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136
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
JILY, 1926
"In the south this kingdom borders on Chiampa (Champa), at an elevation of eleven
degrees from the pole ; in the north, but slightly to the west, it borders on Tunchim (Tonkin); on the east lies the China sea; and on the west, towards the Northwest,
it borders on the kingdom of the Lai (Laos). “As regards its extent, I speak here of Cochin China alone, which is a portion of the
great kingdom of Tonkin .... “Cochin China is divided into five provinces. The first, bordering on Tonkin, where
the king resides, is called Sinuua (Thuân-hoa); the second, Cacciam (Ke-cham), where the king's son resides as Governor; the third, Quamguya (Quang-ngai); the fourth, Quignin (Qui-nho'n), which the Portuguese call Pullucambi (Poulo Gambir); the
fifth, which borders Campa, is named Renran."
"Despite the errors it contains, this passage from Borri's account is interesting and shows clearly that in the view of the author and his contemporaries the Annamite kingdom of the Lê was, towards the middle of the first quarter of the seventeenth century, divided into two parts :(a) Tonkin (Tunchim), lying between the Chinese frontier on the north and the river Linhgiang on the south ; (6) Cochin China (Cocincina, Caucincina, Cauchina) or the Nguyen principality, which extended from the river Linhgiang on the north as far as Cape Varella in the south.
"We thus obtain evidence in the account of the Milanese Jesuit, written between 1618 and 1630 and published after 1631, of the earliest use of the name Cochin China in its limited sense of a single portion of the Annamite kingdom, namely that lying between Dong-ho'i and Cape Varella. Borri could not have been aware that the name had previously been used to designate the whole of the Annamite country; he says nothing about it indeed, and seems on the contrary to believe that the usual name applied by foreigners to the kingdom of the Lê, prior to the independence of the Nguyen, was Tonkin.
"But what is the starting point of this use of the ancient name of Cochin China in its new signification ?
"According to Father de Rhodes, who arrived in Cochin China in December, 1624, the first Jesuit missionary to enter the country was the Neapolitan Busomi, who landed at Tourane on January 18th, 1615. Father Borri arrived three years after Busomi. On the other hand, there were no Jesuits in Tonkin at that date, as the Tonkin mission was not established until 1626. The missionaries in Central Annam were the first therefore to find the need of describing by a separate name the country which they proposed to evangelise, and which enjoyed a separate political existence under the powerful Nguyen rulers. They were acquainted with the names Tonkin and Cochin China from the narratives mentioned above. The former clearly signified the northern part of the kingdom of the Le ; the latter had a wider, less exclusive, meaning. Did the missionaries actually blunder over the latter meaning, as I suspect, or did they decide to apply the name Cochin China exclusively to the southern portion of the Angamite kingdom? It is not easy to decide which of these two solutions is correct. Whichever it be, however, it is quite clear that it was the founders of the first Christian missions in the Annamite country who, on their arrival in 1615 in the principality of the Nguyen, used the name Cochin China for the first time to designate that principality and nothing more. Consequently one may assert that the name with this special significance attaching to it cannot be earlier in date than January 18th, 1615.
"9. This new value accorded to the name of Cochin China was invested by the reports of the missionaries with an authority rendered all the greater by the fact that no need was felt to preserve the name in its ancient significance : for the missionaries, as we have seen, did not establish themselves till ten years later in the northern portion of the Annamite kingdom, & country which they continued to designate by the name of Tonkin.
"In fact the various references to Cochin China from 1618 onwards indicate quite clearly that the name preserved its secondary meaning (i.e., the southern portion of Annam, starting
