History According to William Henry Scott

On 16 November 1420 Kanlai lpentun appeared at court with a large following which included his wife, children, and prime minister. On the 28th he sent up a personal petition:

Your Majesty’s simple–minded servant has been unable to understand why, although he is the one selected by his countrymen, he still has not received the imperial command; pray have the mercy to grant his investiture and his country’s recognition.29 The petition received favorable action, the investiture ceremonies were celebrated, and the Kumalalang entourage feted and regaled to the last man. But on the way home, Kanlai Ipentun suffered the same fate as his Borneo and Sulu neighbors and died in Fukien on 27 May 1421. Board of Rites Manager Yang Shan arranged his funeral and interment, and the Emperor bestowed the posthumous title of “Vigorous and Peaceful” on him, and named his son La-pi as successor. Chang Ch’ien’s presence seems also to have had its effect in Sulu.

The western ruler sent a tribute mission in 1420, and in 1421 the eastern king’s mother sent her late son’s younger brother, Paduka Suli, while the Kumalalang ruler was still there. On 14 May, Paduka Suli left his mark in Chinese history by presenting a pearl weighing seven ounces, then spent two years there, presumably visiting his nephews in Tehchow since he took his late brother’s concubine back home with him. On 3 November 1424, young King La-pi of Kumalalang sent Chief Batikisan and others with a gold-engraved memorial, and the following week a number of other countries appeared, headed by Chief Sheng-ya-li-pa-yii (Sangilaya?) of Sulu.

This rush to Peking was the last of a series of missions which probably indicates a shift away from the old Brunei-Mindoro-Luzon track to new trading centers astride the direct spice route from the Southeast Sea. Unlike the rulers of Luzon, Mao-li’-wu, and Panga- sinan who were referred to as chieftains and who never sent memo- rials engraved on gold, the heads of state in Sulu and Mindanao were called by the Chinese term for monarch, wang, and were received with the same protocol as Iskandar Shah of Malacca, the most im- portant entrepot of Southeast Asia at the time and a favorite staging base for Cheng Ho’s fleets. 30 Sulu, with its pearl beds, access to Sa- bah camphor, and strategic location, seems to have inherited that

older Butuan-Champa trade route which avoided Srivijaya territory. Indeed, modern linguistic evidence suggests that the Taosugs original- ly migrated there from Butuan. But now trade route led not to Cham- pa but to Malacca, whose second ruler must have checked into the government hostel for tribute envoys in Peking right after those 350 Sulu delegates left for home. The mysterious land of Sulu, with its pearls so lustrous they glowed under the sea at night and royal princes settled right in Shan- tung province, soon appeared in popular literature. A Ming drama titled Hsia Hsi Yang (Voyage to the Western Ocean) pictures it as being on the way to India, and has its King Paduka Pasuli capture Cheng Ho’s ships for their cargos of silk and porcelain. The admiral escapes by a clever ruse: he lures the king on board to see a tree that bears porcelain instead of fruit. Paduka Pasuli introduces him- self, zarzu.ela-like, with a little song:

The foggy dew lifts off the sea and morning brightly dawns; The ocean waves and breaking surf grow calm within the shoal; And long time living on the sea has been this land of mine-The moun- tain chief of ocean tribes, whose total peace pervades.31 But it was the real Paduka Suli’s seven-ounce pearl which cap- tured the Chinese imar;ination. Indeed, by the time Huang Hsin-tseng wrote his Hsi Yang Ch’ao-kung tien-lu (Record of tribute missions from the Western Ocean) in 1520, it had grown in size:

When I saw in the Book of Han the story of the two-inch pearl, and read in the biographies of the Immortals how in the time of Empress Lii an edict was handed down calling for a three-inch pearl and that a certain Chu Chung presented one and was given 500 gold pieces, and then Princes Lu Yiian secretly gave Chung 700 gold pieces to get a four-inch pearl. I considered it all false. But now that the Starry Raft collection says the Sulu king presented a pearl weighing eight ounces, I begin to believe it. No wonder he was given a gold seal! For even if things from distant lands are not very valuable, this would be reason enough for people from distant lands to come to court ( ch. 1).

Sulu also receives more space in official Ming annals than any other Philippine state. The Ta Ming Hui-tien (Great Ming compen- dium of laws), for example, records many administrative and fiscal details connected with its missions. The second section under “Board of Rites, ch. 64-Tribute, ch. 2,” gives a synopsis of its vassal rela- tions and a list of tribute offerings ( ch. 106), and a routinary entry at the end of the list of return gifts received by the envoys provides an insight into the tribute system itself: “They were granted the

standard price for their goods and products, minus the tariff duties” ( ch. 111). The section on “State banquets in local hostels for the maintenance of western and island barbarians” under the Provisions Accounting Office notes:

Country of Sulu. Yung Lo 15th year: one banquet. The king of this country came to court, passing through the prefectual way- stations, and was supplied with food and maintenance. He returned the same way (ch. 106).

Ten years later, however, budgetary cutbacks which ended the famous Cheng Ho naval expeditions also discontinued the banquets and established the following austerity in maintaining foreign envoys: Ordinary daily gift-rations. For each barbarian monarch-one pair of chickens, two pounds of meat, one bottle of wine, firewood, and cooking ingredients. For each of the king’s relatives–one pound of meat, one bottle of wine, firewood, and cooking ingredients. For each official and chieftain-a half pound of meat, half bottle of wine, firewood, and cooking ingredients. For his followers, women, petty officers, etc.-firewood only.32

Supplemented by other Chinese accounts, these bookkeeping details make it possible to outline Sulu’s growth as an international emporium. The earliest description-Wang Ta-yiian’s in 1346-men- tions only local products like “bamboo cloth” (abaca or ramie), bees- wax, tortoise shell, lake-wood “of middling quality,” and pearls, devoting most of its space to discussing the profits to be obtained from handling the last item. 33

A century later, the 1417 tribute mission presented pearls, tortoise shell, and “precious stones”-which must have been imports-but Chinese pearls are listed among the Emperor’s return gifts. Significantly, the 1421 tribute list does not include pearls and that seven-ounce giant was presumably too per- sonal a gift to the Emperor to show up in the account books. But it does include high-priced non-Sulu products like brazilwood, black pepper, cubebs (piper longum), foreign tin, “plum blossom camphor” (i.e., first-class), and “rice-grain camphor” (broken fragments). Finally, in 1617, Chang Hsieh’s Tung Hsi Yang K’ao specifically describes a trading center whose inhabitants receive Chinese goods on credit from agents who are euphemistically called “hostages” so as not to offend the Spanish government which controlled the Manila galleon trade.