HKB
SINDAFU.
Tch’eng Tu was the capital of the Kingdom of Shu. The first Shu Dynasty was the Minor Han Dynasty which lasted from A.D. 221 to A.D. 263; this Shu Dynasty was one of the Three Kingdoms (San Kwo chi); the two others being Wei (A.D. 220–264) reigning at Lo Yang, and Wu (A.D. 222–277) reigning at Kien Kang (Nan King). The second was the Ts’ien Shu Dynasty, founded in 907 by Wang Kien, governor of Sze Chw’an since 891; it lasted till 925, when it submitted to the Hau T’ang; in 933 the Hau T’ang were compelled to grant the title of King of Shu (Hau Shu) to Mong Chi-siang, governor of Sze Chw’an, who was succeeded by Mong Ch’ang, dethroned in 965; the capital was also Ch’eng Tu under these two dynasties.
TIBET.
XLV., p. 44. No man of that country would on any consideration take to wife a girl who was a maid; for they say a wife is nothing worth unless she has been used to consort with men. And their custom is this, that when travellers come that way, the old women of the place get ready, and take their unmarried daughters or other girls related to them, and go to the strangers who are passing, and make over the young women to whomsoever will accept them; and the travellers take them accordingly and do their pleasure; after which the girls are restored to the old women who brought them....
Speaking of the Sifan village of Po Lo and the account given by Marco Polo of the customs of these people, M. R. Logan JACK (Back Blocks, 1904, pp. 145–6) writes: “I freely admit that the good looks and modest bearing of the girls were the chief merits of the performance in my eyes. Had the danseuses been scrubbed and well dressed, they would have been a presentable body of débutantes in any European ballroom. One of our party, frivolously disposed, asked a girl (through an interpreter) if she would marry him and go to his country. The reply, ‘I do not know you, sir,’ was all that propriety could have demanded in the best society, and worthy of a pupil ‘finished’ at Miss Pinkerton’s celebrated establishment.... Judging from our experience, no idea of hospitalities of the kind [Marco’s experience] was in the people’s minds.”
XLV., p. 45. Speaking of the people of Tibet, Polo says: “They are very poorly clad, for their clothes are only of the skins of beasts, and of canvas, and of buckram.”
Add to the note, I., p. 48, n. 5:—
“Au XIVᵉ siècle, le bougran [buckram] était une espèce de tissu de lin: le meilleur se fabriquait en Arménie et dans le royaume de Mélibar, s’il faut s’en rapporter à Marco Polo, qui nous apprend que les habitants du Thibet, qu’il signale comme pauvrement vêtus, l’étaient de canevas et de bougran, et que cette dernière étoffe se fabriquait aussi dans la province d’Abasce. Il en venait également de l’île de Chypre. Sorti des manufactures d’Espagne ou importé dans le royaume, à partir de 1442, date d’une ordonnance royale publiée par le P. Saez, le bougran le plus fin payait soixante-dix maravédis de droits, sans distinction de couleur” (FRANCISQUE-MICHEL, Recherches sur le commerce, la fabrication et l’usage des étoffes de soie, d’or et d’argent.... II., 1854, pp. 33–4). Passage mentioned by Dr. Laufer.
XLV., pp. 46 n., 49 seq.