As Far As Ts'ing-K'i Hien, 3 Marches Beyond
Ya-Chau, This Route Coincides With The Great Tibet Road By Ta-T'sien Lu
And Bathang To L'hasa, And Then It Diverges To The Left.
We may now say without hesitation that by this road Marco travelled.
His
Tibet commences with the mountain region near Ya-chau; his 20 days'
journey through a devastated and dispeopled tract is the journey to
Ning-yuan fu. Even now, from Ts'ing-k'i onwards for several days, not a
single inhabited place is seen. The official route from Ya-chau to
Ning-yuan lays down 13 stages, but it generally takes from 15 to 18 days.
Polo, whose journeys seem often to have been shorter than the modern
average,[2] took 20. On descending from the highlands he comes once more
into a populated region, and enters the charming Valley of Kien-ch'ang.
This valley, with its capital near the upper extremity, its numerous towns
and villages, its cassia, its spiced wine, and its termination southward on
the River of the Golden Sands, is CAINDU. The traveller's road from
Ningyuan to Yunnanfu probably lay through Hwei-li, and the Kin-sha Kiang
would be crossed as already indicated, near its most southerly bend, and
almost due north of Yun-nan fu. (See Richthofen as quoted at pp. 45-46.)
As regards the name of CAINDU or GHEINDU (as in G.T.), I think we may
safely recognise in the last syllable the do which is so frequent a
termination of Tibetan names (Amdo, Tsiamdo, etc.); whilst the Cain, as
Baron Richthofen has pointed out, probably survives in the first part of
the name Kienchang.
[Baber writes (pp. 80-81): "Colonel Yule sees in the word Caindu a
variation of 'Chien-ch'ang,' and supposes the syllable 'du' to be the same
as the termination 'du,' 'do,' or 'tu,' so frequent in Tibetan names. In
such names, however, 'do' never means a district, but always a confluence,
or a town near a confluence, as might almost be guessed from a map of
Tibet.... Unsatisfied with Colonel Yule's identification, I cast about for
another, and thought for a while that a clue had been found in the term
'Chien-t'ou' (sharp-head), applied to certain Lolo tribes. But the idea
had to be abandoned, since Marco Polo's anecdote about the 'caitiff,' and
the loose manners of his family, could never have referred to the Lolos,
who are admitted even by their Chinese enemies to possess a very strict
code indeed of domestic regulations. The Lolos being eliminated, the
Si-fans remained; and before we had been many days in their neighbourhood,
stories were told us of their conduct which a polite pen refuses to record.
It is enough to say that Marco's account falls rather short of the truth,
and most obviously applies to the Si-fan."
[Illustration: Road descending from the Table-Land of Yun-nan into the
Valley of the Kin-sha Kiang (the Brius of Polo).
(After Garnier.)]
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