In the Yuen Shi, ch. 94, fol. 11 ro, the “three barbarian kingdoms of Ma-pa-eul (Ma’abar), Pei-nan (corr. Kiu-nam, Coilam) and Fan-ta-la-yi-na” are mentioned. No doubt the last kingdom refers to the Fandaraina of Ibn Batuta, and Prof. Pelliot, who gives me this information, believes it is also, in the middle of the fourteenth century, Pan-ta-li of the Tao yi chi lio.
GOZURAT.
XXV., [p. 393.] “In this province of Gozurat there grows much pepper, and ginger, and indigo. They have also a great deal of cotton. Their cotton trees are of very great size, growing full six paces high, and attaining to an age of 20 years.”
Chau Ju-kwa has, p. 92: “The native products comprise great quantities of indigo, red kino, myrobolans and foreign cotton stuffs of every colour. Every year these goods are transported to the Ta shï countries for sale.”
XXXI., [p. 404.]
TWO ISLANDS CALLED MALE AND FEMALE.
Speaking of the fabulous countries of women, Chau Ju-kwa, p. 151, writes: “The women of this country [to the south-east (beyond Sha-hua kung?) Malaysia] conceive by exposing themselves naked to the full force of the south wind, and so give birth to female children.”
“In the Western Sea there is also a country of women where only three females go to every five males; the country is governed by a queen, and all the civil offices are in the hands of women, whereas the men perform military duties. Noble women have several males to wait upon them; but the men may not have female attendants. When a woman gives birth to a child, the latter takes its name from the mother. The climate is usually cold. The chase with bow and arrows is their chief occupation. They carry on barter with Ta-t’sin and T’ien-chu, in which they make several hundred per cent. profit.”
Cf. F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, pp. 200–202.
XXXII., [pp. 406–7.] Speaking of Scotra, Marco (II., p. 406) says: “The ambergris comes from the stomach of the whale, and as it is a great object of trade, the people contrive to take the whales with barbed iron darts, which, once they are fixed in the body, cannot come out again. A long cord is attached to this end, to that a small buoy which floats on the surface, so that when the whale dies they know where to find it. They then draw the body ashore and extract the ambergris from the stomach and the oil from the head.”