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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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15 2 MARCO POLO BOOK I.
the area within as sown with cotton. The account of its modern state in Burnes and Ferrier is much the same as Ibn Batuta's, except that they found some population ; two separate towns within the walls according to the latter. Burnes estimates the circuit of the ruins at 20 miles. The bulk of the population has been moved since 1858 to Takhtapul, 8 miles east of Balkh, where the Afghan Government is placed.
(Erdmann, 404-405; I. B. III. 59 ; Clavijo, p. 117 ; Burnes, II. 204-206; Ferrier, 206-207.)
According to the legendary history of Alexander, the beautiful Roxana was the daughter of Darius, and her father in a dying interview with Alexander requested the latter to make her his wife :—
" Une fille ai mult bele ; se prendre le voles.
Vus en seres de l'mont tout li mius maries," etc. •
(Lambert Le Court, p. 256.)
NOTE 2.—The country called Dogana in the G. Text is a puzzle. In the former edition I suggested Jiuzgána, a name which till our author's time was applied to a part of the adjoining territory, though not to that traversed in quitting Balkh for the east. Sir H. Rawlinson is inclined to refer the name to Dehg an, or " villager," a term applied in Bactria, and in Kabul, to Tajik peasantry.* I may also refer to certain passages in Baber's " Memoirs," in which he speaks of a place, and apparently a district, called Dehánah, which seems from the context to have lain in the vicinity of the Ghori, or Aksarai River. There is still a village in the Ghori territory, called Dehánah. Though this is worth mentioning, where the true solution is so uncertain, I acknowledge the difficulty of applying it. I may add also that Baber calls the River of Ghori or Aksarai, the Dogh-ábah. (Sprenger, P. and R. Routen, p. 39 and Map ; Anderson in J. A. S. B. XXII. 161 ; Ilch. II. 93 ; Baber, pp. 132, 134, 168, 200, also 146.)
NOTE 3.—Though Burnes speaks of the part of the road that we suppose necessarily to have been here followed from Balkh towards Taican, as barren and dreary, he adds that the ruins of aqueducts and houses proved that the land had at one time been peopled, though now destitute of water, and consequently of inhabitants. The country would seem to have reverted at the time of Burnes' journey, from like causes, nearly to the state in which Marco found it after the Mongol devastations.
Lions seem to mean here the real king of beasts, and not tigers, as hereafter in the book. Tigers, though found on the S. and W. shores of the Caspian, do not seem to exist in the Oxus valley. On the other hand, Rashiduddin tells us that, when Hulaku was reviewing his army after the passage of the river, several lions were started, and two were killed. The lions are also mentioned by Sidi 'Ali, the Turkish Admiral, further down the valley towards Hazárasp : " We were obliged to fight with the lions day and night, and no man dared to go alone for water." Moorcroft says of the plain between Kunduz and the Oxus : " Deer, foxes, wolves, hogs, and lions are numerous, the latter resembling those in the vicinity of Hariana" (in Upper India). Wood also mentions lions in Kuláb, and at Kila'chap on the Oxus. Q. Curtius tells how Alexander killed a great lion in the country north of the Oxus towards Samarkand. [A similar story is told of Timur in The Mulfiuzat Timűry, translated by Major Charles Stewart, 1830 (p. 69) : " During the march
(near Balkh)' two lions made their appearance, one of them a male, the other a female. I (Timur) resolved to kill them myself, and having shot them both with arrows, I considered this circumstance as a lucky omen."—H. C.] (Burnes, II. 200 ; Q. R. 155; lick. I. 90 ; J. As. IX. 217 ; Moorcroft, II. 430 ; Wood, ed. 1872, pp. 259, 260 ; Q. C. VII. 2.)
* It may be observed that the careful Elphinstone distinguishes from this general application of Dehgán or Dehgán, the name Deggán applied to a tribe " once spread over the north-east of Afghanistan, but now as a separate people only in Lunar and Laghman."
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