国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

ruled by a woman whom the Chinese in the vicinity know as the 女王 nü-wang, « woman-king ».
We must also take into account, in India, the feminine look which almost beardless races had to
the bearded Indians. In Al-Bīrūnī's Indian list of tribes, based on the Vāyupurāṇa, the Nārimukha,
or « men with women's faces », are stated to be the Turks (cf. SACHAU, Alberuni's India, I,
302).

Nothing is known, beyond the title, of a 男女二國傳 Nan Nü ĕrh kuo chuan, « Relation
of the two Kingdoms of Men and of Women », in one ch., which is mentioned in the bibliographical
sections of the Sui shu (33, 10 b), and, consequently, was written at the latest in the first years of
the 7th cent. Apart from much older sources (Huai-nan-tzŭ, the Shan-hai ching, Kuo P'o's
commentary, and the K'uo-ti t'u), I know in Chinese texts of no other mention of a « Kingdom of
Men » existing side by side with a « Kingdom of Women », as we find them in Polo, Jourdain Cathala,
and Mussulman writers. So here again I am in doubt as to whether this lost relation referred to
island kingdoms or to Central Asia. In the list of the Kingdoms of Women given in the Liang
ssŭ kung chi, two are to the north-east and east of Tibet and one to the north-west. All of them
occur in historical texts, but the eastern and western ones seem to have been more than once
mixed up, particularly in the Hsin T'ang shu, and it is not always easy to determine which is which.

The earliest historical mention of a Kingdom of Women occurs in connection with the 吐谷
渾 T'u-yü-hun, a nation of Altaic stock, probably Mongolian, which had migrated c. 250 A. D. to
Kan-su, and later to the region of the Kökö-nör. Their capital lay first at 枹罕 Pao-han, the
modern Ho-chou, south-west of Lan-chou, and, at a later period, 15 li west of the great lake. They
were finally reduced by the Tibetans in 663. In the second quarter of the 5th cent., the ruler
of the T'u-yü-hun, 慕利延 Mu-li-yen (or Mu Li-yen, or Mu Yen), who had ascended the throne
in 436, being hard pressed by some of his revolted kin who had the support of the Wei Emperor
T'ai-wu (423-452), first sought refuge with the 白蘭 Po-lan, but, pursued there by the enemy,
led his tribe further west to Khotan, the king of which he killed, and even went on an expedition
to the south against Kashmir (Chi-pin). But in 450, longing after his former haunts, he asked for
help from the Emperor Wên of the (Liu) Sung (424-453), who sent him cars (柴車 ch'ien-chü);
he then returned to his former country, the capital of which was still at Ho-chou, but soon died,
in 452 at the latest. When asking for the Emperor Wên's assistance, Mu-li-yen had sent him,
among other presents, « caps (mao) of the 烏丸 Wu-wan, gold wine-vessels of the Kingdom of
Women (Nü-kuo) and gold bracelets (chin-ch'uan) of the King of the 胡 Hu » (Sung shu, 96, 2 b;
Wei shu, 101, 5 a-b; 102, 2 b; Pei shih, 96, 6 a; 97, 3 a).

The history and political geography of the regions west, north, and north-east of Tibet in the
early Middle Ages are still so little known that it is difficult to give a pertinent commentary of this
text. Wu-wan or 烏桓 Wu-huan lived in the basin of the Liao River (province of Jehol; cf. GIBERT,
Dict. hist. et géogr. de la Mandchourie, 712-713); « the King of the Hu » is a vague term, which
may here refer to the place of origin of the various presents is not neces-
sarily to be looked for in the immediate neighbourhood of the T'u-yü-hun. Yet something may be
deduced about the Kingdom of Women which produced the gold wine-vessels if we give some
attention to the general trend of events and to the topographical indications of various historical
texts. The Po-lan, to whose territory Mu-li-yen fled with his tribe before proceeding further to