Chau Ju-Kua - University of Oregon Libraries

^'3^)^ ISLANDS OF PEMBAAKD MADAGASCAR. 149
2. Islands of Pemba and Madag-asear (?).
K'lin-lun-ts'dng-k'i {% ^ ^ %
((This country is in the sea to the south-west. It is adjacent to a large
island. There are usually (there, i. e., on the great island) gveat p'dng (||)
5hirds which so mask the sun in their flight that the shade on the sun-dial
is shifted {^ M B ^ #)- If the great fong finds a wild camel it swal-
lows it, and if one should chance to find a p'ong's feather, he can make a
water-butt of it, after cutting off the hollow quilPo.
((The products of the country are big elephants' tusks and rhinoceros horns».
10 In the West «there is an island in the season which there are many
savages, with bodies as black as lacquer and with frizzed hair (i^| ^). They
are enticed by (offers of) food and then caught and carried off» for slaves to the
Ta-shi countries, where they fetcli a high price. They are used for gate-
keepers (lit., to look after the gate-bolts). It is said that they do not long
15 for their kinsfolk^.
Notes.
1) K'un-lun-ts'ong-k'i or 'The Zanj (or Blacks) from K'un-lun'. Considering the position
assigned this island, near the island of the rue (Madagascar), the use of the name Ts'ong for its
inhabitants which we have previously' seen (supra, p. 126, 130) was given to the blacks from the
20 Somali coast to the Mozanbique channel, considering further the similarity of sound between the
name used by the Arabs of the time to designate the big island of Pemba, Kanbalu, we have little
doubt that the Chinese name means the cZanj of Kanbalu». Ch6u K'ii-fei (for all of the first and
second paragraphs, and half of the third are taken from his work, 3,6*) used probably the characters
K'un-lun to transcribe the name Kanbalu, because he saw some connexion between these blacks
25 in the West, with the negritos inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and the islands of the Archipelago,
who were known to the Chinese of his time as 'K'un-lun slaves'. See supra, p. 31, n. 2.
The bird pong is the rukh, or rue of mediaeval writers; the story may have had its origin
in the Indian legend of the garuda. The localization of the rue in Madagascar was probably due
to the presence there of the fossil eggs of the gigantic fossil Aepyornis. The rue's quills are,
30 according to Sir John Kirk and Sir Henry Yule, the fronds of the rofia or raphia palm. See The
Academy, March 22, 1884. According to Gabriel Ferrand (Journal Asiatique, 10* serie, X, 551)
they are the Malgash lavgana. The langana is a big bamboo, about 15 centimetres in diameter and
2 meters long, in which the knots have been perforated with the exception of the one at the
end, so as to turn it into a water-vessel. The langana is used by a large number of tribes, and
35 particularly by the coast tribes (of Madagascar).
Marco Polo (II, 405) also says of the rue that oit is so strong that it will seize an
elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he is smashed to
pieces; having so killed him the bird gryphon swoops down on him and eats him at leisuren.
Ch6u K'ii-feii's text has, after the remark about the rue quills: «There are also camel-
40 storks, which measure six to seven feet in height. They have wings and can fly, but not high. They
can eat anything while it is burning hot, they can even eat red hot copper or irons. Chau
Ju-kua, quite properly, put most of this phrase in his chapter on the Berbera-coast, where the
ostriches properly belonged. Supra, p. 128.