1. There is nothing to link this tale with the preceding one; hence it begins a new Group. In many MSS. (including E.) it follows the preceding Epilogue without any break. In other MSS. it follows the Man of Law's Tale; but that is the wrong place for it. See note to B. 1165; also vol. iii. p. 462.
2. An allusion to Prol. l. 97, unless (which is quite as probable) the passage in the Prologue was written afterwards.
9. Sarray, Sarai. This place has been identified, past all doubt, by Colonel Yule in his edition of Marco Polo's Travels, vol. i. p. 5, and vol. ii. p. 424. The modern name is Tzarev, near Sarepta. Sarepta is easily found on any good map of Russia by following the course of the Volga from its mouth upwards. At first this backward course runs N. W. till we have crossed the province of Astrakhan, when it makes a sudden bend, at Sarepta and Tsaritzin. Tsarev is now a place of no importance, but the ancient Sarai was so well known, that the Caspian Sea was sometimes named from it; thus it is called 'the sea of Sarain' in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, ii. 424; 'the sea of Sarra' in the Catalan map of 1375; and Mare Seruanicum, or the Sea of Shirwan, by Vincent of Beauvais. Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speight's Chaucer, speaks to the same effect, and says of 'Sara' that it is 'a place yet well knowen, and bordering vppon the lake Mare Caspium.' Sarai was the place where Batu Khan, the grandson of Gengis Khan, held his court. Batu, with his Mongolian followers known as the Golden Horde, had established an empire in Kaptchak, or Kibzak, now S. E. Russia, about A. D. 1224. The Golden Horde further invaded Russia, and made Alexander Newski grand-duke of it, A. D. 1252. (See Golden Horde in Haydn's Dictionary of Dates.)
Chaucer has here confused two accounts. There were two celebrated Khans, both grandsons of Gengis Khan, who were ruling about the same time. Batu Khan held his court at Sarai, and ruled over the S. E. of Russia; but the Great Khan, named Kublai, held his court at Cambaluc, the modern Pekin, in a still more magnificent manner. And it is easy to see that, although Chaucer names Sarai, his description really applies to Cambaluc. See vol. iii. pp. 471-2.
10. Russye, Russia; invaded by the Golden Horde, as just explained. The end of the Tartar influence in Russia was in the year 1481, when Svenigorod, general of Ivan III., defeated them at the battle of Bielawisch. In the following year Ivan assumed the title of czar.
12. Cambinskan; so in all seven MSS. (Six-text and Harleian), except that in the Ellesmere MS. it more resembles Cambyuskan. Yet Tyrwhitt prints Cambuscan, probably in deference to Milton, who, however, certainly accents the word wrongly, viz. on the second syllable; Il Penseroso, l. 110. Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speight's Chaucer, speaking of the year 1240, says—'whiche must be in the tyme of the fyrst Tartariane emperor called Caius canne, beinge, I suppose, he whome Chaucer namethe Cambiuscan, for so ys [it in] the written copies, such affynytye is there betwene those two names.' Now, although the celebrated Gengis Khan died probably in 1227, the allusion to the 'fyrst Tartariane emperor' is clear; so that Thynne makes the forms Cambius, Caius (perhaps miswritten for Cāius, i. e. Camius) and Gengis all equivalent. But this is the very result for which Colonel Yule has found authority, as explained in vol. iii. p. 471; to which the reader is referred. It is there explained that Chaucer has again confused two accounts; for, whilst he names Gengis Khan (the first 'Grand Khan'), his description really applies to Kublai Khan, his grandson, the celebrated 'Grand Khan' described by Marco Polo.
18. lay, religious profession or belief. 'King Darie swor by his lay': King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 1325. From A. F. lei, law. See lei in Stratmann.
20. This line scans ill as it stands in most MSS. Tyrwhitt and Wright insert and, which gives two accented 'ands'—
And pí | tous ánd | just ánd | alwéy | ylíche.