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Wan-li: Year 18, Month 4, Day 17

20 May 1590

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Hu Ru-ning, a supervising secretary in the Office of Scrutiny for Rites and others memorialized: "The offering of tribute by the Meng-yang native official involved only the grand coordinator and regional inspector submitting a memorial on its behalf. Evidence of the yi sentiments has not been obtained. It is requested that in future when the native offices offer tribute, the fan script document should be submitted with the translated memorial." The ministry re-submitted the memorial, noting: "The circumstances by which the yi in the four directions present tribute to the Court are not uniform. For the native offices beyond the border, there is no fixed tribute period. Whenever an yi envoy arrives with a document, it is translated, examined, fully comprehended and then the grand coordinator and regional inspector memorialize on behalf of the submitter of the document. This is a long-standing system. Now, these yi have long been engaged in rebellion and suddenly they have longed for righteousness and sent advice to the Court. If it is thought that the contents of the memorial may be incomplete in some details, it should be ordered that in future, when the Meng-yang native office submits tribute, the document should be translated and submitted on their behalf in accordance with the regulations. In addition, it would do no harm to enclose the original document with the memorial. Thus, when the situation is memorialized, the original fan script memorial could also be submitted." The memorial was forwarded and approved.

Shen-zong: juan 222.5a-b

Zhong-yang Yan-jiu yuan Ming Shi-lu, volume 106, page 4141/42

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Preferred form of citation for this entry:

Geoff Wade, translator, Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/wan-li/year-18-month-4-day-17, accessed January 22, 2019