faith, took the Lesser Orders, and when I celebrated mass used to attend me wearing his royal robes.  Certain others of the Nestorians on this account accused him of apostacy, but he brought over a great part of his people with him to the true Catholic faith, and built a church of royal magnificence in honour of our God, of the Holy Trinity, and of our Lord, the Pope, giving it the name of the Roman Church.  This King George, six years ago, departed to the Lord, a true Christian, leaving as his heir a son scarcely out of the cradle, and who is now nine years old.  And after King George’s death, his brothers, perfidious followers of the errors of Nestorius, perverted again all those whom he had brought over to the Church, and carried them back to their original schismatical creed.  And being all alone, and not able to leave His Majesty the Cham, I could not go to visit the church above-mentioned, which is twenty days’ journey distant....  I had been in treaty with the late King George, if he had lived, to translate the whole Latin ritual, that it might be sung throughout the extent of his territory; and whilst he was alive I used to celebrate mass in his church according to the Latin rite.”  The distance mentioned, twenty days’ journey from Peking, suits quite well with the position assigned to Tenduc, and no doubt the Roman Church was in the city to which Polo gives that name.

Friar Odoric, travelling from Peking towards Shensi, about 1326-1327, also visits the country of Prester John, and gives to its chief city the name of Tozan, in which perhaps we may trace Tathung.  He speaks as if the family still existed in authority.

King George appears again in Marco’s own book (Bk.  IV. ch. ii.) as one of Kublai’s generals against Kaidu, in a battle fought near Karakorum. (Journ.  As. IX. 299 seqq.; D’Ohsson, I. 123; Huc’s Tartary, etc.  I. 55 seqq.; Koeppen, II. 381; Erdmann’s Temudschin; Gerbillon in Astley, IV. 670; Cathay, pp. 146 and 199 seqq.)

NOTE 2.—­Such a compact is related to have existed reciprocally between the family of Chinghiz and that of the chief of the Kungurats; but I have not found it alleged of the Kerait family except by Friar Odoric.  We find, however, many princesses of this family married into that of Chinghiz.  Thus three nieces of Aung Khan became wives respectively of Chinghiz himself and of his sons Juji and Tului; she who was the wife of the latter, Serkukteni Bigi, being the mother of Mangu, Hulaku, and Kublai.  Dukuz Khatun, the Christian wife of Hulaku, was a grand-daughter of Aung Khan.

The name George, of Prester John’s representative, may have been actually Jirjis, Yurji, or some such Oriental form of Georgius.  But it is possible that the title was really Gurgan, “Son-in-Law,” a title of honour conferred on those who married into the imperial blood, and that this title may have led to the statements of Marco and Odoric about the nuptial privileges of the family.  Gurgan in this sense was one of the titles borne by Timur.[1]