“Khatai,” says Rashiduddin, “is bounded on one side by the country of Machin, which the Chinese call MANZI....  In the Indian language Southern China is called Maha-chin, i.e.  ‘Great China,’ and hence we derive the word Machin.  The Mongols call the same country Nangiass.  It is separated from Khatai by the river called KARAMORAN, which comes from the mountains of Tibet and Kashmir, and which is never fordable.  The capital of this kingdom is the city of Khingsai, which is forty days’ journey from Khanbalik.” (Quat.  Rashid., xci.-xciii.)

MANZI (or Mangi) is a name used for Southern China, or more properly for the territory which constituted the dominion of the Sung Dynasty at the time when the Mongols conquered Cathay or Northern China from the Kin, not only by Marco, but by Odoric and John Marignolli, as well as by the Persian writers, who, however, more commonly call it Machin.  I imagine that some confusion between the two words led to the appropriation of the latter name, also to Southern China.  The term Man-tzu or Man-tze signifies “Barbarians” ("Sons of Barbarians"), and was applied, it is said, by the Northern Chinese to their neighbours on the south, whose civilisation was of later date.[1] The name is now specifically applied to a wild race on the banks of the Upper Kiang.  But it retains its mediaeval application in Manchuria, where Mantszi is the name given to the Chinese immigrants, and in that use is said to date from the time of Kublai. (Palladius in J.R.G.S. vol. xlii. p. 154.) And Mr. Moule has found the word, apparently used in Marco’s exact sense, in a Chinese extract of the period, contained in the topography of the famous Lake of Hang-chau (infra, ch. lxxvi.-lxxvii.)

Though both Polo and Rashiduddin call the Karamoran the boundary between Cathay and Manzi, it was not so for any great distance.  Ho-nan belonged essentially to Cathay.

[1] Magaillans says the Southerns, in return, called the Northerns
    Pe-tai, “Fools of the North”!

CHAPTER LXV.

HOW THE GREAT KAAN CONQUERED THE PROVINCE OF MANZI.

You must know that there was a King and Sovereign lord of the great territory of Manzi who was styled FACFUR, so great and puissant a prince, that for vastness of wealth and number of subjects and extent of dominion, there was hardly a greater in all the earth except the Great Kaan himself. [NOTE 1] But the people of his land were anything rather than warriors; all their delight was in women, and nought but women; and so it was above all with the King himself, for he took thought of nothing else but women, unless it were of charity to the poor.

In all his dominion there were no horses; nor were the people ever inured to battle or arms, or military service of any kind.  Yet the province of Manzi is very strong by nature, and all the cities are encompassed by sheets of water of great depth, and more than an arblast-shot in width; so that the country never would have been lost, had the people but been soldiers.  But that is just what they were not; so lost it was.[NOTE 2]