Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 18

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ JANUARY, 1933
CAPELAN. (The Ruby Mines District of Burma.)
BY THE LATE SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, Br. I HAVE had some old notes by me on this long disputed name Capelan, for the Ruby Mines District of Burma, which do not, of course, settle the difficulty, but as they may help to do so, they seem to be worth publishing.
Forbes (British Burma, 1878) remarks on the Ruby Mines thus (p. 25): "Kyat-pin (query Capelan), whence the rubies are obtained, is situated near Momiet, about seventy miles south of Bamaw, or Bhamo as we have named it." Here Forbes distinctly suggests Capelan as a European corruption of the Burmese form Kyat-pin, or as it would now be transliterated Kyst-pyin. In modern Burmese pronunciation the name sounds in most mouths as Kyappyin, or even Chappyin. This it will be seen is the ordinary derivation of the old European travellers' term Capelan, and it is probably right. Kyatpyin is about 75 miles N. N. E. of Ava or Mandalay and 6 miles S. E. of Mogok, the local headquarters of the Ruby Mines Company.
Tavernier, as edited by Valentine Ball in 1889 from the original French edition of 1676, says in his Travels, II, 99 : “ There are only two places in the East where coloured stones are obtained, namely in the Kingdom of Pegu (Burma) and in the island of Ceylon. The first is a mountain twelve days or thereabouts from Siren in a north-east direction and it is called Capelan." Here Ball notes that “Siren is a mistake for Ava," and that Capelan" is Kyat. pyen: its distance from Ava is about 70 miles." It will be seen below, however, that by "Siren ” Tavernier probably meant Siriam near Rangoon.
From Tavernier's Siren we get a mineralogist, writing before 1882, telling us that "Capelan, the ruby-sapphire district," was "near Syrian, a city of Pegu." Thus in Mason's Burma, ed. Theobald, 1882, I, 11, we read : " The red sapphire is usually denominated the oriental ruby. Dana (Mineralogy, 1868) says, 'the best ruby sapphires occur in the Capolan mountains near Syriam, & city of Pegu.' This is an advance on Phillips, who made
Pegu, a city in Ceylon.' Still the mineralogists make slow progress in geography. In 1833, a letter from a Roman Catholic priest, D. Amata, was published in JASB, which showed that the Capelan Mountains are about 70 miles north of Ava, instead of being in the vicinity of Rangoon, as they would be if' near Syriam.' The Capelan Mountains of Dana are doubt. loss a corrupt form of Kyat-pen, the name of a village near the mines, and the mines them. selves are simply pits sunk in the ruby producing gravel." However, taking Tavernier's statement that Siren was twelve days distant from " Capelan," and Dana's identification of it with Siriam, now a complete ruin, but in Tavernier's day an important foreign emporium, it is fair to assume that Tavernier meant Siriam and not Ava by Siren. Of course Dana's inference that Capelan was "near Siriam " is all nonsense. In Yule's Hobson-Jobson the following varied spellings of Capolan appear 1506 Leonardo Ca'Messer
Auplen. 1510 Varthema
Capellan, 1516 Barbosa
Capelam.. c. 1585 Ramusio
Capelangam. But Kapelan or Capelan has been traced to an earlier date still, for in Nicolo Conti's narrativo, recorded by Poggio in 1440, we find " Capelang, for the Ruby Country north of Ava.
name preserved to a much later date, but not now traceable :" so writes Cordier in a footnote in his edition of Yule's Cathay and the Way Thither I, 177.
In Yule's Embassy to Ava, 1855, 179 f.& n., there is an ingenious guess that Capelan may represent a Palaung or Kachin word, as both Palaunge and Kachins are to be found in