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0093 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 93 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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57. BARGU   77

of the T'ang period, the Bayirqu of Orkhon Turkish texts (cf. CHAVANNES, Doc. sur les Tou-kiue, 352; RADLOV, Die alttiirk. Inschr., NF, 179; THOMSEN, in ZDMG, 1924, 171).

In the Mongol period, the Secret History of 1240 (§ 239) names the « Barqun » (= Baryun) among the tribes which submitted to Jöêi, after the Oirat and the Buriat, and before the Ursut (Urasut), the Qabqanas, the Qangqas and the Tubas. Elsewhere, there are several mentions of a region called Köl-Baryujin-tögüm, or Baryujin-tögüm, or simply Baryujin (§§ 8, 109, 157, 177, 244); in the legendary account of Mongol origins, the name of a man Baryudai-märgän and of his daughter Baryujin-yoa, ruling at Köl-Baryujin-tögüm (§ 8), are clearly ethnical names derived from Baryu or Baryun. A legendary predecessor of Chinghiz-khan had lived as a son-in-law in a family of the Pa-la-hu (Baryu or Baryut; YS, I, 1 b).

Baryujin-tögüm means « Depression of Baryujin ». The name often occurs in Rasidu-'d-Din (cf. Ber, III, 188; the « Bourkoudjin Toukroum » of QUATREMÉRE, Hist. des Mongols, 437, and « Barguchin Tugrum » of Y, I, 270, are misreadings). In the passage corresponding to § 157 of the Secret History, the parallel texts of Shêng-wu ch'in-chêng lu (ed. WANG Kuo-wei, 17 a) and of YS, I, 3 a, say that Toqto'a the Märkit fled to the low passage (1;g yai) of Pa-êrh-hu-chin (Baryujin). From the Secret History, § 109, we see that Baryujin was reached from Mongolia by following down the course of the Selenga; this leads east of the Baikal to the region where there is now the river «Bargugin », the name of which has also been given to three towns along its course and to the mountains between it and Lake Baikal. There can be no doubt that this is the Baryujin of Mongol times, and the Baryujin-tögüm may be either its southern entrance or the whole valley itself. Tögüm, which KOVALEVSKIÏ reads dügiim, is explained to-day in Mongolian as a stretch of fertile land between mountains.

Baryujin is an adjectival, and perhaps sometimes a feminine form regularly derived from Baryu or Barqun. It is well known that the final -n is very unstable in Mongolian, but a plural from Baryu would be regularly *Baryus, while a plural from Barqun is Baryut, and it is Baryut (c.',;) or c_,,9 which is listed as a tribal name in Rasidu-'d-Din's description of Mongol tribes (cf. Bl, Intr., 178; Ber, I, 85-87; III, 188, 193 [where « Buryujin » is a wrong reading, just as «Burghut» must be corrected to « Barghut » in Mi, 284]).

PALLADIUS has said (Y, I, 271) that the name of the Baryut disappears from Chinese texts after Chinghiz-khan's time, to reappear in the middle of the 16th cent.; at the end of the 17th, the Baryut are found on « the western slopes of the interior Hing'an, as well as between Lake Kulon and River Khalkha »; that is where we still find them nowadays.

But this is probably the result of a migration posterior not only to Chinghiz-khan's time, but to the end of the 13th cent., for we find, after Chinghiz-khan, mentions of the Baryu which have escaped Palladius and which tend to show that they continued then to live in a more northern locality and east of the Baikal.

I am not certain that the Pa-li-hun mentioned in YS, 15, la, under the year 1288, represents Barqun, but there is another case which is not doubtful, and which is indirectly connected with what Polo says of the plain of Baryu. In YS, 10, 10 b, there is the following text : « The 16th

year chip yiian, ... the 12th moon, ... on the day ting-yu (January 27, 1280), the A   f Pa-
li-hui offered gerfalcons (hai-ch'ing). The Mussulmans and others, wherever they pass, do not