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| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
174 119. CARAGIAN
biography says that Uriyangqadai « reached the city of Yaêi which is the capital (or a capital) of the Black Barbarians », « Black Barbarians » (Wu-Man) is only the Chinese equivalent of a Mongol original Qara-Jang (the Mongol original is shown by the use of Yaci), and the sentence simply alludes to the fact that Yün-nan-fu was the second capital of the Qara-Jang, i. e. the Ta-li kingdom. Nor can the mention of the thirty-seven tribes of the Black Barbarians carry any great weight. The many Chinese texts, ranging from the Six Dynasties to the Yüan period and even later, which concern the Black and White Barbarians have not been studied critically, but amidst their sometimes conflicting statements we clearly find Black Barbarians in western Yün-nan, nay in the very country of the Cayan-fang, or « White Jang », of Li-chiang, from which, in the T'ang period, according to YS, 61, 4 a, the Black Barbarians had ousted the Mo and So tribes; i. e. the Mosso. Without being positive as to its absolute value, I think that my theory of 1904 still holds good at the present day, and at any rate it is in apparent agreement with the use of Qara-Jang in Polo's
text where « Caragian », taken in its restricted sense, is Ta-li. To prevent all misunderstanding,
I wish to add that my explanation refers only to the use of Qara-Jang, and is not concerned with the location of the Ts'uan tribes.
My hypothetical derivation of « Jang » from « Ts'uan » is open to more objection. I had not noticed in 1904, and neither CHAVANNES nor LAUFER remarked on it later, that the phonetic correspondence is not very satisfactory. Ts'uan is an ancient Ts'uan, that is to say the word was never pronounced with the sonant initial of Tib. 'Jan or Mong. Jang. I think, however, that there are fairly strong historical arguments to connect « Ts'uan » with « Jang ».
The Nan-chao kingdom was actually founded in the first half of the 8th cent. by a petty chieftain whose inherited territory was at Mêng-hua, south-east of Ta-li and south-west of Yunnan-fil (on the « six chao » of Nan-chao, cf. SUZUKI in Tôyô gakuhô, )(ix [1931], 267-282). Before this, the main power in Yün-nan had been for some centuries in the hands of the Ts'uan, and there is now no doubt that the Ts'uan were Lolo tribes. We know from literary sources that the Ts'uan had a writing of their own as early at least as the Mongol period; two inscriptions in Ts'uan characters were discovered in 1909 at Lu-ch'üan, to the north-east of Yün-nan-fu; they date from the Ming period and are in Lolo writing and Lolo language (cf. BEFEO, iv, 155; V, 195-197; also
T i TING Wên-chiang, i Ij Ts'uan wen ts'ung-k'o, i, 1936, 5, and pis. 1-4).
Of the Ts'uan we possess much earlier epigraphical monuments in Chinese. Two funerary inscriptions of Ts'uan chieftains of the region of Yün-nan-fu, dated A. D. 405 and 458 respectively, have been translated by CHAVANNES (JA, 1909, II, 15-41), with a very valuable commentary. In his introduction CHAVANNES says that « Ts'uan is a general term designating the people of the ethnic group which we now call Lolo; the so-called Ts'uan family existed merely as the result of the mistake of the Chinese who made of the name of the nation that of the reigning family .. . The inscriptions of 405 and 458... give the first mentions of the name of the Ts'uan who make
their appearance in official records only c. A. D. 550. » There is of course a great deal of truth in
CHAVANNES'S statement; I think, however, that it is not absolutely correct. The Chan-kuo ts'ê, written before our era, refers, in the section concerning the fjt Wei State, to a man called
Ts'uan Hsiang (cf. CHANG Chu's Hsing-shih hsiin-yüan, 34, 4 a-b). All later mentions of members the Ts'uan family refer to people of the region of Yün-nan-fu. But one of them appears in the
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