IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
204 123. CASCAR
It is that name Kägyar which appears in the Hsin T'ang shu in the form Chia-shih, but this is an apocopated rendering which we can trace back to its full form. In the account of the travels in India of. rr ,j Hui-ch'ao which I brought back from the Tun-huang caves, it is said that Hui-ch'ao, in 727, arrived at « Shu-lo, the native name of which in foreign countries is Op 0
gft Ch'ieh-shih-ch'i-li (*G' a-~i-g'jie-ijie »); cf. Tripit. of Taishô, 51, 979. Hui-ch'ao's work, of which we have only this incomplete and sometimes faulty manuscript, has been briefly commented
upon by .L. , Hui-lin (737-820), himself a Kâshgarian, in his I-ch'ie thing yin-i completed in
817 (ch. 100; Tokyo Tripit. of Meiji, A, x, 104 b). There the name of Käsyar is written g
I Chia-shih-chi-li (*Ka-si-g'iét-liei), and I have no doubt that Hui-lin has preserved the correct
form, at least as far as the first character is concerned. It is indirectly confirmed by the apocopated form which is given in the Hsin T'ang shu and which probably comes from Hui-ch'ao's account. Hui-lin adds that it is a j Hu (at that time generally = Iranian) name, and that the
Chinese (« T'ang ») name for it is , ,, Ts'ung-ling-chên, « Garrison of the Ts'ung-ling ».
Kayar was one of the « Four Garrisons » of the T'ang in Turkestan, although it had already been lost to China when Hui-lin wrote his commentary; and it was the « Garrison » which was particularly intended to protect the Ts'ung-ling or « Onion Range ». Hui-ch'ao uses « Ts'ung-ling-chên » in a general way, but I do not think that there has ever been such an official name, and Hui-lin may have meant to give an explanation of *Kasgiri, not its equivalence with Shu-lo already expressed in Hui-ch'ao's text. The more so since, at the end of the subsisting portion of Hui-ch'ao's account, we find a list of the « Four Garrisons » where that of Kä yar appears under its ordinary Chinese name Shu-lo.
Ch'ieh-shih-ch'i-li or Chia-shih-chi-li must evidently be restored as *Kaggiri, and this text of 727 provides us with the earliest mention of the very name « Kâ yar »; we have seen above, however, that it must then have been in existence for more than a century. Various attempts have been made to explain it. The one quoted by CORDIER ( Y, i, 183), according to which Kägyar is formed of « kash, fine colour, and gar, brick house », is the one started in 1763 by the compilers of the Hsi yü t'ung-wên chip (III, 13-15), who write the name Qasigar in Mongolian, but Qasgär in Turki, and go on by saying that, in Turki, *gafi means « motley », and *qar, « brick-house ». WArrERS (On Yuan Chwang's Travels, xi, 292) commented on the Chinese explanation. According to him, « there is a Turki word Kasha (or Kashka) which means ' variously coloured', but gar, in Mongolian ger, stands perhaps for the Chinese interpretation of the Hindu word ghar which means ' a house '». But there is no word ka.fa meaning « variously coloured » in any Turkish dialect, and gap (also qa5qa, qasqa; gasfya in Käsyari) is only used for piebald animals. I think that, in spite of the « Mongolized » spelling (see infra) adopted in Turki by Ch'ien-lung's Commissioners for the name of Kägyar, they were given a « pandit's » etymology actually based
on the true k- initial, and that their *gas~i is the Pers. , kâshi, « enamelled brick ». *Qar,
« brick-house », is unknown too in Turki. One may think of Mong. gär, « house » (but not « brick-house »), but gär can of course have nothing to do with Hindi ghar (< Prâkrit ghara; cf. Skr. grha), « house ». Since Mong. gär is not of the same « class » as -qar (-yar) of Qasgar, Käsyar, and also for want of a suitable word either in Turki or in Persian, I incline to the view that the word meant by « brick-house » may be the Hindi ghar, carried to Kä yar by Hindu traders; but
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.