Lochac, Locach or Locat is a country far south of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

mentioned by

Marco Polo Marco Polo (, , ; 8 January 1324) was a Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in '' The Travels of Marco Polo'' (also known as ''Book of the Marv ...

. 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.

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 Angkor Wat (; km, អង្គរវត្ត, "City/Capital of Temples") is a temple complex in Cambodia and is the largest religious monument in the world, on a site measuring . Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the g ...

, 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 olden towersare the monuments that have caused merchants from overseas to speak so often of ‘

Zhenla Chenla or Zhenla (; km, ចេនឡា, ; vi, Chân Lạp) is the Chinese designation for the successor polity of the kingdom of Funan preceding the Khmer Empire that existed from around the late sixth to the early ninth century in Indoc ...

ambodiathe rich and noble’." The imprisonment of a Mongol emissary by the Khmer ruler

Jayavarman VIII Jayavarman VIII ( km, ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៨), posthumous name Paramesvarapada, was one of the prominent kings of the Khmer empire. His rule lasted from 1243 until 1295, when he abdicated. One of his wives was Queen Chakravartirajad ...

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.

Subsequent maps and theories

A ''Pentan'' mentioned by Polo appears to be the island of

Bintan Bintan Regency (formerly Riau Islands Regency; id, Kabupaten Kepulauan Riau) is an administrative area in the Riau Islands Province of Indonesia. Bintan Regency includes all of Bintan Island (except for the city of Tanjung Pinang which is sep ...

. Likewise ''Malaiur'' was the old

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

name for the Sumatran city of

Jambi Jambi is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the east coast of central Sumatra and spans to the Barisan Mountains in the west. Its capital and largest city is Jambi. The province has a land area of 50,160.05 km2, and a sea area of 3 ...

(and is the origin of the national name Malay). 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''. 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). On Gerard Mercator's 1538 map of the world, ''Locat'' is situated in Indochina, south of

Champa Champa ( Cham: ꨌꩌꨛꨩ; km, ចាម្ប៉ា; vi, Chiêm Thành or ) were a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is contemporary central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd ...

(Ciamba). 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 (Latin: '"Southern Land'") was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that ...

) to the south of

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

. However, some scholars see in La Jocade a resemblance to the North Island of New Zealand. In 1769, the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Sou ...

hydrographer,

Alexander Dalrymple Alexander Dalrymple FRS (24 July 1737 – 19 June 1808) was a Scottish geographer and the first Hydrographer of the British Admiralty. He was the main proponent of the theory that there existed a vast undiscovered continent in the South P ...

, stated that the northern part of New Holland "seems to be what Marco-Polo calls Lochae". Paul Wheatley, after G. Pauthier (who reads Locach as ''Soucat''), and

Henry Yule Sir Henry Yule (1 May 1820 – 30 December 1889) was a Scottish Orientalist and geographer. He published many travel books, including translations of the work of Marco Polo and ''Mirabilia'' by the 14th-century Dominican Friar Jordanus. ...

(1866), believe that the place referred to was in

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and e ...

, such as:

West Kalimantan West Kalimantan ( id, Kalimantan Barat) is a province of Indonesia. It is one of five Indonesian provinces comprising Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. Its capital city is Pontianak. The province has an area of 147,307&nbs ...

, Sukadana or Lawai (arch. Laue; Lawai, near the

Kapuas River The Kapuas River (or Kapoeas River) is a river in the Indonesian part of Borneo island, at the geographic center of Maritime Southeast Asia. At in length, it is the longest river in the island of Borneo and the longest river of IndonesiaMacK ...

). According to a recent Chinese version of ''

The Travels of Marco Polo ''Book of the Marvels of the World'' ( Italian: , lit. 'The Million', deriving from Polo's nickname "Emilione"), in English commonly called ''The Travels of Marco Polo'', is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from st ...

'' 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.

Theories regarding Lopburi and the Khmer Empire

Subsequent maps and theories

Footnotes

References

Further reading