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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
270
MARCO POLO BOOK III.
mountains called the Gates of China.) In the Livre des iierveiïlcs de l'Inde (pp. 85•
86) we read : ` When arrived between Sanf and the China coast, in the neighbourhood of Sundar Fúlát, an island situated at the entrance of the Sea of Sandjy, which is
the Sea of China. . . .' It would appear from these two passages that Sanf is to he looked for in the Malay Peninsula. This Sanf is different from the Sanf of Ihn Khordâdhbeh and of Abulfeda." (Guyard's transi. II. ii. 127.)
It does not strike me from these passages that Sanf must be looked for in the Malay Peninsula. Indeed Professor G. Schlegel, in a paper published in the T'oung Pao,
vol. x., seems to prove that Shay-po (Djava), represented by Chinese characters, which are the transcription of the Sanskrit name of the China Rose (Hibiscus rosa sinensis), Djavâ or Djapâ, is not the great island of Java, but, according to Chinese texts, a state of the Malay Peninsula ; but he does not seem to me to prove that Shay-po is Champa, as he believes he has done.
However, Professor De Goeje adds in his letter, and I quite agree with the celebrated Arabic scholar of Leyden, that he does not very much like the theory of two Sanf, and that he is inclined to believe that the sea captain of the Marvels of India placed Sundar Fúlát a little too much to the north, and that the narrative of the Relation des Voyages is inexact.
To conclude : the history of the relations between Annam (Tong-king) and her southern neighbour, the kingdom of Champa, the itineraries of Marco Polo and Ibn Khordâdhbêh as well as the position given to Sanf by Abulfeda, justify me, I think, in placing Champa in that part of the central and southern indo-Chinese coast which the French to-day call Annam (Cochinchine and Basse-Cochinchine), the Binh-Thuan province showing more particularly what remains of the ancient kingdom.
Since I wrote the above, I have received No. i of vol. ii. of the Bul. de l'Ecole Franfaise d'Extrc;ne-Orient, which contains a note on Cant et Ca;npā, by M. A. Barth. The reasons given in a note addressed to him by Professor De Goeje and the work of Ibn Khordâdhbeh have led M. A. Barth to my own conclusion, viz. that the coast of Champa was situated where inscriptions have been found on the Annamite coast.—H. C.]
The Sagatu of Marco appears in the Chinese history as San, the military governor of the Canton districts, which he had been active in reducing.
In 1278 Sotu sent an envoy to Chen-ching to claim the king's submission, which was rendered, and for some years he sent his tribute to Kúblái. But when the Kaan proceeded to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom by sending a Resident and Chinese officials, the king's son (I 282) resolutely opposed these proceedings, and threw the Chinese officials into prison. The Kaan, in great wrath at this insult, (coming also so soon after his discomfiture in Japan), ordered Sotu and others to Chen-ching to take vengeance. The prince in the following year made a pretence of submission, and the army (if indeed it had been sent) seems to have been withdrawn. The prince, however, renewed his attack on the Chinese establishments,
and put ioo of their officials to death. Sotu then despatched a new force, but
it was quite unsuccessful, and had to retire. In 1284 the king sent an embassy,
including his grandson, to beg for pardon and reconciliation. Kúblái, however,
refused to receive them, and ordered his son Tughan to advance through Tong-king, an enterprise which led to a still more disastrous war with that country, in which the Mongols had much the worst of it. We are not told more.
Here we have the difficulties usual with Polo's historical anecdotes. Certain
names and circumstances are distinctly recognisable in the Chinese Annals ; others are difficult to reconcile with these. The embassy of 1284 seems the most likely to be the one spoken of by Polo, though the Chinese history does not give it the favourable result which he ascribes to it. The date in the text we see to be wrong, and as usual it varies in different MSS. I suspect the original date was MCCLXXXIII.
`- One of the Chinese notices gives one of the king's names as Sinhopala, and no
doubt this is Ramusio's Accambale (Açambale) ; an indication at once of the authentic character of that interpolation, and of the identity of Champa and Chen-Ching.
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