Chau Ju-Kua - University of Oregon Libraries

98 CnOLA D031IXIOX. 1,19
The native products include the best quality of putchuck, and fine white
flowered (or dotted) cotton stuffs (^^ Q ^g M ^)- The people eat much
butter" (^ ^),
«A road leads to the Western Regions (Si-yii); when there are raids
rice, beans and vegetables; they rarely eat fish or meat.
(on Nan-ni-hua-lo?) by the light horsemen of the Western Regions, the only 5
resistance they offer is to lock their gates. In a few days provisions run
short, and (the raiders) withdraw of their own accord» ^''.
Notes.
1) Quotation from the Liiig-wai-tai-ta, 2,13'': ((Southern Yin-tu of the Wests,; means the
peninsular part of India. Chu-lien is Chola orSoladesam, of which Kanchi (Conjeveram) was the 10
an(;ient capital. From Sola was formed apparently Sola-mandalaor Chola-mandala, which the
Portuguese made into Choromandel and the Dutch into Coromandel. Yule, Marco Polo, II, 354.
Polo speaks of othe kingdom of Ma'abar called Soli, which is the best and noblest Province of
Indian. According to Yule, it was in Polo's time i^i all likelihood Tanjore, biit we are told by
Tennent (Ceylon, I, 394 et seqq.), using Singhalese chronicles, that the Chola dominion at various 15
times before that had included most of southern liidia. As used by Chou K'ii-fei arid Chau Ju-kua,
I think it should be understood to correspond to the Ma'abar of the Arabs, just as Nan-p'i does
to their Malabar, According to Rashideddin «Ma'abar extended from Kulam to the country of
Sildwar, 300 parasangs along the shore. Its length is the same. It possesses many cities and
villages of which little is kiiown Large ships, called in the language of Cl^ina, ((Junks», bring 20
various sorts of choice merchandise and cloths from Chin and Machin, and the countries of Hind
and Sindi). Elliot, Hist, of India, I, 09.
In the seventh century Huan-tsang mentions a kingdom of Chu-li-ye (^^ 7RIJ Mljj
between the lower Krishna and the Pennar rivers. (See, however, A. Cunningham, Anc. geog. of
India, 645). The next mention of this country is in the Ling-wai-tai-ta. Ma Tuan-lin (op. cit, II, 25.
371—582) reproduces Chau's notes, omitting from them, however, all the passages he has taken
from Ch6u K'ii-fei. The Sung-shi does likewise. In the Yiian period the name Chu-li'en was not
used; it was replaced by the appellation Ma-pa-Sr (j|6 /^ G^, Ma'abar). Yiian-shi, 210. It is there
stated that Ma'abar is the largest of all the kingdoms of India. See Pauthier, Livre de Marc
Pol, 603—G05. 30
Chinese writers of the Ming period speak of the Cholas as So-li (^^ 'ffl or Cfr JB )•
Groeneveldt, Notes, 40. G. Phillips, J. K. A. S.,.1896, 3J2. The Sung-shi, 489,so also calls
these people So-li.
Additional evidence as to the location of Chu-lien is supplied by Chou K.'fl-fei's statement-
which forms the fourth paragraph of this chapter. It was between Quilon arid Burma (P'u-kan) 35
on the coast. The route followed by the Chola mission to China in 1015 (see infra) which took
them by ((the Cholian (part of) Ceylonn (^S J^ ^^ Ml ) is likewise evidence of some value.
Still another indication is found in the statement made by the Sung-shi, 489,11 (see supra, p. 59), that
the envoys who came in 1106 to the Chinese court from Burma (P'u-kan) insisted that they
should be treated with more ceremony than those from Chu-lien which was a vassal of Sari-fo-ts'i. 40;
From Singhalese sources (Tennent, Ceylon, I, 402) we learn that in the beginning of the twelfth
century (and how long before is not stated), and again in the beginning of the thirteenth, Ceylon
(or a part of it) was under Cholian rule. It was easy for the P'u-kan envoys to make out Chu-
li6n itself, instead of its dependency Ceylon, a feudatory state of San-fo-ts'i.
2) Ma Tuan-lin and the Sung-shi reproduce textually this paragraph (the former writer 45
giving erroneously the distance between the capital and the sea as 5000 H). Yule, Marco Polo,
II, 319 places the principal' sea-port" of the Chola kingdom at Kaveripattanam, the oPattanami) ;
par excellence of the Coromandel Coast, and at one of the mouths of the Kaveri. He says that
there seems to be some evidence that the Tanjore ports were, before 1300, visited by Chinese
,