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230 PEAKLS. 11,34
sign to them that the diver has been swallowed by a fish. Cases occur in
which the pearl-fisher makes a signal with his rope and the man holding it
on board is not able to pull him up; then the whole crew pull with all their
strength, and bring him up with his feet bitten off by a monster.
What the pearl-fishers call «pearl's-mother» (^ ^)Ms under the con- 5
trol of the foreign officials, who keep a register in which the finds of shells
are entered under the names of the fishermen, in the order in which they
occur. The shells are then placed in a pit. After rather more than a month
the shell will be found to have decayed, when the pearls may be removed,
cleaned, and divided between (the government and) the pearl-fishers. lo
As a general rule a pearl is considered valuable if it is perfectly round;
the test for its absolute roundness is, that it will not cease rolling about all
day when put on a plate. Foreign traders (coming into China) are in the
habit of concealing pearls in the lining of their clothes and in the handles of
their umbrellas, thus evading the duties leviable upon them. 15
Notes.
1) The substance of this article is taken from Ling-wai-tai-ta, 7,6. The word chon-chu, literally
'real pearl', is possibly connected with Turkish janehii. In the Old Turkish inscriptions we
h&ye jdncliu-iigiiz as the equivalent of Chinese chon-chu-ho aPearl rivers. Hirth, Nachworte zur
Inschrift des Tonjukuk (in Radloff's, Alttflrk. Inschrift. d. Mongolei, 2. Folge, p. 80). Jimii and 20
inzii, «a pearla occur in A. Vanibery's, Etymolog. Worterb., 33. Conf. also Russian shemchug,
the standard word for «pearl». The term Kuaag-si referred to as covering a district containing
pearl fisheries probably stands for Kuang-nan-si-lu, the official designation under the Sung
dynasty of the Western Kuang province, of which Lien-ch6u-fu with its celebrated fisheries on
certain islands of the sea south of Pakhoi was then a dependency. «Kaang-si» as an official 25
designation of that province, it appears, dates from the Yiian period. The pearl fisheries along
the coast of Li^n-ch6u-fu did not yield sufficient profit to justify their being continued after the
sixteenth century. They have become famous in literature by the story of a disinterested magis-
trate of Ho-p'u, i. e. Lien-chou-fn, who in the second century A. D. distinguished himself by the
just administration of his offic ewith its pearl fisheries. See F. W. Mayers, in Notes and Queries 30
on China and Japan, I, 1, and Stewart-Lockhart, Manual of Chinese Quotations, 284.
Si-nan, in Cantonese Si-lan, is Ceylon. See supra, p. 74, n. 2. Kien-pi is Kampar on the east
coast of Sumatra, see supra, p. 71. Our author elsewhere says that pearls came from the Chola country -
(Coromandel), the Oman coast, the island of Kish, the Philippines, and Java. In Wei-shu, 102,18'',
pearls are mentioned among the products of Southern India, and are there called mo-ni-elm 35
(® j/^ ^fe)' '"'"i-V-^ being the Sanskrit word for «pearl». Edrisi, I, 375 et seq., says there
were about BOO famous places in the Persian gulf where pearls were fished for. The fishermen
lived on the island of Awal, the capital of which was called Bahrein. The fishing was principally
carried on in August and September. See also Heyd, Hist, du Commerce, II, 648.
2) Ling-wai-tai-ta, loc. cit., remarks that the shark was so fierce and redoutable that 40
he was called «fish-tiger-dragon-fly» (^ 1^ !fe5£)'
3) Chu-mu, literally 'pearl's-mother', is the pearl bearing oyster, the oyster in which a
pearl has grown, a pearl producing shell. It stands for chu-mu (^j^ ^) literally ((pearl's
pasture-ground)), which appears to be the correct expression. Chong-lei-pbn-ts'au, 20,io, and Pientzi-lei-pien,
77,7. ((Mother of pearl)) Is yun-mu-Tc'o (^ -f^ ^), at least at the present day. 45