Place names

Ma-lin (馬林)

A polity noted in connection with the eunuch-led maritime voyages into the Indian Ocean in the early 15th century. Mills (1970, 205) follows Pelliot (1933; 298) in identifying this with Malindi, a town on the east coast of Africa, a little more than 3 degrees south of the Equator, in today's Kenya. For information on further Chinese sources relating to this polity, see Chen, Xie and Lu (1986; 739, 743).