to Ceylon, it is an unfavourable wind which makes ships drift towards these islands; on the other hand, texts show that the Ts’ui-lan islands were on the usual route from Sumatra to Ceylon.—­Gerini, Researches, p. 396, considers that Ts’ui-lan shan is but the phonetic transcript of Tilan-chong Island, the north-easternmost of the Nicobars.—­See Hirth and Rockhill’s Chau Ju-kwa, p. 12n.—­Sansk. narikera, “cocoanuts,” is found in Necuveram.

XIII., p. 309.

ANGAMANAIN.

“When sailing from Lan-wu-li to Si-lan, if the wind is not fair, ships may be driven to a place called Yen-t’o-man [in Cantonese, An-t’o-man].  This is a group of two islands in the middle of the sea, one of them being large, the other small; the latter is quite uninhabited.  The large one measures seventy li in circuit.  The natives on it are of a colour resembling black lacquer; they eat men alive, so that sailors dare not anchor on this coast.

“This island does not contain so much as an inch of iron, for which reason the natives use (bits of) conch-shell (ch’oe-k’ue) with ground edges instead of knives.  On this island is a sacred relic, (the so-called) ‘Corpse on a bed of rolling gold....’” (CHAU JU-KWA, p. 147.)

XIII., p. 311.

DOG-HEADED BARBARIANS.

Rockhill in a note to Carpini (Rubruck, p. 36) mentions “the Chinese annals of the sixth century (Liang Shu, bk. 54; Nan shih, bk. 79) which tell of a kingdom of dogs (Kou kuo) in some remote corner of north-eastern Asia.  The men had human bodies but dogs’ heads, and their speech sounded like barking.  The women were like the rest of their sex in other parts of the world.”

Dr. Laufer writes to me:  “A clear distinction must be made between dog-headed people and the motive of descent from a dog-ancestor,—­two entirely different conceptions.  The best exposition of the subject of the cynocephali according to the traditions of the Ancients is now presented by J. MARQUART (Benin-Sammlung des Reichsmuseums in Leiden, pp. cc-ccxix).  It is essential to recognize that the mediaeval European, Arabic, and Chinese fables about the country of the dog-heads are all derived from one common source, which is traceable to the Greek Romance of Alexander; that is an Oriental-Hellenistic cycle.  In a wider sense, the dog-heads belong to the cycle of wondrous peoples, which assumed shape among the Greek mariners under the influence of Indian and West-Asiatic ideas.  The tradition of the Nan shi (Ch. 79, p. 4), in which the motive of the dog-heads, the women, however, being of human shape, meets its striking parallel in Adam of Bremen (Gesta Hamburg, ecclesiae pontificum, 4, 19), who thus reports on the Terra Feminarum beyond the Baltic Sea:  ’Cumque pervenerint ad partum, si quid masculini generis est, fiunt cynocephali, si quid femini, speciosissimae mulieres.’  See further KLAPROTH, J.  As., XII., 1833, p. 287; DULAURIER, J.  As., 1858, p. 472; ROCKHILL, Rubruck, p. 36.”