P. 359.) I Think It Useless To Discuss This Theory.

- H.C.]

NOTE 4. - No one has been able to identify this state. Its position, however, must have been near PEDIR, and perhaps it was practically the same. Pedir was the most flourishing of those Sumatran states at the appearance of the Portuguese.

Rashiduddin names among the towns of the Archipelago Dalmian, which may perhaps be a corrupt transcript of Dagroian.

Mr. Phillips's Chinese extracts, already cited, state that west of Sumatra (proper) were two small kingdoms, the first Naku-urh, the second Liti. Naku-urh, which seems to be the Ting-'ho-'rh of Pauthier's extracts, which sent tribute to the Kaan, and may probably be Dagroian as Mr. Phillips supposes, was also called the Kingdom of Tattooed Folk.

[Mr. G. Phillips wrote since (J.R.A.S., July 1895, p. 528): "Dragoian has puzzled many commentators, but on (a) Chinese chart ... there is a country called Ta-hua-mien, which in the Amoy dialect is pronounced Dakolien, in which it is very easy to recognise the Dragoian, or Dagoyam, of Marco Polo." In his paper of The Seaports of India and Ceylon (Jour. China B.R.A.S., xx. 1885, p. 221), Mr. Phillips, referring to his Chinese Map, already said: Ta-hsiao-hua-mien, in the Amoy dialect Toa-sio-hoe (or Ko)-bin, "The Kingdom of the Greater and Lesser Tattooed Faces." The Toa-Ko-bin, the greater tattooed-face people, most probably represents the Dagroian, or Dagoyum, of Marco Polo. This country was called Na-ku-erh and Ma Huan says, "the King of Na-ku-erh is also called the King of the Tattooed Faces." - H.C.]

Tattooing is ascribed by Friar Odoric to the people of Sumoltra. (Cathay, p. 86.) Liti is evidently the Lide of De Barros, which by his list lay immediately east of Pedir. This would place Naku-urh about Samarlangka. Beyond Liti was Lanmoli (i.e. Lambri). [See G. Schlegel, Geog. Notes, XVI. Li-tai, Nakur. - H.C.]

There is, or was fifty years ago, a small port between Ayer Labu and Samarlangka, called Darian-Gade (Great Darian?). This is the nearest approach to Dagroian that I have met with. (N. Ann. des V., tom. xviii. p. 16.)

NOTE 5. - Gasparo Balbi (1579-1587) heard the like story of the Battas under Achin. True or false, the charge against them has come down to our times. The like is told by Herodotus of the Paddaei in India, of the Massagetae, and of the Issedonians; by Strabo of the Caspians and of the Derbices; by the Chinese of one of the wild tribes of Kwei-chau; and was told to Wallace of some of the Aru Island tribes near New Guinea, and to Bickmore of a tribe on the south coast of Floris, called Rakka (probably a form of Hindu Rakshasa, or ogre-goblin). Similar charges are made against sundry tribes of the New World, from Brazil to Vancouver Island. Odoric tells precisely Marco's story of a certain island called Dondin. And in "King Alisaunder," the custom is related of a people of India, called most inappropriately Orphani: -

"Another Folk woneth there beside; Orphani he hatteth wide. When her eldrynges beth elde, And ne mowen hemselven welde Hy hem sleeth, and bidelve And," etc., etc. - Weber, I. p. 206.

Benedetto Bordone, in his Isolario (1521 and 1547), makes the same charge against the Irish, but I am glad to say that this seems only copied fiom Strabo. Such stories are still rife in the East, like those of men with tails. I have myself heard the tale told, nearly as Raffles tells it of the Battas, of some of the wild tribes adjoining Arakan. (Balbi, f. 130; Raffles, Mem. p. 427; Wallace, Malay Archip. 281; Bickmore's Travels, p. III; Cathay, pp. 25, 100).

The latest and most authentic statement of the kind refers to a small tribe called Birhors, existing in the wildest parts of Chota Nagpur and Jashpur, west of Bengal, and is given by an accomplished Indian ethnologist, Colonel Dalton. "They were wretched-looking objects ... assuring me that they had themselves given up the practice, they admitted that their fathers were in the habit of disposing of their dead in the manner indicated, viz., by feasting on the bodies; but they declared that they never shortened life to provide such feast, and shrunk with horror at the idea of any bodies but those of their own blood relations being served up at them!" (J.A.S.B. XXXIV. Pt. II. 18.) The same practice has been attributed recently, but only on hearsay, to a tribe of N. Guinea called Tarungares.

The Battas now bury their dead, after keeping the body a considerable time. But the people of Nias and the Batu Islands, whom Junghuhn considers to be of common origin with the Battas, do not bury, but expose the bodies in coffins upon rocks by the sea. And the small and very peculiar people of the Paggi Islands expose their dead on bamboo platforms in the forest. It is quite probable that such customs existed in the north of Sumatra also; indeed they may still exist, for the interior seems unknown. We do hear of pagan hill-people inland from Pedir who make descents upon the coast, (Junghuhn II. 140; Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal, etc. 2nd year, No. 4; Nouv. Ann. des. V. XVIII.)

[1] Marsden, 1st ed. p. 291.

[2] Veth's Atchin, 1873, p. 37.

[3] It might be supposed that Varthema had stolen from Serano; but the book of the former was published in 1510.

[4] Castanheda speaks of Pacem as the best port of the land: "standing on the bank of a river on marshy ground about a league inland; and at the mouth of the river there are some houses of timber where a customs collector was stationed to exact duties at the anchorage from the ships which touched there." (Bk. II. ch. iii.) This agrees with Ibn Batuta's account of Sumatra, 4 miles from its port.

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