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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
1
CHAP. L. COMPARATIVE VALUES OF GOLD AND SILVER
95
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deprived of the services of my best hunters or boat-hands, by the necessity which they felt, and which nothing could persuade them to disregard, of observing couvade, that I realized its full strangeness. No satisfactory explanation of its origin seems attainable. It appears based on a belief in the existence of a mysterious conxection between the child and its father—far closer than that which exists between the child and its mother,—and of such a nature that if the father infringes any of the rules of the couvade, for a time after the birth of the child, the latter suffers. For instance, if he eats the flesh of a water-haas (Capybara), a large rodent with very protruding teeth, the teeth of the child will grow as those of the animal ; or if he eats the flesh of the spotted-skinned labba, the child's skin will become spotted. Apparently there is also some idea that for the father to eat strong food, to wash, to smoke, or to handle weapons, would have the same result as if the new-born babe ate such food, washed, smoked, or played with edged tools" (pp. 217-219.)
I have to thank Dr. Edward B. Tylor for the valuable notes he kindly sent me.—H. C.]
NOTE 5.—" The abundance of gold in Yun-nan is proverbial in China, so that if a man lives very extravagantly they ask if his father is governor of Yun-nan." (Martini, p. 140. )
Polo has told us that in Eastern Yun-nan the exchange was 8 of silver for one of gold (eh. xlviii.) ; in the Western division of the province 6 of silver for one of gold (ch. xlix.) ; and now, still nearer the borders of Ava, only 5 of silver for one of gold. Such discrepancies within 15 days' journey would be inconceivable, but that in both the latter instances at least he appears to speak of the rates at which the gold was purchased from secluded, ignorant, and uncivilised tribes. It is difficult to reconcile with other facts the reason which he assigns for the high value put on silver at Vochan, viz., that there was no silver-mine within five months' journey. In later days, at least, Martini speaks of many silver-mines in Yun-nan, and the " Great Silver Aline " (Bau-dwen gyi of the Burmese) or group of mines, which affords a chief supply to Burma in modern times, is not far from the territory of our Traveller's Zardandan. Garnier's map shows several argentiferous sites in the Valley of the Lan-t'sang.
In another work * I have remarked at some length on the relative values of gold and silver about this time. In Western Europe these seem to have been as 12 to I, and I have shown grounds for believing that in India, and generally over civilised Asia, the ratio was io to I. In Pauthier's extracts from the Yuen-shi or Annals of the Mongol Dynasty, there is an incidental but precise confirmation of this, of which I was not then aware. This states (p. 321) that on the issue of the paper currency of 1287 the official instructions to the local treasuries were to issue notes of the nominal value of two strings, i.e. 2000 wen or cash, for every ounce of flowered silver, and 20,000 cash for every ounce of gold. Ten to I must have continued to be the relation in China down to about the end of the 17th century if we may believe Lecomte ; but when Milburne states the same value in the beginning of the 19th he must have fallen into some great error. In 1781 Sonnerat tells us that formerly gold had been exported from China with a profit of 25 per cent., but at that time a profit of 18 to 20 per cent. was made by importing it. At present t the relative values are about the same as in Europe, viz. I to 1512- or I to 16 ; but in Canton, in 1844, they were I to 17 ; and Timkowski states that at Peking in 1821 the finest gold was valued at 13 to I. And as regards the precise territory of which this chapter speaks I find in Lieutenant Bower's Commercial Report on Sladen's Mission that the price of pure gold at Momein in 1868 was 13 times its weight in silver (p. 122) ; whilst M. Garnier mentions that the exchange at Ta-li in 1869 was 12 to I (I. 522).
Does not Shakspeare indicate at least a memory of Io to I as the traditional
a Cathay, etc., pp. ccl. sew. and p. 441.
t Written in 187o.
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