They have
elephants in great numbers, and other cattle of sundry kinds, and plenty
of game. They live on flesh and milk and rice, and have wine made of rice
and good spices. The whole of the people, or nearly so, have their skin
marked with the needle in patterns representing lions, dragons, birds, and
what not, done in such a way that it can never be obliterated. This work
they cause to be wrought over face and neck and chest, arms and hands, and
belly, and, in short, the whole body; and they look on it as a token of
elegance, so that those who have the largest amount of this embroidery are
regarded with the greatest admiration.
NOTE 1. - No province mentioned by Marco has given rise to wider and wilder
conjectures than this, Cangigu as it has been generally printed.
M. Pauthier, who sees in it Laos, or rather one of the states of Laos
called in the Chinese histories Papesifu, seems to have formed the most
probable opinion hitherto propounded by any editor of Polo. I have no
doubt that Laos or some part of that region is meant to be described,
and that Pauthier is right regarding the general direction of the course
here taken as being through the regions east of Burma, in a north-easterly
direction up into Kwei-chau. But we shall be able to review the geography
of this tract better, as a whole, at a point more advanced. I shall then
speak of the name CAUGIGU, and why I prefer this reading of it.
I do not believe, for reasons which will also appear further on, that Polo
is now following a route which he had traced in person, unless it be in
the latter part of it.
M. Pauthier, from certain indications in a Chinese work, fixes on
Chiangmai or Kiang-mai, the Zimme of the Burmese (in about latitude 18 deg.
48' and long. 99 deg. 30') as the capital of the Papesifu and of the
Caugigu of our text. It can scarcely however be the latter, unless we
throw over entirely all the intervals stated in Polo's itinerary; and M.
Garnier informs me that he has evidence that the capital of the Papesifu at
this time was Muang-Yong, a little to the south-east of Kiang-Tung, where
he has seen its ruins.[1] That the people called by the Chinese Papesifu
were of the great race of Laotians, Shans, or Thai, is very certain, from
the vocabulary of their language published by Klaproth.
[Illustration: Script Pa-pe.]
Pauthier's Chinese authority gives a puerile interpretation of Papesifu
as signifying "the kingdom of the 800 wives," and says it was called so
because the Prince maintained that establishment.
