And when you have ridden seven days eastward through this province you get
near the provinces of Cathay. You find throughout those seven days'
journey plenty of towns and villages, the inhabitants of which are
Mahommetans, but with a mixture also of Idolaters and Nestorian
Christians. They get their living by trade and manufactures; weaving those
fine cloths of gold which are called Nasich and Naques, besides silk
stuffs of many other kinds. For just as we have cloths of wool in our
country, manufactured in a great variety of kinds, so in those regions
they have stuffs of silk and gold in like variety.[NOTE 6]
All this region is subject to the Great Kaan. There is a city you come to
called SINDACHU, where they carry on a great many crafts such as provide
for the equipment of the Emperor's troops. In a mountain of the province
there is a very good silver mine, from which much silver is got: the place
is called YDIFU. The country is well stocked with game, both beast and
bird.[NOTE 7]
Now we will quit that province and go three days' journey forward.
NOTE 1. - Marco's own errors led commentators much astray about Tanduc or
Tenduc, till Klaproth put the matter in its true light.
Our traveller says that Tenduc had been the seat of Aung Khan's
sovereignty; he has already said that it had been the scene of his final
defeat, and he tells us that it was still the residence of his descendants
in their reduced state. To the last piece of information he can speak as a
witness, and he is corroborated by other evidence; but the second
statement we have seen to be almost certainly erroneous; about the first
we cannot speak positively.
Klaproth pointed out the true position of Tenduc in the vicinity of the
great northern bend of the Hwang-Ho, quoting Chinese authorities to show
that Thiante or Thiante-Kiun was the name of a district or group of
towns to the north of that bend, a name which he supposes to be the
original of Polo's Tenduc. The general position entirely agrees with
Marco's indications; it lies on his way eastward from Tangut towards
Chagannor, and Shangtu (see ch. lx., lxi.), whilst in a later passage (Bk.
II. ch. lxiv.), he speaks of the Caramoran or Hwang-Ho in its lower
course, as "coming from the lands of Prester John."
M. Pauthier finds severe fault with Klaproth's identification of the
name Tenduc with the Thiante of the Chinese, belonging to a city which
had been destroyed 300 years before, whilst he himself will have that name
to be a corruption of Tathung. The latter is still the name of a city
and Fu of northern Shansi, but in Mongol time its circle of administration
extended beyond the Chinese wall, and embraced territory on the left of
the Hwang-Ho, being in fact the first Lu, or circle, entered on leaving
Tangut, and therefore, Pauthier urges, the "Kingdom of Tanduc" of our
text.
I find it hard to believe that Marco could get no nearer TATHUNG than in
the form of Tanduc or Tenduc. The origin of the last may have been
some Mongol name, not recovered. But it is at least conceivable that a
name based on the old Thiante-Kiun might have been retained among the
Tartars, from whom, and not from the Chinese, Polo took his nomenclature.
Thiante had been, according to Pauthier's own quotations, the military
post of Tathung; Klaproth cites a Chinese author of the Mongol era, who
describes the Hwang-Ho as passing through the territory of the ancient
Chinese city of Thiante; and Pauthier's own quotation from the Modern
Imperial Geography seems to imply that a place in that territory was
recently known as Fung-chau-Thiante-Kiun.
In the absence of preciser indications, it is reasonable to suppose that
the Plain of Tenduc, with its numerous towns and villages, was the
extensive and well-cultivated plain which stretches from the Hwang-Ho,
past the city of Kuku-Khotan, or "Blue Town." This tract abounds in the
remains of cities attributed to the Mongol era. And it is not improbable
that the city of Tenduc was Kuku-Khotan itself, now called by the Chinese
Kwei-hwa Ch'eng, but which was known to them in the Middle Ages as
Tsing-chau, and to which we find the Kin Emperor of Northern China
sending an envoy in 1210 to demand tribute from Chinghiz. The city is still
an important mart and a centre of Lamaitic Buddhism, being the residence of
a Khutukhtu, or personage combining the characters of cardinal and
voluntarily re-incarnate saint, as well as the site of five great convents
and fifteen smaller ones. Gerbillon notes that Kuku Khotan had been a place
of great trade and population during the Mongol Dynasty.
[The following evidence shows, I think, that we must look for the city of
Tenduc to Tou Ch'eng or Toto Ch'eng, called Togto or Tokto by the
Mongols. Mr. Rockhill (Diary, 18) passed through this place, and 5 li
south of it, reached on the Yellow River, Ho-k'ou (in Chinese) or Dugus or
Dugei (in Mongol). Gerbillon speaks of Toto in his sixth voyage in
Tartary. (Du Halde, IV. 345.) Mr. Rockhill adds that he cannot but think
that Yule overlooked the existence of Togto when he identified Kwei-hwa
Ch'eng with Tenduc. Tou Ch'eng is two days' march west of Kwei-hwa Ch'eng,
"On the loess hill behind this place are the ruins of a large camp,
Orch'eng, in all likelihood the site of the old town" (l.c. 18). M. Bonin
(J. As.
