Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 627 (Color Image)

0627	Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1

visited the place, and his association with « Çulficar » must have occured later on in China. From
the context, and if we take into consideration the administrative customs of the time, it is probable
that « Çulficar » was one of the foreigners whom Qubilai was so willing to appoint to fairly high
posts, but that does not imply that he was more than a director of the local mines, just as Polo's
three years' tenure of office at Yang-chou may have been simply in connection with the gabelle
administration (see « Singiu »).

The exact location of the asbestos mines which were under « Çulficar »'s supervision during
three years has not yet been determined. During the Mongol dynasty, the only known text which
relates to the extraction of asbestos is the one which is met with twice in YS (6, 5b, and 205, 1b);
from it we learn that, at Aḥmad's request (see « Acmat »), it was decided, on October 26, 1267, to
extract asbestos in the 別怯赤 Pieh-ch'ieh-ch'ih mountain (on this name, see LAUFER, in TP,
1915, 365-366; Ch, I, 149; the other form which embarrassed LAUFER, p. 365, is due to Ch'ien-
lung's orthographical « reforms »). Pieh-ch'ieh-ch'ih is certainly a transcription, and supposes
*Bäkäči (the « red » [ch'ih] mountains of Pieh-ch'ieh spoken of by SCHLEGEL are just as wrong as
his precise localization in Ssŭ-ch'uan is arbitrary; CHARIGNON's Bogda[-ōla] is even worse); and
his foreign name suggests a probable localization out of China proper; it may or may not be the
mountain mentioned by Polo.

The problem may however be approached from another angle. Polo says that the mountain
where asbestos was found yielded also ordinary steel and « andanique » (q. v.) It is extremely
tempting to see here the pin-t'ieh of the Chinese (cf. LAUFER, Sino-Iranica, 515-516; see
« Andanique »); in 984, Wang Yen-tê, giving an account of his recent embassy to Kao-ch'ang (see
« Carachoço »), says that there is pin-t'ieh at I-chou (= Qomul; see « Camul »). The mountain
north of Beš-baliq which is mentioned by Wang Yen-tê and which yielded sal-ammoniac may
also come under consideration; for a discussion of this point, see « Andanique » and « Ghinghin
talas ».

In 1655, MARTINI inserted in his Novus Atlas Sinensis a paragraph on Mongolia, to which he
gives the name of « Kingdom of Taniu » (see also the quotation which has passed into KIRCHER,
China Illustrata, 1667, 206-207). YULE (Y, I, 215), who miscopied «Tangu», thought of the
Tangnu-ōla, which cannot be a general name for Mongolia. Without being too positive, I think
MARTINI, who was rather fond of archaisms, called Mongolia in this passage by the title of the
ancient Hsiung-nu Emperors, 單于, read generally shan-yü, but for which tan-yü has often been
used in the past (it has been revived in the extraordinary spelling tan-hu adopted by DE GROOT,
Die Hunnen des vorchristlichen Zeit). It was in this great country of « Taniu », extending from
Manchuria to Samarkand, that MARTINI mentions and describes a herb which passes through fire
without suffering any change and which must be asbestos. MARTINI seems to have seen some of
it, brought of course to China; and we may suppose, unless MARTINI's notice is second-hand and
of an antiquarian character, that a certain quantity of asbestos still found its way from Mongolia
to China in the second quarter of the 17th cent., although we are left in the dark as to the exact
site where it was mined.

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

Citation Information

OCR Text

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