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| 0313 |
Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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is, moreover, the mediaeval expression of a belief which goes back to the early Hsiung-nu. So
«Činggis» has nothing to do with t'ien-tz'ü. The same may be said of Vasil'ev's alternative solu-
tion (ibid. iv, 379) that «Činggis» may be a transcription of t'ien-tzŭ, «Son of Heaven»; the
mediaeval transcriptions from Mongolian or into Mongolian are much too accurate to admit of
such an unaccountable corruption. I shall not stop to discuss the «Chingsze, i. e. perfect warrior»
of Douglas, The life of Jenghis Khan, 54.
Rašid says three times (Ber, I, 159; III, 8, 112) that «Čingiz» is the plural of čing, which in
Mongolian means «firm» (مستکم), or «powerful and strong» (قوی و سخت), so that the name is
tantamount to «king of kings» (pādšāh-i pādšāhān) or «emperor of emperors» (šahinšāh). This
plural was, according to Rašid (Ber, I, 159) a plural majestatis applied to Chinghiz-khan himself;
d'Ohsson's «khan of the powerful ones» (Oh, I, 99) is not in accordance with the text. The tradition
passed on to Abū-'l-Ghāzī (Desmaisons, text, 81; transl., 88) who says, in Turkish, that «Čingiz»
is the plural of čing, and that the latter word means «great» (uluγ) and «firm» (qatt). Schmidt
objected (Gesch. der Ost-Mongolen, 379) that čing was an adverb, meaning «solidly», «immo-
veably», which could have no plural, and Banzarov concurred with him. But in vain : Erdmann,
relying on the consensus of Mussulman writers, maintained that they could not have erred, and
derived from their explanations the very title of his book, «Temudschin der Unerschütterliche» (cf.
his long note, pp. 599-609). Schmidt's argument was not of the soundest. Čing often is an adverb,
but it can also be used as an adjective (the cognate činya is only an adjective), and plurals of
adjectives are known in ancient Mongolian (for instance yākäs in the Secret History, §§ 230, 271).
A much stronger objection would have been to point out that, if čing had a plural, it could only
have been *čingut, not činggis. It seems clear that Rašid's informants had no longer a tradition
to guide them to the meaning and origin of «Činggis», and that they imagined an etymology
which afterwards met with undue success. Their ignorance is shown by the parallel case of gür-
ḫan, always explained by Rašid in the passage where he comments on «Činggiz». According to
him, gür means «firm» (مستکم), or «powerful and great» (قوی و سخت). The world gür existed,
however, and still exists in Mongolian, and the translators of the Secret History have correctly
rendered it «universal» (see «Catai»). Except for the sake of completeness, I would not mention
Blochet's explanation of «Činggis ḫan» (Moufazzal, 532-533) as a «purely Mongolian» title
«Činkkiz qaγan», «Emperor of the brave men», -z being the mark of the plural. Neither a word
*činkki, nor a plural in -z exist in Mongolian.
Banzarov (Černaya Véra, 78) proposed to see in «Činggis» the old Hsiung-nu title tran-
scribed in Chinese as 單于 shan-yü, the ancient sound of which, according to Bičurin, was
«čen-yü». This was for the time a clever suggestion, which Erdmann's supercilious refutation
(Temudschin, 607-608) hardly affects. But Banzarov was misinformed about the ancient pronun-
ciation of the Chinese : shan-yü is an ancient *žǰān-gju (? from a more archaic *žǰān-giu), and
I do not believe that the ancient sonant initial of the Hsiung-nu original could give an initial δ- in
Mongolian (I leave out the pronunciation tan-yü, *tân-jju, adopted by de Groot, which I consider
to be erroneous). On the other hand, we should not lay too much stress on the following point,
the only reasonable one among the seven raised by Erdmann, that if «Činggis» was the mediaeval
form of the term transcribed shan-yü in ancient times, it would form a title by itself, which would
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