国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

This is the first reliable account ever written on Tibet by a European. As
Marco Polo approached the inaccessible country much nearer than Friar John and
Friar William, and probably got information from natives on the trade roads between
Tibet and western China, he has more to tell, both of the inhabitants, their customs
and their country. Though he never visited Tibet proper, only its eastern border-
land, his description of Tibet is in many respects very characteristic, and certain
portions of it could as well have been written in our own days. While the Arab
geographers moved in almost complete darkness, Marco Polo has firmer ground
under his feet and deals with realities, and speaks of a nation with whom he has
been in contact. And still, if we compare his store of Tibetan information with that
of the Chinese of his time and earlier, we must confess that he knew very little
indeed.

He knew, however, that Tibet was a country of very great extent, embracing
eight kingdoms, subject to the Great Kaan, a fact that was completely unknown
to cartographers even some 400 years later. Richthofen is of the opinion that
Marco Polo's description of the rude natives applies only to the inhabitants to-
wards the Chinese frontier, and Yule agrees with him that Marco Polo's Tibet
commences with the mountainous region near Ya-chau, situated north of the country
of the Lolos, and that his 20 days' journey took him to Ning-yuan fu, from where
he travelled to Yunnan fu.¹ From personal experience he certainly knew only those
eastern regions, which are now parts of Szechuan and Yunnan. But there are in-
dications in his account pointing to a wider knowledge, perhaps embracing the great
westward portions of Tibet. He knows the situation of Kashmir in relation to
Badakshan, India and the sea of India,² and, as we have seen, he mentions Kashmir
in connection with Tibet. In fact he approached what we call Tibet both from
the west, Pamir and Bolor, the north, Khotan, and the east, Yunnan. From
the south he did not touch Tibet at all, as his knowledge of India, as a whole,
was very inexact.³ He does not mention the Himalaya, nor the Indus nor
the Ganges, and is in this respect far behind the Greeks 1600 years earlier,
and Ptolemy a thousand years before his time, though, of course he never
had the intention to write a geography as the classic scholars did. But he
must have heard of Tibet from so many sources that he felt convinced of its great
extent.

When he says of Tibet that it contains lakes in several quarters, this can
hardly apply to anything but the vast interior plateau land and southern Tibet. On
the other hand it is surprising that he has not heard of the capital of Tibet, though
Lhasa must have been in trade connection with the limitroph districts visited by