CHINA
chapters as to the true nature of early Chinese wares.
Concerning the other countries to which such wares were exported, Dr. Hirth extracts many details from Chao Jukua's work. In Cochin China, as well as in Cambodia, the local products were exchanged against Chinese "porcelain," umbrellas, gauze fans, lacquered wares, samshu, and sugar. In Java, which was within a month's sail of Ch'üan-chou-fu, via the Straits of Lingas, the pepper of the country was purchased with imitation gold and silver, with silks, damasks, drugs, cinnabar, alum, borax, lacquered ware, iron tripods, and "green and white porcelain." At Palembang in Sumatra there was a depôt of Chinese products and manufactures, where "gold, silver, porcelain, silk piece-goods, sugar, iron, samshu, ginger, rhubarb, and camphor" were stored for sale to Arab traders, who carried them to India, Africa, and Western Asia. This depôt seems to have existed from the T'ien-yu period of the Tang dynasty (904-907). At Lambri, in the north-west of Sumatra, "the last station before one enters the Indian Ocean in travelling from Sumatra to Ceylon," another depôt existed. Here, although "porcelain" was imported, it was doubtless intended for re-export chiefly, as the people are said to have eaten their meals from their hands and used household utensils of copper. From Lambri Chinese junks pushed on to Coilam, on the coast of Malabar, though this distant voyage does not seem to have been regularly undertaken. It is, however, distinctly stated that the products of Malabar were exchanged at Palembang against flower-tanks (probably of pottery), silks, "porcelain," camphor, rhubarb, cloves, etc. Chao Jukua, as translated by Dr. Hirth,
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