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0438 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 438 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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422   181. COTAN

name of the king as Yü-ch'ih, compilers have prefixed Yü-ch'ih to names which already had Vijaya represented by the later transcription Fu-shê. This is what occurred in the Ts'ê fu yüankuei, though not completely, since it only speaks of Fu-shê Hsiung, not Yü-ch'ih Fu-shê Hsiung, for the embassies of 674 and 687. As to Yü-ch'ih Fu-shih or Yü-ch'ih Fu-shih Chan, the only instance of such a duplication in both the T'ang shu, we may finally have to leave its case apart and to decide that the personal name of this individual was Fu-shih or Fu-shih-chan, though I rather think that we have here the beginning of what took place on a larger scale with the Ts'êfu yüan-kuei, and that Fu-shih too represents Vijaya or Visa.

The real personal names of the kings of Khotan in T'ang times, represented by the character which follows Yü-ch'ih, Fu-shê or Fu-shih, are not transcriptions, and do not even look like translations; it may be that the members of the Khotan royal family, which was strongly under Chinese influence, were given purely Chinese « personal names », which would not prevent them from having native names omitted from the Chinese records. Whatever the case may be, all the attempts made to connect these « Chinese » names with native royal names, by treating them either as transcriptions or as translations, have been so many failures (KoNow, in JRAS, 1914, 347-350; A. H. FRANCKE, Königsnamen von Khotan, in SPA W, 1928, 671-676; THOMAS,

Tibetan Texts and Documents, t, 162-163).   I must add that the Chinese list of these kings is
neither complete nor necessarily correct. For the king who is called +a Ching in both the T'ang shu, CHAVANNES remarks (TP, 1904, 24) that Ssû-ma Kuang's Tzia-chin t'ung-chien gives 1rg Hsia instead of Ching. Ssû-ma Kuang was a serious historian, and this reading may have some foundation; moreover, it is mentioned as a variant in the very text of the Ts'efu yiian-kuei to which CHAVANNES appended his note. At the tomb of Kao-tsung (- January 684), there are still the statues of vassals which had been placed in front of the monument, but their short inscriptions are entirely worn away. These inscriptions are partly given, however, from old rubbings, in YEH I-pao's Chin-ship lu pu (ed. of Huai-lu ts'ung-shu, 22, 7-10), and one of them reads j- al f r. m. • },4, « the king of Yü-t'ien (Khotan), Yü-ch'ih Shu ». YEH I-pao's readings are not faultless, and we might think that shu is a misreading for the somewhat similar ching. But Ching became king only in 691 (Ts'ê fu yüan-kuei, 964, 9 b ; TP, 1904, 24) or 692 (Chiu T'ang shu, 198, 8 a), and must have reigned until 728; there is no reason why his statue should have been erected among those of the vassals of an Emperor who had died in 684. I am far from being positive on the point, but it may be that Shu was Ching's elder brother; one does not, however, see how to date his reign if Fu-shê Hsiung really was Ching's immediate predecessor and only died in 691 or 692. Whatever the case may be, the inscription has the advantage of providing a contemporary instance of Yü-ch'ih (and of course not Yü-ch'ih Fu-shê) at a time when the family name of the kings of Khotan is generally written Fu-shê by the dynastic histories.

During the 11th and the 12th cents., Khotan, which had become Mohammedan, was under the domination first of the Iläk-khan, afterwards of the Qara-Hitai. In the beginning of the 13th cent., it was conquered by Küclüg the Naiman, a bitter opponent of Islam. Then came the armies of Chinghiz-khan. In the division of the Mongol Empire as appanages of the conqueror's sons, Khotan fell to the share of the house of ayatai. At the beginning of Qubilai's reign, Cayatai's