Chapter LVI: Discourses of the Province of Caugigu

Caugigu is a province towards the east, which has a king.{1} The people are Idolaters, and have a language of their own. They have made their submission to the Great Kaan, and send him tribute every year. And let me tell you their king is so given to luxury that he hath at the least 300 wives; for whenever he hears of any beautiful woman in the land, he takes and marries her.

They find in this country a good deal of gold, and they also have great abundance of spices. But they are such a long way from the sea that the products are of little value, and thus their price is low. They have elephants in great numbers, and other cattle of sundry kinds, and plenty of game. They live on flesh and milk and rice, and have wine made of rice and good spices. The whole of the people, or nearly so, have their skin marked with the needle in patterns representing lions, dragons, birds, and what not, done in such a way that it can never be obliterated. This work they cause to be wrought over face and neck and chest, arms and hands, and belly, and, in short, the whole body; and they look on it as a token of elegance, so that those who have the largest amount of this embroidery are regarded with the greatest admiration.

NOTE 1.—No province mentioned by Marco has given rise to wider and
wilder conjectures than this, _Cangigu_ as it has been generally
printed.

M. Pauthier, who sees in it Laos, or rather one of the states of
Laos called in the Chinese histories _Papesifu_, seems to have
formed the most probable opinion hitherto propounded by any editor
of Polo. I have no doubt that Laos or some part of that region
is meant to be _described_, and that Pauthier is right regarding
the general direction of the course here taken as being through
the regions east of Burma, in a north-easterly direction up into
Kwei-chau. But we shall be able to review the geography of this
tract better, as a whole, at a point more advanced. I shall then
speak of the name CAUGIGU, and why I prefer this reading of it.

I do not believe, for reasons which will also appear further on,
that Polo is now following a route which he had traced in person,
unless it be in the latter part of it.

M. Pauthier, from certain indications in a Chinese work, fixes on
Chiangmai or Kiang-mai, the Zimmé of the Burmese (in about latitude
18° 48′ and long. 99° 30′) as the capital of the Papesifu and of
the Caugigu of our text. It can scarcely however be the latter,
unless we throw over entirely all the intervals stated in Polo’s
itinerary; and M. Garnier informs me that he has evidence that the
capital of the Papesifu at this time was _Muang-Yong_, a little to
the south-east of Kiang-Tung, where he has seen its ruins.[1] That
the people called by the Chinese Papesifu were of the great race of
Laotians, Sháns, or _Thai_, is very certain, from the vocabulary of
their language published by Klaproth.

Pauthier’s Chinese authority gives a puerile interpretation of
_Papesifu_ as signifying “the kingdom of the 800 wives,” and says
it was called so because the Prince maintained that establishment.
This may be an indication that there were popular stories about
the numerous wives of the King of Laos, such as Polo had heard;
but the interpretation is doubtless rubbish, like most of the
so-called etymologies of proper names applied by the Chinese to
foreign regions. At best these seem to be merely a kind of _Memoria
Technica_, and often probably bear no more relation to the name
in its real meaning than Swift’s _All-eggs-under-the-grate_ bears
to Alexander Magnus. How such “etymologies” arise is obvious
from the nature of the Chinese system of writing. If we also had
to express proper names by combining monosyllabic words already
existing in English, we should in fact be obliged to write the name
of the Macedonian hero much as Swift travestied it. As an example
we may give the Chinese name of Java, _Kwawa_, which signifies
“gourd-sound,” and was given to that Island, we are told, because
the voice of its inhabitants is very like that of a dry gourd
rolled upon the ground! It is usually stated that Tungking was
called _Kiao-chi_, meaning “crossed-toes,” because the people often
exhibit that malformation (which is a fact), but we may be certain
that the syllables were originally a phonetic representation of an
indigenous name which has no such meaning. As another example, less
ridiculous but not more true, _Chin-tan_, representing the Indian
name of China, _Chínasthána_, is explained to mean “Eastern-Dawn”
(_Aurore Orientale_). (_Amyot_, XIV. 101; _Klapr. Mém._ III. 268.)

The states of Laos are shut out from the sea in the manner
indicated; they abound in domestic elephants to an extraordinary
extent; and the people do tattoo themselves in various degrees,
most of all (as M. Garnier tells me) about Kiang Hung. The _style_
of tattooing which the text describes is quite that of the Burmese,
in speaking of whom Polo has omitted to mention the custom: “Every
male Burman is tattooed in his boyhood from the middle to his
knees; in fact he has a pair of breeches tattooed on him. The
pattern is a fanciful medley of animals and arabesques, but it is
scarcely distinguishable, save as a general tint, except on a fair
skin.” (_Mission to Ava_, 151.)

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[1] Indeed documents in Klaproth’s _Asia Polyglotta_ show that the
_Papé_ state was also called _Muang-Yong_ (pp. 364–365). I observe
that the river running to the east of Pu-eul and Ssemao (Puer and
Esmok) is called _Papien_-Kiang, the name of which is perhaps a
memorial of the Papé.

[The old Laocian kingdom of _Xieng-maï_ [Kiang-mai], called
_Muong-Yong_ by the Pa-y, was inhabited by the _Pa-pe Si-fu_ or
Bát-bá T’úc-phu; the inhabitants called themselves Thaï-niai or
great Thaï. (_Devéria, Frontière_, p. 100.) Ch. ix. of the Chinese
work _Sze-i-kwan-kao_ is devoted to Xieng-maï (_Pa-pe_), which
includes the subdivisions of Laos, Xieng Hung [Kiang Hung] and
Muong-Ken. (_Devéria, Mél. de Harlez_, p. 97.)—H. C.]