Marco Conceives Of It, Not As In India, But As
Being, Like Mien, A Province On The Confines Of India,
As being under
the same king as Mien, as lying to the south of that kingdom, and as being
at
The (south) western extremity of a great traverse line which runs
(north) east into Kwei-chau and Sze-ch'wan. All these conditions point
consistently to one locality; that, however, is not Bengal but Pegu. On
the other hand, the circumstances of manners and products, so far as they
go, do belong to Bengal. I conceive that Polo's information regarding
these was derived from persons who had really visited Bengal by sea, but
that he had confounded what he so heard of the Delta of the Ganges with
what he heard on the Yun-nan frontier of the Delta of the Irawadi. It is
just the same kind of error that is made about those great Eastern Rivers
by Fra Mauro in his Map. And possibly the name of Pegu (in Burmese
Bagoh) may have contributed to his error, as well as the probable fact
that the Kings of Burma did at this time claim to be Kings of Bengal,
whilst they actually were Kings of Pegu.
Caugigu. - We have seen reason to agree with M. Pauthier that the
description of this region points to Laos, though we cannot with him
assign it to Kiang-mai. Even if it be identical with the Papesifu of the
Chinese, we have seen that the centre of that state may be placed at Muang
Yong not far from the Mekong; whilst I believe that the limits of Caugigu
must be drawn much nearer the Chinese and Tungking territory, so as to
embrace Kiang Hung, and probably the Papien River.
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