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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

apart from all other considerations, the name of Laṅkā never occurs as such in the nomenclature
of the late Middle Ages (but for « Lung-ya-mên », see « Pentan »). S. Lévi's remarks in JA, 1923,
II, 36-45, must be read in connection with Rouffaer's memoir; cf. also JA, 1918, I, 140-141.

(5) 羅 酋 Lo-hu (*Lâ-γuk), Southern Siam. This is Yule's phonetic equivalence, and I think
it is the only one which deserves to be retained; but we must leave out of account Yule's subsidiary
ideas about lo representing the same name as Laos, or about the final -c of « Lochac » being a trace
of the southern pronunciation of Ch. kuo, « kingdom ». I have dealt at length with the kingdom
of Lo-hu in BEFEO, IV, 233 sq. The name appears in the 11th cent. as that of the Mon-Khmêr
kingdom of the Lower Menam, with its capital at Lopburi, which was finally destroyed by the Thai
Siamese of the northern kingdom of Hsien in 1349; hence the new double name of Hsien-Lo-hu,
which was soon shortened to Hsien-lo and has remained the Chinese name of Siam down to our
day. The ancient Cambodian inscriptions give to the Lo-hu people the name of Lvo, which must
be identical with Lavo, the ancient Siamese name of Lopburi, called Louvo by the early missionaries.
The difficulty is only with Polo's final -c (= -k). The Cambodian city of « Lawêk » (Lovék), which
has been mentioned in connection with « Lochac », is of late origin and must be left out of account,
unless its name was suggested by the name of the former Mon-Khmêr capital of Southern Siam.
But I have already given indications for a possible form in -k of the name of Lavo or of Lo-hu: the King
Mahā-Mongkut raised objections against the popular form Nokburī of Lopburī; the pre-Sung or
early Sung pronunciation of 胡 hu, particularly in the south, was γuk; above all, the Āīn-i Akbarī,
in 1595, speak of an aloes lawāḳī, the name of which Yule supposed to have been derived from
the name of the Kingdom of Lvo (Lavo) or Lo-hu (not from Lovék in Cambodia as in Y, III, 105).
We can now go one step further. The name of the aloes lawāḳī goes back at least to the end of the
10th cent. (cf. Fe, 52, 285, 547), and this leads us to suppose that the Chinese coined their « Lo-hu »
earlier than the known texts quote it, and at a date when it really sounded *Lawāk. The « aloes »
lawāḳī is probably eagle-wood, and the Chinese also knew the Lo-hu sort of eagle-wood (cf. TP,
1933, 385-386). It may even be that, in Polo's time, there was a form of the name nearer to his
spelling than Lo-hu (which was then certainly pronounced in « Mandarin » as it is to-day). The
Buddhist chronicle Fo-tsu li-tai t'ung-tsai of 1333-1344, Tripiṭ. of Meiji, Tōkyō ed., 贊, ch. 32,
41b, says that, in 1278, the Sung pretender escaped to the kingdom of 落 鴿 Lo-hao by way of
Champa, and, again by way of Champa, returned in 1279; Lo-hao does not occur elsewhere. But
the Buddhist chronicler must have used a contemporary document of southern origin, and in the
South, Lo-hao must have then sounded something like *Lok-hok, which is not far from « Lochac ».
I am tempted to explain in the same way the name of the state of 路 㝵 Lu-mo or Lu-ho (ancient
*Luo-γāk; more correct than « Lu-mo ») which, according to Annamese history, asked in 1149
for the right to trade at the mouth of the Red River, together with Siam and Java (cf. BEFEO,
IV, 254); the names used here for Java and Siam are later than the forms used in 1149; but that
does not prevent *Luo-γāk from being another spelling of Lo-hu, « Lochac ». The only difficulty
is that *Lâ-γuk (ancient pronunciation of Lo-hu), Lawāk (which is supposed by lawāḳī) and even
Lvo (= Lavo, perhaps > *Lavok) do not show a -k- (-c-, -ch-) in the middle of the name; that is
my reason for supposing that, in Polo's original dictation, the word may have been « Logac », with