GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

II.

or

LANG-GA-SIU OR LANG-GA-SU

and

SIH-LAN SHAN CEYLAN.

We have here again to do with a most deplorable confusion of the

Chinese geographers; a confusion which has also beguiled European

writers, on account of the resemblance of Lallg-ga-siu with Langka

or properly Ling-ka, the name of a mountain

in the south-east corner of Ceylan, whose dark and precipitous cliffs

were only haunted by ghosts, and where in olden times Buddha

pronounced the Laiigkd sûtra 1),

Now, in the first place, the characters in both names are quite

different; whilst the first name is composed of three characters

Lang-ga-siu, and Laiíkâ has only two.

1) N tr1 o ft 1m

h&'- I o tr 1ft IDt 14-q - o

0 mt 0 Fan-yilt VII, fol. 18 recto. The

f1111 title of this sflitra is ,S'aclolrarnra Ttc?zgkdvafdra súlra. Cf. N7itel, Skt.-Chin. Diet" 1. 618.

192

' PoxTFh SMITH (Vocabulary of Chinese proper names, p. 28)

identified it with the island or islands of Linga near the Malay

peninsula, and Groeneveldt (Notes on the Malay Archipelago and

Malacca, p. 10) even went so far as to place it in the western

part of the island of Java, though the mention that Lang-ga-siu

produces camphor-oil and elephants ought to have warned him that

this identification is impossible, as neither of these two products

are to be found in Java.

The first mention of Lang-ga-su is found in the Books of the

Liang-dynasty, in the year A.D. 515, when this country sent an

envoy to offer natural products 2).

We read in the history of this country in the same Books

that Lang-ga-siu is situated in the southern seas; that it is

30 days pacing from East to West, and 20 days pacing from

North to South, being 24,000 Chinese li distant from Canton; that

its climate and products of the soil are about the same as in

Fu-.nan (eastern part of Siam) and that everywhere is found

Lignum aloes Baros-perfume (Camphor) and suchlike. Men and

, women have naked arms and loose-hanging hairs, only wearing a

cotton Kemban 4). The king and the nobles moreover cover their

shoulders with a sleazy cloth, and wear a girdle of golden cord,

whilst they put golden rings into their ears.

The girls dress in cotton aud wind fine pebble-strings around

their body...... When the king goes out, he rides upon an

elephant......

The people of this country say that their state was founded

. I

4m o Pien-i-tien, Chap. XCIX, I.

3) Aquilaria agallocha , better Yn* , 4) See the Note at the end of this article.

193

more than 400 years ago (A.U. 1 UU), but that it got weaker

under its successors; and as there was among the relations of the

king one who was an excellent man, the people turned towards

him. When the king heard of this, he put him into prison, but .

his chains snapped spontaneously. On this the king thought him to

be a supernatural being and dared not hurt him anymore, but

only drove him from his territory, whence he took refuge to India,

and was carried there to the eldest daughter (of its king). When

on a sudden the king of Lang-ga died, the great officers called

back the prince and made him king. He died more than 20 years

later, and was succeeded by his son .B7eagaclc?to 5). In A.D. 515 he

sent an envoy named Aditya with a letter to the emperor of

China

These embassies were repeated in A.D. 523 and in 531 and

then seem to have been dropped.

5) Cf. ( 4 ) "fortunate" and du"td "a king". l3jagadu"to thus

means Rex felix. Cf. Aditya. Eitcl, Skt.-Chin. Dict. p.127. G) I leave out this letter, evidently composed by some chinese ofticial, and refer our

readers to Mr. Groeneveldt's translation of it, op. cit. p. 11.

J

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AL 0 a 14

194

It is, however, often mentioned in other accounts which will

. enable us to fix its geographical situation pretty accurately.

'rhe first mention we have again found of it is in the Books

of the Sui-dynasty, where we read:

"When emperor Yang had mounted the throne, he longed to

open communications with the most distant regions.

"In A.D. 607, Ch'ang-tsün, Assistant secretary of the military

fields $), and Wang Kiun-cldng, Assistant secretary of the Water-

and-Wood department 9), with some others, asked to be sent as

envoys to Siam.

"H. M., highly elated, gave to Tsun and his companions each

four pieces of silk and a suit of clothes of the fashion; besides

they received 5000 pieces of presents to be offered to the King

of Siam.

"In the 10th month of the same year Tsfin and his companions

embarked in l??an-7aai kiun (Canton).

"During 20 days sailing they always had favorable winds and

reached Tsiao-s7aila island i°); then veering to the south-east, they

anchored at Langkaparvata 1) which lies opposite west of Lin-yilt

(Chaiupa) and upon which stands a temple.

"Steering again southward they reached the Lion's Rock and

from this point a string of islands succeeded each other. After 2

or 3 days further sail, they saw in the west the mountains of the

state of Lang-gcz-siu, and then they reached the southern part of

8) Under the Chow-dynasty there was a department for these fields callrd 1t! -$, now called 0 Vide K'ang-hi, i. v.

9) Cf. Biot, le '1'cheou-li, I, p. 2G, note 4.

10) fi ol is Reef-island: in modern Chinese 11ft:: -r., half-tide rocks. It are the Paracels of our maps, now called the 7 islands. See my Dutch-Chinese

Dict s. v. KLIP.

11) This may be Pulo Cecir maris or some other of this group. 12) Royal Bishops shoal For the transcription of Paroata cf. Eitel, Skt.-Chin. Diet.

p. 91.

195

the island and arrived at the frontiers of the Red-Soil

(Siam)"

Now it is evident that neither Java, nor even Lingga, could be

seen from Point Cambodja, which the ships doubled to sail up to

Siam.

Nor is it by any means possible to see Ceylan from such a

distance, as the author of the Topography of Canton suggests in

his description of Ceylan 15).

We next find it mentioned in Book 222 II, fol. 2 verso, in

the History of the T'ang-dynasty (date 650-655) in the description

of whose geographical position is thus defined:

13) Perhaps Kola Dud or another island in the Hasting Archipelago, or an island near

Cape Liant, opposite Chantebon.

0

0

0 0 0

t o This notice is textually repeated in the Topography of Canton

JlJ

ïm . "The island of Ceylan is the old

Langga-siu. In its centre is a high mountain...... When Cla`a?zg-tsiin of the Sui-dynasty went to Lin-.yih (Siam), he saw it in the extreme west" (Pien-i-tien, Chap. 99, II).

'

Of this high mountain the author says : "In Sanscrit a high mountain is called 6'??M; hence its name" On this cf. Yule's Marco Polo, 11, 255, who adopts v. d. Tuuk's suggestion of the Javanese sela, "a precious stone"; but it seems better to think of the Sanskrit "a stone or rock", or saila, "a

mountain", which agree with the Chinese interpretation.

196

"Pan-pan lies in a gulf of the southern sea. To the North it

borders upon Van-vÛong 1G). Separated by a small sea, it is contig-

uous to Lang-ga-siu, and can be reached by sea in 40 days from

.Kiao-claozv (Tong-king).

"Pan-pan, it is further said, has Kora, also called .Kora Lesar,

to the south-east 1').

"'1'he sea south-east of Kora is called 10tu-lau-mih and

can be reached in one month. To the south it borders upon

Po-li which can be reached in. 10 days; to the east it borders

upon P?,ctsut 2°) which can be reached in 5 days. To the N.W. it

borders upon Bun-tan 21) which can be reached in 6 days" 22).

The same route was still followed in the 18th century, as may

be seen from the sailing direction given in the rgl

Vol. I, p. 25 recto.

"In the passage by sea from Amoy to Siam, one sights, after

having passed the Paracels-sea, Gwalo island (Pulo Cecir maris ?),

and sees to the south Tortoise-island and Duck-island (P. Catwick

1G) is identified with Lin-yih, west of Champa. '

17) Placed by Groeneveldt too much north upon the western coast of the Malay Peninsula, for there it would be at the S. VV, of Pan-pan, and not at the S.E.

18) This must be the channel between the Peninsula and the long island of Si7c?apore. 19) Upon the east-coast of Sumatra. The actual Palo Puli in Assahan, as 1 will show

in another paper. 20) B ussur (:'). 21) Bandon.

'

M. J:iT *tt;. 0 0 1J' p JI'tt;. 00 o 0 0 0 0 m

L

o

23) Terminated in 1730, published in 1744. Cf. Wylie, Notes, p. 48.

197

and P. and then sights Pulo Condore. Veering to the

west, one sees the great and the small Chin-islands (the Brothers

or Ubi islands?). Now turning to the N.W., one takes as a mark

"Pencil-rack Mountain" and steering to the north one reaches

Bamboo-island in the estuary of Siam, which takes 188 watches;

sailing up the harbour takes 40 watches more, together 228 watches

sea-voyage. To the east it (Siam) is connected with Ticng-pu-sai

(Cambodja) to which the sea-voyage only takes 113 watches. °

"Now, how is it that they are so far distant from each other?

It is because the whole sea south of Oam bollja belongs entirely to

Lan-ni (Ramni `? the name given by the Arabs to Sumatra, cf.

Merveilles de l'Inde, pp. 245 and 269) for which reason it is called

"The End of Lan-ni". Lower on it joins the great and the small

Transverse Islands (?); and because one has to make the tour around

its outside, it is so much farther"

24) This is evidently the same mountain called in the itinerary of the

Sui-dynasty, and can only be the peaks of the mountain-ridge on the island of Tan-

talem, or 1'alung-lem. The Chinese who, in their transcription of a foreign name, always try to give also a signification to it, have given to the indented ridge of this mountain the name of Lang-ga, "wolf-teeth" and later that of Pit-lea, "pencil-rack". A Chinese

pencil-rack has this form:

25) Koh nuk, or some other island at the mouth of the Bangkok-river.

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198

The above last passage means that it took so much longer to

go to Siam than to Cambodja, because when having sailed along

the whole eastern coast of the latter country, one had to return

and sail up again the western coast in order to reach Siam.

The chinese name Lallg-ga-siu or Latzq-ga-su answers to a form

Langas or ,Ran,qas, for the Chinese having no words ending in s,

are obliged to represent it by a character pronounced sze, si, siu,

su or so, as e. g. pan-na-si for the Malay panas (hot);

ki-pat-si for Malay kipas (fan); Ni-si tao

for the island Nias; fl§ mo-na-sze for the Sanscrit mânas;

a-sha for §sfi (name of an old kingdom N. of the

for the Sanscrit A

sih-lo-fah-sih-ti for sanscrit ? Z'o-lo-sze

for Talas or Taras, an ancient city in Turkestan; jfi flfi Chai-shi

for the town Tchâsh in Turkestan, etc.

We can thus confidently place Lang-ga-siu either upon the

island of Tantalem itself, or upon the mainland behind it where

now lies Talung or Maddalung.

The name Ranglaas is a. o. that of a village on Banka, and of

a mountain and village on Java. If we pronounce the character -YEf

Long, according to the Amoy Dialect, we have in the Archipelago

the island Rongga, a district Rongga in Java, Rongos in Kediri; a

Longas near Lombok. For the form Lang-ga we find a village of

that name on Sumatra (Padang) and a village Langa in Borneo,

a river Langa in West Borneo, etc. The names are thoroughly Malay.

Note.

Kan-ban in Amoy-dialect. This word has puzzled all

Sinologues. Takakusu (Record of Buddhist religion, p. 12, note 1)

fancies it is to be Skt. Kanibala. Other writers think it refers to

199

the sarong or petticoat worn on the lower part of the body by

the Malays. All this is only guessing. -Sa-aM evidently represents

the Malay word I?emba?a (Kamban), according ico the Malay Dictionary

of Von de Wall (Vol. II, p. 541), a cloth worn by women across

the breasts (doek, dat de vrouwen over den boezem dragen). The

verb I?akemban, derived from it, means wrapped up in a loose cloth

(in een los kleed gewikkeld). The chinese pilgrim I-tsing says that

it is the habit of the inhabitants of the islands in the southern

seas to have their legs bare, and to wear the (Takakusu,

loc. cit.). Now a sarong covers the legs entirely, and thus the

Kanban cannot be a sarong.

The sarong is called by the Chinese tubular petticoat;

probably a transcription of the Malay word siniun, flowered

chintz from Madras, used for the siamese tjawats, which are drawn

through the legs (Von de Wall, op. cit., II, 322); Itrt, properly a

napkin. (See my Nederl.-Chineesch Woordenboek, s. v. Sarong, and

the description of Champa in the _L

Itrt, their uppergarment does not go below the

knees, and below it they wind a multicoloured sarong).

The word :if) tu-ban, mentioned a. o. in the description of

Poli (upon the E. coast of Sumatra):

§lk " §§fl probably represents the wetl-known name turban

(Arabic ticlbent, Persian dulbend and Serban [for terban ?], which

latter word is now by preference used in the Archipelago instead

of the native name dastâr).

My translation differs from that given by Groeneveldt (Notes, p. 80).

I translate: "the people of this country wear cotton (karpasa) as

kerchiefs and also make turbans (of it). 2'he character means

"a bundle of clothes" or a double or triple roll of silk

? (K`ang-hl); but ac-

cording to the I?wang-yun, the same as The ,Slawo7c-we?c

200

says: The Tsih- y zti says : The 1i If

says : In olden times people wrapped their heads with a piece

of black silk of three feet length, which was called Headkerchief...

In the time of of the Chow-dynasty they wore a kerchief of

three feet as in olden times. See the long quotations in

Dictionary s. v. 0