IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
488 TRAVELS OF IBN BATUTA IN BENGAL, CHINA,
sented, and sent one of his people to accompany me. I travelled on the river in a vessel, which was much like the
war galleys in our country, excepting that the sailors rowed standing and all together amidships, whilst the passengers kept forward and aft. For shade they spread an awning made of a plant of the country resembling flax, but not flax ; it was, however, finer than hemp.1
We travelled on the river for twenty-seven days.2 Every day a little before noon we used to moor at some village, where we bought what was needful, and performed our midday prayers.
In the evening we stopped at another village, and so on until we arrived at Sinkalan, which is the city of Sin-ul-Sin. Porcelain is made there, just as at Zaitun, and it is there also that the river called Ab-i-Haiycch (or water-of-life) discharges itself into the sea, at a place which they call the confluence of the seas. Sin-ul-Sin is one of the greatest of cities, and one of those that has the finest of bazars. One of the largest of these is the porcelain bazar, and from it china-ware is exported to the other cities of China, to India, and to Yemen.
In the middle of the city you seè a superb temple with nine gates ; inside of each there is a portico with terraces where the inmates of the building seat themselves. Between the second and third gates there is a place with rooms for occupation by the blind, the infirm or the crippled. These
I Perhaps grass-cloth.
2 It is very possible that there may be continuous inland navigation from Zayton to Canton, parallel to the coast, but I cannot ascertain more than that there is such from Fucheu, and I presume from Thsivan-cheu or Zayton to Chang-cheu. If this does not extend further, his journey " by the river " must have been up the Min river ; then, after crossing the mountains into Kiangsi, re-embarking and following the Kankiang up to the Meiling Pass, and so across that to the Pe-Kiang, leading to Canton; the latter part of the route being that followed by Macartney and Amherst on their return journies, as well as by the authors of many other published narratives.
On Sinkalan or Sin-ul-Sin and its identity with Canton, see supra, pp. 105, 269, 373, and 417.
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