Footnotes
* I am grateful to Bettine Birge, Lina Nie, Yitian Li, Yung-chang Tung, Yuan-Heng Mao, and Penghao Sun for their valuable suggestions on this article. I also thank the reviewers of JWH for their incisive comments, which are very helpful for revising this article.
1. John of Plano Carpini, History of the Mongols, in Mission to Asia, ed. Christopher Dawson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 3–79; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (New York: Routledge, 2014), 87–95.
2. William of Rubruck, The Journey of William of Rubruck, in Mission to Asian, 89–223. The Mongols and the West, 99–103.
3. Mission to Asia, xviii–xxi.
4. For the family background of Marco Polo, see John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 31–46.
5. Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian: Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, trans. and ed. Henry Yule, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1871), 378–85.
6. For an introduction of the different versions of the manuscript, see Marco Polo, The Description of the World, trans. Sharon Kinosh*ta (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2016), xiv–xxv.
7. Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the world, 134, 180.
8. Ibid., 136.
9. Ibid., 180.
10. Ibid., 151–60; also see Berthold Laufer, “Columbus and Cathay, and the Meaning of America to the Orientalist,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, LI (1931): 89–96.
11. A. C. Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1930), 9–10; Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the world, 172–3.
12. Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the world, 175.
13. The study of Marco Polo’s book is a well-established field. For a few representative works, see Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo (Paris: Imprimere Nationale, 1959); Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the world; Stephen Haw, Marco Polo’s China: AVenetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan (London: Routledge, 2006).
14. Marco Polo/Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. 2, 107–108. All the major versions of Marco Polo’s travelogue, including the oldest F version, contain this anecdote. For a different translation of this account, see Marco Polo: The Description of the World, trans. and ed., A. C. Moule and Paul Pelliot (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1938), 310–1.
15. Song Lian 宋濂, Yuanshi, j. 9, 177–9. For English scholarship on the life and career of Bayan, see Francis Cleaves, “The Biography of Bayan of the Bārin in the Yüan Shih,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 19, no. 3/4 (1956): 185–303.
16. Cleaves, “The Biography of Bayan of the Bārin in the Yüan Shih,” 187.
17. Song Lian, Yuanshi, j. 8, 154–5; j. 9, 177–9; j. 126, 3099–113.
18. The title Chengxiang is not limited to Bayan. For example, Bolad Aqa, Rashid alDin’s main informant of China, is usually called Bolad Chengxiang in sources. For research of Bolad’s life, see Thomas Allsen, “Biography of a Cultural Broker: Bolad Ch’eng-Hsiang in China and Iran,” in The Court of the Il-Khans, 1290–1340, eds. Julian Raby and Teresa Fitzherbert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 7–22. Also see Thomas Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 59–80.
19. Cleaves, “The Biography of Bayan of the Bārin in the Yüan Shih,” 186.
20. Ibid.
21. Marco Polo/Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 1, 28; Henry Cordier, Ser Marco Polo: Notes and Addenda to Sir Henry Yule’s Edition, Containing the Results of Recent Research and Discovery (London: John Murray, 1920), 74; Paul Pelliot, “Kao-Tch’ang, Qoco, HouoTcheou et Qara-Khodja,” Journal Asiatique 10, no. 19 (1912): 592; Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo Vol. I (Paris: Imperimerie Nationale, 1959), 424; David Morgan, “Persian as a Lingua Franca in the Mongol Empire,” in Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order, ed. B. Spooner and W. L. Hanaway (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 160–70; Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo Go to China (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 56–60. Recently Stephen Haw, however, has challenged this argument, contending that Persian could not be seen as a lingua franka in Yuan China. See Stephen Haw, “The Persian Language in Yuan-Dynasty China: A Reappraisal,” East Asian History 39 (2014): 5–32.
22. This summary is based on the entries of Argus, Hermes, and Io in Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology, ed. Luke Roman and Monica Roman (New York: Facts on File, 2010), 80–81; 220–3; 265–6.
23. The study of Ovid and his works is a very well-established field. For a general view of this field, see Philip Hardie, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ovid (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006); John F. Miller and Carole E. Newlands, eds., A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid (Chinchester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).
24. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), 22.
25. Ibid., 25
26. For the circulation of Ovid’s works during times of antiquity, see Alison Keith, “Poetae Ovidiani: Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Imperial Roman Epic,” in A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, 70–85; Ian Fielding, “A Poet Between Two Worlds: Ovid in Late Antiquity,” in A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, 100–14.
27. Lester Born, “Ovid and Allegory,” Speculum 9, no. 4 (1934): 362.
28. Traube, Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen, vol. 2 (Munich, 1911), 113. This quotation is from Stephen Wheeler, “Before the aetas Ovidiana: Mapping the Early Reception of Ovidian Elegy,” Hermathena 177/178 (2004/2005): 9–26. Also see Ralph Hexter, “Ovid in the Middle Ages: Exile, Mythographer, and Lover,” in Brill’s Companion to Ovid, ed. Barbara Boyd (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 413–42. Born, “Ovid and Allegory,” 363.
29. This paragraph is based on Frank Coulson, “Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the school tradition of France, 1180–1400: Texts, Manuscript Traditions, Manuscript Settings,” in Ovid in the Middle Ages, ed. James Clark et al. (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 48–82; for introductions of these works and authors, see Kathryn McKinley, Reading the Ovidian Heroine: “Metamorphoses” Commentaries 1100–1618 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 64–80.
30. Coulson, “Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the school tradition of France, 1180–1400,” 82.
31. Robert Black, “Ovid in Medieval Italy,” in Ovid in the Middle Ages, 132.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 134.
34. Ibid., 134–8. Also see Jamie Fumo, “Commentary and Collaboration in the Medieval Allegorical Tradition,” in A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, 114–28, particularly 114.
35. For an introduction of the allegorical interpretation, see James Clark, “Myth and the Medieval Church,” in A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology, ed. Vanda Zajko (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 43–58.
36. Cited in David Brumble, Classical Myths and Legends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: A Dictionary of Allegorical Meanings (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 35.
37. Brumble, Classical Myths and legends in the Middle Ages, 372. One might ask whether Berchorius’ work could reflect the situation in Marco Polo’s time since he was decades later than Marco Polo. I here insist that Berchorius’s work could to a large extent demonstrate the situation in Marco Polo’s time. As William Reynolds points out, Berchorius’ work was a continuation of a two-centuries tradition of moralizing commentaries on the Metamorphoses (William D. Reynolds, The Ovidius Moralizatus of Petrus Berchorius: An Introduction and Translation, University of Illinois: Ph.D. Dissertation, 1971, 1). Based on Berchorius’ work, we could surmise the contents of the works by Arnulf and Garland, who were preceding to or contemporary of Marco Polo. Furthermore, I know no Latin, and Reynolds’ translation of the Ovidius Moralizatus is the English translation of an allegorical commentary on the Metamorphoses that was closest to Marco Polo’s time.
38. Coulson, “Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the school tradition of France, 1180–1400,” 55.
39. Reynolds, The Ovidius Moralizatus of Petrus Berchorius: An Introduction and Translation, 143.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 145.
42. Ibid., 147.
43. Dante, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Volume 2 Purgatorio, ed. and trans. Robert Durling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), canto 29, 497.
44. Ovid/Humphries, Metamorphoses, 25.
45. Dante/Durling, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Volume 2 Purgatorio, canto 32, 551. For studies of the meanings of Dante’s references to the Argus myth, see Jessica Levenstein, “The Pilgrim, the Poet, and the Cowgirl: Dante’s Alter-‘Io’ in Purgatorio XXX–XXXI,” Dante Studies 114 (1996): 189–208; Caron Ann Cioffi, “The Anxieties of Ovidian Influence: Theft in Inferno XXIV and XXV,” Dante Studies 112 (1994): 77–100.
46. Dante/Durling, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Volume I Inferno, ed. and trans. Robert Durling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), canto 24, 367.
47. Ibid., canto 24, p. 376, n. 110.
48. Ibid.
49. Levenstein, “The Pilgrim, the Poet, and the Cowgirl: Dante’s Alter-‘Io’ in Purgatorio XXX–XXXI,” 195.
50. Devin DeWeese, “The Influence of the Mongols on the Religious Consciousness of Thirteenth Century Europe,” Mongolian Studies 5 (1978 & 1979): 41.
51. See C. W. Connell, “Western Views of the Origin of the ‘Tartars’: An Example of the Influence of Myth in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1973): 115–37; DeWeese, “The Influence of the Mongols on the Religious Consciousness of Thirteenth Century Europe,” 47–53; W. R. Jones, “The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 13, no. 4 (1971): 398–404.
52. Matthew Paris, Matthew Paris English History, trans. J. A. Giles (London: Herny G. Bohn, 1853–54), Vol. I, 312. Some sentences are in bold by the author.
53. For an introduction of Tartarus in classical mythology, see the Tartarus entry in Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology, 458–459.
54. DeWeese, “The Influence of the Mongols on the Religious Consciousness of Thirteenth Century Europe,” 47–53.
55. Wang Yun, Yutang jiahua (Beijing Zhonghua shuju, 2006), 103.
56. See Cleaves, “The Biography of Bayan of the Bārin in the Yüan Shih,” 187–8.
57. Su Tianjue, Yuanchao mingchen shilue (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2019), j. 2, p. 21.
58. Zhang Xuan 張鉉, Zhizheng Jinling xinzhi 至正金陵新志, in Songyuan fangzhi congkan 宋元方志叢刊 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989), vol. 6, j. 14, p. 5911.
59. Tao Zongyi, Chuogeng lu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956), j. 1, p. 18.
60. For Ming and Qing works that contain the hundred-wild-geese prophecy, see Jiang Yikui 蔣一葵, Yaoshantang waiji 堯山堂外紀 (Siku quanshu cunmu congshu 四庫全書存目叢書 edition, hereafter skcm edition), zi. 148, j. 69, p. 221; Wang Qi 王圻, Xu wenxian tongkao 續文獻通考(skcm edition), zi. 189, j. 224, p. 258; Chen Zhuo 陳焯, Songyuan shihui宋元詩會 (Yingyin Wenyuange siku quanshu 景印文淵閣四庫全書 edition, hereafter skqs edition), ce. 1464, j. 67, p. 270. For works that contain the variant “white wild goose” version, see Yang Shen 楊慎, Gujin Fengyao 古今風謠 (skcm edition), zi. 251, j. 1, p. 129; Tian Rucheng 田汝成, Xihu youlanzhi yu 西湖遊覽志餘 (skqs edition), ce. 585 j. 6, p. 360; Guo Zizhang 郭子章, Liuyu 六語(skcm edition), zi 251, j. 6, p. 241; Zhou Qingyuan 周清原, Xihu erji 西湖二集 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994 reprint), j. 10, p. 382; Li E厲鶚, Songshi jishi 宋詩紀事 (skqs edition), ce. 1485, j. 100, p. 843.
61. For a general introduction of the motif of the wild goose, see Alfred Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 74–81.
62. For the English translation of this poem, see Bernard Karlgren, The Book of Odes: Chinese Text, Transcription and Translation (Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), 125. For the different interpretations of the poem, see Alfred Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent, 74–75.
63. For a study of the imagery of wild geese in Du Fu’s poetry, see Luo Ning 羅寧, “Du Fu shizhongde yanyixiang he yongyanshi” 杜甫詩中的雁意象和詠雁詩, Hunan shifandaxue shehuikexue xuebao 湖南師範大學社會科學學報 6 (2015): 114–21.
64. Stephen Owen, The Poetry of Du Fu, vol. 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 232–3.
65. Ibid., vol. 3, 374–5.
66. Ibid., vol. 4, 384–5.
67. Wang Wei, “Shi zhi saishang” 使至塞上. This translation is by Stephen Owen, in Michael Fuller, An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 196.
68. Bai Juyi, “Qiusi” 秋思. This translation is by Michael fuller in An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty, 281.
69. Eugene Eoyang, “The Wang Chao-chün Legend: Configurations of the Classic,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 4, no. 1 (1982): 3–22; for a study of the Wang Zhaojun story in the narrative of modern Sino-Mongol relations, see Uradyn Bulag, The Mongols at China’s Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 63–102.
70. Shi Chong, “Wang Zhaojun ci yishou bing xu” 王昭君辭一首並序, in Yutai xinyong 玉台新詠, ed. Xu Ling 徐陵 (Sibu congkan 四部叢刊 edition), j. 2, p. 14a-b.
71. Wang Anshi, Linchuan xiansheng wenji 臨川先生文集 (Sibu congkan edition), j. 4, p. 8b.
72. Ma Zhiyuan, Hangong qiu, in Yuanquxuan fuwaibian 元曲選(附外編), ed. Zang Jinshu 臧晉叔 and Sui Shushen 隋樹森 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2021), ce 1, pp. 16–17.
73. Ban Gu, Hanshu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), j. 54, pp. 2459–67.
74. Li Bai, “Su Wu” 蘇武, in Fenlei buzhu litaibai shi 分類補注李太白詩 (sbck edition), j. 22, p. 14a.
75. The time when this drama was produced cannot be accurately traced. Ming authors claim that this drama was a Song-Yuan drama.
76. Suwu muyang ji 蘇武牧羊記, in Quanyuan xiqu 全元戲曲, ed. Wang Jisi 王季思, vol. 10 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1999), 449–51.
77. Song Lian, Yuanshi, j. 157, p. 3709; Tao Zongyi, Chuogeng lu, j. 20, p. 247.
78. For studies of this Hao Jing legend, see Miao Dong 苗冬, “Yuandai Haojing yanboshu shiji bianzheng” 元代郝經雁帛書事蹟辨正, in Yuanshi luncong 元史論叢 11 (Tianjing: Tianjing guji chubanshe, 2009), 255–60; Also see Liu Pujiang 劉浦江, “Lishi shi zhenyang xiechengde? Haojing yanboshu gushi zhenxiang fafu” 歷史是怎樣寫成的？郝經雁帛書故事真相發覆, in Liu Pujiang, Zhengtong yu huayi: Zhongguo chuantong zhengzhi wenhua yanjiu正統與華夷：中國傳統政治文化研究 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2017), 116–42.
79. Liu Yin, “Baiyan xing” 白雁行, in Quanyuan shi 全元詩, ed. Yang Lian 楊廉(Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2013), ce 15, p. 53.
80. Liu Yin, “Songduzong ximingdian gumo” 宋度宗熙明殿古墨, in Quanyuan shi, ce 15, p. 52.
81. Liu Yin, “Songlizong shu gongshan” 宋理宗書宮扇, in Quanyuan shi, ce 15, p. 49.
82. Wang Silian, “Shouyang meizhuang tu” 壽陽梅粧圖, in Yuan wenlei 元文類, ed. Su Tianjue (Hefei: Anhui daxue chubanshe, 2020), j. 8, p. 151.
83. Kong Qi 孔齊, Zhizheng zhiji 至正直記 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987), j. 3, p. 111.
84. Ibid.
85. Marco Polo/Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 1, 50.
86. Ibid., vol. 1, 52.
87. Ibid., vol. 1, 250. For the identification of the proper noun Tenduc, see Stephen Haw, Marco Polo’s China: A Venetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan, 91.
88. Ibid., vol. 1, 204. For the origins and circulation of the Prester John myth, see Yule’s commentary in Marco Polo/Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 1, p. 205, n. 3.
89. Marco Polo/Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 2, 227.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 232, n. 5.
92. For Rustichello’s life, works, and his relationship with Marco Polo’s travelogue, see John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the world, 46–67.
93. Wang Yun, “Ba Su Wu chijie tu” 拔蘇武持節圖, in Quanyuan shi, ce. 5, p. 408.
94. Tao Zongyi, Chuogeng lu, j. 1, p. 18.
95. Ibid., j. 20, p. 247.
96. Ibid., j. 5, p. 63.
97. Here I do not mean that Marco Polo also held a monstrous imagination of the Mongols. On the contrary, Marco Polo’s description of Khubilai was rather rational and sometimes overpraising. For Marco Polo’s cultural attitude, see Longxi Zhang, “Marco Polo, Chinese Cultural Identity, and an Alternative Model of East-West Encounter,” in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed. Suzanne Conklin and Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 280–96.
98. It is noteworthy that the word baiyan (百眼 hundred eyes) is not completely meaningless in the Chinese context. Or this prophecy would not have appeared. It literally means one hundred eyes. If we search the word baiyan百眼 in Song and Yuan texts, we can find a certain baiyan mojun百眼鬼(hundred-eyed spirit) mentioned in a Yuan drama named erlangshen zuishe suomojing 二郎神醉射鎖魔鏡in Yuanquxuan, vol. 7, 3845–67 (I thank the reviewer for reminding me of this source). But this figure was and is very minor and littleknown by Chinese audiences. A comparison of “hundred eyes” with “thousand eyes” in the Chinese context makes it clearer. The word “thousand eyes” could quickly remind Chinese of an avatar of Guanyin Boddhisatva who have one thousand hands and one thousand eyes, but the word “hundred eyes” makes little cultural sense to Chinese. For the study of the thousand-eyed Guanyin, see Chün-fang Yü, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 59, 61, 80, and 291.
99. Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo go to China, 146. Herbert Franke, “Sino-Western Contacts under the Mongol Empire,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 6 (1966): 54, reprinted in Herbert Franke, China under Mongol Rule (Aldershot, 1994).
100. Numerous works have been made revolving around whether Marco Polo had been in China. Besides the above-mentioned two works by Wood and Franke, some basic scholarship in the English language includes Francis Cleaves, “A Chinese Source Bearing on Marco Polo’s Departure from China and a Persian Source on His Arrival in Persia,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 36 (1976): 181–203; Hans Ulrich Vogel, Marco Polo was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Igor de Rachewiltz, “Marco Polo Went to China,” Zentralasiatische Studien 27 (1997): 34–92. Stephen Haw, Marco Polo’s China: A Venetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan.
