Days to go from Sanf to Sundar Fulat, and then a
month (seven days of which between mountains called the Gates of China.) In
the Livre des Merveilles de l'Inde (pp. 85, 86) we read: 'When arrived
between Sanf and the China coast, in the neighbourhood of Sundar Fulat, an
island situated at the entrance of the Sea of Sandjy, which is the Sea of
China....' It would appear from these two passages that Sanf is to be
looked for in the Malay Peninsula. This Sanf is different from the Sanf of
Ibn Khordadhbeh and of Abulfeda." (Guyard's transl. II. ii. 127.)
It does not strike me from these passages that Sanf must be looked for in
the Malay Peninsula. Indeed Professor G. Schlegel, in a paper published in
the T'oung Pao, vol. x., seems to prove that Shay-po (Djava), represented
by Chinese characters, which are the transcription of the Sanskrit name of
the China Rose (Hibiscus rosa sinensis), Djava or Djapa, is not the
great island of Java, but, according to Chinese texts, a state of the
Malay Peninsula; but he does not seem to me to prove that Shay-po is
Champa, as he believes he has done.
However, Professor De Goeje adds in his letter, and I quite agree with the
celebrated Arabic scholar of Leyden, that he does not very much like the
theory of two Sanf, and that he is inclined to believe that the sea
captain of the Marvels of India placed Sundar Fulat a little too much to
the north, and that the narrative of the Relation des Voyages is
inexact.
To conclude: the history of the relations between Annam (Tong-king) and
her southern neighbour, the kingdom of Champa, the itineraries of Marco
Polo and Ibn Khordadhbeh as well as the position given to Sanf by
Abulfeda, justify me, I think, in placing Champa in that part of the
central and southern indo-Chinese coast which the French to-day call Annam
(Cochinchine and Basse-Cochinchine), the Binh-Thuan province showing more
particularly what remains of the ancient kingdom.
Since I wrote the above, I have received No. 1 of vol. ii. of the Bul.
de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient, which contains a note on Canf et
Campa, by M.A. Barth. The reasons given in a note addressed to him by
Professor De Goeje and the work of Ibn Khordadhbeh have led M.A. Barth to
my own conclusion, viz. that the coast of Champa was situated where
inscriptions have been found on the Annamite coast. - H.C.]
The Sagatu of Marco appears in the Chinese history as Sotu, the military
governor of the Canton districts, which he had been active in reducing.
In 1278 Sotu sent an envoy to Chen-ching to claim the king's submission,
which was rendered, and for some years he sent his tribute to Kublai.
