IIIF Color HighRes
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
432
MARCO POLO BooK II.
400
1411
1
of Ministers usually to have consisted of twelve high officials, viz. : two Ch'ing-siang 5-g ; ] or (chief) ministers of state, one styled, " of the Right," and the other " of
the Left'' ; four called P'ing-chang thing ssé, which seems to mean something like ministers in charge of special departments ; four assistant ministers ; two Counsellors.
Rashiduddin, however, limits the Council to the first two classes : " Strictly speaking, the Council of State is composed of four Ch'ing-sang (C1z'ing-siang) or great officers ( Wazírs he afterwards terms them), and four Fanchán (P'ing-chang) or associated members, taken from the nations of the Tajiks, Cathayans, Ighurs, and Arkaun " (i.e. Nestorian Christians). (Compare p. 418, supra.)
[A Samarkand man, Seyyd Tadj Eddin Hassan ben el Khallal, quoted in the Masálak al Absdr, says : " Near the Khan are two amírs who are his ministers ; they
are called piing San 61,42. (Ch'ing-siang). After them corne the two Bidjan
(Tso Chen then the two
v~. (P'ing Chang), then the two Zoudjin Lam?'') )~
(Yu Chen), and at last the Land un
Yudjin .. J (Lang Chang), head
of the scribes, and secretary of the sovereign. The Khan holds a sitting every day
in the middle of a large building called Chen J.... (Sheng), which is very like our
Palace of Justice." (C. Schefer, Cent. Ec. Langues Or., pp. 18-19.)—H. C.]
In a later age we find the twelve Barons reappearing in the pages of Mendoza : " The King hath in this city of Tabin (Peking), where he is resident, a royal council of twelve counsellors and a president, chosen men throughout all the kingdom, and such as have had experience in government many years." And also in the early centuries of the Christian era we hear that the Khan of the Turks had his twelve grandees, divided into those of the Right and those of the Left, probably a copy from a Chinese order then also existing.
But to return to Rashiduddin : " As the Kaan generally resides at the capital, he has erected a place for the sittings of the Great Council, called Sing . . . . The dignitaries mentioned above are expected to attend daily at the Sing, and to make themselves acquainted with all that passes there."
The Sing of Rashid is evidently the Shieng or Sheng (Scieng) of Polo. M. Pauthier is on this point somewhat contemptuous towards Neumann, who, he says, confounds Marco Polo's twelve Barons or Ministers of State with the chiefs of the twelve great provincial governments called Sing, who had their residence at the chief cities of those governments ; whilst in fact Polo's Scieng (he asserts) has nothing to do with the Sing, but represents the Chinese word Siang " a minister," and " the office of a minister." [There was no doubt a confusion between Siang
41 and Sheng~.—H. C.]
It is very probable that two different words, Siang and Sing, got confounded by the non-Chinese attachés of the Imperial Court ; but it seems to me quite certain that they applied the same word, Sing or Sheng, to both institutions, viz. to the High Council of State, and to the provincial governments. It also looks as if Marco Polo himself had made that very confusion with which Pauthier charges Neumann. For whilst here he represents the twelve Barons as forming a Council of State at the capital, we find further on, when speaking of the city of Yangchau, he says : " Et si siet en ceste cité uns des xii Barons du Grant Kaan ; car elle est esleue pour un des xii sieges," where the last word is probably a mistranscription of Sciengs, or Sings, and in any case the reference is to a distribution of the empire into twelve governments.
To be convinced that Sing was used by foreigners in the double sense that I have said, we have only to proceed with Rashiduddin's account of the administration. After what we have already quoted, he goes on : " The Sing of Khanbaligh is the most eminent, and the building is very large. . . . Sings do not exist in all the cities, but only in the capitals of great provinces. . . . In the whole empire of the Kaan there are twelve of these Sings ; but that of Khanbaligh is the only one which has Ching-sangs amongst its members." Wassáf again, after describing the greatness of Khanzai (Kinsay of Polo) says : " These circumstances characterize the capital
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