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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1926
THE NAME COCHIN CHINA.1
BY M, LEONARD AUROUSSEAU.
TRANSLATED BY 8. M. EDWARDES, 0.8.1., C.V.O. “Tas name Cochin China, which signifies to-day our Annamite colony in southern IndoChina, appears in European geographical documents at a date when the Annamites had not crossed the region of Qui-nho'n and when the Mekhong delta was still wholly Cambodian. Maps and records show also that this name was applied, as the years passed, to different territories. In short, it seems impossible to trace its origin to the geographical nomenclature of Indo-China, whether Chinese or Native. Let us first try and localise precisely the various regions called by this name at certain given dates, and then try and determine its derivation in the light of its oldest signification.
"Before it acquired its present significance, the name of Cochin China was applied by foreigners to the central and southern parts of modern Annam, in which the ancestors of the dynasty of the Nguyen had founded in the 16th century a prosperous kingdom, long distinct from the Annamite territories in the north of the peninsula. Up to the present it has generally, been supposed that the word had no older meaning, and that therefore it could not itself be older than the middle of the 16th century. But we know that Nguyen Hoang, the earliest of these ancestors of the Nguyen to set out for Thuân-hôa, left the court of the Lê at Thang. long between November 10th and December 10th, 1558. The commencement of the kingdom of the Nguyen cannot then have preceded the arrival of Nguyen Hoang at Thuân-ho&; and the name of Cochin China, if from the first it signified this kingdom only, could not have come into use before 1558. But, as a matter of fact, there is evidence of the use of the name long before that date, and this is proved by certain important records which I have collected in the course of a hurried inquiry, and which I mention below, to indicate the scope of my enquiry.
"1. The earliest mention of the name Cochin China that I know is in A.D. 1502, in the Portuguese chart of the Genoese Albert Contino, where it appears in the curious form Chinacochim. This chart, the original of which is in the library of Modena, has been reproduced by Tomaschek in a work published on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Gama. Contino places Chinacochim, in the character of a sea-port, at the mouth of a river which must be the Red River. Further south, about the level of the modern Central Annam, Contino notices another port named Champacochim.
"In this particular form, Chinacochim, which, reversed, gives us Cochimchina, the name Cochin China in 1502 refers to a spot in the Tonkinese delta. At that date and up to 1515 Portuguese navigators (or foreigners in the Portuguese service) had no direct acquaintance with the coast of Indo-China. Such information as they possessed came without doubt from Arab accounts and charts, or perhaps was furnished orally by Muhammadan sailors. Contino's statements must have been drawn in garbled form from one of these sources.
“2. The same remarks may apply to the form Chanacochim, which appears on a chart of 1503 approximately, prepared by another Genoese, Nicolo do Canerio, and preserved in the Hydrographic archives of the Ministry of Marine in Paris. Canerio seems, so far at least as concerns this point, to have copied his compatriot's chart.
"3. The ordinary form of the name appears for the first time, and twice running, in a letter addressed from Malacca on January 8th, 1515, by Jorge de Albuquerque to King Manoel of Portugal. At the beginning of the letter occur the words "das mercadorias que vem da
1 The original artiolo appears in the Bulletin de l'Ecole Française d' Extreme Oriens, Tome XXIV, 1924. I have omitted M. Aurousseau's numerous references in footnotes from considerations of space,
