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

influence of the popular Yači. Another hypothesis would be that Yači is really a Ya-ch'ih c, a « Duck
Lake », which was used as a popular name of the eastern capital of the Ta-li kingdom and adopted as
such by the Mongols, but which the Chinese chroniclers have not recognized when translating it back
from Mongolian into Chinese. There are other examples of these borrowings from Chinese into
foreign languages, which have not been recognized when they reverted to Chinese. But I have no
means to prove it in the present case; at the same time, it is not impossible that the spelling Ya-ch'ih c,
« Duck Lake », was merely a wrong attempt at etymology on the part of more or less scholarly Chinese
of the 13th and 14th cents.

255. IAMB

iaben V ianbi VA jambi P
iamb FA, VB jamb FB, L lamb R
ianb F

The -b only serves to maintain a reading in -m, not in -n (see « Campçio »). The original is
Turk. yam, « postal relays », Mong. Jam. Polo, as Rubrouck before him (« iam »), and as the Per-
sians (يام yām) and even the Armenians (cf. iam in BROSSET, Hist. de la Géorgie, I, Add., 439, 457),
uses the Turkish form; the Chinese chan (= Jam; hence Annam. trạm) is based on the contrary on
the Mongolian. Turk. yam appears in a Chinese transcription of yamčin, « postmaster », already
in the second half of the 5th cent. Cf. my note on the word in TP, 1930, 192-195. The Chinese
etymology of yam from Ch. i-ma, still maintained in Bl, II, 311, is absurd.

256. IASD

adin V jasd Z sasdis LTr
iadys, yadis TA¹ jasdis LT yasdi Ft
iasdi F, Fr, FAr, L, LT, P; R jasdis VLr zansoi VB
iasdy Pr jasoy FB zasdi FA
iasoy VL ladis, padis TA³

Silk

iasdi F, L, V; R jasdi VA yasdi LT
iaseri TA¹, TA³ jasoi VL zafuini VB
iasoi VL jasoy FB zasdi FA

YULE, RICCI-ROSS, and BENEDETTO have adopted « Iasdi », but I think that Z has preserved the
right reading, and that the « Iasdi » of the other Mss. is due to the silk « iasdi » which is mentioned
afterwards by Polo. Yāzd (« Yezd » of our maps) is a well-known place in Persia. Odoric seems to
call it « Gest » (Wy, 419); the « Iest » adopted by YULE (Y², II, 107-108) without any comment does
not seem to be supported by any Ms.; however, Fra Mauro has « Iest » (HALLBERG, 570).