Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 515 (Color Image)

0515	Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1

with an iron staff and gently card [the floss] with a small bow to make it mix and rise; then
they spin and weave it into a cloth which is called *chi-pei*. At present, that which the trade
appreciates in *mu-mien* is the sort which is fine and dense (緻 *chin*). That must be considered
superior which has most flowers; in counting (cross-wise) [the *mu-mien*] which reaches up to
120 flowers is of the best quality. The southern Barbarians (Man-jên) of Hai-nan (or 'south of
the Sea') weave the [*mu-mien*] into napkins (巾 *chin*), on which they draw small characters or
various flowers, with the most clever art; this is what was anciently called '*po-tieh* napkins'
(*po-tieh chin*)...» Fang Cho's *mu-mien*, seven or eight feet high, is clearly the *Gossypium
arboreum*. I feel inclined to believe that his «Hai-nan Man-jên» are not some undetermined
Barbarians «south of the Sea», *i. e.* of the South Seas, but really the Li aborigines of Hai-nan,
and that he was right in attributing to them the manufacture of the «*po-tieh* napkins», men-
tioned more than once by T'ang poets.

The *Tun-chai hsien-lan* was written at the beginning of the 12th cent. (cf. *supra*, p. 438).
The passage on *mu-mien* is too similar to that in the *Wên-ch'ang tsa-lu* not to have been copied
from it. Yet it contains a sentence which is not in the original, unless it has been omitted in
the quotation made of it in the *Shuo fu*. The *Tun-chai hsien-lan* says : «Beginning with Min
(=Fu-chien) and Kuang[-tung] and more to the south, there is much cotton (*mu-mien*). The
local peasants emulate one another in planting it, and some have as much as several thousand
stalks. They collect its flowers to make a cloth which is called *chi-pei* cloth (*chi-pei-pu*).»
Then the *Tun-chai hsien-lan* speaks of the *ku-pei* of the *Nan shih* in the same terms as the
*Wên-ch'ang tsa-lu*.

Yü Chêng-hsieh (*Kuei-ssŭ lei-kao*, 7, 21 *a*, and 14, 4 *b*) has mentioned a passage on the
forms *chi-pei* and *ku-pei*, which occurs in what he calls « 彭乘 P'êng Shêng's 墨客揮犀 *Mo-
k'o hui-hsi* »; in fact, it is to be found in the *Hsü* [續] *Mo-k'o hui-hsi* (*Han-fên-lou ts'ung-shu*
ed., 1, 6-7), and is identical with the one just translated from the *Tun-chai hsien-lan*. But,
although the *Ssŭ-k'u*... Commissioners accepted the ascription of the work to P'êng Shêng
and were forced to suppose that he was homonymous with, but different from, the well-known
P'êng Shêng of the Northern Sung (*Ssŭ-k'u*..., 141, 9-10), it is now well established that both
the *Mo-k'o hui-hsi* and the *Hsü Mo-k'o hui-hsi* are anonymous compilations made up in late
Sung times of extracts from the works of Sung authors, one of these works being precisely the
*Tun-chai hsien-lan* (cf. Wang Kuo-wei's *Kuan-t'ang wei-chi*, 1, 3, and *TP*, 1929, 156).

Even if we discard the last two texts as not being original, those of the *Wên-ch'ang tsa-lu*
and the *Po-chai pien* leave no doubt that cotton cultivation was already extensively practised in
Kuang-tung and Fu-chien at the end of the 11th century.

The 農桑輯要 *Nung-sang chi-yao*, «Manual of agriculture and silkworm breeding», in
7 chs. was prepared by order of Qubilai, and has a preface dated 1273 by the well-known scholar,
王磐 Wang P'an (on whom, cf. *YS*, 160, 1-3; not 王盤 Wang P'an, as in Bretschneider,
*Botanicon Sinicum*, 1, 82). It went through several editions, in 1314 (?), 1320, perhaps 1322,
and by Imperial order was largely distributed throughout the country in 1329, 1332 and 1342;
it was really the official manual of husbandry of the Mongol period (cf. Pelliot, *A propos du
Keng tche t'ou*, in *Mém. conc. l'Asie Orientale*, 1, 112; *Tu-shu min-ch'iu chi chiao-chêng*, 3 b,

32.

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

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OCR Text

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