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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

of the kingdom of P'o-li, and of the kingdom of Po-ssŭ. Hirth and Rockhill have said that
P'o-li (*B'uâ-lji) was « Perak, or thereabout », an identification which seems to be based on an
unsatisfactory phonetic analogy; but there is no indication that the name Perak is of ancient date.
The location of P'o-li, a name which occurs in historical texts before the T'ang dynasty, is not
yet ascertained. Moens (loc. cit., 353-362) pronounces in favour of the southern half of Sumatra,
but his argument is vitiated by a number of confusions. In 1904, I had proposed Bali, a solution
which Laufer endorsed (Sino-Iranica, 479); Borneo, less satisfactory from a phonetic point of view,
is not impossible altogether. But the main fact is that I now feel sure that « P'o-li » in the Yu-yang
tsa-tsu is a corruption of *P'o-lŭ, Barus, which occurs in the name of the product. The text would
read much better with « the tree of the 'dragon-brain perfume' grows in the kingdom of *P'o-lŭ;
in *P'o-lŭ it is called kapur barus... ».
That in T'ang times camphor was known to come from the kingdom of Barus is established
by the T'ang pên-ts'ao, which, written in the 7th cent., antedates the Yu-yang tsa-tsu by two
centuries. Part of its notice on camphor has passed into the Pên-ts'ao kang-mu (34, 58 b) under
the name of 蘇恭 Su Kung, one of the authors of the T'ang pên-ts'ao; part also of the quotation
made there from 蘇頌 Su Sung, an author of the northern Sung dynasty, was in fact copied by
Su Sung from the T'ang pên-ts'ao. Of the T'ang pên-ts'ao itself, we possess an incomplete Japanese
Ms., which has been reproduced in the Chuan-hsi-lu ts'ung-shu and in which the notice of camphor
occurs in ch. 13; the text is very faulty, and it would be of some interest to restore it in its original
form by comparison with the quotations from Su Kung and Su Sung in the Pên-ts'ao kang-mu;
but I cannot do it here. Suffice it to say that, both in the incomplete copy of the T'ang pên-ts'ao
and in the quotation from Su Kung in the Pên-ts'ao kang-mu, the « dragon-brain perfume » and the
« oil perfume » are said to come from the « kingdom of P'o-lŭ », and that the « P'o-lŭ perfume »
(p'o-lŭ hsiang) owes its name to this kingdom. In these notices, no mention is made of « P'o-li ».
More difficult is the problem raised by the sentence in the Yu-yang tsa-tsu that the « tree
of the 'dragon-brain' perfume » also grows in Po-ssŭ. Po-ssŭ (*Puâ-sie) usually transcribes the
name of « Persia » (see « Persie »); but no camphor is produced in Persia. Hirth and Rockhill
(HR, 194) have explained « i. e. it was brought to China by Persian ships ». Laufer (Sino-Iranica,
479), opposed this, and saw in this passage a fresh argument in favour of his theory of a « Malayan
Po-ssŭ ». I do not think he was right. In another chapter, the Yu-yang tsa-tsu (1, 3 b) speaks
of an embassy which came from Tongking in 756 or shortly before that date. It brought as tribute
« 'dragon-brain' (= camphor) which was like cicadas or silkworms. Po-ssŭ (people) said that
it was only to be found in the joints of old (lao) camphor trees (lung-nao shu). In the Palace,
[this camphor] was given the name of 瑞龍腦 jui lung-nao, « Auspicious dragon-brain »... »
(cf. HR, 194, where the passage is misunderstood; there is no name lao lung-nao). It is clear
that the Po-ssŭ people who are at the Court of the T'ang Emperor are, as usual, Persians, and they
speak, nevertheless, of camphor trees. I think that the « kingdom of Po-ssŭ » mentioned in the
notice of camphor in the Yu-yang tsa-tsu is also Persia, and the mention of the name may be due
either to the fact that the author had already spoken of Persians, in connection with camphor, in
an earlier chapter, or to the transportation of camphor on Persian ships, as supposed by Hirth
and Rockhill.