国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

748   255. IAMB

influence of the popular Ya6i. Another hypothesis would be that Ya6i is really a Ya-ch'ih c, a « Duck Lake », which was used as a popular name of the eastern capital of the Ta-li kingdom and adopted as such by the Mongols, but which the Chinese chroniclers have not recognized when translating it back from Mongolian into Chinese. There are other examples of these borrowings from Chinese into foreign languages, which have not been recognized when they reverted to Chinese. But I have no means to prove it in the present case; at the same time, it is not impossible that the spelling Ya-ch'ih c, « Duck Lake », was merely a wrong attempt at etymology on the part of more or less scholarly Chinese of the 13th and 14th cents.

The -b only serves to maintain a reading in -m, not in -n (see « Campçio »). The original is Turk. yarn, « postal relays », Mong. jam. Polo, as Rubrouck before him (« lam »), and as the Persians (fil, yam) and even the Armenians (cf. lam in BROSSET, Hist. de la Géorgie, I, Add., 439, 457), uses the Turkish form; the Chinese chan (= jam; hence Annam. trçim) is based on the contrary on the Mongolian. Turk. yam appears in a Chinese transcription of yaml'in, « postmaster », already in the second half of the 5th cent. Cf. my note on the word in TP, 1930, 192-195. The Chinese etymology of yam from Ch. i-ma, still maintained in Bl, II, 311, is absurd.

256. IASD

adin V

iadys, yadis TA1

iasdi F, Fr, FAt, L, LT, P ; R

iasdy Pr

iasoy VL

Silk

iasdi F, L, V; R iaseri TAi, TA3 iasoi VL

jasd Z

jasdis LT

jasoi VLr

jasoy FB

ladis, padis TA3

jasdi VA jasoi VL jasoy FB

sasdis LTr yasdi Ft zansoi VB zasdi FA

yasdi LT zafuini VB zasdi FA

YULE, RIccI-Ross, and BENEDETTO have adopted « Iasdi », but I think that Z has preserved the right reading, and that the « Iasdi » of the other Mss. is due to the silk «iasdi » which is mentioned afterwards by Polo. Yazd (« Yezd » of our maps) is a well-known place in Persia. Odoric seems to call it « Gest » ( Icy, 419) ; the « Iest » adopted by YULE (YI, II, 107-108) without any comment does not seem to be supported by any Ms.; however, Fra Mauro has « Iest » (HALLBERG, 570).