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1,16 MALABAK. §9
(^ W: cloves, lump-camphor (nau-izi), sandal-wood, cardamoms and
gham-wood '^.
Ku-lin may le reached in five days with the monsoon from Nan-p'i.
«It takes a Ts'uan-chou ship over forty days to reach Lan-li (^ ||_
i. e.,
5 Lan-wu-li); there the winter is spent, and, the following ye^ a further
voyage of a month will take it to this country» ^l
The customs of the people are, on the whole, not different from those
of the Nan-p'i people. The native products comprise cocoanuts and sapan-
wood; for wine they use a mixture of honey (^ ||) with -cocoanuts and the
10 juice of a flower, which they let ferment".
turbanss ^^.
«They are fond of archery; in battle they wrap their hair in silken
For the purpose of trade they use coins of gold and silver; twelve silver
coins are worth one gold one. The country is warm and has no cold season.
15 Every year ships come to this country from San-fo-ts'i, Kien-pi and
Ki-t'o^" (± jjjg)^ and the articles they trade with are the same as in Nan-p'i.
«Great numbers of Ta-shi live in this country. Whenever they (i. e.,
the inhabitants) have taken a bath, they anoint their bodies with yu-hin
(^ :^); as they like to have their bodies gilt like that of a Buddha» ".
20 Notes.
1) Or more correctly «tlie country of the ]Sfan-p'i», or Nairs of Malabar. Tlie name Nan-p'i
does not occur, it is believed, prior to Cbau Ju-kua. In the light of the list of dependencies of
Nan-p'i given by our author in a subsequent passage of this chapter, the supremacy of the Malabars
extended from Xellore to Cambay, and, as we have learned from a previous passage (supra, p. 72),
25 comprised also the island of Ceylon.
The Si-yang chau-kung tien-lu, 3,3, which is a record of the famous expedition of the
eunuch Ch'6ng-Ho, about A. D. 1430, speaking of the inhabitants of Calicut, says that there were
five castes, the Nan-p'i, the Hui-hui or Moslims, the Chi-t'i {^)t JHi) or Chittis, the Ko-ling
("hb -^) or Klings, and the Mu-kua {"^^ ;QX) "i' Mukuva, a name applied to the fishermen
30 of the western coast of the Peninsula near Cape Comorin. Phillips, J. K. A. S. 1896, 342, gives
the first name as Nan-k'un (^a .^)' ^^^ *^ °^ opinion that it also transcribes the name Nair.
The characters Tcun and pi differ so slightly that a copyist may have easily confounded th^m.
The time here stated as necessary to make the voyage from San-fo-ts'i to the Nan-p'i
country is the same as that usually given to make the voyage from the former port to Quilon. In
35 a silbsequent passage (infra, p. 89) our author says it takes a ship sailing with the monsoon five days
to reach Quilon from Nan-p'i; it would appear therefore that Nan-p'i, or the principal port of the
Nan-p'i, was really, as our author says, «in the extreme south-westa of the Peninsula.
2) Mie-a-mo, in Cantonese dialect Mit-a-maf, may be the same as the Ma (or Mo)-Ii-mo
of Chan's list of dependencies of Nan-p'i, and both may transcribe the name Malabar, which
40 country in another passage (Pt. II, Ch. XXVII) he calls Wu-li-pa (in Cantonese Ma-li-pat).
Li-ssi means ((controller of sacrifices, priestn. No explanation suggests itself.
3) Edrisi (I, 177 Jaubert's transl.) speaking of the Raja of Malwa — the Balhara, says:
((He has troops and elephants He wears on his head a golden crown .... He rides much on
horseback, particularly once a week accompanied solely by women, numbering a hundred; they