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0418 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 418 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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402   173. COJA

The Burhan-i Qatï` (cf. VULLERS, II, 920) gives a wordkaûlam, meaning in Persian «black pepper ». It is evidently the name of Quilon adopted as a designation of one of its staple products.

  1. COJA

choia VB

choila VA

chorza V

coia F, FA, TA3, L

cor LT cora FB coya TA1 coyla (?) P, P5

edila VL edilla S goza R

In view of « Goza » in R, I read the « Coia » of F as « Coja » (Cola) for « Cogia » = a>l Uô)a (< I walah), in Persian « master ». I think YULE means the same when he writes « Koja » in Y, I, 33, and B', 441, has adopted « Cogia ». The name is not characteristic enough to support an attempt at identification. For Western quotations of the word, cf. YULE, Hobson-Jobson2, 235; it is written « coya » in Marignolli (Wy, 537). In Codex Cumanicus (KUUN, 105), we find dominus rendered « ghoya » in Persian and « Coia » in Turkish.

  1. COMAIN

chaynari LT

chumani TA1, VB chumanni TA3

comain, comainz F comains FA

commains FB

cumani Z, L, V, R

The Comans appear for the first time in Byzantine history in 1078, and as Kôfcavoc; in 1154, Edrisi calls them Qoman, and speaks of their country as Qomaniya. Although Russian chronicles refer to the « Kumani », they usually give them the name of Polovcy, which does not seem to mean « Dwellers of the Plain », as is said in Y, II, 491, but is probably derived from pol6vyï, « fallow », «grey-fallow ». The Hungarian form is, in the plural, Kûnok (hence Cuni in Hungarian Latin). Although the origin of the name is still uncertain, the Comans were a Turkish-speaking nation, and their name was frequently used in the Middle Ages, by Western travellers and chroniclers, as a synonym of QïpL'aq. Polo is right when he says that the Tartars did not exist in the time of Alexander the Great (see « Alexandre' »), but he is wrong when he replaces their name by that of the Comans. On the Comans, see J. MARQUART, « Ueber das Volkstum der Komanen » (Abh. d. K. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen, ph.-hist. KI., N.F., xIII, No. I, 25-238); PELLIOT, « A propos des Comans », in JA, 1920, I, 125-185; Mi, 315-317. For the various forms of the name in Western documents, cf. HALLBERG, 159-161.