"Il n'y a aucune possibilite de retrouver dans
Saracanco, Sarai + Kunk. Le mot Kunk n'est pas autrement
atteste, et la construction mongole ou turque exigerait kunk-sarai."
XIII., pp. 25-26.
SHANG TU.
See also A. POZDNEIEV, Mongoliya i Mongoly, II., pp. 303 seq.
XV., pp. 27, 28-30. Now it came that Marco, the son of Messer Nicolo, sped
wondrously in learning the customs of the Tartars, as well as their
language, their manner of writing, and their practice of war - in fact he
came in a brief space to know several languages, and four sundry written
characters.
On the linguistic office called Sse yi kwan, cf. an interesting
note by H. MASPERO, p. 8, of Bul. Ecole franc. Ext. Orient,
XII., No. 1, 1912.
XV., p. 28 n. Of the Khitan but one inscription was known and no key.
Prof. Pelliot remarks, Bul. Ecole franc. Ext. Orient, IV., July-Sept.,
1904: "In fact a Chinese work has preserved but five k'i-tan characters,
however with the Chinese translation." He writes to me that we do not know
any k'itan inscription, but half a dozen characters reproduced in a work
of the second half of the fourteenth century. The Uighur alphabet is of
Aramean origin through Sogdian; from this point of view, it is not
necessary to call for Estranghelo, nor Nestorian propaganda. On the other
hand we have to-day documents in Uighur writing older than the Kudatku
Bilik.
