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0034 Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2
Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 / Page 34 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000042
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274   CONTEMPORARY NOTICES OF CATHAY.

However, the enemy is shut off from the empire in this quarter by high mountains which he cannot penetrate. Nevertheless some troops have been posted to watch this

frontier.

To the north-north-west a desert of forty days' extent divides the states of Kublai from those of Kaidu and Dua.l This frontier extends thirty days from east to west. From point to point are posted bodies of troops under the orders of princes of the blood or other generals, and they often come to blows with the troops of Kaidu. Five of these corps are cantoned on the verge of the Desert ; a sixth in the territory of Tangut, near Çh6gen Naicr (White Lake) ;

The air is so impure that if they ate their dinner after noon they would all die. They boil tea and eat winnowed barley." It is clear enough that the second part of this passage indicates a route to China from Coromandel by Bengal and the Indo-Chinese countries, but the names have been desperately corrupted. Tamlifatan looks very like a misreading of Bimlifatan, the port of Bimlipatam, on the coast of the N. Circars ; and Bijalcir is certainly Bengala, quasi-independent under Nasir-uddin, son of the Emperor Balban, and his family. Katban may just possibly have been a mispronunciation of Hccbang, i.e. Silhet (see Ibn Batuta infra) ; whilst Uman is probably the Chinese U-man or Homan, the name applied to one of the wild tribes of the Upper Irawadi region. Gosju and Sabju look like Chinese names, so entirely out of place that I suspect interpolation by some one misunderstanding the route ; the remaining names I have tried in vain to solve in any consistent manner.

Pauthier quotes passages from the Chinese Annals showing that the office of " Direction of Frontier Protection " and the like for the Gold-Teeth territory was established in Kublai's reign, at or near Tali. But it seems to me that in his map he places this people too far to the south, and that it is pretty clear from all the passages just quoted, that they are to be placed at least as high as lat. 24°-25°, corresponding in position generally to the existing Singphos. (Quatremère's Rashid, pp. lxxxvi-xcvi; Elliot, p. 46; Pauthier's Polo, pp. 391-2, 397 seq.)

See ante, p. 195. For a time at least there were two Mongol dynasties in Central Asia, between the frontier of the Great Khan and the Caspian. Kaidu, great grandson of Chinghiz through his second son and successor Okkodai, and who disputed the suzerainty with Kublai through life, represented one of those, whilst that of Chagatai was the other. See a. note appended to Ibn Batuta (infra) " On the History of the Khans of

Chagatai."