In the first quotation the definition of the Argon as sprung de la lengnee, etc., is not intelligible as it stands, but seems to be a corruption of the same definition that has been rendered by Ramusio, viz. that the Argon were half-castes between the race of the Tenduc Buddhists and that of the Mahomedan settlers.  These two texts do not assert that the Argon were Christians.  Pauthier’s text at first sight seems to assert this, and to identify them with the Christian rulers of the province.  But I doubt if it means more than that the Christian rulers have under them a people called Argon, etc.  The passage has been read with a bias, owing to an erroneous interpretation of the word Argon in the teeth of Polo’s explanation of it.

Klaproth, I believe, first suggested that Argon represents the term Arkhaiun, which is found repeatedly applied to Oriental Christians, or their clergy, in the histories of the Mongol era.[2] No quite satisfactory explanation has been given of the origin of that term.  It is barely possible that it may be connected with that which Polo uses here; but he tells us as plainly as possible that he means by the term, not a Christian, but a half-breed.

And in this sense the word is still extant in Tibet, probably also in Eastern Turkestan, precisely in Marco’s form, ARGON.  It is applied in Ladak, as General Cunningham tells us, specifically to the mixt race produced by the marriages of Kashmirian immigrants with Bot (Tibetan) women.  And it was apparently to an analogous cross between Caucasians and Turanians that the term was applied in Tenduc.  Moorcroft also speaks of this class in Ladak, calling them Argands.  Mr. Shaw styles them “a set of ruffians called Argoons, half-bred between Toorkistan fathers and Ladak mothers....  They possess all the evil qualities of both races, without any of their virtues.”  And the author of the Dabistan, speaking of the Tibetan Lamas, says:  “Their king, if his mother be not of royal blood, is by them called Arghun, and not considered their true king.” [See p. 291, my reference to Wellby’s Tibet.—­H.  C.] Cunningham says the word is probably Turki, [Arabic], Arghun, “Fair,” “not white,” as he writes to me, “but ruddy or pink, and therefore ‘fair.’ Arghun is both Turki and Mogholi, and is applied to all fair children, both male and female, as Arghun Beg, Arghuna Khatun,” etc.[3] We find an Arghun tribe named in Timur’s Institutes, which probably derived its descent from such half-breeds.  And though the Arghun Dynasty of Kandahar and Sind claimed their descent and name from Arghun Khan of Persia, this may have had no other foundation.