The kingdom of Liuqiu流求國
1A Kingdom on an Island in the Sea
流求國，居海島之中，當建安郡東，水行五日而至。土多山洞。其王姓歡斯氏，名渴剌兜，不知其由來有國代數也。彼土人呼之為可老羊，妻曰多拔荼。所居曰波羅檀洞，壍柵三重，環以流水，樹棘為藩。王所居舍，其大一十六間，琱刻禽獸。多鬬鏤樹，似橘而葉密，條纖如髮，紛然下垂。國有四五帥，統諸洞，洞有小王。往往有村，村有鳥了帥，並以善戰者為之，自相樹立，理一村之事。男女皆以白紵繩纏髮，從項後盤繞至額。其男子用鳥羽為冠，裝以珠貝，飾以赤毛，形製不同。婦人以羅紋白布為帽，其形正方。織鬬鏤皮并雜色紵及雜毛以為衣，製裁不一。綴毛垂螺為飾，雜色相間，下垂小貝，其聲如珮。綴鐺施釧，懸珠於頸。織藤為笠，飾以毛羽。有刀、矟、弓、箭、劍、鈹之屬。其處少鐵，刃皆薄小，多以骨角輔助之。編紵為甲，或用熊豹皮。王乘木獸，令左右轝之而行，導從不過數十人。小王乘机，鏤為獸形。
The kingdom of Liuqiu lies in the middle of an island in the sea. It is east of Jian'an commandery, five days away by water. The land has many mountains and valleys. The surname of its king is Hwansa and his name is Gallaldu, but how the kingdom began, and how many generations it has lasted, is not known. The people of that land call him garoyang, and they call his wife dabaldo. The place where he lives is called Paradan dong. It has moat and palisade in three rings, with running water drawn around it, and thorn trees planted for a hedge. The house the king lives in is sixteen bays in size, and birds and beasts are carved on it.
There are many turu trees. They are like the orange tree, but the leaves are dense, and the twigs are as fine as hair and hang down in a tangle.
The kingdom has four or five commanders (帥) who lead the several dong (洞), and each dong has a lesser king. Here and there are villages, and each village has a joryo chief (鳥了帥). They are all chosen from among those who fight well. They set one another up, and each governs the affairs of one village.
Both men and women wind their hair with cords of white ramie, coiling it from behind the nape around to the forehead. The men make caps of bird feathers, set with beads and shells and trimmed with red fur, and no two are made alike. The women make hats of patterned white cloth, square in shape. They weave the bark of the turu tree together with ramie of many colors and fur of many kinds to make clothes, and the cutting is not uniform. They join fur and hang conch shells for ornament, with the colors alternating, and small shells hang below, whose sound is like jade pendants. They string bells and wear bracelets, and hang beads at the neck. They weave rattan into hats and trim them with fur and feathers.
They have knives, lances, bows, arrows, swords, and pi blades (鈹). Iron is scarce in that place, so the blades are all thin and small, and they piece them out with bone and horn. They plait ramie into armor, or else use the hide of bear and leopard. The king rides a wooden beast and has his attendants carry it as he goes, and those who lead and follow are no more than a few tens of men. A lesser king rides a seat carved into the shape of a beast.
2War and Punishment
國人好相攻擊，人皆驍健善走，難死而耐創。諸洞各為部隊，不相救助。兩陣相當，勇者三五人出前跳噪，交言相罵，因相擊射。如其不勝，一軍皆走，遣人致謝，即共和解。收取鬬死者，共聚而食之，仍以髑髏將向王所。王則賜之以冠，使為隊帥。無賦斂，有事則均稅。用刑亦無常准，皆臨事科決。犯罪皆斷於鳥了帥；不伏，則上請於王，王令臣下共議定之。獄無枷鏁，唯用繩縛。決死刑以鐵錐，大如筯，長尺餘，鑽頂而殺之。輕罪用杖。俗無文字，望月虧盈以紀時節，候草藥枯以為年歲。
The people of the kingdom are fond of attacking one another. They are all swift and strong and run well, they are hard to kill, and they bear wounds. Each dong forms its own troop, and they do not come to one another's aid. When two lines face each other, three or five brave men come out in front, leaping and shouting, and they trade words and curse one another, and then they strike and shoot. If a side cannot win, its whole army runs, and when it sends a man to apologize they make peace together. They gather up those who died in the fighting, come together, and eat them, and then they carry the skulls to the king's place. The king bestows a cap on such a man and makes him a troop commander.
There are no regular levies. When there is business they tax evenly. Punishment too has no fixed standard, and every case is decided as it comes. All crimes are judged by the joryo chief. If a man will not accept the judgment, the case goes up to the king, and the king has his ministers settle it by common counsel. The prison has no cangue and no chains; they bind with rope only. A death sentence is carried out with an iron awl as thick as a chopstick and more than a cheok long: they bore through the crown of the head and kill him. Light offenses are punished with the rod.
Their custom has no writing. They watch the waning and waxing of the moon to mark the seasons, and they watch for the withering of the grasses and herbs to reckon a year.
3Marriage and Burial
人深目長鼻，頗類於胡，亦有小慧。無君臣上下之節，拜伏之禮。父子同牀而寢。男子拔去髭鬢，身上有毛之處皆亦除去。婦人以墨黥手，為蟲蛇之文。嫁娶以酒肴珠貝為娉，或男女相悅，便相匹偶。婦人產乳，必食子衣，產後以火自灸，令汗出，五日便平復。以木槽中暴海水為鹽，木汁為酢，釀米麪為酒，其味甚薄。食皆用手。偶得異味，先進尊者。凡有宴會，執酒者必待呼名而後飲。上王酒者，亦呼王名。銜杯共飲，頗同突厥。歌呼蹋蹄，一人唱，衆皆和，音頗哀怨。扶女子上膊，搖手而舞。其死者氣將絕，舉至庭，親賓哭泣相弔。浴其屍，以布帛纏之，裹以葦草，親土而殯，上不起墳。子為父者，數月不食肉。南境風俗少異，人有死者，邑里共食之。
The people have deep eyes and long noses, much like the Hu, and they have a small cleverness. They have no order of ruler and subject, of high and low, and no rites of bowing and prostration. Father and son sleep on the same bed. The men pull out their mustaches and side whiskers, and wherever hair grows on the body they remove that as well. The women tattoo their hands with ink in patterns of insects and snakes.
In marriage they offer wine and food and beads and shells as the betrothal gift, but if a man and a woman please each other they simply become a pair. When a woman gives birth she always eats the afterbirth, and after the birth she burns herself with fire to bring out the sweat, and in five days she is well again.
They dry seawater in wooden troughs to make salt, they use the sap of trees for vinegar, and they brew rice and wheat flour into wine, whose taste is very thin. They eat everything with their hands. If by chance they get a rare delicacy, they offer it first to their elders. At every feast the man holding the wine must wait until his name is called before he drinks. Even the man who offers wine to the king calls out the king's name. They hold the cup in the mouth and drink together, much as the Tujue do. They sing and shout and stamp their feet, and when one man leads the crowd all answer, and the sound is very sad and full of grievance. They lift a woman onto the arm and shake their hands and dance.
When the breath of a dying man is about to fail, they carry him out to the courtyard, and kinsmen and guests weep and condole with one another. They wash the body, wind it in cloth and silk, wrap it in reed grass, and lay it close against the earth, raising no mound above it. A son does not eat meat for several months for his father. In the southern borderlands the custom differs a little: when a man dies, the village eats him together.
4The Produce of the Land
有熊羆豺狼，尤多猪雞，無牛羊驢馬。厥田良沃，先以火燒而引水灌之。持一插，以石為刃，長尺餘，闊數寸，而墾之。土宜稻、粱、𢇲黍、麻、豆、赤豆、胡豆、黑豆等，木有楓、栝、樟、松、楩、楠、杉、梓，竹、籐、果、藥同於江表，風土氣候與嶺南相類。
There are bears, brown bears, jackals, and wolves, and pigs and fowl are especially many, but there are no cattle, sheep, donkeys, or horses. The fields are rich. They first burn them with fire and then draw water to flood them. They hold a single spade, with a blade of stone more than a cheok long and a few chon wide, and they till with it. The soil suits rice, millet, panicled millet, hemp, beans, red beans, hudou beans (胡豆), black beans, and the like. Among the trees are maple, fir, camphor, pine, pian, nan, cedar, and catalpa. The bamboo, the rattan, the fruit, and the herbs are the same as in Jiangnan, and the land and the climate are much like those of Lingnan.
5The Gods of the Mountains and the Sea
俗事山海之神，祭以酒肴，鬬戰殺人，便將所殺人祭其神。或依茂樹起小屋，或懸髑髏於樹上，以箭射之，或累石繫幡以為神主。王之所居，壁下多聚髑髏以為佳。人間門戶上必安獸頭骨角。
By custom they serve the gods of the mountains and the sea, and they sacrifice wine and food to them. When they kill a man in battle they sacrifice the man they killed to those gods. Some lean a small house against a thick tree; some hang a skull in a tree and shoot it with arrows; some pile up stones and tie a banner to them for a spirit tablet. In the place where the king lives they think it good to gather many skulls below the wall. Over the doors of ordinary houses they always set the head bones and horns of beasts.
6Chen Leng Attacks, and the Link Is Broken
大業元年，海師何蠻等，每春秋二時，天清風靜，東望依希，似有煙霧之氣，亦不知幾千里。三年，煬帝令羽騎尉朱寬入海求訪異俗，何蠻言之，遂與蠻俱往，因到流求國。言不相通，掠一人而返。明年，帝復令寬慰撫之，流求不從，寬取其布甲而還。時倭國使來朝，見之曰：「此夷邪久國人所用也。」帝遣武賁郎將陳稜、朝請大夫張鎮州率兵自義安浮海擊之。至高華嶼，又東行二日至𪓟鼊嶼，又一日便至流求。初，稜將南方諸國人從軍，有崐崘人頗解其語，遣人慰諭之，流求不從，拒逆官軍。稜擊走之，進至其都，頻戰皆敗，焚其宮室，虜其男女數千人，載軍實而還。自爾遂絕。
In the first year of Daye the sea pilot He Man and others said that in the two seasons of spring and autumn, when the sky was clear and the wind still, one could look east and dimly make out what seemed to be a breath of smoke and mist, and they did not know how many thousand li away it lay. In the third year Emperor Yang ordered Zhu Kuan, of the rank yuqiwei, to go out on the sea and seek out these strange customs. He Man had spoken of it, so Zhu Kuan went together with He Man, and in this way they came to the kingdom of Liuqiu. Their speech did not carry, so they seized one man and came back. The next year the emperor again ordered Zhu Kuan to go and soothe them, but Liuqiu would not follow, and Zhu Kuan took a suit of their cloth armor and returned. At that time an envoy of the kingdom of Wa came to court, saw it, and said, "This is what the people of the kingdom of Yixiejiu (夷邪久) use."
The emperor sent Chen Leng, of the rank wubenlangjiang, and Zhang Zhenzhou, of the rank chaoqingdafu, to lead troops and cross the sea from Yi'an to attack them. They came to Gaohua Islet, then sailed east two days to Goubi Islet, then in one day more reached Liuqiu. At the start Chen Leng had taken men of the several southern kingdoms along with the army, and one man of Kunlun understood their speech fairly well, so they sent a man to reason with them. Liuqiu would not follow, and stood against the imperial army. Chen Leng struck them and drove them off, advanced to their capital, fought them again and again and beat them every time, burned their palace buildings, took several thousand men and women captive, loaded up the spoils of war, and returned. From that time the link was broken for good.