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0065 Notes on Marco Polo : vol.2
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.2 / Page 65 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000246
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228. FANSUR   661

Ragid's « ßûjû ». The names are of course irreconcilable. In Ragid's History of China, the name of the last Emperor of the Chin dynasty is given as . Sûsû, which BLOCHET corrected into

Saga ; according to BLOCHET (Bl, II, 256, 450-451), this Chin Emperor is Wan-yen 7   Ch'êng-lin,
canonized as Mo-ti, and both the name Sûsû of the last Chin Emperor and the name ßûjû, corrected into Sûjû, of the last Sung Emperor, would represent a Chinese epithet su-chu « majestic sovereign », which, in fact, does not exist. Moreover, Ragid certainly never heard of Wan-yen Ch'êng-lin, who had only a nominal reign of a few days at the beginning of 1234; his last Chin Emperor can be

only Ai-tsung, whose personal name was Wan-yen q    Shou-hsü (cf. GILES, Biogr. Diet., No. 2130),

and I have little doubt that, in his case, we must read    Sûsû, a regular transcription of Shou-hsü.

If Ragid used the personal name of that Emperor, and not his posthumous title, it must be because the Mongols did not recognize the posthumous title of the Emperor they had defeated and used to call him by his personal name. It even seems that the Mongols had slightly altered this name, so as to give it a depreciatory meaning. This is at least the information given by the Secret History (§ 273), where we are told that, after conquering the capital of the Chin, the Mongols gave the « Altan qan » (« Golden King », i. e. the Chin sovereign) the name of Sä'üsä; and the following line, as well as the early Chinese translation, show that Sä'üsä is intended to render the Chinese iJ. j hsiao-ssû, « small servant »; this Sä'üsä seems to have been adopted on account of a phonetic analogy with Shou-hsü. It may be in remembrance of this epithet given by the Mongols to the Chin Emperor that the Ming Emperor Ching-t'ai was also called Hsiao-ssû during his captivity in Mongolia (cf. « Sanang Setsen », ed. SCHMIDT, 169, where the name is written « Gayân Siosa »; it is « Mobor Sosa » in Altan tobei, 173, but the true equivalence « White Hsiao-ssû », « White Small Servant », is not unknown to Chinese texts; cf. Mêng-ku yiian-liu pu-chêng, 5, 21 a. For the transcription 4,"_ hsiao-hsieh, cf. Br, u, 208; YS, 107, 6 b). As to the « name » given by Ragid as being that of the last Sung Emperor, we must remember that Ragid's informants lived

under the Mongol dynasty; it will then appear probable that    . Sûjû is miswritten instead of

Sônjü, i. e.   t Sung chu, « the ruler of the Sung »; this is the designation which is regu-

larly used in the YS for the last Sung Emperors, and particularly for Chao Hsien. Ragid mentions all the other Sung sovereigns under their posthumous «temple» name; there was none for Chao Hsien at that time, since he was still alive, and this may account for the epithet used for him by Ragid.

228. FANSUR

famfur VL   fansur F, Fr, FA, L, VA, Z   fonfur G

fanfur LT, VA, VB; R   fanur FB   fransur TAl

fansar Ft   ffamfur, ffanfur, phanfur P   franzur TA3

fansul V

Camphor

canfur VB   fansur Z   fansury FA, FB

fanfur R   fansuri F, L   fasal V

The « kingdom » of « Fansur », centre of production of the camphor called « fansuri », is of course the region of Baros on the southwestern coast of Sumatra; cf. on it Y, II, 302-304; Hobson-

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