Ancient Names Indicating Formosa in Chinese Records

Abstract

The geographical recording of the Former Han Dynasty refers to a people called Tung-t'i, living far off the coast of Hui-chi province, south of the mouth of the Yang-tse River. In the following Three Kingdoms Age, we find the names of islands I and T'an, to the former of which the kingdom of Wu sent an expeditionary force and captured there thousands of natives, having been unable to reach the latter island. The T'an Island being supposed to be the Hainan Island, the I Island would possibly be Formosa, as Dr. S. ICHIMURA suggests. And the letter in question was pronounced tei beides i at least in the Later Han Dynasty, and it may be not improbable, as Dr. K. SHIRATORI remarks, that the island Tungt'i, tung being the "east", corresponds with the island I. However, the present author thinks that both Tung-t'i and I were the names of fictitious islands in the southeastern sea and the name of the island I was applied to Formosa, when the force of the Wu Kingdom landed there. For three centuries, from the Three kingdoms Age to the Sui Dynasty, there was no allusion to Formosa in the Chinese recordings. In Sui-shu, we find a more or less minute description on the Liu-ch'iu, where the force of the Sui Dynasty invaded and captured thousands of natives. Dr. ICHIMURA points out a noteworthy coincidence between the description of this island and that of the I Island. There have been much debates as to whether this Liu-ch'iu was Formosa or Okinawa, or whether the informations about these two islands were confused each other in the Chinese recording of the Sui Dynasty. Anyhow, the vocabulary of the native in the Sui-shu, deciphered by Dr. SHIRATORI, suggests an affinity with the Indonesian languages. Without doubt, Liu-ch'iu in this case was Formosa. During the Tang and Sung Dynasties, Formosa was rarely referred to and was regarded as a home of furious headhunters. Chao Ju-kua, a geographer and a superintendent for the marchant shipping in the province of Fu-chien, wrote : "in Liu-ch'iu there are no particular products, and the natives have a liking for piracy, and so few marchants go there." In his famous Chu-fan-chih, we find for the first time the name of P'eng-hu, the islands lying between Formosa and the Continent. The biography of Wang Ta-you, a governer of Ts'uan-chou (Fu-chien Province), also of the Southern Sung Dynasty, referred to an event that the Visayan of the Philippines invaded P'ing-hu and the coast of Ts'uan-chou. As Dr. T, FUJITA suggests, this P'ing-hu seems to be P'eng-hu. Later in the Mongol Age, the settlement of Chinese immigrants was recorded there. Meanwhile, informations about Formosa became better in the Mongol Age : besides a punitive expeedition toward the natives, various trading articles between China and Formosa were enumerated. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, an envoy was despatched to Liu-ch'iu. Presumably he thought it more preferable not to go to the barbarous Formosa at his peril, but to Okinawa instead, because he had visited Japan beforehand and might have been informed of Okinawa through some of Japanese. Since then, the name of Liu-ch'iu became applied especially to Okinawa was called Great hiu-ch'iu, and Formosa Little Liu-ch'iu or Tung-fan. In the later half of the Ming Dynasty, various place-names in Formosa, such as Wang-kang, Tayuan, Ta-kuo and Ta-hui in the southern part and Chi-lung and Tan-shui in the northern part, were known to the Chinese. Nevertheless, the Ming government did not regard Formosa a part of the Chinese dominion. When the Dutch occupied Peng-hu, the Ming government demanded them to remove to Formosa and to settle wherever they prefer in the island. The modern history of Formosa begins with the Dutch occupation thereof.