[KS] Portuguese during Hideyoshi invasion?

Richard Miller rcmiller at wisc.edu
Thu Apr 12 19:25:09 EDT 2007


I might point out, with respect to "P'arang," that it is tolerably close 
to "Farang," a word used in a number of mainland southeast Asian 
languages to denote "westerner," also ultimately derived via "Ferengi" 
from "Frank" and usually indicating Portuguese. Is this perhaps a Hmong 
tale about the Farang couched as an eyewitness description?

Richard Miller

gkl1 at columbia.edu wrote:
>    Checking out the sillok entry cited by Ernie, it is clear that
> P'arang (McC-R) refers to some south Asian people with whom Chinese
> generals operating on China's southern borders were in contact. Many
> of the Chinese generals who were active in Korea during the Imjin
> wars came from that southern military background, and many troops
> of southern ethnic (non-Chinese) origin served in units commanded
> by those generals. The ethnic troops most prominently mentioned in
> the sillok during the Imjin War years were the Miao tribesmen, who
> had a very fearsome reputation as soldiers.
>    The main entry describing King Sonjo's visit to a Chinese
> commander's quarters (not a barrack!) may be translated as follows:
>       His Highness graced the quarters of Brigadier
>  Peng Xin'gu, who offered him wine. His Highness
>  said, "Is your Excellency going to stay here in
>  Seoul, or will you be continuing south?"
>       "I will be leaving for the south after spending
>  a month here," the Brigadier said. Later, he also
>  said, "I've brought along with me some strange
>  looking but amazing soldiers, and I will have them
>  introduced to you (at court)."
>       His Highness asked, "Where are they from, and
>  what skills and capabilities do they have?" The
>  Brigadier responded, "They are people from a country
>  called Polang (K. P'arang), which is extremely far
>  to the south of the Hu-Guang area (southern and
>  southeastern China). They must cross three seas
>  before they reach Hu-Guang. They are 150,000 li from
>  Korea. They are good at musketry and various other
>  military arts."
>       His Highness observed, "We are but an isolated
>  country beyond the (East) Sea; how would we ever have
>  seen such amazing soldiers! That your Excellency
>  should present them is only through the grace of the
>  emperor, for which we are especially grateful. We can
>  point to the day when the murderous outlaws (the
>  Japanese) will be crushed and destroyed."
>       After another glass of wine they each bowed to
>  the other and the king withdrew.
>
>    Thus far the main entry, a very typical one for that period, in
> which King Sonjo never stopped lobbying high-ranking Chinese
> military officers; hundreds of such entries and conversations are
> recorded--see my "Confucianism and War" in <Journal of Korean
> Studies> (U. of Washington/USC), vol. 6 (1988-89). In this one, the
> sillok editor also inserted a note describing the people of P'arang.
> In the usual format such notes are printed in small and quite
> compressed characters, and in this case some of them are smudged or
> otherwise illegible. Even the legible parts are oddly worded. The
> clear parts indicate that these people, also called Haegwi (Ch.
> Haigui, sea devils), had curly black hair "like that of black
> sheep," all over their bodies, except on top of their heads, which
> were completely bald. Their headwear was of coiled yellow cloth,
> worn in a manner that seems to suggest a turban.
> "They are able to submerge themselves under water and poke holes in
> enemy ships. They can also stay at the bottom of the sea for
> several days," eating sea creatures (one odd phrasing here that I
> suspect is a misprint). "Even in China these people are only rarely
> seen."
>       That is the text of the entry as nearly as I can determine. In
> emphasizing unimaginable distances and the most exotic and fabulous
> traits, the piece is a classic example of the Chinese barbarian
> discourse. But one can see how some might see the
> text as describing Portuguese--the curly body hair, the musket
> expertise, the three seas, the incredible distance from Korea. Thus
> did a Portuguese, Pedro Moura, interpret things in his
> <Portuguese-Korean Historical Studies>, published jointly by the
> Instituto Camoens and the Royal Asiatic Society in 2002. I saw this
> book briefly and took a note from it, but had completely forgotten
> about it until it fell out of my sillok when I started checking out
> Ernie's posting. Perhaps others can find it and see what his
> arguments are. But I myself do not believe that the P'arang were
> Portuguese. I admit that the "three seas gives me pause. But for
> people living on or close to the Indian Ocean, as would seem to be
> the case here, that might still apply to a trip through the
> tropics, the Mallacca straits and up the esstern coast of Asia to
> Macao or Canton. It is not unreasonable to think that, while these
> people probably aren't Portuguese, they could have been from from
> one of their colonies in Africa, India, or southeastern Asia.
>    If Chinese had wanted to refer to Portugal, their ordinary term
> of the day was "Folangji" (K. pron. Pullanggi), which had been
> derived from the Arab name Ferenghi, which itself went back to the
> crusades as a rendering of "Frank" and referred to Christian
> Europeans in general. In East Asia it can also be found in texts as
> a word for their premier sixteenth century weapon, the musket.
> Though the term thus applied to almost all Western Europeans, for 
> the Chinese in the 1590s, it was overwhelmingly the Portuguese--
> then already established in Macao for decades--who fit that
> description. Had it been necessary to specify the Portuguese in
> particular, there are Chinese transcriptions of "Portugal" attested
> in Ming histories and documents that could have been used. One was
> Pulidujia (K. P'oryodoga, where the -li- and the Korean -ryo- are
> inserted only to reflect the -r-, and the -d- clearly stands for a
> -t-; further, in Ming times the syllable /kia/ had still not
> palatalized into the modern /jia/. Given those facts, one could
> reasonably read the transcription as "Purtuga"). Another
> transcription, only a little bit better, was Porduwar (Korean 
> P'aidowai-- where the Korean i's utterly fail to catch the -r- and
> the -l). However short these transcriptions may fall, it is clear
> that Ming Chinese had ways of saying "Portugal" if they needed to,
> and equally clear that P'arang is too far off.
>       In conclusion, Ernie's date of "May 26, 1597" needs some
> comment. First of all, 1597 is an error; the notice in question
> (found in <Sonjo sillok>, kwon 100, p. 25a) falls in the 31st year
> of King Sonjo, which was 1598, when the war in Korea still had a
> few more months to run. And it is a good idea, when citing
> traditional East Asian dates, to avoid translating "first month...
> twelfth month," etc. as "January... December," etc. No East Asian
> nation used the Western calandar in the 1590s, nor did they for
> several centuries afterward. Thus Ernie's date should rather be
>   
>> Fifthmoon 26<, which in >1598< corresponded to June 29.
>>     
>
> Gari Ledyard
>
> Quoting "Ernie ." <recanto at hotmail.com>:
>
>   
>> Hello all. Dear colleagues, I wonder if any of you could confirm
>> me the
>> supposed participation of Portuguese mercenaries or soldiers
>> fighting the
>> Japanese at the end of Hideyoshi invasion along with Chinese and
>> Korean
>> troops. Apparently, the Annals of the Choson Kingdom include an
>> entry about
>> King Sonjo’s visit to a Chinese barrack on May 26, 1597, where he
>> was
>> informed of marine operations by warriors from the remote country
>> called
>> Parang (¿Portugal?). It looks like two days later, the Chinese
>> general paid
>> a return visit to the king with the “demon soldiers” (the
>> Portuguese), who
>> showed off their swordmanship during the royal audience.
>>
>> At least to me, that possibility doesn’t look very convincible
>> for two
>> reasons: Firstly, because of the strong economic and religious
>> interests
>> Portuguese had those days in Japan, which for sure would have
>> been damaged
>> as soon as Hideyoshi would have heard on the Portuguese fighters.
>> And
>> secondly, because as far as I know there is no record at all on
>> that history
>> in Portuguese or Spanish sources, nor in any of the detailed
>> letters Jesuits
>> used to send to their bosses in Rome from Macao or Japan.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> E. de Laurentis
>>
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>>
>>     
>
>
>
>   





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