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1)6 PAGAN. 59
Notes.
1) The Ling-wai-tai-ta, 2,ii, from which nearly the whole of this chapter is taken, reads
as follows: «The kingdom of Fu-kan is five day's journey from the kingdom of Ta-li (S. W. Yan-
nan), and from Wa-li_(a dependency of Chon-la referred to previously) it is sixty days thither.
5 Its boundary line (f^) is the «Black-water muddy Eiver» (|^ ;A^ W^ Vt M ^^^
Irrawadi?), where begin the kingdoms of the West—which cannot (all) be known (^ pj* ^).
The king of the country of Fu-kan and the officials wear golden caps (or hats), in shape like a
rhinoceros horn. They have horses and they ride them without saddles. The king's palace has
tiles made of tin {^f); in the interior the ornamentation of the rooms is in gold and silver.
10 There are several tens of Buddhist temples, and all the priests wear yellow robes .
.
.» (Then
follows the passage forming the fourth paragraph of our text. After this the chapter concludes
with the following:) «In the 2d moon of the fifteenth year ts'ung-ning of Hui-tsung (of the Sung,
H03), P'u-kan sent tribute to the Court of China».
The name of P'u-kan does not appear to occur in Chinese works earlier than the Ling-
15 wai-tai-ta, and the tribute mission of 1 103 — which is duly recorded in Sung-sh! (20,4) seems to
be the first appearance of P'u-kan at the Chinese Court, for the Annals for the king-to period
(1004—1007) do not bear out our author's statement of a mission from P'u-kan in that year, nor
his other statement that one from San-fo-ts'i came there also in that year. The Annals (Sung-shi,
7,s) do, however, mention, under the year 1004 the presence at Court of a mission from P'u-tuan
20 (^B ^ss) together with missions from Chan-ch' ong and the Ta-shii (Arabs). Again under the
years 1007, 1020, 1030, 1042, 1050, 1053, 1056 and 1061 P'u-tuan is recorded to have sent
missions to Court. Ma Tuan-lin (Ethnographic, II, 586) begins his very short account of P'u-kan
with the mission of 1106. Can P'u-tuan, about which we know nothing, save that Ma Tuan-lin
(Op. cit , II, 538) tells us that it was reached by sea after some seven days sailing from Chan-
25 ch'ong, be an earlier form of P'u-kan? It seems probable.
The article on P'u-kan in the Sung-shi (489,ii), while supplying absolutely no information
on its geographical position or concerning its people, says that when the P'u-kan mission of 1106
arrived at Court, the President of the Board of Kites (probably after a protest from the P'u-kan
envoys) stated that, when in the hi-ning period (1068—1077) Chu-lien (Coromandel Coast, the
30 country the nearest to P'u-kan of which the Chinese were cognizant) sent a mission to Court, the
king of Chu-lien had been written to by the Board of Rites on plain white paper, as he was a
vassal of San-fo-ts'i. Fu-kan, he went on to say, was an important (and independent) kingdom, and
should not be treated like the princelet (of Chu-lien); it should be addressed with the same
forms as the Ta-shit (the Caliph) or the sovereign of Kiau-chi. See also infra p. 96.
35 The identity of P'u-kan with Pugan or Pagan on the Irrawadi between the mouth of the
Shindwin and Prome is generally accepted. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries P'u-kan ruled
over Burma from Bhamo south—including Pegu and Arakan — the latter state, at all events, was
under its suzerainty. The kingdom of Pagan was overthrovn by the Mongols, who captured the
capital in 1284. Phayre, Hist, of Burma, 18—54.
40 Schlegel, T'oung-pao, IX, 90, tried to show that P'u-kan was Pahang in the Malay
Peninsula—a country known to Chinese mediaeval writers as Fong-hong (^ "^), but his
argument was extremely weak and his identification has not been accepted by any subsequent
writers. If there could be any doubt as to the identity of Fu-kan with Pagan, we might refer to
the account of the Mongol conquest of Mien or Burma, contained in the Yiian-shi, 210,5, where
45 a victory over P'u-kan (written as in our text) in 1287 is said to signify the complete pacification
of Mien resulting in the payment of an annual tribute of local produce. Again in the Yuanch'au-ch5ng-Mien-lu
(j^ S^ ^j^ ^ ^) or ((Account of the war of the YUan dynasty
against Burma», and which dates from the Mongol period, there are a number of passages in
which P'u-kan is mentioned as a dependency of Mien.
50 2) Quotation from Ling-wai-tai-ta, see supra, n. 1.
3) Better known as Chu-ko Liang. He is credited with having led an expedition into the
heart of Burma somewhere about A. D. 225. Giles, Chin. Biograph. Diet. 180.
4) See supra, n. 1, § 2.