National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0083 Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2
Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 / Page 83 (Color Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000042
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

BIOGRAPHICAL AND INTRODUCTORY NOTICES.   323

at all times have been highly inconvenient guests upon the little Maldive Isles, and we gather from Ibn Batuta that in his time (and Marignolli's) there were but one horse and one mare on the whole metropolitan island. Nor could our author with any show of reason call these little clusters, with their produce of cowries and coco-nuts, "the finest island in the world." We might perhaps get over the statement about the latitude, as wiser men than Marignolli made great mistakes in such matters. But where are we to find a " very lofty and almost inaccessible mountain" in the Maldives ? You might as well seek such a thing on the Texel.

We may remember that Odoric in his quaint idiom terms Java " the second best of all islands that exist," whilst the historic pictures on the palace walls of Saba rather strikingly recal what the same friar tells us about the like in the palace of the Kings of Java, and I should be quite content to accept Java with Meinert, if we could find there any proof of the frequency of female sovereignty. I quote below the only two traces of this that I have been enabled to discover.1 Though I do . not think it so probable, it is just possible that some province of Sumatra

1 The chronology of Javanese history up to the establishment of Islam is very doubtful, and it is difficult to say how far either of the following instances of female rule might suit the time of Marignolli's voyage.

  1. An ineffectual attempt having been made by Ratu Dewa, a native of Kuningan in the province of Cheribon, who had been entrusted with the administration of Gâlu, to maintain an authority independent of Majapahit, he lost his life in the struggle, and his widow Torbita, who persevered and was for a time successful, was at length overcome and went over to Maj apahit.

  2. Merta Wijaya, fifth prince of Majapahit, left two children, a daughter named Kanchana Wungu, and a son, Angka Wijaya, who according to some authorities ruled jointly. The princess, however, is better known as an independent sovereign, under the title of Prabu Kanya Kanchana Wungu (see Raffles, Hist. of Java, ii, 107 and 121).

This second instance seems the most pertinent, and as the fifth prince of Majapahit, according to Walckenaer's correction of the chronology, came to the throne in 1322, the time appears to suit fairly. (See Mem. del' Acad. des Inscript., xv (1842), p. 224 segq).

The stories of Elias (or Khidr) would be gathered from the Mahomedan settlers here, as those of Adam and Cain were gathered (as we shall see) by our traveller in Ceylon.

212