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0286 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 286 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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270   155. CIN

(Armen. Grammatik, I, 49), in his list of Armenian forms borrowed from Iranian, gives Arm. « Cen-kh », China, the Chinese; « tûenastan », China; « Cenbakur », the Emperor (see « Facfur ») of China; «cenik» (adj.), Chinese. According to HÜBSCHMANN, the corresponding Pahlavi forms are « Cen », « Cénastân » (WEST'S « Cinistàn »), *cénik; Pers. « Cin », « Cinistân », «cini ». In view of Cosmas's rç vio-za[v], I have little doubt that a pronunciation «Cinistân» existed in Pahlavi, not at the early date of the Armenian borrowings, but at any rate in the 6th cent., and prior to the redaction of the Bundahi§n. The same name occurs in a Sogdian document probably of the end of the 2nd cent.; it is written « Cynstn », which may be *Cinastan or *Cénastan, or perhaps *einstan (cf. TP, 1913, 428; 1931, 458). The «Çinstân» of the Nestorian tablet of 781 renders the same form (cf. HAVRET, Stèle chrétienne, III, Syriac part, 1; Mo, 35). In the same monument, the ethnical name is « Çinàyé » (HAVRET, 2; Mo, 48), based on *Çin < t✓in (cf. also Mo, 75).

The Persian ~^'. « Cin » passed to the Arabs as :_^° « in ». In other words, the Arabs, having no c, rendered it, as usual, with s; but this is not a sufficient reason to read s as if the Arabs had pronounced it c, as has been arbitrarily done by FERRAND throughout his last publications. When an Arab author wished to render the Persian « Cin » and not the Arabic

« Sin », he transcribed it, for lack of a better equivalent, as   «   » (cf. Fe, 269) ; he would not
have done so if the Arabic s had sounded 5 Moreover, Syriac writers have followed the same course. While their early borrowed forms render the Iranian c with ç (« Çin », etc.) as the Arabs did with s, all the c of Turkish and Mongolian words are transcribed s by Bar Hebraeus. Arabic form « in » is used by Kàsyari. But this does not imply, as BARTHOLD thought, that « in » had been adopted by the Turks in the west (12 Vorlesungen, 97 : Kagyari knew that the term was not Turkish, and the reason why he preferred the Ar. « in » to the Pers. « Cin ,) is simply that he was writing his Diwan in Arabic. A few years before Kâsyari completed the Diwan, the Persian form « Cin » is actually found in Turkish in the Qutacyu bilig (Radlov, III, 2120).

The translators of Buddhist texts into Chinese, when finding « Cina » in the original,

sometimes rendered it etymologically as « Ch'in », at other times translated it with some term meaning « China », or lastly transcribed it phonetically. The ordinary transcriptions are 415 Chih-na (for instance in 587; cf. BEFEO, iv, 574; v, 294; the ms Chih-na of LAUFER, in TP, 1912, 722, seems to be merely copied from EITEL, Handbook2, 176, where it is a slip or a misprint, unfortunately repeated by SOOTHILL and HoDOUS, 152); X l Chih-na (for instance

in 683; cf. BEFEO, Iv, 575);   » Chih-na in Hsüan-tsang. Hsi-fin's Hsü i-ch'ieh ching yin-i,
ch. 2 (Meiji Tripit. of Tokyo, J, VIII, 5 a) gives a form 1A # Chên-na, which seems to be corrupt

for g fg- Chên-tan (on which cf. infra). ODA Tokunô, 750, adds )f   Ssti-na and qp j Chih-
nan, for which I can find no authority.

But, apart from this mechanical transcription of « Cina », another occurs in the forms 'a p Chên-tan (*T'skén-tan; in the Lou-t'an ching [*Lokasthana sûtra?] translated in 265-316 [accor-

ding to   , viii, 47 a; I cannot trace the passage in the sûtra itself]; in a sûtra translated in
317-322 [ r,, vi, 49 a; cf. BEFEO, v, 304-305] ; in the Avatamsaka, ch. 45 [ J, in, 22 b] ; also in v, 107 b, and in Hsin T'ang shu, 221A, 11 a), A Fi Chên-tan (*T'sién-tan; cf. j, vi, 13 b, 73 b) and A- Chên-tan (*T'sién-tan; cf. in the translation of an Agama, , VIII, 44 b, and in