The Mongols call the same country Nangiass. It is
separated from Khatai by the river called KARAMORAN, which comes from the
mountains of Tibet and Kashmir, and which is never fordable. The capital
of this kingdom is the city of Khingsai, which is forty days' journey
from Khanbalik." (Quat. Rashid., xci.-xciii.)
MANZI (or Mangi) is a name used for Southern China, or more properly for
the territory which constituted the dominion of the Sung Dynasty at the
time when the Mongols conquered Cathay or Northern China from the Kin, not
only by Marco, but by Odoric and John Marignolli, as well as by the
Persian writers, who, however, more commonly call it Machin. I imagine
that some confusion between the two words led to the appropriation of the
latter name, also to Southern China. The term Man-tzu or Man-tze
signifies "Barbarians" ("Sons of Barbarians"), and was applied, it is
said, by the Northern Chinese to their neighbours on the south, whose
civilisation was of later date.[1] The name is now specifically applied
to a wild race on the banks of the Upper Kiang. But it retains its
mediaeval application in Manchuria, where Mantszi is the name given to
the Chinese immigrants, and in that use is said to date from the time of
Kublai. (Palladius in J.R.G.S. vol. xlii. p. 154.) And Mr. Moule
has found the word, apparently used in Marco's exact sense, in a Chinese
extract of the period, contained in the topography of the famous Lake of
Hang-chau (infra, ch. lxxvi.-lxxvii.)
Though both Polo and Rashiduddin call the Karamoran the boundary between
Cathay and Manzi, it was not so for any great distance. Ho-nan belonged
essentially to Cathay.
[1] Magaillans says the Southerns, in return, called the Northerns
Pe-tai, "Fools of the North"!
CHAPTER LXV.
HOW THE GREAT KAAN CONQUERED THE PROVINCE OF MANZI.
You must know that there was a King and Sovereign lord of the great
territory of Manzi who was styled FACFUR, so great and puissant a prince,
that for vastness of wealth and number of subjects and extent of dominion,
there was hardly a greater in all the earth except the Great Kaan himself.
[NOTE 1] But the people of his land were anything rather than warriors;
all their delight was in women, and nought but women; and so it was above
all with the King himself, for he took thought of nothing else but women,
unless it were of charity to the poor.
In all his dominion there were no horses; nor were the people ever inured
to battle or arms, or military service of any kind. Yet the province of
Manzi is very strong by nature, and all the cities are encompassed by
sheets of water of great depth, and more than an arblast-shot in width; so
that the country never would have been lost, had the people but been
soldiers.
