The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Marco Polo and da Pisa Rusticiano
CHAPTER VIII.
1469 words | Chapter 336
CONCERNING THE PERSON OF THE GREAT KAAN.
The personal appearance of the Great Kaan, Lord of Lords, whose name
is Cublay, is such as I shall now tell you. He is of a good stature,
neither tall nor short, but of a middle height. He has a becoming
amount of flesh, and is very shapely in all his limbs. His complexion
is white and red, the eyes black and fine,{1} the nose well formed and
well set on. He has four wives, whom he retains permanently as his
legitimate consorts; and the eldest of his sons by those four wives
ought by rights to be emperor;—I mean when his father dies. Those four
ladies are called empresses, but each is distinguished also by her
proper name. And each of them has a special court of her own, very
grand and ample; no one of them having fewer than 300 fair and charming
damsels. They have also many pages and eunuchs, and a number of other
attendants of both sexes; so that each of these ladies has not less
than 10,000 persons attached to her court.{2}
When the Emperor desires the society of one of these four consorts, he
will sometimes send for the lady to his apartment and sometimes visit
her at her own. He has also a great number of concubines, and I will
tell you how he obtains them.
You must know that there is a tribe of Tartars called UNGRAT, who are
noted for their beauty. Now every year an hundred of the most beautiful
maidens of this tribe are sent to the Great Kaan, who commits them to
the charge of certain elderly ladies dwelling in his palace. And these
old ladies make the girls sleep with them, in order to ascertain if
they have sweet breath [and do not snore], and are sound in all their
limbs. Then such of them as are of approved beauty, and are good and
sound in all respects, are appointed to attend on the Emperor by turns.
Thus six of these damsels take their turn for three days and nights,
and wait on him when he is in his chamber and when he is in his bed,
to serve him in any way, and to be entirely at his orders. At the
end of the three days and nights they are relieved by other six. And
so throughout the year, there are reliefs of maidens by six and six,
changing every three days and nights.{3}
[Illustration: Portrait of Kúblái Kaan. (From a Chinese Engraving.)]
NOTE 1.—We are left in some doubt as to the colour of Kúblái’s
eyes, for some of the MSS. read _vairs_ and _voirs_, and others
_noirs_. The former is a very common epithet for eyes in the
mediæval romances. And in the ballad on the death of St. Lewis, we
are told of his son Tristram:—
“Droiz fu comme un rosel, _iex vairs comme faucon_,
Dès le tens Moysel ne nasqui sa façon.”
The word has generally been interpreted _bluish-grey_, but in
the passage just quoted, Fr.-Michel explains it by _brillans_.
However, the evidence for _noirs_ here seems strongest. Rashiduddin
says that when Kúblái was born Chinghiz expressed surprise at the
child’s being so _brown_, as its father and all his other sons were
fair. Indeed, we are told that the descendants of Yesugai (the
father of Chinghiz) were in general distinguished by blue eyes and
reddish hair. (_Michel’s Joinville_, p. 324; _D’Ohsson_, II. 475;
_Erdmann_, 252.)
NOTE 2.—According to Hammer’s authority (Rashid?) Kúblái had
_seven_ wives; Gaubil’s Chinese sources assign him _five_, with the
title of empress (_Hwang-heu_). Of these the best beloved was the
beautiful Jamúi Khátún (Lady or Empress Jamúi, illustrating what
the text says of the manner of styling these ladies), who bore him
four sons and five daughters. Rashiduddin adds that she was called
_Ḳún Ḳú_, or the great consort, evidently the term _Hwang-heu_.
(Gen. Tables in _Hammer’s Ilkhans_; _Gaubil_, 223; _Erdmann_, 200.)
[“Kúblái’s four wives, _i.e._ the empresses of the first, second,
third, and fourth _ordos_. _Ordo_ is, properly speaking, a separate
palace of the Khan, under the management of one of his wives.
Chinese authors translate therefore the word _ordo_ by ‘harem.’
The four _Ordo_ established by Chingis Khan were destined for the
empresses, who were chosen out of four different nomad tribes.
During the reign of the first four Khans, who lived in Mongolia,
the four _ordo_ were considerably distant one from another, and the
Khans visited them in different seasons of the year; they existed
nominally as long as China remained under Mongol domination. The
custom of choosing the empress out of certain tribes, was in the
course of time set aside by the Khans. The empress, wife of the
last Mongol Khan in China, was a Corean princess by birth; and
she contributed in a great measure to the downfall of the Mongol
Dynasty.” (_Palladius_, 40.)
I do not believe that Rashiduddin’s _Kún Kú_ is the term
_Hwang-keu_; it is the term _Kiūn Chu_, King or Queen, a
sovereign.—H. C.]
NOTE 3.—_Ungrat_, the reading of the Crusca, seems to be that to
which the others point, and I doubt not that it represents the
great Mongol tribe of ḲUNGURAT, which gave more wives than any
other to the princes of the house of Chinghiz; a conclusion in
which I find I have been anticipated by De Mailla or his editor
(IX. 426). To this tribe (which, according to Vámbéry, took its
name from (Turki) _Kongur-At_, “Chestnut Horse”) belonged Burteh
Fujin, the favourite wife of Chinghiz himself, and mother of his
four heirs; to the same tribe belonged the two wives of Chagatai,
two of Hulaku’s seven wives, one of Mangku Kaan’s, two at least
of Kúblái’s including the beloved Jamúi Khátún, one at least of
Abaka’s, two of Ahmed Tigudar’s, two of Arghun’s, and two of
Ghazan’s.
The seat of the Ḳungurats was near the Great Wall. Their name
is still applied to one of the tribes of the Uzbeks of Western
Turkestan, whose body appears to have been made up of fractions of
many of the Turk and Mongol tribes. Kungurat is also the name of
a town of Khiva, near the Sea of Aral, perhaps borrowed from the
Uzbek clan.
The conversion of _Ḳungurat_ into _Ungrat_ is due, I suppose, to
that Mongol tendency to soften gutturals which has been before
noticed. (_Erdm._ 199–200; _Hammer, passim; Burnes_, III. 143, 225.)
The Ramusian version adds here these curious and apparently genuine
particulars:—
“The Great Kaan sends his commissioners to the Province to select
four or five hundred, or whatever number may be ordered, of the
most beautiful young women, according to the scale of beauty
enjoined upon them. And they set a value upon the comparative
beauty of the damsels in this way. The commissioners on arriving
assemble all the girls of the province, in presence of appraisers
appointed for the purpose. These carefully survey the points of
each girl in succession, as (for example) her hair, her complexion,
eyebrows, mouth, lips, and the proportion of all her limbs. They
will then set down some as estimated at 16 carats, some at 17,
18, 20, or more or less, according to the sum of the beauties or
defects of each. And whatever standard the Great Kaan may have
fixed for those that are to be brought to him, whether it be 20
carats or 21, the commissioners select the required number from
those who have attained that standard, and bring them to him. And
when they reach his presence he has them appraised anew by other
parties, and has a selection made of 30 or 40 of those, who then
get the highest valuation.”
Marsden and Murray miss the meaning of this curious statement in a
surprising manner, supposing the carat to represent some absolute
value, 4 grains of gold according to the former, whence the damsel
of 20 carats was estimated at 13_s._ 4_d._! This is sad nonsense;
but Marsden would not have made the mistake had he not been
fortunate enough to live before the introduction of Competitive
Examinations. This Kungurat business was in fact a competitive
examination in beauty; total marks attainable 24; no candidate to
pass who did not get 20 or 21. _Carat_ expresses _n_ ÷ 24, not any
absolute value.
Apart from the mode of valuation, it appears that a like system of
selection was continued by the Ming, and that some such selection
from the daughters of the Manchu nobles has been maintained till
recent times. Herodotus tells that the like custom prevailed among
the Adyrmachidae, the Libyan tribe next Egypt. Old Eden too relates
it of the “Princes of Moscovia.” (_Middle Km._ I. 318; _Herod._ IV.
168, Rawl.; _Notes on Russia_, Hak. Soc. II. 253.)
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