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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

that Schiltberger « mentions Misir among the cities of Arabia », since he names no other of these
cities, and it seems difficult to connect with this passage the use of « Misira » on Fra Mauro's map as
the designation of the coast of Arabia opposite Hormuz (cf. Zu, 43, 48; HALLBERG, 356).

216. EGRIGAIA

argigaian V egrigaia F, FA, FB, L, VA, elgrigajan VB
egragaia Ft Z; R erigaia FAt, Lm
egregaia Fr, Pr egrigay TA¹r grigaia TA³r
egregaya P egrigaya TA¹ grighaia TA³
egregia VL egygaia LT

The Mss. have «Egrigaia» (also given by Fra Mauro), which I think slightly corrupt for
«Egricaya», unless the -q- became more or less sonant in the middle of the name.
There is no doubt about its identity with Ning-hsia. In the Secret History (§ 265), the name
is written Āri-qaya, with the Chinese equivalence Ning-hsia. Rašidu-'d-Dīn (Ber, III, 95; pers. 144)
says that ايرقا Erqaya is the Mongol form of the name, but that the Tangut (= Hsi-Hsia) form
is ايرقي Irqai (= Iryai?). Iryai is named five times by «Sanang Setsen» (cf. SCHMIDT, Gesch.
der Ost-Mongolen, 498), from Chinghiz-khan's time down to the first half of the 17th cent. When
an Uighur document speaks of envoys from Irkänd and Irgäi (?; RADLOV, Uigur. Sprachdenkmäler,
28-31; also G. VERNADSKY in JAOS, 56 [1936], 458, 459), it is hardly possible, in view of the change
of «class», that we should have to understand «Yarkänd and Iryai». The name has survived;
it is still the native name of Ning-hsia (cf. RUDNEV, Materialy, 97). In Y, I, 281-282, there is a
mixture, with many misreadings, of «Iryai» and of «Ergiunl» with Uraqai, quite a different place
in Tangut. The name which is corrupt in the Mss. and for which BLOCHET (Bl, II, 498) has adopted
the wrong form ايرزدي, is either Irqai or Uraqai.
Polo used the Mongol form, later abandoned by the Mongols themselves, and it seems certain
that the Mongols had altered the Hsi-Hsia name to make it end in qaya, «rock». From the forms
in the Secret History and in Rašidu-'d-Dīn, it might seem that we ought to adopt the form «Erigaya»
of FAt, in spite of «Egrigaya» of all the main Mss. But I think that the form in the Secret History
was not correctly read by the transcribers at the end of the 14th cent. The «camp» (ying) of
也里合牙 Ye-li-ha-ya is mentioned in YS, 22, 5a, under the date A. D. 1307, and the name
of Ning-hsia is written 也吉里合牙 Ye-chi-li-ha-ya in YS, 120, 7a. The combination of the
two transcriptions suggests *Āgri-qaya, which is exactly Polo's «Egrigaia» (?<«*Egricaya»). But
perhaps this form was not the original one adapted in Mongolian from Hsi-Hsia or it may be dialec-
tal; for it is very tempting to presume a regular Mongol form Ārgi-qaya, «the Steep Rock». It
must be *Āgri-qaya which has been altered to «Artākiyā» in Ḥôndāmir, and to «Yarāqiyā» in the
Nuzhat-al-Qulūb (cf. LE STRANGE's translation, 250).
In the T'ang dynasty, the main centre of the region was at 靈州 Ling-chou, on the eastern