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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

852   360. TIGIU

BLOCHET gave as an equivalent ,( g t'ai fu (cf. also App., 46), more satisfactory in a way, but this very high title, although it had been granted once in (Qgödäi's time, does not seem to have been used under Qubilai; moreover, it was in principle a civilian title (see also « Sangon »). The other

title one may think of, jC   to fu or tai fu, was under the Yüan dynasty given only to the highest
officials of the Yü-shih-t'ai, and the Yü-shih-t'ai had nothing to do with the command of troops. There may be in Rasidu-'d-Din some colloquial use of t'ai fu, or of to fu (tai fu), which has not been traced as yet, but this can have no bearing on Polo's « Thai ». Another problem is raised by Rapid's enumeration of the various boards inferior to the Grand Secretariat; the fifth of these, said by Rapid to deal with military affairs, is called by a name which BLOCHET (Bl, ii, 481) has restored as Yü-shih-t'ai, without being aware of Polo's « Thai » in RAMUSIO, thus seeming to confirm it so far as military attributions are concerned. But the whole enumeration in Raid is obscure. The Mss. give here «Rusnayi », « Rustai », « Rusnayi » (cf. also Y1, III, 123), and the reading of Yü-shiht'ai with an initial "; z- or 3z- (instead of ~ r-) is impossible from the standpoint of Chinese phonetics; the beginning of the name may be A tso, « left ». But nothing more can be said so long as Rapid's list has not been studied critically.

360. TIGIU ( < *TAIGIU) [c. 143]

The transcription is not very satisfactory, but there can be no doubt that the name intended

is    T'ai-chou; probably the archetype of our Mss. had already altered *Taigiu to Tingiu, given
in F, Z, etc., and the « Tigiu » given elsewhere in F, etc., is simply derived from *Tigiu (< Tingiu *Taigiu).

T'ai-chou was not on Polo's route, and, as in the case of Ch'ang-lu (see « Cianglu »), we have here a digression intended to give an account of the extraction of salt from the sea and combined into one continuous itinerary by Rustichello or some very early copyist.

The chou of T'ai (T'ai-chou) was created in the middle of the 10th cent., and became a military area (chün) during the Sung; it became a lu in 1277, and again simply a chou in 1283 (YS, 59, 10 a; Ta-Ch'ing i-t'ung chih, 66, 2 a).

As to the explanation of the whole paragraph, see « Cingiu ». What is said there is enough to show that J. C. FERGUSON'S theory that « Tingiu » was Hsien-nü-miao, approved of in Pe, 226, lacks foundation.