[9] Meaning the Parsees or Guebres, the fire-worshippers of Persia.--E.
[10] It is probable that this Balhara, or king of the people with bored ears, which plainly means the Indians, was the Zamorin or Emperor of Calicut; who, according to the reports of the most ancient Portuguese writers concerning India, was acknowledged as a kind of emperor in the Indies, six hundred years before they discovered the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope.--Harris.
The original editor of this voyage in English, Harris, is certainly mistaken in this point. The Balhara was the sovereign of Southern Seindetic India; of which dominion Guzerat was the principal province.--E.
[11] This is a very early notice of the construction and use of clocks, or machinery to indicate divisions of time, by means of weights.--E.
_Commentary upon the foregoing Account, by Abu Zeid al Hasan of Siraff_.
Having very carefully examined the book I was desired to peruse, that I might confirm what the author relates so far as he agrees with what I have learnt concerning the affairs of navigation, the kingdoms on the coast, and the state of the countries of which he treats, and that I might add what I have elsewhere collected concerning these matters: I find that this book was composed in the year of the Hegira 237, and that the accounts given by the author are conformable with what I have heard from merchants who have sailed from _Irak_ or Persia, through these seas. I find also all that the author has written to be agreeable to truth, except some few passages, in which he has been misinformed. Speaking of the custom, of the Chinese in setting meat before their dead, and believing that the dead had eaten, we had been told the same thing, and once believed it; but have since learnt, from a person of undoubted credit, that this notion is entirely groundless, as well as that the idolaters believe their idols speak to them. From that creditable person we have likewise been informed, that the affairs of China wear quite a different aspect since those days: and since much has been related to explain why our voyages to China have been interrupted, and how the country has been ruined, many customs abolished, and the empire divided, I shall here declare what I know of that revolution.