NOTE 6.—­Two particulars appearing in these latter paragraphs are alluded to by Rashiduddin in giving a brief account of the overland route from India to China, which is unfortunately very obscure:  “Thence you arrive at the borders of Tibet, where they eat raw meat and worship images, and have no shame respecting their wives.” (Elliot, I. p. 73.)

[1] Baber writes (p. 107):  “The river is never called locally by any other
    name than Kin-ke or ’Gold River.’[A] The term Kin-sha-Kiang should
    in strictness be confined to the Tibetan course of the stream; as
    applied to other parts it is a mere book name.  There is no great
    objection to its adoption, except that it is unintelligible to the
    inhabitants of the banks, and is liable to mislead travellers in
    search of indigenous information, but at any rate it should not be
    supposed to asperse Marco Polo’s accuracy. Gold River is the local
    name from the junction of the Yalung to about P’ing-shan; below
    P’ing-shan it is known by various designations, but the Ssu-ch’uanese
    naturally call it ‘the River,’ or, by contrast with its affluents, the
    ‘Big River’ (Ta-ho).”  I imagine that Baber here makes a slight
    mistake, and that they use the name kiang, and not ho, for the
    river.—­H.C.

[Mr. Rockhill remarks (Land of the Lamas, p. 196 note) that “Marco Polo speaks of the Yang-tzu as the Brius, and Orazio della Penna calls it Biciu, both words representing the Tibetan Dre ch’u.  This last name has been frequently translated ‘Cow yak River,’ but this is certainly not its meaning, as cow yak is dri-mo, never pronounced dre, and unintelligible without the suffix, mo. Dre may mean either mule, dirty, or rice, but as I have never seen the word written, I cannot decide on any of these terms, all of which have exactly the same pronunciation.  The Mongols call it Murus osu, and in books this is sometimes changed to Murui osu, ‘Tortuous river.’  The Chinese call it Tung t’ien ho, ‘River of all Heaven.’  The name Kin-sha kiang, ‘River of Golden Sand,’ is used for it from Bat’ang to Sui-fu, or thereabouts.”  The general name for the river is Ta-Kiang (Great River), or simply Kiang, in contradistinction to Ho, for Hwang-Ho (Yellow River) in Northern China.—­H.C.]

[A] Marco Polo nowhere calls the river “Gold River,” the name he
gives it is Brius.—­H.Y.

[2] Baron Richthofen, who has travelled hundreds of miles in his
    footsteps, considers his allowance of time to be generally from 1/4 to
    1/9 greater than that now usual.

[3] See Quatremere’s Rashiduddin, pp. lxxxvi.-xcvi.  My quotation is
    made up from two citations by Quatremere, one from his text of
    Rashiduddin, and the other from the History of Benakeli, which
    Quatremere shows to have been drawn from Rashiduddin, whilst it
    contains some particulars not existing in his own text of that author.