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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

34   MARCO POLO.

all kinds of speculations. In the foregoing pages it has been

simply my desire to present a few new points of view. The

great value of Marco Polo's description of the Persian desert

consists in confirming and proving its physical invariableness

during more than six hundred years. It had as great a scarcity of

oases then as now, and the water in the wells was not less salt

than in our own days." (Overland to India, II., pp. 75-77.)

VOL. I. BK. I.

XXVII., p. 152 n.

DOGANA.

" The country of Dogana is quite certain to be the Chinese

T'u-ho-lo or Tokhara ; for the position suits, and, moreover,

nearly all the other places named by Marco Polo along with

Dogana occur in Chinese History along with Tokhara many

centuries before Polo's arrival. Tokhara being the most

important, it is inconceivable that Marco Polo would omit it.

Thus, Poh-lo (Balkh), capital of the Eptals ; Ta-la-kien (Talecan),

mentioned by Hivan Tsang ; Ho-sim or Ho-ts'z-mi (Casem),

mentioned in the T'ang History ; Shik-nih or Shï-k'i-ni (Syghinan)

of the T'ang History ; Woh-k'an (Vochan), of the same work ;

several forms of Bolor, etc. (see also my remarks on the Pamir

region in the Contemporary Review for Dec., 1897)." (E. H.

PARKER, Asiatic Quart. Rev., Jan., 1904, , p. 142.)

29.  p. 16o.

BADAKHSHAN.

" The Chinese name for ` Badakhshan ' never appears before

the Pa-ta-shan of Kúblái's time." (E. H. PARKER, Asiatic

Quart. Rev., Jan., 1904, p. 143.)

30.  pp. 164-166. " You must know that ten days' journey to the

south of Badashan there is a province called PASHAI, the people of

which have a peculiar language, and are Idolaters, of a brown com-

plexion. They are great adepts in sorceries and the diabolic arts.

The men wear earrings and brooches of gold and silver set with

stones and pearls. They are a pestilent people and a crafty ; and they

live upon flesh and rice. Their country is very hot."

Sir A. STEIN writes (Ancient Khotan, I., pp. 14-15 n.) : " Sir

Henry Yule was undoubtedly right in assuming that Marco

Polo had never personally visited these countries and that his

account of them, brief as it is, was derived from hearsay informa-

tion about the tracts which the Mongol partisan leader Nigūdar