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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
SOME ESTIMATE OF POLO AND HIS BOOK rrr
Tea districts of Fo-kien, is never mentioned ; * the compressed
feet of the women and the employment of the fishing cor-
morant (both mentioned by Friar Odoric, the contemporary
of his later years), artificial egg-hatching, printing of books
(though the notice of this art seems positively challenged in
his account of paper-money), besides a score of remarkable
arts and customs which one would have expected to recur to
his memory, are never alluded to. Neither does he speak of
the great characteristic of the Chinese writing. It is difficult
to account for these omissions, especially considering the
comparative fulness with which he treats the manners of the
Tartars and of the Southern Hindoos ; but the impression re-
mains that his associations in China were chiefly with foreigners.
Wherever the place he speaks of had a Tartar or Persian
name he uses that rather than the Chinese one. Thus Cathay,
Cambaluc, Pulisanb hin, Tangut, Chagannor, Saianfu, Ken-
janfu, Tenduc, Acbalec, Carajan, Zardandan, Zayton, Kemenfu,
Brius, Caramoran, Chorcha, Juju, are all Mongol, Turki, or
Persian forms, though all have Chinese equivalents.1-
In reference to the then recent history of Asia, Marco is
often inaccurate, e.g. in his account of the death of Chinghiz,
in the list of his successors, and in his statement of the relation-
it
entry of Columbus into that city ; in Marco Polo no allusion to the Chinese Wall; in the archives of Portugal nothing about the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci in the service of that crown." ( Varnhagen v. Ense, quoted by Hayward, Essays, 2nd Ser. I. 36.) See regarding the Chinese Wall the remarks referred to above, at p. 292 of this volume.
* [It is a strange fact that Polo never mentions the use of Tea in China, although he travelled through the Tea districts in Fu Kien, and tea was then as generally drunk by the Chinese as it is now. It is mentioned more than four centuries earlier by the Mohammedan merchant Soleyman, who visited China about the middle of the 9th century. He states (Reinaud, Relation des Voyages fails par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde et á la Chine, 1845, I. 40) : " The people of China are accustomed to use as a beverage an infusion of a plant, which they call sakh, and the leaves of which are aromatic and of a bitter taste. It is considered very wholesome. This plant (the leaves) is sold in all the cities of the empire." (Bretschneider, Hist. Bot. Disc. I. p. 5.)—H. C.]
t It is probable that Persian, which had long been the language of Turanian courts, was also the common tongue of foreigners at that of the Mongols. Puli-sang hin and Zardandán, in the preceding list, are pure Persian. So are several of the Oriental phrases noted at p. 8¢. See also notes on Ondanique and Vernique at pp. 93 and 384 of this volume, on Tacuin at p. 448, and a note at p. 93 supra. The narratives of Odoric, and others of the early travellers to Cathay, afford corroborative examples. Lord Stanley of Alderley, in one of his contributions to the Hakluyt Series, has given evidence from experience that Chinese Mahomedans still preserve the knowledge of numerous Persian words,
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