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0199 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 199 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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   122. CARAUNAS   183

seems to have acquired a more restricted sense. In 1420-1422, Sal-Ralf s envoys, who crossed the Huang-ho at least twice each way, name the Qara-mörän, written as with Ragid, only when they cross it at Lan-chou ( Y', I, 278, 286). And a Sino-Turkish itinerary of the Ming dynasty

(the Turkish being written phonetically with Chinese characters) from the collection of vocabularies of the former Morrison Library (now in the School of Oriental Studies in London) gives

!ilk; *II 7(∎   Ko-la-mu-lien, Qara-mürän, as the equivalent of le -J,fjj Lan-chou (read ' 4.11 Lan-

chou; the error shows that the writer no longer distinguished between the finals -m and -n, both still existing in Northern China at the beginning of the Ming dynasty). Further on, for (7 fJ

Ho-nan, the same itinerary gives a   Q, 116   K'o-eul-t'ie-mu-lien-nieh which must be
*Kärtä-mürän[-ä], unknown to me, but showing that some at least of the Mongol names of places in Northern China remained in use among the Persians and the Turks long after the collapse of the Mongol dynasty.

Qara-mörän was still known in 1662 to «Sanang Setsen» (or Sayang Säcän) as an old name of the Yellow River (SCHMIDT, Gesch. der Ost-Mongolen, 103), but the modern Mongol name is Hatun-mürän, or Hatun-yöl, or sometimes Hatun-äkä, meaning «the River of the Princess» (cf. SCHMIDT, ibid., 103, 360, 388; KOVALEVSKIÏ, Dict. mong.-russe-français, 781).

Qara-mürän (Ha-la-mu-lien) appears as the name of a place in YS, 100, lb, and is altered to *Tara-mürän in YS, 100, 2 a (if it be not the reverse, though this is improbable; cf. also Br,

I, 185; Ch, II, 173; and see « Caccia modun»). YANAI gives on his map the Ha-la-mu-lien of

Chinese texts of the Yüan period, not as the equivalent of the Hara-mürän (; Qara-mörän) --Huang-ho, but as the modern Hara-mürän of Eastern Mongolia, a small northern tributary of

the Sara-mürän (cf. also PoPov, Mên-gu-yu-mu-czi, 256, 260, 269); but, from his text (p. 618), it appears that his identification applies strictly only to the Ha-la-ho (« Qara River» = Qara-mürän) of YS, 154, 3b, which is not necessarily the same as the Qara-mürän of YS, 100, 1 b.

   To-day, Hara-mürän (with the corresponding form   j7 Hei-ho in Chinese) is also the
name of a tributary of the Huang-ho (cf. PoPov, ibid., 301).

122. CARAUNAS.

camouas P carans, carcionas FB caraonas F, FA caraor VB

caraunas F, L; R charaoni VL charaunas V charoonas VA

ischerani TA' scarani LT scherani TA3

The problem of the «Caraunas» is one of the most difficult with which a commentator of Marco Polo is confronted, partly on account of contradictions in the Oriental sources, and partly also owing to the slipshod manner in which it has been approached by HAMMER, HOWORTH and others. The best contributions on the subject are due to QUATREMÉRE, Not. et Extr, )(Iv, 282-

84, and YULE (Y, I, 100-106, supplemented in III, 21-24), but they still leave much to be