National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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84   MARCO POLO.

VOL. II. BK. II.

XLV III., p. 72. The name Karajáng. " The first element was the

Mongol or Turki Kárá. . . . Among the inhabitants of this country

some are black, and others are white ; these latter are called by the

Mongols Chaghán , fáng (` White Jang '). Jang has not been explained ;

but probably it may have been a Tibetan term adopted by the Mongols,

and the colours may have applied to their clothing."

Dr. Berthold Laufer, of Chicago, has a note on the subject in

the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soc., Oct., 19I57pp. 781-4:

" M. Pelliot (Bul. Ecole franc. Ext. Orient., IV., 1904, p. 159)

proposed to regard the unexplained name fang as the Mongol

transcription of Ts'uan, the ancient Chinese designation of the

Lo-lo, taken from the family name of one of the chiefs of the

latter ; he gave his opinion, however, merely as an hypothesis

which should await confirmation. I now believe that Yule was

correct in his conception, and that, in accordance with his sugges-

tion, fang indeed represents the phonetically exact transcription

of a Tibetan proper name. This is the Tibetan a Jan or a fans

(the prefixed letter a and the optional affix -s being silent, hence

pronounced Jang or Djang), of which the following precise

definition is given in the Dictionnaire tibétain-latin français par

les Missionnaires Catholiques du Tibet (p. 3 51) : " Tribus et

regionis nomen in N.-W. provinciae Sinarum Yun-nan, cuius

urbs principalis est Sa-t'am seu Ly-kiang fou. Tribus vocatur

Mosso a Sinensibus et Nashi ab ipsismet incolis.' In fact, as

here stated, fan or fang is the Tibetan designation of the Mo-

so and the territory inhabited by them, the capital of which is Li-

kiang-fu. This name is found also in Tibetan literature. . . ."

XLVIII., p. 74, n. 2. One thousand Uighúr families (hou) had been transferred to Karajáng in 1285. ( Yuan Shi, ch. 13, 8v°, quoted by PELLIOT.)

L., pp. 85-6. Zardandan. " The country is wild and hard of access, full of great woods and mountains which 'tis impossible to pass, the air in summer is so impure and bad ; and any foreigners attempting it would die for certain."

" An even more formidable danger was the resolution of our

` permanent ' (as distinguished from ` local ') soldiers and mafus,

of which we were now apprised, to desert us in a body, as they

declined to face the malaria of the Lu-Kiang Ba, or Salwen

Valley. We had, of course, read in Gill's book of this difficulty,

but as we approached the Salwen we had concluded that the

scare had been forgotten. We found, to our chagrin, that the