National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0062 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.2
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.2 / Page 62 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000246
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

658   227. FACFUR

fall of the Sung dynasty, still spoke of the King of Manzi as a fugitive in the forests between Zaitûn (= Ch'üan-chou) and Canton (Y, ir, 151). Under « Lochac », I shall mention a passage of a Buddhist chronicle written in 1333-1344, in which the Sung pretender is said to have escaped in 1278 to the kingdom of Lo-hao (almost certainly the same as Lo-hu, « Lochac », i. e. Siam) by way of Champa, and, again by way of Champa, had returned in 1279; not a word of this occurs in the Sung shih, where the two successive pretenders Chao Shih and Chao Ping never go further south than the coast of Kuang-tung and the « Sea of the Seven Islands » (,j iii ' Ch'i-chou-yang), i. e. the sea to the south-west of the Taya Islands (off the north-eastern end of Hai-nan). The battle on the « Sea of the Seven Islands » took place on January 17, 1278, and i{ f v J Yü Ju-kuei, brother of Chao Ping's mother, was captured (Yuan wen lei, 41, 10-11; the text speaks of « Chao Shih's mother », a certain error, since it was Chao Ping's mother whose surname was Yü; cf. Sung shih, 47, 9 a; 243, 13 b). There can be no doubt that Chao Shih was then on his way to Champa. Although he did not reach it, some of his lieutenants had already sought refuge there at the end of

1277, and among them ß*   r x Ch'ên I-chung, the same man who had proclaimed Chao Shih
Emperor at Fu-chou in 1276 (cf. Sung shih, 47, 11 a; Sung-chi san-ch'ao chêng-yao, Shou-shan-ko ts'ung-shu ed., 6, 5 a, 7 b). In Ch'ên I-chung's biography (Sung shih, 418, 8 a; cf. also 451, 5 b), we are told that, in spite of the entreaties of several emissaries from Chao Shih, and afterwards from Chao Ping, Ch'ên I-chung never came back, and when the Mongol armies invaded Champa in 1282, Ch'ên I-chung went further to Hsien (= Siam), where he died at a date which remains unknown. But a passage in YS, 13, 7 a, raises a curious problem : on May 16, 1285, Qubilai published an order to pursue and seize the Prince of A Kuang of the Sung and Ch'ên I-chung. Now, «Prince of Kuang » was precisely the title borne by Chao Ping, said in his biography to have been drowned in 1279. Things look as though no certain news of his death had reached the Mongol Court as late as 1285, and it may even be that the search for Chao Ping and Ch'ên I-chung was one of the motives which led to the expedition against Champa in 1282. It is well known that, at the beginning of the 15th cent., a similar search for the fallen Chien-wên Emperor (1398-1402) was one of the main incentives to Chêng Ho's maritime expeditions across the Indian Ocean (cf. TP, 1935, 303-306). Whatever the fact may be, no reproach can be brought against Polo or even Rasidu-'d-Din for not having been aware of-the ultimate fate of the last Sung Emperor, since Qubilai, in 1285, still knew no better himself.

According to Polo, the « Facfur »'s wife was taken to the Court of Qubilai after the fall of the Sung capital, and Qubilai « had her honoured and waited upon in costly fashion like a great lady »

(cf. Vol. I, 313). As a matter of fact, there were two Sung Empresses, the Empress   Ch'üan,
the mother of Chao Hsien, and the Empress Dowager Hsieh. On February 5, 1276, Bayan encamped his army 15 li north of Hang-chou; at that time the Emperor and the Empress Dowager already offered to make their submission. The next day Bayan sent an officier to the Sung Palace to « comfort » the Empress Dowager. On February 10 Bayan, with his troops, marched through the capital. On February 20 (or perhaps on February 21; cf. T'u Chi, 7, 33 a) the Sung Emperor and the Empress Dowager presented a formal address of submission, and the next day Bayan made his state entrance in the Sung capital in the name of Qubilai (YS, 9, 1-2). It is on the latter day, February 21, 1276, that the Sung shih, 243, 13 a, in agreement moreover with Bayan's