Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/137

 106 juxtaposition with those of the Ming-Shi, for purposes of comparison, as follows:—

From this, it appears that none of the rulers mentioned by the Chinese are the same as those given in the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, till the name of Ahmad Khan is reached, while the date of the death of his successor, Mansur Khan, differs by two years in the two accounts. The allusion to Vais Khan accords fairly satisfactorily as to date; but here all accordance ends. The first and third names on the Chinese list would appear to be of Mongol origin; the second is certainly Mongol, while the fourth and fifth, though Musulman, are in no way to be traced among the Moghul Khans whom we know of. It is, perhaps, possible that the earlier Moghul chiefs, while Islam had only partially spread among them, bore Mongol as well as Musulman names, and that the Chinese found it more convenient to use the former, in reducing them to their own phonetics; but against this conjecture for solving the difficulty, it must be considered that the number of Khans, previous to Ahmad, is too great, and that the dates do not correspond sufficiently to admit of the assumption that the Mongol names point to Khans of Moghulistan. A more probable explanation, perhaps, may be that during the reigns of Isán Bugha II. and Dust Muhammad, there were also Moghul Amirs who (like the Dughlát Amirs in Alti Shahr), if they did not reign, at all events held some kind of hereditary position as local chiefs, and that it was they who sent the tribute missions, and carried on intercourse, with the Chinese court. Thus, though not supreme in the Khanate, they might have been the chiefs best known to the Chinese. The possibility of this suggestion derives some support, I think, from the accounts the Chinese furnish of the towns of Kara-Khoja and Lu-ko-tsin (more anciently Liu-Chêng). During the first half of the fifteenth century, both these towns, though situated close to Turfán, were reckoned