Chapter LXXVIII

TREATING OF THE GREAT YEARLY REVENUE THAT THE GREAT KAAN HATH
FROM KINSAY.

Now I will tell you about the great revenue which the Great Kaan draweth every year from the said city of Kinsay and its territory, forming a ninth part of the whole country of Manzi.

First there is the salt, which brings in a great revenue. For it produces every year, in round numbers, fourscore _tomans_ of gold; and the _toman_ is worth 70,000 _saggi_ of gold, so that the total value of the fourscore tomans will be five millions and six hundred thousand _saggi_ of gold, each saggio being worth more than a gold florin or ducat; in sooth, a vast sum of money! [This province, you see, adjoins the ocean, on the shores of which are many lagoons or salt marshes, in which the sea-water dries up during the summer time; and thence they extract such a quantity of salt as suffices for the supply of five of the kingdoms of Manzi besides this one.]

Having told you of the revenue from salt, I will now tell you of that which accrues to the Great Kaan from the duties on merchandize and other matters.

You must know that in this city and its dependencies they make great quantities of sugar, as indeed they do in the other eight divisions of this country; so that I believe the whole of the rest of the world together does not produce such a quantity, at least, if that be true which many people have told me; and the sugar alone again produces an enormous revenue.—However, I will not repeat the duties on every article separately, but tell you how they go in the lump. Well, all spicery pays three and a third per cent. on the value; and all merchandize likewise pays three and a third per cent. [But sea-borne goods from India and other distant countries pay ten per cent.] The rice-wine also makes a great return, and coals, of which there is a great quantity; and so do the twelve guilds of craftsmen that I told you of, with their 12,000 stations apiece, for every article they make pays duty. And the silk which is produced in such abundance makes an immense return. But why should I make a long story of it? The silk, you must know, pays ten per cent., and many other articles also pay ten per cent.

And you must know that Messer Marco Polo, who relates all this, was several times sent by the Great Kaan to inspect the amount of his customs and revenue from this ninth part of Manzi,{1} and he found it to be, exclusive of the salt revenue which we have mentioned already, 210 _tomans_ of gold, equivalent to 14,700,000 _saggi_ of gold; one of the most enormous revenues that ever was heard of. And if the sovereign has such a revenue from one-ninth part of the country, you may judge what he must have from the whole of it! However, to speak the truth, this part is the greatest and most productive; and because of the great revenue that the Great Kaan derives from it, it is his favourite province, and he takes all the more care to watch it well, and to keep the people contented.{2}

Now we will quit this city and speak of others.

NOTE 1.—Pauthier’s text seems to be the only one which says that
Marco was sent by the Great Kaan. The G. Text says merely: “_Si qe
jeo March Pol qe plusor foies hoï faire le conte de la rende de
tous cestes couses_,”—“had several times heard the calculations
made.”

NOTE 2.—_Toman_ is 10,000. And the first question that occurs in
considering the statements of this chapter is as to the unit of
these tomans, as intended by Polo. I believe it to have been the
_tael_ (or Chinese ounce) of gold.

We do not know that the Chinese ever made monetary calculations
in gold. But the usual unit of the revenue accounts appears from
Pauthier’s extracts to have been the _ting_, _i.e._ a money of
account equal to ten taels of silver, and we know (_supra_, ch. l.
note 4) that this was in those days the exact equivalent of one
tael of gold.

The equation in our text is 10,000 _x_ = 70,000 saggi of gold,
giving _x_, or the unit sought, = 7 _saggi_. But in both Ramusio
on the one hand, and in the Geog. Latin and Crusca Italian texts
on the other hand, the equivalent of the toman is 80,000 _saggi_;
though it is true that neither with one valuation nor the other
are the calculations consistent in any of the texts, except
Ramusio’s.[1] This consistency does not give any greater weight
to Ramusio’s reading, because we know that version to have been
_edited_, and corrected when the editor thought it necessary: but
I adopt his valuation, because we shall find other grounds for
preferring it. The unit of the _toman_ then is = 8 _saggi_.

The Venice saggio was one-sixth of a Venice ounce. The Venice mark
of 8 ounces I find stated to contain 3681 grains troy;[2] hence the
_saggio_ = 76 grains. But I imagine the term to be used by Polo
here and in other Oriental computations, to express the Arabic
_misḳál_, the real weight of which, according to Mr. Maskelyne, is
74 grains troy. The _misḳál_ of gold was, as Polo says, something
more than a ducat or sequin, indeed, weight for weight, it was to a
ducat nearly as 1·4:1.

Eight _saggi_ or _misḳáls_ would be 592 grains troy. The tael is
580, and the approximation is as near as we can reasonably expect
from a calculation in such terms.

Taking the silver tael at 6_s._ 7_d._, the gold tael, or rather
the _ting_, would be = 3_l._ 5_s._ 10_d._; the _toman_ =
32,916_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._; and the whole salt revenue (80 tomans)
= 2,633,333_l._; the revenue from other sources (210 tomans) =
6,912,500_l._; total revenue from Kinsay and its province (290
tomans) = 9,545,833_l._ A sufficiently startling statement, and
quite enough to account for the sobriquet of Marco Milioni.

Pauthier, in reference to this chapter, brings forward a number of
extracts regarding Mongol finance from the official history of that
dynasty. The extracts are extremely interesting in themselves, but
I cannot find in them that confirmation of Marco’s accuracy which
M. Pauthier sees.

First as to the salt revenue of Kiang-Ché, or the province of
Kinsay. The facts given by Pauthier amount to these: that in
1277, the year in which the Mongol salt department was organised,
the manufacture of salt amounted to 92,148 _yin_, or 22,115,520
_kilos._; in 1286 it had reached 450,000 _yin_, or 108,000,000
_kilos._; in 1289 it fell off by 100,000 _yin_.

The price was, in 1277, 18 _liang_ or taels, in _chao_ or
paper-money of the years 1260–64 (see vol. i. p. 426); in 1282 it
was raised to 22 taels; in 1284 a permanent and reduced price was
fixed, the amount of which is not stated.

M. Pauthier assumes as a mean 400,000 _yin_, at 18 taels, which
will give 7,200,000 _taels_; or, at 6_s._ 7_d._ to the tael,
2,370,000_l._ But this amount being in _chao_ or paper-currency,
which at its highest valuation was worth only 50 per cent. of the
nominal value of the notes, we must _halve_ the sum, giving the
salt revenue on Pauthier’s assumptions = 1,185,000_l._

Pauthier has also endeavoured to present a table of the whole
revenue of Kiang-Ché under the Mongols, amounting to 12,955,710
paper _taels_, or 2,132,294_l._, _including_ the salt revenue. This
would leave only 947,294_l._ for the other sources of revenue,
but the fact is that several of these are left blank, and among
others one so important as the sea-customs. However, even making
the extravagant supposition that the sea-customs and other omitted
items were equal in amount to the whole of the other sources of
revenue, salt included, the total would be only 4,264,585_l._

Marco’s amount, as he gives it, is, I think, unquestionably a
huge exaggeration, though I do not suppose an intentional one. In
spite of his professed rendering of the amounts in gold, I have
little doubt that his tomans really represent paper-currency,
and that to get a valuation in gold, his total has to be divided
_at the very least_ by two. We may then compare his total of 290
tomans of paper _ting_ with Pauthier’s 130 tomans of paper _ting_,
excluding sea-customs and some other items. No nearer comparison is
practicable; and besides the sources of doubt already indicated, it
remains uncertain what in either calculation are the limits of the
province intended. For the bounds of Kiang-Ché seem to have varied
greatly, sometimes including and sometimes excluding Fo-kien.

I may observe that Rashiduddin reports, on the authority of the
Mongol minister Pulad Chingsang, that the whole of Manzi brought in
a revenue of “900 tomans.” This Quatremère renders “nine million
pieces of gold,” presumably meaning dinars. It is unfortunate
that there should be uncertainty here again as to the unit. If
it were the _dinar_ the whole revenue of Manzi would be about
5,850,000_l._, whereas if the unit were, as in the case of Polo’s
toman, the _ting_, the revenue would be nearly 30,000,000 sterling!

It does appear that in China a toman of some denomination of money
near the dinar was known in account. For Friar Odoric states the
revenue of Yang-chau in _tomans_ of _Balish_, the latter unit
being, as he explains, a sum in paper-currency equivalent to a
florin and a half (or something more than a dinar); perhaps,
however, only the _liang_ or tael (see vol. i. pp. 426–7).

It is this calculation of the Kinsay revenue which Marco is
supposed to be expounding to his fellow-prisoner on the title-page
of this volume. [See _P. Hoang, Commerce Public du Sel_, Shanghai,
1898, Liang-tché-yen, pp. 6–7.—H. C.]

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[1] Pauthier’s MSS. A and B are hopelessly corrupt here. His MS. C
agrees with the Geog. Text in making the toman = 70,000 saggi, but
210 tomans = 15,700,000, instead of 14,700,000. The Crusca and
Latin have 80,000 saggi in the first place, but 15,700,000 in the
second. Ramusio alone has 80,000 in the first place, and 16,800,000
in the second.

[2] _Eng. Cyclop., “Weights and Measures.”_