HKB
105 are no longer necessary; in the eleventh moon of 1272 [say about January 1, 1273] Kúblái ‘presented the name Yung-ch’ang to the new city built by Prince Chi-pi T’ie-mu-r.’”
XLVI., p. 49. They have also in this country [Tibet] plenty of fine woollens and other stuffs, and many kinds of spices are produced there which are never seen in our country.
Dr. Laufer draws my attention to the fact that this translation does not give exactly the sense of the French text, which runs thus:
“Et encore voz di qe en ceste provence a gianbelot [camelot] assez et autres dras d’or et de soie, et hi naist maintes especes qe unques ne furent veue en nostre païs.” (Ed. Soc. de Géog., Chap. cxvi., p. 128.)
In the Latin text (Ibid., p. 398), we have:
“In ista provincia sunt giambelloti satis et alii panni de sirico et auro; et ibi nascuntur multæ species quæ nunquam fuerunt visæ in nostris contractis.”
Francisque-Michel (Recherches, II., p. 44) says: “Les Tartares fabriquaient aussi à Aias de très-beaux camelots de poil de chameau, que l’on expédiait pour divers pays, et Marco Polo nous apprend que cette denrée était fort abondante dans le Thibet. Au XVᵉ siècle, il en venait de l’île de Chypre.”
XLVII., pp. 50, 52.
WILD OXEN CALLED BEYAMINI.
Dr. Laufer writes to me: “Yule correctly identifies the ‘wild oxen’ of Tibet with the gayal (Bos gavaeus), but I do not believe that his explanation of the word beyamini (from an artificially constructed buemini = Bohemian) can be upheld. Polo states expressly that these wild oxen are called beyamini (scil. by the natives), and evidently alludes to a native Tibetan term. The gayal is styled in Tibetan ba-men (or ba-man), derived from ba (‘cow’), a diminutive form of which is beu. Marco Polo appears to have heard some dialectic form of this word like beu-men or beu-min.”
XLVIII., p. 70.
KIUNG TU AND KIEN TU.
Kiung tu or Kiang tu is Caindu in Sze-Ch’wan; Kien tu is in Yun Nan. Cf. PELLIOT, Bul. Ecole franç. Ext. Orient, July–Sept, 1904, p. 771. Caindu or Ning Yuan was, under the Mongols, a dependency of Yun Nan, not of Sze Ch’wan. (PELLIOT.)
XLVIII., p. 72. The name Karájáng. “The first element was the Mongol or Turki Kárá.... Among the inhabitants of this country some are black, and others are white; these latter are called by the Mongols Chaghán-Jáng (‘White Jang’). Jang has not been explained; but probably it may have been a Tibetan term adopted by the Mongols, and the colours may have applied to their clothing.”
Dr. Berthold Laufer, of Chicago, has a note on the subject in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soc., Oct., 1915, pp. 781–4: “M. Pelliot (Bul. Ecole franç. Ext. Orient, IV., 1904, p. 159) proposed to regard the unexplained name Jang as the Mongol transcription of Ts’uan, the ancient Chinese designation of the Lo-lo, taken from the family name of one of the chiefs of the latter; he gave his opinion, however, merely as an hypothesis which should await confirmation. I now believe that Yule was correct in his conception, and that, in accordance with his suggestion, Jang indeed represents the phonetically exact transcription of a Tibetan proper name. This is the Tibetan ạ Jaṅ or ạ Jaṇs (the prefixed letter ạ and the optional affix -s being silent, hence pronounced Jang or Djang), of which the following precise definition is given in the Dictionnaire tibétain-latin français par les Missionnaires Catholiques du Tibet (p. 351): ‘Tribus et regionis nomen in N.-W. provinciae Sinarum Yun-nan, cuius urbs principalis est Sa-t’am seu Ly-kiang fou. Tribus vocatur Mosso a Sinensibus et Nashi ab ipsismet incolis.’ In fact, as here stated, Jaⁿ or Jang is the Tibetan designation of the Moso and the territory inhabited by them, the capital of which is Li-kiang-fu. This name is found also in Tibetan literature....”