The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 · Chapter 19Part 19
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It may be said with general truth that the world-maps current up to the end of the 13th century had more analogy to the mythical cosmography of the Hindus than to any thing properly geographical. Both, no doubt, were originally based in the main on real features. In the Hindu cosmography these genuine features are symmetrised as in a kaleidoscope; in the European cartography they are squeezed together in a manner that one can only compare to a pig in brawn. Here and there some feature strangely compressed and distorted is just recognisable. A splendid example of this kind of map is that famous one at Hereford, executed about A.D. 1275, of which a facsimile has lately been published, accompanied by a highly meritorious illustrative Essay.[9]
82. Among the Arabs many able men, from the early days of Islám, took an interest in Geography, and devoted labour to geographical compilations, in which they often made use of their own observations, of the itineraries of travellers, and of other fresh knowledge. But somehow or other their maps were always far behind their books. Though they appear to have had an early translation of Ptolemy, and elaborate Tables of Latitudes and Longitudes form a prominent feature in many of their geographical treatises, there appears to be no Arabic map in existence, laid down with meridians and parallels; whilst all of their best known maps are on the old system of the circular disk. This apparent incapacity for map-making appears to have acted as a heavy drag and bar upon progress in Geography among the Arabs, notwithstanding its early promise among them, and in spite of the application to its furtherance of the great intellects of some (such as Abu Rihán al-Biruni), and of the indefatigable spirit of travel and omnivorous curiosity of others (such as Mas’udi).
83. Some distinct trace of acquaintance with the Arabian Geography is to be found in the World-Map of Marino Sanudo the Elder, constructed between 1300 and 1320; and this may be regarded as an exceptionally favourable specimen of the cosmography in vogue, for the author was a diligent investigator and compiler, who evidently took a considerable interest in geographical questions, and had a strong enjoyment and appreciation of a map.[10] Nor is the map in question without some result of these characteristics. His representation of Europe, Northern Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, Arabia and its two gulfs, is a fair approximation to general facts; his collected knowledge has enabled him to locate, with more or less of general truth, Georgia, the Iron Gates, Cathay, the Plain of Moghan, Euphrates and Tigris, Persia, Bagdad, Kais, Aden (though on the wrong side of the Red Sea), Abyssinia (Habesh), Zangibar (Zinz), Jidda (Zede), etc. But after all the traditional forms are too strong for him. Jerusalem is still the centre of the disk of the habitable earth, so that the distance is as great from Syria to Gades in the extreme West, as from Syria to the India Interior of Prester John which terminates the extreme East. And Africa beyond the Arabian Gulf is carried, according to the Arabian modification of Ptolemy’s misconception, far to the eastward until it almost meets the prominent shores of India.
84. The first genuine mediæval attempt at a geographical construction that I know of, absolutely free from the traditional idola, is the Map of the known World from the Portulano Mediceo (in the Laurentian Library), of which an extract is engraved in the atlas of Baldelli-Boni’s Polo. I need not describe it, however, because I cannot satisfy myself that it makes much use of Polo’s contributions, and its facts have been embodied in a more ambitious work of the next generation, the celebrated Catalan Map of 1375 in the great Library of Paris. This also, but on a larger scale and in a more comprehensive manner, is an honest endeavour to represent the known world on the basis of collected facts, casting aside all theories pseudo-scientific or pseudo-theological; and a very remarkable work it is. In this map it seems to me Marco Polo’s influence, I will not say on geography, but on map-making, is seen to the greatest advantage. His Book is the basis of the Map as regards Central and Further Asia, and partially as regards India. His names are often sadly perverted, and it is not always easy to understand the view that the compiler took of his itineraries. Still we have Cathay admirably placed in the true position of China, as a great Empire filling the south-east of Asia. The Eastern Peninsula of India is indeed absent altogether, but the Peninsula of Hither India is for the first time in the History of Geography represented with a fair approximation to its correct form and position,[11] and Sumatra also (Jaua) is not badly placed. Carajan, Vocian, Mien, and Bangala, are located with a happy conception of their relation to Cathay and to India. Many details in India foreign to Polo’s book,[12] and some in Cathay (as well as in Turkestan and Siberia, which have been entirely derived from other sources) have been embodied in the Map. But the study of his Book has, I conceive, been essentially the basis of those great portions which I have specified, and the additional matter has not been in mass sufficient to perplex the compiler. Hence we really see in this Map something like the idea of Asia that the Traveller himself would have presented, had he bequeathed a Map to us.
[Some years ago, I made a special study of the Far East in the Catalan Map (L’Extrême-Orient dans l’Atlas catalan de Charles V., Paris, 1895), and I have come to the conclusion that the cartographer’s knowledge of Eastern Asia is drawn almost entirely from Marco Polo. We give a reproduction of part of the Catalan Map.—H. C.]
85. In the following age we find more frequent indications that Polo’s book was diffused and read. And now that the spirit of discovery began to stir, it was apparently regarded in a juster light as a Book of Facts, and not as a mere Romman du Grant Kaan.[13] But in fact this age produced new supplies of crude information in greater abundance than the knowledge of geographers was prepared to digest or co-ordinate, and the consequence is that the magnificent Work of Fra Mauro (1459), though the result of immense labour in the collection of facts and the endeavour to combine them, really gives a considerably less accurate idea of Asia than that which the Catalan Map had afforded.[14]
And when at a still later date the great burst of discovery eastward and westward took effect, the results of all attempts to combine the new knowledge with the old was most unhappy. The first and crudest forms of such combinations attempted to realise the ideas of Columbus regarding the identity of his discoveries with the regions of the Great Kaan’s dominion;[15] but even after America had vindicated its independent position on the surface of the globe, and the new knowledge of the Portuguese had introduced China where the Catalan Map of the 14th century had presented Cathay, the latter country, with the whole of Polo’s nomenclature, was shoved away to the north, forming a separate system.[16] Henceforward the influence of Polo’s work on maps was simply injurious; and when to his nomenclature was added a sprinkling of Ptolemy’s, as was usual throughout the 16th century, the result was a most extraordinary hotch-potch, conveying no approximation to any consistent representation of facts.
Thus, in a map of 1522,[17] running the eye along the north of Europe and Asia from West to East, we find the following succession of names: Groenlandia, or Greenland, as a great peninsula overlapping that of Norvegia and Suecia; Livonia, Plescovia and Moscovia, Tartaria bounded on the South by Scithia extra Imaum, and on the East, by the Rivers Ochardes and Bautisis (out of Ptolemy), which are made to flow into the Arctic Sea. South of these are Aureacithis and Asmirea (Ptolemy’s Auxacitis and Asmiræa), and Serica Regio. Then following the northern coast Balor Regio,[18] Judei Clausi, i.e. the Ten Tribes who are constantly associated or confounded with the Shut-up Nations of Gog and Magog. These impinge upon the River Polisacus, flowing into the Northern Ocean in Lat. 75°, but which is in fact no other than Polo’s Pulisanghin![19] Immediately south of this is Tholomon Provincia (Polo’s again), and on the coast Tangut, Cathaya, the Rivers Caramoran and Oman (a misreading of Polo’s Quian), Quinsay and Mangi.
86. The Maps of Mercator (1587) and Magini (1597) are similar in character, but more elaborate, introducing China as a separate system. Such indeed also is Blaeu’s Map (1663) excepting that Ptolemy’s contributions are reduced to one or two.
In Sanson’s Map (1659) the data of Polo and the mediæval Travellers are more cautiously handled, but a new element of confusion is introduced in the form of numerous features derived from Edrisi.
It is scarcely worth while to follow the matter further. With the increase of knowledge of Northern Asia from the Russian side, and that of China from the Maps of Martini, followed by the surveys of the Jesuits, and with the real science brought to bear on Asiatic Geography by such men as De l’Isle and D’Anville, mere traditional nomenclature gradually disappeared. And the task which the study of Polo has provided for the geographers of later days has been chiefly that of determining the true localities that his book describes under obsolete or corrupted names.
[My late illustrious friend, Baron A. E. Nordenskiöld, who has devoted much time and labour to the study of Marco Polo (see his Periplus, Stockholm, 1897), and published a facsimile edition of one of the French MSS. kept in the Stockholm Royal Library (see vol. ii. Bibliography, p. 570), has given to The Geographical Journal for April, 1899, pp. 396–406, a paper on The Influence of the “Travels of Marco Polo” on Jacobo Gastaldi’s Maps of Asia. He writes (p. 398) that as far as he knows, none “of the many learned men who have devoted their attention to the discoveries of Marco Polo, have been able to refer to any maps in which all or almost all those places mentioned by Marco Polo are given. All friends of the history of geography will therefore be glad to hear that such an atlas from the middle of the sixteenth century really does exist, viz. Gastaldi’s ‘Prima, seconda e terza parte dell’Asia.’” All the names of places in Ramusio’s Marco Polo are introduced in the maps of Asia of Jacobo Gastaldi (1561). Cf. Periplus, liv., lv., and lvi.
I may refer to what both Yule and myself say supra of the Catalan Map.—H. C.]
87. Before concluding, it may be desirable to say a few words on the subject of important knowledge other than geographical, which various persons have supposed that Marco Polo must have introduced from Eastern Asia to Europe.
Respecting the mariner’s compass and gunpowder I shall say nothing, as no one now, I believe, imagines Marco to have had anything to do with their introduction. But from a highly respectable source in recent years we have seen the introduction of Block-printing into Europe connected with the name of our Traveller. The circumstances are stated as follows:[20]
“In the beginning of the 15th century a man named Pamphilo Castaldi, of Feltre ... was employed by the Seignory or Government of the Republic, to engross deeds and public edicts of various kinds ... the initial letters at the commencement of the writing being usually ornamented with red ink, or illuminated in gold and colours.
“According to Sansovino, certain stamps or types had been invented some time previously by Pietro di Natali, Bishop of Aquilœa.[21] These were made at Murano of glass, and were used to stamp or print the outline of the large initial letters of public documents, which were afterwards filled up by hand.... Pamphilo Castaldi improved on these glass types, by having others made of wood or metal, and having seen several Chinese books which the famous traveller Marco Polo had brought from China, and of which the entire text was printed with wooden blocks, he caused moveable wooden types to be made, each type containing a single letter; and with these he printed several broadsides and single leaves, at Venice, in the year 1426. Some of these single sheets are said to be preserved among the archives at Feltre....
“The tradition continues that John Faust, of Mayence ... became acquainted with Castaldi, and passed some time with him, at his Scriptorium, ... at Feltre;”
and in short developed from the knowledge so acquired the great invention of printing. Mr. Curzon goes on to say that Panfilo Castaldi was born in 1398, and died in 1490, and that he gives the story as he found it in an article written by Dr. Jacopo Facen, of Feltre, in a (Venetian?) newspaper called Il Gondoliere, No. 103, of 27th December, 1843.
In a later paper Mr. Curzon thus recurs to the subject:[22]
“Though none of the early block-books have dates affixed to them, many of them are with reason supposed to be more ancient than any books printed with moveable types. Their resemblance to Chinese block-books is so exact, that they would almost seem to be copied from the books commonly used in China. The impressions are taken off on one side of the paper only, and in binding, both the Chinese, and ancient German, or Dutch block-books, the blank sides of the pages are placed opposite each other, and sometimes pasted together.... The impressions are not taken off with printer’s ink, but with a brown paint or colour, of a much thinner description, more in the nature of Indian ink, as we call it, which is used in printing Chinese books. Altogether the German and Oriental block-books are so precisely alike, in almost every respect, that ... we must suppose that the process of printing then must have been copied from ancient Chinese specimens, brought from that country by some early travellers, whose names have not been handed down to our times.”
The writer then refers to the tradition about Guttemberg (so it is stated on this occasion, not Faust) having learned Castaldi’s art, etc., mentioning a circumstance which he supposes to indicate that Guttemberg had relations with Venice; and appears to assent to the probability of the story of the art having been founded on specimens brought home by Marco Polo.
This story was in recent years diligently propagated in Northern Italy, and resulted in the erection at Feltre of a public statue of Panfilo Castaldi, bearing this inscription (besides others of like tenor):—
“To Panfilo Castaldi the illustrious Inventor of Movable Printing Types, Italy renders this Tribute of Honour, too long deferred.”
In the first edition of this book I devoted a special note to the exposure of the worthlessness of the evidence for this story.[23] This note was, with the present Essay, translated and published at Venice by Comm. Berchet, but this challenge to the supporters of the patriotic romance, so far as I have heard, brought none of them into the lists in its defence.
But since Castaldi has got his statue from the printers of Lombardy, would it not be mere equity that the mariners of Spain should set up a statue at Huelva to the Pilot Alonzo Sanchez of that port, who, according to Spanish historians, after discovering the New World, died in the house of Columbus at Terceira, and left the crafty Genoese to appropriate his journals, and rob him of his fame?
Seriously; if anybody in Feltre cares for the real reputation of his native city, let him do his best to have that preposterous and discreditable fiction removed from the base of the statue. If Castaldi has deserved a statue on other and truer grounds let him stand; if not, let him be burnt into honest lime! I imagine that the original story that attracted Mr. Curzon was more jeu d’esprit than anything else; but that the author, finding what a stone he had set rolling, did not venture to retract.
88. Mr. Curzon’s own observations, which I have italicised about the resemblance of the two systems are, however, very striking, and seem clearly to indicate the derivation of the art from China. But I should suppose that in the tradition, if there ever was any genuine tradition of the kind at Feltre (a circumstance worthy of all doubt), the name of Marco Polo was introduced merely because it was so prominent a name in Eastern Travel. The fact has been generally overlooked and forgotten[24] that, for many years in the course of the 14th century, not only were missionaries of the Roman Church and Houses of the Franciscan Order established in the chief cities of China, but a regular trade was carried on overland between Italy and China, by way of Tana (or Azov), Astracan, Otrar and Kamul, insomuch that instructions for the Italian merchant following that route form the two first chapters in the Mercantile Handbook of Balducci Pegolotti (circa 1340).[25] Many a traveller besides Marco Polo might therefore have brought home the block-books. And this is the less to be ascribed to him because he so curiously omits to speak of the art of printing, when his subject seems absolutely to challenge its description.
[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.
“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.
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 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 version 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, 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.