National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

As we have seen above (p. 679), the *Liang ssŭ kung chi* mentions a Kingdom of Women east of
the Northern Sea, which owed its name to the fact that a celestial woman had come down to rule it;
but the Kingdom was peopled by men and women as in other countries. This sounds like a possible
echo of the legend of the descent of the Japanese Emperors from the Sun-goddess Amaterasu.

A last series of texts concerns the north-eastern countries, but on the continent; although no
mention is made there of Kingdoms of Women, the association of women with dogs, which occurs in
tales concerning Kingdoms of Women in other regions, renders it desirable to include them.

胡嶠 Hu Chiao, who was retained among the Ch'i-tan from 947 to 953, has left an account of his
adventure, in which he speaks from hearsay of countries more to the north (cf. Chavannes, in
*JA*, 1897, I, 408-409; De Groot, *Religious System of China*, IV, 262). North of the 室韋 Shih-
wei (north-eastern Mongols), « there is the Kingdom of Dogs (Kou-kuo), [the inhabitants of which]
have the bodies of men and the heads of dogs; they have long hair and wear no garments. They
catch fierce wild beasts with their hands. Their speech is the barking of dogs. Their wives are all
human and can speak Chinese. When they give birth to males, these are dogs, but the females are
human. They marry between themselves (*i. e.* dogs with women), and live in caves. [The dogs] eat raw
[flesh], but the wives and daughters feed like human beings (Chavannes misunderstood this phrase).
It is reported that a Chinaman once arrived in that country. The wives pitied him, and allowed
him to escape and go home. They gave him some ten chopsticks, advising him to drop one of them
every ten or more *li*. The dog husbands pursued him, but whenever one saw a household utensil
of his, he could not help taking it home in his jaws, so that they could not overtake the man. Such
is the story. » Cf. *Wu tai shih*, 13, 4 a; *Ch'i-tan-kuo chih*, 25, 5 a.

The *Hei-Ta shih-lio* (c. 1232; cf. *TP*, 1929, 167) gives a list of the countries which had been
attacked by Chinghiz-khan (Wang Kuo-wei ed., 21 a). Among those which had been attacked, but
not completely subdued, the author names the 斛逯盆律子 Hu-su I-lü-tzŭ (*Husu = Mong.
*usu*, « water »), who were the « Water Tatar » (水韃靼 Shui Ta-ta), and the 那海 No-hai I-lü-
tzŭ (Mong. *noyai*, « dog »), who were the « Kingdom of Dogs » (Kou-kuo). The value of I-lü-
tzŭ is not certainly established; I am not in favour of 沈曾植 Shên Tsêng-chih's and Wang Kuo-
wei's correction into I-lü-kan, and of the restoration of the latter form as Mong. *irgän*, « people »;
but my own hypothesis that I-lü-tzŭ may be the plural of the Imperial clan-name of the Ch'i-tan,
耶律 Yeh-lü or 亦剌I-la (*TP*, 1931, 118, 469; 1939, 24), is also doubtful. A note added to the
text by the author himself says of the Kingdom of Dogs : « The countenance of the men is of great
strength (? 拳塊 *ch'üan-k'uai*), and they have hair on the breast; in running, they can catch a
galloping horse. The women are pretty ».

Although Polo, Odoric, Jourdain Cathala, Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, and others locate the dog-headed
barbarians in the Southern Ocean (cf. *Y*, II, 309-312; III, 109-110; Hallberg, 175-178), several texts
mention them in the north. In Adam of Bremen's Baltic Land of Women, the boys had the heads
of dogs, but the women were beautiful (cf. *supra*, p. 676). Plan Carpine heard of a campaign of the
Mongols against people who were said to have the hoofs of oxen and the faces of dogs; part of the
time they barked and part of the time they spoke; they lived beyond the Samoyeds, along the coasts of
the Ocean. These Cynocephali also appear in the relation of Plan Carpine's companion Benedict
the Pole (cf. Rockhill, Rubruck, 12, 36; *Wy*, 74, 138). Although the location beyond the Samoyeds,