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.
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