— 21 — 



• When the emperor Shih-tsu (Kublai) pacified the barbariaris of the four 

 quarters of the world and sent officers to the different countries over the 

 sea, Java was the only place he had to send an army to. 



In the second month of the year 1292 ( 1 ) the emperor issued an 

 order to the governor of F uiden, directing him to send Shih-pi, Ike Mese 

 and Kan Hsing ( 2 ) in command of an army to snbdne Java; to collect soldiers 

 from Fukien, Kiangsi and Hukuang to the number of 20000, to appoint a 

 Commancler of the Right Wing and one of the Left, as well as four Com- 

 manders of Ten Thousand ; to send out a thousancl ships and to equip them 

 vvith provisions for a year and with forty thousand bars of silver. The em- 

 peror further gave ten tiger badges , forty golden badges and a hundred silver 

 badges, together with a hundred pieces of sük, embroidered with gold, for 

 the purpose of rewarding merit. 



When Ike Mese and his associates had their last audience, the em- 

 peror said to them: vWhen you arrive at Java you must clearly proclaim 



C) We shall presently .see that the expedition started the sanie year and reached Java in 

 1293. Amiot says of this event that it took place towards 1287, evidently not having certain data, 

 and Dr. Schlegel places it in 1309. My Chinese texts, as well as that translated by Dr. Schlegel, 



have the 29th year of the period Chih-yüan ^§ j£ and any chronological table will show that 



this period begins in 1264. Lest those who flo not know Chinese, should suspect Chinese chrono- 

 logy of being unreliable, we feel obliged to say that the year given by Dr. Schlegel has its 

 sonrce in a mistake : it is true that Kuhlai did not actually accede to the Chinese throne hefore 

 1280, but nominally he dates his reign twenty years back and the period Chih-yüan was insti- 

 tuted by him; this has been overlooked by Dr. Schlegel, who bas taken those 29 years as counting 

 from the beginning of Kublai's actual reign and so arrived at the year 1309. 



O Jtï VH?j ffi ^iL ipt "Él and pij $$L ' the two fermer are Mongols and the 

 latter a Chinese. The name of the second, Ike Mese, has been taken from the Mandchn transcription 

 given in an appendix to the dynastie histories; Mr. Mayers (China Review, vol. IV. no. 3. p. 188) 

 writes Ihamish, which is probably more correct. It must also be observed that the characters, used 

 for expressing these Mongolian names, have been often interchanged with others conveying the sanie 



sound, we find f. i. the name of the second general also written *(&■ "È&* ^p -gj* and "jtK 



al J/F >^C • ^ e ^ ei ' ^ orm occurs in the notes published by Dr. Schlegel on our present 

 subject; he did not ho wever recognise it as a name, but tried to translate it, and so the passage 



^J&lfcjtt^SSÏÊ^^'jfï^fflEjlVtë wasrenderedbyhim: 

 //the great nobles of Ch'üan-chou blindly and disorderly went to attack Java with their troops", where- 

 as it should have been : '/The Governor of Ch'üan-chou, Ike Mese and his compauions, led an army 

 to subdue Java". We are obliged to notice this mistake, because it has led Dr. Schlegel to a con- 

 clusion completely at variance with our account of this expedition, which he considers not to have 

 emanated from the government, but to have been a filibustering attack of privateers or pirates. 



