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JULY, 1926 ]
THE NAME COCHIN CHINA
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from Chinese Man-tseu, is the name employed by the Arabs to designate southern China, subordinate to the southern Song (1127-1279). It follows from this that the countries called Chin (China) by Ibn Said had nothing in common with China proper, as they lay to the south of the Chinese empire and actually wore independent of it.
"Rasid-ud-din himself (1310) extends the Chinese area as far as the island of Låkawâram (Nicobar) and the continent named Champa (the Champa of the opening of the fourteenth century, that is to say, roughly the parts of Annam situated to the south of the Col des Nuages).
“Dimaqi, who wrote just before 1325, speaks also of Champa 'situated on the coast of China.' Abülfida (1273-1331) states that the frontiers of China in the south-east touch the equator, where there is no latitude.' He reports similarly that the island of Sribuza (Srivijaya=Palembang) is given as a dependency of China.
"I omit several other analogous references of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which betray the same misconception and are therefore superfluous, and I pass on to extracts from the treatise entitled Muhit ('the Ocean ') by the Turkish admiral Sidi 'Ali Chelebs (1554):
The sea-routes to the coast of Chîn and Mâchîn resolve themselves into the following itinerary. First from Singåfur (Singapore). ... to Kanbus& (Cambodia); from Kanbûgå to Samba (Champa)... from Samba to the Gulf of Kawchi (Kiao-tche =the gulf of Tonkin), etc. The port of Kawski in Chin (Kiao-tche in China).... The gulf of Kawshi in Chin (=the gulf of Tonkin in China).... Kawshỉ in Chín. Sanbâ in Chin (Champa in China).... "Laghûr in Chin'.... 'Cape Kanbûsa (Cape of Cambodia, in the present Cochin
China in Chin).' Lung-sakA (Tenasserim) at the extremity of the coast of Chin (China).' Kalândan (Kelantan on the east coast of the Malay peninsula) on the coast of Chin
(China)'.... eto.
"These examples suffice to show that from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century Muhammadan geographers divided the coasts of Eastern Asia into two large areas, distinguished by the following names : (a) Chin (China), comprising Indo-China, from the Malay peninsula to the Hai-nan
straits, and (b) Machin (Great China or China proper), extending to the north of the "Gates of
China," i.e., north of the Hai-nan straits. “In those days all the countries of the Indo-Chinese coast, lying between the Malacca and Hai-nan straits, were, in the view of Arab sailors, situated in Chin (China). These sailors, as the passages above-quoted show, had consequently to follow the general practice of adding to the name of each of those countries the word Chin, which indicated their general situation. This is precisely what happened in the case of the name of the Annamite country, Kiao-tche; for the Muit of Sidi 'Ali Chelebî mentions several times Kawchi of Chin (Kiao-tche of China). Sidi 'Ali Chelebi wrote about 1654, but it is well-known that he was a compiler, rather than an original composer, and that his Muhit is largely composed of earlier Arab texta, amongst the latter being a translation of the Nautical Instructions of Suleiman al-Mahri (beginning of the sixteenth century) and translations of the chart-books and essays on navigation of Ibn Majid, who was Vasco da Gama's Arab pilot across the Indian Ocean and who composed his treatises between 1462 and 1490.
"The Tonkinese delta, one might even say the whole Annamite kingdom, was thug certainly styled by the Arabs "country of Kawchi of Chin " at the close of the fifteenth and the opening of the sixteenth century, that is to say, at the time when the Moslems entered into relations with Portuguese navigators and taught the latter the main ses-routes and the names
