IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
THE DATE-PALM 389
East-African coast. The early texts relating to Ta Ts'in do not mention the palm; but at the end of the article Fu-lin (Syria), the T `an §u speaks of two countries,Mo-lin (*Mwa-lin, Mwa-rin) andJ
Lao-p`o-sa (*Lav-bwi5-sar), as being situated 2000 ii south-west of Fu-lin, and sheltering a dark-complexioned population. The land is barren, the people feed their horses on dried fish, and they themselves subsist on dates.' BRETSCHNEIDER2 was quite right in seeking this locality in Africa, but it is impossible to accept his suggestion that " perhaps the Chinese names Mo-lin and Lao-p`o-sa are intended to express the country of the Moors (Mauritania) or Lybia." HIRTH3 did not discuss this weak theory, and, while locating the countries in question along the west coast of the Red Sea, did not attempt to identify the transcriptions. According to Ma Twan-lin, the country Mo-lin is situated south-west of the country VI k Yarn-sa-lo, which Hirth tentatively equated with Jerusalem. This is out of the question, as Yarn-sa-lo answers to an ancient An-saô(sar)-la(ra).4 Moreover, it is on record in the T`ai p`in hwan yü ki5 that Mo-lin is south-west of
k P`o-sa-lo (*Bwiô-saS-la), so that this name is clearly identical
with that of Ma Twan-lin and the transcription of the Tang Annals. In my opinion, the transcription *Mwa-lin is intended for the Malindi of Edrisi or Mulanda of Ya,qût, now Malindi, south of the Equator, in Seyidieh Province of British East Africa. Edrisi describes this place as a large city, the inhabitants of which live by hunting and fishing. They salt sea-fish for trade, and also exploit iron-mines, iron being the source of their wealth.' If this identification be correct, the geographical definition of the Tang Annals (2000 ii south-west of Fu-lin) is, of course, deficient; but we must not lose sight of the fact that these data rest on a hearsay report hailing from Fu-lin, and that, generally speaking, Chinese calculations of distances on sea-routes are not to be taken too
seriously.? Under the Ming, the same country appears as * Ma-lin,
the king of which sent an embassy to China in 1415 with a gift of
1 In the transcription hu-man, as given above, followed by the explanation that this is the "Persian jujube." The date is not a native of eastern Africa, nor does it thrive in the tropics, but it was doubtless introduced there by the Arabs (cf. F. STORBECK, Mitt. Sem. Or. Spr., 1914, II, p. 158; A. ENGLER, Nutzpflanzen Ost-Afrikas, p. 12).
z Knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the Arabs, p. 25. China and the Roman Orient, p. 204.
4 If Mo-lin was on the littoral of the Red Sea, it would certainly be an absurdity to define its location as south-west of Jersualem.
5 Ch. 184, p. 3.
6 DOZY and DE GOEJE, Edrisi's description de l'Afrique, p. 56 (Leiden, 1866). Cf. Chinese Clay Figures, pp. 8o-81, note.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.