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0168 Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.1
Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.1 / Page 168 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000042
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clii

PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

" The most northern parts of Serice are inhabited by tribes of cannibals.' Below these the nation of the Annibi dwells to the north of the mountains bearing the same name. Between these last and the Auxacian Mountains is the nation of the Sizyges ;2 next to them the Damnœ ; and then the Piaddæ, extending to the river OEchardus. Adjoining it are a people bearing the same name, the OEchardæ.

" And again, east of the Annibi are the Garen œi and the Nabann e.3 There is the Asmiræan country lying north of the mountains of the same name, and south of this extending to the Kasian Mountains the great nation Issedones ; and beyond them to the east the Throani. Bellow them come the Ethaguri to the east of the mountains of the same name, and south of the Issedones the Aspacar e, and then the Batœ, and furthest to the south, near the mountain chains Hemodus and Sericus, are the Ottorocorrhæ 4"

The names of the following cities of Serice are given : "Damna, Piada, A smiræa, Tharrhana, Issedon Serica, Aspacara, Drosache, Paliana, Abragana, Thogara, Daxata, Orosana, Ottorocorrha, Solana, Sera Metropolis" (book vi, ch. 16).

The Land of the SIN1E.

" The Sin are bounded on the north by part of Serice, as has been defined already ; on the east and the south, by the Terra Incognita ; on the west, by India beyond the Ganges, according to the boundary already defined extending to the Great Gulf, and then by the Great Gulf itself, and those gulfs that follow it in succession, by the gulf called Taeriodes, and by part of the gulf of the Sinæ, on which dwell the fish-eating Ethiopians,5 according to the detail which follows."

He then gives the longitude and latitude of various points on the coast; viz., River Aspithra, city of Bramma, River Ambastes, Rhabana

Oikharclai, on the river of that name, which is probably the Tarim, may represent the Uigurs.

1 As late as the middle of the thirteenth century King Hethum of Armenia in the deserts near Bishbalig (Urumtsi) speaks of wild men with no covering but the hair of their heads; " They are real brutes," it is added. I do not know any other reference to tribes in Tartary in so low a state (Journ. Asiat., ser. ii, tom. xii, p. 273 segq.)

2 The name Sizyges in its probable etymology appears to refer to the chariot or waggon driving habits of the people. A tribe of the Uigurs hereabouts were called by the Chinese ChhessJ or " The Car Drivers" (Rérnusat in Acad., viii, 112).

s Possibly the Naiman horde so notable in the Mongol history. 4 Utara Kuru of the Hindus, see Lassen i, 846.

Marcianus of Heraclea in the corresponding passage has the «Ichthyophagi Sinae," which is, perhaps, an indication that his Ptolemy did not contain the perplexing appellation JEthiopes. As this appellation (Ichthyophagi Æthiopes) occurs more appropriately (Bk. iv, chap. 9) as that of a tribe on the remote west coast of Africa, it is not improbable that its introduction here is due to officious, or perhaps unconscious, interpolation by a transcriber.