“Preliminary Thoughts on Mayi/Moyi in Pre-Modern Chinese Records and Modern Interpretations”, https://repository.crossasia.org/receive/crossasia_mods_00000014#
Johannes L. Kurz, April 2024
Arab geographer Ya‘qūbī (9th cent.) referred to three “kingdoms” in the neighbourhood of China, transcribed by Gabriel Ferrand as “Ṭarasul”, “Mūša”, and “Māyd” (Ferrand 1913, 48). Gordon H. Luce in an attempt to reconstruct the original name of the “Pyu” in Burma (called Piao in Chinese texts), referred to Ferrand’s which he interpreted in favour of a location of “T.rsūl, Mūsha and Māyd” in or around Burma (Luce 1937, 241), from which he consequently gleaned the term “Tircul”. The earliest extant manuscript of the original text by Ya‘qūbī dates to 1211 CE (Gordon et al. 2018, 26). Luce, furthermore, confirmed his assumption by replacing China, that figures in the original text, with Nanzhao (Luce 1937, 242), enlisting the help of the translation of a text entitled Ḥudūd al-Ālam compiled in the tenth century. The paragraph in question deals with places called “Ṭ.sūl”, “Mānak”, and “Mūja” (Minorsky 1937, 242-243). Minorsky, for further explanation, had turned to the maps accompanying the translation of a Turkish geographical treatise (1554) of author Seydi Ali Reis (1498-1563). On the map (Bittner 1896, “Tafel I und II: Handelsstrassen und Seewege zur Zeit der ‘Abbasiden”) prepared by Wilhelm Tomaschek and attached to the translation of the work, the region of al-Māyad is indicated in the area of the Bay of Tonking with the note in brackets “vgl. Moï” (cf. Moï). So far, I have not been able to trace the origins of Moï. As to possible mix-ups of the geographical designations for Mait in Arab texts, Devic has dedicated a long discussion which needs no repetition here (Devic 1883-1886, 253-255); Roderich Ptak provides a discussion of the Chinese term Mayi in later Chinese texts (Ptak 1986).
Mayd/Māyṭ was not very far from “Djāba” (“la distance entre Djāba et Māyṭ est petite”) according to Persian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh (825-913) (Ferrand 1913, 28). If we accept “Djāba” as a designation for Sumatra or Java, Māyṭ was close by, and thus not in the Philippines. This proposal is supported by the further information that on leaving Māyṭ one passed by the island of Tiyuma, most likely Tioman (Ferrand 1913, 30). The Xin Tangshu describes an itinerary from Piao (in Burma) towards the south that includes a region referred to as Shepo, most likely on the Malay Peninsula (Xin Tangshu 222C.6307-6308), but clearly not the Shepo that ordinarily refers to the island of Java. If this Shepo is identical with the “Djāba” of Ibn Khordadbeh, Māyṭ would have to be looked for in its vicinity.
Isaac Donoso, summarizing information from Arab sources, suggests for Māyṭ that he regards as “un enclave maritime” either a mainland location on the eastern coast of the Malay Peninsula, or an insular location the Malay Peninsula, eastern Sumatra and western Borneo (Donoso 2011, 270).
In the translation of a text surviving as a copy from the 12th century and attributed to the most likely fictional author Buzurg Ibn Shahriyar (allegedly living in the 10th century) the earliest information appears to be confirmed: “L’île de Mait est voisine de Senf et de Serboza” (Devic 1883-1886, 220), “Senf” being the designation for Champa and “Serboza” a likely designation for Palembang, Sumatra. A map is attached to Devic’s translation, that places Mait in Bangka.
The transcriptions of the term change from author to author, so that Reinaud addresses it as “Mabed” (Reinaud 1845, vol. I, 31), places it in “Cochin-chine” and explains that Masudi (896-956) referred to it as “Maber” (Reinaud 1845, vol. II, 21-22). In Sprenger’s English translation of Masudi’s text the term is rendered as “el-Máyid” (Sprenger 1841, 394), while Barbier de Meynard and de Courteille prefer “Mand” (Barbier de Meynard and de Courteille 1861, 289). Jaubert transcribes the island’s designation as “Almaïd” (Jaubert 1836, 89). The various transcriptions evidently depend on the manuscripts available to the translators. But since the original texts from the ninth and tenth centuries – or rather their later surviving copies – include information that remained stable across time, the fact remains that the elusive place would have to be looked for between Sumatra and the Indochinese Peninsula.
Ferdinand Blumentritt heavily influenced the view that the Arab Mait was in the Philippines, because according to his research, during the time of the arrival of the Spaniards people in Mindoro, referred to their home island as Mait (Blumentritt 1882, 65). What happened consequently was that the sixteenth century Mindoro indigenous term was linked to the early Arabic “Māyd” and “Maït” (and others), even though the ultimate reading was far from confirmed, as we have seen above.
Yet scholars, such as recently Elsa Clavé and Arlo Griffith, work their way from this sixteenth century indigenous appellation Mait, through the translations of Chinese and Arabic texts, to establish knowledge of Mindoro (or Luzon) since the tenth century. They explain that the evident contradictions stem from the reticence of Arab travelers to “venture much further than northern Sumatra or the Straits of Malacca” (Clavé and Griffith 2022, 213). I would agree with this statement, which makes it also possible that what little information we have about Mait, in fact refers to a place in Sumatra or the Malay Peninsula. This Mait then is not to be confused with the sixteenth century Mait/Mindoro, nor with the region comprising northern Borneo and the southern Philippines described in the Zhufan zhi.
The consequence of the confusion of Chinese, Arabic and indigenous appellations is evident in Henry Otley Beyer’s (1883-1966) interesting, but nevertheless wrong, statement that defined the religious affiliation of Mayi traders as follows: “From the late 10th century onward the Arab ships pursued both routes, and the first actual recorded mention of the Philippines, in Chinese written history (as so far available), is the arrival of an Arab ship at Canton with a load of native goods from Mindoro (Mai-i), in the year 982 A.D”. (Otley Beyer 1948, 4). The information Otley Beyer refers to, the offloading of goods from Mayi ships in Guangzhou in 982, survives only in the Wenxian tongkao, while the designation otherwise merely serves as a waypoint on the route from Boni in western Borneo to China. Why Otley Beyer addressed the Mayi traders as Arabs remains his secret forever, for the French translation of the relevant phrase reads: “Un autre royaume des mêmes parages est celui de Mo-y [sic], dont on vit venir des marchands à Kouang-tcheou, dans la septième année taï-ping hing-koue (982), avec des très précieuses marchandises” (Saint-Denys 1883, 502), which was paraphrased by Hirth and Rockhill as follows: “The name Ma-i was first heard of in China in 982 when some traders from that country brought valuable merchandise to China” (Hirth/Rockhill 1911, 160).
References:
Barbier de Meynard, Charles and Abel Pavet de Courteille (transl.). Maçoudi: Les prairies d’or – texte et traduction, Tome premier. Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1861.
Bittner, Maximilian (transl.). Die topographischen Kapitel des indischen Seespiegels Moḥît: Festschrift zur Erinnerung an die Eröffnung des Seeweges nach Ostindien durch Vasco da Gama. With an introduction and maps by Wilhelm Tomaschek. Wien: Verlag der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 1897.
Blumentritt, Ferdinand. Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen. Gotha: Perthes, 1882.
Clavé, Elsa and Arlo Griffith. “The Laguna Copperplate Inscription: Tenth-Century Luzon, Java, and the Malay World”, Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 70.2 (2022): 167-242.
Devic, L. Marcel. Livre des merveilles de l’Inde par le capitaine Bzorg fils de Chahriyār de Rāmhormoz. Leiden: Brill, 1883-1886.
Donoso, Isaac. “El Islam en Filipinas (siglos X-XIX)”. Ph. D. diss. University of Alicante, 2011.
Ferrand, Gabriel. Relations de voyages et textes géographiques arabes, persans et turks relatifs à l’Extrême-Orient du VIII au XVIII siècles. Paris: Leroux, 1913.
Gordon, Matthew S.; Chase F. Robinson, Everett K. Rowson, Michael Fishbein (eds). The Works of Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Ya‘qūbī: An English Translation. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018.
Hirth, Friedrich and William Woodville Rockhill (transl.). Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chi. St. Petersburg, Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911.
Jaubert, Pierre Amédée Emilin Probe. Géographie d’Edrisi traduite de l’arabe en français d’après deux manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi et accompagnée de notes. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1836.
Luce, Gordon H. “The Ancient Pyu”, Journal of the Burma Research Society 27.3 (1937): 239-253.
Minorsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich. Hudūd al-‘Ālam: ‘The Regions of the World’, A Persian Geography 372 A.H.-982 A.D. London: Luzac, 1937.
Otley Beyer, Henry. “Early History of Philippine Relations with Foreign Countries, Especially China”. Manila: National Printing Co., 1948. Originally published as an “Historical Introduction” to E. Arsenio Manuel, Chinese Elements in the Tagalog Language (Manila, 1948).
Ptak, Roderich. “The Country of Ma-i(-tung) in the Ming Novel Hsi-yang-chi”, Philippine Studies 34.2 (1986): 200-208.
Reinaud, Joseph Toussaint: Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l’Inde et à la Chine. Paris: Franck, 1845.
Sprenger, Aloys. El-Masūdī’s Historical Encyclopedia Entitled “Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems”, Vol. I. London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1841.
Xin Tangshu, by Ouyang Xiu et al. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975.
Eastern explorations and experiences 