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0399 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 399 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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161. CIORCIA   383

cf. Tokyo Tripit. of Meiji, n,.,, ix, 78 b, 81 b; juan means « to wriggle like worms »). The Nan shih, which is a general history of the southern dynasties, always speaks of the « Juan-Juan », that is to say gives the northern form of the name (4, 7 a; 6, 12 a; 7, 5 a; 79, 6 b-8 a), though, in the corresponding passages, the original dynastic histories spoke of the Jui-jui and Ju-ju respectively. But this must be due to the fact that Li Yen-shou (-j- c. 676-678), the author of the Nan shih, was also the author of the Pei shih devoted to the northern dynasties, in which he naturally employed the « northern » form Juan-juan, and he wanted to use for the same people the same form in both works (Hu San•hsing's remark, reproduced in the K'ang-hsi tza-tien, s. v. jui, that the Nan shih employs Jui-jui is erroneous. Juan-juan and the allied forms have been discussed by FUJITA in Tôyô gakuhô, xiii [1923], 64, 68, but I do not think that any point of his argument can be retained).

FRANKE maintains (iii, 283, 291) that Jou-jan is a purely Chinese term, meaning « weak », «flexible », and that the depreciatory designation Juan-juan, created by T'o-pa Tao, was chosen

in phonetic agreement with Jou-jan; moreover he writes this new name as « tr   J(o)u-juan »,
and in the course of his work always speaks of the « Jou-Juan ». But this is quite arbitrary, since no ancient source makes a distinction between the two components of Juan-juan, always written t,, and since in no system, even if we should admit of such a distinction, is either of the two characters ever read jou. Finally, FRANKE, like DE GROOT, lays stress on the graphic composition of the characters, and on that account asserts that the original pronunciation of tg can have only been ju, which he finds indicated as a secondary reading in the Chi yün of the eleventh century. In the same way GILES, in the second edition of his Chinese-English Dictionary, gives Ju-ju as a possible pronunciation instead of Juan-juan (cf. also SCHLEGEL'S similar opinion in MARQUART'S Rrân§ahr, 54). But the same Chi yün, in the case of the nation which we

call Juan-juan, says that   is the same as , and for   , the phonetic element of which moreover
is juan, the dictionaries give no other pronunciation than juan (FRANKE's statement to the

contrary, III, 284, is due to the fact that he inadvertently misread   yen, *iwän, as 9i tui,

*d'uâi). The interchange of phonetics between   juan and   juan is paralleled by the

indifferent use of 151 and f%, fp and   , etc. Accordingly, Ju-ju as well as J(o)u-Juan is
erroneous, and we must retain the pronunciation Juan-juan as it is given in the dictionaries since the T'ang period, and confirmed by phonetic glosses ranging from Tu Yu's T'ung tien of the end of the eighth century (196, 5 a) to the Liao shih of the fourteenth.

FRANKE believes on the one hand that Jou-jan is a purely Chinese name, and Juan-juan a derisive deformation of Jou-jan, while on the other he admits (iii, 290-291) a probable semantic connection of these names with that of Keptccxicvvss, or « Worm-Chionites », as suggested by MARQUART and accepted by CHAVANNES (Doc. sur les Tou-kiue, 232). He is thus led to believe that the meaning of « flexible », « wriggling like worms », attached to a native name which would be no other than the very name « Avar ». I agree only with part of this argument. « Jou-jan » makes sense in Chinese, as the later Juan-juan does, but so does also 'µ7 FXj Jui-jui which, with another

ancient pronunciation (nzi ii-nzi ai, not nzç 'at-nzi 'at ), is an o   Chinese term meaning
«flourishing vegetation ». The {j ju of Ju-ju has, among other senses, the meaning «flexible », and, in the commentary to the well-known Li sao of Ch'ü Yüan, it is explained as t 1;f4 jou Juan