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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
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CHAP. LXXXII. I'ORCELAIN MANUFACTU I:E
243
of Zaitun and Sinkalan" (Canton). A good deal of China ware in modern times is made in Fo-kien and Canton provinces, and it is still an article of export from T'swan-chau and Amoy ; but it is only of a very ordinary kind. Pakwiha, between Amoy and Chang-chau, is mentioned in the Chinese Commercial Guide (p. 114) as now the place where the coarse blue ware, so largely exported to India, etc., is largely manufactured ; and Phillips mentions Tung-'an (about half-way between T'swan-chau and Chang-chau) as a great seat of this manufacture.
Looking, however, to the Ramusian interpolations, which do not indicate a locality necessarily near Zayton, or even in Fo-kien, it is possible that Murray is right in supposing the place intended in these to be really King--té chen in Kiang-si, the great seat of the manufacture of genuine porcelain, or rather its chief mart JAU-CHAU FU on the P'o-yang Lake.
The geographical indication of this city of porcelain, as at the place where a branch of the River of Kinsay flows off towards "Layton, points to a notion prevalent in the Middle Ages as to the interdivergence of rivers in general, and especially of Chinese rivers. This notion will be found well embodied in the Catalan Map, and something like it in the maps of the Chinese themselves ;* it is a ruling idea with Ibn Batuta, who, as we have seen (in note 2), speaks of the River of Zayton as connected in the interior with " the Great River," and who travels by this waterway accordingly from Zayton to Kinsay, taking no notice of the mountains of Fo-kien. So also (supra, p. 175) Rashiduddin had been led to suppose that the Great Canal extended to Zayton. With apparently the same idea of one Great River of China with many ramifications, Abulfeda places most of the great cities of China upon " The River." The " Great River of China," with its branches to Kinsay, is alluded to in a like spirit by Wassáf (supra, p. 213). Polo has already indicated the same idea (p. 219).
Assuming this as the notion involved in the passage from Ramusio, the position of .Jau-cliau might be fairly described as that of Tingui is therein, standing as it does on the P'o-yang Lake, from which there is such a ramification of internal navigation, e.g. to Kinsay or Hang-chau fu directly by Kwansin, the Chang-shan portage already referred to (supra, p. 222), and the Ts'ien T'ang (and this is the Kinsay River line to which I imagine Polo here to refer), or circuitously by the Yang-tzű and Great Canal ; to Canton by the portage of the Meiling Pass; and to the cities of Fo-kien either by the Kwansin River or by Kian-chan fu, further south, with a portage in each case across the Fo-kien mountains. None of our maps give any idea of the extent of internal navigation in China. (See Klaproth, Mém. vol. iii.)
The story of the life-long period during which the porcelain clay was exposed to temper long held its ground, and probably was only dispelled by the publication of the details of the King-ta chan manufacture by Père d'Entrecolles in the Lettres Ed antes.
NOTE 6.—The meagre statement in the French texts shows merely that Polo had heard of the Fo-kien dialect. The addition from Ramusio shows further that he was aware of the unity of the written character throughout China, but gives no indication of knowledge of its peculiar principles, nor of the extent of difference in the spoken dialects. Even different districts of Fo-kien, according to Martini, use dialects so different that they understand each other with difficulty (io8).
[Mendoza already said : " It is an admirable thing to consider how that in that kingdome they doo speake manie languages, the one differing from the other : yet generallie in writing they doo understand one the other, and in speaking not." (Parke's Transi. p. 93.)]
Professor Kidd, speaking of his instructors in the Mandarin and Fo-kien dialects respectively, says : " The teachers in both cases read the same books, composed in the same style, and attached precisely the same ideas to the written symbols, but
* In a modern Chinese geographical work abstracted by Mr. Laidlay, we are told that the great river of 7'sim-lo, or Siam, " penetrates to a branch of the Hwang-Ho." (J. A. S. B. XVII. Pt. I.
157.)
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