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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. X. SAMARA AND DAGROIAN
297
t
star. The name was probably given to the N.W. point under a latitude in which the Great Bear sets in that quarter. In this way many of the points of the old Arabian Rose des Vents were named from the rising or setting of certain constellations. (See Reinaud's Abulfeda, Introd. pp. cxcix. -cci. )
NOTE 3.—The tree here intended, and which gives the chief supply of toddy and sugar in the Malay Islands, is the Areng Saccharzfera (front the Javanese name), called by the Malays Gonutti, and by the Portuguese Sauer. It has some resemblance to the date-palm, to which Polo compares it, but it is a much coarser and wilder-looking tree, with a general raggedness, " incompla et adspectu tristis," as Rumphius describes it. It is notable for the number of plants that find a footing in the joints of its stem. On one tree in Java I have counted thirteen species of such parasites, nearly all ferns. The tree appears in the foreground of the cut at p. 273.
Crawfurd thus describes its treatment in obtaining toddy : " One of the spathae, or shoots of fructification, is, on the first appearance of the fruit, beaten for three successive days with a small stick, with the view of determining the sap to the wounded part. The shoot is then cut off, a little way from the root, and the liquor which pours out is received in pots. . . . The Gomuti palm is fit to yield toddy at 9 or 1 o years old, and continues to yield it for 2 years at the average rate of 3 quarts a day." (Hist. of Ind. Arch. I. 398.)
The words omitted in translation are unintelligible to me : "et szint quatre raimes trois cel en." (G. T.)
[" Polo's description of the wine-pots of Samara hung on the trees ' like date-palms,' agrees precisely with the Chinese account of the shu then tsiu made from ` coir trees like cocoa-nut palms ' manufactured by the Burmese. Therefore it seems more likely that Samara is Siam (still pronounced Shunzuro in Japan, and Siamlo in Hakka), than Sumatra." (Parker, China Review, XIV. p. 359.) I think it useless to discuss this theory.—H. C.]
NOTE 4.—No one has been able to identify this state. Its position, however, must have been near PEDIR, and perhaps it was practically the same. Pedir was the most flourishing of those Sumatran states at the appearance of the Portuguese.
Rashiduddin names among the towns of the Archipelago Dalnzian, which may perhaps he a corrupt transcript of Dagroian.
Mr. Phillips's Chinese extracts, already cited (p. 296), state that west of Sumatra (proper) were two small kingdoms, the first Nakú-urh, the second Liti. Nakú-urh, which seems to be the Ting-'ho-'rh of Pauthier's extracts, which sent tribute to the Kaan, arid may probably be Dagroian as Mr. Phillips supposes, was also called the Kingdom of Tattooed Folk.
[Mr G. Phillips wrote since (J R.A.S., July 1895, p. 528) : " Dragoian has puzzled many commentators, but on (a) Chinese chart . . . there is a country called Ta-hua-mien, which in the Amoy dialect is pronounced Dakolien, in which it is very easy to recognise the Dragoian, or Dagoyam, of Marco Polo." In his paper of The Seaports of India and Ceylon (Jour. China B. R. A. S., xx. 1885, p. 221), Mr. Phillips, referring to his Chinese Map, already said : Ta-hsiao-hua-mien, in the Amoy dialect Toa-sio-hoe (or hó)-bin, "The Kingdom of the Greater and Lesser Tattooed Faces." 'IThe Toa-Ko-bin, the greater tattooed-face people, most probably represents the Dagroian, or Dagoyum, of Marco Polo. This country was called Na-ku-êrh, and Ma Huan says, " the King of Na-ku-érh is also called the King of the Tattooed Faces." —H. C.]
Tattooing is ascribed by Friar Odoric to the people of Suinoltra. ( Cathay, p. 86.) Liti is evidently the Lick of De Barros, which by his list lay immediately east of Pedir. This would place Nakú-urh about Samarlangka. Beyond Liti was Lannzoli (i.e. Lambri). [See G. Schlegel, Geog. Notes, XVI. Li-tai, Nakur.—H. C.]
There is, or was fifty years ago, a small port between Ayer I.abu and Samarlangka, called Daridn-Gadé ( Great Darian ?). This is the nearest approach to Dagroian that I have met with. (N. Ann. des V., torn. xviii. p. 16.)
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