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.
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