Why They Were Really Applied To It We Have Already Seen.
(Supra, Ch.
Iv.
Note 3.) Abulfeda says: "The Ocean turns northward along
the east of China, and then expands in the same direction till it passes
China, and comes opposite to the Rampart of Yajuj and Majuj;" whilst the
same geographer's definition of the boundaries of China exhibits that
country as bounded on the west by the Indo-Chinese wildernesses; on the
south, by the seas; on the east, by the Eastern Ocean; on the north, by
the land of Yajuj and Majuj, and other countries unknown. Ibn Batuta,
with less accurate geography in his head than Abulfeda, maugre his
travels, asks about the Rampart of Gog and Magog (Sadd Yajuj wa Majuj)
when he is at Sin Kalan, i.e. Canton, and, as might be expected, gets
little satisfaction.
[Illustration: The Rampart of Gog and Magog]
Apart from this interesting point Marsden seems to be right in the general
bearing of his explanation of the passage, and I conceive that the two
classes of people whom Marco tries to identify with Gog and Magog do
substantially represent the two genera or species, TURKS and MONGOLS, or,
according to another nomenclature used by Rashiduddin, the White and
Black Tartars. To the latter class belonged Chinghiz and his MONGOLS
proper, with a number of other tribes detailed by Rashiduddin, and these I
take to be in a general way the MUNGUL of our text. The Ung on the other
hand, are the UNG-kut, the latter form being presumably only the Mongol
plural of UNG. The Ung-kut were a Turk tribe who were vassals of the Kin
Emperors of Cathay, and were intrusted with the defence of the Wall of
China, or an important portion of it, which was called by the Mongols
Ungu, a name which some connect with that of the tribe. [See note pp.
288-9.] Erdmann indeed asserts that the wall by which the Ung-kut dwelt
was not the Great Wall, but some other. There are traces of other great
ramparts in the steppes north of the present wall. But Erdmann's arguments
seem to me weak in the extreme.
[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 112) writes: "The earliest mention I have
found of the name Mongol in Oriental works occurs in the Chinese annals
of the After T'ang period (A.D. 923-934), where it occurs in the form
Meng-ku. In the annals of the Liao Dynasty (A.D. 916-1125) it is found
under the form Meng-ku-li. The first occurrence of the name in the Tung
chien kang mu is, however, in the 6th year Shao-hsing of Kao-tsung of the
Sung (A.D. 1136). It is just possible that we may trace the word back a
little earlier than the After T'ang period, and that the Meng-wa (or
ngo as this character may have been pronounced at the time), a branch of
the Shih-wei, a Tungusic or Kitan people living around Lake Keule, to the
east of the Baikal, and along the Kerulun, which empties into it, during
the 7th and subsequent centuries, and referred to in the T'ang shu (Bk.
219), is the same as the later Meng-ku. Though I have been unable to find,
as stated by Howorth (History, i. pt. I. 28), that the name Meng-ku
occurs in the T'ang shu, his conclusion that the northern Shih-wei of that
time constituted the Mongol nation proper is very likely correct.... I. J.
Schmidt (Ssanang Setzen, 380) derives the name Mongol from mong,
meaning 'brave, daring, bold,' while Rashiduddin says it means 'simple,
weak' (d'Ohsson, i. 22). The Chinese characters used to transcribe the
name mean 'dull, stupid,' and 'old, ancient,' but they are used purely
phonetically.... The Mongols of the present day are commonly called by the
Chinese Ta-tzu, but this name is resented by the Mongols as opprobrious,
though it is but an abbreviated form of the name Ta-ta-tzu, in which,
according to Rubruck, they once gloried." - H. C.]
Vincent of Beauvais has got from some of his authorities a conception of
the distinction of the Tartars into two races, to which, however, he
assigns no names: "Sunt autem duo genera Tartarorum, diversa quidem
habentia idiomata, sed unicam legem ac ritum, sicut Franci et
Theutonici." But the result of his effort to find a realisation of Gog
and Magog is that he makes Guyuk Kaan into Gog, and Mangu Kaan into
Magog. Even the intelligent Friar Ricold says of the Tartars: "They say
themselves that they are descended from Gog and Magog: and on this account
they are called Mogoli, as if from a corruption of Magogoli."
(Abulfeda in Buesching, IV. 140, 274-275; I. B. IV. 274; Golden
Horde, 34, 68; Erdmann, 241-242, 257-258; Timk. I. 259, 263, 268;
Vinc. Bellov. Spec. Hist. XXIX. 73, XXXI. 32-34; Pereg. Quat. 118;
Not. et Ext. II. 536.)
NOTE 6. - The towns and villages were probably those immediately north of
the Great Wall, between 112 deg. and 115 deg. East longitude, of which many
remains exist, ascribed to the time of the Yuen or Mongol Dynasty. This
tract, between the Great Wall and the volcanic plateau of Mongolia, is
extensively colonised by Chinese, and has resumed the flourishing aspect
that Polo describes. It is known now as the Ku-wei, or extramural
region.
[After Kalgan, Captain Younghusband, on the 12th April, 1886, "passed
through the [outer] Great Wall ... entering what Marco Polo calls the land
of Gog and Magog. For the next two days I passed through a hilly country
inhabited by Chinese, though it really belongs to Mongolia; but on the
14th I emerged on to the real steppes, which are the characteristic
features of Mongolia Proper." (Proc. R. G. S. X., 1888, p. 490.) - H. C.]
Of the cloths called nakh and nasij we have spoken before (supra ch.
vi. note 4). These stuffs, or some such as these, were, I believe, what
the mediaeval writers called Tartary cloth, not because they were made
in Tartary, but because they were brought from China and its borders
through the Tartar dominions; as we find that for like reason they were
sometimes called stuffs of Russia.
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