Locach

Lochac, Locach or Locat is a country far south of China mentioned by Marco Polo. The name is widely believed to be a variant of Lo-huk 罗斛: the Cantonese name for the southern Thai kingdom of Lopburi (also known as Lavapura and Louvo), which was a province of the Khmer Empire at the time.

However, it has also been suggested that Polo or his sources in China were referring to other locations or conflating several different places as Lochac.

In Vietnam, Lopburi was referred to as Lộ Hạc. The Complete History of Đại Việt, the oldest Vietnamese dynastic history, records that in the year 1149 merchant ships from the three countries Trảo Oa (Java), Lộ Hạc and Xiêm La (Siam) entered the Hải Đông (Gulf of Tonking) and requested permission to trade on the island of Vân Đồn.吳士連 [Ngô Sĩ Liên], 大越史記全書 , [Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư - The Complete History of Đại Việt], 正和第十八年 [khắc năm Chính Hòa thứ 18 - 18th year of Chính Hòa - 1697], 本紀 [Bản Kỷ - Primary Chronicle], 四卷 [Quyển IV - vol. 4], 李英宗皇帝 [Anh Tông Hoàng Đế: “Primary Chronicle of the Emperor Anh Tong (1136–1175)]”; Hà Văn Tấn (ed.), Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư: dịch theo bản khắc năm Chính Hòa thứ 18 (1697) [The Complete History of Đại Việt, translated from the edition printed in the 18th year of Chính Hòa 1697], translation and annotations by Ngô Đức Thọ, Tập 1, Hà Nội, Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội, 1983, [Hanoi, Social Sciences Publishing House, Volume I, 1983], pp.337-338. The same work further records that in the year 1360, merchant ships belonging to the countries of Lộ Hạc, Tráo Oa and Xiêm La came to the island of Vân Đồn carrying foreign goods to trade. The editor of the Complete History of Đại Việt, Ngô Đức Thọ, says: "Lộ Hạc is Lavo in Lopburi province, Thailand. Lộ Hạc is likely to be the country of Locac mentioned in Marco Polo's Travels".The Complete History of Đại Việt, translated from the edition printed in the 18th year of Chính Hòa 1697], translation and annotations by Ngô Đức Thọ, Tập 1, Hà Nội, Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội, 1983, [Hanoi, Social Sciences Publishing House, Volume I, 1983], pp.337-338. The same identification was made by Conrad Malte-Brun, Précis de la Géographie Universelle, Paris, 1813, T.IV, pp.214-15.

Theories regarding Lopburi and the Khmer Empire Marco Polo may also have used "Locach" to mean the Khmer Empire in general. One piece of evidence for this is the "golden towers" that Polo reported in Locach, which were more likely inspired by the golden spires of Angkor Wat, the capital of the Khmer Empire (than the Lopburi of his time). As Zhou Daguan, the ambassador sent by the Yuan court to Cambodia in 1296 commented: "These [golden towers] are the monuments that have caused merchants from overseas to speak so often of ‘Zhenla [Cambodia] the rich and noble’."

The imprisonment of a Mongol emissary by the Khmer ruler Jayavarman VIII in 1281 would have been ample justification for Polo's allegation of the inhumanity of its people. He said that Locach was "such a savage place that few people ever go there" and that "the king himself does not want anyone to go there or to spy out his treasure or the state of his realm". Polo also noted an abundance of elephants in Locach; in the Chinese annals, Locach was notable for sending elephants as tribute.Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1963, Vol.II, p.554, note 2. Paul Wheatley, "Lochac Revisited", Oriens Extremus, vol.16, 1969, pp.85- 110. Luohu 羅斛 is also described in the Wubei Zhi (武備志 Military Records) edited by Mao Yüan-yi 茅元儀, containing the Mao Kun Map, dating from the Yuan Dynasty ("Zhan Du Zai", chapter 236, "Examination of All Countries Beyond the Seas: Xianluo", pp.10256-8); See also Ma Huan, Ying-yai sheng-lan: The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores , translated by Feng Ch`eng-Chun with introd. notes and appendices by J. V. G. Mills, Cambridge [Eng.], Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1970.

Subsequent maps and theories On Gerard Mercator's 1538 map of the world, Locat is situated in Indochina, south of Champa (Ciamba).World Map on Double Cordiform Projection, Gerardus Mercator (1512–94). On his 1569 world map, "the Kingdom of Locach" (Lucach regnum) and Beach were shown as a northward extension of the Terra Australis to the south of Java with an inscription, quoting Marco Polo, “Beach the gold-bearing province”.Gerardus Mercator, Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendata, Duisburg, 1569. https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-233595918/view Mercator's source was the account of Marco Polo's Travels published in Novus Orbis Regionum ac Insularum Veteribus Incognitarum."M. Pauli Veneti de regionibus Orientalis", Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich, Novus Orbis Regionum ac Insularum Veteribus Incognitarum, Paris, 1532, "De Provincia Boeach", p.351; Nicholas Crane, Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002, p.104.

Abraham Ortelius identified the Regio Patalis, a large promontory of the Terra Australis shown on Oronce Fine's world maps of 1531 and 1536, with Locach on his world map of 1564. He inscribed on the eastern side of the northward extension of the Southern Continent: “This tract is called by some Patalis". The western side of the same promontory, he inscribed: "The Region of Locach seems to be placed here by M. Polo the Venetian".

Pentan mentioned by Polo appears to be the island of Bintan. Likewise Malaiur was the old Tamil name for the Sumatran city of Jambi (and is the origin of the national name Malay).Sir Henry Yule (ed.), The Book of Ser Marco Polo, London, Murray, 1921, Vol.II, pp.280-283

On Guillaume Le Testu’s 1556 Cosmographie Universel, Locach appears to be named La Joncade – an island off a promontory of the southern continent, Terre australle, to the eastward of Grande Jaue, a northward-extending promontory of the Terre australle (Terra Australis) to the south of Java.Guillaume Le Testu, Cosmographie Universel, 1556, 4me projection, Clémence Lévy and Poerrette Crouzet (eds.), New Worlds, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France/ Bibliothèque de l’Image, 2012, pp.60-61. However, some scholars see in La Jocade a resemblance to the North Island of New Zealand.

A mistranscription of Locach, Beach, originated with the 1532 editions of the Novus Orbis Regionum by Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich, in which Marco Polo's Locach was changed to Boëach, which was later shortened to Beach.(Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich, Novus Orbis Regionum, Basel and Paris, 1532, Marco Polo cap.xi, "De provincia Boëach"; cited in Thomas Suarez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Periplus, 1999, p.160.)

Abraham Ortelius inscribed on his 1564 world map: Latinum exemplar habet Boeach sed male ut fere omnium: Nos italico usi fuimus (A Latin version has Boeach, but mistakenly: like almost everyone we have used the Italian).Abraham Ortelius, Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis juxta Neotericorum Traditiones Descriptio, Antwerp, 1564, at: https://www.e-rara.ch/bau_1/content/zoom/3945906 . Günter Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica, Alphen aan den Rijn, Uitgevermaatschappij Canaletto, 1986, Vol.2. Mercator ignored this correction on his 1569 world map.

By the late seventeenth century, the location and even the existence of Beach was generally considered doubtful, as the geographer Michel Antoine Baudrand put it:“Beach, a large region, placed as a part of the Southland [Terra Australis] on many maps, but where it was, or by whom it was discovered, there is a deep silence among authors, and from the more recent of them it is clear that there is no region so called in all the Southland and in the parts discovered by Europeans.”"Beach, Regio ampla, ponitur tamquam pars terræ Australis in plurimis tabulis, sed ubi fuerit, aut a quibus detecta, altum inest inter authores silentium, & ex recentioribus illarum constat, nullam esse regionem sic dictam in omni terra australi & in partibus ab Europæis detectis"; Michel Antoine Baudrand, Novum Lexicon Geographicum, Filippo Ferrari (ed.), Paris, Pierre Schmidt, 1677, Volume II, Notæ, et Additiones: “Urbes, Regiones et Aliæ Partes Fictitiæ, seu qua nec sunt, nec unquam extiterunt, Quanquam sæpe notentur in pluribus tabulis Geographis”.

In 1769, the East India Company hydrographer, Alexander Dalrymple, stated that the northern part of New Holland "seems to be what Marco-Polo calls Lochae".Alexander Dalrymple, A Plan for Extending the Commerce of this Kingdom, and of the East India Company, London, 1769, p.92 ; cited in Arthur Wichmann, Nova Guinea, Vol.1, Entdeckungsgeschichte von Neu-Guinea, Leiden, Brill, 1909, pp.6-7.

Paul Wheatley, after G. Pauthier (who reads Locach as Soucat),Paul Wheatley, "Lochac Revisited", Oriens Extremus, vol.16, 1969, pp. 85-110 (at JStor).Guillaume Pauthier, Le Livre de Marco Polo, Paris, Firmin Didot, 1865, p. 563. and Henry Yule (1866),Henry Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, VI. Ibn Battuta, note G (1866, vol. 2, p. 521). believe that the place referred to was in Borneo, such as: West Kalimantan, Sukadana or Lawai (arch. Laue; Lawai, near the Kapuas River).

According to a recent Chinese version of The Travels of Marco Polo translated by Chen Kaijun, etc., Marco Polo traveled to islands Sondur and Kondur, 1,126 km south of Java, and then traveled 80 km southeast and arrived at Lochac 罗斛. As pointed out by Robert J. King, this version is based on a misunderstanding of Marco's itinerary in the version of the Travels contained in the 1532 compilation by Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich.Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich, Novus Orbis Regionum ac Insularum Veteribus Incognitarum, Paris, 1532, lib.III, cap.XI, “De provincia Boëach”, p.351. This was used as a source for the Mercator 1569 world map. Grynaeus and Huttich used a version of the Travels in which Locach (or Boëach as it was mistakenly transcribed, or Beach as it was written by Mercator) was located 1700 miles to the south of Java instead of Champa.Robert J. King, “Finding Marco Polo’s Locach”, Terrae Incognitae, vol.50, no.1, April 2018, pp. 1–18, p.2: https://doi.org/10.1080/00822884.2018.1432294 The 1570 world map of Jean Cossin using sinusoidal projection shows lucac (Locach) in the same location.Carte cosmographique et universelle description du monde avec le vrai traict des vents / Faict en Dieppe par Jehan Cossin marinnier en l'an 1570 Chen's version was based on Manuel Komroff's 1926 edition of William Marsden's 1818 English translation of The travels of Marco Polo but ignored Marsden's note saying that although Marco did not visit Java the early transcribers of his manuscript edited it to make it appear that he did and therefore mis-located Pulo Condore and Locach far to its south.William Marsden, The Travels of Marco Polo, London, 1818, p.335.

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References

Locach

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