Sago Palm = Sagus Rumphianus and S. Lævis (Dennys).—“From Malay sāgū. The farinaceous pith taken out of the stem of several species of a particular genus of palm, especially Metroxylon laeve, Mart., and M. Rumphii, Willd., found in every part of the Indian Archipelago, including the Philippines, wherever there is proper soil.” (Hobson-Jobson.)
XII., [p. 306.] “In this island [Necuveran] they have no king nor chief, but live like beasts. And I tell you they go all naked, both men and women, and do not use the slightest covering of any kind.”
We have seen (Marco Polo, II., [p. 308]) that Mr. G. Phillips writes (J. R. A. S., July, 1895, p. 529) that the name Tsui-lan given to the Nicobars by the Chinese is, he has but little doubt, “a corruption of Nocueran, the name given by Marco Polo to the group. The characters Tsui-lan are pronounced Ch’ui lan in Amoy, out of which it is easy to make Cueran. The Chinese omitted the initial syllable and called them the Cueran Islands, while Marco Polo called them the Nocueran Islands.” Schlegel, T’oung Pao, IX., p. 182–190, thinks that the Andaman Islands are alone represented by Ts’ui-lan; the Nicobar being the old country of the Lo-ch’a, and in modern time, Mao shan, “Hat Island.” Pelliot, Bul. Ecole franç. Ext. Orient, IV., 1904, pp. 354–5, is inclined to accept Phillip’s opinion. He says that Mao-shan is one island, not a group of islands; it is not proved that the country of the Lo ch’a is the Nicobar Islands; the name of Lo-hing-man, Naked Barbarians, is, contrary to Schlegel’s opinion, given to the Nicobar as well as to the Andaman people; the name of Andaman appears in Chinese for the first time during the thirteenth century in Chao Ju-kwa under the form Yen-t’o-man; Chao Ju-kwa specifies that going from Lambri (Sumatra) to Ceylon, it is an unfavourable wind which makes ships drift towards these islands; on the other hand, texts show that the Ts’ui-lan islands were on the usual route from Sumatra to Ceylon.—Gerini, Researches, p. 396, considers that Ts’ui-lan shan is but the phonetic transcript of Tilan-chong Island, the north-easternmost of the Nicobars.—See Hirth and Rockhill’s Chau Ju-kwa, p. 12n.—Sansk. nārikera, “cocoanuts,” is found in Necuveram.
XIII., [p. 309.]
ANGAMANAIN.
“When sailing from Lan-wu-li to Si-lan, if the wind is not fair, ships may be driven to a place called Yen-t’o-man [in Cantonese, An-t’o-man]. This is a group of two islands in the middle of the sea, one of them being large, the other small; the latter is quite uninhabited. The large one measures seventy li in circuit. The natives on it are of a colour resembling black lacquer; they eat men alive, so that sailors dare not anchor on this coast.
“This island does not contain so much as an inch of iron, for which reason the natives use (bits of) conch-shell (ch’ö-k’ü) with ground edges instead of knives. On this island is a sacred relic, (the so-called) ‘Corpse on a bed of rolling gold....’” (Chau Ju-kwa, p. 147.)
XIII., [p. 311.]
DOG-HEADED BARBARIANS.
Rockhill in a note to Carpini (Rubruck, p. 36) mentions “the Chinese annals of the sixth century (Liang Shu, bk. 54; Nan shih, bk. 79) which tell of a kingdom of dogs (Kou kuo) in some remote corner of north-eastern Asia. The men had human bodies but dogs’ heads, and their speech sounded like barking. The women were like the rest of their sex in other parts of the world.”