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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
256
MARCO POLO BOOK III.
country without the slightest sign of turning back to help
them. And this was because of the bitter hatred between
the two Barons in command of the force ; for the Baron
who escaped never showed the slightest desire to return
to his colleague who was left upon the Island in the way
you have heard ; though he might easily have done so
after the storm ceased ; and it endured not long. He did
nothing of the kind, however, but made straight for home.
And you must know that the Island to which the soldiers
had escaped was uninhabited ; there was not a creature
upon it but themselves.
Now we will tell you what befel those who escaped on
the fleet, and also those who were left upon the Island.
.
NOTE r.--;-CHIPANGU represents the Chinese Jih fin-kwé, the kingdom of Japan, the name Jih-pên being the Chinese pronunciation, of which the term Nippon, Nippon or Nihon, used in Japan, is a dialectic variation, both meaning " the origin of the sun," or sun-rising, the place the sun comes from. The name Chipangu is used also by Rashiduddin. Our Japan was probably taken from the Malay Japún or Japáng.
E" The name Nihon (`Japan') seems to have been first officially employed by the Japanese Government in A. D. 670. Before that time, the usual native designation of the country was Yanzato, properly the name of one of the central provinces. Yamato and 0-mi-kuni, that is, ` the Great August Country,' are the names still preferred in poetry and belles-lettres. Japan has other ancient names, some of which are of learned length and thundering sound, for instance, Toyo-asJzi-wara-no-cJzi-aki-no-nagai-ho-aki-no-mizu-ho-no-kuni, that is ` the Luxuriant-Reed-Plains-the-Land-of-FreshRice - Ears-of-a-Thousand-Autumns-of - Long - Five - Hundred - Autumns.' " (B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 3rd ed. pr 222. )-I I. C.]
It is remarkable that the name Nihon occurs, in the form of Al-Náfún, in the Ikhwán-al-Safá, supposed to date from the loth century. (See J. A. S. B. XVII. Pt. I. 502. )
[I shall merely mention the strange theory of Mr. George Collingridge that Zipangu is Java and not Japan in his paper on The Early Cartography of Japan. (Geog Jour. i"1ay, 1894, pp. 403-409.) Mr. F. G. Kramp (Japan or Java?), in the Tijdschrift v. het K. Nederl. Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, 1894, and Mr. H. Yule Oldham (Geog. Jour., September, 1894, pp. 276-279), have fully replied to this paper.--H. C.]
NOTE 2.—The causes briefly mentioned in the text maintained the abundance and low price of gold in Japan till the recent opening of the trade. (See Bk. II. ch. 1. note 5.) Edrisi had heard that gold in the isles of Sila (or Japan) was so abund2nt that dog-collars were made of it.
NOTE 3.—This was doubtless an old "yarn," repeated from generation to generation. We find in a Chinese work quoted by Amyot : " The palace of the king (of Japan) is remarkable for its singular construction. It is a vast edifice, of extraordinary height ; it has nine stories, and presents on all sides an exterior shining
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