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

694   230. FEMELES (ISLAND OF WOMEN)

ally, I may refer the reader to the translation given in D'HERVEY DE SAINT-DENYS, Ethnographie, Méridionaux, 170-173, from Wên-hsien t'ung-k'ao, 329, 3-4, which itself copies the abridged text in T'ung tien, 187, 7 a; this abridged version does not contain the long list of tribes at the end. It must be pointed out, however, that this translation ascribes to Fu-kuo a size of 800 li from north to south, and of 4 500 li from west to east; but this is almost certainly an error of the T'ung tien (through a mistaken duplication of w hsi as 51 ssa), since the Sui shu, the Pei shih and the T'ung chip (197, 14 a) all have « 1 500 li » from west to east; and this reading of the Sui shu is confirmed by the early quotation in T'ai-p'ing yii-lan, 788, 16 a. Moreover, D'HERVEY DE SAINT-

DENYS' « montagnes *   Tsing-sie » do not exist; the correct reading is that the country yields

barley « and oats » (   ch'ing-k'o). Fu-kuo had to the east the A   Chia-liang Barbarians
(I); in 609, the king of Fu-kuo sent his son to the Court with sixty of them; in the region of the Chia-liang Barbarians, there was a river (shui) 600 to 700 feet wide, and in Fu-kuo there was another more than 1 000 feet wide; both ran south and were crossed by means of boats made of hide. It looks as though the Ta Kin ho and the Nag chu of our maps were intended. South of

Fu-kuo were the Alj   Po-yüan Barbarians. In 605-617, the various petty tribes enumerated
at the end of the notice sent envoys to the Court, and « general administrators » (tsung-kuan) of the various « routes » (tao) were established along the south-western boundary to look after them from afar. The interesting point for the present inquiry is the short sentence : « West [of Fu-kuo], there is the Kingdom of Women (Nü-kuo) ». This Kingdom of Women certainly is the same as the Kingdom of the Woman King in the Wei shu and most probably as the Su-p'i of the Hsin T'ang shu. According to the latter text, it ought to have To-mi to the east (or rather, as we shall see, to the north-east); though the To-mi has no special paragraph in the Sui shu, its name occurs

in the final list of minor tribes under its older form 12.   Tang-mi (this form Tang-mi was still
in use in the 7th cent.; cf. Chiu T'ang shu, 196 A, 2 a; Hsin T'ang shu, 216 A, 2 a).

The other passage of the Sui shu (83, 5 a; Pei shih, 97, 12 a-b) is a special paragraph concerning a Kingdom of Women; it has been translated by BUSHELL in JRAS, 1880, 531-532, and ROCKHILL, The Land of the Lamas, 339-340, but with some omissions, and it is too important not be given in its entirety : « Kingdom of Women (Nü-kuo). The Kingdom of Women is south of the Ts'ungling (« Onion Range »); from generation to generation its ruler is a woman. The surname of the

queen is g{   Su-p'i and her appellation (tzû) is *   Mo-chieh ». Out of this passage, HERRMANN
(in Sven HEDIN, Southern Tibet, VIII, 22) has elicited a name « Su-p'i-tzû-mo-chieh », which of course does not exist. « She has been twenty years on the throne. The husband of the queen is

called (hao)   Chin-chü (« Gold-gathering ») ; he does not share in the government. The men
in the kingdom have no other activities than to fight. On a mountain they have made a city wall (ch'êng) five or six li square; the people number 10,000 families. The queen lives in a nine-storeyed house, and has several hundred female attendants. Every five days, there is a council of state. There is also a little queen (hsiao nü-wang) and both together attend to the government of the kingdom. It is their custom for women to make light of men, but their natures are not jealous. Men and women paint their faces with different colours, which they sometimes change several times a day. All the people (jên) let their hair hang down, and make shoes (hsiai) of hide. There is no fixed system of taxation. The climate is very cold, and they live by hunting. [The