On Market Days At That Town One Sees A Gathering Of
Wild People In Great Number And Variety, And Whose Costumes Are Highly
Picturesque, As Well As Often Very Rich.
There are the Pa-is, who are
also found again higher up, the Ho-nhi, the Khato, the Lope, the
Shentseu.
These tribes appear to be allied in part to the Laotians, in
part to the Kakhyens.... The wilder races about Sheuping are remarkably
handsome, and you see there types of women exhibiting an extraordinary
regularity of feature, and at the same time a complexion surprisingly
white. The Chinese look quite an inferior race beside them.... I may
add that all these tribes, especially the Ho-nhi and the Pa-i, wear large
amounts of silver ornament; great collars of silver round the neck, as
well as on the legs and arms."
Though the whiteness of the people of Anin is not noticed by Polo, the
distinctive manner in which he speaks in the next chapter of the dark
complexion of the tribes described therein seems to indicate the probable
omission of the opposite trait here.
The prominent position assigned in M. Garnier's remarks to a race called
Ho-nhi first suggested to me that the reading of the text might be ANIN
instead of Aniu. And as a matter of fact this seems to my eyes to be
clearly the reading of the Paris Livre des Merveilles (Pauthier's MS.
B), while the Paris No. 5631 (Pauthier's A) has Auin, and what may be
either Aniu or Anin.
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