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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. LVI.
THE PROVINCE OF CAUGIGU I17
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are such a long way from the sea that the products are
of little value, and thus their price is low. They have
elephants in great numbers, and other cattle of sundry
kinds, and plenty of game. They live on flesh and
milk and rice, and have wine made of rice and good
spices. The whole of the people, or nearly so, have
their skin marked with the needle in patterns represent-
ing lions, dragons, birds, and what not, done in such a
way that it can never be obliterated. This work they
cause to be wrought over face and neck and chest, arms
and hands, and belly, and, in short, the whole body ; and
they look on it as a token of elegance, so that those who
have the largest amount of this embroidery are regarded
with the greatest admiration.
4n
NOTE I.—No province mentioned by Marco has given rise to wider and wilder conjectures than this, Cang id u as it has been generally printed.
M. Pauthier, who sees in it Laos, or rather one of the states of Laos called in the Chinese histories Papesifu, seems to have formed the most probable opinion hitherto propounded by any editor of Polo. I have no doubt that Laos or some part of that region is meant to be described, and that Pauthier is right regarding the general direction of the course here taken as being through the regions east of Burma, in a north-easterly direction up into Kwei-chau. But we shall be able to review the geography of this tract better, as a whole, at a point more advanced. I shall then speak of the name CAUGIGU, and why I prefer this reading of it.
I do not believe, for reasons which will also appear further on, that Polo is now following a route which he had traced in person, unless it be in the latter part of it.
M. Pauthier, from certain indications in a Chinese work, fixes on Chiangmai or Kiang-mai, the Zimmé of the Burmese (in about latitude IS' 48' and long. 99° 30') as the capital of the Papesifu and of the Caugigu of our text. It can scarcely however be the latter, unless we throw over entirely all the intervals stated in Polo's itinerary ; and M. Garnier informs me that he has evidence that the capital of the Papesifu at this time was 1lluang- Yong, a little to the south-east of Kiang-Tung, where he has seen its ruins.* That the people called by the Chinese Papesifu were of the great race of Laotians, Sháns, or T/zai, is very certain, from the vocabulary of their language published by Klaproth.
Pauthier's Chinese authority gives a puerile interpretation of Papesifu as signifying " the kingdom of the Soo wives," and says it was called so because the Prince maintained that establishment. This may be an indication that there were popular
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* Indeed documents in Klaproth's Asia Polyglotta show that the Papé state was also called Muang-Yong (pp. 364-365). I observe that the river running to the east of Pu-eul and Ssemao (Puer and Esmok) is called Papien•Kiang, the name of which is perhaps a memorial of the Papé.
[The old Laocian kingdom of Xieng-znaï [Kiang-mai], called llluong-Yong by the Pa-y, was inhabited by the Pape Si fu or Bát-bá T'úc-phu ; the inhabitants called themselves Thai niai or great Thai. (Devéria, Frontière, p. ioo.) Ch. ix. of the Chinese work Sze-i-kwan-kao is devoted to Xieng-mar Pa-pe), which includes the subdivisions of Laos, Xieng Hung [Kiang Hung] and Mluong-Ken. (Devéria, Átél. de flarlez, p. 97.)— H. C.]
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