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| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
322 158. CINGHIS
August 4, he halted in the region of g 'j; Po-lo-huo-ni (*Boro-goni, « Grey Sheep ») ..
On August 15, he halted in the region of '# 7 Pu-Io-ch'a-han (*Boro-cayân?, « Grey-white » ;
it seems to be the same as Po['} ]-lo-ch'a-han, at which Wên-tsung halted on September 1, after Ming-tsung's death) ... On August 18, he halted in the region of , J, A Hsiao-chih « Loins »; used as place name with the meaning of « hill »; cf. RAMSTEDT, Kalm. Wörterbuch, 342 t, s. v. sûdzi; in TIMKOVSKI, Voyage à Pékin, there is a Sä'üji-yin oho [I, 222], a mountain Sä'üji [II, 427-428], and a station of Sä'üji [II, 390-391] ; this may be the one of our itinerary) ... On
August 25, he halted in the region of ?J, '5# Wang-hu-ch'a-tu (*Ongyucatu, *Ongyoeatu,
«The Place with boats [or with troughs] »; Ongyucatu or Ongyocatu occurs several times in YS; cf. WANG Hui-tsu2, 49, 8 b; YANAI [641, 643] locates it north of Kalgan, outside the Great Wall) ». On August 26, Tuy-Tämür came to Ongyocatu and rendered homage to his elder brother Ming-
tsung, who offered him a banquet. But on August 30, Ming-tsung « died by violence » (It 51.-4 ;
cf. YS, 31, 4 b; 32, 5 b).
In this long series of place names, only a few give as yet a clue to the identification of Sa'ari-kä'är, but this clue is fairly clear. Ming-tsung, starting from a place north of Qara-qorum, i. e. north of the present Erdeni-dzô Monastery of the Orkhon basin, reached the Tula River and followed its course for four days; at the end of the fourth day, he halted east of it. This cannot be far from the « Ulan-daba » of our maps (at the eastern end of the southern bend of the Tula). The next guide-post is Ködä'ü-aral. Its location on the Kerulen is mentioned not only in the Secret History, but also in the YS (2, 1 a) : in 1229, Ögödäi was enthroned at a diet held in the
region of ( ii]Eth~~ ~snj ~• ;C ff~1 «in the region of Ch'ü-tiao-a-ian (*Küdäü-aral) of the
Ch'ieh-lü-lien River (Kälürän = Kerulen) ». The text adds that the enthronement took place at
K'u-t'ieh-wu-a-ia-li (*Kütäü-aral), which is a needless duplication of the former
name due to the hasty compilers of the YS. On the other hand, Ch'ien-lung's Commissioners misunderstood in the first passage the word jI ch'ii as meaning « bend », so that the diet has been supposed to have been held at « Tiao-a-Ian » on the « bend » (ch'ü) of the Kerulen River; this fictitious « bend of the river » occurs more than once in later Chinese researches (and in Ch, I, 201; cf. also Shêng-wu ch'in-chêng lu, WANG Kuo-wei's note, 65 a), and of course cannot be taken into account for the identification of the place. It is a fact, however, that, to the east of the Tula, the Kerulen, which in its upper course runs south-west, makes a great curve to the south, then to the south-east, and finally follows a north-north-eastern course. In YANAI's opinion (594, 672), Ködä'-ü-aral was an island at the confluence of the Sängkür (or Sänggür) and the Kerulen. The Sängkür (probably the Sänggür of the Secret History, §§ 89, 93, 94, 96, 122; now called Cenkir [c = ts] ; cf. POZDNÉEV, Mongoliya, u, 470) is an intermittent stream which runs from north to south inside the bend of the Kerulen and flows into the Kerulen at the southernmost point of the curve of the latter (cf. on it PoPov, Mên-gu yu-mu czi, 400). There are several « sand islands »
ai sha-thou) in the upper course of the Kerulen (cf. PoPov, ibid., 399, 400); moreover, aral may mean not only an « island », but a whole region determined by the confluence of two rivers. However the case may be, the very direction of Ming-tsung's progress towards Shang-tu requires that he should have reached the Kerulen at about the middle of its curve, and fairly to the west of the confluence of the Sängkür and the Kerulen. Consequently *Oro'otu, *Burutung, *Qulan-
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