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110 INDIA. 1,20
that (ithe Romans of the Eastern Empire had to ward off the Ta-shi». We have, therefore, to look
for a different explanation of this statement. In 751, the year of Tu Huan's arrivalJn the West,
the term Ta-shJ, from his point of view, applied to that portion of the Arabs who had just gained
that great victory over the Chinese under Kau Sien-chi, i. e. the Abbaside territory (see Chavannes,
Documents sur les Tou-kiou§: Turcs Occidentaux, 297). In his account of the Ta-shi (T'ung-tien, 5
193,23) Tu Huan says: othe country of Chan (Sham, or Syria, of which Damascus was then the
capital) is on the western boundary of the Ta-shlf» {'^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ffi ;^)j — which
seems to show that to him the Ta-shi were the Abbaside Arabs and that their western neighbours,
treated by him as a separate country, were the Syrians, then still iighting for their independence
here and there against the overwhelming numbers of the Abbaside armies, which had already 10
captured Damascus and driven the old Omaiad rulers out of the country. This view is supported
by Tu Huan's mentioning a city called by him A-ku-lo (^ -^ ^) as the residence of the
king of the Ta-shl. This can be none other than the city of Kufa, the residence of Abu'l-'Abbas,
the Syriac name of which, according to Bar Hebraeus (Abbeloos and Lamy, III, 112: Of.
Assemani, op. cit.. Ill B, 715) was Akula. Tu Huan had no knowledge of Baghdad, the 15
foundation of which by the second Abbaside Caliph in 762 A. D. fell in the year of his return to
China by a trading vessel bound for Canton.
15) Sin T'ang-shu, 221, has taken some of its statements concerning Ta-ts'in from T u
Huan's work, among others what he says of the people's fondness for wine and cakes, also the
passage conceriiing the «Devil marketn. See Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, 58, 60, 279, 283. 20
Ancient, mediaeval, and modern travellers mention such dumb trading in Asia and Africa.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian topography, 52 (Hakl. Soc. edit.) speaks of it as practised
between the Ethiopians and the Barbarians-^probably Somalis. Ta vernier, Travels in India, II, 68
(Ball's edit.) refers to it as existing in his time in India, and Begbie (The Malayan Peninsula, 8)
says it is used among the aborigines of the Malay Peninsula. Cf also what Chau Ju-kua says 25
(infra, Ch. XL) on the trade between the natives of the Philippines (Ma-i) and the Chinese.
21.
INDIA.
T'ien-chu (^ ^).
'(The country of T'ien-chu is subordinate to the country of Ta-ts'in»; so
its rulers are all selected by Ta-ts'in^.
It is the custom of the people to plait their hair and to let it- hang
down, but the temples and the crown of the head are covered with a silken
(^) turban. In their dwellings they use plaster (;g' ^) instead of tiles.
They have walled cities in which the people dwell. 35
The king dresses in brocaded silk, and his hair is wound into a spiral
knot on the crown of his head; the rest of the hair is cut short. "When
holding his court in the morning he sits on a tSng skin,— tong (^) being
the name of an animal, — ornamented with representations of various objects
painted in red wax; and his courtiers make obeisance to him and pray for 40