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| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
| 66 | 49. BAIAN |
knowing L, I had decided in favour of «bagheriac»; the first -r- was perhaps introduced under the influence of « Bargu » which occurs a few lines earlier. The insertion, or the metathesis, must have taken place very early, and is supported by RAMUSIO; unfortunately the chapter does not appear in Z.
49. BAIAN (brother of MINGAN, c. 93)
bagiam VL baian F, V bayan R
baia FA, FB bajan S baym P
baiam TA', TA3 bayam LT chaiam VA
In Mongolian Bayan, «rich ». There were many Bayan in Mongol history; WANG Hui-tsu I, 32, 4-6, thinks he can trace nineteen in YS alone; but the three who have biographies in YS are out of the question here. Being a brother of Ming) an (see «Mingan »), Bayan must have been a Qangii. I have not yet found in Chinese texts a Bayan who was a Qanglï, or who was brought into connection with the kuei-ch'ih troops. CHARIGNON (Ch, III, 91) is wrong when he says that
one of Ming) an's grandsons was call d Bayan; the very name he gives, ! P'u-yen-hu-li,
represents the Turkish name Buyan-quiff « the Slave of the religious merits », answering to a Sanskrit prototype Punyadâsa. We know of only one brother of Ming)'an, and he was put at the head of the kuei-ch'ih troops, but that was some time after 1303, and Polo could not have known
about it; moreover, his name was a if T'o-tieh-ch'u (*Tödäcü ?). We might suppose tha
Ming) an had another brother, who was simply his assistant, and has left no trace in history, if a text of Ra"sidu-'d-Din did not raise fresh difficulties. Raid (BI, II, 501) mentions among
Qubilai's high officials a man whom BLOCHET calls « ,s\14; Tiktädäi son of the
kübügäci Nayan». No office of kübügäci is known; I proposed in 1920 (Y, III, 70) to read
Bayan güyükci », and to see here the « cuiucci» Bayan of Polo; I still think that the correction is almost certain. On the other hand, the would-be name «Tiktädäï» is certainly to be read sl-A- Nangiadai (in written Mongol Nanggiyadai). The name of Nanggiyadai is very common (see «Mongatai»), but the best known Nanggiyadai in Qubilai's time was a Naiman, and his father was called Ma-ch'a (*Maca, *Macaq ?) ; cf. YS, 131, 2 a-3 a; no mention is made of the kuei-ch'ih in his biography. Another Nanggiyadai held a high rank in the Privy Council (he was ch'u-mi fu-shih), although we know very little else about him ( YS, 126, 8 b); his father was really named Bayan, but this Bayan is the well-known general (see « Baian Cingsan »), who was a Bärin, not a Qanglï. No mention is made of the kuei-ch'ih in Bayan's biography ( YS, 127) ; moreover Rasidu-'d-Din calls him by the high title of «Bayan noyan» (Bl, II, 527), and it is extremely unlikely that he should have referred to him here and called him by the much lower title of güyükci. To sum up, while Ragid's text confirms the existence of a «cuiucci» called Bayan, we are not in a position to say that he was really Mingyan's brother, and the case of his son Nanggiyadai, a high official at the Court of Qubilai, remains unsolved.
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