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0605 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 605 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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195. ÇAITON   589

« moving shêng » cannot have lasted much after 1283, since it has left no trace in the later administrative geography of the Mongol period, as described in YS, 62, 9 a. Perhaps the hsing-shêng of Chang-chou, if it existed, was never more than a fen [ ] hsing-shêng, a « detached moving Secretariat », as it seems to have been again at the time of the rebellions which finally brought the dynasty to an end (cf. PHILLIPS, ibid. 26).

But it was Ch'üan-thou, and Ch'üan-chou alone, which, in the first years following the conquest of southern China by the Mongols, alternated with Fu-chou as the seat of the real « moving Grand Secretariat » of Fu-chien. The connection between the two cities had always been very close. As I have shown above, the very name of Ch'üan-chou was at first an official designation of Fu-chou, that is before it was transferred in 711 to the modern Ch'üan-chou. When the Mongols crossed to south of the Yang-tzû, they resorted, for the administration of the newly acquired provinces, to many temporary measures, some of which have left but insufficient traces in our sources; the geographical section of the YS is explicit only in regard to the organization that obtained half a century later. It summarizes the successive changes (though not always correctly) as follows ( YS, 62, 8 a) :

« [Moving Grand Secretariat of Chiang-chê and other places... (= of Hang-chou, of which Fu-chien formed part, after Qubilai)] :

« Lu of Fu-chou.. . Under the Sung, it was the lu of Fu-chien. In the 15th chih-yüan year

(1278) of the Yuan , it became the lu of Fu-chou.   In the 18th year (1281), [the seat of] the

moving Secretariat of Ch'üan-chou was transferred to this chou (i. e. to Fu-chou).   In the

19th year (1282), it again returned to Ch'üan-chou.   In the 20th year (1283), it was trans-

ferred once more to this chou. In the 22nd year (1285), it was [suppressed and ] merged with Hang-chou. »

« Lu of Ch'üan-chou ... In the 14th chih-yüan year (1277) of the Yüan, [the Yüan] established [there] a moving hsüan-wei-ssû which attended at the same time to the affairs of the moving

generalissimo's office for repression in the south' (chêng-nan yiian-shuai fu). In the 15th chihyüan year (1278), the hsüan-wei-ssu became a moving Grand Secretariat (hsing chung shu-shêng), and [Ch'üan-chou] was promoted to a General administrative office of the lu of Ch'üan-chou (Ch'üan-chou tsung-kuan-fu). In the 18th year (1281), the moving shêng was transferred to the

[seat of the] lu of Fu-chou (i. e. to Fu-chou).   In the 19th year (1282), it again returned to
Ch'üan-chou. In the 20th year (1283), it was transferred once more to the [seat of the] lu of Fu-chou.

There can be no doubt that, in agreement with YULE'S conclusions, the alternations between Ch'üan-chou and Fu-chou in the texts of the geographical section of the YS correspond to Rasidu'd-Din's indications as to the alternations between Zâitûn and Fu-Ju, and this again is decisive for the identification of Zâitûn with Ch'üan-chou. But the history of the « moving shêng », as summed up in that section of the YS, is only a rough approximation; the real facts, which we are not always in a position to retrace in full detail, are much more intricate, as may be seen from the following texts in the pên-chi :

1. (YS, 10, 1 b) : « In the 15th chih-yüan year, ... the third month, ... on [the day] i-yu (March 26, 1278), an Imperial edict [prescribed] that Mêng-ku-tai (*Monyutai?, *Monyoitai?;