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and Fu of northern Shansi, but in Mongol time its circle of administration extended beyond the Chinese wall, and embraced territory on the left of the Hwang-Ho, being in fact the first _Lu_, or circle, entered on leaving Tangut, and therefore, Pauthier urges, the "Kingdom of Tanduc" of our text. I find it hard to believe that Marco could get no nearer TATHUNG than in the form of _Tanduc_ or _Tenduc_. The origin of the last may have been some Mongol name, not recovered. But it is at least conceivable that a name based on the old _Thiante-Kiun_ might have been retained among the Tartars, from whom, and not from the Chinese, Polo took his nomenclature. Thiante had been, according to Pauthier's own quotations, the _military post of Tathung_; Klaproth cites a Chinese author of the Mongol era, who describes the Hwang-Ho as passing through _the territory of the ancient Chinese city of Thiante_; and Pauthier's own quotation from the Modern Imperial Geography seems to imply that a place in that territory was recently known as Fung-chau-_Thiante-Kiun_. In the absence of preciser indications, it is reasonable to suppose that the Plain of Tenduc, with its numerous towns and villages, was the extensive and well-cultivated plain which stretches from the Hwang-Ho, past the city of Kuku-Khotan, or "Blue Town." This tract abounds in the remains of cities attributed to the Mongol era. And it is not improbable that the city of Tenduc was Kuku-Khotan itself, now called by the Chinese Kwei-hwa Ch'eng, but which was known to them in the Middle Ages as _Tsing-chau_, and to which we find the Kin Emperor of Northern China sending an envoy in 1210 to demand tribute from Chinghiz. The city is still an important mart and a centre of Lamaitic Buddhism, being the residence of a _Khutukhtu_, or personage combining the characters of cardinal and voluntarily re-incarnate saint, as well as the site of five great convents and fifteen smaller ones. Gerbillon notes that Kuku Khotan had been a place of great trade and population during the Mongol Dynasty. [The following evidence shows, I think, that we must look for the city of Tenduc to _Tou Ch'eng_ or _Toto Ch'eng_, called _Togto_ or _Tokto_ by the Mongols. Mr. Rockhill (_Diary_, 18) passed through this place, and 5 _li_ south of it, reached on the Yellow River, Ho-k'ou (in Chinese) or Dugus or Dugei (in Mongol). Gerbillon speaks of Toto in his sixth voyage in Tartary. (_Du Halde_, IV. 345.) Mr. Rockh
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