Marco Polo
translation: Henry Yule, Henri Cordier

THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO
Volume II.
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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 XIV'e siecle, le bougran [buckram] était une espece de tissu de lin: le meilleur se fabriquait en Arménie et dans le royaume de Mélibar, s'il faut s'en rapporter a Marco Polo, qui nous apprend que les habitants du Thibet, qu'il signale comme pauvrement vetus, l'étaient de canevas et de bougran, et que cette derniere 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, a 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.

Referring to Dr. E. Bretschneider, Prof. E.H. Parker gives the following notes in the Asiatic Quart. Review, Jan., 1904, p. 131: "In 1251 Ho-erh-t'ai was appointed to the command of the Mongol and Chinese forces advancing on Tibet (T'u-fan). [In my copy of the Yüan Shi there is no entry under the year 1254 such as that mentioned by Bretschneider; it may, however, have been taken by Palladius from some (...)

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