i.AUFER] RELATIONS OF CHINESE TO THE PHILIPPINES 249 



active in transmarine undertakings. The geographical literature of 

 the Chinese also abounds in accounts of the Philippines. The most 

 important of these, frequently alluded to in these pages, is the "Tung 

 hsi yang k'ao" ("Investigations regarding the Eastern and West- 

 ern Ocean"), published in 1618 — a very useful geographical work 

 in twelve books, the descriptions of which, as a rule, refer to the 

 time when Europeans first began to visit the Malayan regions. 1 



The appearance of the Spaniards in Eastern waters was not the 

 first occasion on which the Chinese had taken cognizance of these 

 Western people. From the accounts of the Arabs, they had gained 

 a certain knowledge of Spain as early as the beginning of the thir- 

 teenth century. Chao Ju-kua, a member of the imperial family of 

 the Sung dynasty (960-1278) and superintendent and commissioner 

 of customs in Ts'uan-chou-fu, a coast town northward from Amoy, 

 in Fuhkien Province, came in close touch with merchants from 

 India, Persia, Syria, and Arabia, who traded in that port with the 

 Chinese, and availed himself of this opportunity to collect valuable 

 data regarding the countries and peoples of the West. In his book, 

 "Chu fan chi," written between 1209 and 12 14, a brief description 

 is given of Spain under the name Mu-lan-p'i; i. c, the Arabian 

 word Murabit, which we find hispanicized as the dynasty of the 

 Almoravides. He relates that Spain entertained a lively commerce 

 with the Ta-skih (Arabs), and emphasizes the large size of her 

 ships, which could carry several thousand men. Wheat, melons, 

 pomegranates, lemons, rice, and salads are mentioned as the prod- 

 ucts of the country, and it is curious to find merino sheep mentioned 

 as being several feet high and having tails the size of a fan. ? 



In the "Ming shih" and according to later sources, the name for 

 Spain is Yu-ssu-la (or Yii-mi-la, by confounding the similar charac- 

 ters for mi and ssu), apparently an imitation of the sounds in the 

 name las Islas, which the Chinese had heard from the Spaniards on 

 the Philippines. The ordinary designation for Spain and Portugal, 

 however, is simply Hsi yang (i. e., "Western Ocean"), with the dis- 

 tinction that Spain is called Hsiao hsi yang ("the small Western 

 Ocean"), and Portugal Ta hsi yang ("the great Western Ocean"), 

 as the Portuguese were the first of the two to come under the notice 

 of the Chinese. At a later period these names, Hsi yang and Ta hsi 

 yang. were used in a general way for Europe, the name of which, 



'See A. Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature, 2d edition, p. 58; Groeneveldt, 

 Notes on the Malay Archipelago, p. vm. 



2 F. Hirth, Die Lander des Islam nach chinesischen Quellen (Leiden, 1894), 

 pp. 48-50, 63. 



