Chapter 27

CONCERNING THE PROVINCE OF ANIN.

Anin is a Province towards the east, the people of which are subject to the Great Kaan, and are Idolaters. They live by cattle and tillage, and have a peculiar language. The women wear on the legs and arms bracelets of gold and silver of great value, and the men wear such as are even yet more costly. They have plenty of horses which they sell in great numbers to the Indians, making a great profit thereby. And they have also vast herds of buffaloes and oxen, having excellent pastures for these. They have likewise all the necessaries of life in abundance.{1}

Now you must know that between Anin and Caugigu, which we have left behind us, there is a distance of [25] days’ journey;{2} and from Caugigu to Bangala, the third province in our rear, is 30 days’ journey. We shall now leave Anin and proceed to another province which is some 8 days’ journey further, always going eastward.

NOTE 1.—Ramusio, the printed text of the Soc. de Géographie, and most editions have _Amu_; Pauthier reads _Aniu_, and considers the name to represent Tungking or Annam, called also _Nan-yué_. The latter word he supposes to be converted into _Anyuë_, _Aniu_. And accordingly he carries the traveller to the capital of Tungking.

Leaving the name for the present, according to the scheme of the route as I shall try to explain it below, I should seek for Amu or Aniu or _Anin_ in the extreme south-east of Yun-nan. A part of this region was for the first time traversed by the officers of the French expedition up the Mekong, who in 1867 visited Sheu-ping, Lin-ngan and the upper valley of the River of Tungking on their way to Yun-nan-fu. To my question whether the description in the text, of Aniu or Anin and its fine pastures, applied to the tract just indicated, Lieut. Garnier replied on the whole favourably (see further on), proceeding: “The population about Sheu-ping is excessively mixt. On market days at that town one sees a gathering of wild people in great number and variety, and whose costumes are highly picturesque, as well as often very rich. There are the _Pa-is_, who are also found again higher up, the _Ho-nhi_, the _Khato_, the _Lopé_, the _Shentseu_. These tribes appear to be allied in part to the Laotians, in part to the Kakhyens.... The wilder races about Sheuping are remarkably handsome, and you see there types of women exhibiting an extraordinary regularity of feature, and at the same time a complexion surprisingly _white_. The Chinese look quite an inferior race beside them.... I may add that all these tribes, especially the Ho-nhi and the Pa-ï, wear large amounts of silver ornament; great collars of silver round the neck, as well as on the legs and arms.”

Though the _whiteness_ of the people of Anin is not noticed by Polo, the distinctive manner in which he speaks in the next chapter of the _dark_ complexion of the tribes described therein seems to indicate the probable omission of the opposite trait here.

The prominent position assigned in M. Garnier’s remarks to a race called _Ho-nhi_ first suggested to me that the reading of the text might be ANIN instead of _Aniu_. And as a matter of fact this seems to my eyes to be clearly the reading of the Paris _Livre des Merveilles_ (Pauthier’s MS. B), while the Paris No. 5631 (Pauthier’s A) has _Auin_, and what may be either _Aniu_ or _Anin_. _Anyn_ is also found in the Latin Brandenburg MS. of Pipino’s version collated by Andrew Müller, to which, however, we cannot ascribe much weight. But the two words are so nearly identical in mediæval writing, and so little likely to be discriminated by scribes who had nothing to guide their discrimination, that one need not hesitate to adopt that which is supported by argument. In reference to the suggested identity of _Anin_ and _Ho-nhi_, M. Garnier writes again: “All that Polo has said regarding the country of Aniu, though not containing anything _very_ characteristic, may apply perfectly to the different indigenous tribes, at present subject to the Chinese, which are dispersed over the country from Talan to Sheuping and Lin-ngan. These tribes bearing the names (given above) relate that they in other days formed an independent state, to which they give the name of _Muang Shung_. Where this Muang was situated there is no knowing. These tribes have _langage par euls_, as Marco Polo says, and silver ornaments are worn by them to this day in extraordinary profusion; more, however, by the women than the men. They have plenty of horses, buffaloes and oxen, and of sheep as well. It was the first locality in which the latter were seen. The plateau of Lin-ngan affords pasture-grounds which are exceptionally good for that part of the world.

“Beyond Lin-ngan we find the Ho-nhi, properly so called, no longer. But ought one to lay much stress on mere names which have undergone so many changes, and of which so many have been borne in succession by all those places and peoples?... I will content myself with reminding you that the town of _Homi-cheu_ near Lin-ngan in the days of the Yuen bore the name of _Ngo-ning_.”

Notwithstanding M. Garnier’s caution, I am strongly inclined to believe that ANIN represents either HO-NHI or NGO-NING, if indeed these names be not identical. For on reference to Biot I see that the first syllable of the modern name of the town which M. Garnier writes HO_mí_, is expressed by the same character as the first syllable of NGO_ning_.

[The Wo-nhi are also called Ngo-ni, Kan-ni, Ho-ni, Lou-mi, No-pi, Ko-ni and Wa-heh; they descend from the southern barbarians called Ho-nhi. At the time of the kingdom of Nan-Chao, the Ho-nhi, called In-yuen, tribes were a dependence of the Kiang (Xieng) of Wei-yuen (Prefecture of P’u-erh). They are now to be found in the Yunnanese prefectures of Lin-ngan, King-tung, Chen-yuen, Yuen-kiang and Yun-nan. (See _Devéria_, p. 135.)—H. C.]

We give one of M. Garnier’s woodcuts representing some of the races in this vicinity. Their dress, as he notices, has, in some cases, a curious resemblance to costumes of Switzerland, or of Brittany, popular at fancy balls.[1] Coloured figures of some of these races will be found in the Atlas to Garnier’s work; see especially Plate 35.

NOTE 2.—All the French MSS. and other texts except Ramusio’s read 15. We adopt Ramusio’s reading, 25, for reasons which will appear below.

[1] There is a little uncertainty in the adjustment of names and figures of some of these tribes, between the illustrations and the incidental notices in Lieutenant Garnier’s work. But all the figures in the present cut certainly belong to the tract to which we point as Anin; and the two middle figures answer best to what is said of the _Ho-nhi_.