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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

80   MARCO POLO.   VOL. II. BK. II.

Hau T'ang ; in 933 the Hau T'ang were compelled to grant the

title of King of Shu (Hau Shu) to Mong Chi-siang, governor of

Sze Chw'an, who was succeeded by Mong Ch'ang, dethroned in

965 ; the capital was also Ch'eng Tu under these two dynasties.

TIBET.

XLV., p. 44. No man of that country would on any consideration

take to wife a girl who was a maid ; for they say a wife is nothing

worth unless she has been used to consort with men. And their custom

is this, that when travellers come that way, the old women of the place

get ready, and take their unmarried daughters or other girls related to

them, and go to the strangers who are passing, and make over the young

women to whomsoever will accept them ; and the travellers take them

accordingly and do. their pleasure ; after which the girls are restored to

the old women who brought them. . . .

Speaking of the Sifan village of Po Lo and the account given

by Marco Polo of the customs of these people, M. R. Logan JACK

(Back Blocks, 1904, pp. 145-6) writes : " I freely admit that the

good looks and modest bearing of the girls were the chief merits

of the performance in my eyes. Had the danseuses been scrubbed

and well dressed, they would have been a presentable body of

débutantes in any European ballroom. One of our party,

frivolously disposed, asked a girl (through an interpreter) if she

would marry him and go to his country. The reply, ' I do not

know you, sir,' was all that propriety could have demanded in

the best society, and worthy of a pupil ' finished ' at Miss

Pinkerton's celebrated establishment. . . . Judging from our

experience, no idea of hospitalities of the kind [Marco's experi-

ence] was in the people's minds."

XLV., p. 45. Speaking of the people of Tibet, Polo says : " They

are very poorly clad, for their clothes are only of the skins of beasts,

and of canvas, and of buckram."

Add to the note, I., p. 48, n. 5 :

" Au XIVe siècle, le bougran [buckram] était une espèce de

tissu de lin : le meilleur se fabriquait en Arménie et dans le

royaume de Mélibar, s'il faut s'en rapporter á Marco Polo, qui

nous apprend que les habitants du Thibet, qu'il signale comme

pauvrement vêtus, l'étaient de canevas et de bougran, et que

cette dernière étoffe se fabriquait aussi dans la province d'Abasce.

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