IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
CHAP. LX. THE CITIES OF CACANFU AND CFIANGLU
133
t1 r
dead. And you must know they make salt in great
quantities at this place ; I will tell you how 'tis done.2
A kind of earth is found there which is exceedingly
salt. This they dig up and pile in great heaps. Upon
these heaps they pour water in quantities till it runs out
at the bottom ; and then they take up this water and boil
it well in great iron cauldrons, and as it cools it deposits
a fine white salt in very small grains. This salt they
then carry about for sale to many neighbouring districts,
and get great profit thereby.
There is nothing else worth mentioning, so let us go
forward five days' journey, and we shall come to a city
called Chinangli.
.1
NOTE I.—In the greater part of the journey which occupies the remainder of Book II., Pauthier is a chief authority, owing to his industrious Chinese reading and citation. Most of his identifications seem well founded, though sometimes we shall be constrained to dissent from them widely. A considerable number have been anticipated by former editors, but even in such cases he is often able to bring forward new grounds.
CACANFU is HO-KIEN FU in Pe Chih-li, 52 miles in a direct line south by east of Chochau. It was the head of one of the Lu or circuits into which the Mongols divided China. (Pauthier.)
NOTE 2.—Marsden and Murray have identified Changlu with T'SANG-CHAU in Pe Chih-li, about 3o miles east by south of Ho-kien fu. This seems substantially right, but Pauthier shows that there was an old town actually called CH'ANGLU, separated from T'sang-chau only by the great canal. [Ch'ang-lu was the name of T'sang-chau under the T'ang and the Kin. (See Playfair, Diet., p. 34.)—H. C.]
The manner of obtaining salt, described in the text, is substantially the same as one described by Duhalde, and by one of the missionaries, as being employed near the mouth of the Yang-tzú kiang. There is a town of the third order some miles south-east of T'sang-chau, called Yea-shah or ” salt-hill," and, according to Pauthier, T'sang-chau is the mart for salt produced there. (Duhalde in Astley, Iv. 310 ; Lettres Edit. XI. 267 segq. ; Blot. p. 283.)
Polo here introduces a remark about the practice of burning the dead, which, with the notice of the idolatry of the people, and their use of paper-money, constitutes a formula which he repeats all through the Chinese provinces with wearisome iteration. It is, in fact, his definition of the Chinese people, for whom he seems to lack a comprehensive name.
A great change seems to have come over Chinese custom, since the Middle Ages, in regard to the disposal of the dead. Cremation is now entirely disused, except in two cases ; one, that of the obsequies of a Buddhist priest, and the other that in which the coffin instead of being buried has been exposed in the fields, and in the lapse of time has become decayed. But it is impossible to reject the evidence that it was a common practice in Polo's age. He repeats the assertion that it was the custom at every stage of his journey through Eastern China ; though perhaps his taking absolutely no notice of the practice of burial is an instance of that imperfect knowledge of strictly Chinese peculiarities which has been elsewhere ascribed to him. It is the
~1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.