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.
