Chau Ju-Kua - University of Oregon Libraries

,
INTRODUCTION. 33
get near it, and it is another half a day before they can secure it. Should a
wind come up suddenly, they abandon it. If they catch a large fish which is
not fit to eat, they open its belly and take out the small fish which it has
swallowed and which are eatable. There may be not less than several tens
5 in one belly, each one weighing several tens of catties \ All kinds of big sea
fish follow the ships, rising and sinking (around them), and there is nothing
thrown overboard that they do not eat. When a man sickens, he fears dying
on ship-board, for usually before the breath has left his body, he is rolled up
in several layers of matting and thrown into the sea, and, as it is desired to
10 have the body sink, several earthenware jars are filled with water and tied
in the matting before it is thrown overboard. The crowd of fish have devoured
the body and the matting before it can get down very far.
"There are saw-fish (s|g ^) hundreds of feet long, with snouts like
saws, and when they strike a ship they cleave it asunder as though it were
15 a piece of rotten wood.
((When the ship is in mid-ocean, if suddenly there is seen in the distance
(something like) a clump of islands covered with dried trees, and the skipper
has reason to believe that there is no land in that place, they (know) that it
is the sea-serpent (lit., «the dragon-monster» ^ ^). Then they cut o£f
20 their hair, take fish-scales and bones and burn them, upon which it will
gradually disappear in the water.
oAU these are dangers, from the most of which there is no escape.
Traders give heed to the bonzes' saying: 'To cross the sea is dangerous, but
pray, and you will see to the vault of heaven (^ ^ ^)>
and in nothing
25 will help fail you'. On their arrival at Kuang-chou they make the bonzes
presents of food, which is called a 'Lo-han feast'».
Chou K'ti-fei, writing a generation later, thus describes the great ships
which sailed the Southern Sea, and the method of navigating them:
«The ships which sail the Southern Sea and south of it are like houses.
30 When their sails are spread they are like great clouds in the sky. Their
rudders are several tens of feet long. A single ship carries several hundred
men. It has stored on board a year's supply of grain. They feed pigs and
ferment liquors. There is no account of dead or living, no going back to the
mainland when once they have entered the dark blue sea. When on board
36 the gong sounds the day, the animals drink gluttonly, guests and hosts by
1) The Arab relations of the ninth century mention fish caught in the Indian Ocean which
were 20 cubits long. On opening it a smaller fish of the same species was found in its belly, and
in the belly of the smaller fish a still smaller one. Reinaud, Relations, I, 2.
3