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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

319. QUENGIANFU   813

There is no doubt that Polo applies this name to Hsi-an-fu, the metropolis of Shàn-hsi. Already in 1897, DEVÉRIA called attention to the fact that a similar form occurred in the Persian vocabulary of the College of Translators of the Ming dynasty. Polo follows here, as usual, the toponymy then current among Persian-speaking people. DEVÉRIA'S paper has already been quoted by CORDIER (Y, II, 29; III, 77-78), but the facts have not been presented quite accurately. In the

Persian vocabulary of the College of Translators,   Kinjanfu, with the phonetic transcription
in Chinese 13; r1 -k Ch'in-chang-fu ( chin in BEFEO, Iv, 771, is a misprint, which has passed

since into JA, 1912, I, 594), has for Chinese equivalent not A   jjf Ching-chao-fu, as has been

said, but J;   Shàn-hsi, that is, the name of Shàn-hsi province. The same equivalence, Shàn-

hsi, occurs in the Turkish vocabulary of the Ming period, written only in Chinese characters, which is in the Library of the School of Oriental Studies in London (in the series « Kô Kwô YE Yii »).

In this work, Shàn-hsi is rendered by 4jj   jrj Ch'in-ch'ang-fu, seemingly *Kinêangfu, which
would probably also be Kinjanfu if we had it in Arabic writing (the transcriptions of the vocabulary are not very strict). The name appears in Rasidu-'d-Din, written once ~;1. `:s" Kin-janfu (Bl, II,

495), but elsewhere   f Kinjanfu (BI, II, 598; also in Rasid's Ms. History of China; the
form « Kenjangfu » of Y', 127, 128, is only due to an arbitrary transcription by KLAPROTH, who himself gives the name in Arabic letters without -g-). In BEREZIN'S translation (Ber, III, 28), Rasidu-'d-Din speaks of Hsi-an-fu as « Czin-ciao », i. e. Ching-chao, but this is a « learned » correction due to the editor and translator. Instead of 126.. f King-jayu, adopted in the Persian text (p. 46), the various readings clearly establish that we must adopt ,>. ,a:.f King-)anfu. Kinjanfu is also mentioned in the Zafär-nâmäh (cf. Not. et Extr. xiv, 500; YI, I, 175), and was still used about 1545 by the author of Ta'rih-i-Ras§idi (transi. ELIAS and Ross, 404); we find it in situ in a Sino-Arabic inscription of 1545 (TP, 1905, 279, 284; instead of S~;l,t f Kin;âfafûyi,

read   Kinjânfûyi, an ethnic derivative of Kinjanfu; HUART wrongly thought of Kan-
chou). In the fantastic itinerary of Ibn Battatah across China, Qinjânfu probably also represents Kinjanfu (cf. Fe, 428, where FERRAND is misled by DULAURIER into believing that Polo's « Quengianfu » is Chên-chiang on the Yang-tzti, for which see « Cinghianfu »).

YULE (YI, II, 246) has taken it for granted that it was Kinjanfu which appeared in Odoric