[12] It is probable that Persian, which had long been the language of
    Turanian courts, was also the common tongue of foreigners at that of
    the Mongols. Pulisanghin and Zardandan, in the preceding list, are
    pure Persian.  So are several of the Oriental phrases noted at p. 84. 
    See also notes on Ondanique and Vernique at pp. 93 and 384 of this
    volume, on Tacuin at p. 448, and a note at p. 93 supra.  The
    narratives of Odoric, and others of the early travellers to Cathay,
    afford corroborative examples.  Lord Stanley of Alderley, in one of his
    contributions to the Hakluyt Series, has given evidence from
    experience that Chinese Mahomedans still preserve the knowledge of
    numerous Persian words.

[13] Compare these errors with like errors of Herodotus, e.g., regarding
    the conspiracy of the False Smerdis. (See Rawlinson’s Introduction, p.
    55.) There is a curious parallel between the two also in the supposed
    occasional use of Oriental state records, as in Herodotus’s accounts
    of the revenues of the satrapies, and of the army of Xerxes, and in
    Marco Polo’s account of Kinsay, and of the Kaan’s revenues. (Vol. ii
    pp. 185, 216.)

[14] An example is seen in the voluminous Annali Musulmani of G.  B.
    Rampoldi, Milan, 1825.  This writer speaks of the Travels of Marco
    Polo with his brother and uncle; declares that he visited Tipango
    (sic), Java, Ceylon, and the Maldives, collected all the
    geographical notions of his age, traversed the two peninsulas of the
    Indies, examined the islands of Socotra, Madagascar, Sofala, and
    traversed with philosophic eye the regions of Zanguebar, Abyssinia,
    Nubia, and Egypt! and so forth (ix. 174).  And whilst Malte-Brun
    bestows on Marco the sounding and ridiculous title of “the Humboldt
    of the 13th century,” he shows little real acquaintance with his
    Book. (See his Precis, ed. of 1836, I. 551 seqq.)

[15] See for example vol. i. p. 338, and note 4 at p. 341; also vol. ii.
    p. 103.  The descriptions in the style referred to recur in all seven
    times; but most of them (which are in Book IV.) have been omitted in
    this translation.

[16] [On the subject of Moses of Chorene and his works, I must refer to
    the clever researches of the late Auguste Carriere, Professor of
    Armenian at the Ecole des Langues Orientales.—­H.  C.]

[17] Zacher, Forschungen zur Critik, &c., der Alexandersage, Halle,
    1867, p. 108.

[18] Even so sagacious a man as Roger Bacon quotes the fabulous letter of
    Alexander to Aristotle as authentic. (Opus Majus, p. 137.)

[19] J.  As. ser.  VI. tom. xviii. p. 352.