Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 141 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

0141	Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1

lung's commissioners and suppose a dialectical form *qaidu of Mong. qaidaq, «alone», «single»,
from which Manchu kaidu, of identical meaning, would be borrowed (cf. also Blochet,
Moufazzal, 608).

According to Polo, Qaidu was a grandson of Čayatai, and twice (cf. Vol. I, 144, 447) Polo
makes Čayatai a brother of Qubilai; at the same time, he calls Qaidu a «neveu» of Qubilai, and
the word may be taken to mean either «nephew» or «grandson». Polo is here mistaken.
Hammer (Ha¹, I, 142) speaks of a Qaidu, sixth son of Ögödäi, and of a Qaidu, seventh son of
Čayatai, but both are due to misunderstandings or misreadings. The Qaidu, son of Čayatai,
mentioned by Howorth for the campaign of 1240-1241 in Hungary (I, 137, 142), is due to
another error : Wolff (Gesch. der Mongolen, 154, 159) had absurdly changed the Qadan, son
of Ögödäi, given by his sources, into a would-be Qaidu, son of Čayatai; this has led Grousset,
Hist. de l'Extrême-Orient, 435, to include the true Qaidu among the princes who took part in
the campaign of 1240-1241, while Qaidu was still at that period a young boy, as will be seen
farther on. There is in fact only one prince Qaidu in the 13th cent., and he is a grandson not
of Čayatai, but of Ögödäi; to Qubilai, he was the son of a first cousin, what we call in French
a «neveu à la mode de Bretagne».

The date of the birth of Qaidu is not given by any text, but can be determined approxi-
mately. All the texts agree that he was the son of Qaši or Qašin, a son of Ögödäi (YS, 107, 6a;
Bl, II, 7, 434); Rašidu-'d-Dīn adds that Qaši was the name then used by the Mongols for Tangut
(= Hsi-Hsia), and that Qaši owed his name to the fact that he was born when Chinghiz had
just led a victorious campaign against the Hsi-Hsia. It is true that Qaši or, with a paragogical
-n, Qašin, Ch. 合 [= 哈] 失 Ha-shih, represents a Mongol alteration of 河西 Ho-hsi (mediaeval
pronunciation Hô-si), then the common Chinese name for the Hsi-Hsia country, the modern
Kan-su (see «Tangut»). The passage in Mongolian of s- to š- before i was not yet general, and
the name of Qaši, with the adjectival or ethnical suffix -tai, -dai, is still transcribed 河西哈
Ho-hsi-tai (*Qasidai) in the Hei-Ta shih-lio of 1232 (cf. TP, 1928-1929, 167; ed. Wang Kuo-
wei, 1b) and 合昔歹 Ha-si-tai (*Qasidai) in the Cho-kêng lu of 1366 (I, 3a). So there is no
doubt about the meaning of Qaši, and the way in which the name was given is also in agreement
with Mongol habits.

But from 1205 to 1227, Chinghiz marched five times against Tangut; Hung Chün, 15, 1a,
refrained from any formal opinion about the time which is meant here. T'u Chi (37, I) says
that Qaši was born in 1205 (he gives in fact i-hai, 1215, but the whole reasoning in the preceding
paragraph shows that this is a slip for i-ch'ou, 1205); this I cannot accept. Ögödäi was born in
1186; he had seven sons, the eldest of whom, Güyük (see «Cui»), was born in 1206; Chinese
sources and Rašidu-'d-Dīn agree in making Qaši the fifth son, and Rašid says that the first five
sons were born of the same mother (YS, 2, 4a; 107, 5b-6b; Bl, II, 4-7; T'u Chi's attempt to show
that Qaši was the eldest son and born of another mother is a failure). The result is that Qaši
could not have been born before the third campaign of Chinghiz against the Hsi-Hsia, stated to
be in 1209 by the YS, I, 6b, but more correctly in 1210 by Rašid (Ber, III, 16) and the Shêng-wu
ch'in chêng lu (ed. Wang Kuo-wei, 49a). We cannot make it any later, knowing what we do of
Qaši's son Qaidu. So Qaši must have been born in 1210.

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