Friar Odoric, Travelling From Peking Towards Shensi, About 1326-1327, Also
Visits The Country Of Prester John, And Gives To Its Chief City The Name
Of Tozan, In Which Perhaps We May Trace Tathung.
He speaks as if the
family still existed in authority.
King George appears again in Marco's own book (Bk. IV. ch. ii.) as one of
Kublai's generals against Kaidu, in a battle fought near Karakorum.
(Journ. As. IX. 299 seqq.; D'Ohsson, I. 123; Huc's Tartary, etc.
I. 55 seqq.; Koeppen, II. 381; Erdmann's Temudschin; Gerbillon in
Astley, IV. 670; Cathay, pp. 146 and 199 seqq.)
NOTE 2. - Such a compact is related to have existed reciprocally between
the family of Chinghiz and that of the chief of the Kungurats; but I have
not found it alleged of the Kerait family except by Friar Odoric. We find,
however, many princesses of this family married into that of Chinghiz.
Thus three nieces of Aung Khan became wives respectively of Chinghiz
himself and of his sons Juji and Tului; she who was the wife of the
latter, Serkukteni Bigi, being the mother of Mangu, Hulaku, and Kublai.
Dukuz Khatun, the Christian wife of Hulaku, was a grand-daughter of Aung
Khan.
The name George, of Prester John's representative, may have been
actually Jirjis, Yurji, or some such Oriental form of Georgius. But it is
possible that the title was really Gurgan, "Son-in-Law," a title of
honour conferred on those who married into the imperial blood, and that
this title may have led to the statements of Marco and Odoric about the
nuptial privileges of the family. Gurgan in this sense was one of the
titles borne by Timur.[1]
[The following note by the Archimandrite Palladius (Eluc. 21-23) throws
a great light on the relations between the families of Chinghiz Khan and
of Prester John.
"T'ien-te Kiun was bounded on the north by the Yn-shan Mountains, in and
beyond which was settled the Sha-t'o Tu-K'iu tribe, i.e. Tu-K'iu of the
sandy desert. The K'itans, when they conquered the northern borders of
China, brought also under their rule the dispersed family of these Tu-
K'iu. With the accession of the Kin, a Wang Ku [Ongot] family made its
appearance as the ruling family of those tribes; it issued from those Sha-
t'o Tu-K'iu, who once reigned in the north of China as the How T'ang
Dynasty (923-936 A.D.). It split into two branches, the Wang-Ku of the Yn-
shan, and the Wang-Ku of the Lin-t'ao (west of Kan-su). The Kin removed
the latter branch to Liao-tung (in Manchuria). The Yn-shan Wang-Ku guarded
the northern borders of China belonging to the Kin, and watched their
herds. When the Kin, as a protection against the inroads of the tribes of
the desert, erected a rampart, or new wall, from the boundary of the
Tangut Kingdom down to Manchuria, they intrusted the defence of the
principal places of the Yn-shan portion of the wall to the Wang-Ku, and
transferred there also the Liao-tung Wang-Ku.
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