No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Art. XII.—Chao Ju-kua's Ethnography: Table of Contents and Extracts regarding Ceylon and India, and some Articles of Trade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
Chao Ju-kua's ethnographical work, the Chu-fan-chih, consists of two parts (books, chüan). In the first part the author describes the various countries concerned in the Oriental sea-trade of his time; while the second part treats upon the foreign products brought as merchandise to China, and is followed, by way of supplement, by a detailed description of the island of Hainan, which in those days had among all the possessions of the empire risen to a high state of civilization, owing to a large number of statesmen, poets, and philosophers having spent years of their lives there in banishment during the Sung dynasty.
- Type
- Original Communications
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1896
References
page 479 note 1 The text of Chao Ju-kua's Liu-chiu contains various passages identical with the old account in the Sui-shu, which it baa been shown does not apply to the Loo-choo Islands, but Formosa. See Schlegel, , “Problèmes gèographiques,” in T'oung-pao, vol. vi, p. 165seqq.Google Scholar
page 480 note 1 Cf. Yule, , Marco Polo, 2nd ed., vol. ii, p. 283, note 1Google Scholar. A German version of Chao Ju-kua's accounts of Lan-wu-li, and Nan-p'i, has been published in the T'oung-pao, vol. vi, p. 152seqq.Google Scholar, where the sinological reader will find the Chinese characters of some of the names.
page 481 note 1 There can be little doubt as to the identity of this hill Hsi-lun with the Sripada of Buddhist lore, the footprints of Buddha on Adam's Peak (as it is called by the Muhammadans—the Samanta Küṭa of the Sinhalese). Some time previous to the period of our author the veneration of this sacred object had received (according to Lassen, , “Indische Alterthumskunde,” iv, 333Google Scholar) a fresh impetus by the devotion of the Sinhalese usurper Kirtti-Narasinha, who, being a native of Kalinga, had made himself master of the island by making use of a temporary confusion in its Government. This Sinhalese monarch, whose, reign extended from a.d. 1187 to 1196, was a great worshipper of Buddha, and, on one occasion, ascended the sacred Peak with an army in four divisions, in order to worship at the Foot Print. But according to the Mahā Vausa, a much better authority, Parākrama Bahu the Great, who conquered South India and Kambodja, was king 1164–1197; and there is no mention of Kirtti-Narasinha. The Arabs believed that Adam, after his expulsion from Paradise, was thrown on this very hill, and that the footprint belongs to him, whence the name Adam's Peak has arisen. When stepping out Adam set his other foot into the sea. The place has been a resort of both Muhammadan and Buddhist devotees throughout the Middle Ages, the Chinese, of course, taking the Buddhist view of this twofold tradition, though they have been informed of this legend, in which they call Adam “P'an Ku,” the creator of mankind. Cf. Mém. cone. les Chtnois, vol. xiv, p. 25; and Reinaud, , Relation, etc., vol. ii, p. 5seq.Google Scholar, and vol. ii, p. 8 seq. The Chinese name Hsi-lun (lit. fine, or small, wheel), while resembling that of the island, Ceylon, is probably connected with the Sanskrit tehakra, denoting a wheel—“empreinte d'une roue à mille rais sous chaque pied du Bouddha” (Julien, , Hiouen-thsang, vol. iii, p. 475Google Scholar).
page 482 note 1 Pronounced Nampi in Canton. I am inclined to interpret this name as the transcription of some Indian word. The list of states or places mentioned by our author as belonging to this country (Coilom, Guzerat, Cambay, etc.) greatly facilitates its identification with the then flourishing kingdom of Malabar, but it appears that the name Nan-p'i is an ethnical title rather than a political term. The only passage which has occurred to me as throwing light on this subject was in the Hsi-yang-ch'ao-kungtien-lu (ch. iii, p. 3), a work placing on record the results of the famous expeditions of the eunuch Ch'êng Ho about a.d. 1430. Speaking of the inhabitants of the country of Ku-li, i.e. Kalikut, it says that there five different classes, or castes, are distinguished, viz.: 1, the Nan-p'i; 2, the Hui-hui, or Muhammadans; 3, the Chê-ti; 4, the Ko-ling; 5, the Mu-kua. The Hui-hui are well known as Muhammadans; the term Ché-ti I venture to identify with the “Chetty,” or merchants' caste (cf. Yule, , Anglo-Indian Glossary, p. 144Google Scholar, s.v. Chetty, and p. 615, s.v. Sett); Ko-ling may stand for “Kling” (cf. Yule, op. cit., p. 372). Mu-kua is apparently the same as Mucoa, Mukuva. “The fourth class are called Mechua, and these are fishers” (Varthema, Yule, p. 454). These identifications are hased on similarity in sound merely, but the passage referred to gives us some further detail regarding the Nan-p'i and the Hui-hui. The former eat no beef, the Hui-hui eat no pork; the two castes, if we may so call them, do not intermarry, and have their own burial customs. In Calicut sixty per cent, of the entire population in those days (about a.d. 1430) were Hui-hui, or Muhammadans. I do not dare to forestall the opinion of Indian scholars with regard to the name Nan-p'i (Nambi). Could this word stand for namburi, “a Brahman of Malabar” (Yule, p. 471, s.v. Nambooree)?
page 483 note 1 It took Ibn Batuta forty days to sail from Sumatra to Kaulam.—Yule, , Cathay, p. 513Google Scholar.
page 483 ntoe 2 Mieh-a-mo, in Cantonese: Mít-á-mát, in the Amoy dialect: Biat-ò-bwat, possibly a Chinese corruption of Arabic Mádávi or Márávi (Marabia), said to have been an old city in the kingdom of Eli described by Marco Polo. However, the few notices collected by Yule, as referring to this city (Marco Polo, 2nd ed., vol. ii, p. 375seq.)Google Scholar do not encourage me in thinking seriously of this identification. Another possibility may be looked for in the name Ma'abar, now applying to the coast of Coromandel. This would involve the extension of Chao Ju-kua's Nan-p'i to both the east and west coast of Southern India. Certain analogies in the Chinese and Marco Polo's account seem to support this supposition. The king of Ma'abar, like the ruler of Nan-p'i, wears golden armlets and ankle-rings (cf. Yule, p. 322). Both monarchs take pleasure in surrounding themselves with a large number of fine women, even the number agreeing in the two accounts. According to Marco Polo (Yule, p. 323), the king has “some five hundred wives”—“for whenever he hears of a beautiful damsel he takes her to wife.” The king of Nan-p'i, besides his five hundred women, had a body-guard of twenty men guarding the royal insignia right and left, while Polo says: “there are about the king a number of Barons in attendance upon him. These ride with him, and keep always near him,” etc. We learn from a later Chinese authority that the Nan-p'i casterefrained from eating beef. So Polo says (Yule, p. 320): “The people are idolaters, and many of them worship the ox, because (they say) it is a creature of such excellence. They would not eat beef for anything in the world, nor would they on any account kill an ox.”
page 483 note 3 “Ibn Batuta describes the King of Calicut, the great Zamorin, coming down to the beach to see the wreck of certain junks: his clothing consisted of a great piece of white stuff rolled about him from the navel to the knees, and a little scrap of a turban on his head; his feet were bare, and a young slave carried an umbrella over him.”—Yule, , Marco Polo, 2nd ed., vol. ii, p. 330, note 1Google Scholar.
page 484 note 1 fan, “foreign”; possibly standing for fan, “Indian,” “Brahmin.”
page 485 note 1 “The cat's eyes, by the Portuguese called Olhos de Gatos, occur in Zeylon, Cambaya, and Pegu.”—Baldaeus, , Beschreibung der ostindischen Küsten Malabar und Coromandel: Amsterdam, 1672Google Scholar. Yule, S., Anglo-Indian Glossary, p. 774Google Scholar. Probably neither Ceylon nor Pegu are meant in this passage, but Cambay, which, as we shall see directly, is enumerated as one of the territories belonging to Nan-p'i.
page 485 note 2 The Chinese text merely contains the following thirty characters, which I have tried to divide and identify as nearly as possible with the limited knowledge of mediaeval India now at my disposal. The characters are: 
. Regarding the ports on the coast of Malabar during the Middle Ages, see Yule's, note devoted to this subject in Cathay, p. 650seqq.Google Scholar
page 486 note 1 This is probably the beverage known as toddy, regarding which see Yule, , Anglo-Indian Glossary, p. 706Google Scholar.
page 487 note 1 The relation between gold and silver, for centuries previous to the discovery of America, was twelve to one. Cf. Yule, , Cathay, etc., p. 442Google Scholar.
page 487 note 2 Coilom is well known as a resort of trade during the Middle Ages up to the time when the Portuguese appeared with ships of deeper draught which could not anchor in its shallow harbour.—Reinaud, , Relation, etc., p. lxxxiiiGoogle Scholar. According to Reinaud's traveller Soleyman, Coilom was the starting-point in India for the journey to China. Similarly, according to Chao Ju-kua, it was the landing-place in India for those coming from China; for, while junks made the trips from Chinchew to Lambri, and thence direct to Ku-lin (Coilom), it is distinctly said that foreign ships rarely go to Nan-p'i. To arrive in Chu-lien (Orissa), as we shall see further on, the traveller hailing from China had to change ship at Ku-lin (Coilom). This seems to show that China skippers were not in the habit of visiting the coast of Coromandel.
page 488 note 1 Guzerat was famous for its many temples, most of which were situated on the south-western coast in the territory called Okamandala, which afterwards became the seat of a cruel set of pirates.—Lassen, , Ind. Alterthumsk., vol. i, p. 134Google Scholar.
page 488 note 2 Regarding the indigo of Guzerat, see lassen, op. cit., vol. i, p. 325; and Yule, , Marco Polo, vol. ii, p. 383Google Scholar.
page 489 note 1 Chu-lien may be a Chinese corruption of the name Chola. Cf. Yule, , Anglo-Indian Glossary, p. 199Google Scholar.
page 489 note 2 There must be an error in this statement; if not, the li has here been confounded with a considerably smaller measure.
page 489 note 3 It appears that we possess an unmistakable record regarding this city in the fragments left to us of the history of the Kesari dynasty in India. It must be the ancient capital of that empire. Lassen (op. cit., vol. iv, p. 6), speaking of the events recorded in the history of Orissa, describes a king Jajāti, not as the founder, but as the restorer, of the Kesari dynasty, who established his court at the city of Djadjapura. Here he built a palace, called Chaturdvāra, because it had four gates. The chief event of Jajāti's reign is, according to Lassen, the establishment of the service of a deity called Djagannātha, whose image had been carried away and concealed and was then recovered. Four images of that deity, including the original one, were brought to Puri, where a new temple was erected for them. “The entire surroundings of the city,” Lassen says, “were devoted to the service of Djagannātha, or Vishnu, and the maintenance of that temple; and Jajāti laid the foundation for the wealth of its priesthood. One of his successors, Lalita Indra Kesari, who ascended the throne in a.d. 617, was the founder of a large and well-defended city in the neighbourhood of the above sanctuary, which was divided into seven quarters and contained thirty-two streets and where the King resided” (Lassen, l.c., p. 11). I am not able to say whether there is any connection between the “thirty-two streets of the city” mentioned by Lassen and the thirty-two pu-lo, or divisions, occurring in our text. These I would under ordinary circumstances consider to be divisions of the country, hut I cannot do so in the face of Indian tradition as known to me through Lassen's account, pending an inquiry into the text forming the basis of that account of “thirty-two streets,” which Lassen appears to have derived from Stirling's, A. “An Account, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical, of Orissa Proper in Cattack,” in As. Res. xv, p. 269seqq.Google Scholar, which I have not been able to look up. In the Sung-shih the names of two kings are mentioned who sent embassies with tribute from this country to China, viz.: in a.d. 1033, Shih-li-lo-ch'a-yin-to-lo-chu-lo, which may stand for Sri Raja Indra Chola [or, Andhra Chola]; and again, in a.d. 1077, Ti-wa-ka-lo, which may stand for Dēva Kala, or Dēva Kara. The last-named king made a good bargain with his colleague on the dragon throne, since the embassy, consisting of 72 men, were given 81,800 strings of copper cash, i.e. about as many dollars, in return for the articles of tribute, comprising glassware, camphor, brocates [called Kimhwa, 
, in the Chinese text), rhinoceros horns, ivory, incense, rosewater, putchuck, asa foetida, borax, cloves, etc. This so-called embassy was probably, like most of the missions to the coast of China, nothing better than a trading expedition on joint account, the 72 ambassadors being the shareholders, or their supercargoes. It appears that the relations between China and Orissa were not resumed after this expedition, and it is very likely that Chao Ju-kua's chapter on Chu-lien is derived from the account of one of the travellers having reached China during the rule of the Kesari dynasty. Such an account would most probably have been placed on record by one of our author's predecessors in the office of Shih-po, or Superintendent of Trade, at Ch'üan-chou.
page 490 note 1 The text says “thirty-one,” but the enumeration following (12+8+12) shows them to be “thirty-two.”
page 491 note 1 It may not be quite hopeless to attempt identifying some of these names, whether they represent “streets,” “divisions” (of the city, or of the country), or “cities” (pura). Should they prove to be names of cities, their identification would assist us in gaining some positive knowledge of the political extent of the Kesari empire. The repetition of certain groups of sounds, such as p'u-têng (twice, viz. a, 23, 24, and b, 21, 22), which may stand for patam, as an ending in city names, or mung-ka-lan (four times, viz. b, 36, 37, 38; c, 12, 13, 14; c, 21, 22, 23; and c, 42, 43, 44), which may stand for Mangalor, might lead to some interesting discoveries. The characters follow each other thus:— 
page 492 note 1 Yüeh-no cloth is frequently mentioned in mediaeval texts on Central and Western Asia., Among other places Baghdad was engaged in its manufacture (see Die Länder des Islâm nach chines. Quellen, Supplement to T'oung-pao, vol. v, p. 42, note 4); also in Rûm (Lu-mei), whatever may he meant hy that name (ibid., p. 48).
page 492 note 2 This may refer to the imposts levied by Varja Kesari.—Lassen, op. cit., vol. iv, p. 11.
page 492 note 3 This seems to show that, when this item of information was placed on record, the great conquest of North India had not taken place.
page 493 note 1 
. Mr. E. H. Parker, in a similar passage, transliterates the characters 11 and 12 by solo, which he calls “a sort of cotton” (China Review, vol. xix, p. 193); but the term reads polo (“blue, yellow, and green polo”), not solo. The character which Mr. Parker has in view is probably 
, so.
page 494 note 1 Cf. the embassy mentioned in the Sung-shih. Note on p. 490, above.
page 494 note 2 Wang-shê, lit. Royal Lodge. I believe that our author here confounds the city of Radjagriha, the Wang-shê of Buddhistic lore, with the new capital founded in a.d. 989 by Nirūpa Kesari and named Kaṭaka, the translation of which name is given as “Royal Residence.” This is the same city which has given its name to the present province of Cuttack.—Lassen, op. cit., vol. iv, p. 12.
page 494 note 3 A great geographer of the T'ang dynasty, who lived about a.d. 730 to 805. He was the author of a number of important ethnographical works, none of which appear to have come down to our days. From his biography (T'ang-shu, ch. 166, p. 1 seqq.) I conclude that he devoted considerable interest to foreign nations. He drew several maps, among others one entitled Hai-nei-hua-i, i.e. “Chinese and Foreigners within the Seas”; and that this was not a mere illustration of ethnographical types, which the word t'u (map, drawing) often denotes, maybe concluded from the remark, made in the T'ang-shu, that “it measured three chang and three ch'ih in breadth, and that it was drawn on the scale of 100 li to the inch.” The geographical section of the bibliographical chapter of the T'ang-shu (ch. 58, p. 32) mentions under his name, besides “Ten books of Maps” (Ti- t'u shih chüan), the work quoted by Chao Ju-kua, with a slight variant, placing ssῠ (four) for hsi (west) in the title.
page 494 note 4 Alias Lu Hui-nêng. Cf. Rémusat, “Sur la succession des trente-trois patriarches de la religion de Bouddha,” in Mél. Asiat. i, p. 124; Lassen, , Ind. Alt., vol. iv, p. 660seq.Google Scholar; Eitel, s.v. Bodhidharma; Watters, , Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 393Google Scholar; Mayers, , Manual, No. 428Google Scholar.
page 495 note 1 In Cantonese Ch'a-na-kat, which may correspond to some name like Chanagar = Chandernagor? Cf. Champanagara, Lassen, op. cit., vol. i, p. 175; and Sunarganu, Yule, , Cathay, p. 465Google Scholar.
page 495 note 2 An account similar to Chao Ju-kua's will be found in the letterpress, accompanying an illustration in the Chinese Orbis Pictus San-ts'ai-t'u-hui. It is reproduced in the T'u-shu-chi-ch'êng, sect. 8: 107, ch. i, p. 50.
page 496 note 1 The term T'ien-chu, usually rendered by India, has a much more limited sense in Buddhist texts than the name thus rendered would suggest. The Hsiang-chiao-p'i-pien, a well-digested Buddhist cyclopaedia of the Ming dynasty (see my notes regarding it in T'oung-pao, vol. vi, p. 318) says (ch. i, p. 4) that “Bangala [Pang-ko-la] is in the east of T'ien-chu; Chao-no-p'o [Chandernagor?], in the middle; Magadha, in the south; Kapila [Buddha's birthplace in the north of Oudh: Cunningham, , The Ancient Geogr. of India, p. 414seqq.Google Scholar;], in the west; and Gazna [Ka-shê-nd] in the north.” Chao Ju-kua probably excludes the T'ien-chu of Buddhists from his own account, which forms the first part of this chapter, and is followed by a quotation from other sources, in which T'ien-chu is taken in another sense; for Wu-t'ien-chu, “The Five Indies,” was well known as a general term for India in the wider sense before Chao Ju-kua.” T'ien-chu is said to be an imitation of the sound Sun-tu or Shên-tu [Sindh], just as T'u-fan is said to stand for T'u-fat [Tibet].” I find this remark in a work published in a.d. 1175, the Yen-fan-lu, by Ch'êng Ta-ch'ang, a most interesting cyclopaedic collection of miscellanies and by no means the kind of work which Wylie, (Notes on Chinese Lit., p. 129)Google Scholar represents it to be.
page 496 note 2 The only interpretation I am able to offer with regard to this remarkable statement is, that at some time or other Nestorian Bishops were regarded “chiefs of the country.” “With the exception of the Buddhist devotee Lo-hu-na, who called himself a native of T'ien-cha and who, as coming from T'ien-chu, or India, in the wider sense, may not be at all connected with the T'ien-chu here described, nothing occurs in this account which points to Buddhism or which strongly speaks against the assumption that Nestorians are referred to as “chiefs.” I am inclined to think that Chao Ju-kua's T'ien-chu refers to the coast of Madras, the legendary burial-place of St. Thomas (see Yule, , Marco Polo, vol. ii, p. 342seqq.Google Scholar), to which should be added the adjoining territory described by Marco Polo as the kingdom of Mutfili. Chao Ju-kua's T'ien-chu produces diamonds: of these Marco Polo says (Yule, vol. ii, p. 347) that “no other country but this kingdom of Mutfili produces them.” Possibly the pieces of talc referred to in the Chinese text as looking like silken gauze have some connection with Polo's “delicate buckrams” which look “like tissue of spider's web.” Whether a bishop, or some other church authority, was in charge of the St. Thomas Christians, it is most probable that he took his appointment from the Nestorian patriarch as the ecclesiastical “King of Ta-ts'in.” Cf. China and the Roman Orient, p. 284 seqq.
page 497 note 1 I am strongly tempted to here suspect an allusion to the use of consecrated water (aqua lustralis), known to the ancient Christians long before the existence of Roman Catholicism.
page 497 note 2 The entire passage following down to the words “they cut jadestone” appears with almost the same reading in the T'ung-tien, a work of the eighth century a.d. Altogether Chao Ju-kua's accounts of Ta-ts'in and T'ien-chu are blended with matter occurring in older texts, to which fact the authors of the great Catalogue of the Peking Imperial Library have drawn attention.
page 497 note 3 “Sucre cristallisé.” This is the translation adopted by Julien for the term shih-mi (lit. “stone honey,” “petrified honey”) on the strength of a definition, deríved apparently from the ancient work I-wu-chih (P'ei-wên-yün-fu, ch. xciii, p. 72). The I-wu-chih says: “The juice pressed out of the sugar-cane produced in Chiao-chih [Tungking] is like i-hsing [“sweet cakes”], and is called t'ang [i.e. sugar[; when further boiled and exposed to the sun, it may be broken up like bricks, after it has coagulated and crystallized. To eat it, you take it into your mouth and dissolve it. At the time people called it shih-mi.” This name shih-mi occurs as early as the Hou-han-shu, in the description of India, which involves that sugar-candy was known there during the first centuries of our era. The Hsi-ching-tsa-chi, a record of events at the Western capital during the Han dynasty, even mentions that the king of Nan-yüeh presented the emperor Kao-ti [b.c. 206–194] with shih-mi (see P'ei-wên-yün-fu, l.c.). Regarding Sugar and Sugar-cane in ancient India, see Lassen, op. cit., vol. i, p. 317 seqq.
page 498 note 1 “The Wooden Ox” and ”the Gliding Horse,” according to the San-kuochih (Chu, ch. v, pp. 13 and 15), were contrivances facilitating the transport of provisions invented by the great hero of the third century, Chu-ko Liang. The Chinese attach great value to these inventions, a detailed description of which has been preserved by the scholiast commenting on the passage referred to. I am not able, from a cursory perusal of it, to form a clear idea as to how they were constructed and how they worked.
page 498 note 2 Hsi-tan chang-shu. According to Julien (Hiouen-Thsang, iii, p. 527), the first chapters of a syllabary in twelve chapters attributed to Brahma. Cf. Eitel, Handbook for the Student of Chin. Buddh., s.v. Siddha Vastu. Watters, , “The Shadows of a Pilgrim,” in China Review, vol. xix, p. 220Google Scholar, shows it to be the beginning of a child's primer, or A B C, the first chapter of which was headed by the word Siddham, forming an auspicious invocation. This may be the primary meaning and would be the orthodox interpretation according to the traditional explanation of this term as found in Buddhist glossaries. Since a gap appears in the text following it, we cannot easily decide what the author was going to say. His speaking of the astronomical achievements of the Hindus, however, seems to suggest that by the term Hsi-tan ( = Siddhânta) the astronomical literature is referred to. Alberûni (Sachau, vol. i, p. 153) says: “The book known among Muslims as Sindhind is called by them Siddhânta, i.e. straight, not crooked nor changing. By this name they call every standard book on astronomy, even such books as, according to our opinion, do not come up to the mark of our so-called Zîj, i.e. handbooks of mathematical astronomy. They have five Siddhânta”, etc. Lassen (op. cit., vol. iv, p. 621) calls the Siddhânta “ein Lehrbuch, in dem ein wissenschaftliches System durch Gründe bewiesen wird, besonders ein astronomisches.”
page 499 note 1 Pin-su, in Cantonese Pan-sók, the latter form representing the sound Panso R,; for, since I had shown (“Chinese Equivalents of the letter R in foreign names” in Journ. of the China Br. Roy. As. Soc., vol. xxi, p. 220) that final n and final t were employed in Ancient Chinese transcriptions to represent final r in foreign names, M. Terrien de Lacouperie added k and p to the number of Chinese finals which can take the place of final r (see “The Djurtchen of Mandshuria” in Journ. Roy. As. Soc, vol. XXI, p. 442). Although this name Pansor is not mentioned anywhere else by our author, I do not hesitate to identify it with the country distinctly described as a producer of camphor under the name Fansur by Arab and other mediaeval writers. “The camphor al-fansūri is mentioned as early as by Avicenna, and by Marco Polo, and came from a place called Pansūr in Sumatra, perhaps the same as Barus, which has now long given its name to the costly Sumatra drug.”—Yule, , Anglo-Indian Glossary, p. 116Google Scholar. The name Pansūr is first mentioned by Mas'ūdi (about a.d. 940) and Abu Seyd (Reinaud, , Relation, etc., vol. i, p. 7: fansurGoogle Scholar). Marco Polo describes a kingdom of Fansur which produces camphor. Chao Ju-kua was apparently not aware that this country of Pin-su (Pansur, or Fansur) and his San-fo-ch'i were situated on the same island; and he may be correct, in a certain sense, in maintaining that in San-fo-ch'i (Palembang) itself the drug was not produced, but merely imported for re-shipment. This passage need not, therefore, involve the exclusion of the camphor industry from Sumatra. Regarding the Fansur question and its literature, see Yule, , Marco Polo, vol. ii, p. 285seqq.Google Scholar
page 501 note 1 This word Hsün-lu [old sound: hun-luk] I look upon as the Chiuese equivalent of Turkish ghyunluk, “frankincense,” though I am not prepared to say whether the Chinese have got this word from the Turks, or vice versâ. Cf. China and the Roman Orient, p. 266 seq.
page 501 note 2 Regarding the identification of these three names, see my Die Länder des Islâm, etc., p. 21, note 3, and p. 27 note 1; also Professor de Goeje's remarks on p. 58.
page 501 note 3 From a passage in the Hsiang-p'u, a later work on incenses, where the same sense is reproduced in almost identical words, I conclude that yung (Banian) is a misprint for sung (a pine-tree), the two characters being easily confounded. The passage referred to is quoted in the Pên-ts'ao-kang - mu, ch. xxxiv, p. 48.
page 502 note 1 Mo-yao, lit. Mo Medicine. The word mo, pronounced mút in Cantonese, is a transcription for Arahic mur, myrrh.
page 502 note 2 According to Part I, from the country of Chung-li, some Arab colony on the east coast of Africa. Cf. Die Länder des Islâm, etc., p. 39. I had endeavoured to identify this country with that of the Somali as adjoining Berhera (Pi-pa-lo); but Prof, de Goeje may be right in suggesting Socotra as the producer of Dragon's Blood. Probably the name Chung-li embraces the Somali coast with Socotra, the term shan, which I first translated by Gebirge, referring to an island here.
page 505 note 1 The last paragraph is added to the text in two rows of small characters, and may possibly be a gloss added by another hand. It is certainly remarkable that Chao Ju-kua omits pepper among the products of Nan-p'i. In his description of Shê-p'o, on the other hand, pepper appears named among other products, besides a special note, which says: “There is vast store of pepper of these foreign countries, and the merchant ships, from the manifold profit they derive from that trade, are in the habit of smuggling copper cash for bartering purposes. Our Court has repeatedly interdicted all trade [with Shê-p'o, Java]; but foreign merchants deceitfully changed its name into that of Sukitan.” Under the head of “Sukitan” our author says: “Pepper grows there in great abundance. In the proper season and in good years twenty-five taels of trade silver will buy from ten to twenty packages of pepper, each package holding fifty pecks [shêng, equal to about an English pint]; in years of dearth, or in times of disturbance, the same sum will fetch only half that amount. The pepper-gatherers suffer much from the acrid fumes they have to inhale and are commonly afflicted with headache [malaria?], which will yield to doses of the Hsiung medicine of Szechuen [Ch'uan-hsiung, a species of Levisticum, also mentioned among the Chinese articles imported in Shê-p'o, or Java].” Under Hsin-t'o [Sunda] we learn that “the pepper produced in the hills is small-grained, but heavy, and superior to that of Ta-pan [Tuban].”
page 506 note 1 Yung-chou Ku-chiang. Yung-chou is the name used during the T'ang and Sung dynasties for the present prefecture of Nan-ning in Kuangsi (Playfair, Cities and Towns of China, Nos. 5116 and 3076). The Ku River is a tributary of the Yü-chiang, the navigable southern affluent of the West River, or Sikiang, which had been mistaken for the West River itself by Mr. Michael Moss in his “Narrative” of an expedition on that river, as I have shown in a paper on “The West River, or Sikiang” in vol. iii (1874) of the China ReviewGoogle Scholar. The Ku River is described as flowing ten li east of the Nan-ning city (Nan-ning-fu-chih, quoted in the T'u-shu-chi-ch'êng, sect. 6, ch. 1242).
page 506 note 2 The Sung-shih, in its chapter on official dress (ch. 153, p. 10), contains a list of dress materials presented to the various grades of higher officials by the emperor. In the year a.d. 963, according to this list, officials of certain grades, among which the huang-ch'in chu-ssῠ fu-shih, i.e. the Imperial Commissioners and Assistant-Commissioners related to the Imperial family, are included, were to be presented each with a “fine brocade of kingfishers' feathers.” Our author, being one of the class concerned in this bounty, is sure to have been well informed on whatever regulations were connected with it. It is, therefore, of some importance to know that, in the year a.d. 1107, this liberality was stopped by the Emperor Hui Tsung as far as Kingfishers' feathers were concerned. “The ancient rulers,” the Emperor says, alluding no doubt to the famous example set by King T'ang, the founder of the Shang dynasty, “in their government measures, extended the principle of humanity to plants, trees, birds, and beasts: now the depriving of living creatures of their life, in order to obtain their plumage for quite an unnecessary purpose, is certainly not worthy of the kindness extended by the early rulers to all creatures. I, therefore, order the officials to stop the practice on pain of punishment.” (Sung-shih, l.c., p. 16.) This is an early instance of a movement which has been resumed in our daya by the societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals in condemning the practice of adorning ladies' bonnets with the plumage of birds killed for the purpose.