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| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
140. CHEYNAM 243
it came into common use has not been ascertained. Nevertheless, it goes pretty far back, and its use under the Sung is proved by Yii-ti chi-shêng, 124, and in 1225 by Chao Ju-kua (HR, 175-190).
In the Mongol period, from about 1278, Hai-nan was officially associated with 4 Hai-pei,
« North of the Sea », in the title of a commissioner (hsüan-wei-ssû) named « Commissioner of North of the Sea and South of the Sea », who was stationed on the mainland, at Lei-chou (YS, 63, 7 b-8 a). And already in the beginning of 1279,-we find an edict mentioning « the districts (chün) of Ch'iung, Yai and Wan of South of the Sea »; these districts were all in the island of Hai-nan. The popular name thus fell in with the official designation. Hai-nan by itself is referred to in 1329 (YS, 33, 5 b), and a work of 1349-1350 speaks of « cottons of Champa and Hai-nan » (TP, 1915, 123). So Polo was amply justified in applying the name to the whole Gulf of Tonking which, with the island of Hai-nan, was the « South of the Sea » section of the Lei-chou Commissariat.
The Catalan Map of 1375 shows the island of « Caynam », with the correct form of the distorted name as it appears in Z and R; BUCHON took it to be the Andaman Islands, but the true identification with Hainan has already been adopted in Y', I, 301, and CORDIER, L'Extrême-Orient dans l'Atlas Catalan, 10, 23-24, 45. Opposite the island and on the mainland, the Catalan Map has an important town, with the legend : Cjutat de caynâ açj finis catayo. The second part of this corroborates the identification, as Hai-nan is the southernmost portion of China. But the city of Caynä = Caynam raises a difficult problem. CORDIER disposed of it by saying that the city was a fancy of the cartographer. The question is not so simple.
Raidu-'d-Din mentions in Kaf jäh-guh, i. e. Chiao-chih-kuo, Tonking (see « Caugigu »), two towns neither of which has been satisfactorily identified. BLOCHET (Bl, II, 499), following QUATREMÈRE (Hist. des Mongols, xcv; cf. also Pon, 30), reads one of the names as 1;,~ Hâinam; but while QUATREMÈRE took this name to be that of the island of Hai-nan, BLOCHET identifies his Häinam with « Qainam », marked in MARTINI'S Atlas Sinensis as a town of « Kiaochi, sive Couchinchina ». The reading of the name in Raid is doubtful. D'OHSSON (Oh, II, 640) adopted hypothetically « Djessam »; BLOCHET'S mss. write 1, T r1.,,ß and r\ic; h is of rare occurrence in Rasid's transcriptions of Mongolian and Chinese names, and one might think of readings like *Cinam, etc. Nevertheless, Hâinam is probably correct. YULE (Y1, III, 131) has already quoted from the first edition of the first volume of ELLIOT'S History of India a passage where Raid describes a sea-route from India to China by way of Champa, « Haitam » subject to the Great Khan, and Mahacin (= Canton). « Haitam » YULE took hypothetically for Hai-nan, and this was confirmed in ELLIOT'S revised edition of the first volume (p. 71), where we find Hâinam, not Häitam.
Of course, MARTINI is no authority for Indo-China; his second-hand information of the 17th cent. carries no weight for the 13th or 14th; and there was no city of « Qainam » south of Tourane in his time. But MARTINI never meant to locate a « Qainam » in Annam. In his system of spelling, q is always followed by u, and in spite of a blurred engraving, the form he meant is in fact « Quinam », that is to say, the name then given in European documents to Annam in general, or to the port of Faifo; cf. Bull. des amis du Vieux Huê, I, 337-340, 347-351; BEFEO, xxxvl, 114.
But the curious case of the « city » of the Catalan Map remains unexplained. The tradition of such a city lingered for two centuries. In 1554, Sidi 'Ali Cäläbi mentions a port of 1 Ainam
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