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| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
167. COGATAI 395
The name of Ch'ih-t'u-ko-êrh mentioned above raises an interesting question of SinoMongolian nomenclature. It appears also as Chih-t'u-ko in YS, 121, 2 b, 3 a, and simply as 74 44. Ch'ih-k'o in YS, 8, 2 b. All are more or less complete transcriptions of Citkür, in Mongolian «Devil» (but read here Citgör and Citkör), and this gives us the Mongol name of the barbarian kingdom of Eastern Yün-nan which other Chinese texts of the period name131 Kuei-kuo, « Devilish kingdom », or « Lo [ )-Kuei-kuo », or « Lo-shih [ I.0 J-Kuei-kuo », «Devilish kingdom of the Lo family ». The Chinese name goes back to late T'ang times, when we find a jC94,
Ta-kuei-chu Lo-tien-wang, « Great Chief of the Devils, Prince of Lo-tien» (often named in Ts'ê fu yüan-kuei; also for instance in Chiu Wu-tai shih, 38, 4 b); and the tradition of a 9j, f-j Kuei-fang, «Region of Devils », in Yün-nan is still more ancient. Other Mongol names of Yünnanese tribes are well known, such as Qara-Jang, Cayân-fang, to which must be added the Iki-büsä or Yäkä-büsä, «Big belts ».
167. COGATAI cogatai R
Most of the names given in their versions of Abmad's murder in 1282 by Polo, Rasidu'd-Din, and the Chinese sources are hardly reconcilable (see « Acmatl »), and that of «Cogatai » is no exception to the rule. In Raid, the nearest counterpart to Polo's « Cogatai » is a certain 3T3; *Tiirgân, or *Târgan (Bl, II, 517; BARTHOLD, in MINAEV, Marko Polo, 126), or, with a correction, 3lf *Tfigân. There is some similitude in sound between this *Türgän (or *Tügän) and the Toyönêar of Chinese sources, while « Cogatai », corrected to *Togacai, would be another distortion of the same name; but the difference of phonetic «class» practically disposes of any connection between *Türgän (or *Tügän) and Toyôncar (cf. MOULE, in JNCB, 1927, 27).
MOULE (ibid.) has alluded to my former suggestion that the best representative of Polo's
«Cogatai» seemed to be firkt Kao Hsi, and I still hold the same view. But this should not be
interpreted as an attempt to suggest a phonetic identification of Kao Hsi (pronounced «Kao Hi» in the Mongol period) with « Cogatai ». It seems to be beyond doubt that « Cogatai» renders a genuine Mongolian name *Kökätäi -= Kökötäi, an adjectival form derived from Mong. kökä, kökö, «blue », and the exact masculine counterpart of the woman's name Kököcin or Kökäcin (see «Cocacin »). WANG Hui-tsul, 29, 3 a-b, enumerates eight different Kökötäi in the YS alone. The most natural solution would be to suppose that Kao Hsi, who belonged to a family of P'o-hai descent which had settled in China and served under the Chin, was known under a Mongolian as well as his usual Chinese name; instances of such double names are numerous even in the YS, and not always easy to detect. As a matter of fact, we know that Kao Hsi had a Mongolian personal
name, bestowed on him by Qubilai (YS, 169, 6 a); unfortunately, this was not Kökätäi, but *IJ
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