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
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 417
three to twelve sails, made of strips of bamboo woven like mats. Each of them had a crew of 1,000 men, viz., 600 sailors and 400 soldiers, and had three tenders attached, which were called respectively the Half, the Third, and the Quarter, names apparently indicating their proportionate size.. The vessels for this trade were built nowhere except at ZAITUN and SINKALAN, the city also called SIN-tL-SIN,1 and were all made with triple sides, fastened with enormous spikes, three cubits in length. Each ship had four decks, and numerous private and public cabins for the merchant passengers, with closets and all sorts of conveniences.2 The sailors frequently had pot-herbs, ginger, &c., growing on board in wooden tubs. The commander of the ship was a very great personage,3 and, when he landed, the soldiers belonging to his ship marched before him with sword and spear and martial music.
M. Polo, p. 656). I may venture at least to suggest a doubt of this derivation. Junk is certainly the Malay and Javanese Jong or Ajong, 'a great ship' (v. Crawfurd's Malay Dict. in vocib.); whilst Zao may just as probably be the Dhao or Dao, which is to this day the common term on all the shores of the Indian Ocean, I believe from Malabar westward, for the queer old-fashioned high-sterned craft of those coasts, the Tava of Athanasius Nikitin's voyage from Hormuz to Cambay. Dow," says Burton, "is used on the Zanzibar coast for craft generally" (J. R. G. S., xxix, 239.)
1 We have already seen that Sinkaldn is Canton (supra, pp. 105 and 268), and Ibn Batuta here also teaches us to identify it with the Siniaul-Sin of Edrisi, which that geographer describes as lying at one extremity of the Chinese empire, unequalled for its size, edifices and commerce, and crowded with merchants from all the parts of India towards China. It was the residence, he says, of a Chinese Prince of the Blood, who governed it as a vassal of the Fagfur (the Facfur of Polo, i. e., the Sung Emperor of Southern China; see Jaubert's Edrisi, i, 193).
2 This account of the great Junks may be compared with those given by M. Polo (iii, c. 1), and F. Jordanus (p. 54).
3 Because Ibn Batuta says the skipper was like a great Amir," Lassen assumes that he was an Arab. For this there seems no ground. Further on Ibn Batuta calls Kurtai the Viceroy of Kingszé, who is expressly said to be a Pagan, " a great Amir." All that he means to say of the captain might be most accurately expressed in the vulgar term a very great swell."
Whilst referring to Lassen's remarks upon Ibn Batuta towards the end of the fourth volume of his Indian Antiquities, I am constrained to say that the carelessness exhibited in this part of that great work makes one stand aghast, coming from a man of such learning and reputation.
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