S. F. BALFOUR
to be found. In the pearl sea the local Tan and Man14 live near the oyster beds but they are more wretched and starved than the poorest people and are not allowed to get pearls for themselves.
It is not possible to locate the parts of the Taipo Sea where this fishing was done. No doubt the appellation Taipo Sea was used, just as T'un Mun, to denote a large indefinite area possibly including most of Mirs Bay. There are, nowadays, oysters on the Canton estuary side only, and these do not give pearls. This text, which can be found in the Topography, gives a picture of the conditions existing when the population of our region was composed mainly of soldiers and aborigines.
No doubt cultivation was practised in the neighbourhood of these garrisons by the soldiers themselves or by a few families of Chinese peasants, but rice cultivation on a large scale, such as exists now on all the plains, cannot have existed a thousand years ago. Much of the country must have been jungle. The presence of elephants is shewn by an inscription dated A.D. 962 at a Buddhist temple not far from the present frontier. The inscription describes the erection of a pagoda on a site where elephant bones were collected and buried in order to pacify herds of elephants which were doing great damage in the neighbourhood. A description15 of the event runs as follows:
In Ts'ư Fu Shih, a Buddhist temple in Tung Kun district, a stone pagoda was built in the 5th year of the reign of Ta Pao of the Southern Han dynasty with the intention of pacifying the elephants which at that time were doing much damage to the crops. Elephant bones were collected in a heap, and the pagoda raised over them so as to keep the elephants in control.
We have already seen that crocodiles were common in South China during the T'ang dynasty, but the presence of elephants as late as the tenth century is a remarkable testimony of the change that the region underwent during less than a thousand years. It seems likely that the nature of the region changed after a process of deforestation.
14 i.e. Tanka and Hoklo.
15 BRÂES, Volume I, page 12.
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S. F. BALFOUR
to be found. In the pearl sea the local Tan and Man' live near the oyster beds but they are more wretched and starved than the poorest people and are not allowed to get pearls for themselves."
It is not possible to locate the parts of the Taipo Sea where this fishing was done. No doubt the appellation Taipo Sea was used, just as T'un Mun, to denote a large indefinite area possibly including most of Mirs Bay. There are, nowadays, oysters on the Canton estuary side only, and these do not give pearls. This text, which can be found in the Topography, gives a picture of the conditions existing when the population of our region was composed mainly of soldiers and aborigines.
No doubt cultivation was practised in the neighbourhood of these garrisons by the soldiers themselves or by a few families of Chinese peasants, but rice cultivation on a large scale, such as exists now on all the plains, cannot have existed a thousand years ago. Much of the country must have been jungle. The presence of elephants is shewn by an inscription dated A.D. 962 at a Buddhist temple not far from the present frontier. The inscription describes the erection of a pagoda on a site where elephant bones were collected and buried in order to pacify herds of elephants which were doing great damage in the neighbourhood. A descrip- tion of the event runs as follows: 15
In Ts'ữ Fu Shih, a Buddhist temple in Tung Kun district, a stone pagoda was built in the 5th year of the reign of Ta Pao of the Southern Han dynasty with the intention of pacifying the elephants which at that time were doing much damage to the crops. Elephant bones were collected in a heap, and the pagoda raised over them so as to keep the elephants in control.
We have already seen that crocodiles were common in South China during the T'ang dynasty, but the presence of elephants as late as the tenth century is a remarkable testimony of the change that the region underwent during less than a thousand years. It seems likely that the nature of the region changed after a process of deforestation.
14 i.e. Tanka and Hoklo.
15 BRÂES, Volume I, page 12.
Page 165Page 166
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