SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS
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surviving specimen of a Middle Mongolian literary text, and an invaluable source on the customs and mores of the Mongols in their early formative period, has a lot to tell about the feuds and struggles of steppe tribes. But it remains singularly uninformative about the countries outside Mongolia. The campaigns against Russia, for example, are mentioned only in the most laconic terms. It is said in No. 274 "they destroyed the towns of Ejil, Jayah and Meget". Of these three only Meget, modern Mzcheti near Tiflis, is a town, whereas Ejil and Jayah are names of rivers—the Volga and the Ural respectively. And later similar confusion reigns between names of tribes and towns—the text mentions the "population of towns like Asut, Sesut, Bolar and Man-Kerman Kiwa". Asut are the As, the Ossetes; Sesut are probably the Saqsin; Bolar the Volga Bulgars; and Man-Kerman Kiwa means in Turkish the "great town Kiwa" which might refer to Sugdaq near Kaffa in the Crimea raided by the Mongols in 1223. All this shows a grandiose unconcern over countries that, after all, had become parts of the Mongol empire.
The situation is not very different if we turn to the Chinese sources. The dynastic history of the Yuan, Yuan-shih, compiled in 1368-1369 from existing records does not contain much on those parts of Asia that, at some time under Kublai Khan, had belonged to him who was also emperor of China. The compilers and historiographers whose work finally resulted in the Yuan-shih as we have it were mostly Chinese, and their attitude in writing a dynastic history was as a matter of course centered on China. It is perhaps significant that in the section reserved for foreign states in the Yuan-shih we find only entries of those countries which had always had ambassadorial contacts and so-called "tribute" relations with China, countries like North and South Korea, Japan, Annam, Burma and Champa. These were immediate neighbors of China. No special chapters were written on other Western states, even if they were dominated by Mongols—countries such as Persia or the Golden Horde or the Chagatai dominion of Central Asia. If they sent embassies or notifications the records must be looked for in the annalistic section (pen-chi). There are, it is true, a few data on Western Asia and even Russia scattered through the Yuan-shih, but they are extremely scanty. There is an appendix on the Western Regions to the section of political geography (YS ch. 63) where the kingdom of Uzbeg.
SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS
51
surviving specimen of a Middle Mongolian literary text, and an invaluable source on the customs and mores of the Mongols in their early formative period, has a lot to tell about the feuds and struggles of steppe tribes. But it remains singularly uninformative about the countries outside Mongolia. The campaigns against Russia, for example, are mentioned only in the most laconic terms. It is said in No. 274 "they destroyed the towns of Ejil, Jayah and Meget". Of these three only Meget, modern Mzcheti near Tiflis, is a town, whereas Ejil and Jayah are names of rivers the Volga and the Ural respectively. And later similar confusion reigns between names of tribes and towns— - the text mentions the "population of towns like Asut, Sesut, Bolar and Man-Kerman Kiwa". Asut are the As, the Ossetes; Sesut are probably the Saqsin; Bolar the Volga Bulgars; and Man-Kerman Kiwa means in Turkish the "great town Kiwa" which might refer to Sugdaq near Kaffa in the Crimea raided by the Mongols in 1223. All this shows a grandiose unconcern over countries that, after all, had become parts of the Mongol empire.
The situation is not very different if we turn to the Chinese sources. The dynastic history of the Yuan, Yuan-shih, compiled in 1368-1369 from existing records does not contain much on those parts of Asia that, at some time under Kublai Khan, had belonged to him who was also emperor of China. The compilers and historiographers whose work finally resulted in the Yuan-shih as we have it were mostly Chinese, and their attitude in writing a dynastic history was as a matter of course centered on China. It is perhaps significant that in the section reserved for foreign states in the Yian-shih we find only entries of those countries which had always had ambassadorial contacts and so-called “tri- bute" relations with China, countries like North and South Korea, Japan, Annam, Burma and Champa. These were immediate neighbors of China. No special chapters were written on other Western states, even if they were dominated by Mongols - coun- tries such as Persia or the Golden Horde or the Chagatai dominion of Central Asia. If they sent embassies or notifications the records must be looked for in the annalistic section (pen-chi). There are, it is true, a few data on Western Asia and even Russia scattered through the Yuan-shih, but they are extremely scanty. There is an appendix on the Western Regions to the section of political geography (YS ch. 63) where the kingdom of Uzbeg.
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