IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
01
314 MARCO POLO BOOK III.
would he sell it, for it had come to him from his
ancestors.'
The people of Seilan are no soldiers, but poor
cowardly creatures. And when they have need of
soldiers they get Saracen troops from foreign parts.
[NOTE 1.—Mr. Geo. Phillips gives (Seaports of India, p. 216 et seqq.) the Stai Chart used by Chinese Navigators on their return voyage from Ceylon to Su-men-1dla. —II. C.]
NOTE 2.—Valentyn appears to be repeating a native tradition when he says : " In old times the island had, as they loosely say, a good 400 miles (i.e. Dutch, say i600 miles) of compass, but at the north end the sea has from time to time carried away a large part of it." (Ceylon, in vol. v., p. i8.) Curious particulars touching the exaggerated ideas of the ancients, inherited by the Arabs, as to the dimensions of Ceylon, will be found in Tennent's Ceylon, ch. i. The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang has the same tale. According to him, the circuit was 7000 li, or 1400 miles. We see from Marco's curious notice of the old charts (G. T. " selonc qe se treuve en la mapemondi des mariner de cel mer ") that travellers had begun to find that the dimensions were exaggerated. The real circuit is under 700 miles !
On the ground that all the derivations of the name SAlLAN or CEYLON from the old Sinhala, Serendib, and what not, sieem forced, Van der Tuuk has suggested that the name may have been originally Javanese, being formed (he says) according to the rules of that language from Sela, "a precious stone," so that Pulo Selan would be the " Island of Gems." [Professor Schlegel says (Geog. Notes, I. p. 19, note) that " it seems better to think of the Sanskrit sila, `a stone or rock,' or aila, `a mountain,' which agree with the Chinese interpretation."—H. C.] The Island was really called anciently Ratnadvīpa, " the Island of Gems " (MJnz. de H. T., II. 125, and Harivansa, I. 403) ; and it is termed by an Arab Historian of the 9th century . jazírat al Yákút, " The Isle of Rubies." [The (Chinese) characters ya-ku pao-shih are in some accounts of Ceylon used to express Yákút. (Ma-Huan, transi. by Phillips, p. 213. )-
C.] As a matter of fact, we derive originally from the Malays nearly all the forms we have adopted for names of countries reached by sea to the east of the Bay of Bengal, e.g. Awa, Barnaa, Paigu, Siyam, China, fapún, Kochi (Cochin China), Champa, Kamboja, Mallika (properly a place in the Island of Ceram), Súlúk, Burnet', Tanasari, Martavan, etc. That accidents in the history of marine affairs in those seas should have led to the adoption of the Malay and Javanese names in the case of Ceylon also is at least conceivable. But Dr. Caldwell has pointed out to me that the Páli form of Sinhala was Sikalan, and that this must have been colloquially shortened to Sêlan, for it appears in old Tamul inscriptions as 1lam. * Hence there is nothing really strained in the derivation of Sailán from Sinhala. Tennent ( Ceylon,
549) and Crawfurd (Malay Diet. p. 171) ascribe the name Selan, Zeilan, to the Portuguese, but this is quite unfounded, as our author sufficiently testifies. The name Sailán also occurs in Rashiduddin, in Hayton, and in Jordanus (see next note). (See Van der Tuuk, work quoted above (p. 287), p. 118 ; J. As. sér. IV., torn. viii. 145 ; J Ind. Arch. IV. 187 ; Elliot, I. 7o.) [Sinhala or Sihala, "lions' abode," with the addition of " Island," Sihala-dvīpa, comes down to us in Cosmas LceAe ßa (Hobson Dobson ). ]
NOTE 3.—The native king at this time was Pandita Prakrama Bahu III., who reigned from 1267 to 1301 at Dambadenia, about 40 miles north-north-east of Columbo. But the Tamuls of the continent had recently been in possession of the whole northern
* The old Tamul alphabet has no sibilant.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.