And
let me tell you their king is so given to luxury that he hath at the least
300 wives; for whenever he hears of any beautiful woman in the land, he
takes and marries her.
They find in this country a good deal of gold, and they also have great
abundance of spices. But they are such a long way from the sea that the
products are of little value, and thus their price is low. 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. This may be an
indication that there were popular stories about the numerous wives of the
King of Laos, such as Polo had heard; but the interpretation is doubtless
rubbish, like most of the so-called etymologies of proper names applied by
the Chinese to foreign regions. At best these seem to be merely a kind of
Memoria Technica, and often probably bear no more relation to the name
in its real meaning than Swift's All-eggs-under-the-grate bears to
Alexander Magnus. How such "etymologies" arise is obvious from the nature
of the Chinese system of writing. If we also had to express proper names
by combining monosyllabic words already existing in English, we should in
fact be obliged to write the name of the Macedonian hero much as Swift
travestied it. As an example we may give the Chinese name of Java,
Kwawa, which signifies "gourd-sound," and was given to that Island, we
are told, because the voice of its inhabitants is very like that of a dry
gourd rolled upon the ground! It is usually stated that Tungking was
called Kiao-chi meaning "crossed-toes," because the people often exhibit
that malformation (which is a fact), but we may be certain that the
syllables were originally a phonetic representation of an indigenous name
which has no such meaning. As another example, less ridiculous but not
more true, Chin-tan, representing the Indian name of China,
Chinasthana, is explained to mean "Eastern-Dawn" (Aurore Orientale).
(Amyot, XIV. 101; Klapr. Mem. III. 268.)
The states of Laos are shut out from the sea in the manner indicated; they
abound in domestic elephants to an extraordinary extent; and the people do
tattoo themselves in various degrees, most of all (as M. Garnier tells me)
about Kiang Hung. The style of tattooing which the text describes is
quite that of the Burmese, in speaking of whom Polo has omitted to mention
the custom: "Every male Burman is tattooed in his boyhood from the middle
to his knees; in fact he has a pair of breeches tattooed on him. The
pattern is a fanciful medley of animals and arabesques, but it is scarcely
distinguishable, save as a general tint, except on a fair skin." (Mission
to Ava, 151.)
[1] Indeed documents in Klaproth's Asia Polyglotta show that the
Pape state was also called Muang-Yong (pp. 364-365). I observe
that the river running to the east of Pu-eul and Ssemao (Puer and
Esmok) is called Papien-Kiang, the name of which is perhaps a
memorial of the Pape.