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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. XXXVIII. PRESTER JOHN AND THE GOLDEN KING 19
my sons, what thing is this ye say ? and whither would
ye have me go ? " They answered, and said : " You
shall come with us, will yet nill ye, to Prester John our
Lord."
~
NOTE I.—The name of the castle is very doubtful. But of that and the geography, which in this part is tangled, we shall speak further on.
Whilst the original French texts were unknown, the king here spoken of figured in the old Latin versions as hing Darius, and in Ramusio as Re Dor. It was a most happy suggestion of Marsden's, in absence of all knowledge of the fact that the original narrative was French, that this Dor represented the Emperor of the Kin or
4
The " Roi d'Or." (From a MS. in the Royal Asiatic Society's Collection.)
" V en octzt.e slrnztixuz ha un nwut Ijiauz eaIeiz en guet a une ur:1nbiz11me ,sale lem on il ,punt portrait A moot b-ellez 4.1Dinturtz tout fez roi z be rele$ probentez gut furent anzienetmnt, et re .eat um.out belle bizt.e A 'wit."
Golden Dynasty, called by the Mongols _4Itun Kiidit, of which Roi D' Or is a literal translation.
Of the legend itself I can find no trace. Rashiduddin relates a story of the grand- {
father of Aung Khan (Polo's Prester John), Merghuz Boirúk hhan, being treacher- '
ously made over to the King of the Churché (the Kin sovereign), and put to death by being nailed to a wooden ass. But the-same author tells us that Aung Khan got his title of Aung (Ch. Wang) or king from the Kin Emperor of his day, so that no hereditary feud seems deducible.
Mr. Wylie, who is of opinion, like Baron Richthofen, that the Caichu which Polo makes the scene of that story, is Kiai-chau (or Hiai-chau as it seems to be pronounced), north of the Yellow River, has been good enough to search the histories of the Liao and Kin Dynasties,* but without finding any trace of such a story, or of the Kin
Emperors having resided in that neighbourhood. - 4
* [There is no trace of it in Harlez's French translation from the Manchu of the History of the Kin i
Empire, 1887.—H. C.]
VOL. II. B 2
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