The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Marco Polo and da Pisa Rusticiano
CHAPTER XV.
1704 words | Chapter 241
HOW THE EMPEROR SENT MARK ON AN EMBASSY OF HIS.
Now it came to pass that Marco, the son of Messer Nicolo, sped
wondrously in learning the customs of the Tartars, as well as their
language, their manner of writing, and their practice of war; in fact
he came in brief space to know several languages, and four sundry
written characters. And he was discreet and prudent in every way,
insomuch that the Emperor held him in great esteem.{1} And so when he
discerned Mark to have so much sense, and to conduct himself so well
and beseemingly, he sent him on an ambassage of his, to a country
which was a good six months’ journey distant.{2} The young gallant
executed his commission well and with discretion. Now he had taken
note on several occasions that when the Prince’s ambassadors returned
from different parts of the world, they were able to tell him about
nothing except the business on which they had gone, and that the
Prince in consequence held them for no better than fools and dolts,
and would say: “I had far liever hearken about the strange things,
and the manners of the different countries you have seen, than merely
be told of the business you went upon;”—for he took great delight in
hearing of the affairs of strange countries. Mark therefore, as he went
and returned, took great pains to learn about all kinds of different
matters in the countries which he visited, in order to be able to tell
about them to the Great Kaan.{3}
NOTE 1.—The word Emperor stands here for _Seigneur_.
What the four characters acquired by Marco were is open to
discussion.
The Chronicle of the Mongol Emperors rendered by Gaubil mentions,
as characters used in their Empire, the Uíghúr, the Persian and
Arabic, that of the Lamas (Tibetan), that of the Niuché, introduced
by the Kin Dynasty, the Khitán, and the _Báshpah_ character,
a syllabic alphabet arranged, on the basis of the Tibetan and
Sanskrit letters chiefly, by a learned chief Lama so-called,
under the orders of Kublai, and established by edict in 1269 as
the official character. Coins bearing this character, and dating
from 1308 to 1354, are extant. The forms of the Niuché and Khitán
were devised in imitation of Chinese writing, but are supposed to
be syllabic. Of the Khitán but one inscription was known, and no
key. “The Khitan had two national scripts, the ‘small characters’
(_hsiao tzŭ_) and the ‘large characters’ (_ta tzŭ_).” S. W. Bushell,
_Insc. in the Juchen and Allied Scripts_, Cong. des Orientalistes,
Paris, 1897.—_Die Sprache und Schrift der Juchen_ von Dr. W. Grube,
Leipzig, 1896, from a polyglot MS. dictionary, discovered by Dr. F.
Hirth and now kept in the Royal Library, Berlin.—H. Y. and H. C.
Chinghiz and his first successors used the Uíghúr, and sometimes
the Chinese character. Of the Uíghúr character we give a specimen
in Bk. IV. It is of Syriac origin, undoubtedly introduced into
Eastern Turkestan by the early Nestorian missions, probably in the
8th or 9th century. The oldest known example of this character so
applied, the _Kudatku Bilik_, a didactic poem in Uíghúr (a branch
of Oriental Turkish), dating from A.D. 1069, was published by
Prof. Vámbéry in 1870. A new edition of the _Kudatku Bilik_ was
published at St. Petersburg, in 1891, by Dr. W. Radloff. Vámbéry
had a pleasing illustration of the origin of the Uíghúr character,
when he received a visit at Pesth from certain Nestorians of
Urumia on a begging tour. On being shown the original MS. of the
_Kudatku Bilik_, they read the character easily, whilst much to
their astonishment they could not understand a word of what was
written. This Uíghúr is the basis of the modern Mongol and Manchu
characters. (Cf. E. Bretschneider, _Mediæval Researches_, I. pp.
236, 263.)—H. Y. and H. C.
[At the village of Keuyung Kwan, 40 miles north of Peking, in the
sub-prefecture of Ch’ang Ping, in the Chih-li province, the road
from Peking to Kalgan runs beyond the pass of Nankau, under an
archway, a view of which will be found at the end of this volume,
on which were engraved, in 1345, two large inscriptions in six
different languages: Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongol, _Báshpah_, Uíghúr,
Chinese, and a language unknown till recently. Mr. Wylie’s kindness
enabled Sir Henry Yule to present a specimen of this. (A much
better facsimile of these inscriptions than Wylie’s having since
been published by Prince Roland Bonaparte in his valuable _Recueil
des Documents de l’Époque Mongole_, this latter is, by permission,
here reproduced.) The Chinese and Mongol inscriptions have been
translated by M. Ed. Chavannes; the Tibetan by M. Sylvain Lévi
(_Jour. Asiat._, Sept.–Oct. 1894, pp. 354–373); the Uíghúr, by
Prof. W. Radloff (_Ibid._ Nov.–Dec. 1894, pp. 546, 550); the Mongol
by Prof. G. Huth. (_Ibid._ Mars–Avril 1895, pp. 351–360.) The
sixth language was supposed by A. Wylie (_J. R. A. S._ vol. xvii.
p. 331, and N.S., vol. v. p. 14) to be Neuchih, Niuché, Niuchen
or Juchen. M. Devéria has shown that the inscription is written
in _Si Hia_, or the language of Tangut, and gave a facsimile of a
stone stèle (_pei_) in this language kept in the great Monastery
of the Clouds (Ta Yun Ssŭ) at Liangchau in Kansuh, together with a
translation of the Chinese text, engraved on the reverse side of
the slab. M. Devéria thinks that this writing was borrowed by the
Kings of Tangut from the one derived in 920 by the Khitans from
the Chinese. (_Stèle Si-Hia de Leang-tcheou_ ... _J. As._, 1898;
_L’écriture du royaume de Si-Hia ou Tangout_, par M. Devéria....
Ext. des Mém.... présentés à l’Ac. des Ins. et B. Let. 1^{ère} Sér.
XI., 1898.) Dr. S. W. Bushell in two papers (_Inscriptions in the
Juchen and Allied Scripts, Actes du XI. Congrès des Orientalistes_,
Paris, 1897, 2nd. sect., pp. 11, 35, and the _Hsi Hsia Dynasty of
Tangut, their Money and their peculiar Script, J. China Br. R. A.
S._, xxx. N.S. No. 2, pp. 142, 160) has also made a special study
of the same subject. The Si Hia writing was adopted by Yuan Ho in
1036, on which occasion he changed the title of his reign to Ta
Ch’ing, _i.e._ “Great Good Fortune.” Unfortunately, both the late
M. Devéria and Dr. S. W. Bushell have deciphered but few of the Si
Hia characters.—H. C.]
[Illustration: Hexaglot Inscription on the East side of the Kiu-Yong
Kwan.]
[Illustration: Hexaglot Inscription on the West side of the Kiu-Yong
Kwan.]
The orders of the Great Kaan are stated to have been published
habitually in six languages, viz., Mongol, Uíghúr, Arabic, Persian,
Tangutan (Si-Hia), and Chinese.—H. Y. and H. C.
Gházán Khan of Persia is said to have understood Mongol, Arabic,
Persian, something of Kashmiri, of Tibetan, of Chinese, and a
little of the _Frank_ tongue (probably French).
The annals of the Ming Dynasty, which succeeded the Mongols in
China, mention the establishment in the 11th moon of the 5th year
Yong-lo (1407) of the _Sse yi kwan_, a linguistic office for
diplomatic purposes. The languages to be studied were Niuché,
Mongol, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Bokharan (Persian?), Uíghúr, Burmese,
and Siamese. To these were added by the Manchu Dynasty two
languages called _Papeh_ and _Pehyih_, both dialects of the S.W.
frontier. (See _infra_, Bk. II. ch. lvi.–lvii., and notes.) Since
1382, however, official interpreters had to translate Mongol texts;
they were selected among the Academicians, and their service
(which was independent of the _Sse yi kwan_ when this was created)
was under the control of the _Han-lin-yuen_. There may have been
similar institutions under the Yuen, but we have no proof of it. At
all events, such an office could not then be called _Sse yi kwan_
(_Sse yi_, Barbarians from four sides); Niuché (Niuchen) was taught
in Yong-lo’s office, but not Manchu. The _Sse yi kwan_ must not be
confounded with the _Hui t’ong kwan_, the office for the reception
of tributary envoys, to which it was annexed in 1748. (_Gaubil_, p.
148; _Gold. Horde_, 184; _Ilchan._ II. 147; _Lockhart_ in _J. R. G.
S._ XXXVI. 152; _Koeppen_, II. 99; G. Devéria, _Hist. du Collège
des Interprètes de Peking_ in _Mélanges_ Charles de Harlez, pp.
94–102; MS. Note of Prof. A. Vissière; _The Tangut Script in the
Nan-K’ou Pass_, by Dr. S. W. Bushell, _China Review_, xxiv. II. pp.
65–68.)—H. Y. and H. C.
Pauthier supposes Mark’s four acquisitions to have been
_Báshpah-Mongol, Arabic, Uighúr_, and _Chinese_. I entirely reject
the Chinese. Sir H. Yule adds: “We shall see no reason to believe
that he knew either language or character” [Chinese]. The blunders
Polo made in saying that the name of the city, Suju, signifies
in our tongue “Earth” and Kinsay “Heaven” show he did not know
the Chinese characters, but we read in Bk. II. ch. lxviii.: “And
Messer Marco Polo himself, of whom this Book speaks, did govern
this city (Yanju) for three full years, by the order of the Great
Kaan.” It seems to me [H. C.] hardly possible that Marco could have
for three years been governor of so important and so Chinese a
city as Yangchau, in the heart of the Empire, without acquiring a
knowledge of the spoken language.—H. C. The other three languages
seem highly probable. The fourth may have been Tibetan. But it is
more likely that he counted separately two varieties of the same
character (_e.g._ of the Arabic and Persian) as two “_lettres de
leur escriptures_.”—H. Y. and H. C.
NOTE 2.—[Ramusio here adds: “Ad und città, detta Carazan,” which,
as we shall see, refers to the Yun-nan Province.]—H. C.
NOTE 3.—From the context no doubt Marco’s employments were
honourable and confidential; but _Commissioner_ would perhaps
better express them than Ambassador in the modern sense. The word
_Ilchi_, which was probably in his mind, was applied to a large
variety of classes employed on the commissions of Government, as
we may see from a passage of Rashiduddin in D’Ohsson, which says
that “there were always to be found in every city from one to two
hundred _Ilchis_, who forced the citizens to furnish them with free
quarters,” etc., III. 404. (See also 485.)
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