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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
4
CHAP. XXVI. THE KAAN'S POSTS AND RUNNERS
43'3
itself, but four hundred cities of note, and embracing ample territories, are dependent on its jurisdiction, insomuch that the most inconsiderable of those cities surpasses Baghdad and Shiraz. In the number of these cities are Lankinfu and Zaitun, and Chinkalán ; for they call Khanzai a Shim, i.e. a great city in which the high and mighty Council of Administration holds its meetings." Friar Odoric again says : " This empire hath been divided by the Lord thereof into twelve parts, each one thereof is termed a Singo."
Polo, it seems evident to me, knew nothing of Chinese. His Shienb is no direct attempt to represent any Chinese word, but simply the term that he had been used to employ in talking Persian or Turki, in the way that Rashiduddin and Wassáf employ it.
4,
I find no light as to the thirty-four provinces into which Polo represents the empire as divided, unless it be an enumeration of the provinces and districts which he describes in the second and third parts of Bk. II., of which it is not difficult to reckon thirty-three or thirty-four, but not worth while to repeat the calculation.
[China was then divided into twelve Shen; or provinces : Cheng-Tung, Liao-Yang, Chung-Shu, Shen-Si, Ling-Pe (Karakorum), Kan-Suh, Sze-ch'wan, Ho-Nan Kiang-Pe, Kiang-Ché, Kiang-Si, Hu-Kwang and Yun-Nan. Rashiduddin (J. As., XI. 1883, p. 447) says that of the twelve Sing, Khanbaligh was the only one with Chinsiang: We read in Morrison's Dict. (Pt. II. vol. i. p. 70) : " Chin-seang, a Minister of State, was so called under the Ming Dynasty." According to Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, xxiv. p. tot), Ching Siang were abolished in 1395. I imagine that the thirty-four provinces refer to the Fu cities, which numbered however thirty-nine, according to Oxenham's Historical Atlas.—H. C.]
( Cathay, 263 seqq. and 137 ; Mendoza, I. 96 ; Erdmann, 142 ; Hammer's Wassáf, p. 42, but corrected.)
CHAPTER XXVI.
How THE KAAN'S POSTS AND RUNNERS ARE SPED THROUGH MANY LANDS AND PROVINCES.
Now you must know that from this city of Cambaluc
proceed many roads and highways leading to a variety
of provinces, one to one province, another to another ;
and each road receives the name of the province to
which it leads ; and it is a very sensible plan.' And the
messengers of the Emperor in travelling from Cambaluc,
be the road whichsoever they will, find at every twenty-
five miles of the journey a station which they call Yamb,2
or, as we should say, the " Horse-Post-House." And at
each of those stations used by the messengers, there is
a large and handsome building for them to put up at, in
VOL. It 2 r
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