The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1

[1] “They draw nowadays the map of the world in a laughable manner, for they draw the inhabited earth as a circle; but this is impossible, both from what we see and from reason.” (Meteorolog. Lib. II. cap. 5.) Cf. Herodotus, iv. 36.

[2] In Dante’s Cosmography, Jerusalem is the centre of our οἰκουμένη, whilst the Mount of Purgatory occupies the middle of the Antipodal hemisphere:—

“Come ciò sia, se’ l vuoi poter pensare,

Dentro raccolto immagina Sion

Con questo monte in su la terra stare,

Sì, ch’ambodue hann’un solo orrizon

E diversi emisperi”....

—Purg. IV. 67.

[3] The belief, with this latter ground of it, is alluded to in curious verses by Jacopo Alighieri, Dante’s son:—

“E molti gran Profeti

Filosofi e Poeti

Fanno il colco dell’Emme

Dov’è Gerusalemme;

Se le loro scritture

Hanno vere figure:

E per la Santa fede

Cristiana ancor si vede

Che’ l’ suo principio Cristo

Nel suo mezzo conquisto

Per cui prese morte

E vi pose la sorte.”

—(Rime Antiche Toscane, III. 9.)

Though the general meaning of the second couplet is obvious, the expression il colco dell’Emme, “the couch of the M,” is puzzling. The best solution that occurs to me is this: In looking at the world map of Marino Sanudo, noticed on p. 133, as engraved by Bongars in the Gesta Dei per Francos, you find geometrical lines laid down, connecting the N.E., N.W., S.E., and S.W. points, and thus forming a square inscribed in the circular disk of the Earth, with its diagonals passing through the Central Zion. The eye easily discerns in these a great M inscribed in the circle, with its middle angular point at Jerusalem. Gervasius of Tilbury (with some confusion in his mind between tropic and equinoxial, like that which Pliny makes in speaking of the Indian Mons Malleus) says that “some are of opinion that the Centre is in the place where the Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria at the well, for there, at the summer solstice, the noonday sun descends perpendicularly into the water of the well, casting no shadow; a thing which the philosophers say occurs at Syene”! (Otia Imperialia, by Liebrecht, p. 1.)

[4] This circumstance does not, however, show in the Vulgate.

[5]

“Veggiamo in prima in general la terra

Come risiede e come il mar la serra.

Un T dentro ad un O mostra il disegno

Come in tre parti fu diviso il Mondo,

E la superiore è il maggior regno

Che quasi piglia la metà del tondo.

Asia chiamata: il gambo ritto è segno

Che parte il terzo nome dal secondo

Affrica dico da Europa: il mare

Mediterran tra esse in mezzo appare.”

—La Sfera, di F. Leonardo di Stagio Dati, Lib. iii. st. 11.

[6] De Civ. Dei, xvi. 17, quoted by Peschel, 92.

[7] Opus Majus, Venice ed. pp. 142, seqq.

[8] Peschel, p. 195. This had escaped me.

[9] By the Rev. W. L. Bevan, M.A., and the Rev. H. W. Phillott, M.A. In Asia, they point out, the only name showing any recognition of modern knowledge is Samarcand.

[10] His work, Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis, intended to stimulate a new Crusade, has three capital maps, besides that of the World, one of which, translated, but otherwise in facsimile, is given at p. 18 of this volume. But besides these maps, he gives, in a tabular form of parallel columns, the reigning sovereigns in Europe and Asia connected with his historical retrospect, just on the plan presented in Sir Harris Nicolas’s Chronology of History.

[11] I do not see that al-Birúni deserves the credit in this respect assigned to him by Professor Peschel, so far as one can judge from the data given by Sprenger (Peschel, p. 128; Post und Reise-Routen, 81–82.)

[12] For example, Delli, which Polo does not name; Diogil (Deogír); on the Coromandel coast Setemelti, which I take to be a clerical error for Sette-Templi, the Seven Pagodas; round the Gulf of Cambay we have Cambetum (Kambayat), Cocintaya (Kokan-Tana, see vol. ii. p. 396), Goga, Baroche, Neruala (Anharwala), and to the north Moltan. Below Multan are Hocibelch and Bargelidoa, two puzzles. The former is, I think, Uch-baligh, showing that part of the information was from Perso-Mongol sources.

[13] I see it stated by competent authority that Romman is often applied to any prose composition in a Romance language.

In or about 1426, Prince Pedro of Portugal, the elder brother of the illustrious Prince Henry, being on a visit to Venice, was presented by the Signory with a copy of Marco Polo’s book, together with a map already alluded to. (Major’s P. Henry, pp. 61, 62.)

[14] This is partly due also to Fra Mauro’s reversion to the fancy of the circular disk limiting the inhabited portion of the earth.

[15] An early graphic instance of this is Ruysch’s famous map (1508). The following extract of a work printed as late as 1533 is an example of the like confusion in verbal description: “The Territories which are beyond the limits of Ptolemy’s Tables have not yet been described on certain authority. Behind the Sinae and the Seres, and beyond 180° of East Longitude, many countries were discovered by one [quendam] Marco Polo a Venetian and others, and the sea-coasts of those countries have now recently again been explored by Columbus the Genoese and Amerigo Vespucci in navigating the Western Ocean.... To this part (of Asia) belong the territory called that of the Bachalaos [or Codfish, Newfoundland], Florida, the Desert of Lop, Tangut, Cathay, the realm of Mexico (wherein is the vast city of Temistitan, built in the middle of a great lake, but which the older travellers styled Quinsay), besides Paria, Uraba, and the countries of the Canibals.” (Joannis Schoneri Carolostadtii Opusculum Geogr., quoted by Humboldt, Examen, V. 171, 172.)

[16] In Robert Parke’s Dedication of his Translation of Mendoza’s, London, 1st of January, 1589, he identifies China and Japan with the regions of which Paulus Venetus and Sir John Mandeuill “wrote long agoe.”—MS. Note by Yule.

[17] “Totius Europae et Asiae Tabula Geographica, Auctore Thoma D. Aucupario. Edita Argentorati, mdxxii.” Copied in Witsen.

[18] This strange association of Balor (i.e., Bolor, that name of so many odd vicissitudes, see pp. 178–179 infra) with the shut-up Israelites must be traced to a passage which Athanasius Kircher quotes from R. Abraham Pizol (qu. Peritsol?): “Regnum, inquit, Belor magnum et excelsum nimis, juxta omnes illos qui scripserunt Historicos. Sunt in eo Judaei plurimi inclusi, et illud in latere Orientali et Boreali,” etc. (China Illustrata, p. 49.)

[19] Vol. ii. p. 1.

[20] A short Account of Libraries of Italy, by the Hon. R. Curzon (the late Lord de la Zouche); in Bibliog. and Hist. Miscellanies; Philobiblon Society, vol. i, 1854, pp. 6. seqq.

[21] P. del Natali was Bishop of Equilio, a city of the Venetian Lagoons, in the latter part of the 14th century. (See Ughelli, Italia Sacra, X. 87.) There is no ground whatever for connecting him with these inventions. The story of the glass types appears to rest entirely and solely on one obscure passage of Sansovino, who says that under the Doge Marco Corner (1365–1367): “certe Natale Veneto lasciò un libro della materie delle forme da giustar intorno alle lettere, ed il modo di formarle di vetro.” There is absolutely nothing more. Some kind of stencilling seems indicated.

[22] History of Printing in China and Europe, in Philobiblon, vol. vi. p. 23.

[23] See Appendix L. in First Edition.

[24] Ramusio himself appears to have been entirely unconscious of it, vide supra, p. 3.

[25] This subject has been fully treated in Cathay and the Way Thither.

XIV. Explanations regarding the Basis adopted for the present Translation.

89. It remains to say a few words regarding the basis adopted for our English version of the Traveller’s record.

Ramusio’s recension was that which Marsden selected for translation. But at the date of his most meritorious publication nothing was known of the real Text followed by Marsden and by Pauthier. literary history of Polo’s Book, and no one was aware of the peculiar value and originality of the French manuscript texts, nor had Marsden seen any of them. A translation from one of those texts is a translation at first hand; a translation from Ramusio’s Italian is, as far as I can judge, the translation of a translated compilation from two or more translations, and therefore, whatever be the merits of its matter, inevitably carries us far away from the spirit and style of the original narrator. M. Pauthier, I think, did well in adopting for the text of his edition the MSS. which I have classed as of the second Type, the more as there had hitherto been no publication from those texts. But editing a text in the original language, and translating, are tasks substantially different in their demands.

90. It will be clear from what has been said in the preceding pages that I should not regard as a fair or full representation of Polo’s Work, a versionEclectic formation of the English Text of this Translation. on which the Geographic Text did not exercise a material influence. But to adopt that Text, with all its awkwardnesses and tautologies, as the absolute subject of translation, would have been a mistake. What I have done has been, in the first instance, to translate from Pauthier’s Text. The process of abridgment in this text, however it came about, has been on the whole judiciously executed, getting rid of the intolerable prolixities of manner which belong to many parts of the Original Dictation, but as a general rule preserving the matter. Having translated this,—not always from the Text adopted by Pauthier himself, but with the exercise of my own judgment on the various readings which that Editor lays before us,—I then compared the translation with the Geographic Text, and transferred from the latter not only all items of real substance that had been omitted, but also all expressions of special interest and character, and occasionally a greater fulness of phraseology where condensation in Pauthier’s text seemed to have been carried too far. And finally I introduced between brackets everything peculiar to Ramusio’s version that seemed to me to have a just claim to be reckoned authentic, and that could be so introduced without harshness or mutilation. Many passages from the same source which were of interest in themselves, but failed to meet one or other of these conditions, have been given in the notes.[1]

91. As regards the reading of proper names and foreign words, in which there is so much variation in the different MSS. and editions, Mode of rendering proper names.I have done my best to select what seemed to be the true reading from the G. T. and Pauthier’s three MSS., only in some rare instances transgressing this limit.

Where the MSS. in the repetition of a name afforded a choice of forms, I have selected that which came nearest the real name when known. Thus the G. T. affords Baldasciain, Badascian, Badasciam, Badausiam, Balasian. I adopt Badascian, or in English spelling Badashan, because it is closest to the real name Badakhshan. Another place appears as Cobinan, Cabanat, Cobian. I adopt the first because it is the truest expression of the real name Koh-benán. In chapters 23, 24 of Book I., we have in the G. T. Asisim, Asciscin, Asescin, and in Pauthier’s MSS. Hasisins, Harsisins, etc. I adopt Asciscin, or in English spelling Ashishin, for the same reason as before. So with Creman, Crerman, Crermain, Querman, Anglicè Kerman; Cormos, Hormos, and many more.[2]

In two or three cases I have adopted a reading which I cannot show literatim in any authority, but because such a form appears to be the just resultant from the variety of readings which are presented; as in surveying one takes the mean of a number of observations when no one can claim an absolute preference.

Polo’s proper names, even in the French Texts, are in the main formed on an Italian fashion of spelling.[3] I see no object in preserving such spelling in an English book, so after selecting the best reading of the name I express it in English spelling, printing Badashan, Pashai, Kerman, instead of Badascian, Pasciai, Querman, and so on.

And when a little trouble has been taken to ascertain the true form and force of Polo’s spelling of Oriental names and technical expressions, it will be found that they are in the main as accurate as Italian lips and orthography will admit, and not justly liable either to those disparaging epithets[4] or to those exegetical distortions which have been too often applied to them. Thus, for example, Cocacin, Ghel or Ghelan, Tonocain, Cobinan, Ondanique, Barguerlac, Argon, Sensin, Quescican, Toscaol, Bularguci, Zardandan, Anin, Caugigu, Coloman, Gauenispola, Mutfili, Avarian, Choiach, are not, it will be seen, the ignorant blunderings which the interpretations affixed by some commentators would imply them to be, but are, on the contrary, all but perfectly accurate utterances of the names and words intended.

The -tchéou (of French writers), -choo, -chow, or -chau[5] of English writers, which so frequently forms the terminal part in the names of Chinese cities, is almost invariably rendered by Polo as -giu. This has frequently in the MSS., and constantly in the printed editions, been converted into -gui, and thence into -guy. This is on the whole the most constant canon of Polo’s geographical orthography, and holds in Caagiu (Ho-chau), Singiu (Sining-chau), Cui-giu (Kwei-chau), Sin-giu (T’sining-chau), Pi-giu (Pei-chau), Coigangiu (Hwaingan-chau), Si-giu (Si-chau), Ti-giu (Tai-chau), Tin-giu (Tung-chau), Yan-giu (Yang-chau), Sin-giu (Chin-chau), Cai-giu (Kwa-chau), Chinghi-giu (Chang-chau), Su-giu (Su-chau), Vu-giu (Wu-chau), and perhaps a few more. In one or two instances only (as Sinda-ciu, Caiciu) he has -ciu instead of -giu.

The chapter-headings I have generally taken from Pauthier’s Text, but they are no essential part of the original work, and they have been slightly modified or enlarged where it seemed desirable.

[1] This “eclectic formation of the English text,” as I have called it for brevity in the marginal rubric, has been disapproved by Mr. de Khanikoff, a critic worthy of high respect. But I must repeat that the duties of a translator, and of the Editor of an original text, at least where the various recensions bear so peculiar a relation to each other as in this case, are essentially different; and that, on reconsidering the matter after an interval of four or five years, the plan which I have adopted, whatever be the faults of execution, still commends itself to me as the only appropriate one.

Let Mr. de Khanikoff consider what course he would adopt if he were about to publish Marco Polo in Russian. I feel certain that with whatever theory he might set out, before his task should be concluded he would have arrived practically at the same system that I have adopted.

[2] In Polo’s diction C frequently represents H., e.g., Cormos = Hormuz; Camadi probably = Hamadi; Caagiu probably = Hochau; Cacianfu = Hochangfu, and so on. This is perhaps attributable to Rusticiano’s Tuscan ear. A true Pisan will absolutely contort his features in the intensity of his efforts to aspirate sufficiently the letter C. Filippo Villani, speaking of the famous Aguto (Sir J. Hawkwood), says his name in English was Kauchouvole. (Murat. Script. xiv. 746.)

[3] In the Venetian dialect ch and j are often sounded as in English, not as in Italian. Some traces of such pronunciation I think there are, as in Coja, Carajan, and in the Chinese name Vanchu (occurring only in Ramusio, supra, p. 99). But the scribe of the original work being a Tuscan, the spelling is in the main Tuscan. The sound of the Qu is, however, French, as in Quescican, Quinsai, except perhaps in the case of Quenianfu, for a reason given in vol. ii. p. 29.

[4] For example, that enthusiastic student of mediæval Geography, Joachim Lelewel, speaks of Polo’s “gibberish” (le baragouinage du Venitien) with special reference to such names as Zayton and Kinsay, whilst we now know that these names were in universal use by all foreigners in China, and no more deserve to be called gibberish than Bocca-Tigris, Leghorn, Ratisbon, or Buda.

[5] I am quite sensible of the diffidence with which any outsider should touch any question of Chinese language or orthography. A Chinese scholar and missionary (Mr. Moule) objects to my spelling chau, whilst he, I see, uses chow. I imagine we mean the same sound, according to the spelling which I try to use throughout the book. Dr. C. Douglas, another missionary scholar, writes chau.