however, seems disposed to regard it as Chang-chau.

The chief arguments urged for this last identity are: (1.) Ibn Batuta’s representation of his having embarked at Zayton “on the river,” i.e. on the internal navigation system of China, first for Sin-kalán (Canton), and afterwards for Kinsay. This could not, it is urged, be T’swan-chau, the river of which has no communication with the internal navigation, whereas the river at Chang-chau has such communication, constantly made use of in both directions (interrupted only by brief portages); (2.) Martini’s mention of the finding various Catholic remains, such as crosses and images of the Virgin, at Chang-chau, in the early part of the 17th century, indicating that city as the probable site of the Franciscan establishments.

[I remember that the argument brought forward by Mr. Phillips in favour of Changchow which most forcibly struck Sir H. Yule, was the finding of various Christian remains at this place, and Mr. Phillips wrote (Jour. China Br. R. A. Soc. 1888, 27–28): “We learn from the history of the Franciscan missions that two churches were built in Zaitun, one in the city and the other in a forest not far from the town. MARTINI makes mention of relics being found in the city of Changchow, and also of a missal which he tried in vain to purchase from its owner, who gave as a reason for not parting with it, that it had been in his family for several generations. According to the history of the Spanish Dominicans in China, ruins of churches were used in rebuilding the city walls, many of the stones having crosses cut on them.” Another singular discovery relating to these missions, is one mentioned by Father VITTORIO RICCI, which would seem to point distinctly to the remains of the Franciscan church built by ANDRÉ DE PÉROUSE outside the city of Zaitun: “The heathen of Changchow,” says RICCI, “found buried in a neighbouring hill called Saysou another cross of a most beautiful form cut out of a single block of stone, which I had the pleasure of placing in my church in that city. The heathen were alike ignorant of the time when it was made and how it came to be buried there.”—H. C.]

Whether the application by foreigners of the term Zayton, may, by some possible change in trade arrangements in the quarter-century after Polo’s departure from China, have undergone a transfer, is a question which it would be vain to answer positively without further evidence. But as regards Polo’s Zayton, I continue in the belief that this was T’swan-chau and its haven, with the admission that this haven may probably have embraced that great basin called Amoy Harbour, or part of it.[4]

[Besides the two papers I have already mentioned, the late Mr. Phillips has published, since the last edition of Marco Polo, in the T’oung-Pao, VI. and VII.: Two Mediæval Fuh-kien Trading Ports: Chüan-chow and Chang-chow. He has certainly given many proofs of the importance of Chang-chau at the time of the Mongol Dynasty, and one might well hesitate (I know it was also the feeling of Sir Henry Yule at the end of his life) between this city and T’swan-chau, but the weak point of his controversy is his theory about Fu-chau. However, Mr. George Phillips, who died in 1896, gathered much valuable material, of which we have made use; it is only fair to pay this tribute to the memory of this learned consul.—H. C.]

Martini (circa 1650) describes T’swan-chau as delightfully situated on a promontory between two branches of the estuary which forms the harbour, and these so deep that the largest ships could come up to the walls on either side. A great suburb, Loyang, lay beyond the northern water, connected with the city by the most celebrated bridge in China. Collinson’s Chart in some points below the town gives only 1¼ fathom for the present depth, but Dr. Douglas tells me he has even now occasionally seen large junks come close to the city.

Chinchew, though now occasionally visited by missionaries and others, is not a Treaty port, and we have not a great deal of information about its modern state. It is the head-quarters of the T’i-tuh, or general commanding the troops in Fo-kien. The walls have a circuit of 7 or 8 miles, but embracing much vacant ground. The chief exports now are tea and sugar, which are largely grown in the vicinity, tobacco, china-ware, nankeens, etc. There are still to be seen (as I learn from Mr. Phillips) the ruins of a fine mosque, said to have been founded by the Arab traders who resorted thither. The English Presbyterian Church Mission has had a chapel in the city for about ten years.

Zayton, we have seen from Ibn Batuta’s report, was famed for rich satins called Zaitúníah. I have suggested in another work (Cathay, p. 486) that this may be the origin of our word Satin, through the Zettani of mediæval Italian (or Aceytuni of mediæval Spanish). And I am more strongly disposed to support this, seeing that Francisque-Michel, in considering the origin of Satin, hesitates between Satalin from Satalia in Asia Minor and Soudanin from the Soudan or Sultan; neither half so probable as Zaituni. I may add that in a French list of charges of 1352 we find the intermediate form Zatony. Satin in the modern form occurs in Chaucer:—

“In Surrie whilom dwelt a compagnie Of chapmen rich, and therto sad and trewe, That widë where senten their spicerie, Clothes of gold, and satins riche of hewe.” —Man of Lawe’s Tale, st. 6.

[Hatzfeld (Dict.) derives satin from the Italian setino; and setino from SETA, pig’s hair, and gives the following example: “Deux aunes et un quartier de satin vremeil,” in Caffiaux, Abattis de maisons à Gommegnies, p. 17, 14th century. The Portuguese have setim. But I willingly accept Sir Henry Yule’s suggestion that the origin of the word is Zayton; cf. zeitun زيتون olive.

“The King [of Bijánagar] ... was clothed in a robe of zaitún satin.” (Elliot, IV. p. 113, who adds in a note zaitún: Olive-coloured?) And again (Ibid. p. 120): “Before the throne there was placed a cushion of zaitúni satin, round which three rows of the most exquisite pearls were sewn.”—H. C.]

(Recherches, etc., II. 229 seqq.; Martini, circa p. 110; Klaproth, Mém. II. 209–210; Cathay, cxciii. 268, 223, 355, 486; Empoli in Append. vol. iii. 87 to _Archivio Storico Italiano; Douet d’Arcq._ p. 342; Galv., Discoveries of the World, Hak. Soc. p. 129; Marsden, 1st ed. p. 372; _Appendix to Trade Report of Amoy_, for 1868 and 1900. [Heyd, Com. Levant, II. 701–702.])

NOTE 3.—We have referred in a former note (ch. lxxvii. note 7) to an apparent change in regard to the Chinese consumption of pepper, which is now said to be trifling. We shall see in the first chapter of Bk. III. that Polo estimates the tonnage of Chinese junks by the number of baskets of pepper they carried, and we have seen in last note the large estimate by Giov. d’Empoli of the quantity that went to China in 1515. Galvano also, speaking of the adventure of Fernão Perez d’Andrade to China in 1517, says that he took in at Pacem a cargo of pepper, “as being the chief article of trade that is valued in China.” And it is evident from what Marsden says in his History of Sumatra, that in the last century some tangible quantity was still sent to China. The export from the Company’s plantations in Sumatra averaged 1200 tons, of which the greater part came to Europe, the rest went to China.

[Couto says also: “Os portos principaes do Reyno da Sunda são Banta, Aché, Xacatara, por outro nome Caravão, aos quaes vam todos os annos mui perto de vinte sommas, que são embarcações do Chincheo, huma das Provincias maritimas da China, a carregar de pimenta, porque dá este Reyno todos os annos oito mil bares della, que são trinta mil quintaes.” (Decada IV. Liv. III. Cap. I. 167.)]

NOTE 4.—These tattooing artists were probably employed mainly by mariners frequenting the port. We do not know if the Malays practised tattooing before their conversion to Islam. But most Indo-Chinese races tattoo, and the Japanese still “have the greater part of the body and limbs scrolled over with bright-blue dragons, and lions, and tigers, and figures of men and women tattooed into their skins with the most artistic and elaborate ornamentation.” (Alcock, I. 191.) Probably the Arab sailors also indulged in the same kind of decoration. It is common among the Arab women now, and Della Valle speaks of it as in his time so much in vogue among both sexes through Egypt, Arabia, and Babylonia, that he had not been able to escape. (I. 395.)

NOTE 5.—The divergence in Ramusio’s version is here very notable: “The River which enters the Port of Zayton is great and wide, running with great velocity, and is a branch of that which flows by the city of Kinsay. And at the place where it quits the main channel is the city of Tingui, of which all that is to be said is that there they make porcelain basins and dishes. The manner of making porcelain was thus related to him. They excavate a certain kind of earth, as it were from a mine, and this they heap into great piles, and then leave it undisturbed and exposed to wind, rain, and sun for 30 or 40 years. In this space of time the earth becomes sufficiently refined for the manufacture of porcelain; they then colour it at their discretion, and bake it in a furnace. Those who excavate the clay do so always therefore for their sons and grandsons. The articles are so cheap in that city that you get 8 bowls for a Venice groat.”

Ibn Batuta speaks of porcelain as manufactured at Zayton; indeed he says positively (and wrongly): “Porcelain is made nowhere in China except in the cities of Zaitun and Sinkalan” (Canton). A good deal of China ware in modern times is made in Fo-kien and Canton provinces, and it is still an article of export from T’swan-chau and Amoy; but it is only of a very ordinary kind. Pakwiha, between Amoy and Chang-chau, is mentioned in the Chinese Commercial Guide (p. 114) as now the place where the coarse blue ware, so largely exported to India, etc., is largely manufactured; and Phillips mentions Tung-’an (about half-way between T’swan-chau and Chang-chau) as a great seat of this manufacture.

Looking, however, to the Ramusian interpolations, which do not indicate a locality necessarily near Zayton, or even in Fo-kien, it is possible that Murray is right in supposing the place intended in these to be really King-tê chên in Kiang-si, the great seat of the manufacture of genuine porcelain, or rather its chief mart JAU-CHAU FU on the P’o-yang Lake.

The geographical indication of this city of porcelain, as at the place where a branch of the River of Kinsay flows off towards Zayton, points to a notion prevalent in the Middle Ages as to the interdivergence of rivers in general, and especially of Chinese rivers. This notion will be found well embodied in the Catalan Map, and something like it in the maps of the Chinese themselves;[5] it is a ruling idea with Ibn Batuta, who, as we have seen (in note 2), speaks of the River of Zayton as connected in the interior with “the Great River,” and who travels by this waterway accordingly from Zayton to Kinsay, taking no notice of the mountains of Fo-kien. So also (supra, p. 175) Rashiduddin had been led to suppose that the Great Canal extended to Zayton. With apparently the same idea of one Great River of China with many ramifications, Abulfeda places most of the great cities of China upon “The River.” The “Great River of China,” with its branches to Kinsay, is alluded to in a like spirit by Wassáf (supra, p. 213). Polo has already indicated the same idea (p. 219).

Assuming this as the notion involved in the passage from Ramusio, the position of Jau-chau might be fairly described as that of Tingui is therein, standing as it does on the P’o-yang Lake, from which there is such a ramification of internal navigation, e.g. to Kinsay or Hang-chau fu directly by Kwansin, the Chang-shan portage already referred to (supra, p. 222), and the Ts’ien T’ang (and this is the Kinsay River line to which I imagine Polo here to refer), or circuitously by the Yang-tzŭ and Great Canal; to Canton by the portage of the Meiling Pass; and to the cities of Fo-kien either by the Kwansin River or by Kian-chan fu, further south, with a portage in each case across the Fo-kien mountains. None of our maps give any idea of the extent of internal navigation in China. (See Klaproth, Mém. vol. iii.)

The story of the life-long period during which the porcelain clay was exposed to temper long held its ground, and probably was only dispelled by the publication of the details of the King-tê chên manufacture by Père d’Entrecolles in the Lettres Edifiantes.

NOTE 6.—The meagre statement in the French texts shows merely that Polo had heard of the Fo-kien dialect. The addition from Ramusio shows further that he was aware of the unity of the written character throughout China, but gives no indication of knowledge of its peculiar principles, nor of the extent of difference in the spoken dialects. Even different districts of Fo-kien, according to Martini, use dialects so different that they understand each other with difficulty (108).

[Mendoza already said: “It is an admirable thing to consider how that in that kingdome they doo speake manie languages, the one differing from the other: yet generallie in writing they doo understand one the other, and in speaking not.” (Parke’s Transl. p. 93.)]

Professor Kidd, speaking of his instructors in the Mandarin and Fo-kien dialects respectively, says: “The teachers in both cases read the same books, composed in the same style, and attached precisely the same ideas to the written symbols, but could not understand each other in conversation.” Moreover, besides these sounds attaching to the Chinese characters when read in the dialect of Fo-kien, thus discrepant from the sounds used in reading the same characters in the Mandarin dialect, yet another class of sounds is used to express the same ideas in the Fo-kien dialect when it is used colloquially and without reference to written symbols! (Kidd’s China, etc., pp. 21–23.)

The term Fokien dialect in the preceding passage is ambiguous, as will be seen from the following remarks, which have been derived from the Preface and Appendices to the Rev. Dr. Douglas’s Dictionary of the Spoken Language of Amoy,[6] and which throw a distinct light on the subject of this note:—

“The vernacular or spoken language of Amoy is not a mere colloquial dialect or patois, it is a distinct language—one of the many and widely differing spoken languages which divide among them the soil of China. For these spoken languages are not dialects of one language, but cognate languages, bearing to each other a relation similar to that between Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, or between English, Dutch, German, and Danish. The so-called ‘written language’ is indeed uniform throughout the whole country, but that is rather a notation than a language. And this written language, as read aloud from books, is not spoken in any place whatever, under any form of pronunciation. The most learned men never employ it as a means of ordinary oral communication even among themselves. It is, in fact, a dead language, related to the various spoken languages of China, somewhat as Latin is to the languages of Southern Europe.

“Again: Dialects, properly speaking, of the Amoy vernacular language are found (e.g.) in the neighbouring districts of Changchew, Chinchew, and Tungan, and the language with its subordinate dialects is believed to be spoken by 8 or 10 millions of people. Of the other languages of China the most nearly related to the Amoy is the vernacular of Chau-chau-fu, often called ‘the Swatow dialect,’ from the only treaty-port in that region. The ancestors of the people speaking it emigrated many years ago from Fuh-kien, and are still distinguished there by the appellation Hok-ló, i.e. people from Hok-kien (or Fuh-kien). This language differs from the Amoy, much as Dutch differs from German, or Portuguese from Spanish.

“In the Island of Hai-nan (Hái-lâm), again (setting aside the central aborigines), a language is spoken which differs from Amoy more than that of Swatow, but is more nearly related to these two than to any other of the languages of China.

“In Fuh-chau fu we have another language which is largely spoken in the centre and north of Fuh-kien. This has many points of resemblance to the Amoy, but is quite unintelligible to the Amoy people, with the exception of an occasional word or phrase.

“Hing-hwa fu (Heng-hoà), between Fuh-chau and Chinchew, has also a language of its own, though containing only two Hien districts. It is alleged to be unintelligible both at Amoy and at Fuhchau.

“To the other languages of China that of Amoy is less closely related; yet all evidently spring from one common stock. But that common stock is not the modern Mandarin dialect, but the ancient form of the Chinese language as spoken some 3000 years ago. The so-called Mandarin, far from being the original form, is usually more changed than any. It is in the ancient form of the language (naturally) that the relation of Chinese to other languages can best be traced; and as the Amoy vernacular, which very generally retains the final consonants in their original shape, has been one of the chief sources from which the ancient form of Chinese has been recovered, the study of that vernacular is of considerable importance.”

NOTE 7.—This is inconsistent with his former statements as to the supreme wealth of Kinsay. But with Marco the subject in hand is always pro magnifico.

Ramusio says that the Traveller will now “begin to speak of the territories, cities, and provinces of the Greater, Lesser, and Middle India, in which regions he was when in the service of the Great Kaan, being sent thither on divers matters of business. And then again when he returned to the same quarter with the queen of King Argon, and with his father and uncle, on his way back to his native land. So he will relate the strange things that he saw in those Indies, not omitting others which he heard related by persons of reputation and worthy of credit, and things that were pointed out to him on the maps of manners of the Indies aforesaid.”

Book II

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Dr. C. Douglas objects to this derivation of Zayton, that the place was never called Tseut’ung absolutely, but T’seu-t’ung-ching, “city of prickly T’ung-trees”; and this not as a name, but as a polite literary epithet, somewhat like “City of Palaces” applied to Calcutta.

[2] Giovanni did not get to Zayton; but two years later he got to Canton with Fernão Perez, was sent ashore as Factor, and a few days after died of fever. (De Barros, III. II. viii.) The way in which Botero, a compiler in the latter part of the 16th century, speaks of Zayton as between Canton and Liampo (Ningpo), and exporting immense quantities of porcelain, salt and sugar, looks as if he had before him modern information as to the place. He likewise observes, “All the moderns note the port of Zaiton between Canton and Liampo.” Yet I know no other modern allusion except Giovanni d’Empoli’s; and that was printed only a few years ago. (Botero, Relazione Universale, pp. 97, 228.)

[3] Martini says of Ganhai (’An-Hai or Ngan-Hai), “Ingens hic mercium ac Sinensium navium copia est ... ex his (’Anhai and Amoy) in totam Indiam merces avehuntur.”

[4] Dr. Douglas assures me that the cut at p. 245 is an excellent view of the entrance to the S. channel of the _Chang-chau River_, though I derived it from a professed view of the mouth of the Chinchew River. I find he is quite right; see _List of Illustrations_.

[5] In a modern Chinese geographical work abstracted by Mr. Laidlay, we are told that the great river of Tsim-lo, or Siam, “penetrates to a branch of the Hwang-Ho.” (J. A. S. B. XVII. Pt. I. 157.)

[6] CHINESE-ENGLISH DICTIONARY of the Vernacular or Spoken language of Amoy, with the principal variations of the Chang-chew and Chin-chew Dialects; by the Rev. Carstairs Douglas, M.A., LL.D., Glasg., Missionary of the Presb. Church in England. (Trübner, 1873.) I must note that I have not access to the book itself, but condense these remarks from extracts and abstracts made by a friend at my request.

BOOK THIRD.

JAPAN, THE ARCHIPELAGO, SOUTHERN INDIA, AND THE COASTS AND ISLANDS OF THE INDIAN SEA

Chapter I

OF THE MERCHANT SHIPS OF MANZI THAT SAIL UPON THE INDIAN SEAS.

Having finished our discourse concerning those countries wherewith our Book hath been occupied thus far, we are now about to enter on the subject of INDIA, and to tell you of all the wonders thereof.

And first let us speak of the ships in which merchants go to and fro amongst the Isles of India.

These ships, you must know, are of fir timber.{1} They have but one deck, though each of them contains some 50 or 60 cabins, wherein the merchants abide greatly at their ease, every man having one to himself. The ship hath but one rudder, but it hath four masts; and sometimes they have two additional masts, which they ship and unship at pleasure.{2}

[Moreover the larger of their vessels have some thirteen compartments or severances in the interior, made with planking strongly framed, in case mayhap the ship should spring a leak, either by running on a rock or by the blow of a hungry whale (as shall betide ofttimes, for when the ship in her course by night sends a ripple back alongside of the whale, the creature seeing the foam fancies there is something to eat afloat, and makes a rush forward, whereby it often shall stave in some part of the ship). In such case the water that enters the leak flows to the bilge, which is always kept clear; and the mariners having ascertained where the damage is, empty the cargo from that compartment into those adjoining, for the planking is so well fitted that the water cannot pass from one compartment to another. They then stop the leak and replace the lading.{3}]

The fastenings are all of good iron nails and the sides are double, one plank laid over the other, and caulked outside and in. The planks are not pitched, for those people do not have any pitch, but they daub the sides with another matter, deemed by them far better than pitch; it is this. You see they take some lime and some chopped hemp, and these they knead together with a certain wood-oil; and when the three are thoroughly amalgamated, they hold like any glue. And with this mixture they do paint their ships.{4}

Each of their great ships requires at least 200 mariners [some of them 300]. They are indeed of great size, for one ship shall carry 5000 or 6000 baskets of pepper [and they used formerly to be larger than they are now]. And aboard these ships, you must know, when there is no wind they use sweeps, and these sweeps are so big that to pull them requires four mariners to each.{5} Every great ship has certain large barks or tenders attached to it; these are large enough to carry 1000 baskets of pepper, and carry 50 or 60 mariners apiece [some of them 80 or 100], and they are likewise moved by oars; they assist the great ship by towing her, at such times as her sweeps are in use [or even when she is under sail, if the wind be somewhat on the beam; not if the wind be astern, for then the sails of the big ship would take the wind out of those of the tenders, and she would run them down]. Each ship has two [or three] of these barks, but one is bigger than the others. There are also some ten [small] boats for the service of each great ship, to lay out the anchors, catch fish, bring supplies aboard, and the like. When the ship is under sail she carries these boats slung to her sides. And the large tenders have their boats in like manner.

When the ship has been a year in work and they wish to repair her, they nail on a third plank over the first two, and caulk and pay it well; and when another repair is wanted they nail on yet another plank, and so on year by year as it is required. Howbeit, they do this only for a certain number of years, and till there are six thicknesses of planking. When a ship has come to have six planks on her sides, one over the other, they take her no more on the high seas, but make use of her for coasting as long as she will last, and then they break her up.{6}

Now that I have told you about the ships which sail upon the Ocean Sea and among the Isles of India, let us proceed to speak of the various wonders of India; but first and foremost I must tell you about a number of Islands that there are in that part of the Ocean Sea where we now are, I mean the Islands lying to the eastward. So let us begin with an Island which is called Chipangu.

NOTE 1.—Pine [Pinus sinensis] is [still] the staple timber for ship-building both at Canton and in Fo-kien. There is a very large export of it from Fu-chau, and even the chief fuel at that city is from a kind of fir. Several varieties of pine-wood are also brought down the rivers for sale at Canton. (N. and Q., China and Japan, I. 170; Fortune, I. 286; Doolittle.)

NOTE 2.—Note the one rudder again. (Supra, Bk. I. ch. xix. note 3.) One of the shifting masts was probably a bowsprit, which, according to Lecomte, the Chinese occasionally use, very slight, and planted on the larboard bow.

NOTE 3.—The system of water-tight compartments, for the description of which we have to thank Ramusio’s text, in our own time introduced into European construction, is still maintained by the Chinese, not only in sea-going junks, but in the larger river craft. (See Mid. Kingd. II. 25; Blakiston, 88; Deguignes, I. 204–206.)

NOTE 4.—This still remains quite correct, hemp, old nets, and the fibre of a certain creeper being used for oakum. The wood-oil is derived from a tree called Tong-shu, I do not know if identical with the wood-oil trees of Arakan and Pegu (Dipterocarpus laevis).

[“What goes under the name of ‘wood-oil’ to-day in China is the poisonous oil obtained from the nuts of Elæococca verrucosa. It is much used for painting and caulking ships.” (Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc. I. p. 4.)—H. C.]

NOTE 5.—The junks that visit Singapore still use these sweeps. (J. Ind. Arch. II. 607.) Ibn Batuta puts a much larger number of men to each. It will be seen from his account below that great ropes were attached to the oars to pull by, the bulk of timber being too large to grasp; as in the old French galleys wooden manettes or grips, were attached to the oar for the same purpose.

NOTE 6.—The Chinese sea-going vessels of those days were apparently larger than was at all common in European navigation. Marco here speaks of 200 (or in Ramusio up to 300) mariners, a large crew indeed for a merchant vessel, but not so great as is implied in Odoric’s statement, that the ship in which he went from India to China had 700 souls on board. The numbers carried by Chinese junks are occasionally still enormous. “In February, 1822, Captain Pearl, of the English ship Indiana, coming through Caspar Straits, fell in with the cargo and crew of a wrecked junk, and saved 198 persons out of 1600, with whom she had left Amoy, whom he landed at Pontianak. This humane act cost him 11,000_l._” (Quoted by Williams from Chin. Rep. VI. 149.)

The following are some other mediæval accounts of the China shipping, all unanimous as to the main facts.

Friar Jordanus:—“The vessels which they navigate to Cathay be very big, and have upon the ship’s hull more than one hundred cabins, and with a fair wind they carry ten sails, and they are very bulky, being made of three thicknesses of plank, so that the first thickness is as in our great ships, the second crosswise, the third again longwise. In sooth, ’tis a very strong affair!” (55.)

Nicolo Conti:—“They build some ships much larger than ours, capable of containing 2000 butts (vegetes), with five masts and five sails. The lower part is constructed with triple planking, in order to withstand the force of the tempests to which they are exposed. And the ships are divided into compartments, so formed that if one part be shattered the rest remains in good order, and enables the vessel to complete its voyage.”

Ibn Batuta:—“Chinese ships only are used in navigating the sea of China.... There are three classes of these: (1) the Large, which are called Jonúk (sing. Junk); (2) the Middling, which are called Zao; and (3) the Small, called Kakam. Each of the greater ships has from twelve sails down to three. These are made of bamboo laths woven into a kind of mat; they are never lowered, and they are braced this way and that as the wind may blow. When these vessels anchor the sails are allowed to fly loose. Each ship has a crew of 1000 men, viz. 600 mariners and 400 soldiers, among whom are archers, target-men, and cross-bow men to shoot naphtha. Each large vessel is attended by three others, which are called respectively ‘The Half,’ ‘The Third,’ and ‘The Quarter.’ These vessels are built only at Zayton, in China, and at Sínkalán or Sín-ul-Sín (i.e. Canton). This is the way they are built. They construct two walls of timber, which they connect by very thick slabs of wood, clenching all fast this way and that with huge spikes, each of which is three cubits in length. When the two walls have been united by these slabs they apply the bottom planking, and then launch the hull before completing the construction. The timbers projecting from the sides towards the water serve the crew for going down to wash and for other needs. And to these projecting timbers are attached the oars, which are like masts in size, and need from 10 to 15 men[1] to ply each of them. There are about 20 of these great oars, and the rowers at each oar stand in two ranks facing one another. The oars are provided with two strong cords or cables; each rank pulls at one of these and then lets go, whilst the other rank pulls on the opposite cable. These rowers have a pleasant chaunt at their work usually, singing Lá’ la! Lá’ la![2] The three tenders which we have mentioned above also use oars, and tow the great ships when required.

“On each ship four decks are constructed; and there are cabins and public rooms for the merchants. Some of these cabins are provided with closets and other conveniences, and they have keys so that their tenants can lock them, and carry with them their wives or concubines. The crew in some of the cabins have their children, and they sow kitchen herbs, ginger, etc., in wooden buckets. The captain is a very great Don; and when he lands, the archers and negro-slaves march before him with javelins, swords, drums, horns, and trumpets.” (IV. pp. 91 seqq. and 247 seqq. combined.) Comparing this very interesting description with Polo’s, we see that they agree in all essentials except size and the number of decks. It is not unlikely that the revival of the trade with India, which Kúblái stimulated, may have in its development under his successors led to the revival also of the larger ships of former times to which Marco alludes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Or even 30 (p. 248).

[2] Corresponding to the “Hevelow and rumbelow” of the Christian oarsmen. (See Cœur de Lion in Weber, II. 99.)Return to passage

Chapter II

DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLAND OF CHIPANGU, AND THE GREAT KAAN’S DESPATCH OF A HOST AGAINST IT.

Chipangu is an Island towards the east in the high seas, 1500 miles distant from the Continent; and a very great Island it is.{1}

The people are white, civilized, and well-favoured. They are Idolaters, and are dependent on nobody. And I can tell you the quantity of gold they have is endless; for they find it in their own Islands, [and the King does not allow it to be exported. Moreover] few merchants visit the country because it is so far from the main land, and thus it comes to pass that their gold is abundant beyond all measure.{2}

I will tell you a wonderful thing about the Palace of the Lord of that Island. You must know that he hath a great Palace which is entirely roofed with fine gold, just as our churches are roofed with lead, insomuch that it would scarcely be possible to estimate its value. Moreover, all the pavement of the Palace, and the floors of its chambers, are entirely of gold, in plates like slabs of stone, a good two fingers thick; and the windows also are of gold, so that altogether the richness of this Palace is past all bounds and all belief.{3}

They have also pearls in abundance, which are of a rose colour, but fine, big, and round, and quite as valuable as the white ones. [In this Island some of the dead are buried, and others are burnt. When a body is burnt, they put one of these pearls in the mouth, for such is their custom.] They have also quantities of other precious stones.{4}

Cublay, the Grand Kaan who now reigneth, having heard much of the immense wealth that was in this Island, formed a plan to get possession of it. For this purpose he sent two of his Barons with a great navy, and a great force of horse and foot. These Barons were able and valiant men, one of them called ABACAN and the other VONSAINCHIN, and they weighed with all their company from the ports of Zayton and Kinsay, and put out to sea. They sailed until they reached the Island aforesaid, and there they landed, and occupied the open country and the villages, but did not succeed in getting possession of any city or castle. And so a disaster befel them, as I shall now relate.

You must know that there was much ill-will between those two Barons, so that one would do nothing to help the other. And it came to pass that there arose a north wind which blew with great fury, and caused great damage along the coasts of that Island, for its harbours were few. It blew so hard that the Great Kaan’s fleet could not stand against it. And when the chiefs saw that, they came to the conclusion that if the ships remained where they were the whole navy would perish. So they all got on board and made sail to leave the country. But when they had gone about four miles they came to a small Island, on which they were driven ashore in spite of all they could do; and a large part of the fleet was wrecked, and a great multitude of the force perished, so that there escaped only some 30,000 men, who took refuge on this Island.

These held themselves for dead men, for they were without food, and knew not what to do, and they were in great despair when they saw that such of the ships as had escaped the storm were making full sail for their own country without the slightest sign of turning back to help them. And this was because of the bitter hatred between the two Barons in command of the force; for the Baron who escaped never showed the slightest desire to return to his colleague who was left upon the Island in the way you have heard; though he might easily have done so after the storm ceased; and it endured not long. He did nothing of the kind, however, but made straight for home. And you must know that the Island to which the soldiers had escaped was uninhabited; there was not a creature upon it but themselves.

Now we will tell you what befel those who escaped on the fleet, and also those who were left upon the Island.

NOTE 1.—✛CHIPANGU represents the Chinese Jih-pên-kwé, the kingdom of Japan, the name Jih-pên being the Chinese pronunciation, of which the term Nippon, Niphon or Nihon, used in Japan, is a dialectic variation, both meaning “the origin of the sun,” or sun-rising, the place the sun comes from. The name Chipangu is used also by Rashiduddin. Our Japan was probably taken from the Malay Japún or Japáng.

[“The name Nihon (‘Japan’) seems to have been first officially employed by the Japanese Government in A.D. 670. Before that time, the usual native designation of the country was Yamato, properly the name of one of the central provinces. Yamato and Ō-mi-kuni, that is, ‘the Great August Country,’ are the names still preferred in poetry and belles-lettres. Japan has other ancient names, some of which are of learned length and thundering sound, for instance, Toyo-ashi-wara-no-chi-aki-no-naga-i-ho-aki-no-mizu-ho-no-kuni, that is ‘the Luxuriant-Reed-Plains-the-Land-of-Fresh-Rice-Ears-of- a-Thousand-Autumns-of-Long-Five-Hundred-Autumns.’” (B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 3rd ed. p. 222.)—H. C.]

It is remarkable that the name Nipon occurs, in the form of Al-Náfún, in the Ikhwán-al-Safá, supposed to date from the 10th century. (See J. A. S. B. XVII. Pt. I. 502.)

[I shall merely mention the strange theory of Mr. George Collingridge that Zipangu is Java and not Japan in his paper on The Early Cartography of Japan. (Geog. Jour. May, 1894, pp. 403–409.) Mr. F. G. Kramp (Japan or Java?), in the Tijdschrift v. het K. Nederl. Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, 1894, and Mr. H. Yule Oldham (Geog. Jour., September, 1894, pp. 276–279), have fully replied to this paper.—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—The causes briefly mentioned in the text maintained the abundance and low price of gold in Japan till the recent opening of the trade. (See Bk. II. ch. 1. note 5.) Edrisi had heard that gold in the isles of Sila (or Japan) was so abundant that dog-collars were made of it.

NOTE 3.—This was doubtless an old “yarn,” repeated from generation to generation. We find in a Chinese work quoted by Amyot: “The palace of the king (of Japan) is remarkable for its singular construction. It is a vast edifice, of extraordinary height; it has nine stories, and presents on all sides an exterior shining with the purest gold.” (Mém. conc. les Chinois, XIV. 55.) See also a like story in Kaempfer. (H. du Japon, I. 139.)

NOTE 4.—Kaempfer speaks of pearls being found in considerable numbers, chiefly about Satsuma, and in the Gulf of Omura, in Kiusiu. From what Alcock says they do not seem now to be abundant. (Ib. I. 95; Alcock, I. 200.) No precious stones are mentioned by Kaempfer.

Rose-tinted pearls are frequent among the Scotch pearls, and, according to Mr. King, those of this tint are of late the most highly esteemed in Paris. Such pearls were perhaps also most highly esteemed in old India; for red pearls (Lohitamukti) form one of the seven precious objects which it was incumbent to use in the adornment of Buddhistic reliquaries, and to distribute at the building of a Dagoba. (Nat. Hist. of Prec. Stones, etc., 263; Koeppen, I. 541.)

Chapter III

WHAT FURTHER CAME OF THE GREAT KAAN’S EXPEDITION AGAINST CHIPANGU.

You see those who were left upon the Island, some 30,000 souls, as I have said, did hold themselves for dead men, for they saw no possible means of escape. And when the King of the Great Island got news how the one part of the expedition had saved themselves upon that Isle, and the other part was scattered and fled, he was right glad thereat, and he gathered together all the ships of his territory and proceeded with them, the sea now being calm, to the little Isle, and landed his troops all round it. And when the Tartars saw them thus arrive, and the whole force landed, without any guard having been left on board the ships (the act of men very little acquainted with such work), they had the sagacity to feign flight. [Now the Island was very high in the middle, and whilst the enemy were hastening after them by one road they fetched a compass by another and] in this way managed to reach the enemy’s ships and to get aboard of them. This they did easily enough, for they encountered no opposition.

Once they were on board they got under weigh immediately for the great Island, and landed there, carrying with them the standards and banners of the King of the Island; and in this wise they advanced to the capital. The garrison of the city, suspecting nothing wrong, when they saw their own banners advancing supposed that it was their own host returning, and so gave them admittance. The Tartars as soon as they had got in seized all the bulwarks and drove out all who were in the place except the pretty women, and these they kept for themselves. In this way the Great Kaan’s people got possession of the city.

When the King of the great Island and his army perceived that both fleet and city were lost, they were greatly cast down; howbeit, they got away to the great Island on board some of the ships which had not been carried off. And the King then gathered all his host to the siege of the city, and invested it so straitly that no one could go in or come out. Those who were within held the place for seven months, and strove by all means to send word to the Great Kaan; but it was all in vain, they never could get the intelligence carried to him. So when they saw they could hold out no longer they gave themselves up, on condition that their lives should be spared, but still that they should never quit the Island. And this befel in the year of our Lord 1279.{1} The Great Kaan ordered the Baron who had fled so disgracefully to lose his head. And afterwards he caused the other also, who had been left on the Island, to be put to death, for he had never behaved as a good soldier ought to do.{2}

But I must tell you a wonderful thing that I had forgotten, which happened on this expedition.

You see, at the beginning of the affair, when the Kaan’s people had landed on the great Island and occupied the open country as I told you, they stormed a tower belonging to some of the islanders who refused to surrender, and they cut off the heads of all the garrison except eight; on these eight they found it impossible to inflict any wound! Now this was by virtue of certain stones which they had in their arms inserted between the skin and the flesh, with such skill as not to show at all externally. And the charm and virtue of these stones was such that those who wore them could never perish by steel. So when the Barons learned this they ordered the men to be beaten to death with clubs. And after their death the stones were extracted from the bodies of all, and were greatly prized.{3}

Now the story of the discomfiture of the Great Kaan’s folk came to pass as I have told you. But let us have done with that matter, and return to our subject.

NOTE 1.—Kúblái had long hankered after the conquest of Japan, or had at least, after his fashion, desired to obtain an acknowledgment of supremacy from the Japanese sovereign. He had taken steps in this view as early as 1266, but entirely without success. The fullest accessible particulars respecting his efforts are contained in the Japanese Annals translated by Titsing; and these are in complete accordance with the Chinese histories as given by Gaubil, De Mailla, and in Pauthier’s extracts, so far as these three latter enter into particulars. But it seems clear from the comparison that the Japanese chronicler had the Chinese Annals in his hands.

In 1268, 1269, 1270, and 1271, Kúblái’s efforts were repeated to little purpose, and, provoked at this, in 1274, he sent a fleet of 300 vessels with 15,000 men against Japan. This was defeated near the Island of Tsushima with heavy loss.

Nevertheless Kúblái seems in the following years to have renewed his attempts at negotiation. The Japanese patience was exhausted, and, in 1280, they put one of his ambassadors to death.

“As soon as the Moko (Mongols) heard of this, they assembled a considerable army to conquer Japan. When informed of their preparations, the Dairi sent ambassadors to Ize and other temples to invoke the gods. Fosiono Toki Mune, who resided at Kama Kura, ordered troops to assemble at Tsukuzi (Tsikouzen of Alcock’s Map), and sent ... numerous detachments to Miyako to guard the Dairi and the Togou (Heir Apparent) against all danger.... In the first moon (of 1281) the Mongols named Asikan (Ngo Tsa-han[1]), Fan-bunko (Fan Wen-hu), Kinto (Hintu), and Kosakio (Hung Cha-khieu), Generals of their army, which consisted of 100,000 men, and was embarked on numerous ships of war. Asikan fell ill on the passage, and this made the second General (Fan Wen-hu) undecided as to his course.

“7th Month. The entire fleet arrived at the Island of Firando (P’hing-hu), and passed thence to Goriosan (Ulungshan). The troops of Tsukuzi were under arms. 1st of 3rd Month. A frightful storm arose; the Mongol ships foundered or were sorely shattered. The General (Fan Wen-hu) fled with the other Generals on the vessels that had least suffered; nobody has ever heard what became of them. The army of 100,000 men, which had landed below Goriosan, wandered about for three days without provisions; and the soldiers began to plan the building of vessels in which they might escape to China.

“7th day. The Japanese army invested and attacked them with great vigour. The Mongols were totally defeated. 30,000 of them were made prisoners and conducted to Fakata (the Fokouoka of Alcock’s Map, but Fakatta in Kaempfer’s), and there put to death. Grace was extended to only (three men), who were sent to China with the intelligence of the fate of the army. The destruction of so numerous a fleet was considered the most evident proof of the protection of the gods.” (Titsingh, pp. 264–265.) At p. 259 of the same work Klaproth gives another account from the Japanese Encyclopædia; the difference is not material.

The Chinese Annals, in De Mailla, state that the Japanese spared 10,000 or 12,000 of the Southern Chinese, whom they retained as slaves. Gaubil says that 30,000 Mongols were put to death, whilst 70,000 Coreans and Chinese were made slaves.

Kúblái was loth to put up with this huge discomfiture, and in 1283 he made preparations for another expedition; but the project excited strong discontent; so strong that some Buddhist monks whom he sent before to collect information, were thrown overboard by the Chinese sailors; and he gave it up. (De Mailla, IX. 409; 418, 428; Gaubil, 195; Deguignes, III. 177.)

The Abacan of Polo is probably the Asikan of the Japanese, whom Gaubil calls Argan. Vonsainchin is perhaps Fan Wen-hu with the Chinese title of Tsiang-Kiun or General (elsewhere represented in Polo by Sangon),—FAN TSIANG-KIUN.

We see that, as usual, whilst Marco’s account in some of the main features concurs with that of the histories, he gives a good many additional particulars, some of which, such as the ill-will between the Generals, are no doubt genuine. But of the story of the capture of the Japanese capital by the shipwrecked army we know not what to make: we can’t accept it certainly.

[The Korea Review publishes a History of Korea based upon Korean and Chinese sources, from which we gather some interesting facts regarding the relations of China, Korea, and Japan at the time of Kúblái: “In 1265, the seed was sown that led to the attempted invasion of Japan by the Mongols. A Koryŭ citizen, Cho I., found his way to Peking, and there, having gained the ear of the emperor, told him that the Mongol powers ought to secure the vassalage of Japan. The emperor listened favourably and determined to make advances in that direction. He therefore appointed Heuk Chŭk and Eun Hong as envoys to Japan, and ordered them to go by way of Koryŭ and take with them to Japan a Koryŭ envoy as well. Arriving in Koryŭ they delivered this message to the king, and two officials, Son Kun-bi and Kim Ch’an, were appointed to accompany them to Japan. They proceeded by the way of Kŏje Harbor in Kyŭng-sang Province, but were driven back by a fierce storm, and the king sent the Mongol envoys back to Peking. The Emperor was ill satisfied with the outcome of the adventure, and sent Heuk Chŭk with a letter to the king, ordering him to forward the Mongol envoy to Japan. The message which he was to deliver to the ruler of Japan said, ‘The Mongol power is kindly disposed towards you and desires to open friendly intercourse with you. She does not desire your submission, but if you accept her patronage, the great Mongol empire will cover the earth.’ The king forwarded the message with the envoys to Japan, and informed the emperor of the fact.... The Mongol and Koryŭ envoys, upon reaching the Japanese capital, were treated with marked disrespect.... They remained five months, ... and at last they were dismissed without receiving any answer either to the emperor or to the king.” (II. pp. 37, 38.)

Such was the beginning of the difficulties with Japan; this is the end of them: “The following year, 1283, changed the emperor’s purpose. He had time to hear the whole story of the sufferings of his army in the last invasion; the impossibility of squeezing anything more out of Koryŭ, and the delicate condition of home affairs, united in causing him to give up the project of conquering Japan, and he countermanded the order for the building of boats and the storing of grain.” (II. p. 82.)

Japan was then, for more than a century (A.D. 1205–1333), governed really in the name of the descendants of Yoritomo, who proved unworthy of their great ancestor “by the so-called ‘Regents’ of the Hōjō family, while their liege lords, the Shōguns, though keeping a nominal court at Kamakura, were for all that period little better than empty names. So completely were the Hōjōs masters of the whole country, that they actually had their deputy governors at Kyōtō and in Kyūshū in the south-west, and thought nothing of banishing Mikados to distant islands. Their rule was made memorable by the repulse of the Mongol fleet sent by Kúblái Khan with the purpose of adding Japan to his gigantic dominions. This was at the end of the 13th century, since which time Japan has never been attacked from without.” (B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 3rd ed., 1898, pp. 208–209.)

The sovereigns (Mikado, Tennō) of Japan during this period were: Kameyama-Tennō (1260; abdicated 1274; repulse of the Mongols); Go-Uda-Tennō (1275; abdicated 1287); Fushimi-Tennō (1288; abdicated 1298); and Go-Fushimi Tennō. The shikken (prime ministers) were Hōjō Tokiyori (1246); Hōjō Tokimune (1261); Hōjō Sadatoki (1284). In 1266 Prince Kore-yasu and in 1289 Hisa-akira, were appointed shōgun.—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—Ram. says he was sent to a certain island called Zorza (Chorcha?), where men who have failed in duty are put to death in this manner: They wrap the arms of the victim in the hide of a newly flayed buffalo, and sew it tight. As this dries it compresses him so terribly that he cannot move, and so, finding no help, his life ends in misery. The same kind of torture is reported of different countries in the East: e.g. see Makrizi, Pt. III. p. 108, and Pottinger, as quoted by Marsden in loco. It also appears among the tortures of a Buddhist hell as represented in a temple at Canton. (Oliphant’s Narrative, I. 168.)

NOTE 3.—Like devices to procure invulnerability are common in the Indo-Chinese countries. The Burmese sometimes insert pellets of gold under the skin with this view. At a meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1868, gold and silver coins were shown, which had been extracted from under the skin of a Burmese convict who had been executed at the Andaman Islands. Friar Odoric speaks of the practice in one of the Indian Islands (apparently Borneo); and the stones possessing such virtue were, according to him, found in the bamboo, presumably the siliceous concretions called Tabashir. Conti also describes the practice in Java of inserting such amulets under the skin. The Malays of Sumatra, too, have great faith in the efficacy of certain “stones, which they pretend are extracted from reptiles, birds, animals, etc., in preventing them from being wounded.” (See Mission to Ava, p. 208; Cathay, 94; Conti, p. 32; Proc. As. Soc. Beng. 1868, p. 116; Anderson’s Mission to Sumatra, p. 323.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] These names in parentheses are the Chinese forms; the others, the Japanese modes of reading them.

IV. CONCERNING THE FASHION OF THE IDOLS

Now you must know that the Idols of Cathay, and of Manzi, and of this Island, are all of the same class. And in this Island as well as elsewhere, there be some of the Idols that have the head of an ox, some that have the head of a pig, some of a dog, some of a sheep, and some of divers other kinds. And some of them have four heads, whilst some have three, one growing out of either shoulder. There are also some that have four hands, some ten, some a thousand! And they do put more faith in those Idols that have a thousand hands than in any of the others.{1} And when any Christian asks them why they make their Idols in so many different guises, and not all alike, they reply that just so their forefathers were wont to have them made, and just so they will leave them to their children, and these to the after generations. And so they will be handed down for ever. And you must understand that the deeds ascribed to these Idols are such a parcel of devilries as it is best not to tell. So let us have done with the Idols, and speak of other things.

But I must tell you one thing still concerning that Island (and ’tis the same with the other Indian Islands), that if the natives take prisoner an enemy who cannot pay a ransom, he who hath the prisoner summons all his friends and relations, and they put the prisoner to death, and then they cook him and eat him, and they say there is no meat in the world so good!—But now we will have done with that Island and speak of something else.

You must know the Sea in which lie the Islands of those parts is called the SEA OF CHIN, which is as much as to say “The Sea over against Manzi.” For, in the language of those Isles, when they say Chin, ’tis Manzi they mean. And I tell you with regard to that Eastern Sea of Chin, according to what is said by the experienced pilots and mariners of those parts, there be 7459 Islands in the waters frequented by the said mariners; and that is how they know the fact, for their whole life is spent in navigating that sea. And there is not one of those Islands but produces valuable and odorous woods like the lignaloe, aye and better too; and they produce also a great variety of spices. For example in those Islands grows pepper as white as snow, as well as the black in great quantities. In fact the riches of those Islands is something wonderful, whether in gold or precious stones, or in all manner of spicery; but they lie so far off from the main land that it is hard to get to them. And when the ships of Zayton and Kinsay do voyage thither they make vast profits by their venture.{2}

It takes them a whole year for the voyage, going in winter and returning in summer. For in that Sea there are but two winds that blow, the one that carries them outward and the other that brings them homeward; and the one of these winds blows all the winter, and the other all the summer. And you must know these regions are so far from India that it takes a long time also for the voyage thence.

Though that Sea is called the Sea of Chin, as I have told you, yet it is part of the Ocean Sea all the same. But just as in these parts people talk of the Sea of England and the Sea of Rochelle, so in those countries they speak of the Sea of Chin and the Sea of India, and so on, though they all are but parts of the Ocean.{3}

Now let us have done with that region which is very inaccessible and out of the way. Moreover, Messer Marco Polo never was there. And let me tell you the Great Kaan has nothing to do with them, nor do they render him any tribute or service.

So let us go back to Zayton and take up the order of our book from that point.{4}

NOTE 1.—“Several of the (Chinese) gods have horns on the forehead, or wear animals’ heads; some have three eyes.... Some are represented in the Indian manner with a multiplicity of arms. We saw at Yang-cheu fu a goddess with thirty arms.” (Deguignes, I. 364–366.)

The reference to any particular form of idolatry here is vague. But in Tibetan Buddhism, with which Marco was familiar, all these extravagances are prominent, though repugnant to the more orthodox Buddhism of the South.

When the Dalai Lama came to visit the Altun Khan, to secure the reconversion of the Mongols in 1577, he appeared as a manifest embodiment of the Bodhisatva Avalokiteçvara, with four hands, of which two were always folded across the breast! The same Bodhisatva is sometimes represented with eleven heads. Manjushri manifests himself in a golden body with 1000 hands and 1000 Pátras or vessels, in each of which were 1000 figures of Sakya visible, etc. (Koeppen, II. 137; Vassilyev, 200.)

NOTE 2.—Polo seems in this passage to be speaking of the more easterly Islands of the Archipelago, such as the Philippines, the Moluccas, etc., but with vague ideas of their position.

NOTE 3.—In this passage alone Polo makes use of the now familiar name of CHINA. “Chin,” as he says, “in the language of those Isles means Manzi.” In fact, though the form Chin is more correctly Persian, we do get the exact form China from “the language of those Isles,” i.e. from the Malay. China is also used in Japanese.

What he says about the Ocean and the various names of its parts is nearly a version of a passage in the geographical Poem of Dionysius, ending:—

Οὕτωϛ Ὠκεανὸς περιδέδρομε λαῖαν ἅπασαν Τοῖος ἐὼν καὶ τοῖα μετ’ ἀνδράσιν οὐνόμαθ’ ἔλκων (42–3).

So also Abulfeda: “This is the sea which flows from the Ocean Sea.... This sea takes the names of the countries it washes. Its eastern extremity is called the Sea of Chin ... the part west of this is called the Sea of India ... then comes the Sea of Fárs, the Sea of Berbera, and lastly the Sea of Kolzum” (Red Sea).

NOTE 4.—The Ramusian here inserts a short chapter, shown by the awkward way in which it comes in to be a very manifest interpolation, though possibly still an interpolation by the Traveller’s hand:—

“Leaving the port of Zayton you sail westward and something south-westward for 1500 miles, passing a gulf called CHEINAN, having a length of two months’ sail towards the north. Along the whole of its south-east side it borders on the province of Manzi, and on the other side with Anin and Coloman, and many other provinces formerly spoken of. Within this Gulf there are innumerable Islands, almost all well-peopled; and in these is found a great quantity of gold-dust, which is collected from the sea where the rivers discharge. There is copper also, and other things; and the people drive a trade with each other in the things that are peculiar to their respective Islands. They have also a traffic with the people of the mainland, selling them gold and copper and other things; and purchasing in turn what they stand in need of. In the greater part of these Islands plenty of corn grows. This gulf is so great, and inhabited by so many people, that it seems like a world in itself.”

This passage is translated by Marsden with much forcing, so as to describe the China Sea, embracing the Philippine Islands, etc.; but, as a matter of fact, it seems clearly to indicate the writer’s conception as of a great gulf running up into the continent between Southern China and Tong-king for a length equal to two months’ journey.

The name of the gulf, Cheinan, i.e. Heinan, may either be that of the Island so called, or, as I rather incline to suppose, ’An-nan, i.e. Tong-king. But even by Camoens, writing at Macao in 1559–1560, the Gulf of Hainan is styled an unknown sea (though this perhaps is only appropriate to the prophetic speaker):—

“Vês, corre a costa, que Champa se chama, Cuja mata he do pao cheiroso ornada: Vês, Cauchichina está de escura fama, E de Aināo vê a incognita enseada” (X. 129).

And in Sir Robert Dudley’s Arcano del Mare (Firenze, 1647), we find a great bottle-necked gulf, of some 5½° in length, running up to the north from Tong-king, very much as I have represented the Gulf of Cheinan in the attempt to realise Polo’s Own Geography. (See map in Introductory Essay.)

V. OF THE GREAT COUNTRY CALLED CHAMBA

You must know that on leaving the port of Zayton you sail west-south-west for 1500 miles, and then you come to a country called CHAMBA,{1} a very rich region, having a king of its own. The people are Idolaters and pay a yearly tribute to the Great Kaan, which consists of elephants and nothing but elephants. And I will tell you how they came to pay this tribute.

It happened in the year of Christ 1278 that the Great Kaan sent a Baron of his called Sagatu with a great force of horse and foot against this King of Chamba, and this Baron opened the war on a great scale against the King and his country.

Now the King [whose name was Accambale] was a very aged man, nor had he such a force as the Baron had. And when he saw what havoc the Baron was making with his kingdom he was grieved to the heart. So he bade messengers get ready and despatched them to the Great Kaan. And they said to the Kaan: “Our Lord the King of Chamba salutes you as his liege-lord, and would have you to know that he is stricken in years and long hath held his realm in peace. And now he sends you word by us that he is willing to be your liegeman, and will send you every year a tribute of as many elephants as you please. And he prays you in all gentleness and humility that you would send word to your Baron to desist from harrying his kingdom and to quit his territories. These shall henceforth be at your absolute disposal, and the King shall hold them of you.”

When the Great Kaan had heard the King’s ambassage he was moved with pity, and sent word to that Baron of his to quit that kingdom with his army, and to carry his arms to the conquest of some other country; and as soon as this command reached them they obeyed it. Thus it was then that this King became vassal of the Great Kaan, and paid him every year a tribute of 20 of the greatest and finest elephants that were to be found in the country.

But now we will leave that matter, and tell you other particulars about the King of Chamba.

You must know that in that kingdom no woman is allowed to marry until the King shall have seen her; if the woman pleases him then he takes her to wife; if she does not, he gives her a dowry to get her a husband withal. In the year of Christ 1285, Messer Marco Polo was in that country, and at that time the King had, between sons and daughters, 326 children, of whom at least 150 were men fit to carry arms.{2}

There are very great numbers of elephants in this kingdom, and they have lignaloes in great abundance. They have also extensive forests of the wood called Bonús, which is jet-black, and of which chessmen and pen-cases are made. But there is nought more to tell, so let us proceed.{3}

NOTE 1.—✛The name CHAMPA is of Indian origin, like the adjoining Kamboja and many other names in Indo-China, and was probably taken from that of an ancient Hindu city and state on the Ganges, near modern Bhágalpúr. Hiuen Tsang, in the 7th century, makes mention of the Indo-Chinese state as Mahāchampā (Pèl. Boudd., III. 83.)

The title of Champa down to the 15th century seems to have been applied by Western Asiatics to a kingdom which embraced the whole coast between Tong-king and Kamboja, including all that is now called Cochin China outside of Tong-king. It was termed by the Chinese Chen-Ching. In 1471 the King of Tong-king, Lê Thanh-tong, conquered the country, and the genuine people of Champa were reduced to a small number occupying the mountains of the province of Binh Thuan at the extreme south-east of the Coch. Chinese territory. To this part of the coast the name Champa is often applied in maps. (See J. A. sér. II. tom. xi. p. 31, and J. des Savans, 1822, p. 71.) The people of Champa in this restricted sense are said to exhibit Malay affinities, and they profess Mahomedanism. [“The Mussulmans of Binh-Thuan call themselves Bani or Orang Bani, ‘men mussulmans,’ probably from the Arabic beni ‘the sons,’ to distinguish them from the Chams Djat ‘of race,’ which they name also Kaphir or Akaphir, from the Arabic word kafer ‘pagans.’ These names are used in Binh-Thuan to make a distinction, but Banis and Kaphirs alike are all Chams.... In Cambodia all Chams are Mussulmans.” (E. Aymonier, Les Tchames, p. 26.) The religion of the pagan Chams of Binh-Thuan is degenerate Brahmanism with three chief gods, Po-Nagar, Po-Romé, and Po-Klong-Garaï. (Ibid., p. 35.)—H. C.] The books of their former religion they say (according to Dr. Bastian) that they received from Ceylon, but they were converted to Islamism by no less a person than ’Ali himself. The Tong-king people received their Buddhism from China, and this tradition puts Champa as the extreme flood-mark of that great tide of Buddhist proselytism, which went forth from Ceylon to the Indo-Chinese regions in an early century of our era, and which is generally connected with the name of Buddaghosha.

The prominent position of Champa on the route to China made its ports places of call for many ages, and in the earliest record of the Arab navigation to China we find the country noticed under the identical name (allowing for the deficiencies of the Arabic Alphabet) of Ṣanf or Chanf. Indeed it is highly probable that the Ζάβα or Ζάβαι of Ptolemy’s itinerary of the sea-route to the Sinae represents this same name.

[“It is true,” Sir Henry Yule wrote since (1882), “that Champa, as known in later days, lay to the east of the Mekong delta, whilst Zabai of the Greeks lay to the west of that and of the μέγα ακροτήριον—the Great Cape, or C. Cambodia of our maps. Crawford (Desc. Ind. Arch. p. 80) seems to say that the Malays include under the name Champa the whole of what we call Kamboja. This may possibly be a slip. But it is certain, as we shall see presently, that the Arab Ṣanf—which is unquestionably Champa—also lay west of the Cape, i.e. within the Gulf of Siam. The fact is that the Indo-Chinese kingdoms have gone through unceasing and enormous vicissitudes, and in early days Champa must have been extensive and powerful, for in the travels of Hiuen Tsang (about A.D. 629) it is called Mahâ-Champa. And my late friend Lieutenant Garnier, who gave great attention to these questions, has deduced from such data as exist in Chinese Annals and elsewhere, that the ancient kingdom which the Chinese describe under the name of Fu-nan, as extending over the whole peninsula east of the Gulf of Siam, was a kingdom of the Tsiam or Champa race. The locality of the ancient port of Zabai or Champa is probably to be sought on the west coast of Kamboja, near the Campot, or the Kang-kao of our maps. On this coast also was the Ḳomâr and Ḳamârah of Ibn Batuta and other Arab writers, the great source of aloes-wood, the country then of the Khmer or Kambojan People.” (Notes on the Oldest Records of the Sea-Route to China from Western Asia, Proc. R. G. S. 1882, pp. 656–657.)

M. Barth says that this identification would agree well with the testimony of his inscription XVIII. B., which comes from Angkor and for which Campā is a part of the Dakshiṇāpatha, of the southern country. But the capital of this rival State of Kamboja would thus be very near the Trêang province where inscriptions have been found with the names of Bhavavarman and of Īçānavarman. It is true that in 627, the King of Kamboja, according to the Chinese Annals (Nouv. Mél. As. I. p. 84), had subjugated the kingdom of Fu-nan identified by Yule and Garnier with Campā. Abel Rémusat (Nouv. Mél. As. I. pp. 75 and 77) identifies it with Tong-king and Stan. Julien (J. As. 4ᵉ Sér. X. p. 97) with Siam. (Inscrip. Sanscrites du Cambodge, 1885, pp. 69–70, note.)

Sir Henry Yule writes (l.c. p. 657): “We have said that the Arab Ṣanf, as well as the Greek Zabai, lay west of Cape Cambodia. This is proved by the statement that the Arabs on their voyage to China made a ten days’ run from Ṣanf to Pulo Condor.” But Abulfeda (transl. by Guyard, II. ii. p. 127) distinctly says that the Komār Peninsula (Khmer) is situated west of the Ṣanf Peninsula; between Ṣanf and Komār there is not a day’s journey by sea.

We have, however, another difficulty to overcome.

I agree with Sir Henry Yule and Marsden that in ch. vii. infra, p. 276, the text must be read, “When you leave Chamba,” instead of “When you leave Java.” Coming from Zayton and sailing 1500 miles, Polo arrives at Chamba; from Chamba, sailing 700 miles he arrives at the islands of Sondur and Condur, identified by Yule with Sundar Fúlát (Pulo Condore); from Sundar Fúlát, after 500 miles more, he finds the country called Locac; then he goes to Pentam (Bintang, 500 miles), Malaiur, and Java the Less (Sumatra). Ibn Khordâdhbeh’s itinerary agrees pretty well with Marco Polo’s, as Professor De Goeje remarks to me: “Starting from Mâit (Bintang), and leaving on the left Tiyuma (Timoan), in five days’ journey, one goes to Kimèr (Kmer, Cambodia), and after three days more, following the coast, arrives to Ṣanf; then to Lukyn, the first point of call in China, 100 parasangs by land or by sea; from Lukyn it takes four days by sea and twenty by land to go to Kanfu.” [Canton, see note, supra p. 199.] (See De Goeje’s Ibn Khordâdhbeh, p. 48 et seq.) But we come now to the difficulty. Professor De Goeje writes to me: “It is strange that in the Relation des Voyages of Reinaud, p. 20 of the text, reproduced by Ibn al Fakîh, p. 12 seq., Sundar Fúlát (Pulo Condore) is placed between Ṣanf and the China Sea (Sandjy); it takes ten days to go from Ṣanf to Sundar Fúlát, and then a month (seven days of which between mountains called the Gates of China). In the Livre des Merveilles de l’Inde (pp. 85, 86) we read: ‘When arrived between Ṣanf and the China coast, in the neighbourhood of Sundar Fúlát, an island situated at the entrance of the Sea of Sandjy, which is the Sea of China....’ It would appear from these two passages that Ṣanf is to be looked for in the Malay Peninsula. This Ṣanf is different from the Ṣanf of Ibn Khordâdhbeh and of Abulfeda.” (Guyard’s transl. II. ii. 127.)

It does not strike me from these passages that Ṣanf must be looked for in the Malay Peninsula. Indeed Professor G. Schlegel, in a paper published in the T’oung Pao, vol. x., seems to prove that Shay-po (Djava), represented by Chinese characters, which are the transcription of the Sanskrit name of the China Rose (Hibiscus rosa sinensis), Djavâ or Djapâ, is not the great island of Java, but, according to Chinese texts, a state of the Malay Peninsula; but he does not seem to me to prove that Shay-po is Champa, as he believes he has done.

However, Professor De Goeje adds in his letter, and I quite agree with the celebrated Arabic scholar of Leyden, that he does not very much like the theory of two Ṣanf, and that he is inclined to believe that the sea captain of the Marvels of India placed Sundar Fúlát a little too much to the north, and that the narrative of the Relation des Voyages is inexact.

To conclude: the history of the relations between Annam (Tong-king) and her southern neighbour, the kingdom of Champa, the itineraries of Marco Polo and Ibn Khordâdhbeh as well as the position given to Ṣanf by Abulfeda, justify me, I think, in placing Champa in that part of the central and southern Indo-Chinese coast which the French to-day call Annam (Cochinchine and Basse-Cochinchine), the Binh-Thuan province showing more particularly what remains of the ancient kingdom.

Since I wrote the above, I have received No. 1 of vol. ii. of the Bul. de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient, which contains a note on Canf et Campā, by M. A. Barth. The reasons given in a note addressed to him by Professor De Goeje and the work of Ibn Khordâdhbeh have led M. A. Barth to my own conclusion, viz. that the coast of Champa was situated where inscriptions have been found on the Annamite coast.—H. C.]

The Sagatu of Marco appears in the Chinese history as Sotu, the military governor of the Canton districts, which he had been active in reducing.

In 1278 Sotu sent an envoy to Chen-ching to claim the king’s submission, which was rendered, and for some years he sent his tribute to Kúblái. But when the Kaan proceeded to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom by sending a Resident and Chinese officials, the king’s son (1282) resolutely opposed these proceedings, and threw the Chinese officials into prison. The Kaan, in great wrath at this insult (coming also so soon after his discomfiture in Japan), ordered Sotu and others to Chen-ching to take vengeance. The prince in the following year made a pretence of submission, and the army (if indeed it had been sent) seems to have been withdrawn. The prince, however, renewed his attack on the Chinese establishments, and put 100 of their officials to death. Sotu then despatched a new force, but it was quite unsuccessful, and had to retire. In 1284 the king sent an embassy, including his grandson, to beg for pardon and reconciliation. Kúblái, however, refused to receive them, and ordered his son Tughan to advance through Tong-king, an enterprise which led to a still more disastrous war with that country, in which the Mongols had much the worst of it. We are not told more.

Here we have the difficulties usual with Polo’s historical anecdotes. Certain names and circumstances are distinctly recognisable in the Chinese Annals; others are difficult to reconcile with these. The embassy of 1284 seems the most likely to be the one spoken of by Polo, though the Chinese history does not give it the favourable result which he ascribes to it. The date in the text we see to be wrong, and as usual it varies in different MSS. I suspect the original date was MCCLXXXIII.

One of the Chinese notices gives one of the king’s names as Sinhopala, and no doubt this is Ramusio’s Accambale (Açambale); an indication at once of the authentic character of that interpolation, and of the identity of Champa and Chen-ching.

[We learn from an inscription that in 1265 the King of Champa was Jaya-Sinhavarman II., who was named Indravarman in 1277, and whom the Chinese called Che li Tseya Sinho phala Maha thiwa (Çri Jaya Sinha varmma maha deva). He was the king at the time of Polo’s voyage. (A. Bergaigne, Ancien royaume de Campā, pp. 39–40; E. Aymonier, les Tchames et leurs religions, p. 14.)—H. C.]

There are notices of the events in De Mailla (IX. 420–422) and Gaubil (194), but Pauthier’s extracts which we have made use of are much fuller.

Elephants have generally formed a chief part of the presents or tribute sent periodically by the various Indo-Chinese states to the Court of China.

[In a Chinese work published in the 14th century, by an Annamite, under the title of Ngan-nan chi lio, and translated into French by M. Sainson (1896), we read (p. 397): “Elephants are found only in Lin-y; this is the country which became Champa. It is the habit to have burdens carried by elephants; this country is to-day the Pu-chêng province.” M. Sainson adds in a note that Pu-chêng, in Annamite Bó chańh quân, is to-day Quang-binh, and that, in this country, was placed the first capital (Dong-hoi) of the future kingdom of Champa thrown later down to the south.—H. C.]

[The Chams, according to their tradition, had three capitals: the most ancient, Shri-Banœuy, probably the actual Quang-Binh province; Bal-Hangov, near Hué; and Bal-Angoué, in the Binh-Dinh province. In the 4th century, the kingdom of Lin-y or Lâm-âp is mentioned in the Chinese Annals.—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—The date of Marco’s visit to Champa varies in the MSS.: Pauthier has 1280, as has also Ramusio; the G. T. has 1285; the Geographic Latin 1288. I incline to adopt the last. For we know that about 1290, Mark returned to Court from a mission to the Indian Seas, which might have included this visit to Champa.

The large family of the king was one of the stock marvels. Odoric says: “ZAMPA is a very fine country, having great store of victuals and all good things. The king of the country, it was said when I was there [circa 1323], had, what with sons and with daughters, a good two hundred children; for he hath many wives and other women whom he keepeth. This king hath also 14,000 tame elephants.... And other folk keep elephants there just as commonly as we keep oxen here” (pp. 95–96). The latter point illustrates what Polo says of elephants, and is scarcely an exaggeration in regard to all the southern Indo-Chinese States. (See note to Odoric u.s.)

NOTE 3.—Champa Proper and the adjoining territories have been from time immemorial the chief seat of the production of lign-aloes or eagle-wood. Both names are misleading, for the thing has nought to do either with aloes or eagles; though good Bishop Pallegoix derives the latter name from the wood being speckled like an eagle’s plumage. It is in fact through Aquila, Agila, from Aguru, one of the Sanskrit names of the article, whilst that is possibly from the Malay Kayu (wood)-gahru, though the course of the etymology is more likely to be the other way; and Αλόη is perhaps a corruption of the term which the Arabs apply to it, viz. Al-’Ud, “The Wood.”

[It is probable that the first Portuguese who had to do with eagle-wood called it by its Arabic name, aghāluḥy, or malayālam, agila; whence páo de’ aguila “aguila wood.” It was translated into Latin as lignum aquilae, and after into modern languages, as bois d’aigle, eagle-wood, adlerholz, etc. (A. Cabaton, les Chams, p. 50.) Mr. Groeneveldt (Notes, pp. 141–142) writes: “Lignum aloes is the wood of the Aquilaria agallocha, and is chiefly known as sinking incense. The Pen-ts’au Kang-mu describes it as follows: ‘Sinking incense, also called honey incense. It comes from the heart and the knots of a tree and sinks in water, from which peculiarity the name sinking incense is derived.... In the Description of Annam we find it called honey incense, because it smells like honey.’ The same work, as well as the Nan-fang Ts’au-mu Chuang, further informs us that this incense was obtained in all countries south of China, by felling the old trees and leaving them to decay, when, after some time, only the heart, the knots, and some other hard parts remained. The product was known under different names, according to its quality or shape, and in addition to the names given above, we find fowl bones, horse-hoofs, and green cinnamon; these latter names, however, are seldom used.”—H. C.]

The fine eagle-wood of Champa is the result of disease in a leguminous tree, Aloexylon Agallochum; whilst an inferior kind, though of the same aromatic properties, is derived from a tree of an entirely different order, Aquilaria Agallocha, and is found as far north as Silhet.

The Bonus of the G. T. here is another example of Marco’s use, probably unconscious, of an Oriental word. It is Persian Abnús, Ebony, which has passed almost unaltered into the Spanish Abenuz. We find Ibenus also in a French inventory (Douet d’Arcq, p. 134), but the Bonús seems to indicate that the word as used by the Traveller was strange to Rusticiano. The word which he uses for pen-cases too, Calamanz, is more suggestive of the Persian Ḳalamdán than of the Italian Calamajo.

“Ebony is very common in this country (Champa), but the wood which is the most precious, and which is sufficiently abundant, is called ‘Eagle-wood,’ of which the first quality sells for its weight in gold; the native name is Kínam.” (Bishop Louis in J. A. S. B. VI. 742; Dr. Birdwood, in the Bible Educator, I. 243; Crawford’s Dict.)

VI. CONCERNING THE GREAT ISLAND OF JAVA

When you sail from Chamba, 1500 miles in a course between south and south-east, you come to a great Island called Java. And the experienced mariners of those Islands who know the matter well, say that it is the greatest Island in the world, and has a compass of more than 3000 miles. It is subject to a great King and tributary to no one else in the world. The people are Idolaters. The Island is of surpassing wealth, producing black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galingale, cubebs, cloves, and all other kinds of spices.

This Island is also frequented by a vast amount of shipping, and by merchants who buy and sell costly goods from which they reap great profit. Indeed the treasure of this Island is so great as to be past telling. And I can assure you the Great Kaan never could get possession of this Island, on account of its great distance, and the great expense of an expedition thither. The merchants of Zayton and Manzi draw annually great returns from this country.{1}

NOTE 1.—Here Marco speaks of that Pearl of Islands, Java. The chapter is a digression from the course of his voyage towards India, but possibly he may have touched at the island on his previous expedition, alluded to in note 2, ch. v. Not more, for the account is vague, and where particulars are given not accurate. Java does not produce nutmegs or cloves, though doubtless it was a great mart for these and all the products of the Archipelago. And if by treasure he means gold, as indeed Ramusio reads, no gold is found in Java. Barbosa, however, has the same story of the great amount of gold drawn from Java; and De Barros says that Sunda, i.e. Western Java, which the Portuguese regarded as a distinct island, produced inferior gold of 7 carats, but that pepper was the staple, of which the annual supply was more than 30,000 cwt. (Ram. I. 318–319; De Barros, Dec. IV. liv. i. cap. 12.)

The circuit ascribed to Java in Pauthier’s Text is 5000 miles. Even the 3000 which we take from the Geog. Text is about double the truth; but it is exactly the same that Odoric and Conti assign. No doubt it was a tradition among the Arab seamen. They never visited the south coast, and probably had extravagant ideas of its extension in that direction, as the Portuguese had for long. Even at the end of the 16th century Linschoten says: “Its breadth is as yet unknown; some conceiving it to be a part of the Terra Australis extending from opposite the Cape of Good Hope. However it is commonly held to be an island” (ch. xx.). And in the old map republished in the Lisbon De Barros of 1777, the south side of Java is marked “Parte incognita de Java,” and is without a single name, whilst a narrow strait runs right across the island (the supposed division of Sunda from Java Proper).

The history of Java previous to the rise of the Empire of Majapahit, in the age immediately following our Traveller’s voyage, is very obscure. But there is some evidence of the existence of a powerful dynasty in the island about this time; and in an inscription of ascertained date (A.D. 1294) the King Uttungadeva claims to have subjected five kings, and to be sovereign of the whole Island of Java (Jawa-dvipa; see Lassen, IV. 482). It is true that, as our Traveller says, Kúblái had not yet attempted the subjugation of Java, but he did make the attempt almost immediately after the departure of the Venetians. It was the result of one of his unlucky embassies to claim the homage of distant states, and turned out as badly as the attempts against Champa and Japan. His ambassador, a Chinese called Meng-K’i, was sent back with his face branded like a thief’s. A great armament was assembled in the ports of Fo-kien to avenge this insult; it started about January, 1293, but did not effect a landing till autumn. After some temporary success the force was constrained to re-embark with a loss of 3000 men. The death of Kúblái prevented any renewal of the attempt; and it is mentioned that his successor gave orders for the re-opening of the Indian trade which the Java war had interrupted. (See Gaubil, pp. 217 seqq., 224.) To this failure Odoric, who visited Java about 1323, alludes: “Now the Great Kaan of Cathay many a time engaged in war with this king; but the king always vanquished and got the better of him.” Odoric speaks in high terms of the richness and population of Java, calling it “the second best of all Islands that exist,” and describing a gorgeous palace in terms similar to those in which Polo speaks of the Palace of Chipangu. (Cathay, p. 87 seqq.)

[We read in the Yuen-shi (Bk. 210), translated by Mr. Groeneveldt, that “Java is situated beyond the sea and further away than Champa; when one embarks at Ts’wan-chau and goes southward, he first comes to Champa and afterwards to this country.” It appears that when his envoy Mêng-K’i had been branded on the face, Kúblái, in 1292, appointed Shih-pi, a native of Po-yeh, district Li-chau, Pao-ting fu, Chih-li province, commander of the expedition to Java, whilst Ike-Mese, a Uighúr, and Kau-Hsing, a man from Ts’ai-chau (Ho-nan), were appointed to assist him. Mr. Groeneveldt has translated the accounts of these three officers. In the Ming-shi (Bk. 324) we read: “Java is situated at the south-west of Champa. In the time of the Emperor Kúblái of the Yuen Dynasty, Mêng-K’i was sent there as an envoy and had his face cut, on which Kúblái sent a large army which subdued the country and then came back.” (L.c. p. 34.) The prince guilty of this insult was the King of Tumapel “in the eastern part of the island Java, whose country was called Java par excellence by the Chinese, because it was in this part of the island they chiefly traded.” (L.c. p. 32.)—H. C.]

The curious figure of a vessel which we give here is taken from the vast series of mediæval sculptures which adorns the great Buddhist pyramid in the centre of Java, known as Boro Bodor, one of the most remarkable architectural monuments in the world, but the history of which is all in darkness. The ship, with its outrigger and apparently canvas sails, is not Chinese, but it undoubtedly pictures vessels which frequented the ports of Java in the early part of the 14th century,[1] possibly one of those from Ceylon or Southern India.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] 1344 is the date to which a Javanese traditional verse ascribes the edifice. (Crawford’s Desc. Dictionary.)

Chapter VII

WHEREIN THE ISLES OF SONDUR AND CONDUR ARE SPOKEN OF; AND THE KINGDOM OF LOCAC.

When you leave Chamba{1} and sail for 700 miles on a course between south and south-west, you arrive at two Islands, a greater and a less. The one is called SONDUR and the other CONDUR.{2} As there is nothing about them worth mentioning, let us go on five hundred miles beyond Sondur, and then we find another country which is called LOCAC. It is a good country and a rich; [it is on the mainland]; and it has a king of its own. The people are Idolaters and have a peculiar language, and pay tribute to nobody, for their country is so situated that no one can enter it to do them ill. Indeed if it were possible to get at it, the Great Kaan would soon bring them under subjection to him.

In this country the brazil which we make use of grows in great plenty; and they also have gold in incredible quantity. They have elephants likewise, and much game. In this kingdom too are gathered all the porcelain shells which are used for small change in all those regions, as I have told you before.

There is nothing else to mention except that this is a very wild region, visited by few people; nor does the king desire that any strangers should frequent the country, and so find out about his treasure and other resources.{3} We will now proceed, and tell you of something else.

NOTE 1.—All the MSS. and texts I believe without exception read “when you leave Java,” etc. But, as Marsden has indicated, the point of departure is really Champa, the introduction of Java being a digression; and the retention of the latter name here would throw us irretrievably into the Southern Ocean. Certain old geographers, we may observe, did follow that indication, and the results were curious enough, as we shall notice in next note but one. Marsden’s observations are so just that I have followed Pauthier in substituting Champa for Java in the text.

NOTE 2.—There is no reason to doubt that these islands are the group now known as that of PULO CONDORE, in old times an important landmark, and occasional point of call, on the route to China. The group is termed Sundar Fúlát (Fúlát representing the Malay Pulo or Island, in the plural) in the Arab Relations of the 9th century, the last point of departure on the voyage to China, from which it was a month distant. This old record gives us the name Sondor; in modern times we have it as Kondór; Polo combines both names. [“These may also be the ‘Satyrs’ Islands’ of Ptolemy, or they may be his Sindai; for he has a Sinda city on the coast close to this position, though his Sindai islands are dropt far away. But it would not be difficult to show that Ptolemy’s islands have been located almost at random, or as from a pepper castor.” (Yule, Oldest Records, p. 657.)] The group consists of a larger island about 12 miles long, two of 2 or 3 miles, and some half-dozen others of insignificant dimensions. The large one is now specially called Pulo Condore. It has a fair harbour, fresh water, and wood in abundance. Dampier visited the group and recommended its occupation. The E. I. Company did establish a post there in 1702, but it came to a speedy end in the massacre of the Europeans by their Macassar garrison. About the year 1720 some attempt to found a settlement there was also made by the French, who gave the island the name of Isle d’Orléans. The celebrated Père Gaubil spent eight months on the island and wrote an interesting letter about it (February, 1722; see also Lettres Edifiantes, Rec. xvi.). When the group was visited by Mr. John Crawford on his mission to Cochin China the inhabitants numbered about 800, of Cochin Chinese descent. The group is now held by the French under Saigon. The chief island is known to the Chinese as the mountain of Kunlun. There is another cluster of rocks in the same sea, called the Seven Cheu, and respecting these two groups Chinese sailors have a kind of Incidit-in-Scyllan saw:—

“_Shang p’a Tsi-chéu, hia-pa Kun-lun, Chen mi t’uo shih, jin chuen mo tsun._”[1]

Meaning:—

“With Kunlun to starboard, and larboard the Cheu, Keep conning your compass, whatever you do, Or to Davy Jones’ Locker go vessel and crew.”

(Ritter, IV. 1017; Reinaud, I. 18; A. Hamilton, II. 402; Mém. conc. les Chinois, XIV. 53.)

NOTE 3.—Pauthier reads the name of the kingdom Soucat, but I adhere to the readings of the G. T., Lochac and Locac, which are supported by Ramusio. Pauthier’s C and the Bern MS. have le chac and le that, which indicate the same reading.

Distance and other particulars point, as Hugh Murray discerns, to the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, or (as I conceive) to the territory now called Siam, including the said coast, as subject or tributary from time immemorial.

The kingdom of Siam is known to the Chinese by the name of Sien-Lo. The Supplement to Ma Twan-lin’s Encyclopædia describes Sien-Lo as on the sea-board to the extreme south of Chen-ching. “It originally consisted of two kingdoms, Sien and Lo-hoh. The Sien people are the remains of a tribe which in the year (A.D. 1341) began to come down upon the Lo-hoh, and united with the latter into one nation.... The land of the Lo-hoh consists of extended plains, but not much agriculture is done.”[2]

In this Lo or LO-HOH, which apparently formed the lower part of what is now Siam, previous to the middle of the 14th century, I believe that we have our Traveller’s Locac. The latter half of the name may be either the second syllable of Lo-Hoh, for Polo’s c often represents h; or it may be the Chinese Kwŏ or Kwé, “kingdom,” in the Canton and Fo-kien pronunciation (i.e. the pronunciation of Polo’s mariners) kok; Lo-kok, “the kingdom of Lo.” Sien-LO-KOK is the exact form of the Chinese name of Siam which is used by Bastian.

What was this kingdom of Lo which occupied the northern shores of the Gulf of Siam? Chinese scholars generally say that Sien-Lo means Siam and Laos; but this I cannot accept, if Laos is to bear its ordinary geographical sense, i.e. of a country bordering Siam on the north-east and north. Still there seems a probability that the usual interpretation may be correct, when properly explained.

[Regarding the identification of Locac with Siam, Mr. G. Phillips writes (Jour. China B. R. A. S., XXI., 1886, p. 34, note): “I can only fully endorse what Col. Yule says upon this subject, and add a few extracts of my own taken from the article on Siam given in the Wu-pé-ché. It would appear that previously to 1341 a country called Lohoh (in Amoy pronunciation Lohok) existed, as Yule says, in what is now called Lower Siam, and at that date became incorporated with Sien. In the 4th year of Hung-wu, 1372, it sent tribute to China, under the name of Sien Lohok. The country was first called Sien Lo in the first year of Yung Lo, 1403. In the T’ang Dynasty it appears to have been known as Lo-yueh, pronounced Lo-gueh at that period. This Lo-yueh would seem to have been situated on the Eastern side of Malay Peninsula, and to have extended to the entrance to the Straits of Singapore, in what is now known as Johore.”—H. C.]

In 1864, Dr. Bastian communicated to the Asiatic Society of Bengal the translation of a long and interesting inscription, brought [in 1834] from Sukkothai to Bangkok by the late King of Siam [Mongkut, then crown prince], and dated in a year 1214, which in the era of Salivahana (as it is almost certainly, see Garnier, cited below) will be A.D. 1292–1293, almost exactly coincident with Polo’s voyage. The author of this inscription was a Prince of Thai (or Siamese) race, styled Phra Râma Kamhêng (“The Valiant”) [son of Srī Indratiya], who reigned in Sukkothai, whilst his dominions extended from Vieng-chan on the Mekong River (lat. 18°), to Pechabur, and Srī-Thammarat (i.e. Ligór, in lat. 8° 18′), on the coast of the Gulf of Siam. [This inscription gives three dates—1205, 1209, and 1214 śaka = A.D. 1283, 1287 and 1292. One passage says: “Formerly the Thaïs had no writing; it is in 1205 śaka, year of the goat = A.D. 1283, that King Râma Kamhêng sent for a teacher who invented the Thaï writing. It is to him that we are indebted for it to-day.” (Cf. Fournereau, Siam ancien, p. 225; Schmitt, Exc. et Recon., 1885; Aymonier, Cambodge, II. p. 72.)—H. C.] The conquests of this prince are stated to have extended eastward to the “Royal Lake,” apparently the Great Lake of Kamboja; and we may conclude with certainty that he was the leader of the Siamese, who had invaded Kamboja shortly before it was visited (in 1296) by that envoy of Kúblái’s successor, whose valuable account of the country has been translated by Rémusat.[3] Now this prince Râma Kamhêng of Sukkothai was probably (as Lieutenant Garnier supposes) of the Thai-nyai, Great Thai, or Laotian branch of the race. Hence the application of the name Lo-kok to his kingdom can be accounted for.

It was another branch of the Thai, known as Thai-noi, or Little Thai, which in 1351, under another Phra Rama, founded Ayuthia and the Siamese monarchy, which still exists.

The explanation now given seems more satisfactory than the suggestions formerly made of the connection of the name Locac, either with Lophāburi (or Lavó, Louvo), a very ancient capital near Ayuthia, or with Lawék, i.e. Kamboja. Kamboja had at an earlier date possessed the lower valley of the Menam, but, we see, did so no longer.[4]

The name Lawek or Lovek is applied by writers of the 16th and 17th centuries to the capital of what is still Kamboja, the ruins of which exist near Udong. Laweik is mentioned along with the other Siamese or Laotian countries of Yuthia, Tennasserim, Sukkothai, Pichalok, Lagong, Lanchang (or Luang Prabang), Zimmé (or Kiang-mai), and Kiang-Tung, in the vast list of states claimed by the Burmese Chronicle as tributary to Pagán before its fall. We find in the Aín-i-Akbari a kind of aloes-wood called Lawáki, no doubt because it came from this region.

The G. T. indeed makes the course from Sondur to Locac sceloc or S.E.; but Pauthier’s text seems purposely to correct this, calling it, “v. c. milles oultre Sandur.” This would bring us to the Peninsula somewhere about what is now the Siamese province of Ligor,[5] and this is the only position accurately consistent with the next indication of the route, viz. a run of 500 miles south to the Straits of Singapore. Let us keep in mind also Ramusio’s specific statement that Locac was on terra firma.

As regards the products named: (1) gold is mined in the northern part of the Peninsula and is a staple export of Kalantan, Tringano, and Pahang, further down. Barbosa says gold was so abundant in Malacca that it was reckoned by Bahars of 4 cwt. Though Mr. Logan has estimated the present produce of the whole Peninsula at only 20,000 ounces, Hamilton, at the beginning of last century, says Pahang alone in some years exported above 8 cwt. (2) Brazil-wood, now generally known by the Malay term Sappan, is abundant on the coast. Ritter speaks of three small towns on it as entirely surrounded by trees of this kind. And higher up, in the latitude of Tavoy, the forests of sappan-wood find a prominent place in some maps of Siam. In mediæval intercourse between the courts of Siam and China we find Brazil-wood to form the bulk of the Siamese present. [“Ma Huan fully bears out Polo’s statement in this matter, for he says: This Brazil (of which Marco speaks) is as plentiful as firewood. On Chêng-ho’s chart Brazil and other fragrant woods are marked as products of Siam. Polo’s statement of the use of porcelain shells as small change is also corroborated by Ma Huan.” (G. Phillips, Jour. China B. R. A. S., XXI., 1886, p. 37.)—H. C.] (3) Elephants are abundant. (4) Cowries, according to Marsden and Crawford, are found in those seas largely only on the Sulu Islands; but Bishop Pallegoix says distinctly that they are found in abundance on the sand-banks of the Gulf of Siam. And I see Dr. Fryer, in 1673, says that cowries were brought to Surat “from Siam and the Philippine Islands.”

For some centuries after this time Siam was generally known to traders by the Persian name of Shahr-i-nao, or New City. This seems to be the name generally applied to it in the Shijarat Malayu (or Malay Chronicle), and it is used also by Abdurrazzák. It appears among the early navigators of the 16th century, as Da Gama, Varthema, Giovanni d’Empoli and Mendez Pinto, in the shape of Sornau, Xarnau. Whether this name was applied to the new city of Ayuthia, or was a translation of that of the older Lophāburi (which appears to be the Sansk. or Pali Nava pura = New-City) I do not know.

[Reinaud (Int. Abulfeda, p. CDXVI.) writes that, according to the Christian monk of Nadjran, who crossed the Malayan Seas, about the year 980, at this time, the King of Lukyn had just invaded the kingdom of Ṣanf and taken possession of it. According to Ibn Khordâdhbeh (De Goeje, p. 49) Lukyn is the first port of China, 100 parasangs distant from Ṣanf by land or sea; Chinese stone, Chinese silk, porcelain of excellent quality, and rice are to be found at Lukyn.—H. C.]

(Bastian, I. 357, III. 433, and in J. A. S. B. XXXIV. Pt. I. p. 27 seqq.; Ramus. I. 318; Amyot, XIV. 266, 269; Pallegoix, I. 196; Bowring, I. 41, 72; Phayre in J. A. S. B. XXXVII. Pt. I. p. 102; Aín Akb. 80; Mouhot, I. 70; Roe and Fryer, reprint, 1873, p. 271.)

Some geographers of the 16th century, following the old editions which carried the travellers south-east or south-west of Java to the land of Boeach (for Locac), introduced in their maps a continent in that situation. (See e.g. the map of the world by P. Plancius in Linschoten.) And this has sometimes been adduced to prove an early knowledge of Australia. Mr. Major has treated this question ably in his interesting essay on the early notices of Australia.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] [From the Hsing-ch’a Shêng-lan, by Fei Hsin.]

[2] The extract of which this is the substance I owe to the kindness of Professor J. Summers, formerly of King’s College.Return to passage

[3] I am happy to express my obligation to the remarks of my lamented friend Lieutenant Garnier, for light on this subject, which has led to an entire reform in the present note. (See his excellent Historical Essay, forming ch. v. of the great “Voyage d’Exploration en Indo-Chine,” pp. 136–137).Return to passage

[4] The Ḳakula of Ibn Batuta was probably on the coast of Locac. The Ḳamárah Ḳomar of the same traveller and other Arab writers, I have elsewhere suggested to be Khmer, or Kamboja Proper. (See I. B. IV. 240; Cathay, 469, 519.) Ḳakula and Ḳamarah were both in “Mul-Java”; and the king of this undetermined country, whom Wassáf states to have submitted to Kúblái in 1291, was called Sri Rama. It is possible that this was Phra Rama of Sukkothai. (See Cathay, 519; Elliot, III. 27.)Return to passage

[5] Mr. G Phillips supposes the name Locac to be Ligor, or rather Lakhon, as the Siamese call it. But it seems to me pretty clear from what has been said that Lo-kok, though including Ligor, is a different name from Lakhon. The latter is a corruption of the Sanskrit, Nagara, “city.”Return to passage

VIII. OF THE ISLAND CALLED PENTAM, AND THE CITY MALAIUR

When you leave Locac and sail for 500 miles towards the south, you come to an island called PENTAM, a very wild place. All the wood that grows thereon consists of odoriferous trees.{1} There is no more to say about it; so let us sail about sixty miles further between those two Islands. Throughout this distance there is but four paces’ depth of water, so that great ships in passing this channel have to lift their rudders, for they draw nearly as much water as that.{2}

And when you have gone these 60 miles, and again about 30 more, you come to an Island which forms a Kingdom, and is called MALAIUR. The people have a King of their own, and a peculiar language. The city is a fine and noble one, and there is great trade carried on there. All kinds of spicery are to be found there, and all other necessaries of life.{3}

NOTE 1.—Pentam, or as in Ram. Pentan, is no doubt the Bintang of our maps, more properly BENTĂN, a considerable Island at the eastern extremity of the Straits of Malacca. It appears in the list, published by Dulaurier from a Javanese Inscription, of the kingdoms conquered in the 15th century by the sovereigns reigning at Majapahit in Java. (J. A. sér. IV. tom. xiii. 532.) Bintang was for a long time after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca the chief residence of the Malay Sultans who had been expelled by that conquest, and it still nominally belongs to the Sultan of Johore, the descendant of those princes, though in fact ruled by the Dutch, whose port of Rhio stands on a small island close to its western shore. It is the Bintão of the Portuguese whereof Camoens speaks as the persistent enemy of Malacca (X. 57).

[Cf. Professor Schlegel’s Geog. Notes, VI. Ma-it; regarding the odoriferous trees, Professor Schlegel remarks (p. 20) that they were probably santal trees.—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—There is a good deal of confusion in the text of this chapter. Here we have a passage spoken of between “those two Islands,” when only one island seems to have been mentioned. But I imagine the other “island” in the traveller’s mind to be the continuation of the same Locac, i.e. the Malay Peninsula (included by him under that name), which he has coasted for 500 miles. This is confirmed by Ramusio, and the old Latin editions (as Müller’s): “between the kingdom of Locac and the Island of Pentan.” The passage in question is the Strait of Singapore, or as the old navigators called it, the Straits of Gobernador, having the mainland of the Peninsula and the Island of Singapore, on the one side, and the Islands of Bintang and Batang on the other. The length of the strait is roughly 60 geographical miles, or a little more; and I see in a route given in the Lettres Edifiantes (II. p. 118) that the length of navigation is so stated: “Le détroit de Gobernador a vingt lieues de long, et est fort difficile quand on n’y a jamais passé.”

The Venetian passo was 5 feet. Marco here alludes to the well-known practice with the Chinese junks of raising the rudder, for which they have a special arrangement, which is indicated in the cut at p. 248.

NOTE 3.—There is a difficulty here about the indications, carrying us, as they do, first 60 miles through the Strait, and then 30 miles further to the Island Kingdom and city of Malaiur. There is also a singular variation in the readings as to this city and island. The G. T. has “Une isle qe est roiame, et s’apelle Malanir e l’isle Pentam.” The Crusca has the same, only reading Malavir. Pauthier: “Une isle qui est royaume, et a nom Maliur.” The Geog. Latin: “Ibi invenitur una insula in qua est unus rex quem vocant Lamovich. Civitas et insula vocantur Pontavich.” Ram.: “Chiamasi la città Malaiur, e cosi l’isola Malaiur.”

All this is very perplexed, and it is difficult to trace what may have been the true readings. The 30 miles beyond the straits, whether we give the direction south-east as in G. T. or no, will not carry us to the vicinity of any place known to have been the site of an important city. As the point of departure in the next chapter is from Pentam and not from Malaiur, the introduction of the latter is perhaps a digression from the route, on information derived either from hearsay or from a former voyage. But there is not information enough to decide what place is meant by Malaiur. Probabilities seem to me to be divided between Palembang, and its colony Singhapura. Palembang, according to the Commentaries of Alboquerque, was called by the Javanese MALAYO. The List of Sumatran Kingdoms in De Barros makes TANA-MALAYU the next to Palembang. On the whole, I incline to this interpretation.

[In Valentyn (V. 1, Beschryvinge van Malakka, p. 317) we find it stated that the Malay people just dwelt on the River Malayu in the Kingdom of Palembang, and were called from the River Orang Malayu.—MS. Note.—H. Y.]

[Professor Schlegel in his Geog. Notes, IV., tries to prove by Chinese authorities that Maliur and Tana-Malayu are two quite distinct countries, and he says that Maliur may have been situated on the coast opposite Singapore, perhaps a little more to the S.W. where now lies Malacca, and that Tana-Malayu may be placed in Asahan, upon the east coast of Sumatra.—H. C.]

Singhapura was founded by an emigration from Palembang, itself a Javanese colony. It became the site of a flourishing kingdom, and was then, according to the tradition recorded by De Barros, the most important centre of population in those regions, “whither used to gather all the navigators of the Eastern Seas, from both East and West; to this great city of Singapura all flocked as to a general market.” (Dec. II. 6, 1.) This suits the description in our text well; but as Singhapura was in sight of any ship passing through the straits, mistake could hardly occur as to its position, even if it had not been visited.

I omit Malacca entirely from consideration, because the evidence appears to me conclusive against the existence of Malacca at this time.

The Malay Chronology, as published by Valentyn, ascribes the foundation of that city to a king called Iskandar Shah, placing it in A.D. 1252, fixes the reign of Mahomed Shah, the third King of Malacca and first Mussulman King, as extending from 1276 to 1333 (not stating when his conversion took place), and gives 8 kings in all between the foundation of the city and its capture by the Portuguese in 1511, a space, according to those data, of 259 years. As Sri Iskandar Shah, the founder, had reigned 3 years in Singhapura before founding Malacca, and Mahomed Shah, the loser, reigned 2 years in Johore after the loss of his capital, we have 264 years to divide among 8 kings, giving 33 years to each reign. This certainly indicates that the period requires considerable curtailment.

Again, both De Barros and the Commentaries or Alboquerque ascribe the foundation of Malacca to a Javanese fugitive from Palembang called Paramisura, and Alboquerque makes Iskandar Shah (Xaquem darxa) the son of Paramisura, and the first convert to Mahomedanism. Four other kings reign in succession after him, the last of the four being Mahomed Shah, expelled in 1511.

[Godinho de Eredia says expressly (Cap. i. Do Citio Malaca, p. 4) that Malacca was founded by _Permicuri, primeiro monarcha de Malayos_, in the year 1411, in the Pontificate of John XXIV., and in the reign of Don Juan II. of Castille and Dom Juan I. of Portugal.]

The historian De Couto, whilst giving the same number of reigns from the conversion to the capture, places the former event about 1384. And the Commentaries of Alboquerque allow no more than some ninety years from the foundation of Malacca to his capture of the city.

There is another approximate check to the chronology afforded by a Chinese record in the XIVth volume of Amyot’s collection. This informs us that Malacca first acknowledged itself as tributary to the Empire in 1405, the king being Sili-ju-eul-sula (?). In 1411 the King of Malacca himself, now called Peilimisula (Paramisura), came in person to the court of China to render homage. And in 1414 the Queen-Mother of Malacca came to court, bringing her son’s tribute.

Now this notable fact of the visit of a King of Malacca to the court of China, and his acknowledgment of the Emperor’s supremacy, is also recorded in the Commentaries of Alboquerque. This work, it is true, attributes the visit, not to Paramisura, the founder of Malacca, but to his son and successor Iskandar Shah. This may be a question of a title only, perhaps borne by both; but we seem entitled to conclude with confidence that Malacca was founded by a prince whose son was reigning, and visited the court of China in 1411. And the real chronology will be about midway between the estimates of De Couto and of Alboquerque. Hence Malacca did not exist for a century, more or less, after Polo’s voyage.

[Mr. C. O. Blagden, in a paper on the Mediæval Chronology of Malacca (Actes du XIᵉ Cong. Int. Orient. Paris, 1897), writes (p. 249) that “if Malacca had been in the middle of the 14th century anything like the great emporium of trade which it certainly was in the 15th, Ibn Batuta would scarcely have failed to speak of it.” The foundation of Malacca by Sri Iskandar Shah in 1252, according to the Sejarah Malayu “must be put at least 125 years later, and the establishment of the Muhammadan religion there would then precede by only a few years the end of the 14th century, instead of taking place about the end of the 13th, as is generally supposed” (p. 251). (Cf. G. Schlegel, Geog. Notes, XV.)—H. C.]

Mr. Logan supposes that the form Malayu-r may indicate that the Malay language of the 13th century “had not yet replaced the strong naso-guttural terminals by pure vowels.” We find the same form in a contemporary Chinese notice. This records that in the 2nd year of the Yuen, tribute was sent from Siam to the Emperor. “The Siamese had long been at war with the Maliyi or MALIURH, but both nations laid aside their feud and submitted to China.” (Valentyn, V. p. 352; Crawford’s Desc. Dict. art. Malacca; Lassen, IV. 541 seqq.; Journ. Ind. Archip. V. 572, II. 608–609; De Barros, Dec. II. 1. vi. c. 1; Comentarios do grande Afonso d’Alboquerque, Pt. III. cap. xvii.; Couto, Dec. IV. liv. ii.; Wade in Bowring’s Kingdom and People of Siam, I. 72.)

[From I-tsing we learn that going from China to India, the traveller visits the country of Shih-li-fuh-shi (Çrībhôja or simply Fuh-shi = Bhôja), then Mo-louo-yu, which seems to Professor Chavannes to correspond to the Malaiur of Marco Polo and to the modern Palembang, and which in the 10th century formed a part of Çribhôdja identified by Professor Chavannes with Zabedj. (I-tsing, p. 36.) The Rev. S. Beal has some remarks on this question in the Merveilles de l’Inde, p. 251, and he says that he thinks “there are reasons for placing this country [Çrībhôja], or island, on the East coast of Sumatra, and near Palembang, or, on the Palembang River.” Mr. Groeneveldt (T’oung Pao, VII. abst. p. 10) gives some extracts from Chinese authors, and then writes: “We have therefore to find now a place for the Molayu of I-tsing, the Malaiur of Marco Polo, the Malayo of Alboquerque, and the Tana-Malayu of De Barros, all which may be taken to mean the same place. I-tsing tells us that it took fifteen days to go from Bhôja to Molayu and fifteen days again to go from there to Kieh-ch’a. The latter place, suggesting a native name Kada, must have been situated in the north-west of Sumatra, somewhere near the present Atjeh, for going from there west, one arrived in thirty days at Magapatana, near Ceylon, whilst a northern course brought one in ten days to the Nicobar Islands. Molayu should thus lie half-way between Bhôja and Kieh-ch’a, but this indication must not be taken too literally where it is given for a sailing vessel, and there is also the statement of De Barros, which does not allow us to go too far away from Palembang, as he mentions Tana-Malayu next to that place. We have therefore to choose between the next three larger rivers: those of Jambi, Indragiri, and Kampar, and there is an indication in favour of the last one, not very strong, it is true, but still not to be neglected. I-tsing tells us: ‘Le roi me donna des secours grâce auxquels je parvins au pays de Mo-louo-yu; j’y séjournai derechef pendant deux mois. Je changeai de direction pour aller dans le pays de Kie-tcha.’ The change of direction during a voyage along the east coast of Sumatra from Palembang to Atjeh is nowhere very perceptible, because the course is throughout more or less north-west, still one may speak of a change of direction at the mouth of the River Kampar, about the entrance of the Strait of Malacca, whence the track begins to run more west, whilst it is more north before. The country of Kampar is of little importance now, but it is not improbable that there has been a Hindoo settlement, as the ruins of religious monuments decidedly Buddhist are still existing on the upper course of the river, the only ones indeed on this side of the island, it being a still unexplained fact that the Hindoos in Java have built on a very large scale, and those of Sumatra hardly anything at all.”—Mr. Takakusu (A Record of the Buddhist Religion, p. xli.) proposes to place Shih-li-fuh-shi at Palembang and Mo-louo-yu farther on the northern coast of Sumatra.—(Cf. G. Schlegel, Geog. Notes, XVI.; P. Pelliot, Bul. Ecole Franç. Ext. Orient, II. pp. 94–96.)—H. C.]

Chapter IX

CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF JAVA THE LESS. THE KINGDOMS OF FERLEC AND BASMA.

When you leave the Island of Pentam and sail about 100 miles, you reach the Island of JAVA THE LESS. For all its name ’tis none so small but that it has a compass of two thousand miles or more. Now I will tell you all about this Island.{1}

You see there are upon it eight kingdoms and eight crowned kings. The people are all Idolaters, and every kingdom has a language of its own. The Island hath great abundance of treasure, with costly spices, lign-aloes and spikenard and many others that never come into our parts.{2}

Now I am going to tell you all about these eight kingdoms, or at least the greater part of them. But let me premise one marvellous thing, and that is the fact that this Island lies so far to the south that the North Star, little or much, is never to be seen!

Now let us resume our subject, and first I will tell you of the kingdom of FERLEC.

This kingdom, you must know, is so much frequented by the Saracen merchants that they have converted the natives to the Law of Mahommet—I mean the townspeople only, for the hill-people live for all the world like beasts, and eat human flesh, as well as all other kinds of flesh, clean or unclean. And they worship this, that, and the other thing; for in fact the first thing that they see on rising in the morning, that they do worship for the rest of the day.{3}

Having told you of the kingdom of Ferlec, I will now tell of another which is called BASMA.

When you quit the kingdom of Ferlec you enter upon that of Basma. This also is an independent kingdom, and the people have a language of their own; but they are just like beasts without laws or religion. They call themselves subjects of the Great Kaan, but they pay him no tribute; indeed they are so far away that his men could not go thither. Still all these Islanders declare themselves to be his subjects, and sometimes they send him curiosities as presents.{4} There are wild elephants in the country, and numerous unicorns, which are very nearly as big. They have hair like that of a buffalo, feet like those of an elephant, and a horn in the middle of the forehead, which is black and very thick. They do no mischief, however, with the horn, but with the tongue alone; for this is covered all over with long and strong prickles [and when savage with any one they crush him under their knees and then rasp him with their tongue]. The head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry it ever bent towards the ground. They delight much to abide in mire and mud. ’Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon, and is not in the least like that which our stories tell of as being caught in the lap of a virgin; in fact, ’tis altogether different from what we fancied.{5} There are also monkeys here in great numbers and of sundry kinds; and goshawks as black as crows. These are very large birds and capital for fowling.{6}

I may tell you moreover that when people bring home pygmies which they allege to come from India, ’tis all a lie and a cheat. For those little men, as they call them, are manufactured on this Island, and I will tell you how. You see there is on the Island a kind of monkey which is very small, and has a face just like a man’s. They take these, and pluck out all the hair except the hair of the beard and on the breast, and then they dry them and stuff them and daub them with saffron and other things until they look like men. But you see it is all a cheat; for nowhere in India nor anywhere else in the world were there ever men seen so small as these pretended pygmies.

Now I will say no more of the kingdom of Basma, but tell you of the others in succession.

NOTE 1.—Java the Less is the Island of SUMATRA. Here there is no exaggeration in the dimension assigned to its circuit, which is about 2300 miles. The old Arabs of the 9th century give it a circuit of 800 parasangs, or say 2800 miles, and Barbosa reports the estimate of the Mahomedan seamen as 2100 miles. Compare the more reasonable accuracy of these estimates of Sumatra, which the navigators knew in its entire compass, with the wild estimates of Java Proper, of which they knew but the northern coast.

Polo by no means stands alone in giving the name of Java to the island now called Sumatra. The terms Jawa, Jawi, were applied by the Arabs to the islands and productions of the Archipelago generally (e.g., Lubán Jawí, “Java frankincense,” whence by corruption Benzoin), but also specifically to Sumatra. Thus Sumatra is the Jáwah both of Abulfeda and of Ibn Batuta, the latter of whom spent some time on the island, both in going to China and on his return. The Java also of the Catalan Map appears to be Sumatra. Javaku again is the name applied in the Singalese chronicles to the Malays in general. Jáu and Dawa are the names still applied by the Battaks and the people of Nias respectively to the Malays, showing probably that these were looked on as Javanese by those tribes who did not partake of the civilisation diffused from Java. In Siamese also the Malay language is called Chawa; and even on the Malay peninsula, the traditional slang for a half-breed born from a Kling (or Coromandel) father and a Malay mother is Jáwí Păkăn, “a Jawi (i.e. Malay) of the market.” De Barros says that all the people of Sumatra called themselves by the common name of Jauijs. (Dec. III. liv. v. cap. 1.)

There is some reason to believe that the application of the name Java to Sumatra is of very old date. For the oldest inscription of ascertained date in the Archipelago which has yet been read, a Sanskrit one from Pagaroyang, the capital of the ancient Malay state of Menang-kabau in the heart of Sumatra, bearing a date equivalent to A.D. 656, entitles the monarch whom it commemorates, Adityadharma by name, the king of “the First Java” (or rather Yava). This Mr. Friedrich interprets to mean Sumatra. It is by no means impossible that the Iabadiu, or Yávadvípa of Ptolemy may be Sumatra rather than Java.

An accomplished Dutch Orientalist suggests that the Arabs originally applied the terms Great Java and Little Java to Java and Sumatra respectively, not because of their imagined relation in size, but as indicating the former to be Java Proper. Thus also, he says, there is a Great Acheh (Achin) which does not imply that the place so called is greater than the well-known state of Achin (of which it is in fact a part), but because it is Acheh Proper. A like feeling may have suggested the Great Bulgaria, Great Hungary, Great Turkey of the mediæval travellers. These were, or were supposed to be, the original seats of the Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Turks. The Great Horde of the Kirghiz Kazaks is, as regards numbers, not the greatest, but the smallest of the three. But the others look upon it as the most ancient. The Burmese are alleged to call the Rakhain or people of Arakan Mranma Gyí or Great Burmese, and to consider their dialect the most ancient form of the language. And, in like manner, we may perhaps account for the term of Little Thai, formerly applied to the Siamese in distinction from the Great Thai, their kinsmen of Laos.

In after-days, when the name of Sumatra for the Great Island had established itself, the traditional term “Little Java” sought other applications. Barbosa seems to apply it to Sumbawa; Pigafetta and Cavendish apply it to Bali, and in this way Raffles says it was still used in his own day. Geographers were sometimes puzzled about it. Magini says Java Minor is almost incognita.

(Turnour’s Epitome, p. 45; Van der Tuuk, Bladwijzer tot de drie Stukken van het Bataksche Leesboek, p. 43, etc.; Friedrich in Bat. Transactions, XXVI.; Levchine, Les Kirghíz Kazaks, 300, 301.)

NOTE 2.—As regards the treasure, Sumatra was long famous for its produce of gold. The export is estimated in Crawford’s History at 35,530 ounces; but no doubt it was much more when the native states were in a condition of greater wealth and civilisation, as they undoubtedly were some centuries ago. Valentyn says that in some years Achin had exported 80 bahars, equivalent to 32,000 or 36,000 lbs. avoirdupois (!). Of the other products named, lign-aloes or eagle-wood is a product of Sumatra, and is or was very abundant in Campar on the eastern coast. The Ain-i-Akbari says this article was usually brought to India from Achin and Tenasserim. Both this and spikenard are mentioned by Polo’s contemporary, Kazwini, among the products of Java (probably Sumatra), viz., Java lign-aloes (al-’Ud al-Jáwi), camphor spikenard (Sumbul), etc. Náráwastu is the name of a grass with fragrant roots much used as a perfume in the Archipelago, and I see this is rendered spikenard in a translation from the Malay Annals in the Journal of the Archipelago.

With regard to the kingdoms of the island which Marco proceeds to describe, it is well to premise that all the six which he specifies are to be looked for towards the north end of the island, viz., in regular succession up the northern part of the east coast, along the north coast, and down the northern part of the west coast. This will be made tolerably clear in the details, and Marco himself intimates at the end of the next chapter that the six kingdoms he describes were all at this side or end of the island: “Or vos avon contée de cesti roiames que sunt de ceste partie de scete ysle, et des autres roiames de l’autre partie ne voz conteron-noz rien.” Most commentators have made confusion by scattering them up and down, nearly all round the coast of Sumatra. The best remarks on the subject I have met with are by Mr. Logan in his Journal of the Ind. Arch. II. 610.

The “kingdoms” were certainly many more than eight throughout the island. At a later day De Barros enumerates 29 on the coast alone. Crawford reckons 15 different nations and languages on Sumatra and its dependent isles, of which 11 belong to the great island itself.

(Hist. of Ind. Arch. III. 482; Valentyn, V. (Sumatra), p. 5; Desc. Dict. p. 7, 417; Gildemeister, p. 193; _Crawf. Malay Dict._ 119; J. Ind. Arch. V. 313.)

NOTE 3.—The kingdom of PARLÁK is mentioned in the Shijarat Malayu or Malay Chronicle, and also in a Malay History of the Kings of Pasei, of which an abstract is given by Dulaurier, in connection with the other states of which we shall speak presently. It is also mentioned (Barlak), as a city of the Archipelago, by Rashiduddin. Of its extent we have no knowledge, but the position (probably of its northern extremity) is preserved in the native name, Tanjong (i.e. Cape) Parlák of the N.E. horn of Sumatra, called by European seamen “Diamond Point,” whilst the river and town of Perla, about 32 miles south of that point, indicate, I have little doubt, the site of the old capital.[1] Indeed in Malombra’s Ptolemy (Venice, 1574), I find the next city of Sumatra beyond Pacen marked as Pulaca.

The form Ferlec shows that Polo got it from the Arabs, who having no p often replace that letter by f. It is notable that the Malay alphabet, which is that of the Arabic with necessary modifications, represents the sound p not by the Persian pe (پ), but by the Arabic fe (ف), with three dots instead of one (ڤ).

A Malay chronicle of Achin dates the accession of the first Mahomedan king of that state, the nearest point of Sumatra to India and Arabia, in the year answering to A.D. 1205, and this is the earliest conversion among the Malays on record. It is doubtful, indeed, whether there were Kings of Achin in 1205, or for centuries after (unless indeed Lambri is to be regarded as Achin), but the introduction of Islam may be confidently assigned to that age.

The notice of the Hill-people, who lived like beasts and ate human flesh, presumably attaches to the Battas or Bataks, occupying high table-lands in the interior of Sumatra. They do not now extend north beyond lat. 3°. The interior of Northern Sumatra seems to remain a terra incognita, and even with the coast we are far less familiar than our ancestors were 250 years ago. The Battas are remarkable among cannibal nations as having attained or retained some degree of civilisation, and as being possessed of an alphabet and documents. Their anthropophagy is now professedly practised according to precise laws, and only in prescribed cases. Thus: (1) A commoner seducing a Raja’s wife must be eaten; (2) Enemies taken in battle outside their village must be eaten alive; those taken in storming a village may be spared; (3) Traitors and spies have the same doom, but may ransom themselves for 60 dollars a-head. There is nothing more horrible or extraordinary in all the stories of mediæval travellers than the facts of this institution. (See Junghuhn, Die Battaländer, II. 158.) And it is evident that human flesh is also at times kept in the houses for food. Junghuhn, who could not abide Englishmen but was a great admirer of the Battas, tells how after a perilous and hungry flight he arrived in a friendly village, and the food that was offered by his hosts was the flesh of two prisoners who had been slaughtered the day before (I. 249). Anderson was also told of one of the most powerful Batta chiefs who would eat only such food, and took care to be supplied with it (225).

The story of the Battas is that in old times their communities lived in peace and knew no such custom; but a Devil, Nanalain, came bringing strife, and introduced this man-eating, at a period which they spoke of (in 1840) as “three men’s lives ago,” or about 210 years previous to that date. Junghuhn, with some enlargement of the time, is disposed to accept their story of the practice being comparatively modern. This cannot be, for their hideous custom is alluded to by a long chain of early authorities. Ptolemy’s anthropophagi may perhaps be referred to the smaller islands. But the Arab Relations of the 9th century speak of man-eaters in Al-Ramni, undoubtedly Sumatra. Then comes our traveller, followed by Odoric, and in the early part of the 15th century by Conti, who names the Batech cannibals. Barbosa describes them without naming them; Galvano (p. 108) speaks of them by name; as does De Barros. (Dec. III. liv. viii. cap. 1.)

The practice of worshipping the first thing seen in the morning is related of a variety of nations. Pigafetta tells it of the people of Gilolo, and Varthema in his account of Java (which I fear is fiction) ascribes it to some people of that island. Richard Eden tells it of the Laplanders. (Notes on Russia, Hak. Soc. II. 224.)

NOTE 4.—Basma, as Valentyn indicated, seems to be the PASEI of the Malays, which the Arabs probably called Basam or the like, for the Portuguese wrote it PACEM. [Mr. J. T. Thomson writes (Proc. R. G. S. XX. p. 221) that of its actual position there can be no doubt, it being the Passier of modern charts.—H. C.] Pasei is mentioned in the Malay Chronicle as founded by Malik al-Ṣálih, the first Mussulman sovereign of Samudra, the next of Marco’s kingdoms. He assigned one of these states to each of his two sons, Malik al-Dháhir and Malik al-Mansúr; the former of whom was reigning at Samudra, and apparently over the whole coast, when Ibn Batuta was there (about 1346–47). There is also a Malay History of the Kings of Pasei to which reference has already been made.

Somewhat later Pasei was a great and famous city. Majapahit, Malacca, and Pasei being reckoned the three great cities of the Archipelago. The stimulus of conversion to Islam had not taken effect on those Sumatran states at the time of Polo’s voyage, but it did so soon afterwards, and, low as they have now fallen, their power at one time was no delusion. Achin, which rose to be the chief of them, in 1615 could send against Portuguese Malacca an expedition of more than 500 sail, 100 of which were galleys larger than any then constructed in Europe, and carried from 600 to 800 men each.

[Dr. Schlegel writes to me that according to the Malay Dictionary of Von de Wall and Van der Tuuk, ii. 414–415, Polo’s Basman is the Arab pronunciation of Pasĕman, the modern Ophir in West Sumatra; Gūnung Pasĕman is Mount Ophir.—H. C.]

NOTE 5.—The elephant seems to abound in the forest-tracts throughout the whole length of Sumatra, and the species is now determined to be a distinct one (E. Sumatranus) from that of continental India and identical with that of Ceylon.[3] The Sumatran elephant in former days was caught and tamed extensively. Ibn Batuta speaks of 100 elephants in the train of Al Dháhir, the King of Sumatra Proper, and in the 17th century Beaulieu says the King of Achin had always 900. Giov. d’Empoli also mentions them at Pedir in the beginning of the 16th century; and see Pasei Chronicle quoted in J. As. sér. IV. tom. ix. pp. 258–259. This speaks of elephants as used in war by the people of Pasei, and of elephant-hunts as a royal diversion. The locus of that best of elephant stories, the elephant’s revenge on the tailor, was at Achin.

As Polo’s account of the rhinoceros is evidently from nature, it is notable that he should not only call it unicorn, but speak so precisely of its one horn, for the characteristic, if not the only, species on the island, is a two-horned one (Rh. Sumatranus),[4] and his mention of the buffalo-like hair applies only to this one. This species exists also on the Indo-Chinese continent and, it is believed, in Borneo. I have seen it in the Arakan forests as high as 19° 20′; one was taken not long since near Chittagong; and Mr. Blyth tells me a stray one has been seen in Assam or its borders.

[Ibn Khordâdhbeh says (De Goeje’s Transl. p. 47) that rhinoceros is to be found in Kâmeroun (Assam), which borders on China. It has a horn, a cubit long, and two palms thick; when the horn is split, inside is found on the black ground the white figure of a man, a quadruped, a fish, a peacock or some other bird.—H. C.]

[John Evelyn mentions among the curiosities kept in the Treasury at St. Denis: “A faire unicorne’s horn, sent by a K. of Persia, about 7 foote long.” Diary, 1643, 12th Nov.—H. C.]

What the Traveller says of the animals’ love of mire and mud is well illustrated by the manner in which the Semangs or Negritoes of the Malay Peninsula are said to destroy him: “This animal ... is found frequently in marshy places, with its whole body immersed in the mud, and part of the head only visible.... Upon the dry weather setting in ... the mud becomes hard and crusted, and the rhinoceros cannot effect his escape without considerable difficulty and exertion. The Semangs prepare themselves with large quantities of combustible materials, with which they quietly approach the animal, who is aroused from his reverie by an immense fire over him, which being kept well supplied by the Semangs with fresh fuel, soon completes his destruction, and renders him in a fit state to make a meal of.” (J. Ind. Arch. IV. 426.)[5] There is a great difference in aspect between the one-horned species (Rh. Sondaicus and Rh. Indicus) and the two-horned. The Malays express what that difference is admirably, in calling the last Bádak-Karbáu, “the Buffalo-Rhinoceros,” and the Sondaicus Bádak-Gájah, “the Elephant-Rhinoceros.”

The belief in the formidable nature of the tongue of the rhinoceros is very old and wide-spread, though I can find no foundation for it but the rough appearance of the organ. [“His tongue also is somewhat of a rarity, for, if he can get any of his antagonists down, he will lick them so clean, that he leaves neither skin nor flesh to cover his bones.” (A. Hamilton, ed. 1727, II. 24. M.S. Note of Yule.) Compare what is said of the tongue of the Yak, I. p. 277.—H. C.] The Chinese have the belief, and the Jesuit Lecomte attests it from professed observation of the animal in confinement. (Chin. Repos. VII. 137; Lecomte, II. 406.) [In a Chinese work quoted by Mr. Groeneveldt (T’oung Pao, VII. No. 2, abst. p. 19) we read that “the rhinoceros has thorns on its tongue and always eats the thorns of plants and trees, but never grasses or leaves.”—H. C.]

The legend to which Marco alludes, about the Unicorn allowing itself to be ensnared by a maiden (and of which Marsden has made an odd perversion in his translation, whilst indicating the true meaning in his note), is also an old and general one. It will be found, for example, in Brunetto Latini, in the Image du Monde, in the Mirabilia of Jordanus,[6] and in the verses of Tzetzes. The latter represents Monoceros as attracted not by the maiden’s charms but by her perfumery. So he is inveigled and blindfolded by a stout young knave, disguised as a maiden and drenched with scent:—

“’Tis then the huntsmen hasten up, abandoning their ambush; Clean from his head they chop his horn, prized antidote to poison; And let the docked and luckless beast escape into the jungles.” —V. 399, seqq.

In the cut which we give of this from a mediæval source the horn of the unicorn is evidently the tusk of a narwhal. This confusion arose very early, as may be seen from its occurrence in Aelian, who says that the horn of the unicorn or Kartazōnon (the Arab Karkaddan or Rhinoceros) was not straight but twisted (ἐλιγμούς ἔχον τινάς, Hist. An. xvi. 20). The mistake may also be traced in the illustrations to Cosmas Indicopleustes from his own drawings, and it long endured, as may be seen in Jerome Cardan’s description of a unicorn’s horn which he saw suspended in the church of St. Denis; as well as in a circumstance related by P. della Valle (II. 491; and Cardan, de Varietate, c. xcvii.). Indeed the supporter of the Royal arms retains the narwhal horn. To this popular error is no doubt due the reading in Pauthier’s text, which makes the horn white instead of black.

We may quote the following quaint version of the fable from the Bestiary of Philip de Thaun, published by Mr. Wright (Popular Treatises on Science, etc. p. 81):

“Monosceros est Beste, un corne ad en la teste, Purceo ad si a nun, de buc ad façun; Par Pucele est prise; or vez en quel guise. Quant hom le volt cacer et prendre et enginner, Si vent hom al forest ù sis riparis est; Là met une Pucele hors de sein sa mamele, Et par odurement Monosceros la sent; Dunc vent à la Pucele, et si baiset la mamele, En sein devant se dort, issi vent à sa mort Li hom suivent atant ki l’ocit en dormant U trestout vif le prent, si fais puis sun talent. Grant chose signifie.”....

And so goes on to moralise the fable.

NOTE 6.—In the J. Indian Archip. V. 285, there is mention of the Falco Malaiensis, black, with a double white-and-brown spotted tail, said to belong to the ospreys, “but does not disdain to take birds and other game.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] See Anderson’s Mission to East Coast of Sumatra, pp. 229, 233 and map. The Ferlec of Polo was identified by Valentyn. (Sumatra, in vol. v. p. 21.) Marsden remarks that a terminal k is in Sumatra always softened or omitted in pronunciation. (H. of Sum. 1st. ed. p. 163.) Thus we have Perlak, and Perla, as we have Battak and Batta.

[2] Since this engraving was made a fourth species has been established, Rhin. lasyotis, found near Chittagong.

[3] The elephant of India has 6 true ribs and 13 false ribs, that of Sumatra and Ceylon has 6 true and 14 false.Return to passage

[4] Marsden, however, does say that a one-horned species (Rh. sondaicus?) is also found on Sumatra (3rd ed. of his H. of Sumatra, p. 116).Return to passage

[5] An American writer professes to have discovered in Missouri the fossil remains of a bogged mastodon, which had been killed precisely in this way by human contemporaries. (See Lubbock, Preh. Times, 2d ed. 279.)Return to passage

[6] Tresor, p. 253; N. and E., V. 263; Jordanus, p. 43.Return to passage

[7] Another mediæval illustration of the subject is given in _Les Arts au Moyen Age_, p. 499, from the binding of a book. It is allegorical, and the Maiden is there the Virgin Mary.

X. THE KINGDOMS OF SAMARA AND DAGROIAN

So you must know that when you leave the kingdom of Basma you come to another kingdom called Samara, on the same Island.{1} And in that kingdom Messer Marco Polo was detained five months by the weather, which would not allow of his going on. And I tell you that here again neither the Pole-star nor the stars of the Maestro{2} were to be seen, much or little. The people here are wild Idolaters; they have a king who is great and rich; but they also call themselves subjects of the Great Kaan. When Messer Mark was detained on this Island five months by contrary winds, [he landed with about 2000 men in his company; they dug large ditches on the landward side to encompass the party, resting at either end on the sea-haven, and within these ditches they made bulwarks or stockades of timber] for fear of those brutes of man-eaters; [for there is great store of wood there; and the Islanders having confidence in the party supplied them with victuals and other things needful.] There is abundance of fish to be had, the best in the world. The people have no wheat, but live on rice. Nor have they any wine except such as I shall now describe.

You must know that they derive it from a certain kind of tree that they have. When they want wine they cut a branch of this, and attach a great pot to the stem of the tree at the place where the branch was cut; in a day and a night they will find the pot filled. This wine is excellent drink, and is got both white and red. [It is of such surpassing virtue that it cures dropsy and tisick and spleen.] The trees resemble small date-palms; ... and when cutting a branch no longer gives a flow of wine, they water the root of the tree, and before long the branches again begin to give out wine as before.{3} They have also great quantities of Indian nuts [as big as a man’s head], which are good to eat when fresh; [being sweet and savoury, and white as milk. The inside of the meat of the nut is filled with a liquor like clear fresh water, but better to the taste, and more delicate than wine or any other drink that ever existed.]

Now that we have done telling you about this kingdom, let us quit it, and we will tell you of Dagroian.

When you leave the kingdom of Samara you come to another which is called DAGROIAN. It is an independent kingdom, and has a language of its own. The people are very wild, but they call themselves the subjects of the Great Kaan. I will tell you a wicked custom of theirs.{4}

When one of them is ill they send for their sorcerers, and put the question to them, whether the sick man shall recover of his sickness or no. If they say that he will recover, then they let him alone till he gets better. But if the sorcerers foretell that the sick man is to die, the friends send for certain judges of theirs to put to death him who has thus been condemned by the sorcerers to die. These men come, and lay so many clothes upon the sick man’s mouth that they suffocate him. And when he is dead they have him cooked, and gather together all the dead man’s kin, and eat him. And I assure you they do suck the very bones till not a particle of marrow remains in them; for they say that if any nourishment remained in the bones this would breed worms, and then the worms would die for want of food, and the death of those worms would be laid to the charge of the deceased man’s soul. And so they eat him up stump and rump. And when they have thus eaten him they collect his bones and put them in fine chests, and carry them away, and place them in caverns among the mountains where no beast nor other creature can get at them. And you must know also that if they take prisoner a man of another country, and he cannot pay a ransom in coin, they kill him and eat him straightway. It is a very evil custom and a parlous.{5}

Now that I have told you about this kingdom let us leave it, and I will tell you of Lambri.

NOTE 1.—I have little doubt that in Marco’s dictation the name was really Samatra, and it is possible that we have a trace of this in the Samarcha (for Samartha) of the Crusca MS.

The Shijarat Malayu has a legend, with a fictitious etymology, of the foundation of the city and kingdom of Samudra, or SUMATRA, by Marah Silu, a fisherman near Pasangan, who had acquired great wealth, as wealth is got in fairy tales. The name is probably the Sanskrit Samudra, “the sea.” Possibly it may have been imitated from Dwára Samudra, at that time a great state and city of Southern India. [We read in the Malay Annals, Salalat al Salatin, translated by Mr. J. T. Thomson (Proc. R. G. S. XX. p. 216): “Mara Silu ascended the eminence, when he saw an ant as big as a cat; so he caught it, and ate it, and on the place he erected his residence, which he named Samandara, which means Big Ant (Semut besar in Malay).”—H. C.] Mara Silu having become King of Samudra was converted to Islam, and took the name of Malik al-Ṣálih. He married the daughter of the King of Parlák, by whom he had two sons; and to have a principality for each he founded the city and kingdom of Pasei. Thus we have Marco’s three first kingdoms, Ferlec, Basma, and Samara, connected together in a satisfactory manner in the Malayan story. It goes on to relate the history of the two sons Al-Dháhir and Al-Mansúr. Another version is given in the history of Pasei already alluded to, with such differences as might be expected when the oral traditions of several centuries came to be written down.

Ibn Batuta, about 1346, on his way to China, spent fifteen days at the court of Samudra, which he calls Sămăthrah or Sămŭthrah. The king whom he found there reigning was the Sultan Al-Malik Al-Dháhir, a most zealous Mussulman, surrounded by doctors of theology, and greatly addicted to religious discussions, as well as a great warrior and a powerful prince. The city was 4 miles from its port, which the traveller calls Sărha; he describes the capital as a large and fine town, surrounded with an enceinte and bastions of timber. The court displayed all the state of Mahomedan royalty, and the Sultan’s dominions extended for many days along the coast. In accordance with Ibn Batuta’s picture, the Malay Chronicle represents the court of Pasei (which we have seen to be intimately connected with Samudra) as a great focus of theological studies about this time.

There can be little doubt that Ibn Batuta’s Malik Al-Dháhir is the prince of the Malay Chronicle, the son of the first Mahomedan king. We find in 1292 that Marco says nothing of Mahomedanism; the people are still wild idolaters; but the king is already a rich and powerful prince. This may have been Malik al-Ṣálih before his conversion; but it may be doubted if the Malay story be correct in representing him as the founder of the city. Nor is this apparently so represented in the Book of the Kings of Pasei.

Before Ibn Batuta’s time, Sumatra or Samudra appears in the travels of Fr. Odoric. After speaking of Lamori (to which we shall come presently), he says: “In the same island, towards the south, is another kingdom, by name SUMOLTRA, in which is a singular generation of people, for they brand themselves on the face with a hot iron in some twelve places,” etc. This looks as if the conversion to Islam was still (circa 1323) very incomplete. Rashiduddin also speaks of Súmútra as lying beyond Lamuri. (Elliot, I. p. 70.)

The power attained by the dynasty of Malik al-Ṣálih, and the number of Mahomedans attracted to his court, probably led in the course of the 14th century to the extension of the name of Sumatra to the whole island. For when visited early in the next century by Nicolo Conti, we are told that he “went to a fine city of the island of Taprobana, which island is called by the natives Shamuthera.” Strange to say, he speaks of the natives as all idolaters. Fra Mauro, who got much from Conti, gives us Isola Siamotra over Taprobana; and it shows at once his own judgment and want of confidence in it, when he notes elsewhere that “Ptolemy, professing to describe Taprobana, has really only described Saylan.”

We have no means of settling the exact position of the city of Sumatra, though possibly an enquiry among the natives of that coast might still determine the point. Marsden and Logan indicate Samarlanga, but I should look for it nearer Pasei. As pointed out by Mr. Braddell in the J. Ind. Arch., Malay tradition represents the site of Pasei as selected on a hunting expedition from Samudra, which seems to imply tolerable proximity. And at the marriage of the Princess of Parlak to Malik Al-Ṣálih, we are told that the latter went to receive her on landing at Jambu Ayer (near Diamond Point), and thence conducted her to the city of Samudra. I should seek Samudra near the head of the estuary-like Gulf of Pasei, called in the charts Telo (or Talak) Samawe; a place very likely to have been sought as a shelter to the Great Kaan’s fleet during the south-west monsoon. Fine timber, of great size, grows close to the shore of this bay,[1] and would furnish material for Marco’s stockades.

When the Portuguese first reached those regions Pedir was the leading state upon the coast, and certainly no state called Sumatra continued to exist. Whether the city continued to exist even in decay is not easy to discern. The Aín-i-Akbari says that the best civet is that which is brought from the seaport town of Sumatra, in the territory of Achin, and is called Sumatra Zabád; but this may have been based on old information. Valentyn seems to recognise the existence of a place of note called Samadra or Samotdara, though it is not entered on his map. A famous mystic theologian who flourished under the great King of Achin, Iskandar Muda, and died in 1630, bore the name of Shamsuddín Shamatráni, which seems to point to the city of Sumatra as his birth place.[2] The most distinct mention that I know of the city so called, in the Portuguese period, occurs in the soi-disant “Voyage which Juan Serano made when he fled from Malacca,” in 1512, published by Lord Stanley of Alderley, at the end of his translation of Barbosa. This man speaks of the “island of Samatra” as named from “a city of this northern part.” And on leaving Pedir, having gone down the northern coast, he says, “I drew towards the south and south-east direction, and reached to another country and city which is called Samatra,” and so on. Now this describes the position in which the city of Sumatra should have been if it existed. But all the rest of the tract is mere plunder from Varthema.[3]

There is, however, a like intimation in a curious letter respecting the Portuguese discoveries, written from Lisbon in 1515, by a German, Valentine Moravia, who was probably the same Valentyn Fernandez, the German, who published the Portuguese edition of Marco Polo at Lisbon in 1502, and who shows an extremely accurate conception of Indian geography. He says: “La maxima insula la quale è chiamata da Marcho Polo Veneto Iava Minor, et al presente si chiama Sumotra, da un emporie di dicta insula” (printed by De Gubernatis, Viagg. Ita. etc., p. 170).

Several considerations point to the probability that the states of Pasei and Sumatra had become united, and that the town of Sumatra may have been represented by the Pacem of the Portuguese.[4] I have to thank Mr. G. Phillips for the copy of a small Chinese chart showing the northern coast of the island, which he states to be from “one of about the 13th century.” I much doubt the date, but the map is valuable as showing the town of Sumatra (Sumantala). This seems to be placed in the Gulf of Pasei, and very near where Pasei itself still exists. An extract of a “Chinese account of about A.D. 1413” accompanied the map. This states that the town was situated some distance up a river, so as to be reached in two tides. There was a village at the mouth of the river called Talumangkin.[5]

[Mr. E. H. Parker writes (China Review, XXIV. p. 102): “Colonel Yule’s remarks about Pasei are borne out by Chinese History (Ming, 325, 20, 24), which states that in 1521 Pieh-tu-lu (Pestrello [for Perestrello?]) having failed in China ‘went for’ Pa-si. Again ‘from Pa-si, Malacca, to Luzon, they swept the seas, and all the other nations were afraid of them.’”—H. C.]

Among the Indian states which were prevailed on to send tribute (or presents) to Kúblái in 1286, we find Sumutala. The chief of this state is called in the Chinese record Tu-‘han-pa-ti, which seems to be just the Malay words Tuan Pati, “Lord Ruler.” No doubt this was the rising state of Sumatra, of which we have been speaking; for it will be observed that Marco says the people of that state called themselves the Kaan’s subjects. Rashiduddin makes the same statement regarding the people of Java (i.e. the island of Sumatra), and even of Nicobar: “They are all subject to the Kaan.” It is curious to find just the same kind of statements about the princes of the Malay Islands acknowledging themselves subjects of Charles V., in the report of the surviving commander of Magellan’s ship to that emperor (printed by Baldelli-Boni, I. lxvii.). Pauthier has curious Chinese extracts containing a notable passage respecting the disappearance of Sumatra Proper from history: “In the years Wen-chi (1573–1615), the Kingdom of Sumatra divided in two, and the new state took the name of Achi (Achin). After that Sumatra was no more heard of.” (Gaubil, 205; De Mailla, IX. 429; Elliot, I. 71; Pauthier, pp. 605 and 567.)

NOTE 2.—“Vos di que la Tramontaine ne part. Et encore vos di que l’estoilles dou Meistre ne aparent ne pou ne grant” (G. T.). The Tramontaine is the Pole star:—

“De nostre Père l’Apostoille Volsisse qu’il semblast l’estoile Qui ne se muet ... Par cele estoile vont et viennent Et lor sen et lor voie tiennent Il l’apelent la tres montaigne.” —La Bible Guiot de Provins in Barbazan, by Méon, II. 377.

The Meistre is explained by Pauthier to be Arcturus; but this makes Polo’s error greater than it is. Brunetto Latini says: “Devers la tramontane en a il i. autre (vent) plus debonaire, qui a non Chorus. Cestui apelent li marinier MAISTRE por vij. estoiles qui sont en celui meisme leu,” etc. (Li Tresors, p. 122). Magister or Magistra in mediæval Latin, La Maistre in old French, signifies “the beam of a plough.” Possibly this accounts for the application of Maistre to the Great Bear, or Plough. But on the other hand the pilot’s art is called in old French maistrance. Hence this constellation may have had the name as the pilot’s guide,—like our Lode-star. The name was probably given to the N.W. point under a latitude in which the Great Bear sets in that quarter. In this way many of the points of the old Arabian Rose des Vents were named from the rising or setting of certain constellations. (See Reinaud’s Abulfeda, Introd. pp. cxcix.–cci.)

NOTE 3.—The tree here intended, and which gives the chief supply of toddy and sugar in the Malay Islands, is the Areng Saccharifera (from the Javanese name), called by the Malays Gomuti, and by the Portuguese Saguer. It has some resemblance to the date-palm, to which Polo compares it, but it is a much coarser and wilder-looking tree, with a general raggedness, “incompta et adspectu tristis,” as Rumphius describes it. It is notable for the number of plants that find a footing in the joints of its stem. On one tree in Java I have counted thirteen species of such parasites, nearly all ferns. The tree appears in the foreground of the cut at p. 273.

Crawford thus describes its treatment in obtaining toddy: “One of the spathae, or shoots of fructification, is, on the first appearance of the fruit, beaten for three successive days with a small stick, with the view of determining the sap to the wounded part. The shoot is then cut off, a little way from the root, and the liquor which pours out is received in pots.... The Gomuti palm is fit to yield toddy at 9 or 10 years old, and continues to yield it for 2 years at the average rate of 3 quarts a day.” (Hist. of Ind. Arch. I. 398.)

The words omitted in translation are unintelligible to me: “et sunt quatre raimes trois cel en.” (G. T.)

[“Polo’s description of the wine-pots of Samara hung on the trees ‘like date-palms,’ agrees precisely with the Chinese account of the shu theu tsiu made from ‘coir trees like cocoa-nut palms’ manufactured by the Burmese. Therefore it seems more likely that Samara is Siam (still pronounced Shumuro in Japan, and Siamlo in Hakka), than Sumatra.” (Parker, China Review, XIV. p. 359.) I think it useless to discuss this theory.—H. C.]

NOTE 4.—No one has been able to identify this state. Its position, however, must have been near PEDIR, and perhaps it was practically the same. Pedir was the most flourishing of those Sumatran states at the appearance of the Portuguese.

Rashiduddin names among the towns of the Archipelago Dalmian, which may perhaps be a corrupt transcript of Dagroian.

Mr. Phillips’s Chinese extracts, already cited, state that west of Sumatra (proper) were two small kingdoms, the first Nakú-urh, the second Liti. Nakú-urh, which seems to be the Ting-’ho-’rh of Pauthier’s extracts, which sent tribute to the Kaan, and may probably be Dagroian as Mr. Phillips supposes, was also called the Kingdom of Tattooed Folk.

[Mr. G. Phillips wrote since (J. R. A. S., July 1895, p. 528): “Dragoian has puzzled many commentators, but on (a) Chinese chart ... there is a country called Ta-hua-mien, which in the Amoy dialect is pronounced Dakolien, in which it is very easy to recognise the Dragoian, or Dagoyam, of Marco Polo.” In his paper of The Seaports of India and Ceylon (Jour. China B. R. A. S., xx. 1885, p. 221), Mr. Phillips, referring to his Chinese Map, already said: Ta-hsiao-hua-mien, in the Amoy dialect Toa-sio-hoe (or Ko)-bin, “The Kingdom of the Greater and Lesser Tattooed Faces.” The Toa-Ko-bin, the greater tattooed-face people, most probably represents the Dagroian, or Dagoyum, of Marco Polo. This country was called Na-ku-êrh, and Ma Huan says, “the King of Na-ku-êrh is also called the King of the Tattooed Faces.”—H. C.]

Tattooing is ascribed by Friar Odoric to the people of Sumoltra. (Cathay, p. 86.) Liti is evidently the Lidé of De Barros, which by his list lay immediately east of Pedir. This would place Nakú-urh about Samarlangka. Beyond Liti was Lanmoli (i.e. Lambri). [See G. Schlegel, Geog. Notes, XVI. Li-taï, Nakur.—H. C.]

There is, or was fifty years ago, a small port between Ayer Labu and Samarlangka, called Darián-Gadé (Great Darian?). This is the nearest approach to Dagroian that I have met with. (N. Ann. des V., tom. xviii. p. 16.)

NOTE 5.—Gasparo Balbi (1579–1587) heard the like story of the Battas under Achin. True or false, the charge against them has come down to our times. The like is told by Herodotus of the Paddaei in India, of the Massagetæ, and of the Issedonians; by Strabo of the Caspians and of the Derbices; by the Chinese of one of the wild tribes of Kwei-chau; and was told to Wallace of some of the Aru Island tribes near New Guinea, and to Bickmore of a tribe on the south coast of Floris, called Rakka (probably a form of Hindu Rákshasa, or ogre-goblin). Similar charges are made against sundry tribes of the New World, from Brazil to Vancouver Island. Odoric tells precisely Marco’s story of a certain island called Dondin. And in “King Alisaunder,” the custom is related of a people of India, called most inappropriately Orphani:—

“Another Folk woneth there beside; Orphani he hatteth wide. When her eldrynges beth elde, And ne mowen hemselven welde Hy hem sleeth, and bidelve And,” etc., etc. —Weber, I. p. 206.

Benedetto Bordone, in his Isolario (1521 and 1547), makes the same charge against the Irish, but I am glad to say that this seems only copied from Strabo. Such stories are still rife in the East, like those of men with tails. I have myself heard the tale told, nearly as Raffles tells it of the Battas, of some of the wild tribes adjoining Arakan. (Balbi, f. 130; Raffles, Mem. p. 427; Wallace, Malay Archip. 281; Bickmore’s Travels, p. 111; Cathay, pp. 25, 100).

The latest and most authentic statement of the kind refers to a small tribe called Birhōrs, existing in the wildest parts of Chota Nagpúr and Jashpúr, west of Bengal, and is given by an accomplished Indian ethnologist, Colonel Dalton. “They were wretched-looking objects ... assuring me that they had themselves given up the practice, they admitted that their fathers were in the habit of disposing of their dead in the manner indicated, viz., by feasting on the bodies; but they declared that they never shortened life to provide such feast, and shrunk with horror at the idea of any bodies but those of their own blood relations being served up at them!” (J. A. S. B. XXXIV. Pt. II. 18.) The same practice has been attributed recently, but only on hearsay, to a tribe of N. Guinea called Tarungares.

The Battas now bury their dead, after keeping the body a considerable time. But the people of Nias and the Batu Islands, whom Junghuhn considers to be of common origin with the Battas, do not bury, but expose the bodies in coffins upon rocks by the sea. And the small and very peculiar people of the Paggi Islands expose their dead on bamboo platforms in the forest. It is quite probable that such customs existed in the north of Sumatra also; indeed they may still exist, for the interior seems unknown. We do hear of pagan hill-people inland from Pedir who make descents upon the coast. (Junghuhn II. 140; Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal, etc., 2nd year, No. 4; Nouv. Ann. des. V. XVIII.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Marsden, 1st ed. p. 291.

[2] Veth’s Atchin, 1873, p. 37.Return to passage

[3] It might be supposed that Varthema had stolen from Serano; but the book of the former was published in 1510.Return to passage

[4] Castanheda speaks of Pacem as the best port of the land: “standing on the bank of a river on marshy ground about a league inland; and at the mouth of the river there are some houses of timber where a customs collector was stationed to exact duties at the anchorage from the ships which touched there.” (Bk. II. ch. iii.) This agrees with Ibn Batuta’s account of Sumatra, 4 miles from its port. [A village named Samudra discovered in our days near Pasei is perhaps a remnant of the kingdom of Samara. (Merveilles de l’Inde, p. 234.)—H. C.]Return to passage

[5] If Mr. Phillips had given particulars about his map and quotations, as to date, author, etc., it would have given them more value. He leaves this vague.Return to passage