No Man Of That Country Would On Any Consideration Take To
Wife A Girl Who Was A Maid; For They Say A Wife Is Nothing Worth Unless
She Has Been Used To Consort With Men.
And their custom is this, that when
travellers come that way, the old women of the place get ready,
And take
their unmarried daughters or other girls related to them, and go to the
strangers who are passing, and make over the young women to whomsoever
will accept them; and the travellers take them accordingly and do their
pleasure; after which the girls are restored to the old women who brought
them....
Speaking of the Sifan village of Po Lo and the account given by Marco Polo
of the customs of these people, M.R. Logan JACK (Back Blocks, 1904, pp.
145-6) writes: "I freely admit that the good looks and modest bearing of
the girls were the chief merits of the performance in my eyes. Had the
danseuses been scrubbed and well dressed, they would have been a
presentable body of debutantes in any European ballroom. One of our
party, frivolously disposed, asked a girl (through an interpreter) if she
would marry him and go to his country. The reply, 'I do not know you,
sir,' was all that propriety could have demanded in the best society, and
worthy of a pupil 'finished' at Miss Pinkerton's celebrated
establishment.... Judging from our experience, no idea of hospitalities of
the kind [Marco's experience] was in the people's minds."
XLV., p. 45. Speaking of the people of Tibet, Polo says: "They are very
poorly clad, for their clothes are only of the skins of beasts, and of
canvas, and of buckram."
Add to the note, I., p. 48, n. 5: -
"Au XIV'e siecle, le bougran [buckram] etait une espece de tissu de lin: le
meilleur se fabriquait en Armenie et dans le royaume de Melibar, s'il faut
s'en rapporter a Marco Polo, qui nous apprend que les habitants du Thibet,
qu'il signale comme pauvrement vetus, l'etaient de canevas et de bougran,
et que cette derniere etoffe se fabriquait aussi dans la province
d'Abasce. Il en venait egalement de l'ile de Chypre. Sorti des
manufactures d'Espagne ou importe dans le royaume, a partir de 1442, date
d'une ordonnance royale publiee par le P. Saez, le bougran le plus fin
payait soixante-dix maravedis de droits, sans distinction de couleur"
(FRANCISQUE-MICHEL, Recherches sur le commerce, la fabrication et l'usage
des etoffes de soie, d'or et d'argent.... II., 1854, pp. 33-4). Passage
mentioned by Dr. Laufer.
XLV., pp. 46 n., 49 seq.
Referring to Dr. E. Bretschneider, Prof. E.H. Parker gives the following
notes in the Asiatic Quart. Review, Jan., 1904, p. 131: "In 1251
Ho-erh-t'ai was appointed to the command of the Mongol and Chinese forces
advancing on Tibet (T'u-fan). [In my copy of the Yuean Shi there is no
entry under the year 1254 such as that mentioned by Bretschneider; it may,
however, have been taken by Palladius from some other chapter.] In 1268
Mang-ku-tai was ordered to invade the Si-fan (outer Tibet) and Kien-tu
[Marco's Caindu] with 6000 men.
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