474 Sino-Iranica 



Lambesi; i.e., Besi or Basi (lam meaning "village"), a petty state on 

 the west coast of Sumatra immediately below Acheh, upon which it 

 borders. This identification is impossible, first of all, for phonetic reasons : 

 Chinese po $fc was never possessed of an ancient labial sonant, but 

 solely of a labial surd (*pwa). 1 



Tsuboi Kumazo 2 regards Po-se as a transcription of Pasi, Pasei, 

 Pasay, Pazze, or Pacem, a port situated on northern Sumatra near the 

 Diamond Cape, which subsequently vied in wealth with Majapahit 

 and Malacca, and called Basma by Marco Polo. 3 



C. O. Blagden 4 remarks with reference to this Po-se, "One is very 

 much tempted to suppose that this stands for Pose (or Pasai) in north- 

 eastern Sumatra, but I have no evidence that the place existed as early 

 as 1178." If this be the case, the proposed identification is rendered 

 still more difficult; for, as we have seen, Po-se appears on the horizon 

 of the Chinese as early as from the seventh to the ninth century under the 

 T'ang, and probably even at an earlier date. The only text that gives 

 us an approximate clew to the geographical location of Po-se is the 

 Man $u; and I should think that all we can do under the circumstances, 

 or until new sources come to light, is to adhere to this definition; 

 that is, as far as the T'ang period is concerned. Judging from the 

 movements of Malayan tribes, it would not be impossible that, in the 

 age of the Sung, the Po-se had extended their seats from the mainland 

 to the islands of the Archipelago, but I am not prepared for the present 

 either to accept or to reject the theory of their settlement on Sumatra 

 under the Sung. 



Aside from the references in historical texts, we have another class 

 of documents in which the Malayan Po-se is prominent, the Pen-ts'ao 

 literature and other works dealing with plants and products. I propose 

 to review these notices in detail. V 



60. In regard to alum, F. P. Smith 5 stated that apart from native 

 localities it is also mentioned as reaching China from Persia, K'un-lun, 



1 On p. 471 Gerini identifies Po-se with the Baslsi tribe in the more southern 

 parts of the Malay Peninsula. On the other hand, it is difficult to see why Gerini 

 searched for Po-se on Sumatra, as he quotes after Parker a Chinese source 

 under the date a.d. 802, to the effect that near the capital of Burma there were 

 hills of sand, and a barren waste which borders on Po-se and P'o-lo-men (see 

 above, p. 469). 



2 Actes du Douzieme Congres des Orientalistes, Rome 1899, Vol. II, p. 92. 



8 Cf. Yule, Marco Polo, Vol. II, pp. 284-288. Regarding the kings of Pase, 

 see G. Ferrand, Textes relatifs a l'Extr6me-Orient, Vol. II, pp. 666-669. 



4 Journal Royal As. Soc, 1913, p. 168. 



5 Contributions towards the Materia Medica of China, p. 10. 



