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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
a
2 f $ MARCO POLO BOOK II.
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value of the notes, we must halve the sum, giving the salt revenue on Pauthier's a3sumptions= I, 185,000/.
Pauthier has also endeavoured to present a table of the whole revenue of Kiang-Ché under the Mongols, amounting to 12,955,710 paper taels, or 2,132,2941., including the salt revenue. This would leave only 947,294/. for the other sources of revenue, but the fact is that several of these are left blank, and among others one so important as the sea-customs. However, even making the extravagant supposition that the sea-customs and other omitted items were equal in amount to the whole of the other sources of revenue, salt included, the total would be only 4,264,585/.
Marco's amount, as he gives it, is, I think, unquestionably a huge exaggeration, though I do not suppose an intentional one. In spite of his professed rendering of the amounts in gold, I have little doubt that his tomans really represent paper-currency, and that to get a valuation in gold, his total has to be divided at the ve.y least by two. We may then compare his total of 290 tomans of paper ling with Pauthier's 130 tomans of paper Ling, excluding sea-customs and some other items. No nearer comparison is practicable ; and besides the sources of doubt already indicated, it remains uncertain what in either calculation are the limits of the province intended. For the bounds of Kiang-Ché seem to have varied greatly, sometimes including and sometimes excluding Fo-kien.
I may observe that Rashiduddin reports, on the authority of the Mongol minister Pulad Chingsang, that the whole of Manzi brought in a revenue of " 900 tomans." This Quatremère renders " nine million pieces of gold," presumably meaning dinars. It is unfortunate that there should be uncertainty here again as to the unit. If it were the dinar the whole revenue of Manzi would be about 5,850,0001., whereas if the unit were, as in the case of Polo's toman, the ling, the revenue would be nearly 30,000,000 sterling !
It does appear that in China a toman of some denomination of money near the dinar was known in account. For Friar Odoric states the revenue of Yang-chau in tomans of Balish, the latter unit being, as he explains, a sum in paper-currency equivalent to a florin and a half (or something more than a dinar) ; perhaps, however, only the Jiang or tael (see vol. i. pp. 426-7).
It is this calculation of the Kinsay revenue which Marco is supposed to be expounding to his fellow-prisoner on the title-page of this volume. [See P. /Bang, Commerce Public du Sel, Shanghai, 1898, Liang-tché-yen, pp. 6-7.—II. C.]
X'
CHAPTER LXXIX.
OF THE CITY OF TANPIJU AND OTHERS.
WHEN you leave Kinsay and travel a day's journey to
the south-east, through a plenteous region, passing a
succession of dwellings and charming gardens, you reach
the city of TANPIJU, a great, rich, and fine city, under
Kinsay. The people are subject to the Kaan, and have
paper-money, and are Idolaters, and burn their dead in
the way described before. They live by trade and
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