Xanadu: a marble palace and a portable palace of cane
Editorial contextAt his summer capital Kublai had a marble palace with gilded, painted rooms inside a sixteen-mile walled park. He also had a second palace made of bamboo cane: gilded, roofed with split-cane tiles, held up by gilt dragon columns, and designed to be taken down and moved, with more than 200 silk cords to hold it against the wind. It is the steppe tent reimagined as palace architecture. This passage later inspired Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'.
The construction of the Palace is so devised that it can be taken down and put up again with great celerity ; and it can all be taken to pieces and removed whithersoever the Emperor may command. When erected, it is stayed [against mishaps from the wind] by more than 200 cords of silk.
About Kublai Khan's court
Keep in mind
The marble palace and the park are described on the previous page (p.263).
Natigay, the felt god of the household
Editorial contextPolo says the Tartars worship a high god of heaven and an earth god, Natigay, who guards children, cattle and crops. Every household had felt figures of him, his wife and children, and at meals they greased the idols' mouths with fat and sprinkled broth outside the door. Yule links Natigay to the Mongol 'ongon' spirit figures that Pallas later saw among the Buryats.
They show him great worship and honour, and every man hath a figure of him in his house, made of felt and cloth ; and they also make in the same manner images of his wife and children. … And when they eat, they take the fat of the meat and grease the god's mouth withal, as well as the mouths of his wife and children.
About Tartars (Mongols)
Units of ten, blood from a horse's vein and dried milk
Editorial contextPolo explains the decimal army (officers over ten, a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand, the 'toman'), scouts on every side, and how little gear a rider carried: two leather milk bottles, a small pot and a small tent. In emergencies they rode ten days without a fire, drinking blood from their horses' veins, and carried dried milk paste that churned into a meal inside the bottle as they rode.
And in case of great urgency they will ride ten days on end without lighting a fire or taking a meal. On such an occasion they will sustain themselves on the blood of their horses, opening a vein and letting the blood jet into their mouths, drinking till they have had enough, and then staunching it.
About Tartar (Mongol) armies
Keep in mind
Blood-drinking is also reported by Herberstein, Schiltberger and others; Polo describes the practice rather than a scene he witnessed.
The 'genuine Tartars' are going native
Editorial contextAfter praising Tartar warfare, Polo adds a striking remark: in his day the Mongols were changing. Those settled in China had taken up the religion and ways of the Chinese, and those in the Middle East had adopted Muslim customs. It is an eyewitness observation that the conquerors were being absorbed by the settled peoples they ruled.
But I must add also that in these days they are greatly degenerated ; for those who are settled in Cathay have taken up the practices of the Idolaters of the country, and have abandoned their own institutions ; whilst those who have settled in the Levant have adopted the customs of the Saracens.
About Mongols settled in China and in the Ilkhanate
Keep in mind
'Idolaters' means Buddhists and followers of Chinese religion; 'Saracens' means Muslims.
Ghost weddings for dead children
Editorial contextPolo reports that when a boy and a girl died unmarried, their families arranged a marriage between them, drew up a contract, burned it so the couple would know in the next world, and burned paper pictures of the dowry. Yule notes this is really a Chinese custom, though he trusts Polo that Mongols practised it too.
And marry them they do, making a regular contract ! And when the contract papers are made out they put them in the fire, in order (as they will have it) that the parties in the other world may know the fact, and so look on each other as man and wife.
About Tartars (Mongols); Chinese
The Tartars of the West and their kings
Editorial contextPolo calls the Golden Horde the 'Tartars of the Ponent' (of the West). Their first king, 'Sain', conquered Russia, the Cumans, Alans, Circassians, Goths of Crimea and Khazaria. He lists the later khans down to Toqta, who reigned in Polo's time. Yule's note points out that 'Sain' (the Good) was really Batu's own surname, so Polo turned one khan into two.
The first lord of the Tartars of the Ponent was Sain, a very great and puissant king, who conquered Rosia and Comania, Alania, Lac, Menjar, Zic, Gothia, and Gazaria ; all these provinces were conquered by King Sain.
About 'Tartars of the Ponent' (the Golden Horde)
Twenty thousand killed on the road to a khan's grave
Editorial contextPolo says all the Great Khans were carried, however far away they died, to a mountain called Altay for burial, and the funeral escort killed everyone they met on the road to serve the dead ruler in the next world, along with his best horses. He claims more than 20,000 people died this way on Möngke's funeral journey. Yule notes Rashid al-Din reports the same custom for Chinggis.
When they are carrying the body of any Emperor to be buried with the others, the convoy that goes with the body doth put to the sword all whom they fall in with on the road, saying : "Go and wait upon your Lord in the other world !" … when Mongou Kaan died, more than 20,000 persons, who chanced to meet the body on its way, were slain
About Mongol imperial family
Keep in mind
Möngke died in 1259, years before Polo arrived; the figure is hearsay and likely exaggerated.
Gog and Magog are really Ung and Mungul
Editorial contextIn Tenduc, which he says was once Prester John's capital, Polo meets the legend of Gog and Magog, the wild nations Alexander walled in. He offers a down-to-earth explanation: the local names Ung and Mungul, two peoples who lived there before the Tartar migration, had been misheard in the West as Gog and Magog. Yule's notes identify the Ung as the Ongut.
Here also is what we call the country of Gog and Magog ; they, however, call it Ung and Mungul, after the names of two races of people that existed in that Province before the migration of the Tartars. Ung was the title of the people of the country, and Mungul a name sometimes applied to the Tartars.
About Ongut and Mongols
Keep in mind
Polo's 'Prester John' line here is King George of the Ongut, a Nestorian Christian prince.
The khan's daughter who wrestled her suitors for horses
Editorial contextKaidu Khan's daughter Aijaruc ('Bright Moon') refused to marry anyone who could not beat her. Each challenger staked horses, and she won more than 10,000. When a handsome prince staked 1,000 horses and her parents begged her to lose, she threw him on the palace floor anyway. She then rode to war with her father, snatching enemies from their ranks 'as deftly as a hawk'.
When both had taken post in the middle of the hall they grappled each other by the arms and wrestled this way and that, but for a long time neither could get the better of the other. At last, however, it so befel that the damsel threw him right valiantly on the palace pavement.
About Aijaruc (Khutulun), daughter of Kaidu Khan
Keep in mind
Polo was not present; Persian sources confirm a warrior daughter of Kaidu named Khutulun.
Raiding the Land of Darkness on mares with foals
Editorial contextFar to the north, Polo says, lies a Land of Darkness where no sun, moon or stars are seen. Tartars raid it riding mares whose foals they leave at the border, trusting the mares to find the way back to their young. The pale inhabitants hunt sables, ermine and black fox for the fur trade. Yule suggests the story garbles the Arctic winter night.
The Tartars however sometimes visit the country, and they do it in this way. They enter the region riding mares that have foals, and these foals they leave behind. After taking all the plunder that they can get, they find their way back by help of the mares, which are all eager to get back to their foals
About Tartars (Golden Horde raiders) and northern fur hunters
Keep in mind
Pure hearsay; the mare-and-foal trick is an old travellers' tale also told of Alexander the Great.