National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

288

MARCO POLO   BooK I.

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Iloly Trinity, and of our Lord, the Pope, giving it the name of the Roman Church. This King George, six years ago, departed to the Lord, a true Christian, leaving as his heir a son scarcely out of the cradle, and who is now nine years old. And after King George's death, his brothers, perfidious followers of the errors of Nestorius, perverted again all those whom he had Lrought over to the Church, and carried them back to their original schismatical creed. And being all alone, and not able to leave His Majesty the Cham, I could not go to visit the church above-mentioned, which is twenty days' journey distant. ... I had been in treaty with the late King George, if he had lived, to translate the whole Latin ritual, that it might be sung throughout the extent of his territory ; and whilst he was alive I used to celebrate mass in his church according to the Latin rite." The distance mentioned, twenty days' journey from Peking, suits quite well with the position assigned to Tenduc, and no doubt the Roman Church was in the city to which Polo gives that name.

Friar Odoric, travelling from Peking towards Shensi, about 1326-1327, also visits the country of Prester John, and gives to its chief city the name of Tozan, in which perhaps we may trace Tathun'; . He speaks as if the family still existed in authority.

King George appears again in Marco's own book (Bk. IV. ch. ii.) as one of Kúblái's generals against Kaidu, in a battle fought near Karakorúm. (Journ. As. IX. 299 seqq.; D'Ohsson, I. 123 ; Huc's Tartary, etc. I. 55 seqq.; Koeppen, II. 381 ; Erdmann'sTemucischin ; Gerbillon in Astley, IV. 67o ; Cathay, pp. 146 and 199 segq. )

NOTE 2. —Such a compact is related to have existed reciprocally between the family of Chinghiz and that of the chief of the Kunguráts ; but I have not found it alleged of the Kerait family except by Friar Odoric. We find, however, many princesses of this family married into that of Chinghiz. Thus three nieces of Aung Khan became wives respectively of Chinghiz himself and of his sons Juji and Tului . she who was the wife of the latter, Serkukteni Bigi, being the mother of Mangú, Hulaku, and Kúblái. Dukuz Khatun, the Christian wife of Hulaku, was a granddaughter of Aung Khan.

The name George, of Prester John's representative, may have been actually Jirjis, Yurji, or some such Oriental form of Georgius. But it is possible that the title was really Guigczn, "Son-in Law," a title of honour conferred on those who married into the imperial blood, and that this title may have led to the statements of Marco and Odoric about the nuptial privileges of the family. Gurgán in this sense was one of the titles borne by Timur.*

[The following note by the Archimandrite Palladius (Eluc. 21-23) throws a great light on the relations between the families of Chinghiz Khan and of Prester John.

" T'ien-te Kiun was bounded on the north by the Yn-shan Mountains, in and beyond which was settled the Sha-t'o Tu-K'iu tribe, i.e. Tu-K'iu of the sandy desert. The K'itans, when they conquered the northern borders of China, brought also under their rule the dispersed family of these Tu-K'iu. With the accession of the Kin, a Wang Ku [Ongot] family made its appearance as the ruling family of those

* Mr. Ney Elias favours me with a curious but tantalising communication on this subject : " An old man called on me at Kwei-hwa Ch'eng (Tendue), who said he was neither Chinaman, Mongol, nor Mahomedan, and lived on ground a short distance to the north of the city, especially allotted to his ancestors by the Emperor, and where there now exist several families of the same origin. He then mentioned the connection of his family with that of the Emperor, but in what way I am not clear, and said that he ought to be, or had been, a prince. Other people coming in, he was inter-

rupted and went away    He was not with me more than ten minutes, and the incident is a
specimen of the difficulty in obtaining interesting information, except by mere chance. . . . The idea that struck me was, that he was perhaps a descendant of King George of Tenduc ; for I had

your M. P. before me, and had been inquiring as much as I dared about subjects it suggested   
At Kwei-hwa Ch'eng I was very closely spied, and my servant was frequently told to warn me against asking too many questions."

I should mention that Oppert, in his very interesting monograph, Der Presbyter Johannes, refuses to recognise the Kerait chief at all in that character, and supposes Polo's King George to be the representative of a prince of the Liao (suj5ra, p. 205), who, as we learn from De Mailla's History, after the defeat of the Kin, in which he had assisted Chinghiz, settled in Liaotung, and received from the conqueror the title of King of the Liao. This seems to me geographically and otherwise quite inadmissible.

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