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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
i
1
THE OLD FRENCH TEXT 83
been here, but still there are many again who know nothing about it, so it will be well to include it in our Book. We will do so then, and let us begin first with the Strait of Constantinople.
"At the Straits leading into the Great Sea, on the West Side, there is a hill called the Faro.--But since beginning on this matter I have changed my mind, because so many people know all about it, so we will not put it in our description but go on to something else." (See vol. ii. p. 487 seqq.)
And so on.
As a specimen of tautology and hammering reiteration the
following can scarcely be surpassed. The Traveller is speaking
of the Chug hi, i.e. the Indian Jogis
" And there are among them certain devotees, called Chug hi; these are longer-lived than the other people, for they live from 150 to 200 years ; and yet they are so hale of body that they can go and come wheresoever they please, and do all the service needed for their monastery or their idols, and do it just as well as if they were younger ; and that comes of the great abstinence that they practise, in eating little food and only what is wholesome ; for they use to eat rice and milk more than anything else. And again I tell you that these Chug-hi who live such a long time as I have told you, do also eat what I am going to tell you, and you will think it a great matter. For I tell you that they take quicksilver and sulphur, and mix them together, and make a drink of them, and then they drink this, and they say that it adds to their life ; and in fact they do live much longer for it ; and I tell you that they do this twice every month. And let me tell you that these people use this drink from their infancy in order to live longer, and without fail those who live so long as I have told you use this drink of sulphur and quicksilver." (See G. T. p. 213.)
Such talk as this does not survive the solvent of translation ;
and we may be certain that we have here the nearest approach
to the Traveller's reminiscences as they were taken down from his
lips in the prison of Genoa.
53. Another circumstance, heretofore I believe unnoticed, is
in itself enough to demonstrate the Geographic Text to be the
source of all other versions of the Work. It is this.
In reviewing the various classes or types of texts
of Polo's Book, which we shall hereafter attempt to dis-
criminate, there are certain proper names which we find
Conclusive proof that the Old French Text is the source of all the others.
in the different texts to take very different forms, each class
adhering in the main to one particular form.
Thus the names of the Mongol ladies introduced at pp. 32 and
36 of this volume, which are in proper Oriental form Bulughán
and Kukdchin, appear in the class of MSS. which Pauthier has
followed as Bolgara and Cog aira ; in the MSS. of Pipino's
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