IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
584 195. ÇAITON
until it was challenged by G. PHILLIPS and Carstairs DOUGLAS, and more recently by CHARIGNON. I think that KLAPROTH was probably right, in spite of some weak points in his argument.
In the first place, KLAPROTH was mistaken when he quoted as an independent source on
« Zaiton » a late Turkish geography which in the paragraph in question is quite evidently an almost verbatim retranslation from Polo himself (PAUTHIER in Pa, 528, and PHILLIPS in TP, 1895, 455, still follow KLAPROTH here, but YULE knew better; cf. Y, II, 230). KLAPROTH moreover misunderstood tz'û-t'ung as meaning two different plants, « thorns and Bignonia tomentosa ». This last error has unfortunately b:en repeated by PAUTHIER (Pa, 528), CORDIER (L'Extrême-Crient dans l'Atlas Catalan, 32) and BLOCHET (Bl, II, 490). But tz'û-t'ung is the name of a thorn-bearing tree, probably here the Acanthopanax ricinifolium (but it is also used as a name of the Erythrina Indica, which was adopted in the present case by KUWABARA in Mem. of the Research Department of the Toyobunko, II [19281, 30). According to KLAPROTH, Tz'ût'ung was an ancient name given to Ch'üan-chou because its city walls were all planted round with tz'û-t'ung.
YULE, who was always in favour of the identification of « Zaiton » with Ch'üan-chou, thought
that Tz'û-t'ung had been, according to KLAPROTH, the real official name of Ch'üan-chou; and as the name Ch'üan-thou already existed « in the 7th or 8th century », the use of Tz'û-t'ung and its passage into foreign languages as Zâitûn was bound to be of a very early date ( Y, II, 237). Of course, KLAPROTH made the best of his case by being vague on the nature and use of Tz'û-t'ung as a name. DOUGLAS rightly objected that the name was not Tz'û-t'ung, but Tz'û-t'ung-ch'êng [ !bj j, the « City of the tz'û-t'ung », and that it was an epithet rather than the true name (Y, II, 236). CHARIGNON (Ch, III, 115), going further, said that even Tz'û-t'ung-ch'êng never existed, but only T'ung-ch'êng, which cannot give the etymology of « Zâitûn ». According to CHARIGNON, the true etymology of the name is aj Jui-t'ung, which was found by HIRTH as a name of Ch'üan-chou in a work of 1274, and which CHARIGNON himself met with in a modern Chinese work. But CHARIGNON blundered here. In the work of 1274, there was no mention of Ch'üanchou under the name of Jui-t'ung; BIRTH, in a note of his own (TP, 1894, 388; cf. also JRAS,
1896, 73), mentions Ch'üan-chou with the alternative name Jui-t'ung between brackets, without,
however, giving any reference. Two years later (TP, 1896, 224), PHILLIPS replied to MIRTH'S note by saying that, familiar as he was with the main works on Fu-chien, he had never seen the name of Jui-t'ung in any of them. I think there is here a misunderstanding first of HIRTH, and later of CHARIGNON. In the Ta-Ch'ing i-t'ung chih, the very book where KLAPROTH found his Tz'û-t'ung, the quotation in which Tz'û-t'ung appears goes on by saying that when the tz'fi-t'ung give forth first leaves and afterwards flowers, the five cereals grow in plenty; « for that reason these (tz'û-t'ung) are called jui-t'ung (' auspicious t'ung') ». There seems to be no name here, and the case is probably the same in the modern compilation used by CHARIGNON. Even in the late parallel passage of the local monograph Chin-chiang-chih cited by ARNAIZ in TP, 1911, 679, I think that jui-t'ung is merely another name of the tz'û-t'ung, and not of the city as in ARNAIZ's translation.
As to CHARIGNON's argument that Tz'û-t'ung-ch'êng did not exist, but only T'ung-ch'êng,
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.