Jordanus Also Has The Story Of The Hairy Men.
Galvano Heard That There Were On The Island Certain People Called Daraque
Dara (?), Which Had Tails Like Unto Sheep.
And the King of Tidore told
him of another such tribe on the Isle of Batochina.
Mr. St. John in Borneo
met with a trader who had seen and felt the tails of such a race
inhabiting the north-east coast of that Island. The appendage was 4 inches
long and very stiff; so the people all used perforated seats. This Borneo
story has lately been brought forward in Calcutta, and stoutly maintained,
on native evidence, by an English merchant. The Chinese also have their
tailed men in the mountains above Canton. In Africa there have been many
such stories, of some of which an account will be found in the Bulletin
de la Soc. de Geog. ser. IV. tom. iii. p. 31. It was a story among
mediaeval Mahomedans that the members of the Imperial House of Trebizond
were endowed with short tails, whilst mediaeval Continentals had like
stories about Englishmen, as Matthew Paris relates. Thus we find in the
Romance of Coeur de Lion, Richard's messengers addressed by the "Emperor
of Cyprus": -
"Out, Taylards, of my palys!
Now go, and say your tayled King
That I owe him nothing."
- Weber, II. 83.
The Princes of Purbandar, in the Peninsula of Guzerat, claim descent from
the monkey-god Hanuman, and allege in justification a spinal elongation
which gets them the name of Punchariah, "Taylards."
(Ethe's Kazwini, p. 221; Anderson, p. 210; St. John, Forests of the
Far East, I. 40; Galvano, Hak. Soc. 108, 120; Gildemeister, 194;
Allen's Indian Mail, July 28, 1869; Mid. Kingd. I. 293; N. et Ext.
XIII. i. 380; Mat. Paris under A.D. 1250; Tod's Rajasthan, I. 114.)
NOTE 3. - The Camphor called Fansuri is celebrated by Arab writers at
least as old as the 9th century, e.g., by the author of the first part
of the Relations, by Mas'udi in the next century, also by Avicenna, by
Abulfeda, by Kazwini, and by Abul Fazl, etc. In the second and third the
name is miswritten Kansur, and by the last Kaisuri, but there can be
no doubt of the correction required. (Reinaud, I. 7; Mas. I. 338;
Liber Canonis, Ven. 1544, I. 116; Buesching, IV. 277; Gildem. p. 209;
Ain-i-Akb. p. 78.) In Serapion we find the same camphor described as
that of Pansor; and when, leaving Arab authorities and the earlier
Middle Ages we come to Garcias, he speaks of the same article under the
name of camphor of Barros. And this is the name - Kapur Barus - derived
from the port which has been the chief shipping-place of Sumatran camphor
for at least three centuries, by which the native camphor is still known
in Eastern trade, as distinguished from the Kapur China or
Kapur-Japun, as the Malays term the article derived in those countries by
distillation from the Laurus Camphora.
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