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1 52 BESI (?), SUMATRA. 1,38,4-5
Marsden, Hist, of Sumatra, 262, note, remarks: kTIH witliin a few years the Lampoon
people (island of Samanlia, in the Straits of Sunda) believed the inhabitants of the island Engano
to be all females, who were impregnated by the wind; lilte the mares in Tirgil's Georgics. They
styled them, in the Malay language. Ana Saytcm, or imps of the devil)). Col. Kenneth Mackay,
Across Papua, 70, says that the natives of the Trobriand Isl-ands off the east coast of New Guinea, 5
have a curious creation myth, according to which the first human beings were three maidens
who conceived by the rain falling on them.
The legend of an island of women somewhere in the Malay archipelago was known to the
Arabs in the tenth century, see Devic, Livrcdes merveilles de I'Inde, 20—29.
On the notion of the waters of the Ocean flowing downward, see supra, pp. 26, 75, 9. tO
2) The island in the Western Ocean inhabited by women and its relations with Fu-lin are
mentioned by Htian-tsang in his account of Persia, Beal, Records, II, 279, also in T'ang-shu,
221B,6a. Cf. Hirth, China and Soman Orient, 84,200—202. Western mediaeval writers also refer
to it; Marco Polo, places it some 500 miles south of the Mekran coast. See Yule, Marco Polo,
11, 395—398, and Friar Jordanus, Marvels (Hakl. Soc. edit.), 44. 15
There were, according to the Chinese, other countries of women, in Tibet and Central
Asia, see Rockhill, Land of the lamas, 339—341. The P'o-wu-chi (|^ m\ ^), of the middle
of the sixth century, mentions a country, or island, to the east of a place called Wu-tsu (^ Sfl.)>
in the Great Ocean which was inhabited solely by women.
5. Best (?). Sumatra. 20
Po-ssV(^ Ijf).
«The country of Po-ssi is above the countries of the south-west. The
inhabitants are of a very dark complexion and their hair is curly. They
wrap around their bodies cotton cloth with green (or blue) flowers (or spots),
and wear golden circlets on each arm. They have no walled cities. 05
«Their king holds his court in the morning, when he sits cross-legged on
a divan covered with tiger skins. When withdrawing from his presence, his
courtiers make their obeisance by kneeling down. When going out, the king
sits in a hammock (|^ ^), or rides an elephant, followed by a body-guard
of over an hundred men carrying swords and shouting. The people eat cakes 30
of flour, and meat; the food is put in earthenware vessels, from which they
help themselves with their hands.
Note.
This is a quotation from Ling-wai-tai-ta, 3,6''. Our author has slightly changed the
wording of the first phrase, which, in the original, reads nThe country of Po-ssi is above (or «on» 35
t" ) tte south-western Ocean)). Po-ssi in Chinese mediaeval works is usually Persia here it
seems to be some country or tribe of south-eastern Asia, inhabited by Negritos; we might expect
to find it in or near the Malay Peninsula. Gerini, Researches, 429, 679, 681—682, arrives at
the conclusion that the Po-ssi of our text, is doubtless the same as de Barros' Lambrij, which
adjoins Daya, which, in turn, adjoins Acheen. oThe name itself, he says, may be Lambesi, i. e., 40
Besi or Basi — lam being merely the ordinary prefix meaning village — a petty state on the
homonymous river on the west coast of Sumatra immediately belor/Acheh, upon which it borders)).