Which the
'Kashgarliks' are held to this day by the people of other Turkestan
districts, especially by the Khotanese. And in the case of Hiuan Tsang at
least, it seems probable from his long stay in, and manifest attachment
to, Khotan that this neighbourly criticism might have left an impression
upon him."
XXXVI., p. 188.
KHOTAN.
Sir Aurel Stein writes (Ancient Khotan, I., pp. 139-140): "Marco Polo's
account of Khotan and the Khotanese forms an apt link between these early
Chinese notices and the picture drawn from modern observation. It is brief
but accurate in all details. The Venetian found the people 'subject to the
Great Kaan' and 'all worshippers of Mahommet.' 'There are numerous towns
and villages in the country, but Cotan, the capital, is the most noble of
all and gives its name to the kingdom. Everything is to be had there in
plenty, including abundance of cotton [with flax, hemp, wheat, wine, and
the like]. The people have vineyards and gardens and estates. They live by
commerce and manufactures, and are no soldiers.' Nor did the peculiar
laxity of morals, which seems always to have distinguished the people of
the Khotan region, escape Marco Polo's attention. For of the 'Province of
Pein' which, as we shall see, represents the oases of the adjoining modern
district of Keriya, he relates the custom that 'if the husband of any
woman go away upon a journey and remain away for more than twenty days, as
soon as that term is past the woman may marry another man, and the husband
also may then marry whom he pleases.'
"No one who has visited Khotan or who is familiar with the modern accounts
of the territory, can read the early notices above extracted without being
struck at once by the fidelity with which they reflect characteristic
features of the people at the present day.
