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138
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1926
the kingdom of Annam, was specially applied from 1502 to 1515 to the country entered by way of the Bay of Tonkin.
“When Jorge de Albuquerque wrote his letter of January 8th, 1515, no Portuguese, no European, was yet properly acquainted with the Annamite country; and this must have been still more the case, thirteen years previously, when Contino prepared his chart of the Far East.
“The name of this country must therefore have been passed on to the Portuguese by travellers in the Far East before the end of the fifteenth century. These travellers can only have been Chinese, Annamites, Chams, Malays, Javanese, Persians, Arabs, or Turks. Chinese, Annamite, Cham and Javan geographical nomenclature supplies, so far as I am aware, no term which could have given use to the full name Cochin China. The Malays spoke of Kuchi or Kuchi-china, neither of which terms can be explained in the Malay tongue. The problem thus remains unsolved. It remains to investigate the puzzle from the Persian, Arab, and Turkish standpoint.
“Prior to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope (November 22, 1497), the existence of the Annamite kingdom had already been announced to Europe by Marco Polo in the thirteenth Century. The Venetian had given this kingdom the name of Caugigu, in which one must recognise the words Kiao-tche Kouo, “the land of the Kiao-tche (Giao-chi)," by which the Chinese had been accustomed to describe the Tonkinese regions fifteen hundred years before the date of Marco Polo.
"The same name in a slightly different form is found at the opening of the fourteenth century in the History of the Mongols by the Persian Rasid-ud-din, who speaks of the country of Kafchekuo (=Kiao-tche Kouo).
"The name Kiao-tche was thus already in vogue in the fourteenth century in non-Chinese lands, European and Muhammadan, to designate Tonkin, the most important part of the Annamite country, and also-by a natural extension of the term-to designate the Annamite kingdom regarded as a whole.
"For a long period, indeed, the great Moslem navigators (Persian up to the ninth century, followed by Arabs up to the commencement of the sixteenth century) sailed across the Indian Ocean and the China seas; they maintained relations with the ports on the east coast of IndoChina and learned to know the country of Kiao-tche (the Annamite kingdom).
"But these navigators had a special geographical notion about these coasts and about the countries in the south of Eastern Asia. A scrutiny of the records of maritime journeys, of the itineraries and sailing instructions, discloses the fact that Muhammadan sailors gave the name China a widely extended meaning.
"Thus in 1224 the geographer and sailor Yakut (1179-1229) writes in his Mu'jjam al Buldan:-Ma'bar (Coromandel) is the last country in India. Next comes China, of which the first (region) is Djâwa (Java or Sumatra); thence one enters a sea which is difficult of access and fertile in disasters. One arrives at length in China proper.'
"In the thirteenth century the botanist Ibn al Baytår, in his Traité des simples, notes that the northern areas of China are styled in Persian Chin Ma-Chin (ie., China of great China ; of. Sanskrit Sina Mahds ina), equivalent in Arabic to Chin al-Chin, China of the Chinas, for the Persians call China Sin (Chin).'
“Kazwini (1203—1283), in his Kitab'ajdib al-makhluqdt wa gharaib al-maudjudât, speaks of the islands of the China Sea, and includes among them Java, Sumatra, Nias, etc. The same author in his Kitabathar al-bildd wa akhbar al-'ibåd further states that Java and Sumatra are parts of China.
"In the thirteenth century Ibn Said clearly distinguishes 'China' (Chin or the countries on the east coast of Indo-China) from China properly so-called ' (Chin al-chín), or the regions situated on the north side of the straits of Hai-nan. He shows the town of Manzi as the capital of Chin al-Chin or of China properly so-called. Now one knows that Manzi, derived
