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of the market of the Land of Darkness « agrees almost word for word with Dr Hirth's account of the
' Spirit Market ', taken from the Chinese ». As a matter of fact, this note of PARKER, in China
Review, xiv, 359, where he proposed to see in the Visü the Wu-sun of Chinese historians of Han
times, is valueless; but it may be worth while to say a few words about the « dumb trade » in Chinese
sources, compared with western accounts.

YULE (Y, II, 486; Y¹, III, 259) has mentioned the « dumb trade » in a number of countries of
Asia and Africa; more information is to be found in BASSET, Muséon, VII, 53, to which add HR, 110,
and MARQUART, Die Benin-Sammlung des Reichsmuseums für Völkerkunde in Leiden, CLXXXI-
CLXXXII; I have not had access to the monograph The Silent Trade by P. J. Hamilton GRIERSON,
Edinburgh, 1903.

Pliny (VI, 22), followed by Solinus (41; TENNENT's statement to the contrary in his Ceylon, I,
571, is erroneous, since Solinus gives both; for a mediaeval adaptation, cf. LANGLOIS, La connais-
sance de la nature et du monde, 127-128), ascribes the dumb trade to the « Serae », perhaps as a conse-
quence of some misunderstanding. The informant was the Ceylonese envoy who came tho the Em-
peror Claudius, and whose father had travelled to the country of the Serae. Since, however, the
envoy speaks of the Serae as being beyond the « montes Hemodos », i.e. the Himālaya, it is possible
that his father had reached China by the ancient route of Burma and Yün-nan, and met there some
aboriginal tribe which practised the dumb trade.

But it must be admitted that Chinese texts are silent about any such practice in the south-west, and
it is precisely in reference to Ceylon that dumb trade is mentioned by them for the first time. The
text, which occurs in Fa-hsien, is well known; it bears on the beginning of the 5th cent. A. D. (cf.
LEGGE, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, 101) : « This kingdom [of Ceylon] originally had no popu-
lation, and was only inhabited by demons (kuei-shên, here = rākṣasa) and dragons ( = nāga); the
merchants of the various kingdoms carried on traffic with them (i. e. with the demons). When
trafficking, the demons did not show themselves. They merely set forth their precious goods, mar-
king their price, and the merchants, in agreement with the price, returned the value and took the
goods. On account of the coming and going of the merchants, the people of the various kingdoms
heard that the country was pleasant, and in their turn flocked to it in numbers, so that finally it
became a great kingdom ». All later Chinese accounts of the dumb trade in Ceylon are copied,
either expressly or tacitly, from Fa-hsien. In his work Ceylon (I, 570), TENNENT (who erroneously
dates Fa-hsien's travels in the 3rd cent.) has connected this text with a similar practice ascribed to
the Veddah, the wretched aborigines of Ceylon, by various authors of the 17th and 18th cents.
(RIBEIRO, KNOX and VALENTYN). He also adduced the much earlier evidence of Al-Bīrūnī on Laṅkā
(c. 1030 A. D.; cf. SACHAU, Alberuni's India, I, 309) : « According to the uniform report of all
sailors, the ships which are sent to this country land their cargo in boats, viz. ancient Western denars
and various kinds of merchandise, striped Indian cloth, salt, and other usual articles of trade. These
wares are deposited on the shore in leather sheets, each of which is marked with the name of its owner.
Thereupon the merchants retire to their ships. On the following day they find the sheets covered
with cloves by way of payment, little or much, as the natives happen to own. The people with whom
this trade is carried on are demons according to some, savage men according to others. » TENNENT
might have added two passages from Marignolli : In the eastern part of « Seyllan » (= Ceylon),