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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. XI. LAMBRI
301
same Island.* It is probable that the verzino or brazil-wood of Ameri (L'Ameri, i.e. Lambri ?) which appears in the mercantile details of Pegolotti was from this part of Sumatra. It is probable also that the country called Nanwuli, which the Chinese Annals report, with Sunzzentula and others, to have sent tribute to the Great Kaan in 1286, was this same Lambri which Polo tells us called itself subject to the
Kaan.
In the time of the Sung Dynasty ships from T'swan-chau (or Zayton) bound for Tashi, or Arabia, used to sail in forty days to a place called Lanli poi (probably this is also Lambri, La;;lbri puri ?). There they passed the winter, i.e. the south-west monsoon, just as Marco Polo's party did at Sumatra, and sailing again when the wind became fair, they reached Arabia in sixty days. (Bretsclzneider, p. 16.)
[The theory of Sir H. Yule is confirmed by Chinese authors quoted by Mr. Groeneveldt (Notes on the Malay Archipelago, pp. 98-1ao) : " The country of Lambri is situated due west of Sumatra, at a distance of three days sailing with a fair wind ; it lies near the sea and has a population of only about a thousand families. . . . On the east the country is bordered by Litai, on the west and the north by the sea, and on the south by high mountains, at the south of which is the sea again. . . . At the north-west of this country, in the sea, at a distance of half a day, is a flat mountain, called the Hat-island ; the sea at the west of it is the great ocean, and is called the Ocean of Lambri. Ships coming from the west all take this island as a landmark." Mr. Groeneveldt adds : " Lambri [according to his extracts from Chinese authors] must have been situated on the north-western corner of the island of Sumatra, on or near the spot of the present Achin : we see that it was bounded by the sea on the north and the west, and that the Indian Ocean was called after this insignifichnt place, because it was considered to begin there. Moreover, the small island at half a day's distance, called Hat-island, perfectly agrees with the small islands Bras or Nasi, lying off Achin, and of which the former, with its newly-erected lighthouse, is a landmark for modern navigation, just what it is said in our text to have been for the natives then. We venture to think that the much discussed situation of Marco Polo's Lambri is definitely settled herewith." The Chinese author writes : " The mountains [of Lambri] produce the fragrant wood called Hsiang-chên Hsiang." Mr. Groeneveldt remarks (l.c. p. 143) that this " is the name of a fragrant wood, much used as incense, but which we have not been able to determine. Dr. Williams says it comes from Sumatra, where it is called laka-wood, and is the product of a tree to which the name of Tanarius major is given by him. For different reasons, we think this identification subject to doubt."
Captain M. J. C. Lucardie mentions a village called Lamreh, situated at Atjeh, near Tungkup, in the xxvi. Mukim, which might be a remnant of the country of Lámeri. (iierveilles de l'Inde, p. 235.)—H. C.]
(De Barros, Dec. III. Bk. V. ch. i. ; Elliot, I. 7o; Cathay, 84, segq. ; Pe;ol. p. 361 ; Pazlth ier, p. 6o5.)
NOTE 2.—Stories of tailed or hairy men are common in the Archipelago, as in many other regions. Kazwini tells of the hairy little men that are found in Pámni (Sumatra) with a language like birds' chirping. Marsden was told of hairy people called Oran; Gzlgu in the interior of the Island, who differed little, except in the use of speech, from the Orang utang. Since his time a French writer, giving the same. name and same description, declares that he saw "a group" of these hairy people on the coast of Andragiri, and was told by them that they inhabited the interior of Menangkabau and formed a small tribe. It is rather remarkable that this writer makes no allusion to Marsden though his account is so nearly identical (L' Océanie in L' Univers Pittoresque, I. 24. ) [One of the stories of the 1llerveilles de l'Inde (p. 125) is that there are anthropophagi with tails at Lulu bilenk between Fansur and
* I formerly supposed Al-Ramni, the oldest Arabic name of Sumatra, to be a corruption of Lambri ; but this is more probably of Hindu origin. One of the Dvfyas of the ocean mentioned in the Puranas is called Ráuzawyaka, "delightfulness." (JVilliazns's Skt. Dict.)
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