BOOK FIRST.
ACCOUNT OF REGIONS VISITED OR HEARD OF ON THE JOURNEY FROM THE LESSER ARMENIA TO THE COURT OF THE GREAT KAAN AT CHANDU.
Aias, the Laias of Polo, from an Admiralty Chart.
Position of Diláwar, the supposed Site of Polo’s Dilavar
Lit. Frauenfelder, Palermo
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
Here the Book begins; and first it speaks of the Lesser Hermenia.
There are two Hermenias, the Greater and the Less. The Lesser Hermenia is governed by a certain King, who maintains a just rule in his dominions, but is himself subject to the Tartar.[{1}] The country contains numerous towns and villages,[{2}] and has everything in plenty; moreover, it is a great country for sport in the chase of all manner of beasts and birds. It is, however, by no means a healthy region, but grievously the reverse.[{3}] In days of old the nobles there were valiant men, and did doughty deeds of arms; but nowadays they are poor creatures, and good at nought, unless it be at boozing; they are great at that. Howbeit, they have a city upon the sea, which is called Layas, at which there is a great trade. For you must know that all the spicery, and the cloths of silk and gold, and the other valuable wares that come from the interior, are brought to that city. And the merchants of Venice and Genoa, and other countries, come thither to sell their goods, and to buy what they lack. And whatsoever persons would travel to the interior (of the East), merchants or others, they take their way by this city of Layas.[{4}]
Having now told you about the Lesser Hermenia, we shall next tell you about Turcomania.
[Note 1.]—The Petite Hermenie of the Middle Ages was quite distinct from the Armenia Minor of the ancient geographers, which name the latter applied to the western portion of Armenia, west of the Euphrates, and immediately north of Cappadocia.
Coin of King Hetum and his Queen Isabel.
But when the old Armenian monarchy was broken up (1079–80), Rupen, a kinsman of the Bagratid Kings, with many of his countrymen, took refuge in the Taurus. His first descendants ruled as barons, a title adopted apparently from the Crusaders, but still preserved in Armenia. Leon, the great-great-grandson of Rupen, was consecrated King under the supremacy of the Pope and the Western Empire in 1198. The kingdom was at its zenith under Hetum or Hayton I., husband of Leon’s daughter Isabel (1224–1269); he was, however, prudent enough to make an early submission to the Mongols, and remained ever staunch to them, which brought his territory constantly under the flail of Egypt. It included at one time all Cilicia, with many cities of Syria and the ancient Armenia Minor, of Isauria and Cappadocia. The male line of Rupen becoming extinct in 1342, the kingdom passed to John de Lusignan, of the royal house of Cyprus, and in 1375 it was put an end to by the Sultan of Egypt. Leon VI., the ex-king, into whose mouth Froissart puts some extraordinary geography, had a pension of 1000l. a year granted him by our Richard II., and died at Paris in 1398.
The chief remaining vestige of this little monarchy is the continued existence of a Catholicos of part of the Armenian Church at Sis, which was the royal residence. Some Armenian communities still remain both in hills and plains; and the former, the more independent and industrious, still speak a corrupt Armenian.
Polo’s contemporary, Marino Sanuto, compares the kingdom of the Pope’s faithful Armenians to one between the teeth of four fierce beasts, the Lion Tartar, the Panther Soldan, the Turkish Wolf, the Corsair Serpent.
(Dulaurier, in J. As. sér. V. tom. xvii.; St. Martin, Arm.; Mar. San. p. 32; Froissart, [Bk. II. ch. xxii.] seqq.; Langlois, V. en Cilicie, 1861, p. 19.)
[Note 2.]—“Maintes villes et maint chasteaux.” This is a constantly recurring phrase, and I have generally translated it as here, believing chasteaux (castelli) to be used in the frequent old Italian sense of a walled village or small walled town, or like the Eastern Kala’, applied in Khorasan “to everything—town, village, or private residence—surrounded by a wall of earth.” (Ferrier, p. 292; see also A. Conolly, I. p. 211.) Martini, in his Atlas Sinensis, uses “Urbes, oppida, castella,” to indicate the three classes of Chinese administrative cities.
[Note 3.]—“Enferme durement.” So Marino Sanuto objects to Lesser Armenia as a place of debarkation for a crusade “quia terra est infirma.” Langlois, speaking of the Cilician plain: “In this region once so fair, now covered with swamps and brambles, fever decimates a population which is yearly diminishing, has nothing to oppose to the scourge but incurable apathy, and will end by disappearing altogether,” etc. (Voyage, p. 65.) Cilician Armenia retains its reputation for sport, and is much frequented by our naval officers for that object. Ayas is noted for the extraordinary abundance of turtles.
[Note 4.]—The phrase twice used in this passage for the Interior is Fra terre, an Italianism (Fra terra, or, as it stands in the Geog. Latin, “infra terram Orientis”), which, however, Murray and Pauthier have read as an allusion to the Euphrates, an error based apparently on a marginal gloss in the published edition of the Soc. de Géographie. It is true that the province of Comagene under the Greek Empire got the name of Euphratesia, or in Arabic Furátíyah, but that was not in question here. The great trade of Ayas was with Tabriz, viâ Sivas, Erzingan, and Erzrum, as we see in Pegolotti. Elsewhere, too, in Polo we find the phrase fra terre used, where Euphrates could possibly have no concern, as in relation to India and Oman. (See Bk. III. chs. xxix. and xxxviii., and notes in each case.)
With regard to the phrase spicery here and elsewhere, it should be noted that the Italian spezerie included a vast deal more than ginger and other things “hot i’ the mouth.” In one of Pegolotti’s lists of spezerie we find drugs, dye-stuffs, metals, wax, cotton, etc.
CHAPTER II.
Concerning the Province of Turcomania.
In Turcomania there are three classes of people. First, there are the Turcomans; these are worshippers of Mahommet, a rude people with an uncouth language of their own.[{1}] They dwell among mountains and downs where they find good pasture, for their occupation is cattle-keeping. Excellent horses, known as Turquans, are reared in their country, and also very valuable mules. The other two classes are the Armenians and the Greeks, who live mixt with the former in the towns and villages, occupying themselves with trade and handicrafts. They weave the finest and handsomest carpets in the world, and also a great quantity of fine and rich silks of cramoisy and other colours, and plenty of other stuffs. Their chief cities are Conia, Savast [where the glorious Messer Saint Blaise suffered martyrdom], and Casaria, besides many other towns and bishops’ sees, of which we shall not speak at present, for it would be too long a matter. These people are subject to the Tartar of the Levant as their Suzerain.[{2}] We will now leave this province, and speak of the Greater Armenia.
[Note 1.]—Ricold of Montecroce, a contemporary of Polo, calls the Turkmans homines bestiales. In our day Ainsworth notes of a Turkman village: “The dogs were very ferocious; ... the people only a little better.” (J. R. G. S. X. 292.) The ill report of the people of this region did not begin with the Turkmans, for the Emperor Constantine Porphyrog. quotes a Greek proverb to the disparagement of the three kappas, Cappadocia, Crete, and Cilicia. (In Banduri, I. 6.)
[Note 2.]—In Turcomania Marco perhaps embraces a great part of Asia Minor, but he especially means the territory of the decaying Seljukian monarchy, usually then called by Asiatics Rúm, as the Ottoman Empire is now, and the capital of which was Iconium, Kuniyah, the Conia of the text, and Coyne of Joinville. Ibn Batuta calls the whole country Turkey (Al-Turkíyah), and the people Turkmán; exactly likewise does Ricold (Thurchia and Thurchimanni). Hayton’s account of the various classes of inhabitants is quite the same in substance as Polo’s. [The Turkmans emigrated from Turkestan to Asia Minor before the arrival of the Seljukid Turks. “Their villages,” says Cuinet, Turquie d’Asie, II. p. 767, “are distinguished by the peculiarity of the houses being built of sun-baked bricks, whereas it is the general habit in the country to build them of earth or a kind of plaster, called djès”—H. C.] The migratory and pastoral Turkmans still exist in this region, but the Kurds of like habits have taken their place to a large extent. The fine carpets and silk fabrics appear to be no longer produced here, any more than the excellent horses of which Polo speaks, which must have been the remains of the famous old breed of Cappadocia. [It appears, however (Vital Cuinet’s Turquie d’Asie, I. p. 224), that fine carpets are still manufactured at Koniah, also a kind of striped cotton cloth, called Aladja.—H. C.]
A grant of privileges to the Genoese by Leon II., King of Lesser Armenia, dated 23rd December, 1288, alludes to the export of horses and mules, etc., from Ayas, and specifies the duties upon them. The horses now of repute in Asia as Turkman come from the east of the Caspian. And Asia Minor generally, once the mother of so many breeds of high repute, is now poorer in horses than any province of the Ottoman empire.
(Pereg. Quat. p. 114; I. B. II. 255 seqq.; Hayton, ch. xiii.; Liber Jurium Reip. Januensis, II. 184; Tchihatcheff, As. Min., 2de partie, 631.)
[The Seljukian Sultanate of Iconium or Rúm, was founded at the expense of the Byzantines by Suleiman (1074–1081); the last three sovereigns of the dynasty contemporaneous with Marco Polo are Ghiath ed-din Kaïkhosru III. (1267–1283), Ghiath ed-din Mas’ud II. (1283–1294), Ala ed-din Kaïkobad III. (1294–1308), when this kingdom was destroyed by the Mongols of Persia. Privileges had been granted to Venice by Ghiath ed-din Kaïkhosru I. (✛1211), and his sons Izz ed-din Kaikaus (1211–1220), and Ala ed-din Kaïkobad I. (1220–1237); the diploma of 1220 is unfortunately the only one of the three known to be preserved. (Cf. Heyd, I. p. 302.)—H. C.]
Though the authors quoted above seem to make no distinction between Turks and Turkmans, that which we still understand does appear to have been made in the 12th century: “That there may be some distinction, at least in name, between those who made themselves a king, and thus achieved such glory, and those who still abide in their primitive barbarism and adhere to their old way of life, the former are nowadays termed Turks, the latter by their old name of Turkomans.” (William of Tyre, i. 7.)
Casaria is Kaisaríya, the ancient Caesareia of Cappadocia, close to the foot of the great Mount Argaeus. Savast is the Armenian form (Sevasd) of Sebaste, the modern Sivas. The three cities, Iconium, Caesareia, and Sebaste, were metropolitan sees under the Catholicos of Sis.
[The ruins of Sebaste are situated at about 6 miles to the east of modern Sivas, near the village of Gavraz, on the Kizil Irmak. In the 11th century, the King of Armenia, Senecherim, made his capital of Sebaste. It belonged after to the Seljukid Turks, and was conquered in 1397 by Bayezid Ilderim with Tokat, Castambol and Sinope. (Cf. Vital Cuinet.)
One of the oldest churches in Sivas is St. George (Sourp-Kévork), occupied by the Greeks, but claimed by the Armenians; it is situated near the centre of the town, in what is called the “Black Earth,” the spot where Timur is said to have massacred the garrison. A few steps north of St. George is the Church of St. Blasius, occupied by the Roman Catholic Armenians. The tomb of St. Blasius, however, is shown in another part of the town, near the citadel mount, and the ruins of a very beautiful Seljukian Medresseh. (From a MS. Note by Sir H. Yule. The information had been supplied by the American Missionaries to General Sir C. Wilson, and forwarded by him to Sir H. Yule.)
It must be remembered that at the time of the Seljuk Turks, there were four Medressehs at Sivas, and a university as famous as that of Amassia. Children to the number of 1000, each a bearer of a copy of the Koran, were crushed to death under the feet of the horses of Timur, and buried in the “Black Earth”; the garrison of 4000 soldiers were buried alive.
St. Blasius, Bishop of Sebaste, was martyred in 316 by order of Agricola, Governor of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia, during the reign of Licinius. His feast is celebrated by the Latin Church on the 3rd of February, and by the Greek Church on the 11th of February. He is the patron of the Republic of Ragusa in Dalmatia, and in France of wool-carders.
At the village of Hullukluk, near Sivas, was born in 1676 Mekhitar, founder of the well-known Armenian Order, which has convents at Venice, Vienna, and Trieste.—H. C.]
CHAPTER III.
Description of the Greater Hermenia.
This is a great country. It begins at a city called Arzinga, at which they weave the best buckrams in the world. It possesses also the best baths from natural springs that are anywhere to be found.[{1}] The people of the country are Armenians, and are subject to the Tartar. There are many towns and villages in the country, but the noblest of their cities is Arzinga, which is the See of an Archbishop, and then Arziron and Arzizi.[{2}]
The country is indeed a passing great one, and in the summer it is frequented by the whole host of the Tartars of the Levant, because it then furnishes them with such excellent pasture for their cattle. But in winter the cold is past all bounds, so in that season they quit this country and go to a warmer region, where they find other good pastures. [At a castle called Paipurth, that you pass in going from Trebizond to Tauris, there is a very good silver mine.[{3}]]
And you must know that it is in this country of Armenia that the Ark of Noah exists on the top of a certain great mountain [on the summit of which snow is so constant that no one can ascend;[{4}] for the snow never melts, and is constantly added to by new falls. Below, however, the snow does melt, and runs down, producing such rich and abundant herbage that in summer cattle are sent to pasture from a long way round about, and it never fails them. The melting snow also causes a great amount of mud on the mountain].
The country is bounded on the south by a kingdom called Mosul, the people of which are Jacobite and Nestorian Christians, of whom I shall have more to tell you presently. On the north it is bounded by the Land of the Georgians, of whom also I shall speak. On the confines towards Georgiania there is a fountain from which oil springs in great abundance, insomuch that a hundred shiploads might be taken from it at one time. This oil is not good to use with food, but ’tis good to burn, and is also used to anoint camels that have the mange. People come from vast distances to fetch it, for in all the countries round about they have no other oil.[{5}]
Now, having done with Great Armenia, we will tell you of Georgiania.
[Note 1.]—[Erzinjan, Erzinga, or Eriza, in the vilayet of Erzrum, was rebuilt in 1784, after having been destroyed by an earthquake. “Arzendjan,” says Ibn Batuta, II. p. 294, “is in possession of well-established markets; there are manufactured fine stuffs, which are called after its name.” It was at Erzinjan that was fought in 1244 the great battle, which placed the Seljuk Turks under the dependency of the Mongol Khans.—H. C.] I do not find mention of its hot springs by modern travellers, but Lazari says Armenians assured him of their existence. There are plenty of others in Polo’s route through the country, as at Ilija, close to Erzrum, and at Hássan Kalá.
The Buckrams of Arzinga are mentioned both by Pegolotti (circa 1340) and by Giov. d’Uzzano (1442). But what were they?
Buckram in the modern sense is a coarse open texture of cotton or hemp, loaded with gum, and used to stiffen certain articles of dress. But this was certainly not the mediæval sense. Nor is it easy to bring the mediæval uses of the term under a single explanation. Indeed Mr. Marsh suggests that probably two different words have coalesced. Fr.-Michel says that Bouqueran was at first applied to a light cotton stuff of the nature of muslin, and afterwards to linen, but I do not see that he makes out this history of the application. Douet d’Arcq, in his Comptes de l’Argenterie, etc., explains the word simply in the modern sense, but there seems nothing in his text to bear this out.
A quotation in Raynouard’s Romance Dictionary has “Vestirs de polpra e de bisso que est bocaran,” where Raynouard renders bisso as lin; a quotation in Ducange also makes Buckram the equivalent of Bissus; and Michel quotes from an inventory of 1365, “unam culcitram pinctam (qu. punctam?) albam factam de bisso aliter boquerant.”
Mr. Marsh again produces quotations, in which the word is used as a proverbial example of whiteness, and inclines to think that it was a bleached cloth with a lustrous surface.
It certainly was not necessarily linen. Giovanni Villani, in a passage which is curious in more ways than one, tells how the citizens of Florence established races for their troops, and, among other prizes, was one which consisted of a Bucherame di bambagine (of cotton). Polo, near the end of the Book (Bk. III. ch. xxxiv.), speaking of Abyssinia, says, according to Pauthier’s text: “Et si y fait on moult beaux bouquerans et autres draps de coton.” The G. T. is, indeed, more ambiguous: “Il hi se font maint biaus dras banbacin e bocaran” (cotton and buckram). When, however, he uses the same expression with reference to the delicate stuffs woven on the coast of Telingana, there can be no doubt that a cotton texture is meant, and apparently a fine muslin. (See Bk. III. ch. xviii.) Buckram is generally named as an article of price, chier bouquerant, rice boquerans, etc, but not always, for Polo in one passage (Bk. II. ch. xlv.) seems to speak of it as the clothing of the poor people of Eastern Tibet.
Plano Carpini says the tunics of the Tartars were either of buckram (bukeranum), of purpura (a texture, perhaps velvet), or of baudekin, a cloth of gold (pp. 614–615). When the envoys of the Old Man of the Mountain tried to bully St. Lewis, one had a case of daggers to be offered in defiance, another a bouqueran for a winding sheet (Joinville, p. 136.)
In accounts of materials for the use of Anne Boleyn in the time of her prosperity, bokeram frequently appears for “lyning and taynting” (?) gowns, lining sleeves, cloaks, a bed, etc., but it can scarcely have been for mere stiffening, as the colour of the buckram is generally specified as the same as that of the dress.
A number of passages seem to point to a quilted material. Boccaccio (Day viii. Novel 10) speaks of a quilt (coltre) of the whitest buckram of Cyprus, and Uzzano enters buckram quilts (coltre di Bucherame) in a list of Linajuoli, or linen-draperies. Both his handbook and Pegolotti’s state repeatedly that buckrams were sold by the piece or the half-score pieces—never by measure. In one of Michel’s quotations (from Baudouin de Sebourc) we have:
“Gaufer li fist premiers armer d’un auqueton
Qui fu de bougherant et plaine de bon coton.”
Mr. Hewitt would appear to take the view that Buckram meant a quilted material; for, quoting from a roll of purchases made for the Court of Edward I., an entry for Ten Buckrams to make sleeves of, he remarks, “The sleeves appear to have been of pourpointerie,” i.e. quilting. (Ancient Armour, I. 240.)
This signification would embrace a large number of passages in which the term is used, though certainly not all. It would account for the mode or sale by the piece, and frequent use of the expression a buckram, for its habitual application to coltre or counterpanes, its use in the auqueton of Baudouin, and in the jackets of Falstaff’s “men in buckram,” as well as its employment in the frocks of the Mongols and Tibetans. The winter chapkan, or long tunic, of Upper India, a form of dress which, I believe, correctly represents that of the Mongol hosts, and is probably derived from them, is almost universally of quilted cotton.[1] This signification would also facilitate the transfer of meaning to the substance now called buckram, for that is used as a kind of quilting.
The derivation of the word is very uncertain. Reiske says it is Arabic, Abu-Kairám, “Pannus cum intextis figuris”; Wedgwood, attaching the modern meaning, that it is from It., bucherare, to pierce full of holes, which might be if bucherare could be used in the sense of puntare, or the French piquer; Marsh connects it with the bucking of linen; and D’Avezac thinks it was a stuff that took its name from Bokhara. If the name be local, as so many names of stuffs are, the French form rather suggests Bulgaria. [Heyd, II. 703, says that Buckram (Bucherame) was principally manufactured at Erzinjan (Armenia), Mush, and Mardin (Kurdistan), Ispahan (Persia), and in India, etc. It was shipped to the west at Constantinople, Satalia, Acre, and Famagusta; the name is derived from Bokhara.—H. C.]
(Della Decima, III. 18, 149, 65, 74, 212, etc.; IV. 4, 5, 6, 212; Reiske’s Notes to Const. Porphyrogen. II.; D’Avezac, p. 524; Vocab. Univ. Ital.; Franc.-Michel, Recherches, etc. II. 29 seqq.; Philobiblon Soc. Miscell. VI.; Marsh’s Wedgwood’s Etym. Dict. sub voce.)
Castle of Baiburt.
[Note 2.]—Arziron is Erzrum, which, even in Tournefort’s time, the Franks called Erzeron (III. 126); [it was named Garine, then Theodosiopolis, in honour of Theodosius the Great; the present name was given by the Seljukid Turks, and it means “Roman Country”; it was taken by Chinghiz Khan and Timur, but neither kept it long. Odorico (Cathay, I. p. 46), speaking of this city, says it “is mighty cold.” (See also on the low temperature of the place, Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, II. pp. 258–259.) Arzizi, Arjish, in the vilayet of Van, was destroyed in the middle of the 19th century; it was situated on the road from Van to Erzrum. Arjish Kalá was one of the ancient capitals of the Kingdom of Armenia; it was conquered by Toghrul I., who made it his residence. (Cf. Vital Cuinet, Turquie d’Asie, II. p. 710).—H. C.]
Arjish is the ancient Arsissa, which gave the Lake Van one of its names. It is now little more than a decayed castle, with a village inside.
Notices of Kuniyah, Kaisariya, Sivas, Arzan-ar-Rumi, Arzangan, and Arjish, will be found in Polo’s contemporary Abulfeda. (See Büsching, IV. 303–311.)
[Note 3.]—Paipurth, or Baiburt, on the high road between Trebizond and Erzrum, was, according to Neumann, an Armenian fortress in the first century, and, according to Ritter, the castle Baiberdon was fortified by Justinian. It stands on a peninsular hill, encircled by the windings of the R. Charok. [According to Ramusio’s version Baiburt was the third relay from Trebizund to Tauris, and travellers on their way from one of these cities to the other passed under this stronghold.—H. C.] The Russians, in retiring from it in 1829, blew up the greater part of the defences. The nearest silver mines of which we find modern notice, are those of Gumish-Khánah (“Silverhouse”), about 35 miles N.W. of Baiburt; they are more correctly mines of lead rich in silver, and were once largely worked. But the Masálak-al-absár (14th century), besides these, speaks of two others in the same province, one of which was near Bajert. This Quatremère reasonably would read Babert or Baiburt. (Not. et Extraits, XIII. i. 337; Texier, Arménie, I. 59.)
[Note 4.]—Josephus alludes to the belief that Noah’s Ark still existed, and that pieces of the pitch were used as amulets. (Ant. I. 3. 6.)
Ararat (16,953 feet) was ascended, first by Prof. Parrot, September 1829; by Spasski Aotonomoff, August 1834; by Behrens, 1835; by Abich, 1845; by Seymour in 1848; by Khodzko, Khanikoff, and others, for trigonometrical and other scientific purposes, in August 1850. It is characteristic of the account from which I take these notes (Longrimoff, in Bull. Soc. Géog. Paris, sér. IV. tom. i. p. 54), that whilst the writer’s countrymen, Spasski and Behrens, were “moved by a noble curiosity,” the Englishman is only admitted to have “gratified a tourist’s whim”!
[Note 5.]—Though Mr. Khanikoff points out that springs of naphtha are abundant in the vicinity of Tiflis, the mention of ship-loads (in Ramusio indeed altered, but probably by the Editor, to camel-loads), and the vast quantities spoken of, point to the naphtha-wells of the Baku Peninsula on the Caspian. Ricold speaks of their supplying the whole country as far as Baghdad, and Barbaro alludes to the practice of anointing camels with the oil. The quantity collected from the springs about Baku was in 1819 estimated at 241,000 poods (nearly 4000 tons), the greater part of which went to Persia. (Pereg. Quat. p. 122; Ramusio, II. 109; El. de Laprim. 276; V. du Chev. Gamba, I. 298.)
[The phenomenal rise in the production of the Baku oil-fields between 1890–1900, may be seen at a glance from the Official Statistics where the total output for 1900 is given as 601,000,000 poods, about 9,500,000 tons. (Cf. Petroleum, No. 42, vol. ii. p. 13.)]
[1] Polo’s contemporary, the Indian Poet Amír Khusrú, puts in the mouth of his king Kaikobád a contemptuous gibe at the Mongols with their cotton-quilted dresses. (Elliot, III. p. 526.)
CHAPTER IV.
Of Georgiania and the Kings thereof.
In Georgiania there is a King called David Melic, which is as much as to say “David King”; he is subject to the Tartar.[{1}] In old times all the kings were born with the figure of an eagle upon the right shoulder. The people are very handsome, capital archers, and most valiant soldiers. They are Christians of the Greek Rite, and have a fashion of wearing their hair cropped, like Churchmen.[{2}]
This is the country beyond which Alexander could not pass when he wished to penetrate to the region of the Ponent, because that the defile was so narrow and perilous, the sea lying on the one hand, and on the other lofty mountains impassable to horsemen. The strait extends like this for four leagues, and a handful of people might hold it against all the world. Alexander caused a very strong tower to be built there, to prevent the people beyond from passing to attack him, and this got the name of the Iron Gate. This is the place that the Book of Alexander speaks of, when it tells us how he shut up the Tartars between two mountains; not that they were really Tartars, however, for there were no Tartars in those days, but they consisted of a race of people called Comanians and many besides.[{3}]
[In this province all the forests are of box-wood.[{4}]] There are numerous towns and villages, and silk is produced in great abundance. They also weave cloths of gold, and all kinds of very fine silk stuffs. The country produces the best goshawks in the world [which are called Avigi].[{5}] It has indeed no lack of anything, and the people live by trade and handicrafts. ’Tis a very mountainous region, and full of strait defiles and of fortresses, insomuch that the Tartars have never been able to subdue it out and out.
Mediæval Georgian Fortress, from a drawing dated 1634.
“La provence est toute plene de grant montagne et d’estroit pas et de fort.”
There is in this country a certain Convent of Nuns called St. Leonard’s, about which I have to tell you a very wonderful circumstance. Near the church in question there is a great lake at the foot of a mountain, and in this lake are found no fish, great or small, throughout the year till Lent come. On the first day of Lent they find in it the finest fish in the world, and great store too thereof; and these continue to be found till Easter Eve. After that they are found no more till Lent come round again; and so ’tis every year. ’Tis really a passing great miracle![{6}]
That sea whereof I spoke as coming so near the mountains is called the Sea of Ghel or Ghelan, and extends about 700 miles.[{7}] It is twelve days’ journey distant from any other sea, and into it flows the great River Euphrates and many others, whilst it is surrounded by mountains. Of late the merchants of Genoa have begun to navigate this sea, carrying ships across and launching them thereon. It is from the country on this sea also that the silk called Ghellé is brought.[{8}] [The said sea produces quantities of fish, especially sturgeon, at the river-mouths salmon, and other big kinds of fish.][{9}]
[Note 1.]—Ramusio has: “One part of the said province is subject to the Tartar, and the other part, owing to its fortresses, remains subject to the King David.” We give an illustration of one of these mediæval Georgian fortresses, from a curious collection of MS. notices and drawings of Georgian subjects in the Municipal Library at Palermo, executed by a certain P. Cristoforo di Castelli of that city, who was a Theatine missionary in Georgia, in the first half of the 17th century.
The G. T. says the King was always called David. The Georgian Kings of the family of Bagratidae claimed descent from King David through a prince Shampath, said to have been sent north by Nebuchadnezzar; a descent which was usually asserted in their public documents. Timur in his Institutes mentions a suit of armour given him by the King of Georgia as forged by the hand of the Psalmist King. David is a very frequent name in their royal lists. [The dynasty of the Bagratidae, which was founded in 786 by Ashod, and lasted until the annexation of Georgia by Russia on the 18th January, 1801, had nine reigning princes named David. During the second half of the 12th century the princes were: Dawith (David) IV. Narin (1247–1259), Dawith V. (1243–1272), Dimitri II. Thawdadebuli (1272–1289), Wakhtang II. (1289–1292), Dawith VI. (1292–1308).—H. C.] There were two princes of that name, David, who shared Georgia between them under the decision of the Great Kaan in 1246, and one of them, who survived to 1269, is probably meant here. The name of David was borne by the last titular King of Georgia, who ceded his rights to Russia in 1801. It is probable, however, as Marsden has suggested, that the statement about the King always being called David arose in part out of some confusion with the title of Dadian, which, according to Chardin (and also to P. di Castelli), was always assumed by the Princes of Mingrelia, or Colchis as the latter calls it. Chardin refers this title to the Persian Dád, “equity.” To a portrait of “Alexander, King of Iberia,” or Georgia Proper, Castelli attaches the following inscription, giving apparently his official style: “With the sceptre of David, Crowned by Heaven, First King of the Orient and of the World, King of Israel,” adding, “They say that he has on his shoulder a small mark of a cross, ‘Factus est principatus super humerum ejus,’ and they add that he has all his ribs in one piece, and not divided.” In another place he notes that when attending the King in illness his curiosity moved him strongly to ask if these things were true, but he thought better of it! (Khanikoff; Jour. As. IX. 370, XI. 291, etc.; Tim. Instit. p. 143; Castelli MSS.)
[A descendant of these Princes was in St. Petersburg about 1870. He wore the Russian uniform, and bore the title of Prince Bagration-Mukransky.]
[Note 2.]—This fashion of tonsure is mentioned by Barbaro and Chardin. The latter speaks strongly of the beauty of both sexes, as does Della Valle, and most modern travellers concur.
[Note 3.]—This refers to the Pass of Derbend, apparently the Sarmatic Gates of Ptolemy, and Claustra Caspiorum of Tacitus, known to the Arab geographers as the “Gate of Gates” (Báb-ul-abwáb), but which is still called in Turkish Demír-Kápi, or the Iron Gate, and to the ancient Wall that runs from the Castle of Derbend along the ridges of Caucasus, called in the East Sadd-i-Iskandar, the Rampart of Alexander. Bayer thinks the wall was probably built originally by one of the Antiochi, and renewed by the Sassanian Kobad or his son Naoshirwan. It is ascribed to the latter by Abulfeda; and according to Klaproth’s extracts from the Derbend Námah, Naoshirwan completed the fortress of Derbend in A.D. 542, whilst he and his father together had erected 360 towers upon the Caucasian Wall which extended to the Gate of the Alans (i.e. the Pass of Dariel). Mas’udi says that the wall extended for 40 parasangs over the steepest summits and deepest gorges. The Russians must have gained some knowledge as to the actual existence and extent of the remains of this great work, but I have not been able to meet with any modern information of a very precise kind. According to a quotation from Reinegg’s Kaukasus (I. 120, a work which I have not been able to consult), the remains of defences can be traced for many miles, and are in some places as much as 120 feet high. M. Moynet indeed, in the Tour du Monde (I. 122), states that he traced the wall to a distance of 27 versts (18 miles) from Derbend, but unfortunately, instead of describing remains of such high interest from his own observation, he cites a description written by Alex. Dumas, which he says is quite accurate.
[“To the west of Narin-Kaleh, a fortress which from the top of a promontory rises above the city, the wall, strengthened from distance to distance by large towers, follows the ridge of the mountains, descends into the ravines, and ascends the slopes to take root on some remote peak. If the natives were to be believed, this wall, which, however, no longer has any strategetical importance, had formerly its towers bristling upon the Caucasus chain from one sea to another; at least, this rampart did protect all the plains at the foot of the eastern Caucasus, since vestiges were found up to 30 kilometres from Derbend.” (Reclus, Asie russe, p. 160.) It has belonged to Russia since 1813. The first European traveller who mentions it is Benjamin of Tudela.
Bretschneider (II. p. 117) observes: “Yule complains that he was not able to find any modern information regarding the famous Caucasian Wall which begins at Derbend. I may therefore observe that interesting details on the subject are found in Legkobytov’s Survey of the Russian Dominions beyond the Caucasus (in Russian), 1836, vol. iv. pp. 158–161, and in Dubois de Montpéreux’s Voyage autour du Caucase, 1840, vol. iv. pp. 291–298, from which I shall give here an abstract.”
(He then proceeds to give an abstract, of which the following is a part:)
“The famous Dagh bary (mountain wall) now begins at the village of Djelgan, 4 versts south-west of Derbend, but we know that as late as the beginning of the last century it could be traced down to the southern gate of the city. This ancient wall then stretches westward to the high mountains of Tabasseran (it seems the Tabarestan of Mas’udi).... Dubois de Montpéreux enumerates the following sites of remains of the wall:—In the famous defile of Dariel, north-east of Kazbek. In the valley of the Assai river, near Wapila, about 35 versts north-east of Dariel. In the valley of the Kizil river, about 15 versts north-west of Kazbek. Farther west, in the valley of the Fiag or Pog river, between Lacz and Khilak. From this place farther west about 25 versts, in the valley of the Arredon river, in the district of Valaghir. Finally, the westernmost section of the Caucasian Wall has been preserved, which was evidently intended to shut up the maritime defile of Gagry, on the Black Sea.”—H. C.]
There is another wall claiming the title of Sadd-i-Iskandar at the S.E. angle of the Caspian. This has been particularly spoken of by Vámbéry, who followed its traces from S.W. to N.E. for upwards of 40 miles. (See his Travels in C. Asia, 54 seqq., and Julius Braun in the Ausland, No. 22, of 1869.)
Yule (II. pp. 537–538) says, “To the same friendly correspondent [Professor Braun] I owe the following additional particulars on this interesting subject, extracted from Eichwald, Periplus des Kasp. M. I. 128.
“‘At the point on the mountain, at the extremity of the fortress (of Derbend), where the double wall terminates, there begins a single wall constructed in the same style, only this no longer runs in a straight line, but accommodates itself to the contour of the hill, turning now to the north and now to the south. At first it is quite destroyed, and showed the most scanty vestiges, a few small heaps of stones or traces of towers, but all extending in a general bearing from east to west.... It is not till you get 4 versts from Derbend, in traversing the mountains, that you come upon a continuous wall. Thenceforward you can follow it over the successive ridges ... and through several villages chiefly occupied by the Tartar hill-people. The wall ... makes many windings, and every ¾ verst it exhibits substantial towers like those of the city-wall, crested with loop-holes. Some of these are still in tolerably good condition; others have fallen, and with the wall itself have left but slight vestiges.’
“Eichwald altogether followed it up about 18 versts (12 miles) not venturing to proceed further. In later days this cannot have been difficult, but my kind correspondent had not been able to lay his hand on information.
“A letter from Mr. Eugene Schuyler communicates some notes regarding inscriptions that have been found at and near Derbend, embracing Cufic of A.D. 465, Pehlvi, and even Cuneiform. Alluding to the fact that the other Iron-gate, south of Shahrsabz, was called also Kalugah, or Kohlugah he adds: ‘I don’t know what that means, nor do I know if the Russian Kaluga, south-west of Moscow, has anything to do with it, but I am told there is a Russian popular song, of which two lines run:
‘“Ah Derbend, Derbend Kaluga,
Derbend my little Treasure!”’
View of Derbend.
“Alexandre ne poit paser quand il vost aler au Ponent ... car de l’un les est la mer, et de l’autre est gran montagne que ne se poent cavaucher. La vie est mout estroit entre la montagne et la mer.”
“I may observe that I have seen it lately pointed out that Koluga is a Mongol word signifying a barrier; and I see that Timkowski (I. 288) gives the same explanation of Kalgan, the name applied by Mongols and Russians to the gate in the Great Wall, called Chang-kia-Kau by the Chinese, leading to Kiakhta.”
The story alluded to by Polo is found in the mediæval romances of Alexander, and in the Pseudo-Callisthenes on which they are founded. The hero chases a number of impure cannibal nations within a mountain barrier, and prays that they may be shut up therein. The mountains draw together within a few cubits, and Alexander then builds up the gorge and closes it with gates of brass or iron. There were in all twenty-two nations with their kings, and the names of the nations were Gōth, Magōth, Anugi, Egēs, Exenach, etc. Godfrey of Viterbo speaks of them in his rhyming verses:—
“Finibus Indorum species fuit una virorum;
Goth erat atque Magoth dictum cognomen eorum
* * * * *
Narrat Esias, Isidorus et Apocalypsis,
Tangit et in titulis Magna Sibylla suis.
Patribus ipsorum tumulus fuit venter eorum,” etc.
Among the questions that the Jews are said to have put, in order to test Mahommed’s prophetic character, was one series: “Who are Gog and Magog? Where do they dwell? What sort of rampart did Zu’lḳarnain build between them and men?” And in the Koran we find (ch. xviii. The Cavern): “They will question thee, O Mahommed, regarding Zu’lḳarnain. Reply: I will tell you his history”—and then follows the story of the erection of the Rampart of Yájúj and Májúj. In ch. xxi. again there is an allusion to their expected issue at the latter day. This last expectation was one of very old date. Thus the Cosmography of Aethicus, a work long believed (though erroneously) to have been abridged by St. Jerome, and therefore to be as old at least as the 4th century, says that the Turks of the race of Gog and Magog, a polluted nation, eating human flesh and feeding on all abominations, never washing, and never using wine, salt, nor wheat, shall come forth in the Day of Antichrist from where they lie shut up behind the Caspian Gates, and make horrid devastation. No wonder that the irruption of the Tartars into Europe, heard of at first with almost as much astonishment as such an event would produce now, was connected with this prophetic legend![1] The Emperor Frederic II., writing to Henry III. of England, says of the Tartars: “’Tis said they are descended from the Ten Tribes who abandoned the Law of Moses, and worshipped the Golden Calf. They are the people whom Alexander Magnus shut up in the Caspian Mountains.”
[See the chapter Gog et Magog dans le roman en alexandrins, in Paul Meyer’s Alexandre le Grand dans la Littérature française, Paris, 1886, II. pp. 386–389.—H. C.]:
“Gos et Margos i vienent de la tiere des Turs
Et .cccc. m. hommes amenerent u plus,
Il en jurent la mer dont sire est Neptunus
Et le porte d’infier que garde Cerberus
Que l’orguel d’Alixandre torneront a reüs
Por çou les enclot puis es estres desus.
Dusc’ al tans Antecrist n’en istera mais nus.”
According to some chroniclers, the Emperor Heraclius had already let loose the Shut-up Nations to aid him against the Persians, but it brought him no good, for he was beaten in spite of their aid, and died of grief.
The theory that the Tartars were Gog and Magog led to the Rampart of Alexander being confounded with the Wall of China (see infra, [Bk. I. ch. lix.]), or being relegated to the extreme N.E. of Asia, as we find it in the Carta Catalana.
These legends are referred to by Rabbi Benjamin, Hayton, Rubruquis, Ricold, Matthew Paris, and many more. Josephus indeed speaks of the Pass which Alexander fortified with gates of steel. But his saying that the King of Hyrcania was Lord of this Pass points to the Hyrcanian Gates of Northern Persia, or perhaps to the Wall of Gomushtapah, described by Vámbéry.
Ricold of Montecroce allows two arguments to connect the Tartars with the Jews who were shut up by Alexander; one that the Tartars hated the very name of Alexander, and could not bear to hear it; the other, that their manner of writing was very like the Chaldean, meaning apparently the Syriac (anté, p. 29). But he points out that they had no resemblance to Jews, and no knowledge of the law.
Edrisi relates how the Khalif Wathek sent one Salem the Dragoman to explore the Rampart of Gog and Magog. His route lay by Tiflis, the Alan country, and that of the Bashkirds, to the far north or north-east, and back by Samarkand. But the report of what he saw is pure fable.
In 1857, Dr. Bellew seems to have found the ancient belief in the legend still held by Afghan gentlemen at Kandahar.
At Gelath in Imeretia there still exists one valve of a large iron gate, traditionally said to be the relic of a pair brought as a trophy from Derbend by David, King of Georgia, called the Restorer (1089–1130). M. Brosset, however, has shown it to be the gate of Ganja, carried off in 1139.
(Bayer in Comment. Petropol. I. 401 seqq.; Pseudo-Callisth. by Müller, p. 138; Gott. Viterb. in Pistorii Nidani Script. Germ. II. 228; Alexandriade, pp. 310–311; Pereg. IV. p. 118; Acad. des Insc. Divers Savans, II. 483; Edrisi, II. 416–420, etc.)
[Note 4.]—The box-wood of the Abkhasian forests was so abundant, and formed so important an article of Genoese trade, as to give the name of Chao de Bux (Cavo di Bussi) to the bay of Bambor, N.W. of Sukum Kala’, where the traffic was carried on. (See Elie de Laprim. 243.) Abulfeda also speaks of the Forest of Box (Shará’ ul-buḳs) on the shores of the Black Sea, from which box-wood was exported to all parts of the world; but his indication of the exact locality is confused. (Reinaud’s Abulf. I. 289.)
At the present time “Boxwood abounds on the southern coast of the Caspian, and large quantities are exported from near Resht to England and Russia. It is sent up the Volga to Tsaritzin, from thence by rail to the Don, and down that river to the Black Sea, from whence it is shipped to England.” (MS. Note, H. Y.)
[Cf. V. Helm’s Cultivated Plants, edited by J. S. Stallybrass, Lond., 1891, The Box Tree, pp. 176–179.—H. C.]
[Note 5.]—Jerome Cardan notices that “the best and biggest goshawks come from Armenia,” a term often including Georgia and Caucasus. The name of the bird is perhaps the same as ’Afçi, “Falco montanus.” (See Casiri, I. 320.) Major St. John tells me that the Terlán, or goshawk, much used in Persia, is still generally brought from Caucasus. (Cardan, de Rer. Varietate, VII. 35.)
[Note 6.]—A letter of Warren Hastings, written shortly before his death, and after reading Marsden’s Marco Polo, tells how a fish-breeder of Banbury warned him against putting pike into his fish-pond, saying, “If you should leave them where they are till Shrove Tuesday they will be sure to spawn, and then you will never get any other fish to breed in it.” (Romance of Travel, I. 255.) Edward Webbe in his Travels (1590, reprinted 1868) tells us that in the “Land of Siria there is a River having great store of fish like unto Salmon-trouts, but no Jew can catch them, though either Christian and Turk shall catch them in abundance with great ease.” The circumstance of fish being got only for a limited time in spring is noticed with reference to Lake Van both by Tavernier and Mr. Brant.
But the exact legend here reported is related (as M. Pauthier has already noticed) by Wilibrand of Oldenburg of a stream under the Castle of Adamodana, belonging to the Hospitallers, near Naversa (the ancient Anazarbus), in Cilicia under Taurus. And Khanikoff was told the same story of a lake in the district of Akhaltziké in Western Georgia, in regard to which he explains the substance of the phenomenon as a result of the rise of the lake’s level by the melting of the snows, which often coincides with Lent. I may add that Moorcroft was told respecting a sacred pond near Sir-i-Chashma, on the road from Kabul to Bamian, that the fish in the pond were not allowed to be touched, but that they were accustomed to desert it for the rivulet that ran through the valley regularly every year on the day of the vernal equinox, and it was then lawful to catch them.
Like circumstances would produce the same effect in a variety of lakes, and I have not been able to identify the convent of St. Leonard’s. Indeed Leonard (Sant Lienard, G. T.) seems no likely name for an Armenian Saint; and the patroness of the convent (as she is of many others in that country) was perhaps Saint Nina, an eminent personage in the Armenian Church, whose tomb is still a place of pilgrimage; or possibly St. Helena, for I see that the Russian maps show a place called Elenovka on the shores of Lake Sevan, N.E. of Erivan. Ramusio’s text, moreover, says that the lake was four days in compass, and this description will apply, I believe, to none but the lake just named. This is, according to Monteith, 47 miles in length and 21 miles in breadth, and as far as I can make out he travelled round it in three very long marches. Convents and churches on its shores are numerous, and a very ancient one occupies an island on the lake. The lake is noted for its fish, especially magnificent trout.
(Tavern. Bk. III. ch. iii.; J. R. G. S. X. 897; Pereg. Quat. p. 179; Khanikoff, 15; Moorcroft, II. 382; J. R. G. S. III. 40 seqq.)
Ramusio has: “In this province there is a fine city called Tiflis, and round about it are many castles and walled villages. It is inhabited by Christians, Armenians, Georgians, and some Saracens and Jews, but not many.”
[Note 7.]—The name assigned by Marco to the Caspian, “Mer de Gheluchelan” or “Ghelachelan,” has puzzled commentators. I have no doubt that the interpretation adopted above is the correct one. I suppose that Marco said that the sea was called “La Mer de Ghel ou (de) Ghelan,” a name taken from the districts of the ancient Gelae on its south-western shores, called indifferently Gíl or Gílán, just as many other regions of Asia have like duplicate titles (singular and plural), arising, I suppose, from the change of a gentile into a local name. Such are Lár, Lárán, Khutl, Khutlán, etc., a class to which Badakhshán, Wakhán, Shaghnán, Mungán, Chaghánián, possibly Bámián, and many others have formerly belonged, as the adjectives in some cases surviving, Badakhshi, Shaghni, Wákhi, etc., show.[2] The change exemplified in the induration of these gentile plurals into local singulars is everywhere traced in the passage from earlier to later geography. The old Indian geographical lists, such as are preserved in the Puránas, and in Pliny’s extracts from Megasthenes, are, in the main, lists of peoples, not of provinces, and even where the real name seems to be local a gentile form is often given. So also Tochari and Sogdi are replaced by Tokháristán and Sughd; the Veneti and Taurini by Venice and Turin; the Remi and the Parisii, by Rheims and Paris; East-Saxons and South-Saxons by Essex and Sussex; not to mention the countless -ings that mark the tribal settlement of the Saxons in Britain.
Abulfeda, speaking of this territory, uses exactly Polo’s phrase, saying that the districts in question are properly called Kíl-o-Kílán, but by the Arabs Jíl-o-Jílán. Teixeira gives the Persian name of the sea as Darya Ghiláni. (See Abulf. in Büsching, v. 329.)
[The province of Gíl (Gílán), which is situated between the mountains and the Caspian Sea, and between the provinces of Azerbaíján and Mázanderán (H. C.)], gave name to the silk for which it was and is still famous, mentioned as Ghelle (Gílí) at the end of this chapter. This Seta Ghella is mentioned also by Pegolotti (pp. 212, 238, 301), and by Uzzano, with an odd transposition, as Seta Leggi, along with Seta Masandroni, i.e. from the adjoining province of Mázanderán (p. 192). May not the Spanish Geliz, “a silk-dealer,” which seems to have been a puzzle to etymologists, be connected with this? (See Dozy and Engelmann, 2nd ed. p. 275.) [Prof. F. de Filippi (Viaggo in Persia nel 1862, ... Milan, 1865, 8vo) speaks of the silk industry of Ghílán (pp. 295–296) as the principal product of the entire province.—H. C.]
The dimensions assigned to the Caspian in the text would be very correct if length were meant, but the Geog. Text with the same figure specifies circuit (zire). Ramusio again has “a circuit of 2800 miles.” Possibly the original reading was 2700; but this would be in excess.
[Note 8.]—The Caspian is termed by Vincent of Beauvais Mare Seruanicum, the Sea of Shirwan, another of its numerous Oriental names, rendered by Marino Sanuto as Mare Salvanicum. (III. xi. ch. ix.) But it was generally known to the Franks in the Middle Ages as the Sea of Bacu. Thus Berni:—
“Fuor del deserto la diritta strada
Lungo il Mar di Bacu miglior pareva.”
(Orl. Innam. xvii. 60.)
And in the Sfera of Lionardo Dati (circa 1390):—
“Da Tramontana di quest’Asia Grande
Tartari son sotto la fredda Zona,
Gente bestial di bestie e vivande,
Fin dove l’Onda di Baccù risuona,” etc. (p. 10.)
This name is introduced in Ramusio, but probably by interpolation, as well as the correction of the statement regarding Euphrates, which is perhaps a branch of the notion alluded to in Prologue, ch. ii. note 5. In a later chapter Marco calls it the Sea of Sarai, a title also given in the Carta Catalana. [Odorico calls it Sea of Bacuc (Cathay) and Sea of Bascon (Cordier). The latter name is a corruption of Abeskun, a small town and island in the S.E. corner of the Caspian Sea, not far from Ashurada.—H. C.]
We have little information as to the Genoese navigation of the Caspian, but the great number of names exhibited along its shores in the map just named (1375) shows how familiar such navigation had become by that date. See also Cathay, p. 50, where an account is given of a remarkable enterprise by Genoese buccaneers on the Caspian about that time. Mas’udi relates an earlier history of how about the beginning of the 9th century a fleet of 500 Russian vessels came out of the Volga, and ravaged all the populous southern and western shores of the Caspian. The unhappy population was struck with astonishment and horror at this unlooked-for visitation from a sea that had hitherto been only frequented by peaceful traders or fishermen. (II. 18–24.)
[Note 9.]—[The enormous quantity of fish found in the Caspian Sea is ascribed to the mass of vegetable food to be found in the shallower waters of the North and the mouth of the Volga. According to Reclus, the Caspian fisheries bring in fish to the annual value of between three and four millions sterling.—H. C.]
[1] See Letter of Frederic to the Roman Senate, of 20th June, 1241, in Bréholles. Mahommedan writers, contemporary with the Mongol invasions, regarded these as a manifest sign of the approaching end of the world. (See Elliot’s Historians, II. p. 265.)
[2] When the first edition was published, I was not aware of remarks to like effect regarding names of this character by Sir H. Rawlinson in the J. R. As. Soc. vol. xi. pp. 64 and 103.
CHAPTER V.
Of the Kingdom of Mausul.
On the frontier of Armenia towards the south-east is the kingdom of Mausul. It is a very great kingdom, and inhabited[{1}] by several different kinds of people whom we shall now describe.
First there is a kind of people called Arabi, and these worship Mahommet. Then there is another description of people who are Nestorian and Jacobite Christians. These have a Patriarch, whom they call the Jatolic, and this Patriarch creates Archbishops, and Abbots, and Prelates of all other degrees, and sends them into every quarter, as to India, to Baudas, or to Cathay, just as the Pope of Rome does in the Latin countries. For you must know that though there is a very great number of Christians in those countries, they are all Jacobites and Nestorians; Christians indeed, but not in the fashion enjoined by the Pope of Rome, for they come short in several points of the Faith.[{2}]
All the cloths of gold and silk that are called Mosolins are made in this country; and those great Merchants called Mosolins, who carry for sale such quantities of spicery and pearls and cloths of silk and gold, are also from this kingdom.[{3}]
There is yet another race of people who inhabit the mountains in that quarter, and are called Curds. Some of them are Christians, and some of them are Saracens; but they are an evil generation, whose delight it is to plunder merchants.[{4}]
[Near this province is another called Mus and Merdin, producing an immense quantity of cotton, from which they make a great deal of buckram[{5}] and other cloth. The people are craftsmen and traders, and all are subject to the Tartar King.]
Coin of Badruddín of Mausul.
[Note 1.]—Polo could scarcely have been justified in calling Mosul a very great kingdom. This is a bad habit of his, as we shall have to notice again. Badruddín Lúlú, the last Atabeg of Mosul of the race of Zenghi had at the age of 96 taken sides with Hulaku, and stood high in his favour. His son Malik Sálih, having revolted, surrendered to the Mongols in 1261 on promise of life; which promise they kept in Mongol fashion by torturing him to death. Since then the kingdom had ceased to exist as such. Coins of Badruddín remain with the name and titles of Mangku Kaan on their reverse, and some of his and of other atabegs exhibit curious imitations of Greek art. (Quat. Rash. p. 389; Jour. As. IV. VI. 141.).—H. Y. and H. C. [Mosul was pillaged by Timur at the end of the 14th century; during the 15th it fell into the hands of the Turkomans, and during the 16th, of Ismail, Shah of Persia.—H. C.]
[The population of Mosul is to-day 61,000 inhabitants—(48,000 Musulmans, 10,000 Christians belonging to various churches, and 3000 Jews).—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—The Nestorian Church was at this time and in the preceding centuries diffused over Asia to an extent of which little conception is generally entertained, having a chain of Bishops and Metropolitans from Jerusalem to Peking. The Church derived its name from Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was deposed by the Council of Ephesus in 431. The chief “point of the Faith” wherein it came short, was (at least in its most tangible form) the doctrine that in Our Lord there were two Persons, one of the Divine Word, the other of the Man Jesus; the former dwelling in the latter as in a Temple, or uniting with the latter “as fire with iron.” Nestorin, the term used by Polo, is almost a literal transcript of the Arab form Nastúri. A notice of the Metropolitan sees, with a map, will be found in Cathay, p. ccxliv.
Játhalík, written in our text (from G. T.) Jatolic, by Fr. Burchard and Ricold Jaselic, stands for Καθολικóς. No doubt it was originally Gáthalík, but altered in pronunciation by the Arabs. The term was applied by Nestorians to their Patriarch; among the Jacobites to the Mafrián or Metropolitan. The Nestorian Patriarch at this time resided at Baghdad. (Assemani, vol. iii. pt. 2; Per. Quat. 91, 127.)
The Jacobites, or Jacobins, as they are called by writers of that age (Ar. Ya’úbkíy), received their name from Jacob Baradaeus or James Zanzale, Bishop of Edessa (so called, Mas’udi says, because he was a maker of barda’at or saddle-cloths), who gave a great impulse to their doctrine in the 6th century. [At some time between the years 541 and 578, he separated from the Church and became a follower of the doctrine of Eutyches.—H. C.] The Jacobites then formed an independent Church, which at one time spread over the East at least as far as Sístán, where they had a see under the Sassanian Kings. Their distinguishing tenet was Monophysitism, viz., that Our Lord had but one Nature, the Divine. It was in fact a rebound from Nestorian doctrine, but, as might be expected in such a case, there was a vast number of shades of opinion among both bodies. The chief locality of the Jacobites was in the districts of Mosul, Tekrit, and Jazírah, and their Patriarch was at this time settled at the Monastery of St. Matthew, near Mosul, but afterwards, and to the present day, at or near Mardin. [They have at present two patriarchates: the Monastery of Zapharan near Baghdad and Etchmiadzin.—H. C.] The Armenian, Coptic, Abyssinian, and Malabar Churches all hold some shade of the Jacobite doctrine, though the first two at least have Patriarchs apart.
(Assemani, vol. ii.; Le Quien, II. 1596; Mas’udi, II. 329–330; Per. Quat. 124–129.)
[Note 3.]—We see here that mosolin or muslin had a very different meaning from what it has now. A quotation from Ives by Marsden shows it to have been applied in the middle of last century to a strong cotton cloth made at Mosul. Dozy says the Arabs use Mauçili in the sense of muslin, and refers to passages in ‘The Arabian Nights.’ [Bretschneider (Med. Res. II. p. 122) observes “that in the narrative of Ch’ang Ch’un’s travels to the west in 1221, it is stated that in Samarkand the men of the lower classes and the priests wrap their heads about with a piece of white mo-sze. There can be no doubt that mo-sze here denotes ‘muslin,’ and the Chinese author seems to understand by this term the same material which we are now used to call muslin.”—H. C.] I have found no elucidation of Polo’s application of mosolini to a class of merchants. But, in a letter of Pope Innocent IV. (1244) to the Dominicans in Palestine, we find classed as different bodies of Oriental Christians, “Jacobitae, Nestoritae, Georgiani, Graeci, Armeni, Maronitae, et Mosolini.” (Le Quien, III. 1342.)
[Note 4.]—“The Curds,” says Ricold, “exceed in malignant ferocity all the barbarous nations that I have seen.... They are called Curti, not because they are curt in stature, but from the Persian word for Wolves.... They have three principal vices, viz., Murder, Robbery, and Treachery.” Some say they have not mended since, but his etymology is doubtful. Kúrt is Turkish for a wolf, not Persian, which is Gurg; but the name (Karduchi, Kordiaei, etc.) is older, I imagine, than the Turkish language in that part of Asia. Quatremère refers it to the Persian gurd, “strong, valiant, hero.” As regards the statement that some of the Kurds were Christians, Mas’udi states that the Jacobites and certain other Christians in the territory of Mosul and Mount Judi were reckoned among the Kurds. (Not. et Ext. XIII. i. 304.) [The Kurds of Mosul are in part nomadic and are called Kotcheres, but the greater number are sedentary and cultivate cereals, cotton, tobacco, and fruits. (Cuinet.) Old Kurdistan had Shehrizor (Kerkuk, in the sanjak of that name) as its capital.—H. C.]
[Note 5.]—Ramusio here, as in all passages where other texts have Bucherami and the like, puts Boccassini, a word which has become obsolete in its turn. I see both Bochayrani and Bochasini coupled, in a Genoese fiscal statute of 1339, quoted by Pardessus. (Lois Maritimes, IV. 456.)
Mush and Mardin are in very different regions, but as their actual interval is only about 120 miles, they may have been under one provincial government. Mush is essentially Armenian, and, though the seat of a Pashalik, is now a wretched place. Mardin, on the verge of the Mesopotamian Plain, rises in terraces on a lofty hill, and there, says Hammer, “Sunnis and Shias, Catholic and Schismatic Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Chaldæans, Sun-, Fire-, Calf-, and Devil-worshippers dwell one over the head of the other.” (Ilchan. I. 191.)
CHAPTER VI.
Of the great City of Baudas, and how it was taken.
Baudas is a great city, which used to be the seat of the Calif of all the Saracens in the world, just as Rome is the seat of the Pope of all the Christians.[{1}] A very great river flows through the city, and by this you can descend to the Sea of India. There is a great traffic of merchants with their goods this way; they descend some eighteen days from Baudas, and then come to a certain city called Kisi, where they enter the Sea of India.[{2}] There is also on the river, as you go from Baudas to Kisi, a great city called Bastra, surrounded by woods, in which grow the best dates in the world.[{3}]
In Baudas they weave many different kinds of silk stuffs and gold brocades, such as nasich, and nac, and cramoisy, and many another beautiful tissue richly wrought with figures of beasts and birds. It is the noblest and greatest city in all those regions.[{4}]
Now it came to pass on a day in the year of Christ 1255, that the Lord of the Tartars of the Levant, whose name was Alaü, brother to the Great Kaan now reigning, gathered a mighty host and came up against Baudas and took it by storm.[{5}] It was a great enterprise! for in Baudas there were more than 100,000 horse, besides foot soldiers. And when Alaü had taken the place he found therein a tower of the Califs, which was full of gold and silver and other treasure; in fact the greatest accumulation of treasure in one spot that ever was known.[{6}] When he beheld that great heap of treasure he was astonished, and, summoning the Calif to his presence, he said to him: “Calif, tell me now why thou hast gathered such a huge treasure? What didst thou mean to do therewith? Knewest thou not that I was thine enemy, and that I was coming against thee with so great an host to cast thee forth of thine heritage? Wherefore didst thou not take of thy gear and employ it in paying knights and soldiers to defend thee and thy city?”
The Calif wist not what to answer, and said never a word. So the Prince continued, “Now then, Calif, since I see what a love thou hast borne thy treasure, I will e’en give it thee to eat!” So he shut the Calif up in the Treasure Tower, and bade that neither meat nor drink should be given him, saying, “Now, Calif, eat of thy treasure as much as thou wilt, since thou art so fond of it; for never shalt thou have aught else to eat!”
So the Calif lingered in the tower four days, and then died like a dog. Truly his treasure would have been of more service to him had he bestowed it upon men who would have defended his kingdom and his people, rather than let himself be taken and deposed and put to death as he was.[{7}] Howbeit, since that time, there has been never another Calif, either at Baudas or anywhere else.[{8}]
Now I will tell you of a great miracle that befell at Baudas, wrought by God on behalf of the Christians.
[Note 1.]—This form of the Mediæval Frank name of Baghdad, Baudas [the Chinese traveller, Ch’ang Te, Si Shi Ki, XIII. cent., says, “the kingdom of Bao-da,” H. C.], is curiously like that used by the Chinese historians, Paota (Pauthier; Gaubil), and both are probably due to the Mongol habit of slurring gutturals. (See Prologue, ch. ii. note 3.) [Baghdad was taken on the 5th of February, 1258, and the Khalif surrendered to Hulaku on the 10th of February.—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Polo is here either speaking without personal knowledge, or is so brief as to convey an erroneous impression that the Tigris flows to Kisi, whereas three-fourths of the length of the Persian Gulf intervene between the river mouth and Kisi. The latter is the island and city of Kish or Kais, about 200 miles from the mouth of the Gulf, and for a long time one of the chief ports of trade with India and the East. The island, the Cataea of Arrian, now called Ghes or Kenn, is singular among the islands of the Gulf as being wooded and well supplied with fresh water. The ruins of a city [called Harira, according to Lord Curzon,] exist on the north side. According to Wassáf, the island derived its name from one Kais, the son of a poor widow of Síráf (then a great port of Indian trade on the northern shore of the Gulf), who on a voyage to India, about the 10th century, made a fortune precisely as Dick Whittington did. The proceeds of the cat were invested in an establishment on this island. Modern attempts to nationalise Whittington may surely be given up! It is one of the tales which, like Tell’s shot, the dog Gellert, and many others, are common to many regions. (Hammer’s Ilch. I. 239; Ouseley’s Travels, I. 170; Notes and Queries, 2nd s. XI. 372.)
Mr. Badger, in a postscript to his translation of the History of Omán (Hak. Soc. 1871), maintains that Kish or Kais was at this time a city on the mainland, and identical from Síráf. He refers to Ibn Batuta (II. 244), who certainly does speak of visiting “the city of Kais, called also Síráf.” And Polo, neither here nor in Bk. III. ch. xl., speaks of Kisi as an island. I am inclined, however, to think that this was from not having visited it. Ibn Batuta says nothing of Síráf as a seat of trade; but the historian Wassáf, who had been in the service of Jamáluddín al-Thaibi, the Lord of Kais, in speaking of the export of horses thence to India, calls it “the Island of Kais.” (Elliot, III. 34.) Compare allusions to this horse trade in ch. xv. and in Bk. III. ch. xvii. Wassáf was precisely a contemporary of Polo.
[Note 3.]—The name is Bascra in the MSS., but this is almost certainly the common error of c for t. Basra is still noted for its vast date-groves. “The whole country from the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris to the sea, a distance of 30 leagues, is covered with these trees.” (Tav. Bk. II. ch. iii.)
[Note 4.]—From Baudas, or Baldac, i.e. Baghdad, certain of these rich silk and gold brocades were called Baldachini, or in English Baudekins. From their use in the state canopies and umbrellas of Italian dignitaries, the word Baldacchino has come to mean a canopy, even when architectural. [Baldekino, baldacchino, was at first entirely made of silk, but afterwards silk was mixed (sericum mixtum) with cotton or thread. When Hulaku conquered Baghdad part of the tribute was to be paid with that kind of stuff. Later on, says Heyd (II. p. 697), it was also manufactured in the province of Ahwaz, at Damas and at Cyprus; it was carried as far as France and England. Among the articles sent from Baghdad to Okkodai Khan, mentioned in the Yüan ch’ao pi shi (made in the 14th century), quoted by Bretschneider (Med. Res. II. p. 124), we note: Nakhut (a kind of gold brocade), Nachidut (a silk stuff interwoven with gold), Dardas (a stuff embroidered in gold). Bretschneider (p. 125) adds: “With respect to nakhut and nachidut, I may observe that these words represent the Mongol plural form of nakh and nachetti.... I may finally mention that in the Yüan shi, ch. lxxviii. (on official dresses), a stuff, na-shi-shi, is repeatedly named, and the term is explained there by kin kin (gold brocade).”—H. C.] The stuffs called Nasich and Nac are again mentioned by our traveller below ([ch. lix.]). We only know that they were of silk and gold, as he implies here, and as Ibn Batuta tells us, who mentions Nakh several times and Nasíj once. The latter is also mentioned by Rubruquis (Nasic) as a present made to him at the Kaan’s court. And Pegolotti speaks of both nacchi and nacchetti of silk and gold, the latter apparently answering to Nasich. Nac, Nacques, Nachiz, Nacíz, Nasís, appear in accounts and inventories of the 14th century, French and English. (See Dictionnaire des Tissus, II. 199, and Douet d’Arcq, Comptes de l’Argenterie des Rois de France, etc., 334.) We find no mention of Nakh or Nasíj among the stuffs detailed in the Aín Akbari, so they must have been obsolete in the 16th century. [Cf. Heyd, Com. du Levant, II. p. 698; Nacco, nachetto, comes from the Arabic nakh (nekh); nassit (nasith) from the Arabic nécidj.—H. C.] Quermesis or Cramoisy derived its name from the Kermes insect (Ar. Kirmiz) found on Quercus coccifera, now supplanted by cochineal. The stuff so called is believed to have been originally a crimson velvet, but apparently, like the mediæval Purpura, if not identical with it, it came to indicate a tissue rather than a colour. Thus Fr.-Michel quotes velvet of vermeil cramoisy, of violet, and of blue cramoisy, and pourpres of a variety of colours, though he says he has never met with pourpre blanche. I may, however, point to Plano Carpini (p. 755), who describes the courtiers at Karakorum as clad in white purpura.
The London prices of Chermisi and Baldacchini in the early part of the 15th century will be found in Uzzano’s work, but they are hard to elucidate.
Babylon, of which Baghdad was the representative, was famous for its variegated textures in very early days. We do not know the nature of the goodly Babylonish garment which tempted Achan in Jericho, but Josephus speaks of the affluence of rich stuffs carried in the triumph of Titus, “gorgeous with life-like designs from the Babylonian loom,” and he also describes the memorable Veil of the Temple as a πέπλος Βαβυλώνιος of varied colours marvellously wrought. Pliny says King Attalus invented the intertexture of cloth with gold; but the weaving of damasks of a variety of colours was perfected at Babylon, and thence they were called Babylonian.
The brocades wrought with figures of animals in gold, of which Marco speaks, are still a spécialité at Benares, where they are known by the name of Shikárgáh or hunting-grounds, which is nearly a translation of the name Thard-wahsh “beast-hunts,” by which they were known to the mediæval Saracens. (See Q. Makrizi, IV. 69–70.) Plautus speaks of such patterns in carpets, the produce of Alexandria—“Alexandrina belluata conchyliata tapetia.” Athenaeus speaks of Persian carpets of like description at an extravagant entertainment given by Antiochus Epiphanes; and the same author cites a banquet given in Persia by Alexander, at which there figured costly curtains embroidered with animals. In the 4th century Asterius, Bishop of Amasia in Pontus, rebukes the Christians who indulge in such attire: “You find upon them lions, panthers, bears, huntsmen, woods, and rocks; whilst the more devout display Christ and His disciples, with the stories of His miracles,” etc. And Sidonius alludes to upholstery of like character:
“Peregrina det supellex
* * * *
Ubi torvus, et per artem
Resupina flexus ora,
It equo reditque telo
Simulacra bestiarum
Fugiens fugansque Parthus.” (Epist. ix. 13.)
A modern Kashmír example of such work is shown under ch. xvii.
(D’Avezac, p. 524; Pegolotti, in Cathay, 295, 306; I. B. II. 309, 388, 422; III. 81; Della Decima, IV. 125–126; Fr.-Michel, Recherches, etc., II. 10–16, 204–206; Joseph. Bell. Jud. VII. 5, 5, and V. 5, 4; Pliny, VIII. 74 (or 48); Plautus, Pseudolus, I. 2; Yonge’s Athenaeus, V. 26 and XII. 54; Mongez in Mém. Acad. IV. 275–276.)
[Note 5.]—[Bretschneider (Med. Res. I. p. 114) says: “Hulagu left Karakorum, the residence of his brother, on the 2nd May, 1253, and returned to his ordo, in order to organize his army. On the 19th October of the same year, all being ready, he started for the west.” He arrived at Samarkand in September, 1255. For this chapter and the following of Polo, see: Hulagu’s Expedition to Western Asia, after the Mohammedan Authors, pp. 112–122, and the Translation of the Si Shi Ki (Ch’ang Te), pp. 122–156, in Bretschneider’s Mediæval Researches, I.—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—[“Hulagu proceeded to the lake of Ormia (Urmia), when he ordered a castle to be built on the island of Tala, in the middle of the lake, for the purpose of depositing here the immense treasures captured at Baghdad. A great part of the booty, however, had been sent to Mangu Khan.” (Hulagu’s Exp., Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. p. 120.) Ch’ang Te says (Si Shi Ki, p. 139): “The palace of the Ha-li-fa was built of fragrant and precious woods. The walls of it were constructed of black and white jade. It is impossible to imagine the quantity of gold and precious stones found there.”—H. C.]
“I said to the Kalif: ‘Thou art old,
Thou hast no need of so much gold.
Thou shouldst not have heaped and hidden it here,
Till the breath of Battle was hot and near,
But have sown through the land these useless hoards
To spring into shining blades of swords,
And keep thine honour sweet and clear.
* * * * *
Then into his dungeon I locked the drone,
And left him to feed there all alone
In the honey-cells of his golden hive:
Never a prayer, nor a cry, nor a groan
Was heard from those massive walls of stone,
Nor again was the Kalif seen alive.’
This is the story, strange and true,
That the great Captain Alaü
Told to his brother, the Tartar Khan,
When he rode that day into Cambalu,
By the road that leadeth to Ispahan.” (Longfellow.)[1]
The story of the death of Mosta’sim Billah, the last of the Abbaside Khalifs, is told in much the same way by Hayton, Ricold, Pachymeres, and Joinville. The memory of the last glorious old man must have failed him, when he says the facts were related by some merchants who came to King Lewis, when before Saiette (or Sidon), viz. in 1253, for the capture of Baghdad occurred five years later. Mar. Sanuto says melted gold was poured down the Khalif’s throat—a transfer, no doubt, from the old story of Crassus and the Parthians. Contemporary Armenian historians assert that Hulaku slew him with his own hand.
All that Rashiduddin says is: “The evening of Wednesday, the 14th of Safar, 656 (20th February, 1258), the Khalif was put to death in the village of Wakf, with his eldest son and five eunuchs who had never quitted him.” Later writers say that he was wrapt in a carpet and trodden to death by horses.
[Cf. The Story of the Death of the last Abbaside Caliph, from the Vatican MS. of Ibn-al-Furāt, by G. le Strange (Jour. R. As. Soc., April, 1900, pp. 293–300). This is the story of the death of the Khalif told by Ibn-al-Furāt (born in Cairo, 1335 A.D.):
“Then Hūlagū gave command, and the Caliph was left a-hungering, until his case was that of very great hunger, so that he called asking that somewhat might be given him to eat. And the accursed Hūlagū sent for a dish with gold therein, and a dish with silver therein, and a dish with gems, and ordered these all to be set before the Caliph al Musta’sim, saying to him, ‘Eat these.’ But the Caliph made answer, ‘These be not fit for eating.’ Then said Hūlagū: ‘Since thou didst so well know that these be not fit for eating, why didst thou make a store thereof? With part thereof thou mightest have sent gifts to propitiate us, and with part thou shouldst have raised an army to serve thee and defend thyself against us! And Hūlagū commanded them to take forth the Caliph and his son to a place without the camp, and they were here bound and put into two great sacks, being afterwards trampled under foot till they both died—the mercy of Allah be upon them.”—H. C.]
The foundation of the story, so widely received among the Christians, is to be found also in the narrative of Nikbi (and Mirkhond), which is cited by D’Ohsson. When the Khalif surrendered, Hulaku put before him a plateful of gold, and told him to eat it. “But one does not eat gold,” said the prisoner. “Why, then,” replied the Tartar, “did you hoard it, instead of expending it in keeping up an army? Why did you not meet me at the Oxus?” The Khalif could only say, “Such was God’s will!” “And that which has befallen you was also God’s will,” said Hulaku.
Wassáf’s narrative is interesting:—“Two days after his capture the Khalif was at his morning prayer, and began with the verse (Koran, III. 25), ‘Say God is the Possessor of Dominion! It shall be given to whom He will; it shall be taken from whom He will: whom He will He raiseth to honour; whom He will He casteth to the ground.’ Having finished the regular office he continued still in prayer with tears and importunity. Bystanders reported to the Ilkhan the deep humiliation of the Khalif’s prayers, and the text which seemed to have so striking an application to those two princes. Regarding what followed there are different stories. Some say that the Ilkhan ordered food to be withheld from the Khalif, and that when he asked for food the former bade a dish of gold be placed before him, etc. Eventually, after taking counsel with his chiefs, the Padishah ordered the execution of the Khalif. It was represented that the blood-drinking sword ought not to be stained with the gore of Mosta’sim. He was therefore rolled in a carpet, just as carpets are usually rolled up, insomuch that his limbs were crushed.”
The avarice of the Khalif was proverbial. When the Mongol army was investing Miafaraḳain, the chief, Malik Kamál, told his people that everything he had should be at the service of those in need: “Thank God, I am not like Mosta’sim, a worshipper of silver and gold!”
(Hayton in Ram. ch. xxvi.; Per. Quat. 121; Pachym. Mic. Palaeol. II. 24; Joinville, p. 182; Sanuto, p. 238; J. As. sér. V. tom. xi. 490, and xvi. 291; D’Ohsson, III. 243; Hammer’s Wassáf, 75–76; Quat. Rashid. 305.)
[Note 8.]—Nevertheless Froissart brings the Khalif to life again one hundred and twenty years later, as “Le Galifre de Baudas.” (Bk. III. ch. xxiv.)
[1] Not that Alaü (pace Mr. Longfellow) ever did see Cambalu.
CHAPTER VII.
How the Calif of Baudas took counsel to slay all the Christians in his Land.
I will tell you then this great marvel that occurred between Baudas and Mausul.
It was in the year of Christ[{1}] ... that there was a Calif at Baudas who bore a great hatred to Christians, and was taken up day and night with the thought how he might either bring those that were in his kingdom over to his own faith, or might procure them all to be slain. And he used daily to take counsel about this with the devotees and priests of his faith,[{2}] for they all bore the Christians like malice. And, indeed, it is a fact, that the whole body of Saracens throughout the world are always most malignantly disposed towards the whole body of Christians.
Now it happened that the Calif, with those shrewd priests of his, got hold of that passage in our Gospel which says, that if a Christian had faith as a grain of mustard seed, and should bid a mountain be removed, it would be removed. And such indeed is the truth. But when they had got hold of this text they were delighted, for it seemed to them the very thing whereby either to force all the Christians to change their faith, or to bring destruction upon them all. The Calif therefore called together all the Christians in his territories, who were extremely numerous. And when they had come before him, he showed them the Gospel, and made them read the text which I have mentioned. And when they had read it he asked them if that was the truth? The Christians answered that it assuredly was so. “Well,” said the Calif, “since you say that it is the truth, I will give you a choice. Among such a number of you there must needs surely be this small amount of faith; so you must either move that mountain there,”—and he pointed to a mountain in the neighbourhood—“or you shall die an ill death; unless you choose to eschew death by all becoming Saracens and adopting our Holy Law. To this end I give you a respite of ten days; if the thing be not done by that time, ye shall die or become Saracens.” And when he had said this he dismissed them, to consider what was to be done in this strait wherein they were.
[Note 1.]—The date in the G. Text and Pauthier is 1275, which of course cannot have been intended. Ramusio has 1225.
[The Khalifs in 1225 were Abu’l Abbas Ahmed VII. en-Nassir lidini ’llah (1180–1225) and Abu Nasr Mohammed IX. ed-Dhahir bi-emri ’llah (1225–1226).—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—“Cum sez regisles et cum sez casses.” (G. T.) I suppose the former expression to be a form of Regules, which is used in Polo’s book for persons of a religious rule or order, whether Christian or Pagan. The latter word (casses) I take to be the Arabic Kashísh, properly a Christian Presbyter, but frequently applied by old travellers, and habitually by the Portuguese (caxiz, caxix), to Mahomedan Divines. (See Cathay, p. 568.) It may, however, be Kází.
Pauthier’s text has simply “à ses prestres de la Loi.”
CHAPTER VIII.
How the Christians were in great dismay because of what the Calif had said.
The Christians on hearing what the Calif had said were in great dismay, but they lifted all their hopes to God, their Creator, that He would help them in this their strait. All the wisest of the Christians took counsel together, and among them were a number of bishops and priests, but they had no resource except to turn to Him from whom all good things do come, beseeching Him to protect them from the cruel hands of the Calif.
So they were all gathered together in prayer, both men and women, for eight days and eight nights. And whilst they were thus engaged in prayer it was revealed in a vision by a Holy Angel of Heaven to a certain Bishop who was a very good Christian, that he should desire a certain Christian Cobler,[{1}] who had but one eye, to pray to God; and that God in His goodness would grant such prayer because of the Cobler’s holy life.
Now I must tell you what manner of man this Cobler was. He was one who led a life of great uprightness and chastity, and who fasted and kept from all sin, and went daily to church to hear Mass, and gave daily a portion of his gains to God. And the way how he came to have but one eye was this. It happened one day that a certain woman came to him to have a pair of shoes made, and she showed him her foot that he might take her measure. Now she had a very beautiful foot and leg; and the Cobler in taking her measure was conscious of sinful thoughts. And he had often heard it said in the Holy Evangel, that if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, rather than sin. So, as soon as the woman had departed, he took the awl that he used in stitching, and drove it into his eye and destroyed it. And this is the way he came to lose his eye. So you can judge what a holy, just, and righteous man he was.
[Note 1.]—Here the G. T. uses a strange word: “Or te vais a tel cralantur.” It does not occur again, being replaced by chabitier (savetier). It has an Oriental look, but I can make no satisfactory suggestion as to what the word meant.
CHAPTER IX.
How the One-eyed Cobler was desired to pray for the Christians.
Now when this vision had visited the Bishop several times, he related the whole matter to the Christians, and they agreed with one consent to call the Cobler before them. And when he had come they told him it was their wish that he should pray, and that God had promised to accomplish the matter by his means. On hearing their request he made many excuses, declaring that he was not at all so good a man as they represented. But they persisted in their request with so much sweetness, that at last he said he would not tarry, but do what they desired.
CHAPTER X.
How the Prayer of the One-eyed Cobler caused the Mountain to move.
And when the appointed day was come, all the Christians got up early, men and women, small and great, more than 100,000 persons, and went to church, and heard the Holy Mass. And after Mass had been sung, they all went forth together in a great procession to the plain in front of the mountain, carrying the precious cross before them, loudly singing and greatly weeping as they went. And when they arrived at the spot, there they found the Calif with all his Saracen host armed to slay them if they would not change their faith; for the Saracens believed not in the least that God would grant such favour to the Christians. These latter stood indeed in great fear and doubt, but nevertheless they rested their hope on their God Jesus Christ.
So the Cobler received the Bishop’s benison, and then threw himself on his knees before the Holy Cross, and stretched out his hands towards Heaven, and made this prayer: “Blessed Lord God Almighty, I pray Thee by Thy goodness that Thou wilt grant this grace unto Thy people, insomuch that they perish not, nor Thy faith be cast down, nor abused nor flouted. Not that I am in the least worthy to prefer such request unto Thee; but for Thy great power and mercy I beseech Thee to hear this prayer from me Thy servant full of sin.”
And when he had ended this his prayer to God the Sovereign Father and Giver of all grace, and whilst the Calif and all the Saracens, and other people there, were looking on, the mountain rose out of its place and moved to the spot which the Calif had pointed out! And when the Calif and all his Saracens beheld, they stood amazed at the wonderful miracle that God had wrought for the Christians, insomuch that a great number of the Saracens became Christians. And even the Calif caused himself to be baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen, and became a Christian, but in secret. Howbeit, when he died they found a little cross hung round his neck; and therefore the Saracens would not bury him with the other Califs, but put him in a place apart. The Christians exulted greatly at this most holy miracle, and returned to their homes full of joy, giving thanks to their Creator for that which He had done.[{1}]
And now you have heard in what wise took place this great miracle. And marvel not that the Saracens hate the Christians; for the accursed law that Mahommet gave them commands them to do all the mischief in their power to all other descriptions of people, and especially to Christians; to strip such of their goods, and do them all manner of evil, because they belong not to their law. See then what an evil law and what naughty commandments they have! But in such fashion the Saracens act, throughout the world.
Now I have told you something of Baudas. I could easily indeed have told you first of the affairs and the customs of the people there. But it would be too long a business, looking to the great and strange things that I have got to tell you, as you will find detailed in this Book.
So now I will tell you of the noble city of Tauris.
[Note 1.]—We may remember that at a date only three years before Marco related this story (viz. in 1295), the cottage of Loreto is asserted to have changed its locality for the third and last time by moving to the site which it now occupies.
Some of the old Latin copies place the scene at Tauris. And I observe that a missionary of the 16th century does the same. The mountain, he says, is between Tauris and Nakhshiwan, and is called Manhuc. (Gravina, Christianità nell’ Armenia, etc., Roma, 1605, p. 91.)
The moving of a mountain is one of the miracles ascribed to Gregory Thaumaturgus. Such stories are rife among the Mahomedans themselves. “I know,” says Khanikoff, “at least half a score of mountains which the Musulmans allege to have come from the vicinity of Mecca.”
Ramusio’s text adds here: “All the Nestorian and Jacobite Christians from that time forward have maintained a solemn celebration of the day on which the miracle occurred, keeping a fast also on the eve thereof.”
F. Göring, a writer who contributes three articles on Marco Polo to the Neue Züricher-Zeitung, 5th, 6th, 8th April, 1878, says: “I heard related in Egypt a report which Marco Polo had transmitted to Baghdad. I will give it here in connection with another which I also came across in Egypt.
“‘Many years ago there reigned in Babylon, on the Nile, a haughty Khalif who vexed the Christians with taxes and corvées. He was confirmed in his hate of the Christians by the Khakam Chacham Bashi or Chief Rabbi of the Jews, who one day said to him: “The Christians allege in their books that it shall not hurt them to drink or eat any deadly thing. So I have prepared a potion that one of them shall taste at my hand: if he does not die on the spot then call me no more Chacham Bashi!” The Khalif immediately sent for His Holiness the Patriarch of Babylon, and ordered him to drink up the potion. The Patriarch just blew a little over the cup and then emptied it at a draught, and took no harm. His Holiness then on his side demanded that the Chacham Bashi should quaff a cup to the health of the Khalif, which he (the Patriarch) should first taste, and this the Khalif found only fair and right. But hardly had the Chacham Bashi put the cup to his lips than he fell down and expired.’ Still the Musulmans and Jews thirsted for Christian blood. It happened at that time that a mass of the hill Mokattani became loose and threatened to come down upon Babylon. This was laid to the door of the Christians, and they were ordered to stop it. The Patriarch in great distress has a vision that tells him summon the saintly cobbler (of whom the same story is told as here)—the cobbler bids the rock to stand still and it does so to this day. ‘These two stories may still be heard in Cairo’—from whom is not said. The hill that threatened to fall on the Egyptian Babylon is called in Turkish Dur Dagh, ‘Stay, or halt-hill.’ (L.c. April, 1878.)”—MS. Note, H. Y.
CHAPTER XI.
Of the Noble City of Tauris.
Tauris is a great and noble city, situated in a great province called Yrac, in which are many other towns and villages. But as Tauris is the most noble I will tell you about it.[{1}]
The men of Tauris get their living by trade and handicrafts, for they weave many kinds of beautiful and valuable stuffs of silk and gold. The city has such a good position that merchandize is brought thither from India, Baudas, Cremesor,[{2}] and many other regions; and that attracts many Latin merchants, especially Genoese, to buy goods and transact other business there; the more as it is also a great market for precious stones. It is a city in fact where merchants make large profits.[{3}]
The people of the place are themselves poor creatures; and are a great medley of different classes. There are Armenians, Nestorians, Jacobites, Georgians, Persians, and finally the natives of the city themselves, who are worshippers of Mahommet. These last are a very evil generation; they are known as Taurizi.[{4}] The city is all girt round with charming gardens, full of many varieties of large and excellent fruits.[{5}]
Now we will quit Tauris, and speak of the great country of Persia. [From Tauris to Persia is a journey of twelve days.]
[Note 1.]—Abulfeda notices that Tabríz was vulgarly pronounced Tauriz, and this appears to have been adopted by the Franks. In Pegolotti the name is always Torissi.
Tabriz is often reckoned to belong to Armenia, as by Hayton. Properly it is the chief city of Azerbaiján, which never was included in ’Irák. But it may be observed that Ibn Batuta generally calls the Mongol Ilkhan of Persia Sáhib or Malik ul-’Irák, and as Tabriz was the capital of that sovereign, we can account for the mistake, whilst admitting it to be one. [The destruction of Baghdad by Hulaku made Tabriz the great commercial and political city of Asia, and diverted the route of Indian products from the Mediterranean to the Euxine. It was the route to the Persian Gulf by Kashan, Yezd, and Kermán, to the Mediterranean by Lajazzo, and later on by Aleppo,—and to the Euxine by Trebizond. The destruction of the Kingdom of Armenia closed to Europeans the route of Tauris.—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Cremesor, as Baldelli points out, is Garmsir, meaning a hot region, a term which in Persia has acquired several specific applications, and especially indicates the coast-country on the N.E. side of the Persian Gulf, including Hormuz and the ports in that quarter.
[Note 3.]—[Of the Italians established at Tabriz, the first whose name is mentioned is the Venetian Pietro Viglioni (Vioni); his will, dated 10th December, 1264, is still in existence. (Archiv. Venet. XXVI. pp. 161–165; Heyd, French Ed., II. p. 110.)—H. C.] At a later date (1341) the Genoese had a factory at Tabriz headed by a consul with a council of twenty-four merchants, and in 1320 there is evidence of a Venetian settlement there. (Elie de la Prim, 161; Heyd, II. 82.)
Rashiduddin says of Tabriz that there were gathered there under the eyes of the Padishah of Islam “philosophers, astronomers, scholars, historians, of all religions, of all sects; people of Cathay, of Máchín, of India, of Kashmir, of Tibet, of the Uighúr and other Turkish nations, Arabs and Franks.” Ibn Batuta: “I traversed the bazaar of the jewellers, and my eyes were dazzled by the varieties of precious stones which I beheld. Handsome slaves, superbly dressed, and girdled with silk, offered their gems for sale to the Tartar ladies, who bought great numbers. [Odoric (ed. Cordier) speaks also of the great trade of Tabriz.] Tabriz maintained a large population and prosperity down to the 17th century, as may be seen in Chardin. It is now greatly fallen, though still a place of importance.” (Quat. Rash., p. 39; I. B. II. 130.)
Ghazan Khan’s Mosque at Tabriz.—(From Fergusson.)
[Note 4.]—In Pauthier’s text this is Touzi, a mere clerical error, I doubt not for Torizi, in accordance with the G. Text (“le peuple de la cité que sunt apelés Tauriz”), with the Latin, and with Ramusio. All that he means to say is that the people are called Tabrízís. Not recondite information, but ’tis his way. Just so he tells us in ch. iii. that the people of Hermenia are called Hermins, and elsewhere that the people of Tebet are called Tebet. So Hayton thinks it not inappropriate to say that the people of Catay are called Cataini, that the people of Corasmia are called Corasmins, and that the people of the cities of Persia are called Persians.
[Note 5.]—Hamd Allah Mastaufi, the Geographer, not long after Polo’s time, gives an account of Tabriz, quoted in Barbier de Meynard’s Dict. de la Perse, p. 132. This also notices the extensive gardens round the city, the great abundance and cheapness of fruits, the vanity, insolence, and faithlessness of the Tabrízís, etc. (p. 132 seqq.). Our cut shows a relic of the Mongol Dynasty at Tabriz.
CHAPTER XII.
Of the Monastery of St. Barsamo on the Borders of Tauris.
On the borders of (the territory of) Tauris there is a monastery called after Saint Barsamo, a most devout Saint. There is an Abbot, with many Monks, who wear a habit like that of the Carmelites, and these to avoid idleness are continually knitting woollen girdles. These they place upon the altar of St. Barsamo during the service, and when they go begging about the province (like the Brethren of the Holy Spirit) they present them to their friends and to the gentlefolks, for they are excellent things to remove bodily pain; wherefore every one is devoutly eager to possess them.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—Barsauma (“The Son of Fasting”) was a native of Samosata, and an Archimandrite of the Asiatic Church. He opposed the Nestorians, but became himself still more obnoxious to the orthodox as a spreader of the Monophysite Heresy. He was condemned by the Council of Chalcedon (451), and died in 458. He is a Saint of fame in the Jacobite and Armenian Churches, and several monasteries were dedicated to him; but by far the most celebrated, and doubtless that meant here, was near Malatia. It must have been famous even among the Mahomedans, for it has an article in Bákúi’s Geog. Dictionary. (Dír-Barsúma, see N. et Ext. II. 515.) This monastery possessed relics of Barsauma and of St. Peter, and was sometimes the residence of the Jacobite Patriarch and the meeting-place of the Synods.
A more marvellous story than Marco’s is related of this monastery by Vincent of Beauvais: “There is in that kingdom (Armenia) a place called St. Brassamus, at which there is a monastery for 300 monks. And ’tis said that if ever an enemy attacks it, the defences of the monastery move of themselves, and shoot back the shot against the besieger.”
(Assemani in vol. ii. passim; Tournefort, III. 260; Vin. Bell. Spec. Historiale, Lib. XXX. c. cxlii.; see also Mar. Sanut. III. xi. c. 16.)
CHAPTER XIII.
Of the Great Country of Persia; with some account of the Three Kings.
Persia is a great country, which was in old times very illustrious and powerful; but now the Tartars have wasted and destroyed it.
In Persia is the city of Saba, from which the Three Magi set out when they went to worship Jesus Christ; and in this city they are buried, in three very large and beautiful monuments, side by side. And above them there is a square building, carefully kept. The bodies are still entire, with the hair and beard remaining. One of these was called Jaspar, the second Melchior, and the third Balthasar. Messer Marco Polo asked a great many questions of the people of that city as to those Three Magi, but never one could he find that knew aught of the matter, except that these were three kings who were buried there in days of old. However, at a place three days’ journey distant he heard of what I am going to tell you. He found a village there which goes by the name of Cala Ataperistan,[{1}] which is as much as to say, “The Castle of the Fire-worshippers.” And the name is rightly applied, for the people there do worship fire, and I will tell you why.
They relate that in old times three kings of that country went away to worship a Prophet that was born, and they carried with them three manner of offerings, Gold, and Frankincense, and Myrrh; in order to ascertain whether that Prophet were God, or an earthly King, or a Physician. For, said they, if he take the Gold, then he is an earthly King; if he take the Incense he is God; if he take the Myrrh he is a Physician.
So it came to pass when they had come to the place where the Child was born, the youngest of the Three Kings went in first, and found the Child apparently just of his own age; so he went forth again marvelling greatly. The middle one entered next, and like the first he found the Child seemingly of his own age; so he also went forth again and marvelled greatly. Lastly, the eldest went in, and as it had befallen the other two, so it befell him. And he went forth very pensive. And when the three had rejoined one another, each told what he had seen; and then they all marvelled the more. So they agreed to go in all three together, and on doing so they beheld the Child with the appearance of its actual age, to wit, some thirteen days.[{2}] Then they adored, and presented their Gold and Incense and Myrrh. And the Child took all the three offerings, and then gave them a small closed box; whereupon the Kings departed to return into their own land.
[Note 1.]—Kala’ Atishparastán, meaning as in the text. (Marsden.)
[Note 2.]—According to the Collectanea ascribed to Bede, Melchior was a hoary old man; Balthazar in his prime, with a beard; Gaspar young and beardless. (Inchofer, Tres Magi Evangelici, Romae, 1639.)
CHAPTER XIV.
What befell when the Three Kings returned to their own Country.
And when they had ridden many days they said they would see what the Child had given them. So they opened the little box, and inside it they found a stone. On seeing this they began to wonder what this might be that the Child had given them, and what was the import thereof. Now the signification was this: when they presented their offerings, the Child had accepted all three, and when they saw that they had said within themselves that He was the True God, and the True King, and the True Physician.[{1}] And what the gift of the stone implied was that this Faith which had begun in them should abide firm as a rock. For He well knew what was in their thoughts. Howbeit, they had no understanding at all of this signification of the gift of the stone; so they cast it into a well. Then straightway a fire from Heaven descended into that well wherein the stone had been cast.
And when the Three Kings beheld this marvel they were sore amazed, and it greatly repented them that they had cast away the stone; for well they then perceived that it had a great and holy meaning. So they took of that fire, and carried it into their own country, and placed it in a rich and beautiful church. And there the people keep it continually burning, and worship it as a god, and all the sacrifices they offer are kindled with that fire. And if ever the fire becomes extinct they go to other cities round about where the same faith is held, and obtain of that fire from them, and carry it to the church. And this is the reason why the people of this country worship fire. They will often go ten days’ journey to get of that fire.[{2}]
Such then was the story told by the people of that Castle to Messer Marco Polo; they declared to him for a truth that such was their history, and that one of the three kings was of the city called Saba, and the second of Ava, and the third of that very Castle where they still worship fire, with the people of all the country round about.[{3}]
Having related this story, I will now tell you of the different provinces of Persia, and their peculiarities.
[Note 1.]—“Mire.” This was in old French the popular word for a Leech; the politer word was Physicien. (N. et E. V. 505.)
Chrysostom says that the Gold, Myrrh, and Frankincense were mystic gifts indicating King, Man, God; and this interpretation was the usual one. Thus Prudentius:—
“Regem, Deumque adnunciant
Thesaurus et fragrans odor
Thuris Sabaei, at myrrheus
Pulvis sepulchrum praedocet.” (Hymnus Epiphanius.)
And the Paris Liturgy:—
“Offert Aurum Caritas,
Et Myrrham Austeritas,
Et Thus Desiderium.
Auro Rex agnoscitur,
Homo Myrrha, colitur
Thure Deus gentium.”
And in the “Hymns, Ancient and Modern”:—
“Sacred gifts of mystic meaning:
Incense doth their God disclose,
Gold the King of Kings proclaimeth,
Myrrh His sepulchre foreshows.”
[Note 2.]—“Feruntque (Magi), si justum est credi, etiam ignem caelitus lapsum apud se sempiternis foculis custodire, cujus portionem exiguam, ut faustam praeisse quondam Asiaticis Regibus dicunt.” (Ammian. Marcell. XXIII. 6.)
[Note 3.]—Saba or Sava still exists as Sávah, about 50 miles S.W. of Tehrân. It is described by Mr. Consul Abbott, who visited it in 1849, as the most ruinous town he had ever seen, and as containing about 1000 families. The people retain a tradition, mentioned by Hamd Allah Mastaufi, that the city stood on the shores of a Lake which dried up miraculously at the birth of Mahomed. Sávah is said to have possessed one of the greatest Libraries in the East, until its destruction by the Mongols on their first invasion of Persia. Both Sávah and Ávah (or Ábah) are mentioned by Abulfeda as cities of Jibal. We are told that the two cities were always at loggerheads, the former being Sunni and the latter Shiya. [We read in the Travels of Thévenot, a most intelligent traveller, “qu’il n’a rien écrit de l’ancienne ville de Sava qu’il trouva sur son chemin, et où il a marqué lui-même que son esprit de curiosité l’abandonna.” (Voyages, éd. 1727, vol. v. p. 343. He died a few days after at Miana, in Armenia, 28th November, 1667). (MS. Note.—H. Y.)]
As regards the position of Avah, Abbott says that a village still stands upon the site, about 16 miles S.S.E. of Sávah. He did not visit it, but took a bearing to it. He was told there was a mound there on which formerly stood a Gueber Castle. At Sávah he could find no trace of Marco Polo’s legend. Chardin, in whose time Sávah was not quite so far gone to decay, heard of an alleged tomb of Samuel, at 4 leagues from the city. This is alluded to by Hamd Allah.
Keith Johnston and Kiepert put Ávah some 60 miles W.N.W. of Sávah, on the road between Kazvin and Hamadan. There seems to be some great mistake here.
Friar Odoric puts the locality of the Magi at Kashan, though one of the versions of Ramusio and the Palatine MS. (see Cordier’s Odoric, pp. xcv. and 41 of his Itinerary), perhaps corrected in this, puts it at Saba.—H. Y. and H. C.
We have no means of fixing the Kala’ Atishparastán. It is probable, however, that the story was picked up on the homeward journey, and as it seems to be implied that this castle was reached three days after leaving Sávah, I should look for it between Sávah and Abher. Ruins to which the name Kila’-i-Gabr, “Gueber Castle,” attaches are common in Persia.
As regards the Legend itself, which shows such a curious mixture of Christian and Parsi elements, it is related some 350 years earlier by Mas’udi: “In the Province of Fars they tell you of a Well called the Well of Fire, near which there was a temple built. When the Messiah was born the King Koresh sent three messengers to him, the first of whom carried a bag of Incense, the second a bag of Myrrh, and the third a bag of Gold. They set out under the guidance of the Star which the king had described to them, arrived in Syria, and found the Messiah with Mary His Mother. This story of the three messengers is related by the Christians with sundry exaggerations; it is also found in the Gospel. Thus they say that the Star appeared to Koresh at the moment of Christ’s birth; that it went on when the messengers went on, and stopped when they stopped. More ample particulars will be found in our Historical Annals, where we have given the versions of this legend as current among the Guebers and among the Christians. It will be seen that Mary gave the king’s messengers a round loaf, and this, after different adventures, they hid under a rock in the province of Fars. The loaf disappeared underground, and there they dug a well, on which they beheld two columns of fire to start up flaming at the surface; in short, all the details of the legend will be found in our Annals.” The Editors say that Mas’udi had carried the story to Fars by mistaking Shíz in Azerbaiján (the Atropatenian Ecbatana of Sir H. Rawlinson) for Shiraz. A rudiment of the same legend is contained in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. This says that Mary gave the Magi one of the bands in which the Child was swathed. On their return they cast this into their sacred fire; though wrapt in the flame it remained unhurt.
We may add that there was a Christian tradition that the Star descended into a well between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Gregory of Tours also relates that in a certain well, at Bethlehem, from which Mary had drawn water, the Star was sometimes seen, by devout pilgrims who looked carefully for it, to pass from one side to the other. But only such as merited the boon could see it.
(See Abbott in J. R. G. S. XXV. 4–6; Assemani, III. pt. 2, 750; Chardin, II. 407; N. et Ext. II. 465; Dict. de la Perse, 2, 56, 298; Cathay, p. 51; Mas’udi, IV. 80; Greg. Turon. Libri Miraculorum, Paris, 1858, I. 8.)
Several of the fancies that legend has attached to the brief story of the Magi in St. Matthew, such as the royal dignity of the persons; their location, now in Arabia, now (as here) at Saba in Persia, and again (as in Hayton and the Catalan Map) in Tarsia or Eastern Turkestan; the notion that one of them was a Negro, and so on, probably grew out of the arbitrary application of passages in the Old Testament, such as: “Venient legati ex Aegypto: Aethiopia praevenit manus ejus Deo” (Ps. lxviii. 31). This produced the Negro who usually is painted as one of the Three. “Reges Tharsis et Insulae munera offerent: Reges Arabum et Saba dona adducent” (lxxii. 10). This made the Three into Kings, and fixed them in Tarsia, Arabia, and Sava. “Mundatio Camelorum operiet te, dromedarii Madian et Epha: omnes de Saba venient aurum et thus deferentes et laudem Domino annunciantes” (Is. lx. 6). Here were Ava and Sava coupled, as well as the gold and frankincense.
One form of the old Church Legend was that the Three were buried at Sessania Adrumetorum (Hadhramaut) in Arabia, whence the Empress Helena had the bodies conveyed to Constantinople, [and later to Milan in the time of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus. After the fall of Milan (1162), Frederic Barbarossa gave them to Archbishop Rainald of Dassel (1159–1167), who carried them to Cologne (23rd July, 1164).—H. C.]
The names given by Polo, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, have been accepted from an old date by the Roman Church; but an abundant variety of other names has been assigned to them. Hyde quotes a Syriac writer who calls them Aruphon, Hurmon, and Tachshesh, but says that some call them Gudphorbus, Artachshasht, and Labudo; whilst in Persian they were termed Amad, Zad-Amad, Drust-Amad, i.e. Venit, Cito Venit, Sincerus Venit. Some called them in Greek, Apellius, Amerus, and Damascus, and in Hebrew, Magaloth, Galgalath, and Saracia, but otherwise Ator, Sator, and Petatoros! The Armenian Church used the same names as the Roman, but in Chaldee they were Kaghba, Badadilma, Badada Kharida. (Hyde, Rel. Vet. Pers. 382–383; Inchofer, ut supra; J. As. sér. VI. IX. 160.)
[Just before going to press we have read Major Sykes’ new book on Persia. Major Sykes (ch. xxiii.) does not believe that Marco visited Baghdád, and he thinks that the Venetians entered Persia near Tabriz, and travelled to Sultania, Kashán, and Yezd. Thence they proceeded to Kerman and Hormuz. We shall discuss this question in the Introduction.—H. C.]
CHAPTER XV.
Of the Eight Kingdoms of Persia, and how they are named.
Now you must know that Persia is a very great country, and contains eight kingdoms. I will tell you the names of them all.
The first kingdom is that at the beginning of Persia, and it is called Casvin; the second is further to the south, and is called Curdistan; the third is Lor; the fourth [Suolstan]; the fifth Istanit; the sixth Serazy; the seventh Soncara; the eighth Tunocain, which is at the further extremity of Persia. All these kingdoms lie in a southerly direction except one, to wit, Tunocain; that lies towards the east, and borders on the (country of the) Arbre Sol.[{1}]
In this country of Persia there is a great supply of fine horses; and people take them to India for sale, for they are horses of great price, a single one being worth as much of their money as is equal to 200 livres Tournois; some will be more, some less, according to the quality.[{2}] Here also are the finest asses in the world, one of them being worth full 30 marks of silver, for they are very large and fast, and acquire a capital amble. Dealers carry their horses to Kisi and Curmosa, two cities on the shores of the Sea of India, and there they meet with merchants who take the horses on to India for sale.
In this country there are many cruel and murderous people, so that no day passes but there is some homicide among them. Were it not for the Government, which is that of the Tartars of the Levant, they would do great mischief to merchants; and indeed, maugre the Government, they often succeed in doing such mischief. Unless merchants be well armed they run the risk of being murdered, or at least robbed of everything; and it sometimes happens that a whole party perishes in this way when not on their guard. The people are all Saracens, i.e. followers of the Law of Mahommet.[{3}]
In the cities there are traders and artizans who live by their labour and crafts, weaving cloths of gold, and silk stuffs of sundry kinds. They have plenty of cotton produced in the country; and abundance of wheat, barley, millet, panick, and wine, with fruits of all kinds.
[Some one may say, “But the Saracens don’t drink wine, which is prohibited by their law.” The answer is that they gloss their text in this way, that if the wine be boiled, so that a part is dissipated and the rest becomes sweet, they may drink without breach of the commandment; for it is then no longer called wine, the name being changed with the change of flavour.[{4}]]
[Note 1.]—The following appear to be Polo’s Eight Kingdoms:—
I. Kazvín; then a flourishing city, though I know not why he calls it a kingdom. Persian ’Irák, or the northern portion thereof, seems intended. Previous to Hulaku’s invasion Kazvín seems to have been in the hands of the Ismailites or Assassins.
II. Kurdistan. I do not understand the difficulties of Marsden, followed by Lazari and Pauthier, which lead them to put forth that Kurdistan is not Kurdistan but something else. The boundaries of Kurdistan according to Hamd Allah were Arabian ’Irák, Khuzistán, Persian ’Irák, Azerbaijan and Diarbekr. (Dict. de la P. 480.) [Cf. Curzon, Persia pass.—H. C.] Persian Kurdistan, in modern as in mediæval times, extends south beyond Kermanshah to the immediate border of Polo’s next kingdom, viz.:
III. Lúr or Lúristán. [On Lúristán, see Curzon, Persia, II. pp. 273–303, with the pedigree of the Ruling Family of the Feili Lurs (Pusht-i-Kuh), p. 278.—H. C.] This was divided into two principalities, Great Lúr and Little Lúr, distinctions still existing. The former was ruled by a Dynasty called the Faslúyah Atabegs, which endured from about 1155 to 1424, [when it was destroyed by the Timurids; it was a Kurd Dynasty, founded by Emad ed-din Abu Thaher (1160–1228), and the last prince of which was Ghiyas ed-din (1424). In 1258 the general Kitubuka (Hulagu’s Exp. to Persia, Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. p. 121) is reported to have reduced the country of Lúr or Lúristán and its Atabeg Teghele.—H. C.]. Their territory lay in the mountainous district immediately west of Ispahan, and extended to the River of Dizfúl, which parted it from Little Lúr. The stronghold of the Atabegs was the extraordinary hill fort of Mungasht, and they had a residence also at Aidhej or Mal-Amir in the mountains south of Shushan, where Ibn Batuta visited the reigning Prince in 1327. Sir H. Rawlinson has described Mungasht, and Mr. Layard and Baron de Bode have visited other parts, but the country is still very imperfectly known. Little Lúristán lay west of the R. Dizfúl, extending nearly to the Plain of Babylonia. Its Dynasty, called Kurshid, [was founded in 1184 by the Kurd Shodja ed-din Khurshid, and existed till Shah-Werdy lost his throne in 1593.—H. C.].
The Lúrs are akin to the Kurds, and speak a Kurd dialect, as do all those Ilyáts, or nomads of Persia, who are not of Turkish race. They were noted in the Middle Ages for their agility and their dexterity in thieving. The tribes of Little Lúr “do not affect the slightest veneration for Mahomed or the Koran; their only general object of worship is their great Saint Baba Buzurg,” and particular disciples regard with reverence little short of adoration holy men looked on as living representatives of the Divinity. (Ilchan. I. 70 seqq.; Rawlinson in J. R. G. S. IX.; Layard in Do. XVI. 75, 94; Ld. Strangford in J. R. A. S. XX. 64; N. et E. XIII. i. 330, I. B. II. 31; D’Ohsson, IV. 171–172.)
IV. Shúlistán, best represented by Ramusio’s Suolstan, whilst the old French texts have Cielstan (i.e. Shelstán); the name applied to the country of the Shúls, or Shauls, a people who long occupied a part of Lúristán, but were expelled by the Lúrs in the 12th century, and settled in the country between Shíráz and Khuzistán (now that of the Mamaseni, whom Colonel Pelly’s information identifies with the Shúls), their central points being Naobanján and the fortress called Kala’ Safed or “White Castle.” Ibn Batuta, going from Shiraz to Kazerun, encamped the first day in the country of the Shúls, “a Persian desert tribe which includes some pious persons.” (Q. R. p. 385; N. et E. XIII. i. 332–333; Ilch. I. 71; J. R. G. S. XIII. Map; I. B. II. 88.) [“Adjoining the Kuhgelus on the East are the tents of the Mamasenni (qy. Mohammed Huseini) Lúrs, occupying the country still known as Shúlistán, and extending as far east and south-east as Fars and the Plain of Kazerun. This tribe prides itself on its origin, claiming to have come from Seistán, and to be directly descended from Rustam, whose name is still borne by one of the Mamasenni clans.” (Curzon, Persia, II. p. 318.)—H. C.]
V. Ispahan? The name is in Ramusio Spaan, showing at least that he or some one before him had made this identification. The unusual combination ff, i.e. sf, in manuscript would be so like the frequent one ft, i.e. st, that the change from Isfan to Istan would be easy. But why Istanit?
VI. Shíráz [(Shir = milk, or Shir = lion)—H. C.] representing the province of Fars or Persia Proper, of which it has been for ages the chief city. [It was founded after the Arab conquest in 694 A.D., by Mohammed, son of Yusuf Kekfi. (Curzon, Persia, II. pp. 93–110.)—H. C.] The last Dynasty that had reigned in Fars was that of the Salghur Atabegs, founded about the middle of the 12th century. Under Abubakr (1226–1260) this kingdom attained considerable power, embracing Fars, Kermán, the islands of the Gulf and its Arabian shores; and Shíráz then flourished in arts and literature; Abubakr was the patron of Saadi. From about 1262, though a Salghurian princess, married to a son of Hulaku, had the nominal title of Atabeg, the province of Fars was under Mongol administration. (Ilch. passim.)
VII. Shawánkára or Shabánkára. The G. T. has Soucara, but the Crusca gives the true reading Soncara. It is the country of the Shawánkárs, a people coupled with the Shúls and Lúrs in mediæval Persian history, and like them of Kurd affinities. Their princes, of a family Faslúyah, are spoken of as influential before the Mahomedan conquest, but the name of the people comes prominently forward only during the Mongol era of Persian history. [Shabánkára was taken in 1056 from the Buyid Dynasty, who ruled from the 10th century over a great part of Persia, by Fazl ibn Hassan (Fazluïeh-Hasunïeh). Under the last sovereign, Ardeshir, Shabánkára was taken in 1355 by the Modhafferians, who reigned in ’Irák, Fars, and Kermán, one of the Dynasties established at the expense of the Mongol Ilkhans after the death of Abu Saïd (1335), and were themselves subjugated by Timur in 1392.—H. C.] Their country lay to the south of the great salt lake east of Shíráz, and included Niriz and Darábjird, Fassa, Forg, and Tárum. Their capital was I′g or I′j, called also Irej, about 20 miles north-west of Daráb, with a great mountain fortress; it was taken by Hulaku in 1259. The son of the prince was continued in nominal authority, with Mongol administrators. In consequence of a rebellion in 1311 the Dynasty seems to have been extinguished. A descendant attempted to revive their authority about the middle of the same century. The latest historical mention of the name that I have found is in Abdurrazzák’s History of Shah Rukh, under the year H. 807 (1404). (See Jour. As. 3d. s. vol. ii. 355.) But a note by Colonel Pelly informs me that the name Shabánkára is still applied (1) to the district round the towns of Runiz and Gauristan near Bandar Abbas; (2) to a village near Maiman, in the old country of the tribe; (3) to a tribe and district of Dashtistan, 38 farsakhs west of Shíráz.
With reference to the form in the text, Soncara, I may notice that in two passages of the Masálak-ul-Absár, translated by Quatremère, the name occurs as Shankárah. (Q. R. pp. 380, 440 seqq.; N. et E. XIII.; Ilch. I. 71 and passim; Ouseley’s Travels, II. 158 seqq.)
VIII. Tún-o-Káin, the eastern Kuhistán or Hill country of Persia, of which Tún and Káin are chief cities. The practice of indicating a locality by combining two names in this way is common in the East. Elsewhere in this book we find Ariora-Keshemur and Kes-macoran (Kij-Makrán). Upper Sind is often called in India by the Sepoys Rori-Bakkar, from two adjoining places on the Indus; whilst in former days, Lower Sind was often called Diul-Sind. Karra-Mánikpúr, Uch-Multán, Kunduz-Baghlán are other examples.
The exact expression Tún-o-Káin for the province here in question is used by Baber, and evidently also by some of Hammer’s authorities. (Baber, pp. 201, 204; see Ilch. II. 190; I. 95, 104, and Hist. de l’Ordre des Assassins, p. 245.)
[We learn from (Sir) C. Macgregor’s (1875) Journey through Khorasan (I. p. 127) that the same territory including Gháín or Kaïn is now called by the analogous name of Tabas-o-Tún. Tún and Kaïn (Gháín) are both described in their modern state, by Macgregor. (Ibid. pp. 147 and 161.)—H. C.]
Note that the identification of Suolstan is due to Quatremère (see N. et E. XIII. i. circa p. 332); that of Soncara to Defréméry (J. As. sér. IV. tom. xi. p. 441); and that of Tunocain to Malte-Brun. (N. Ann. des V. xviii. p. 261.) I may add that the Lúrs, the Shúls, and the Shabánkáras are the subjects of three successive sections in the Masálak-al-Absár of Shihábuddin Dimishki, a work which reflects much of Polo’s geography. (See N. et E. XIII. i. 330–333; Curzon, Persia, II. pp. 248 and 251.)
[Note 2.]—The horses exported to India, of which we shall hear more hereafter, were probably the same class of “Gulf Arabs” that are now carried thither. But the Turkman horses of Persia are also very valuable, especially for endurance. Kinneir speaks of one accomplishing 900 miles in eleven days, and Ferrier states a still more extraordinary feat from his own knowledge. In that case one of those horses went from Tehran to Tabriz, returned, and went again to Tabriz, within twelve days, including two days’ rest. The total distance is about 1100 miles.
The livre tournois at this period was equivalent to a little over 18 francs of modern French silver. But in bringing the value to our modern gold standard we must add one-third, as the ratio of silver to gold was then 1:12 instead of 1:16. Hence the equivalent in gold of the livre tournois is very little less than 1l. sterling, and the price of the horse would be about 193l.[1]
Mr. Wright quotes an ordinance of Philip III. of France (1270–1285) fixing the maximum price that might be given for a palfrey at 60 livres tournois, and for a squire’s roncin at 20 livres. Joinville, however, speaks of a couple of horses presented to St. Lewis in 1254 by the Abbot of Cluny, which he says would at the time of his writing (1309) have been worth 500 livres (the pair, it would seem). Hence it may be concluded in a general way that the ordinary price of imported horses in India approached that of the highest class of horses in Europe. (Hist. of Dom. Manners, p. 317; Joinville, p. 205.)
About 1850 a very fair Arab could be purchased in Bombay for 60l., or even less; but prices are much higher now.
With regard to the donkeys, according to Tavernier, the fine ones used by merchants in Persia were imported from Arabia. The mark of silver was equivalent to about 44s. of our silver money, and allowing as before for the lower relative value of gold, 30 marks would be equivalent to 88l. sterling.
Kisi or Kish we have already heard of. Curmosa is Hormuz, of which we shall hear more. With a Pisan, as Rusticiano was, the sound of c is purely and strongly aspirate. Giovanni d’Empoli, in the beginning of the 16th century, another Tuscan, also calls it Cormus. (See Archiv. Stor. Ital. Append. III. 81.)
[Note 3.]—The character of the nomad and semi-nomad tribes of Persia in those days—Kurds, Lúrs, Shúls, Karaunahs, etc.—probably deserved all that Polo says, and it is not changed now. Take as an example Rawlinson’s account of the Bakhtyáris of Luristán: “I believe them to be individually brave, but of a cruel and savage character; they pursue their blood feuds with the most inveterate and exterminating spirit.... It is proverbial in Persia that the Bakhtiyaris have been compelled to forego altogether the reading of the Fatihah or prayer for the dead, for otherwise they would have no other occupation. They are also most dextrous and notorious thieves.” (J. R. G. S. IX. 105.)
[Note 4.]—The Persians have always been lax in regard to the abstinence from wine.
According to Athenaeus, Aristotle, in his Treatise on Drinking (a work lost, I imagine, to posterity), says, “If the wine be moderately boiled it is less apt to intoxicate.” In the preparation of some of the sweet wines of the Levant, such as that of Cyprus, the must is boiled, but I believe this is not the case generally in the East. Baber notices it as a peculiarity among the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush. Tavernier, however, says that at Shíráz, besides the wine for which that city was so celebrated, a good deal of boiled wine was manufactured, and used among the poor and by travellers. No doubt what is meant is the sweet liquor or syrup called Dúsháb, which Della Valle says is just the Italian Mostocotto, but better, clearer, and not so mawkish (I. 689). (Yonge’s Athen. X. 34; Baber, p. 145; Tavernier, Bk. V. ch. xxi.)
[1] The Encyc. Britann., article “Money,” gives the livre tournois of this period as 18.17 francs. A French paper in Notes and Queries (4th S. IV. 485) gives it under St. Lewis and Philip III. as equivalent to 18.24 fr., and under Philip IV. to 17.95. And lastly, experiment at the British Museum, made by the kind intervention of my friend, Mr. E. Thomas, F.R.S., gave the weights of the sols of St. Lewis (1226–1270) and Philip IV. (1285–1314) respectively as 63 grains and 61½ grains of remarkably pure silver. These trials would give the livres (20 sols) as equivalent to 18.14 fr. and 17.70 fr. respectively.
CHAPTER XVI.
Concerning the Great City of Yasdi.
Yasdi also is properly in Persia; it is a good and noble city, and has a great amount of trade. They weave there quantities of a certain silk tissue known as Yasdi, which merchants carry into many quarters to dispose of. The people are worshippers of Mahommet.[{1}]
When you leave this city to travel further, you ride for seven days over great plains, finding harbour to receive you at three places only. There are many fine woods [producing dates] upon the way, such as one can easily ride through; and in them there is great sport to be had in hunting and hawking, there being partridges and quails and abundance of other game, so that the merchants who pass that way have plenty of diversion. There are also wild asses, handsome creatures. At the end of those seven marches over the plain you come to a fine kingdom which is called Kerman.[{2}]
[Note 1.]—Yezd, an ancient city, supposed by D’Anville to be the Isatichae of Ptolemy, is not called by Marco a kingdom, though having a better title to the distinction than some which he classes as such. The atabegs of Yezd dated from the middle of the 11th century, and their Dynasty was permitted by the Mongols to continue till the end of the 13th, when it was extinguished by Ghazan, and the administration made over to the Mongol Diwan.
Yezd, in pre-Mahomedan times, was a great sanctuary of the Gueber worship, though now it is a seat of fanatical Mahomedanism. It is, however, one of the few places where the old religion lingers. In 1859 there were reckoned 850 families of Guebers in Yezd and fifteen adjoining villages, but they diminish rapidly.
[Heyd (Com. du Levant, II. p. 109) says the inhabitants of Yezd wove the finest silk of Taberistan.—H. C.] The silk manufactures still continue, and, with other weaving, employ a large part of the population. The Yazdi, which Polo mentions, finds a place in the Persian dictionaries, and is spoken of by D’Herbelot as Ḳumásh-i-Yezdi, “Yezd stuff.” [“He [Nadir Shah] bestowed upon the ambassador [Hakeem Ataleek, the prime minister of Abulfiez Khan, King of Bokhara] a donation of a thousand mohurs of Hindostan, twenty-five pieces of Yezdy brocade, a rich dress, and a horse with silver harness....” (Memoirs of Khojah Abdulkurreem, a Cashmerian of distinction ... transl. from the original Persian, by Francis Gladwin ... Calcutta, 1788, 8vo, p. 36.)—H. C.]
Yezd is still a place of important trade, and carries on a thriving commerce with India by Bandar Abbási. A visitor in the end of 1865 says: “The external trade appears to be very considerable, and the merchants of Yezd are reputed to be amongst the most enterprising and respectable of their class in Persia. Some of their agents have lately gone, not only to Bombay, but to the Mauritius, Java, and China.”
(Ilch. I. 67–68; Khanikoff, Mém. p. 202; Report by Major R. M. Smith, R.E.)
Friar Odoric, who visited Yezd, calls it the third best city of the Persian Emperor, and says (Cathay, I. p. 52): “There is very great store of victuals and all other good things that you can mention; but especially is found there great plenty of figs; and raisins also, green as grass and very small, are found there in richer profusion than in any other part of the world.” [He also gives from the smaller version of Ramusio’s an awful description of the Sea of Sand, one day distant from Yezd. (Cf. Tavernier, 1679, I. p. 116.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—I believe Della Valle correctly generalises when he says of Persian travelling that “you always travel in a plain, but you always have mountains on either hand” (I. 462). [Compare Macgregor, I. 254: “I really cannot describe the road. Every road in Persia as yet seems to me to be exactly alike, so ... my readers will take it for granted that the road went over a waste, with barren rugged hills in the distance, or near; no water, no houses, no people passed.”—H. C.] The distance from Yezd to Kermán is, according to Khanikoff’s survey, 314 kilomètres, or about 195 miles. Ramusio makes the time eight days, which is probably the better reading, giving a little over 24 miles a day. Westergaard in 1844, and Khanikoff in 1859, took ten days; Colonel Goldsmid and Major Smith in 1865 twelve. [“The distance from Yezd to Kermán by the present high road, 229 miles, is by caravans, generally made in nine stages; persons travelling with all comforts do it in twelve stages; travellers whose time is of some value do it easily in seven days.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. pp. 490–491.)—H. C.]
Khanikoff observes on this chapter: “This notice of woods easy to ride through, covering the plain of Yezd, is very curious. Now you find it a plain of great extent indeed from N.W. to S.E., but narrow and arid; indeed I saw in it only thirteen inhabited spots, counting two caravanserais. Water for the inhabitants is brought from a great distance by subterraneous conduits, a practice which may have tended to desiccate the soil, for every trace of wood has completely disappeared.”
Abbott travelled from Yezd to Kermán in 1849, by a road through Báfk, east of the usual road, which Khanikoff followed, and parallel to it; and it is worthy of note that he found circumstances more accordant with Marco’s description. Before getting to Báfk he says of the plain that it “extends to a great distance north and south, and is probably 20 miles in breadth;” whilst Báfk “is remarkable for its groves of date-trees, in the midst of which it stands, and which occupy a considerable space.” Further on he speaks of “wild tufts and bushes growing abundantly,” and then of “thickets of the Ghez tree.” He heard of the wild asses, but did not see any. In his report to the Foreign Office, alluding to Marco Polo’s account, he says: “It is still true that wild asses and other game are found in the wooded spots on the road.” The ass is the Asinus Onager, the Gor Khar of Persia, or Kulan of the Tartars. (Khan. Mém. p. 200; Id. sur Marco Polo, p. 21; J. R. G. S. XXV. 20–29; Mr. Abbott’s MS. Report in Foreign office.) [The difficulty has now been explained by General Houtum-Schindler in a valuable paper published in the Jour. Roy. As. Soc. N.S. XIII., October, 1881, p. 490. He says: “Marco Polo travelled from Yazd to Kermán viâ Báfk. His description of the road, seven days over great plains, harbour at three places only, is perfectly exact. The fine woods, producing dates, are at Báfk itself. (The place is generally called Báft.) Partridges and quails still abound; wild asses I saw several on the western road, and I was told that there were a great many on the Báfk road. Travellers and caravans now always go by the eastern road viâ Anár and Bahrámábád. Before the Sefavíehs (i.e. before A.D. 1500) the Anár road was hardly, if ever, used; travellers always took the Báfk road. The country from Yazd to Anár, 97 miles, seems to have been totally uninhabited before the Sefavíehs. Anár, as late as A.D. 1340, is mentioned as the frontier place of Kermán to the north, on the confines of the Yazd desert. When Sháh Abbás had caravanserais built at three places between Yazd and Anár (Zein ud-dín, Kermán-sháhán, and Shamsh), the eastern road began to be neglected.” (Cf. Major Sykes’ Persia, ch. xxiii.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER XVII.
Concerning the Kingdom of Kerman.
Kerman is a kingdom which is also properly in Persia, and formerly it had a hereditary prince. Since the Tartars conquered the country the rule is no longer hereditary, but the Tartar sends to administer whatever lord he pleases.[{1}] In this kingdom are produced the stones called turquoises in great abundance; they are found in the mountains, where they are extracted from the rocks.[{2}] There are also plenty of veins of steel and Ondanique.[{3}] The people are very skilful in making harness of war; their saddles, bridles, spurs, swords, bows, quivers, and arms of every kind, are very well made indeed according to the fashion of those parts. The ladies of the country and their daughters also produce exquisite needlework in the embroidery of silk stuffs in different colours, with figures of beasts and birds, trees and flowers, and a variety of other patterns. They work hangings for the use of noblemen so deftly that they are marvels to see, as well as cushions, pillows quilts, and all sorts of things.[{4}]
In the mountains of Kerman are found the best falcons in the world. They are inferior in size to the Peregrine, red on the breast, under the neck, and between the thighs; their flight so swift that no bird can escape them.[{5}]
On quitting the city you ride on for seven days, always finding towns, villages, and handsome dwelling-houses, so that it is very pleasant travelling; and there is excellent sport also to be had by the way in hunting and hawking. When you have ridden those seven days over a plain country, you come to a great mountain; and when you have got to the top of the pass you find a great descent which occupies some two days to go down. All along you find a variety and abundance of fruits; and in former days there were plenty of inhabited places on the road, but now there are none; and you meet with only a few people looking after their cattle at pasture. From the city of Kerman to this descent the cold in winter is so great that you can scarcely abide it, even with a great quantity of clothing.[{6}]
[Note 1.]—Kermán is mentioned by Ptolemy, and also by Ammianus amongst the cities of the country so called (Carmania): “inter quas nitet Carmana omnium mater.” (XXIII. 6.)
M. Pauthier’s supposition that Sirján was in Polo’s time the capital, is incorrect. (See N. et E. XIV. 208, 290.) Our Author’s Kermán is the city still so called; and its proper name would seem to have been Kuwáshír. (See Reinaud, Mém. sur l’Inde, 171; also Sprenger P. and R. R. 77.) According to Khanikoff it is 5535 feet above the sea.
Kermán, on the fall of the Beni Búya Dynasty, in the middle of the 11th century, came into the hands of a branch of the Seljukian Turks, who retained it till the conquests of the Kings of Khwarizm, which just preceded the Mongol invasion. In 1226 the Amir Borák, a Kara Khitaian, who was governor on behalf of Jaláluddin of Khwarizm, became independent under the title of Kutlugh Sultan. [He died in 1234.] The Mongols allowed this family to retain the immediate authority, and at the time when Polo returned from China the representative of the house was a lady known as the Pádishah Khátún [who reigned from 1291], the wife successively of the Ilkhans Abaka and Kaikhatu; an ambitious, clever, and masterful woman, who put her own brother Siyurgutmish to death as a rival, and was herself, after the decease of Kaikhatu, put to death by her brother’s widow and daughter [1294]. The Dynasty continued, nominally at least, to the reign of the Ilkhan Khodabanda (1304–13), when it was extinguished. [See Major Sykes’ Persia, chaps, v. and xxiii.]
Kermán was a Nestorian see, under the Metropolitan of Fars. (Ilch. passim; Weil, III. 454; Lequien, II. 1256.)
[“There is some confusion with regard to the names of Kermán both as a town and as a province or kingdom. We have the names Kermán, Kuwáshír, Bardshír. I should say the original name of the whole country was Kermán, the ancient Karamania. A province of this was called Kúreh-i-Ardeshír, which, being contracted, became Kuwáshír, and is spoken of as the province in which Ardeshír Bábekán, the first Sassanian monarch, resided. A part of Kúreh-i-Ardeshír was called Bardshír, or Bard-i-Ardeshír, now occasionally Bardsír, and the present city of Kermán was situated at its north-eastern corner. This town, during the Middle Ages, was called Bardshír. On a coin of Qara Arslán Beg, King of Kermán, of A.H. 462, Mr. Stanley Lane Poole reads Yazdashír instead of Bardshír. Of Al Idrísí’s Yazdashír I see no mention in histories; Bardshír was the capital and the place where most of the coins were struck. Yazdashír, if such a place existed, can only have been a place of small importance. It is, perhaps, a clerical error for Bardshír; without diacritical points, both words are written alike. Later, the name of the city became Kermán, the name Bardshír reverting to the district lying south-west of it, with its principal place Mashíz. In a similar manner Mashíz was often, and is so now, called Bardshír. Another old town sometimes confused with Bardshír was Sírján or Shírján, once more important than Bardshír; it is spoken of as the capital of Kermán, of Bardshír, and of Sardsír. Its name now exists only as that of a district, with principal place S’aídábád. The history of Kermán, ’Agd-ul-’Olá, plainly says Bardshír is the capital of Kermán, and from the description of Bardshír there is no doubt of its having been the present town Kermán. It is strange that Marco Polo does not give the name of the city. In Assemanni’s Bibliotheca Orientalis Kuwáshír and Bardashír are mentioned as separate cities, the latter being probably the old Mashíz, which as early as A.H. 582 (A.D. 1186) is spoken of in the History of Kermán as an important town. The Nestorian bishop of the province Kermán, who stood under the Metropolitan of Fars, resided at Hormúz.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. pp. 491–492.)
There does not seem any doubt as to the identity of Bardashir with the present city of Kermán. (See The Cities of Kirmān in the time of Hamd-Allah Mustawfi and Marco Polo, by Guy le Strange, Jour. R. As. Soc. April, 1901, pp. 281, 290.) Hamd-Allah is the author of the Cosmography known as the Nuzhat-al-Kūlūb or “Heart’s Delight.” (Cf. Major Sykes’ Persia, chap. xvi., and the Geographical Journal for February, 1902, p. 166.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—A MS. treatise on precious stones cited by Ouseley mentions Shebavek in Kermán as the site of a Turquoise mine. This is probably Shahr-i-Babek, about 100 miles west of the city of Kermán, and not far from Párez, where Abbott tells us there is a mine of these stones, now abandoned. Goebel, one of Khanikoff’s party, found a deposit of turquoises at Taft, near Yezd. (Ouseley’s Travels, I. 211; J. R. G. S. XXVI. 63–65; Khan. Mém. 203.)
[“The province Kermán is still rich in turquoises. The mines of Páríz or Párez are at Chemen-i-mó-aspán, 16 miles from Páríz on the road to Bahrámábád (principal place of Rafsinján), and opposite the village or garden called Gód-i-Ahmer. These mines were worked up to a few years ago; the turquoises were of a pale blue. Other turquoises are found in the present Bardshír plain, and not far from Mashíz, on the slopes of the Chehel tan mountain, opposite a hill called the Bear Hill (tal-i-Khers). The Shehr-i-Bábek turquoise mines are at the small village Kárík, a mile from Medvár-i-Bálá, 10 miles north of Shehr-i-Bábek. They have two shafts, one of which has lately been closed by an earthquake, and were worked up to about twenty years ago. At another place, 12 miles from Shehr-i-Bábek, are seven old shafts now not worked for a long period. The stones of these mines are also of a very pale blue, and have no great value.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. 1881, p. 491.)
The finest turquoises came from Khorasan; the mines were near Maaden, about 48 miles to the north of Nishapūr. (Heyd, Com. du Levant, II. p. 653; Ritter, Erdk. pp. 325–330.)
It is noticeable that Polo does not mention indigo at Kermán.—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—Edrisi says that excellent iron was produced in the “cold mountains” N.W. of Jiruft, i.e. somewhere south of the capital; and Jihán Numá, or Great Turkish Geography, that the steel mines of Niriz, on the borders of Kermán, were famous. These are also spoken of by Teixeira. Major St. John enables me to indicate their position, in the hills east of Niriz. (Edrisi, vol. i. p. 430; Hammer, Mém. sur la Perse, p. 275; Teixeira, Relaciones, p. 378; and see Map of Itineraries, No. II.)
[“Marco Polo’s steel mines are probably the Parpa iron mines on the road from Kermán to Shíráz, called even to-day M’aden-i-fúlád (steel mine); they are not worked now. Old Kermán weapons, daggers, swords, old stirrups, etc., made of steel, are really beautiful, and justify Marco Polo’s praise of them” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. p. 491.)—H. C.]
Ondanique of the Geog. Text, Andaine of Pauthier’s, Andanicum of the Latin, is an expression on which no light has been thrown since Ramusio’s time. The latter often asked the Persian merchants who visited Venice, and they all agreed in stating that it was a sort of steel of such surpassing value and excellence, that in the days of yore a man who possessed a mirror, or sword, of Andanic regarded it as he would some precious jewel. This seems to me excellent evidence, and to give the true clue to the meaning of Ondanique. I have retained the latter form because it points most distinctly to what I believe to be the real word, viz. Hundwáníy, “Indian Steel.”[1] (See Johnson’s Pers. Dict. and De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe, II. 148.) In the Vocabulista Arabico, of about A.D. 1200 (Florence, 1871, p. 211), Hunduwán is explained by Ensis. Vüllers explains Hundwán as “anything peculiar to India, especially swords,” and quotes from Firdúsi, “Khanjar-i-Hundwán,” a hanger of Indian steel.
The like expression appears in the quotation from Edrisi below as Hindiah, and found its way into Spanish in the shapes of Alhinde, Alfinde, Alinde, first with the meaning of steel, then assuming, that of steel mirror, and finally that of metallic foil of a glass mirror. (See Dozy and Engelmann, 2d ed. pp. 144–145.) Hint or Al-hint is used in Berber also for steel. (See J. R. A. S. IX. 255.)
The sword-blades of India had a great fame over the East, and Indian steel, according to esteemed authorities, continued to be imported into Persia till days quite recent. Its fame goes back to very old times. Ctesias mentions two wonderful swords of such material that he got from the king of Persia and his mother. It is perhaps the ferrum candidum of which the Malli and Oxydracae sent a 100 talents weight as a present to Alexander.[2] Indian Iron and Steel (σíδηρος Ἰνδικòς καì στóμωμα) are mentioned in the Periplus as imports into the Abyssinian ports. Ferrum Indicum appears (at least according to one reading) among the Oriental species subject to duty in the Law of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus on that matter. Salmasius notes that among surviving Greek chemical treatises there was one περì βαφῆς Ἰνδικοῦ σιδήρου, “On the Tempering of Indian Steel.” Edrisi says on this subject: “The Hindus excel in the manufacture of iron, and in the preparation of those ingredients along with which it is fused to obtain that kind of soft Iron which is usually styled Indian Steel (Hindiah).[3] They also have workshops wherein are forged the most famous sabres in the world.... It is impossible to find anything to surpass the edge that you get from Indian Steel (al-hadíd al-Hindí).”
Allusions to the famous sword-blades of India would seem to be frequent in Arabic literature. Several will be found in Hamása’s collection of ancient Arabic poems translated by Freytag. The old commentator on one of these passages says: “Ut optimos gladios significet ... Indicos esse dixit,” and here the word used in the original is Hundwániyah. In Manger’s version of Arabshah’s Life of Timur are several allusions of the same kind; one, a quotation from Antar, recalls the ferrum candidum of Curtius:
“Albi (gladii) Indici meo in sanguine abluuntur.”
In the histories, even of the Mahomedan conquest of India, the Hindu infidels are sent to Jihannam with “the well-watered blade of the Hindi sword”; or the sword is personified as “a Hindu of good family.” Coming down to later days, Chardin says of the steel of Persia: “They combine it with Indian steel, which is more tractable ... and is much more esteemed.” Dupré, at the beginning of this century, tells us: “I used to believe ... that the steel for the famous Persian sabres came from certain mines in Khorasan. But according to all the information I have obtained, I can assert that no mine of steel exists in that province. What is used for these blades comes in the shape of disks from Lahore.” Pottinger names steel among the imports into Kermán from India. Elphinstone the Accurate, in his Caubul, confirms Dupré: “Indian Steel [in Afghanistan] is most prized for the material; but the best swords are made in Persia and in Syria;” and in his History of India, he repeats: “The steel of India was in request with the ancients; it is celebrated in the oldest Persian poem, and is still the material of the scimitars of Khorasan and Damascus.”[4]
Klaproth, in his Asia Polyglotta, gives Andun as the Ossetish and Andan as the Wotiak, for Steel. Possibly these are essentially the same with Hundwáníy and Alhinde, pointing to India as the original source of supply. [In the Sikandar Nāma,e Bará (or “Book of Alexander the Great,” written A.D. 1200, by Abū Muhammad bin Yusuf bin Mu,Ayyid-i-Nizāmu-’d-Dīn), translated by Captain H. Wilberforce Clarke (Lond., 1881, large 8vo), steel is frequently mentioned: Canto xix. 257, p. 202; xx. 12, p. 211; xlv. 38, p. 567; lviii. 32, pp. 695, 42, pp. 697, 62, 66, pp. 699; lix. 28, p. 703.—H. C.]
Avicenna, in his fifth book De Animâ, according to Roger Bacon, distinguishes three very different species of iron: “1st. Iron which is good for striking or bearing heavy strokes, and for being forged by hammer and fire, but not for cutting-tools. Of this hammers and anvils are made, and this is what we commonly call Iron simply. 2nd. That which is purer, has more heat in it, and is better adapted to take an edge and to form cutting-tools, but is not so malleable, viz. Steel. And the 3rd is that which is called Andena. This is less known among the Latin nations. Its special character is that like silver it is malleable and ductile under a very low degree of heat. In other properties it is intermediate between iron and steel.” (Fr. R. Baconis Opera Inedita, 1859, pp. 382–383.) The same passage, apparently, of Avicenna is quoted by Vincent of Beauvais, but with considerable differences. (See Speculum Naturale, VII. ch. lii. lx., and Specul. Doctrinale, XV. ch. lxiii.) The latter author writes Alidena, and I have not been able to refer to Avicenna, so that I am doubtful whether his Andena is the same term with the Andaine of Pauthier and our Ondanique.
The popular view, at least in the Middle Ages, seems to have regarded Steel as a distinct natural species, the product of a necessarily different ore, from iron; and some such view is, I suspect, still common in the East. An old Indian officer told me of the reply of a native friend to whom he had tried to explain the conversion of iron into steel—“What! You would have me believe that if I put an ass into the furnace it will come forth a horse.” And Indian Steel again seems to have been regarded as a distinct natural species from ordinary steel. It is in fact made by a peculiar but simple process, by which the iron is converted directly into cast-steel, without passing through any intermediate stage analogous to that of blister-steel. When specimens were first examined in England, chemists concluded that the steel was made direct from the ore. The Ondanique of Marco no doubt was a fine steel resembling the Indian article. (Müller’s Ctesias, p. 80; Curtius, IX. 24; Müller’s Geog. Gr. Min. I. 262; Digest. Novum, Lugd. 1551, Lib. XXXIX. Tit. 4; Salmas. Ex. Plinian. II. 763; Edrisi, I. 65–66; J. R. S. A. A. 387 seqq.; Hamasae Carmina, I. 526; Elliot, II. 209, 394; Reynolds’s Utbi, p. 216.)
Texture, with Animals, etc., from a Cashmere Scarf in the Indian Museum.
“De deverses maineres laborés à bestes et ausiaus mout richement.”
[Note 4.]—Paulus Jovius in the 16th century says, I know not on what authority, that Kermán was then celebrated for the fine temper of its steel in scimitars and lance-points. These were eagerly bought at high prices by the Turks, and their quality was such that one blow of a Kermán sabre would cleave an European helmet without turning the edge. And I see that the phrase, “Kermání blade” is used in poetry by Marco’s contemporary Amír Khusrú of Delhi. (P. Jov. Hist. of his own Time, Bk. XIV.; Elliot, III. 537.)
There is, or was in Pottinger’s time, still a great manufacture of matchlocks at Kermán; but rose-water, shawls, and carpets are the staples of the place now. Polo says nothing that points to shawl-making, but it would seem from Edrisi that some such manufacture already existed in the adjoining district of Bamm. It is possible that the “hangings” spoken of by Polo may refer to the carpets. I have seen a genuine Kermán carpet in the house of my friend, Sir Bartle Frere. It is of very short pile, very even and dense; the design, a combination of vases, birds, and floral tracery, closely resembling the illuminated frontispiece of some Persian MSS.
The shawls are inferior to those of Kashmir in exquisite softness, but scarcely in delicacy of texture and beauty of design. In 1850, their highest quality did not exceed 30 tomans (14l.) in price. About 2200 looms were employed on the fabric. A good deal of Kermán wool called Kurk, goes viâ Bandar Abbási and Karáchi to Amritsar, where it is mixed with the genuine Tibetan wool in the shawl manufacture. Several of the articles named in the text, including pardahs (“cortines”) are woven in shawl-fabric. I scarcely think, however, that Marco would have confounded woven shawl with needle embroidery. And Mr. Khanikoff states that the silk embroidery, of which Marco speaks, is still performed with great skill and beauty at Kermán. Our cut illustrates the textures figured with animals, already noticed at [p. 66].
The Guebers were numerous here at the end of last century, but they are rapidly disappearing now. The Musulman of Kermán is, according to Khanikoff, an epicurean gentleman, and even in regard to wine, which is strong and plentiful, his divines are liberal. “In other parts of Persia you find the scribblings on the walls of Serais to consist of philosophical axioms, texts from the Koran, or abuse of local authorities. From Kermán to Yezd you find only rhymes in praise of fair ladies or good wine.”
(Pottinger’s Travels; Khanik. Mém. 186 seqq., and Notice, p. 21; Major Smith’s Report; Abbott’s MS. Report in F. O.; Notes by Major O. St. John, R.E.)
[Note 5.]—Parez is famous for its falcons still, and so are the districts of Aktár and Sirján. Both Mr. Abbott and Major Smith were entertained with hawking by Persian hosts in this neighbourhood. The late Sir O. St. John identifies the bird described as the Sháhín (Falco Peregrinator), one variety of which, the Fársi, is abundant in the higher mountains of S. Persia. It is now little used in that region, the Terlán or goshawk being most valued, but a few are caught and sent for sale to the Arabs of Oman. (J. R. G. S. XXV. 50, 63, and Major St. John’s Notes.)
[“The fine falcons, ‘with red breasts and swift of flight,’ come from Páríz. They are, however, very scarce, two or three only being caught every year. A well-trained Páríz falcon costs from 30 to 50 tomans (12l. to 20l.), as much as a good horse.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. p. 491.) Major Sykes, Persia, ch. xxiii., writes: “Marco Polo was evidently a keen sportsman, and his description of the Sháhin, as it is termed, cannot be improved upon.” Major Sykes has a list given him by a Khán of seven hawks of the province, all black and white, except the Sháhin, which has yellow eyes, and is the third in the order of size.—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—We defer geographical remarks till the traveller reaches Hormuz.
[1] A learned friend objects to Johnson’s Hundwáníy = “Indian Steel,” as too absolute; some word for steel being wanted. Even if it be so, I observe that in three places where Polo uses Ondanique (here, ch. xxi., and ch. xlii.), the phrase is always “steel and ondanique.” This looks as if his mental expression were Púlád-i-Hundwáni, rendered by an idiom like Virgil’s pocula et aurum.
[2] Kenrick suggests that the “bright iron” mentioned by Ezekiel among the wares of Tyre (ch. xxvii. 19) can hardly have been anything else than Indian Steel, because named with cassia and calamus.
[3] Literally rendered by Mr. Redhouse: “The Indians do well the combining of mixtures of the chemicals with which they (smelt and) cast the soft iron, and it becomes Indian (steel), being referred to India (in this expression).”
[4] In Richardson’s Pers. Dict., by Johnson, we have a word Rohan, Rohina (and other forms). “The finest Indian steel, of which the most excellent swords are made; also the swords made of that steel.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
Of the City of Camadi and its Ruins; also touching the Carauna Robbers.
After you have ridden down hill those two days, you find yourself in a vast plain, and at the beginning thereof there is a city called Camadi, which formerly was a great and noble place, but now is of little consequence, for the Tartars in their incursions have several times ravaged it. The plain whereof I speak is a very hot region; and the province that we now enter is called Reobarles.
The fruits of the country are dates, pistachioes, and apples of Paradise, with others of the like not found in our cold climate. [There are vast numbers of turtledoves, attracted by the abundance of fruits, but the Saracens never take them, for they hold them in abomination.] And on this plain there is a kind of bird called francolin, but different from the francolin of other countries, for their colour is a mixture of black and white, and the feet and beak are vermilion colour.[{1}]
The beasts also are peculiar; and first I will tell you of their oxen. These are very large, and all over white as snow; the hair is very short and smooth, which is owing to the heat of the country. The horns are short and thick, not sharp in the point; and between the shoulders they have a round hump some two palms high. There are no handsomer creatures in the world. And when they have to be loaded, they kneel like the camel; once the load is adjusted, they rise. Their load is a heavy one, for they are very strong animals. Then there are sheep here as big as asses; and their tails are so large and fat, that one tail shall weigh some 30 lbs. They are fine fat beasts, and afford capital mutton.[{2}]
In this plain there are a number of villages and towns which have lofty walls of mud, made as a defence against the banditti,[{3}] who are very numerous, and are called Caraonas. This name is given them because they are the sons of Indian mothers by Tartar fathers. And you must know that when these Caraonas wish to make a plundering incursion, they have certain devilish enchantments whereby they do bring darkness over the face of day, insomuch that you can scarcely discern your comrade riding beside you; and this darkness they will cause to extend over a space of seven days’ journey. They know the country thoroughly, and ride abreast, keeping near one another, sometimes to the number of 10,000, at other times more or fewer. In this way they extend across the whole plain that they are going to harry, and catch every living thing that is found outside of the towns and villages; man, woman, or beast, nothing can escape them! The old men whom they take in this way they butcher; the young men and the women they sell for slaves in other countries; thus the whole land is ruined, and has become well-nigh a desert.
The King of these scoundrels is called Nogodar. This Nogodar had gone to the Court of Chagatai, who was own brother to the Great Kaan, with some 10,000 horsemen of his, and abode with him; for Chagatai was his uncle. And whilst there this Nogodar devised a most audacious enterprise, and I will tell you what it was. He left his uncle who was then in Greater Armenia, and fled with a great body of horsemen, cruel unscrupulous fellows, first through Badashan, and then through another province called Pashai-Dir, and then through another called Ariora-Keshemur. There he lost a great number of his people and of his horses, for the roads were very narrow and perilous. And when he had conquered all those provinces, he entered India at the extremity of a province called Dalivar. He established himself in that city and government, which he took from the King of the country, Asedin Soldan by name, a man of great power and wealth. And there abideth Nogodar with his army, afraid of nobody, and waging war with all the Tartars in his neighbourhood.[{4}]
Now that I have told you of those scoundrels and their history, I must add the fact that Messer Marco himself was all but caught by their bands in such a darkness as that I have told you of; but, as it pleased God, he got off and threw himself into a village that was hard by, called Conosalmi. Howbeit he lost his whole company except seven persons who escaped along with him. The rest were caught, and some of them sold, some put to death.[{5}]
[Note 1.]—Ramusio has “Adam’s apple” for apples of Paradise. This was some kind of Citrus, though Lindley thinks it impossible to say precisely what. According to Jacques de Vitry it was a beautiful fruit of the Citron kind, in which the bite of human teeth was plainly discernible. (Note to Vulgar Errors, II. 211; Bongars, I. 1099.) Mr. Abbott speaks of this tract as “the districts (of Kermán) lying towards the South, which are termed the Ghermseer or Hot Region, where the temperature of winter resembles that of a charming spring, and where the palm, orange, and lemon-tree flourish.” (MS. Report; see also J. R. G. S. XXV. 56.)
[“Marco Polo’s apples of Paradise are more probably the fruits of the Konár tree. There are no plantains in that part of the country. Turtle doves, now as then, are plentiful, and as they are seldom shot, and are said by the people to be unwholesome food, we can understand Marco Polo’s saying that the people do not eat them.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. pp. 492–493.)—H. C.]
The Francolin here spoken of is, as Major Smith tells me, the Darráj of the Persians, the Black Partridge of English sportsmen, sometimes called the Red-legged Francolin. The Darráj is found in some parts of Egypt, where its peculiar call is interpreted by the peasantry into certain Arabic words, meaning “Sweet are the corn-ears! Praised be the Lord!” In India, Baber tells us, the call of the Black Partridge was (less piously) rendered “Shír dáram shakrak,” “I’ve got milk and sugar!” The bird seems to be the ἀτταγὰς of Athenaeus, a fowl “speckled like the partridge, but larger,” found in Egypt and Lydia. The Greek version of its cry is the best of all: “τρìς τοῖς κακούργοις κακά” (“Threefold ills to the ill-doers!”). This is really like the call of the black partridge in India as I recollect it. [Tetrao francolinus.—H. C.]
(Chrestomathie Arabe, II. 295; Baber, 320; Yonge’s Atken. IX. 39.)
[Note 2.]—Abbott mentions the humped (though small) oxen in this part of Persia, and that in some of the neighbouring districts they are taught to kneel to receive the load, an accomplishment which seems to have struck Mas’udi (III. 27), who says he saw it exhibited by oxen at Rai (near modern Tehran). The Aín Akbari also ascribes it to a very fine breed in Bengal. The whimsical name Zebu, given to the humped or Indian ox in books of Zoology, was taken by Buffon from the exhibitors of such a beast at a French Fair, who probably invented it. That the humped breeds of oxen existed in this part of Asia in ancient times is shown by sculptures at Kouyunjik. (See cut below.)
A letter from Agassiz, printed in the Proc. As. Soc. Bengal (1865), refers to wild “zebus,” and calls the species a small one. There is no wild “zebu,” and some of the breeds are of enormous size.
[“White oxen, with short thick horns and a round hump between the shoulders, are now very rare between Kermán and Bender ’Abbás. They are, however, still to be found towards Belúchistán and Mekrán, and they kneel to be loaded like camels. The sheep which I saw had fine large tails; I did not, however, hear of any having so high a weight as thirty pounds.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. p. 493.)—H. C.]
The fat-tailed sheep is well known in many parts of Asia and part of Africa. It is mentioned by Ctesias, and by Ælian, who says the shepherds used to extract the tallow from the live animal, sewing up the tail again; exactly the same story is told by the Chinese Pliny, Ma Twan-lin. Marco’s statements as to size do not surpass those of the admirable Kämpfer: “In size they so much surpass the common sheep that it is not unusual to see them as tall as a donkey, whilst all are much more than three feet; and as to the tail I shall not exceed the truth, though I may exceed belief, if I say that it sometimes reaches 40 lbs. in weight.” Captain Hutton was assured by an Afghan sheep-master that tails had occurred in his flocks weighing 12 Tabriz mans, upwards of 76 lbs.! The Afghans use the fat as an aperient, swallowing a dose of 4 to 6 lbs! Captain Hutton’s friend testified that trucks to bear the sheep-tails were sometimes used among the Taimúnis (north of Herat). This may help to locate that ancient and slippery story. Josafat Barbaro says he had seen the thing, but is vague as to place. (Ælian Nat. An. III. 3, IV. 32; Amoen. Exoticae; Ferrier, H. of Afghans, p. 294; J. A. S. B. XV. 160.)
Humped Oxen from the Assyrian Sculptures at Koyunjik.
[Rabelais says (Bk. I. ch. xvi.): “Si de ce vous efmerveillez, efmerveillez vous d’advantage de la queue des béliers de la Scythie, qui pesait plus de trente livres; et des moutons de Surie, esquels fault (si Tenaud, dict vray) affuster une charrette au cul, pour la porter tant qu’elle est longue et pesante.” (See G. Capus, A travers le roy. de Tamerlan, pp. 21–23, on the fat sheep.)—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—The word rendered banditti is in Pauthier Carans, in G. Text Caraunes, in the Latin “a scaranis et malandrinis.” The last is no doubt correct, standing for the old Italian Scherani, bandits. (See Cathay, p. 287, note.)
[Note 4.]—This is a knotty subject, and needs a long note.
The Ḳaraunahs are mentioned often in the histories of the Mongol regime in Persia, first as a Mongol tribe forming a Tuman, i.e. a division or corps of 10,000 in the Mongol army (and I suspect it was the phrase the Tuman of the Ḳaraunahs in Marco’s mind that suggested his repeated use of the number 10,000 in speaking of them); and afterwards as daring and savage freebooters, scouring the Persian provinces, and having their headquarters on the Eastern frontiers of Persia. They are described as having had their original seats on the mountains north of the Chinese wall near Ḳaraún Jidun or Khidun; and their special accomplishment in war was the use of Naphtha Fire. Rashiduddin mentions the Ḳaránut as a branch of the great Mongol tribe of the Kunguráts, who certainly had their seat in the vicinity named, so these may possibly be connected with the Ḳaraunahs. The same author says that the Tuman of the Ḳaraunahs formed the Injú or peculium of Arghún Khan.
Wassáf calls them “a kind of goblins rather than human beings, the most daring of all the Mongols”; and Mirkhond speaks in like terms.
Dr. Bird of Bombay, in discussing some of the Indo-Scythic coins which bear the word Korano attached to the prince’s name, asserts this to stand for the name of the Ḳaraunah, “who were a Græco-Indo-Scythic tribe of robbers in the Punjab, who are mentioned by Marco Polo,” a somewhat hasty conclusion which Pauthier adopts. There is, Quatremère observes, no mention of the Ḳaraunahs before the Mongol invasion, and this he regards as the great obstacle to any supposition of their having been a people previously settled in Persia. Reiske, indeed, with no reference to the present subject, quotes a passage from Hamza of Ispahan, a writer of the 10th century, in which mention is made of certain troops called Ḳaráunahs. But it seems certain that in this and other like cases the real reading was Kazáwinah, people of Kazvin. (See Reiske’s Constant. Porphyrog. Bonn. ed. II. 674; Gottwaldt’s Hamza Ispahanensis, p. 161; and Quatremère in J. A. sér. V. tom. xv. 173.) Ibn Batuta only once mentions the name, saying that Tughlak Sháh of Dehli was “one of those Turks called Ḳaráunas who dwell in the mountains between Sind and Turkestan.” Hammer has suggested the derivation of the word Carbine from Karáwinah (as he writes), and a link in such an etymology is perhaps furnished by the fact that in the 16th century the word Carbine was used for some kind of irregular horseman.
(Gold. Horde, 214; Ilch. I. 17, 344, etc.; Erdmann, 168, 199, etc.; J. A. S. B. X. 96; Q. R. 130; Not. et Ext. XIV. 282; I. B. III. 201; Ed. Webbe, his Travailes, p. 17, 1590. Reprinted 1868.)
As regards the account given by Marco of the origin of the Caraonas, it seems almost necessarily a mistaken one. As Khanikoff remarks, he might have confounded them with the Biluchis, whose Turanian aspect (at least as regards the Brahuis) shows a strong infusion of Turki blood, and who might be rudely described as a cross between Tartars and Indians. It is indeed an odd fact that the word Karáni (vulgo Cranny) is commonly applied in India at this day to the mixed race sprung from European fathers and Native mothers, and this might be cited in corroboration of Marsden’s reference to the Sanskrit Karana, but I suspect the coincidence arises in another way. Karana is the name applied to a particular class of mixt blood, whose special occupation was writing and accounts. But the prior sense of the word seems to have been “clever, skilled,” and hence a writer or scribe. In this sense we find Karáni applied in Ibn Batuta’s day to a ship’s clerk, and it is used in the same sense in the Aín Akbari. Clerkship is also the predominant occupation of the East-Indians, and hence the term Karáni is applied to them from their business, and not from their mixt blood. We shall see hereafter that there is a Tartar term Arghún, applied to fair children born of a Mongol mother and white father; it is possible that there may have been a correlative word like Ḳaráun (from Ḳará, black) applied to dark children born of Mongol father and black mother, and that this led Marco to a false theory.
[Major Sykes (Persia) devotes a chapter (xxiv.) to The Karwán Expedition in which he says: “Is it not possible that the Karwánis are the Caraonas of Marco Polo? They are distinct from the surrounding Baluchis, and pay no tribute.”—H. C.]
Portrait of a Hazára.
Let us turn now to the name of Nogodar. Contemporaneously with the Ḳaraunahs we have frequent mention of predatory bands known as Nigúdaris, who seem to be distinguished from the Ḳaraunahs, but had a like character for truculence. Their headquarters were about Sijistán, and Quatremère seems disposed to look upon them as a tribe indigenous in that quarter. Hammer says they were originally the troops of Prince Nigudar, grandson of Chaghatai, and that they were a rabble of all sorts, Mongols, Turkmans, Kurds, Shúls, and what not. We hear of their revolts and disorders down to 1319, under which date Mirkhond says that there had been one-and-twenty fights with them in four years. Again we hear of them in 1336 about Herat, whilst in Baber’s time they turn up as Nukdari, fairly established as tribes in the mountainous tracts of Karnúd and Ghúr, west of Kabul, and coupled with the Hazáras, who still survive both in name and character. “Among both,” says Baber, “there are some who speak the Mongol language.” Hazáras and Takdaris (read Nukdaris) again occur coupled in the History of Sind. (See Elliot, I. 303–304.) [On the struggle against Timur of Toumen, veteran chief of the Nikoudrians (1383–84), see Major David Price’s Mahommedan History, London, 1821, vol. iii. pp. 47–49, H. C.] In maps of the 17th century, as of Hondius and Blaeuw, we find the mountains north of Kabul termed Nochdarizari, in which we cannot miss the combination Nigudar-Hazárah, whencesoever it was got. The Hazáras are eminently Mongol in feature to this day, and it is very probable that they or some part of them are the descendants of the Ḳaráunahs or the Nigudaris, or of both, and that the origination of the bands so called, from the scum of the Mongol inundation, is thus in degree confirmed. The Hazáras generally are said to speak an old dialect of Persian. But one tribe in Western Afghanistan retains both the name of Mongols and a language of which six-sevenths (judging from a vocabulary published by Major Leech) appear to be Mongol. Leech says, too, that the Hazáras generally are termed Moghals by the Ghilzais. It is worthy of notice that Abu’l Fázl, who also mentions the Nukdaris among the nomad tribes of Kabul, says the Hazáras were the remains of the Chaghataian army which Mangu Kaan sent to the aid of Hulaku, under the command of Nigudar Oghlan. (Not. et Ext. XIV. 284; Ilch. I. 284, 309, etc,; Baber, 134, 136, 140; J. As. sér. IV. tom. iv. 98; Ayeen Akbery, II. 192–193.)
So far, excepting as to the doubtful point of the relation between Ḳaráunahs and Nigudaris, and as to the origin of the former, we have a general accordance with Polo’s representations. But it is not very easy to identify with certainty the inroad on India to which he alludes, or the person intended by Nogodar, nephew of Chaghatai. It seems as if two persons of that name had each contributed something to Marco’s history.
We find in Hammer and D’Ohsson that one of the causes which led to the war between Barka Khan and Hulaku in 1262 (see above, Prologue, ch. ii.) was the violent end that had befallen three princes of the House of Juji, who had accompanied Hulaku to Persia in command of the contingent of that House. When war actually broke out, the contingent made their escape from Persia. One party gained Kipchak by way of Derbend; another, in greater force, led by Nigudar and Onguja, escaped to Khorasan, pursued by the troops of Hulaku, and thence eastward, where they seized upon Ghazni and other districts bordering on India.
But again: Nigudar Aghul, or Oghlan, son of (the younger) Juji, son of Chaghatai, was the leader of the Chaghataian contingent in Hulaku’s expedition, and was still attached to the Mongol-Persian army in 1269, when Borrak Khan, of the House of Chaghatai, was meditating war against his kinsman, Abaka of Persia. Borrak sent to the latter an ambassador, who was the bearer of a secret message to Prince Nigudar, begging him not to serve against the head of his own House. Nigudar, upon this, made a pretext of retiring to his own headquarters in Georgia, hoping to reach Borrak’s camp by way of Derbend. He was, however, intercepted, and lost many of his people. With 1000 horse he took refuge in Georgia, but was refused an asylum, and was eventually captured by Abaka’s commander on that frontier. His officers were executed, his troops dispersed among Abaka’s army, and his own life spared under surveillance. I find no more about him. In 1278 Hammer speaks of him as dead, and of the Nigudarian bands as having been formed out of his troops. But authority is not given.
The second Nigudar is evidently the one to whom Abu’l Fázl alludes. Khanikoff assumes that the Nigudar who went off towards India about 1260 (he puts the date earlier) was Nigudar, the grandson of Chaghatai, but he takes no notice of the second story just quoted.
In the former story we have bands under Nigudar going off by Ghazni, and conquering country on the Indian frontier. In the latter we have Nigudar, a descendant of Chaghatai, trying to escape from his camp on the frontier of Great Armenia. Supposing the Persian historians to be correct, it looks as if Marco had rolled two stories into one.
Some other passages may be cited before quitting this part of the subject. A chronicle of Herat, translated by Barbier de Meynard, says, under 1298: “The King Fakhruddin (of Herat) had the imprudence to authorise the Amir Nigudar to establish himself in a quarter of the city, with 300 adventurers from ’Irák. This little troop made frequent raids in Kuhistan, Sijistan, Farrah, etc., spreading terror. Khodabanda, at the request of his brother Ghazan Khan, came from Mazanderan to demand the immediate surrender of these brigands,” etc. And in the account of the tremendous foray of the Chaghataian Prince Kotlogh Shah, on the east and south of Persia in 1299, we find one of his captains called Nigudar Bahadur. (Gold. Horde, 146, 157, 164; D’Ohsson, IV. 378 seqq., 433 seqq., 513 seqq.; Ilch. I. 216, 261, 284; II. 104; J. A. sér. V. tom. xvii. 455–456, 507; Khan. Notice, 31.)
As regards the route taken by Prince Nogodar in his incursion into India, we have no difficulty with Badakhshan. Pashai-Dir is a copulate name; the former part, as we shall see reason to believe hereafter, representing the country between the Hindu Kush and the Kabul River (see infra, [ch. xxx.]); the latter (as Pauthier already has pointed out), Dir, the chief town of Panjkora, in the hill country north of Peshawar. In Ariora-Keshemur the first portion only is perplexing. I will mention the most probable of the solutions that have occurred to me, and a second, due to that eminent archæologist, General A. Cunningham. (1) Ariora may be some corrupt or Mongol form of Aryavartta, a sacred name applied to the Holy Lands of Indian Buddhism, of which Kashmir was eminently one to the Northern Buddhists. Oron, in Mongol, is a Region or Realm, and may have taken the place of Vartta, giving Aryoron or Ariora. (2) “Ariora,” General Cunningham writes, “I take to be the Harhaura of Sanscrit—i.e. the Western Panjáb. Harhaura was the North-Western Division of the Nava-Khanda, or Nine Divisions of Ancient India. It is mentioned between Sindhu-Sauvira in the west (i.e. Sind), and Madra in the north (i.e. the Eastern Panjáb, which is still called Madar-Des). The name of Harhaura is, I think, preserved in the Haro River. Now, the Sind-Sagor Doab formed a portion of the kingdom of Kashmir, and the joint names, like those of Sindhu-Sauvira, describe only one State.” The names of the Nine Divisions in question are given by the celebrated astronomer, Varaha Mihira, who lived in the beginning of the 6th century, and are repeated by Al Biruni. (See Reinaud, Mém. sur l’Inde, p. 116.) The only objection to this happy solution seems to lie in Al Biruni’s remark, that the names in question were in general no longer used even in his time (A.D. 1030).
There can be no doubt that Asidin Soldan is, as Khanikoff has said, Ghaiassuddin Balban, Sultan of Delhi from 1266 to 1286, and for years before that a man of great power in India, and especially in the Panjáb, of which he had in the reign of Ruknuddin (1236) held independent possession.
Firishta records several inroads of Mongols in the Panjáb during the reign of Ghaiassuddin, in withstanding one of which that King’s eldest son was slain; and there are constant indications of their presence in Sind till the end of the century. But we find in that historian no hint of the chief circumstances of this part of the story, viz., the conquest of Kashmir and the occupation of Dalivar or Dilivar (G. T.), evidently (whatever its identity) in the plains of India. I do find, however, in the history of Kashmir, as given by Lassen (III. 1138), that in the end of 1259, Lakshamana Deva, King of Kashmir, was killed in a campaign against the Turushka (Turks or Tartars), and that their leader, who is called Kajjala, got hold of the country and held it till 1287.[1] It is difficult not to connect this both with Polo’s story and with the escapade of Nigudar about 1260, noting also that this occupation of Kashmir extended through the whole reign of Ghaiassuddin.
We seem to have a memory of Polo’s story preserved in one of Elliot’s extracts from Wassáf, which states that in 708 (A.D. 1308), after a great defeat of a Mongol inroad which had passed the Ganges, Sultan Ala’uddin Khilji ordered a pillar of Mongol heads to be raised before the Badáun gate, “as was done with the Nigudari Moghuls” (III. 48).
We still have to account for the occupation and locality of Dalivar; Marsden supposed it to be Lahore; Khanikoff considers it to be Diráwal, the ancient desert capital of the Bhattis, properly (according to Tod) Deoráwal, but by a transposition common in India, as it is in Italy, sometimes called Diláwar, in the modern State of Bháwalpúr. But General Cunningham suggests a more probable locality in Diláwar on the west bank of the Jelam, close to Dárápúr, and opposite to Mung. These two sites, Diláwar-Dárápúr on the west bank, and Mung on the east, are identified by General Cunningham (I believe justly) with Alexander’s Bucephala and Nicaea. The spot, which is just opposite the battlefield of Chiliánwála, was visited (15th December, 1868) at my request, by my friend Colonel R. Maclagan, R.E. He writes: “The present village of Diláwar stands a little above the town of Dárápúr (I mean on higher ground), looking down on Dárápúr and on the river, and on the cultivated and wooded plain along the river bank. The remains of the Old Diláwar, in the form of quantities of large bricks, cover the low round-backed spurs and knolls of the broken rocky hills around the present village, but principally on the land side. They cover a large area of very irregular character, and may clearly be held to represent a very considerable town. There are no indications of the form of buildings, ... but simply large quantities of large bricks, which for a long time have been carried away and used for modern buildings.... After rain coins are found on the surface.... There can be no doubt of a very large extent of ground, of very irregular and uninviting character, having been covered at some time with buildings. The position on the Jelam would answer well for the Diláwar which the Mongol invaders took and held.... The strange thing is that the name should not be mentioned (I believe it is not) by any of the well-known Mahomedan historians of India. So much for Diláwar.... The people have no traditions. But there are the remains; and there is the name, borne by the existing village on part of the old site.” I had come to the conclusion that this was almost certainly Polo’s Dalivar, and had mapped it as such, before I read certain passages in the History of Zíyáuddín Barni, which have been translated by Professor Dowson for the third volume of Elliot’s India. When the comrades of Ghaiassuddin Balban urged him to conquests, the Sultan pointed to the constant danger from the Mongols,[2] saying: “These accursed wretches have heard of the wealth and condition of Hindustan, and have set their hearts upon conquering and plundering it. They have taken and plundered Lahor within my territories, and no year passes that they do not come here and plunder the villages.... They even talk about the conquest and sack of Delhi.” And under a later date the historian says: “The Sultan ... marched to Lahor, and ordered the rebuilding of the fort which the Mughals had destroyed in the reigns of the sons of Shamsuddin. The towns and villages of Lahor which the Mughals had devastated and laid waste he repeopled.” Considering these passages, and the fact that Polo had no personal knowledge of Upper India, I now think it probable that Marsden was right, and that Dilivar is really a misunderstanding of “Città di Livar” for Lahàwar or Lahore.
The Magical darkness which Marco ascribes to the evil arts of the Karaunas is explained by Khanikoff from the phenomenon of Dry Fog, which he has often experienced in Khorasan, combined with the Dust Storm with which we are familiar in Upper India. In Sind these phenomena often produce a great degree of darkness. During a battle fought between the armies of Sindh and Kachh in 1762, such a fog came on, obscuring the light of day for some six hours, during which the armies were intermixed with one another and fighting desperately. When the darkness dispersed they separated, and the consternation of both parties was so great at the events of the day that both made a precipitate retreat. In 1844 this battle was still spoken of with wonder. (J. Bomb. Br. R. A. S. I. 423.)
Major St. John has given a note on his own experience of these curious Kermán fogs (see Ocean Highways, 1872, p. 286): “Not a breath of air was stirring, and the whole effect was most curious, and utterly unlike any other fog I have seen. No deposit of dust followed, and the feeling of the air was decidedly damp. I unfortunately could not get my hygrometer till the fog had cleared away.”
[General Houtum-Schindler, l.c. p. 493, writes: “The magical darkness might, as Colonel Yule supposes, be explained by the curious dry fogs or dust storms, often occurring in the neighbourhood of Kermán, but it must be remarked that Marco Polo was caught in one of these storms down in Jíruft, where, according to the people I questioned, such storms now never occur. On the 29th of September, 1879, at Kermán, a high wind began to blow from S.S.W. at about 5 P.M. First there came thick heavy clouds of dust with a few drops of rain. The heavy dust then settled down, the lighter particles remained in the air, forming a dry fog of such density that large objects, like houses, trees, etc., could not even faintly be distinguished at a distance of a hundred paces. The barometers suffered no change, the three I had with me remained in statu quo.” “The heat is over by the middle of September, and after the autumnal equinox, there are a few days of what is best described as a dense dry fog. This was undoubtedly the haze referred to by Marco Polo.” (Major Sykes, ch. iv.)—H. C.]
Richthofen’s remarkable exposition of the phenomena of the löss in North China, and of the sub-aerial deposits of the steppes and of Central Asia throws some light on this. But this hardly applies to St John’s experience of “no deposit of dust.” (See Richthofen, China, pp. 96–97 s. MS. Note, H. Y.)
The belief that such opportune phenomena were produced by enchantment was a thoroughly Tartar one. D’Herbelot relates (art. Giagathai) that in an action with a rebel called Mahomed Tarabi, the Mongols were encompassed by a dust storm which they attributed to enchantment on the part of the enemy, and it so discouraged them that they took to flight.
[Note 5.]—The specification that only seven were saved from Marco’s company is peculiar to Pauthier’s Text, not appearing in the G. T.
Several names compounded of Salm or Salmi occur on the dry lands on the borders of Kermán. Edrisi, however (I. p. 428), names a place called Ḳanát-ul-Shám as the first march in going from Jíruft to Walashjird. Walashjird is, I imagine, represented by Galashkird, Major R. Smith’s third march from Jíruft (see my Map of Routes from Kermán to Hormuz); and as such an indication agrees with the view taken below of Polo’s route, I am strongly disposed to identify Ḳanát-ul-Shám with his castello or walled village of Canosalmi.
[“Marco Polo’s Conosalmi, where he was attacked by robbers and lost the greater part of his men, is perhaps the ruined town or village Kamasal (Kahn-i-asal = the honey canal), near Kahnúj-i-pancheh and Vakílábád in Jíruft. It lies on the direct road between Shehr-i-Daqíánús (Camadi) and the Nevergún Pass. The road goes in an almost due southerly direction. The Nevergún Pass accords with Marco Polo’s description of it; it is very difficult, on account of the many great blocks of sandstone scattered upon it. Its proximity to the Bashakird mountains and Mekrán easily accounts for the prevalence of robbers, who infested the place in Marco Polo’s time. At the end of the Pass lies the large village Shamíl, with an old fort; the distance thence to the site of Hormúz or Bender ’Abbás (lying more to the west) is 52 miles, two days’ march. The climate of Bender ’Abbás is very bad, strangers speedily fall sick, two of my men died there, all the others were seriously ill.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. pp. 495–496.) Major Sykes (ch. xxiii.) says: “Two marches from Camadi was Kahn-i-Panchur, and a stage beyond it lay the ruins of Fariáb or Pariáb, which was once a great city, and was destroyed by a flood, according to local legend. It may have been Alexander’s Salmous, as it is about the right distance from the coast, and if so, could not have been Marco’s Cono Salmi. Continuing on, Galashkird mentioned by Edrisi, is the next stage.”—H. C.]
The raids of the Mekranis and Biluchis long preceded those of the Karaunas, for they were notable even in the time of Mahmud of Ghazni, and they have continued to our own day to be prosecuted nearly on the same stage and in the same manner. About 1721, 4000 horsemen of this description plundered the town of Bander Abbási, whilst Captain Alex. Hamilton was in the port; and Abbott, in 1850, found the dread of Bilúch robbers to extend almost to the gates of Ispahan. A striking account of the Bilúch robbers and their characteristics is given by General Ferrier. (See Hamilton, I. 109; J. R. G. S. XXV.; Khanikoff’s Mémoire; Macd. Kinneir, 196; Caravan Journeys, p. 437 seq.)
[1] Khajlak is mentioned as a leader of the Mongol raids in India by the poet Amir Khusrú (A.D. 1289; see Elliot III. 527).
[2] Professor Cowell compares the Mongol inroads in the latter part of the 13th and beginning of the 14th century, in their incessant recurrence, to the incursions of the Danes in England. A passage in Wassáf (Elliot, III. 38) shows that the Mongols were, circa 1254–55, already in occupation of Sodra on the Chenab, and districts adjoining.
CHAPTER XIX.
Of the Descent to the City of Hormos.
The Plain of which we have spoken extends in a southerly direction for five days’ journey, and then you come to another descent some twenty miles in length, where the road is very bad and full of peril, for there are many robbers and bad characters about. When you have got to the foot of this descent you find another beautiful plain called the Plain of Formosa. This extends for two days’ journey; and you find in it fine streams of water with plenty of date-palms and other fruit-trees. There are also many beautiful birds, francolins, popinjays, and other kinds such as we have none of in our country. When you have ridden these two days you come to the Ocean Sea, and on the shore you find a city with a harbour which is called Hormos.[{1}] Merchants come thither from India, with ships loaded with spicery and precious stones, pearls, cloths of silk and gold, elephants’ teeth, and many other wares, which they sell to the merchants of Hormos, and which these in turn carry all over the world to dispose of again. In fact, ’tis a city of immense trade. There are plenty of towns and villages under it, but it is the capital. The King is called Ruomedam Ahomet. It is a very sickly place, and the heat of the sun is tremendous. If any foreign merchant dies there, the King takes all his property.
In this country they make a wine of dates mixt with spices, which is very good. When any one not used to it first drinks this wine, it causes repeated and violent purging, but afterwards he is all the better for it, and gets fat upon it. The people never eat meat and wheaten bread except when they are ill, and if they take such food when they are in health it makes them ill. Their food when in health consists of dates and salt-fish (tunny, to wit) and onions, and this kind of diet they maintain in order to preserve their health.[{2}]
Their ships are wretched affairs, and many of them get lost; for they have no iron fastenings, and are only stitched together with twine made from the husk of the Indian nut. They beat this husk until it becomes like horse-hair, and from that they spin twine, and with this stitch the planks of the ships together. It keeps well, and is not corroded by the sea-water, but it will not stand well in a storm. The ships are not pitched, but are rubbed with fish-oil. They have one mast, one sail, and one rudder, and have no deck, but only a cover spread over the cargo when loaded. This cover consists of hides, and on the top of these hides they put the horses which they take to India for sale. They have no iron to make nails of, and for this reason they use only wooden trenails in their shipbuilding, and then stitch the planks with twine as I have told you. Hence ’tis a perilous business to go a voyage in one of those ships, and many of them are lost, for in that Sea of India the storms are often terrible.[{3}]
The people are black, and are worshippers of Mahommet. The residents avoid living in the cities, for the heat in summer is so great that it would kill them. Hence they go out (to sleep) at their gardens in the country, where there are streams and plenty of water. For all that they would not escape but for one thing that I will mention. The fact is, you see, that in summer a wind often blows across the sands which encompass the plain, so intolerably hot that it would kill everybody, were it not that when they perceive that wind coming they plunge into water up to the neck, and so abide until the wind have ceased.[{4}] [And to prove the great heat of this wind, Messer Mark related a case that befell when he was there. The Lord of Hormos, not having paid his tribute to the King of Kerman the latter resolved to claim it at the time when the people of Hormos were residing away from the city. So he caused a force of 1600 horse and 5000 foot to be got ready, and sent them by the route of Reobarles to take the others by surprise. Now, it happened one day that through the fault of their guide they were not able to reach the place appointed for their night’s halt, and were obliged to bivouac in a wilderness not far from Hormos. In the morning as they were starting on their march they were caught by that wind, and every man of them was suffocated, so that not one survived to carry the tidings to their Lord. When the people of Hormos heard of this they went forth to bury the bodies lest they should breed a pestilence. But when they laid hold of them by the arms to drag them to the pits, the bodies proved to be so baked, as it were, by that tremendous heat, that the arms parted from the trunks, and in the end the people had to dig graves hard by each where it lay, and so cast them in.][{5}]
The people sow their wheat and barley and other corn in the month of November, and reap it in the month of March. The dates are not gathered till May, but otherwise there is no grass nor any other green thing, for the excessive heat dries up everything.
When any one dies they make a great business of the mourning, for women mourn their husbands four years. During that time they mourn at least once a day, gathering together their kinsfolk and friends and neighbours for the purpose, and making a great weeping and wailing. [And they have women who are mourners by trade, and do it for hire.]
Now, we will quit this country. I shall not, however, now go on to tell you about India; but when time and place shall suit we shall come round from the north and tell you about it. For the present, let us return by another road to the aforesaid city of Kerman, for we cannot get at those countries that I wish to tell you about except through that city.
I should tell you first, however, that King Ruomedam Ahomet of Hormos, which we are leaving, is a liegeman of the King of Kerman.[{6}]
On the road by which we return from Hormos to Kerman you meet with some very fine plains, and you also find many natural hot baths; you find plenty of partridges on the road; and there are towns where victual is cheap and abundant, with quantities of dates and other fruits. The wheaten bread, however, is so bitter, owing to the bitterness of the water, that no one can eat it who is not used to it. The baths that I mentioned have excellent virtues; they cure the itch and several other diseases.[{7}]
Now, then, I am going to tell you about the countries towards the north, of which you shall hear in regular order. Let us begin.
[Note 1.]—Having now arrived at Hormuz, it is time to see what can be made of the Geography of the route from Kermán to that port.
The port of Hormuz, [which had taken the place of Kish as the most important market of the Persian Gulf (H. C.),] stood upon the mainland. A few years later it was transferred to the island which became so famous, under circumstances which are concisely related by Abulfeda:—“Hormuz is the port of Kermán, a city rich in palms, and very hot. One who has visited it in our day tells me that the ancient Hormuz was devastated by the incursions of the Tartars, and that its people transferred their abode to an island in the sea called Zarun, near the continent, and lying west of the old city. At Hormuz itself no inhabitants remain, but some of the lowest order.” (In Büsching, IV. 261–262.) Friar Odoric, about 1321, found Hormuz “on an island some 5 miles distant from the main.” Ibn Batuta, some eight or nine years later, discriminates between Hormuz or Moghistan on the mainland, and New Hormuz on the Island of Jeraun, but describes only the latter, already a great and rich city.
The site of the Island Hormuz has often been visited and described; but I could find no published trace of any traveller having verified the site of the more ancient city, though the existence of its ruins was known to John de Barros, who says that a little fort called Cuxstac (Kuhestek of P. della Valle, II. p. 300) stood on the site. An application to Colonel Pelly, the very able British Resident at Bushire, brought me from his own personal knowledge the information that I sought, and the following particulars are compiled from the letters with which he has favoured me:—
“The ruins of Old Hormuz, well known as such, stand several miles up a creek, and in the centre of the present district of Minao. They are extensive (though in large part obliterated by long cultivation over the site), and the traces of a long pier or Bandar were pointed out to Colonel Pelly. They are about 6 or 7 miles from the fort of Minao, and the Minao river, or its stony bed, winds down towards them. The creek is quite traceable, but is silted up, and to embark goods you have to go a farsakh towards the sea, where there is a custom-house on that part of the creek which is still navigable. Colonel Pelly collected a few bricks from the ruins. From the mouth of the Old Hormuz creek to the New Hormuz town, or town of Turumpak on the island of Hormuz, is a sail of about three farsakhs. It may be a trifle more, but any native tells you at once that it is three farsakhs from Hormuz Island to the creek where you land to go up to Minao. Hormuzdia was the name of the region in the days of its prosperity. Some people say that Hormuzdia was known as Jerunia, and Old Hormuz town as Jerun.” (In this I suspect tradition has gone astray.) “The town and fort of Minao lie to the N.E. of the ancient city, and are built upon the lowest spur of the Bashkurd mountains, commanding a gorge through which the Rudbar river debouches on the plain of Hormuzdia.” In these new and interesting particulars it is pleasing to find such precise corroboration both of Edrisi and of Ibn Batuta. The former, writing in the 12th century, says that Hormuz stood on the banks of a canal or creek from the Gulf, by which vessels came up to the city. The latter specifies the breadth of sea between Old and New Hormuz as three farsakhs. (Edrisi, I. 424; I. B. II. 230.)
I now proceed to recapitulate the main features of Polo’s Itinerary from Kermán to Hormuz. We have:—
Marches. 1.
From Kermán across a plain to the top of a mountain-pass, where extreme cold was experienced . . . 7
2.
A descent, occupying . . . 2
3.
A great plain, called Reobarles, in a much warmer climate, abounding in francolin partridge, and in dates and tropical fruit, with a ruined city of former note, called Camadi, near the head of the plain, which extends for . . . 5
4.
A second very bad pass, descending for 20 miles, say . . . 1
5.
A well-watered fruitful plain, which is crossed to Hormuz, on the shores of the Gulf . . . 2
—
Total . . .
17
No European traveller, so far as I know, has described the most direct road from Kermán to Hormuz, or rather to its nearest modern representative Bander Abbási,—I mean the road by Báft. But a line to the eastward of this, and leading through the plain of Jíruft, was followed partially by Mr. Abbott in 1850, and completely by Major R. M. Smith, R.E., in 1866. The details of this route, except in one particular, correspond closely in essentials with those given by our author, and form an excellent basis of illustration for Polo’s description.
Major Smith (accompanied at first by Colonel Goldsmid, who diverged to Mekran) left Kermán on the 15th of January, and reached Bander Abbási on the 3rd of February, but, as three halts have to be deducted, his total number of marches was exactly the same as Marco’s, viz. 17. They divide as follows:—
Marches. 1.
From Kermán to the caravanserai of Deh Bakri in the pass so called. “The ground as I ascended became covered with snow, and the weather bitterly cold” (Report) . . . 6
2.
Two miles over very deep snow brought him to the top of the pass; he then descended 14 miles to his halt. Two miles to the south of the crest he passed a second caravanserai: “The two are evidently built so near one another to afford shelter to travellers who may be unable to cross the ridge during heavy snow-storms.” The next march continued the descent for 14 miles, and then carried him 10 miles along the banks of the Rudkhanah-i-Shor. The approximate height of the pass above the sea is estimated at 8000 feet. We have thus for the descent the greater part of . . . 2
3.
“Clumps of date-palms growing near the village showed that I had now reached a totally different climate.” (Smith’s Report.) And Mr. Abbott says of the same region: “Partly wooded ... and with thickets of reeds abounding with francolin and Jirufti partridge.... The lands yield grain, millet, pulse, French- and horse-beans, rice, cotton, henna, Palma Christi, and dates, and in part are of great fertility.... Rainy season from January to March, after which a luxuriant crop of grass.” Across this plain (districts of Jíruft and Rudbar), the height of which above the sea, is something under 2000 feet . . . 6
4.
6½ hours, “nearly the whole way over a most difficult mountain-pass,” called the Pass of Nevergun . . . 1
5.
Two long marches over a plain, part of which is described as “continuous cultivation for some 16 miles,” and the rest as a “most uninteresting plain” . . . 2
—
Total as before . . .
17
In the previous edition of this work I was inclined to identify Marco’s route absolutely with this Itinerary. But a communication from Major St. John, who surveyed the section from Kermán towards Deh Bakri in 1872, shows that this first section does not answer well to the description. The road is not all plain, for it crosses a mountain pass, though not a formidable one. Neither is it through a thriving, populous tract, for, with the exception of two large villages, Major St. John found the whole road to Deh Bakri from Kermán as desert and dreary as any in Persia. On the other hand, the more direct route to the south, which is that always used except in seasons of extraordinary severity (such as that of Major Smith’s journey, when this route was impassable from snow), answers better, as described to Major St. John by muleteers, to Polo’s account. The first six days are occupied by a gentle ascent through the districts of Bardesir and Kairat-ul-Arab, which are the best-watered and most fertile uplands of Kermán. From the crest of the pass reached in those six marches (which is probably more than 10,000 feet above the sea, for it was closed by snow on 1st May, 1872), an easy descent of two days leads to the Garmsir. This is traversed in four days, and then a very difficult pass is crossed to reach the plains bordering on the sea. The cold of this route is much greater than that of the Deh Bakri route. Hence the correspondence with Polo’s description, as far as the descent to the Garmsir, or Reobarles, seems decidedly better by this route. It is admitted to be quite possible that on reaching this plain the two routes coalesced. We shall assume this provisionally, till some traveller gives us a detailed account of the Bardesir route. Meantime all the remaining particulars answer well.
[General Houtum-Schindler (l.c. pp. 493–495), speaking of the Itinerary from Kermán to Hormúz and back, says: “Only two of the many routes between Kermán and Bender ’Abbás coincide more or less with Marco Polo’s description. These two routes are the one over the Deh Bekrí Pass [see above, Colonel Smith], and the one viâ Sárdú. The latter is the one, I think, taken by Marco Polo. The more direct roads to the west are for the greater part through mountainous country, and have not twelve stages in plains which we find enumerated in Marco Polo’s Itinerary. The road viâ Báft, Urzú, and the Zendán Pass, for instance, has only four stages in plains; the road, viâ Ráhbur, Rúdbár and the Nevergún Pass only six; and the road viâ Sírján also only six.”
Marches. The Sárdú route, which seems to me to be the one followed by Marco Polo, has five stages through fertile and populous plains to Sarvízan . . . 5
One day’s march ascends to the top of the Sarvízan Pass . . . 1
Two days’ descent to Ráhjird, a village close to the ruins of old Jíruft, now called Shehr-i-Daqíánús . . . 2
Six days’ march over the “vast plain” of Jírúft and Rúdbár to Faríáb, joining the Deh Bekrí route at Kerímábád, one stage south of the Shehr-i-Daqíánús . . . 6
One day’s march through the Nevergún Pass to Shamíl, descending . . . 1
Two days’ march through the plain to Bender ’Abbás or Hormúz . . . 2
—
In all . . .
17
The Sárdú road enters the Jíruft plain at the ruins of the old city, the Deh Bekrí route does so at some distance to the eastward. The first six stages performed by Marco Polo in seven days go through fertile plains and past numerous villages. Regarding the cold, “which you can scarcely abide,” Marco Polo does not speak of it as existing on the mountains only; he says, “From the city of Kermán to this descent the cold in winter is very great,” that is, from Kermán to near Jíruft. The winter at Kermán itself is fairly severe; from the town the ground gradually but steadily rises, the absolute altitudes of the passes crossing the mountains to the south varying from 8000 to 11,000 feet. These passes are up to the month of March always very cold; in one it froze slightly in the beginning of June. The Sárdú Pass lies lower than the others. The name is Sárdú, not Sardú from sard, “cold.” Major Sykes (Persia, ch. xxiii.) comes to the same conclusion: “In 1895, and again in 1900, I made a tour partly with the object of solving this problem, and of giving a geographical existence to Sárdu, which appropriately means the ‘Cold Country.’ I found that there was a route which exactly fitted Marco’s conditions, as at Sarbizan the Sárdu plateau terminates in a high pass of 9200 feet, from which there is a most abrupt descent to the plain of Jíruft, Komádin being about 35 miles, or two days’ journey from the top of the pass. Starting from Kermán, the stages would be as follows:—I. Jupár (small town); 2. Bahrámjird (large village); 3. Gudar (village); 4. Ráin (small town).... Thence to the Sarbizan pass is a distance of 45 miles, or three desert stages, thus constituting a total of 110 miles for the seven days. This is the camel route to the present day, and absolutely fits in with the description given.... The question to be decided by this section of the journey may then, I think, be considered to be finally and most satisfactorily settled, the route proving to lie between the two selected by Colonel Yule, as being the most suitable, although he wisely left the question open.”—H. C.]
In the abstract of Major Smith’s Itinerary as we have given it, we do not find Polo’s city of Camadi. Major Smith writes to me, however, that this is probably to be sought in “the ruined city, the traces of which I observed in the plain of Jíruft near Kerimabad. The name of the city is now apparently lost.” It is, however, known to the natives as the City of Dakiánús, as Mr. Abbott, who visited the site, informs us. This is a name analogous only to the Arthur’s ovens or Merlin’s caves of our own country, for all over Mahomedan Asia there are old sites to which legend attaches the name of Dakianus or the Emperor Decius, the persecuting tyrant of the Seven Sleepers. “The spot,” says Abbott, “is an elevated part of the plain on the right bank of the Hali Rúd, and is thickly strewn with kiln-baked bricks, and shreds of pottery and glass.... After heavy rain the peasantry search amongst the ruins for ornaments of stone, and rings and coins of gold, silver, and copper. The popular tradition concerning the city is that it was destroyed by a flood long before the birth of Mahomed.”
[General Houtum-Schindler, in a paper in the Jour. R. As. Soc., Jan. 1898, p. 43, gives an abstract of Dr. Houtsma’s (of Utrecht) memoir, Zur Geschichte der Saljuqen von Kerman, and comes to the conclusion that “from these statements we can safely identify Marco Polo’s Camadi with the suburb Qumādīn, or, as I would read it, Qamādīn, of the city of Jíruft.”—(Cf. Major Sykes’ Persia, chap. xxiii.: “Camadi was sacked for the first time, after the death of Toghrul Shah of Kermán, when his four sons reduced the province to a condition of anarchy.”)
Major P. Molesworth Sykes, Recent Journeys in Persia (Geog. Journal, X. 1897, p. 589), says: “Upon arrival in Rudbar, we turned northwards and left the Farman Farma, in order to explore the site of Marco Polo’s ‘Camadi.’... We came upon a huge area littered with yellow bricks eight inches square, while not even a broken wall is left to mark the site of what was formerly a great city, under the name of the Sher-i-Jiruft.”—H. C.] The actual distance from Bamm to the City of Dakianus is, by Abbott’s Journal, about 66 miles.
The name of Reobarles, which Marco applies to the plain intermediate between the two descents, has given rise to many conjectures. Marsden pointed to Rúdbár, a name frequently applied in Persia to a district on a river, or intersected by streams—a suggestion all the happier that he was not aware of the fact that there is a district of Rudbar exactly in the required position. The last syllable still requires explanation. I ventured formerly to suggest that it was the Arabic Laṣṣ, or, as Marco would certainly have written it, Les, a robber. Reobarles would then be Rudbar-i-Laṣṣ, “Robber’s River District.” The appropriateness of the name Marco has amply illustrated; and it appeared to me to survive in that of one of the rivers of the plain, which is mentioned by both Abbott and Smith under the title of Rúdkhánah-i-Duzdi, or Robbery River, a name also applied to a village and old fort on the banks of the stream. This etymology was, however, condemned as an inadmissible combination of Persian and Arabic by two very high authorities both as travellers and scholars—Sir H. Rawlinson and Mr. Khanikoff. The Les, therefore, has still to be explained.[1]
[Major Sykes (Geog. Journal, 1902, p. 130) heard of robbers, some five miles from Mináb, and he adds: “However, nothing happened, and after crossing the Gardan-i-Pichal, we camped at Birinti, which is situated just above the junction of Rudkhána Duzdi, or ‘River of Theft,’ and forms part of the district of Rudán, in Fars.”
“The Jíruft and Rúdbár plains belong to the germsír (hot region), dates, pistachios, and konars (apples of Paradise) abound in them. Reobarles is Rúdbár or Rüdbáris.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. 1881, p. 495.)—H. C.]
We have referred to Marco’s expressions regarding the great cold experienced on the pass which formed the first descent; and it is worthy of note that the title of “The Cold Mountains” is applied by Edrisi to these very mountains. Mr. Abbott’s MS. Report also mentions in this direction, Sardu, said to be a cold country (as its name seems to express [see above,—H. C.]), which its population (Iliyáts) abandon in winter for the lower plains. It is but recently that the importance of this range of mountains has become known to us. Indeed the existence of the chain, as extending continuously from near Kashán, was first indicated by Khanikoff in 1862. More recently Major St. John has shown the magnitude of this range, which rises into summits of 15,000 feet in altitude, and after a course of 550 miles terminates in a group of volcanic hills some 50 miles S.E. of Bamm. Yet practically this chain is ignored on all our maps!
Marco’s description of the “Plain of Formosa” does not apply, now at least, to the whole plain, for towards Bander Abbási it is barren. But to the eastward, about Minao, and therefore about Old Hormuz, it has not fallen off. Colonel Pelly writes: “The district of Minao is still for those regions singularly fertile. Pomegranates, oranges, pistachio-nuts, and various other fruits grow in profusion. The source of its fertility is of course the river, and you can walk for miles among lanes and cultivated ground, partially sheltered from the sun.” And Lieutenant Kempthorne, in his notes on that coast, says of the same tract: “It is termed by the natives the Paradise of Persia. It is certainly most beautifully fertile, and abounds in orange-groves, and orchards containing apples, pears, peaches, and apricots; with vineyards producing a delicious grape, from which was at one time made a wine called amber-rosolli”—a name not easy to explain. ’Ambar-i-Rasúl, “The Prophet’s Bouquet!” would be too bold a name even for Persia, though names more sacred are so profaned at Naples and on the Moselle. Sir H. Rawlinson suggests ’Ambar-’asali, “Honey Bouquet,” as possible.
When Nearchus beached his fleet on the shore of Harmozeia at the mouth of the Anamis (the River of Minao), Arrian tells us he found the country a kindly one, and very fruitful in every way except that there were no olives. The weary mariners landed and enjoyed this pleasant rest from their toils. (Indica, 33; J. R. G. S. V. 274.)
MARCO POLO’S ITINERARIES No. II.
Kerman to Hormuz (Bᵏ. I. Ch. 19.)
Approximate Section from Yazd to Hormuz
The name Formosa is probably only Rusticiano’s misunderstanding of Harmuza, aided, perhaps, by Polo’s picture of the beauty of the plain. We have the same change in the old Mafomet for Mahomet, and the converse one in the Spanish hermosa for formosa. Teixeira’s Chronicle says that the city of Hormuz was founded by Xa Mahamed Dranku, i.e. Shah Mahomed Dirhem-Ko, in “a plain of the same name.”
The statement in Ramusio that Hormuz stood upon an island, is, I doubt not, an interpolation by himself or some earlier transcriber.
When the ships of Nearchus launched again from the mouth of the Anamis, their first day’s run carried them past a certain desert and bushy island to another which was large and inhabited. The desert isle was called Organa; the large one by which they anchored Oaracta. (Indica, 37.) Neither name is quite lost; the latter greater island is Kishm or Brakht; the former Jerún,[2] perhaps in old Persian Gerún or Gerán, now again desert though no longer bushy, after having been for three centuries the site of a city which became a poetic type of wealth and splendour. An Eastern saying ran, “Were the world a ring, Hormuz would be the jewel in it.”
[“The Yüan shi mentions several seaports of the Indian Ocean as carrying on trade with China; Hormuz is not spoken of there. I may, however, quote from the Yüan History a curious statement which perhaps refers to this port. In ch. cxxiii., biography of Arsz-lan, it is recorded that his grandson Hurdutai, by order of Kubilai Khan, accompanied Bu-lo no-yen on his mission to the country of Ha-rh-ma-sz. This latter name may be intended for Hormuz. I do not think that by the Noyen Bulo, M. Polo could be meant, for the title Noyen would hardly have been applied to him. But Rashid-eddin mentions a distinguished Mongol, by name Pulad, with whom he was acquainted in Persia, and who furnished him with much information regarding the history of the Mongols. This may be the Bu-lo no-yen of the Yüan History.” (Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. p. 132.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—A spirit is still distilled from dates in Persia, Mekran, Sind, and some places in the west of India. It is mentioned by Strabo and Dioscorides, according to Kämpfer, who says it was in his time made under the name of a medicinal stomachic; the rich added Radix Chinae, ambergris, and aromatic spices; the poor, liquorice and Persian absinth. (Sir B. Frere; Amoen. Exot. 750; Macd. Kinneir, 220.)
[“The date wine with spices is not now made at Bender ’Abbás. Date arrack, however, is occasionally found. At Kermán a sort of wine or arrack is made with spices and alcohol, distilled from sugar; it is called Má-ul-Háyát (water of life), and is recommended as an aphrodisiac. Grain in the Shamíl plain is harvested in April, dates are gathered in August.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. p. 496.)
See “Remarks on the Use of Wine and Distilled Liquors among the Mohammedans of Turkey and Persia,” pp. 315–330 of Narrative of a Tour through Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia, and Mesopotamia.... By the Rev. Horatio Southgate, ... London, 1840, vol. ii.—H. C.]
[Sir H. Yule quotes, in a MS. note, these lines from Moore’s Light of the Harem:
“Wine, too, of every clime and hue,
Around their liquid lustre threw
Amber Rosolli[3]—the bright dew
From vineyards of the Green Sea gushing.”] See above, p. 114.
The Double or Latin Rudder, as shown in the Navicella of Giotto. (From Eastlake.)
The date and dry-fish diet of the Gulf people is noticed by most travellers, and P. della Valle repeats the opinion about its being the only wholesome one. Ibn Batuta says the people of Hormuz had a saying, “Khormá wa máhí lút-i-Pádshahi,” i.e. “Dates and fish make an Emperor’s dish!” A fish, exactly like the tunny of the Mediterranean in general appearance and habits, is one of the great objects of fishery off the Sind and Mekran coasts. It comes in pursuit of shoals of anchovies, very much like the Mediterranean fish also. (I. B. II. 231; Sir B. Frere.)
[Friar Odoric (Cathay, I. pp. 55–56) says: “And there you find (before arriving at Hormuz) people who live almost entirely on dates, and you get forty-two pounds of dates for less than a groat; and so of many other things.”]
[Note 3.]—The stitched vessels of Kermán (πλοιάρια ῥαπτὰ) are noticed in the Periplus. Similar accounts to those of our text are given of the ships of the Gulf and of Western India by Jordanus and John of Montecorvino. (Jord. p. 53; Cathay, p. 217.) “Stitched vessels,” Sir B. Frere writes, “are still used. I have seen them of 200 tons burden; but they are being driven out by iron-fastened vessels, as iron gets cheaper, except where (as on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts) the pliancy of a stitched boat is useful in a surf. Till the last few years, when steamers have begun to take all the best horses, the Arab horses bound to Bombay almost all came in the way Marco Polo describes.” Some of them do still, standing over a date cargo, and the result of this combination gives rise to an extraordinary traffic in the Bombay bazaar. From what Colonel Pelly tells me, the stitched build in the Gulf is now confined to fishing-boats, and is disused for sea-going craft.
[Friar Odoric (Cathay, I. p. 57) mentioned these vessels: “In this country men make use of a kind of vessel which they call Jase, which is fastened only with stitching of twine. On one of these vessels I embarked, and I could find no iron at all therein.” Jase is for the Arabic Djehaz.—H. C.]
The fish-oil used to rub the ships was whale-oil. The old Arab voyagers of the 9th century describe the fishermen of Siraf in the Gulf as cutting up the whale-blubber and drawing the oil from it, which was mixed with other stuff, and used to rub the joints of ships’ planking. (Reinaud, I. 146.)
Both Montecorvino and Polo, in this passage, specify one rudder, as if it was a peculiarity of these ships worth noting. The fact is that, in the Mediterranean at least, the double rudders of the ancients kept their place to a great extent through the Middle Ages. A Marseilles MS. of the 13th century, quoted in Ducange, says: “A ship requires three rudders, two in place, and one to spare.” Another: “Every two-ruddered bark shall pay a groat each voyage; every one-ruddered bark shall,” etc. (See Duc. under Timonus and Temo.) Numerous proofs of the use of two rudders in the 13th century will be found in “Documenti inediti riguardanti le due Crociate di S. Ludovico IX., Re di Francia, etc., da L. T. Belgrano, Genova, 1859.” Thus in a specification of ships to be built at Genoa for the king (p. 7), each is to have “Timones duo, affaiticos, grossitudinis palmorum viiii et dimidiae, longitudinis cubitorum xxiiii.” Extracts given by Capmany, regarding the equipment of galleys, show the same thing, for he is probably mistaken in saying that one of the dos timones specified was a spare one. Joinville (p. 205) gives incidental evidence of the same: “Those Marseilles ships have each two rudders, with each a tiller (? tison) attached to it in such an ingenious way that you can turn the ship right or left as fast as you would turn a horse. So on the Friday the king was sitting upon one of these tillers, when he called me and said to me,” etc.[4] Francesco da Barberino, a poet of the 13th century, in the 7th part of his Documenti d’Amore (printed at Rome in 1640), which instructs the lover to whose lot it may fall to escort his lady on a sea-voyage (instructions carried so far as to provide even for the case of her death at sea!), alludes more than once to these plural rudders. Thus—
“—— se vedessi avenire
Che vento ti rompesse
Timoni ...
In luogo di timoni
Fa spere[5] e in aqua poni.” (P. 272–273.)
And again, when about to enter a port, it is needful to be on the alert and ready to run in case of a hostile reception, so the galley should enter stern foremost—a movement which he reminds his lover involves the reversal of the ordinary use of the two rudders:—
“L’un timon leva suso
L’altro leggier tien giuso,
Ma convien levar mano
Non mica com soleàno,
Ma per contraro, e face
Cosi ’l guidar verace.” (P. 275.)
12th Century Illumination. (After Pertz.)
Seal of Winchelsea.
12th Century Illumination. (After Pertz.)
From Leaning Tower. (After Jal.)
After Spinello Aretini at Siena.
From Monument of St. Peter Martyr.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DOUBLE RUDDER OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
A representation of a vessel over the door of the Leaning Tower at Pisa shows this arrangement, which is also discernible in the frescoes of galley-fights by Spinello Aretini, in the Municipal Palace at Siena.
[Godinho de Eredia (1613), describing the smaller vessels of Malacca which he calls bâlos in ch. 13, De Embarcaçôes, says: “At the poop they have two rudders, one on each side to steer with.” E por poupa dos bâllos, tem 2 lêmes, hum en cada lado pera o governo. (Malacca, l’ Inde mérid. et le Cathay, Bruxelles, 1882, 4to, f. 26.)—H. C.]
The midship rudder seems to have been the more usual in the western seas, and the double quarter-rudders in the Mediterranean. The former are sometimes styled Navarresques and the latter Latins. Yet early seals of some of the Cinque Ports show vessels with the double rudder; one of which (that of Winchelsea) is given in the cut.
In the Mediterranean the latter was still in occasional use late in the 16th century. Captain Pantero Pantera in his book, L’ Armata Navale (Rome, 1614, p. 44), says that the Galeasses, or great galleys, had the helm alla Navarresca, but also a great oar on each side of it to assist in turning the ship. And I observe that the great galeasses which precede the Christian line of battle at Lepanto, in one of the frescoes by Vasari in the Royal Hall leading to the Sistine Chapel, have the quarter-rudder very distinctly.
The Chinese appear occasionally to employ it, as seems to be indicated in a woodcut of a vessel of war which I have traced from a Chinese book in the National Library at Paris. (See above, [p. 37].) [For the Chinese words for rudder, see p. 126 of J. Edkins’ article on Chinese Names for Boats and Boat Gear, Jour. N. China Br. R. As. Soc. N.S. XI. 1876.—H. C.] It is also used by certain craft of the Indian Archipelago, as appears from Mr. Wallace’s description of the Prau in which he sailed from Macassar to the Aru Islands. And on the Caspian, it is stated in Smith’s “Dict. of Antiquities” (art. Gubernaculum), the practice remained in force till late times. A modern traveller was nearly wrecked on that sea, because the two rudders were in the hands of two pilots who spoke different languages, and did not understand each other!
(Besides the works quoted see Jal, Archéologie Navale, II. 437–438, and Capmany, Memorias, III. 61.)
[Major Sykes remarks (Persia, ch. xxiii.): “Some unrecorded event, probably the sight of the unseaworthy craft, which had not an ounce of iron in their composition, made our travellers decide that the risks of the sea were too great, so that we have the pleasure of accompanying them back to Kermán and thence northwards to Khorasán.”—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—So also at Bander Abbási Tavernier says it was so unhealthy that foreigners could not stop there beyond March; everybody left it in April. Not a hundredth part of the population, says Kämpfer, remained in the city. Not a beggar would stop for any reward! The rich went to the towns of the interior or to the cool recesses of the mountains, the poor took refuge in the palm-groves at the distance of a day or two from the city. A place called ’Ishin, some 12 miles north of the city, was a favourite resort of the European and Hindu merchants. Here were fine gardens, spacious baths, and a rivulet of fresh and limpid water.
The custom of lying in water is mentioned also by Sir John Maundevile, and it was adopted by the Portuguese when they occupied Insular Hormuz, as P. della Valle and Linschoten relate. The custom is still common during great heats, in Sind and Mekran (Sir B. F.).
An anonymous ancient geography (Liber Junioris Philosophi) speaks of a people in India who live in the Terrestrial Paradise, and lead the life of the Golden Age.... The sun is so hot that they remain all day in the river!
The heat in the Straits of Hormuz drove Abdurrazzak into an anticipation of a verse familiar to English schoolboys: “Even the bird of rapid flight was burnt up in the heights of heaven, as well as the fish in the depths of the sea!” (Tavern. Bk. V. ch. xxiii.; Am. Exot. 716, 762; Müller, Geog. Gr. Min. II. 514; India in XV. Cent. p. 49.)
[Note 5.]—A like description of the effect of the Simúm on the human body is given by Ibn Batuta, Chardin, A. Hamilton, Tavernier, Thévenot, etc.; and the first of these travellers speaks specially of its prevalence in the desert near Hormuz, and of the many graves of its victims; but I have met with no reasonable account of its poisonous action. I will quote Chardin, already quoted at greater length by Marsden, as the most complete parallel to the text: “The most surprising effect of the wind is not the mere fact of its causing death, but its operation on the bodies of those who are killed by it. It seems as if they became decomposed without losing shape, so that you would think them to be merely asleep, when they are not merely dead, but in such a state that if you take hold of any part of the body it comes away in your hand. And the finger penetrates such a body as if it were so much dust.” (III. 286.)
Burton, on his journey to Medina, says: “The people assured me that this wind never killed a man in their Allah-favoured land. I doubt the fact. At Bir Abbas the body of an Arnaut was brought in swollen, and decomposed rapidly, the true diagnosis of death by the poison-wind.” Khanikoff is very distinct as to the immediate fatality of the desert wind at Khabis, near Kermán, but does not speak of the effect on the body after death. This Major St. John does, describing a case that occurred in June, 1871, when he was halting, during intense heat, at the post-house of Pasangan, a few miles south of Kom. The bodies were brought in of two poor men, who had tried to start some hours before sunset, and were struck down by the poisonous blast within half-a-mile of the post-house. “It was found impossible to wash them before burial.... Directly the limbs were touched they separated from the trunk.” (Oc. Highways, ut. sup.) About 1790, when Timúr Sháh of Kabul sent an army under the Sirdár-i-Sirdárán to put down a revolt in Meshed, this force on its return was struck by Simúm in the Plain of Farrah, and the Sirdár perished, with a great number of his men. (Ferrier, H. of the Afghans, 102; J. R. G. S. XXVI. 217; Khan. Mém. 210.)
[Note 6.]—The History of Hormuz is very imperfectly known. What I have met with on the subject consists of—(1) An abstract by Teixeira of a chronicle of Hormuz, written by Thurán Sháh, who was himself sovereign of Hormuz, and died in 1377; (2) some contemporary notices by Wassáf, which are extracted by Hammer in his History of the Ilkhans; (3) some notices from Persian sources in the 2nd Decade of De Barros (ch. ii.). The last do not go further back than Gordun Sháh, the father of Thurán Sháh, to whom they erroneously ascribe the first migration to the Island.
One of Teixeira’s Princes is called Ruknuddin Mahmud, and with him Marsden and Pauthier have identified Polo’s Ruomedam Acomet, or as he is called on another occasion in the Geog. Text, Maimodi Acomet. This, however, is out of the question, for the death of Ruknuddin is assigned to A.H. 675 (A.D. 1277), whilst there can, I think, be no doubt that Marco’s account refers to the period of his return from China, viz. 1293 or thereabouts.
We find in Teixeira that the ruler who succeeded in 1290 was Amir Masa’úd, who obtained the Government by the murder of his brother Saifuddin Nazrat. Masa’úd was cruel and oppressive; most of the influential people withdrew to Baháuddin Ayaz, whom Saifuddin had made Wazir of Kalhát on the Arabian coast. This Wazir assembled a force and drove out Masa’úd after he had reigned three years. He fled to Kermán and died there some years afterwards.
Baháuddin, who had originally been a slave of Saifuddin Nazrat’s, succeeded in establishing his authority. But about 1300 great bodies of Turks (i.e. Tartars) issuing from Turkestan ravaged many provinces of Persia, including Kermán and Hormuz. The people, unable to bear the frequency of such visitations, retired first to the island of Kishm, and then to that of Jerún, on which last was built the city of New Hormuz, afterwards so famous. This is Teixeira’s account from Thurán Sháh, so far as we are concerned with it. As regards the transfer of the city it agrees substantially with Abulfeda’s, which we have already quoted (supra, note 1).
Hammer’s account from Wassáf is frightfully confused, chiefly I should suppose from Hammer’s own fault; for among other things he assumes that Hormuz was always on an island, and he distinguishes between the Island of Hormuz and the Island of Jerún! We gather, however, that Hormuz before the Mongol time formed a government subordinate to the Salghur Atabegs of Fars (see [note 1, ch. xv.]), and when the power of that Dynasty was falling, the governor Mahmúd Kalháti, established himself as Prince of Hormuz, and became the founder of a petty dynasty, being evidently identical with Teixeira’s Ruknuddin Mahmud above-named, who is represented as reigning from 1246 to 1277. In Wassáf we find, as in Teixeira, Mahmúd’s son Masa’úd killing his brother Nazrat, and Baháuddin expelling Masa’úd. It is true that Hammer’s surprising muddle makes Nazrat kill Masa’úd; however, as a few lines lower we find Masa’úd alive and Nazrat dead, we may safely venture on this correction. But we find also that Masa’úd appears as Ruknuddin Masa’úd, and that Baháuddin does not assume the princely authority himself, but proclaims that of Fakhruddin Ahmed Ben Ibrahim At-Thaibi, a personage who does not appear in Teixeira at all. A MS. history, quoted by Ouseley, does mention Fakhruddin, and ascribes to him the transfer to Jerún. Wassáf seems to allude to Baháuddin as a sort of Sea Rover, occupying the islands of Larek and Jerún, whilst Fakhruddin reigned at Hormuz. It is difficult to understand the relation between the two.
It is possible that Polo’s memory made some confusion between the names of Ruknuddin Masa’úd and Fakhruddin Ahmed, but I incline to think the latter is his Ruomedan Ahmed. For Teixeira tells us that Masa’úd took refuge at the court of Kermán, and Wassáf represents him as supported in his claims by the Atabeg of that province, whilst we see that Polo seems to represent Ruomedan Acomat as in hostility with that prince. To add to the imbroglio I find in a passage of Wassáf Malik Fakhruddin Ahmed at-Thaibi sent by Ghazan Khan in 1297 as ambassador to Khanbalig, staying there some years, and dying off the Coromandel coast on his return in 1305. (Elliot, iii. pp. 45–47.)
Masa’úd’s seeking help from Kermán to reinstate him is not the first case of the same kind that occurs in Teixeira’s chronicle, so there may have been some kind of colour for Marco’s representation of the Prince of Hormuz as the vassal of the Atabeg of Kermán (“l’homme de cest roy de Creman;” see Prologue, [ch. xiv. note 2]). M. Khanikoff denies the possibility of the existence of any royal dynasty at Hormuz at this period. That there was a dynasty of Maliks of Hormuz, however, at this period we must believe on the concurring testimony of Marco, of Wassáf, and of Thurán Sháh. There was also, it would seem, another quasi-independent principality in the Island of Kais. (Hammer’s Ilch. II. 50, 51; Teixeira, Relacion de los Reyes de Hormuz; Khan. Notice, p. 34.)
The ravages of the Tartars which drove the people of Hormuz from their city may have begun with the incursions of the Nigudaris and Karaunahs, but they probably came to a climax in the great raid in 1299 of the Chaghataian Prince Kotlogh Shah, son of Dua Khan, a part of whose bands besieged the city itself, though they are said to have been repulsed by Baháuddin Ayas.
[The Dynasty of Hormuz was founded about 1060 by a Yemen chief Mohammed Dirhem Ko, and remained subject to Kermán till 1249, when Rokn ed-din Mahmúd III. Kalháti (1242–1277) made himself independent. The immediate successors of Rokn ed-din were Saif ed-din Nazrat (1277–1290), Masa’úd (1290–1293), Bahad ed-din Ayaz Sayfin (1293–1311). Hormuz was captured by the Portuguese in 1510 and by the Persians in 1622.—H. C.]
[Note 7.]—The indications of this alternative route to Kermán are very vague, but it may probably have been that through Finn, Tárum, and the Sírján district, passing out of the plain of Hormuz by the eastern flank of the Ginao mountain. This road would pass near the hot springs at the base of the said mountain, Sarga, Khurkhu, and Ginao, which are described by Kämpfer. Being more or less sulphureous they are likely to be useful in skin-diseases: indeed, Hamilton speaks of their efficacy in these. (I. 95.) The salt-streams are numerous on this line, and dates are abundant. The bitterness of the bread was, however, more probably due to another cause, as Major Smith has kindly pointed out to me: “Throughout the mountains in the south of Persia, which are generally covered with dwarf oak, the people are in the habit of making bread of the acorns, or of the acorns mixed with wheat or barley. It is dark in colour, and very hard, bitter, and unpalatable.”
Major St. John also noticed the bitterness of the bread in Kermán, but his servants attributed it to the presence in the wheat-fields of a bitter leguminous plant, with a yellowish white flower, which the Kermánis were too lazy to separate, so that much remained in the thrashing, and imparted its bitter flavour to the grain (surely the Tare of our Lord’s Parable!).
[General Houtum-Schindler says (l.c. p. 496): “Marco Polo’s return journey was, I am inclined to think, viâ Urzú and Báft, the shortest and most direct road. The road viâ Tárum and Sírján is very seldom taken by travellers intending to go to Kermán; it is only frequented by the caravans going between Bender ’Abbás and Bahrámábád, three stages west of Kermán. Hot springs, ‘curing itch,’ I noticed at two places on the Urzú-Báft road. There were some near Qal’ah Asgher and others near Dashtáb; they were frequented by people suffering from skin-diseases, and were highly sulphureous; the water of those near Dashtáb turned a silver ring black after two hours’ immersion. Another reason of my advocating the Urzú road is that the bitter bread spoken of by Marco Polo is only found on it, viz. at Báft and in Bardshír. In Sírján, to the west, and on the roads to the east, the bread is sweet. The bitter taste is from the Khúr, a bitter leguminous plant, which grows among the wheat, and whose grains the people are too lazy to pick out. There is not a single oak between Bender ’Abbás and Kermán; none of the inhabitants seemed to know what an acorn was. A person at Báft, who had once gone to Kerbelá viâ Kermánsháh and Baghdád, recognised my sketch of tree and fruit immediately, having seen oak and acorn between Kermánsháh and Qasr-i-Shírín on the Baghdád road.” Major Sykes writes (ch. xxiii.): “The above description undoubtedly refers to the main winter route, which runs viâ Sírján. This is demonstrated by the fact that under the Kuh-i-Ginao, the summer station of Bandar Abbás, there is a magnificent sulphur spring, which, welling from an orifice 4 feet in diameter, forms a stream some 30 yards wide. Its temperature at the source is 113 degrees, and its therapeutic properties are highly appreciated. As to the bitterness of the bread, it is suggested in the notes that it was caused by being mixed with acorns, but, to-day at any rate, there are no oak forests in this part of Persia, and I would urge that it is better to accept our traveller’s statement, that it was due to the bitterness of the water.”—However, I prefer Gen. Houtum-Schindler’s theory.—H. C.]
| Marches. | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. | From Kermán across a plain to the top of a mountain-pass, where extreme cold was experienced . . . | 7 |
| 2. | A descent, occupying . . . | 2 |
| 3. | A great plain, called Reobarles, in a much warmer climate, abounding in francolin partridge, and in dates and tropical fruit, with a ruined city of former note, called Camadi, near the head of the plain, which extends for . . . | 5 |
| 4. | A second very bad pass, descending for 20 miles, say . . . | 1 |
| 5. | A well-watered fruitful plain, which is crossed to Hormuz, on the shores of the Gulf . . . | 2 |
| — | ||
| Total . . . | 17 |
| Marches. | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. | From Kermán to the caravanserai of Deh Bakri in the pass so called. “The ground as I ascended became covered with snow, and the weather bitterly cold” (Report) . . . | 6 |
| 2. | Two miles over very deep snow brought him to the top of the pass; he then descended 14 miles to his halt. Two miles to the south of the crest he passed a second caravanserai: “The two are evidently built so near one another to afford shelter to travellers who may be unable to cross the ridge during heavy snow-storms.” The next march continued the descent for 14 miles, and then carried him 10 miles along the banks of the Rudkhanah-i-Shor. The approximate height of the pass above the sea is estimated at 8000 feet. We have thus for the descent the greater part of . . . | 2 |
| 3. | “Clumps of date-palms growing near the village showed that I had now reached a totally different climate.” (Smith’s Report.) And Mr. Abbott says of the same region: “Partly wooded ... and with thickets of reeds abounding with francolin and Jirufti partridge.... The lands yield grain, millet, pulse, French- and horse-beans, rice, cotton, henna, Palma Christi, and dates, and in part are of great fertility.... Rainy season from January to March, after which a luxuriant crop of grass.” Across this plain (districts of Jíruft and Rudbar), the height of which above the sea, is something under 2000 feet . . . | 6 |
| 4. | 6½ hours, “nearly the whole way over a most difficult mountain-pass,” called the Pass of Nevergun . . . | 1 |
| 5. | Two long marches over a plain, part of which is described as “continuous cultivation for some 16 miles,” and the rest as a “most uninteresting plain” . . . | 2 |
| — | ||
| Total as before . . . | 17 |
| Marches. | |
|---|---|
| The Sárdú route, which seems to me to be the one followed by Marco Polo, has five stages through fertile and populous plains to Sarvízan . . . | 5 |
| One day’s march ascends to the top of the Sarvízan Pass . . . | 1 |
| Two days’ descent to Ráhjird, a village close to the ruins of old Jíruft, now called Shehr-i-Daqíánús . . . | 2 |
| Six days’ march over the “vast plain” of Jírúft and Rúdbár to Faríáb, joining the Deh Bekrí route at Kerímábád, one stage south of the Shehr-i-Daqíánús . . . | 6 |
| One day’s march through the Nevergún Pass to Shamíl, descending . . . | 1 |
| Two days’ march through the plain to Bender ’Abbás or Hormúz . . . | 2 |
| — | |
| In all . . . | 17 |
[1] It is but fair to say that scholars so eminent as Professors Sprenger and Blochmann have considered the original suggestion lawful and probable. Indeed, Mr. Blochmann says in a letter: “After studying a language for years, one acquires a natural feeling for anything un-idiomatic; but I must confess I see nothing un-Persian in rúdbár-i-duzd, nor in rúdbár-i-lass.... How common lass is, you may see from one fact, that it occurs in children’s reading-books.” We must not take Reobarles in Marco’s French as rhyming to (French) Charles; every syllable sounds. It is remarkable that Lăs, as the name of a small State near our Sind frontier, is said to mean, “in the language of the country,” a level plain. (J. A. S. B. VIII. 195.) It is not clear what is meant by the language of the country. The chief is a Brahui, the people are Lumri or Numri Bilúchis, who are, according to Tod, of Jat descent.
[2] Sir Henry Rawlinson objects to this identification (which is the same that Dr. Karl Müller adopts), saying that Organa is more probably “Angan, formerly Argan.” To this I cannot assent. Nearchus sails 300 stadia from the mouth of Anamis to Oaracta, and on his way passes Organa. Taking 600 stadia to the degree (Dr. Müller’s value), I make it just 300 stadia from the mouth of the Hormuz creek to the eastern point of Kishm. Organa must have been either Jerún or Lárek; Angan (Hanjám of Mas’udi) is out of the question. And as a straight run must have passed quite close to Jerún, not to Lárek, I find the former most probable. Nearchus next day proceeds 200 stadia along Oaracta, and anchors in sight of another island (Neptune’s) which was separated by 40 stadia from Oaracta. This was Angan; no other island answers, and for this the distances answer with singular precision.
[3] Moore refers to Persian Tales.
[4] This tison can be seen in the cuts from the tomb of St. Peter Martyr and the seal of Winchelsea.
[5] Spere, bundles of spars, etc., dragged overboard.
CHAPTER XX.
Of the Wearisome and Desert Road that has now to be travelled.
On departing from the city of Kerman you find the road for seven days most wearisome; and I will tell you how this is.[{1}] The first three days you meet with no water, or next to none. And what little you do meet with is bitter green stuff, so salt that no one can drink it; and in fact if you drink a drop of it, it will set you purging ten times at least by the way. It is the same with the salt which is made from those streams; no one dares to make use of it, because of the excessive purging which it occasions. Hence it is necessary to carry water for the people to last these three days; as for the cattle, they must needs drink of the bad water I have mentioned, as there is no help for it, and their great thirst makes them do so. But it scours them to such a degree that sometimes they die of it. In all those three days you meet with no human habitation; it is all desert, and the extremity of drought. Even of wild beasts there are none, for there is nothing for them to eat.[{2}]
After those three days of desert [you arrive at a stream of fresh water running underground, but along which there are holes broken in here and there, perhaps undermined by the stream, at which you can get sight of it. It has an abundant supply, and travellers, worn with the hardships of the desert, here rest and refresh themselves and their beasts.][{3}]
You then enter another desert which extends for four days; it is very much like the former except that you do see some wild asses. And at the termination of these four days of desert the kingdom of Kerman comes to an end, and you find another city which is called Cobinan.
[Note 1.] [“The present road from Kermán to Kúbenán is to Zerend about 50 miles, to the Sár i Benán 15 miles, thence to Kúbenán 30 miles—total 95 miles. Marco Polo cannot have taken the direct road to Kúbenán, as it took him seven days to reach it. As he speaks of waterless deserts, he probably took a circuitous route to the east of the mountains, viâ Kúhpáyeh and the desert lying to the north of Khabis.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. pp. 496–497.) (Cf. Major Sykes, ch. xxiii.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—This description of the Desert of Kermán, says Mr. Khanikoff, “is very correct. As the only place in the Desert of Lút where water is found is the dirty, salt, bitter, and green water of the rivulet called Shor-Rúd (the Salt River), we can have no doubt of the direction of Marco Polo’s route from Kermán so far.” Nevertheless I do not agree with Khanikoff that the route lay N.E. in the direction of Ambar and Kain, for a reason which will appear under the next chapter. I imagine the route to have been nearly due north from Kermán, in the direction of Tabbas or of Tún. And even such a route would, according to Khanikoff’s own map, pass the Shor-Rúd, though at a higher point.
I extract a few lines from that gentleman’s narrative: “In proportion as we got deeper into the desert, the soil became more and more arid; at daybreak I could still discover a few withered plants of Caligonum and Salsola, and not far from the same spot I saw a lark and another bird of a whitish colour, the last living things that we beheld in this dismal solitude.... The desert had now completely assumed the character of a land accursed, as the natives call it. Not the smallest blade of grass, no indication of animal life vivified the prospect; no sound but such as came from our own caravan broke the dreary silence of the void.” (Mém. p. 176.)
[Major P. Molesworth Sykes (Geog. Jour. X. p. 578) writes: “At Tun, I was on the northern edge of the great Dash-i-Lut (Naked Desert), which lay between us and Kerman, and which had not been traversed, in this particular portion, since the illustrious Marco Polo crossed it, in the opposite direction, when travelling from Kerman to ‘Tonocain’ viâ Cobinan.” Major Sykes (Persia, ch. iii.) seems to prove that geographers have, without sufficient grounds, divided the great desert of Persia into two regions, that to the north being termed Dasht-i-Kavir, and that further south the Dasht-i-Lut—and that Lut is the one name for the whole desert, Dash-i-Lut being almost a redundancy, and that Kavir (the Arabic Kafr) is applied to every saline swamp. “This great desert stretches from a few miles out of Tehrán practically to the British frontier, a distance of about 700 miles.”—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—I can have no doubt of the genuineness of this passage from Ramusio. Indeed some such passage is necessary; otherwise why distinguish between three days of desert and four days more of desert? The underground stream was probably a subterraneous canal (called Kanát or Kárez), such as is common in Persia; often conducted from a great distance. Here it may have been a relic of abandoned cultivation. Khanikoff, on the road between Kermán and Yezd, not far west of that which I suppose Marco to be travelling, says: “At the fifteen inhabited spots marked upon the map, they have water which has been brought from a great distance, and at considerable cost, by means of subterranean galleries, to which you descend by large and deep wells. Although the water flows at some depth, its course is tracked upon the surface by a line of more abundant vegetation.” (Ib. p. 200.) Elphinstone says he has heard of such subterranean conduits 36 miles in length. (I. 398.) Polybius speaks of them: “There is no sign of water on the surface; but there are many underground channels, and these supply tanks in the desert, that are known only to the initiated.... At the time when the Persians got the upper hand in Asia, they used to concede to such persons as brought spring-water to places previously destitute of irrigation, the usufruct for five generations. And Taurus being rife with springs, they incurred all the expense and trouble that was needed to form these underground channels to great distances, insomuch that in these days even the people who make use of the water don’t know where the channels begin, or whence the water comes.” (X. 28.)
CHAPTER XXI.
Concerning the City of Cobinan and the things that are made there.
Cobinan is a large town.[{1}] The people worship Mahommet. There is much Iron and Steel and Ondanique, and they make steel mirrors of great size and beauty. They also prepare both Tutia (a thing very good for the eyes) and Spodium; and I will tell you the process.
They have a vein of a certain earth which has the required quality, and this they put into a great flaming furnace, whilst over the furnace there is an iron grating. The smoke and moisture, expelled from the earth of which I speak, adhere to the iron grating, and thus form Tutia, whilst the slag that is left after burning is the Spodium.[{2}]
[Note 1.]—Kuh-Banán is mentioned by Moḳaddasi (A.D. 985) as one of the cities of Bardesír, the most northerly of the five circles into which he divides Kermán. (See Sprenger, Post-und Reise-routen des Orients, p. 77.) It is the subject of an article in the Geog. Dictionary of Yáḳút, though it has been there mistranscribed into Kubiyán and Kukiyán. (See Leipzig ed. 1869, iv. p. 316, and Barbier de Meynard, Dict. de la Perse, p. 498.) And it is also indicated by Mr. Abbott (J. R. G. S. XXV. 25) as the name of a district of Kermán, lying some distance to the east of his route when somewhat less than half-way between Yezd and Kermán. It would thus, I apprehend, be on or near the route between Kermán and Tabbas; one which I believe has been traced by no modern traveller. We may be certain that there is now no place at Kuh-Banán deserving the title of une cité grant, nor is it easy to believe that there was in Polo’s time; he applies such terms too profusely. The meaning of the name is perhaps “Hill of the Terebinths, or Wild Pistachioes,” “a tree which grows abundantly in the recesses of bleak, stony, and desert mountains, e.g. about Shamákhi, about Shiraz, and in the deserts of Luristan and Lar.” (Kämpfer, 409, 413.)
[“It is strange that Marco Polo speaks of Kúbenán only on his return journey from Kermán; on the down journey he must have been told that Kúbenán was in close proximity; it is even probable that he passed there, as Persian travellers of those times, when going from Kermán to Yazd, and vice versá, always called at Kúbenán.” (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. p. 490.) In all histories this name is written Kúbenán, not Kúhbenán; the pronunciation to-day is Kóbenán and Kobenún.—H. C.]
I had thought my identification of Cobinan original, but a communication from Mr. Abbott, and the opportunity which this procured me of seeing his MS. Report already referred to, showed that he had anticipated me many years ago. The following is an extract: “Districts of Kerman * * * Kooh Benan. This is a hilly district abounding in fruits, such as grapes, peaches, pomegranates, sinjid (sweet-willow), walnuts, melons. A great deal of madder and some asafœtida is produced there. This is no doubt the country alluded to by Marco Polo, under the name of Cobinam, as producing iron, brass, and tutty, and which is still said to produce iron, copper, and tootea.” There appear to be lead mines also in the district, as well as asbestos and sulphur. Mr. Abbott adds the names of nine villages, which he was not able to verify by comparison. These are Púz, Tarz, Gújard, Aspaj, Kuh-i-Gabr, Dahnah, Búghín, Bassab, Radk. The position of Kuh Banán is stated to lie between Bahabád (a place also mentioned by Yáḳút as producing Tutia) and Ráví, but this does not help us, and for approximate position we can only fall back on the note in Mr. Abbott’s field-book, as published in the J. R. G. S., viz. that the District lay in the mountains E.S.E. from a caravanserai 10 miles S.E. of Gudran. To get the seven marches of Polo’s Itinerary we must carry the Town of Kuh Banán as far north as this indication can possibly admit, for Abbott made only five and a half marches from the spot where this observation was made to Kermán. Perhaps Polo’s route deviated for the sake of the fresh water. That a district, such as Mr. Abbott’s Report speaks of, should lie unnoticed, in a tract which our maps represent as part of the Great Desert, shows again how very defective our geography of Persia still is.
[“During the next stage to Darband, we passed ruins that I believe to be those of Marco Polo’s ‘Cobinan’ as the modern Kúhbenán does not at all fit in with the great traveller’s description, and it is just as well to remember that in the East the caravan routes seldom change.” (Captain P. M. Sykes, Geog. Jour. X. p. 580.—See Persia, ch. xxiii.)
Kuh Banán has been visited by Mr. E. Stack, of the Indian Civil Service. (Six Months in Persia, London, 1882, I. 230.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Tutty (i.e. Tutia) is in modern English an impure oxide of zinc, collected from the flues where brass is made; and this appears to be precisely what Polo describes, unless it be that in his account the production of tutia from an ore of zinc is represented as the object and not an accident of the process. What he says reads almost like a condensed translation of Galen’s account of Pompholyx and Spodos: “Pompholyx is produced in copper-smelting as Cadmia is; and it is also produced from Cadmia (carbonate of zinc) when put in the furnace, as is done (for instance) in Cyprus. The master of the works there, having no copper ready for smelting, ordered some pompholyx to be prepared from cadmia in my presence. Small pieces of cadmia were thrown into the fire in front of the copper-blast. The furnace top was covered, with no vent at the crown, and intercepted the soot of the roasted cadmia. This, when collected, constitutes Pompholyx, whilst that which falls on the hearth is called Spodos, a great deal of which is got in copper-smelting.” Pompholyx, he adds, is an ingredient in salves for eye discharges and pustules. (Galen, De Simpl. Medic., p. ix. in Latin ed., Venice, 1576.) Matthioli, after quoting this, says that Pompholyx was commonly known in the laboratories by the Arabic name of Tutia. I see that pure oxide of zinc is stated to form in modern practice a valuable eye-ointment.
Teixeira speaks of tutia as found only in Kermán, in a range of mountains twelve parasangs from the capital. The ore got here was kneaded with water, and set to bake in crucibles in a potter’s kiln. When well baked, the crucibles were lifted and emptied, and the tutia carried in boxes to Hormuz for sale. This corresponds with a modern account in Milburne, which says that the tutia imported to India from the Gulf is made from an argillaceous ore of zinc, which is moulded into tubular cakes, and baked to a moderate hardness. The accurate Garcia da Horta is wrong for once in saying that the tutia of Kermán is no mineral, but the ash of a certain tree called Goan.
(Matth. on Dioscorides, Ven. 1565, pp. 1338–40; Teixeira, Relacion de Persia, p. 121; Milburne’s Or. Commerce, I. 139; Garcia, f. 21 v.; Eng. Cyc., art. Zinc.)
[General A. Houtum-Schindler (Jour. R. As. Soc. N.S. XIII. October, 1881, p. 497) says: “The name Tútíá for collyrium is now not used in Kermán. Tútíá, when the name stands alone, is sulphate of copper, which in other parts of Persia is known as Kát-i-Kebúd; Tútíá-i-sabz (green Tútíá) is sulphate of iron, also called Záj-i-síyah. A piece of Tútíá-i-zard (yellow Tútíá) shown to me was alum, generally called Záj-i-safíd; and a piece of Tútíá-í-safíd (white Tútíá) seemed to be an argillaceous zinc ore. Either of these may have been the earth mentioned by Marco Polo as being put into the furnace. The lampblack used as collyrium is always called Surmah. This at Kermán itself is the soot produced by the flame of wicks, steeped in castor oil or goat’s fat, upon earthenware saucers. In the high mountainous districts of the province, Kúbenán, Páríz, and others, Surmah is the soot of the Gavan plant (Garcia’s goan). This plant, a species of Astragalus, is on those mountains very fat and succulent; from it also exudes the Tragacanth gum. The soot is used dry as an eye-powder, or, mixed with tallow, as an eye-salve. It is occasionally collected on iron gratings.
“Tútíá is the Arabicised word dúdhá, Persian for smokes.
“The Shems-ul-loghát calls Tútíá a medicine for eyes, and a stone used for the fabrication of Surmah. The Tohfeh says Tútíá is of three kinds—yellow and blue mineral Tútíá, Tútíá-i-qalam (collyrium) made from roots, and Tútíá resulting from the process of smelting copper ore. ‘The best Tútíá-i-qalam comes from Kermán.’ It adds, ‘Some authors say Surmah is sulphuret of antimony, others say it is a composition of iron’; I should say any black composition used for the eyes is Surmah, be it lampblack, antimony, iron, or a mixture of all.
“Teixeira’s Tútíá was an impure oxide of zinc, perhaps the above-mentioned Tútíá-i-safíd, baked into cakes; it was probably the East India Company’s Lapis Tútíá, also called Tutty. The Company’s Tutenague and Tutenage, occasionally confounded with Tutty, was the so-called ‘Chinese Copper,’ an alloy of copper, zinc, and iron, brought from China.”
Major Sykes (ch. xxiii.) writes: “I translated Marco’s description of tutia (which is also the modern Persian name), to a khán of Kubenán, and he assured me that the process was the same to-day; spodium he knew nothing about, but the sulphate of zinc is found in the hills to the east of Kubenán.”
Heyd (Com. II. p. 675) says in a note: “Il résulte de l’ensemble de ce passage que les matières désignées par Marco Polo sous le nom de ‘espodie’ (spodium) étaient des scories métalliques; en général, le mot spodium désigne les résidus de la combustion des matières végétales ou des os (de l’ivoire).”—H. C.]
CHAPTER XXII.
Of a certain Desert that continues for eight days’ Journey.
When you depart from this City of Cobinan, you find yourself again in a Desert of surpassing aridity, which lasts for some eight days; here are neither fruits nor trees to be seen, and what water there is is bitter and bad, so that you have to carry both food and water. The cattle must needs drink the bad water, will they nill they, because of their great thirst. At the end of those eight days you arrive at a Province which is called Tonocain. It has a good many towns and villages, and forms the extremity of Persia towards the North.[{1}] It also contains an immense plain on which is found the Arbre Sol, which we Christians call the Arbre Sec; and I will tell you what it is like. It is a tall and thick tree, having the bark on one side green and the other white; and it produces a rough husk like that of a chestnut, but without anything in it. The wood is yellow like box, and very strong, and there are no other trees near it nor within a hundred miles of it, except on one side, where you find trees within about ten miles’ distance. And there, the people of the country tell you, was fought the battle between Alexander and King Darius.[{2}]
The towns and villages have great abundance of everything good, for the climate is extremely temperate, being neither very hot nor very cold. The natives all worship Mahommet, and are a very fine-looking people, especially the women, who are surpassingly beautiful.
[Note 1.]—All that region has been described as “a country divided into deserts that are salt, and deserts that are not salt.” (Vigne, I. 16.) Tonocain, as we have seen ([ch. xv. note 1]), is the Eastern Kuhistan of Persia, but extended by Polo, it would seem to include the whole of Persian Khorasan. No city in particular is indicated as visited by the traveller, but the view I take of the position of the Arbre Sec, as well as his route through Kuh-Banán, would lead me to suppose that he reached the Province of Tun-o-Kain about Tabbas.
[“Marco Polo has been said to have traversed a portion of (the Dash-i-Kavir, great Salt Desert) on his supposed route from Tabbas to Damghan, about 1272; although it is more probable that he marched further to the east, and crossed the northern portion of the Dash-i-Lut, Great Sand Desert, separating Khorasan in the south-east from Kermán, and occupying a sorrowful parallelogram between the towns of Neh and Tabbas on the north, and Kermán and Yezd on the south.” (Curzon, Persia, II. pp. 248 and 251.) Lord Curzon adds in a note (p. 248): “The Tunogan of the text which was originally mistaken for Damghan, is correctly explained by Yule as Tun-o- (i.e. and) Káin.” Major Sykes writes (ch. xxiii.): “The section of the Lut has not hitherto been rediscovered, but I know that it is desert throughout, and it is practically certain that Marco ended these unpleasant experiences at Tabas, 150 miles from Kubenán. To-day the district is known as Tun-o-Tabas, Káin being independent of it.”—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—This is another subject on which a long and somewhat discursive note is inevitable.
One of the Bulletins of the Soc. de Géographie (sér. III. tom. iii. p. 187) contains a perfectly inconclusive endeavour, by M. Roux de Rochelle, to identify the Arbre Sec or Arbre Sol with a manna-bearing oak alluded to by Q. Curtius as growing in Hyrcania. There can be no doubt that the tree described is, as Marsden points out, a Chínár or Oriental Plane. Mr. Ernst Meyer, in his learned Geschichte der Botanik (Königsberg, 1854–57, IV. 123), objects that Polo’s description of the wood does not answer to that tree. But, with due allowance, compare with his whole account that which Olearius gives of the Chinar, and say if the same tree be not meant. “The trees are as tall as the pine, and have very large leaves, closely resembling those of the vine. The fruit looks like a chestnut, but has no kernel, so it is not eatable. The wood is of a very brown colour, and full of veins; the Persians employ it for doors and window-shutters, and when these are rubbed with oil they are incomparably handsomer than our walnut-wood joinery.” (I. 526.) The Chinar-wood is used in Kashmir for gunstocks.
The whole tenor of the passage seems to imply that some eminent individual Chinar is meant. The appellations given to it vary in the different texts. In the G. T. it is styled in this passage, “The Arbre Seule which the Christians call the Arbre Sec,” whilst in ch. cci. of the same (infra, Bk. IV. ch. v.) it is called “L’Arbre Sol, which in the Book of Alexander is called L’Arbre Seche.” Pauthier has here “L’Arbre Solque, que nous appelons L’Arbre Sec,” and in the later passage “L’Arbre Seul, que le Livre Alexandre appelle Arbre Sec;” whilst Ramusio has here “L’Albero del Sole che si chiama per i Cristiani L’Albor Secco,” and does not contain the later passage. So also I think all the old Latin and French printed texts, which are more or less based on Pipino’s version, have “The Tree of the Sun, which the Latins call the Dry Tree.”
[G. Capus says (A travers le roy. de Tamerlan, p. 296) that he found at Khodjakent, the remains of an enormous plane-tree or Chinar, which measured no less than 48 metres (52 yards) in circumference at the base, and 9 metres diameter inside the rotten trunk; a dozen tourists from Tashkent one day feasted inside, and were all at ease.—H. C.]
Pauthier, building as usual on the reading of his own text (Solque), endeavours to show that this odd word represents Thoulk, the Arabic name of a tree to which Forskal gave the title of Ficus Vasta, and this Ficus Vasta he will have to be the same as the Chinar. Ficus Vasta would be a strange name surely to give to a Plane-tree, but Forskal may be acquitted of such an eccentricity. The Tholaḳ (for that seems to be the proper vocalisation) is a tree of Arabia Felix, very different from the Chinar, for it is the well-known Indian Banyan, or a closely-allied species, as may be seen in Forskal’s description. The latter indeed says that the Arab botanists called it Delb, and that (or Dulb) is really a synonym for the Chinar. But De Sacy has already commented upon this supposed application of the name Delb to the Tholaḳ as erroneous. (See Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, pp. cxxiv. and 179; Abdallatif, Rel. de l’Egypte, p. 80; J. R. G. S. VIII. 275; Ritter, VI. 662, 679.)
The fact is that the Solque of M. Pauthier’s text is a mere copyist’s error in the reduplication of the pronoun que. In his chief MS. which he cites as A (No. 10,260 of Bibl. Nationale, now Fr. 5631) we can even see how this might easily happen, for one line ends with Solque and the next begins with que. The true reading is, I doubt not, that which this MS. points to, and which the G. Text gives us in the second passage quoted above, viz. Arbre Sol, occurring in Ramusio as Albero del Sole. To make this easier of acceptation I must premise two remarks: first, that Sol is “the Sun” in both Venetian and Provençal; and, secondly, that in the French of that age the prepositional sign is not necessary to the genitive. Thus, in Pauthier’s own text we find in one of the passages quoted above, “Le Livre Alexandre, i.e. Liber Alexandri;” elsewhere, “Cazan le fils Argon,” “à la mère sa femme,” “Le corps Monseigneur Saint Thomas si est en ceste Province;” in Joinville, “le commandemant Mahommet”, “ceux de la Haulequa estoient logiez entour les héberges le soudanc, et establiz pour le cors le soudanc garder;” in Baudouin de Sebourc, “De l’amour Bauduin esprise et enflambée.”
Moreover it is the Tree of the Sun that is prominent in the legendary History of Alexander, a fact sufficient in itself to rule the reading. A character in an old English play says:—
“Peregrine. Drake was a didapper to Mandevill:
Candish and Hawkins, Frobisher, all our Voyagers
Went short of Mandevil. But had he reached
To this place—here—yes, here—this wilderness,
And seen the Trees of the Sun and Moon, that speak
And told King Alexander of his death;
He then
Had left a passage ope to Travellers
That now is kept and guarded by Wild Beasts.”
(Broome’s Antipodes, in Lamb’s Specimens.)
The same trees are alluded to in an ancient Low German poem in honour of St. Anno of Cologne. Speaking of the Four Beasts of Daniel’s Vision:—
“The third beast was a Libbard;
Four Eagle’s Wings he had;
This signified the Grecian Alexander,
Who with four Hosts went forth to conquer lands
Even to the World’s End,
Known by its Golden Pillars.
In India he the Wilderness broke through
With Trees twain he there did speak,” etc.
(In Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teuton. tom. i.[1])
These oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, somewhere on the confines of India, appear in all the fabulous histories of Alexander, from the Pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. Thus Alexander is made to tell the story in a letter to Aristotle: “Then came some of the towns-people and said, ‘We have to show thee something passing strange, O King, and worth thy visiting; for we can show thee trees that talk with human speech.’ So they led me to a certain park, in the midst of which were the Sun and Moon, and round about them a guard of priests of the Sun and Moon. And there stood the two trees of which they had spoken, like unto cypress trees; and round about them were trees like the myrobolans of Egypt, and with similar fruit. And I addressed the two trees that were in the midst of the park, the one which was male in the Masculine gender, and the one that was female in the Feminine gender. And the name of the Male Tree was the Sun, and of the female Tree the Moon, names which were in that language Muthu and Emaūsae.[2] And the stems were clothed with the skins of animals; the male tree with the skins of he-beasts, and the female tree with the skins of she-beasts.... And at the setting of the Sun, a voice, speaking in the Indian tongue, came forth from the (Sun) Tree; and I ordered the Indians who were with me to interpret it. But they were afraid and would not,” etc. (Pseudo-Callisth. ed. Müller, III. 17.)
The story as related by Firdusi keeps very near to the Greek as just quoted, but does not use the term “Tree of the Sun.” The chapter of the Sháh Námeh containing it is entitled Dídan Sikandar dirakht-i-goyárá, “Alexander’s interview with the Speaking Tree.” (Livre des Rois, V. 229.) In the Chanson d’Alixandre of Lambert le Court and Alex. de Bernay, these trees are introduced as follows:—
“‘Signor,’ fait Alixandre, ‘je vus voel demander,
Se des merveilles d’Inde me saves rien conter.’
Cil li ont respondu: ‘Se tu vius escouter
Ja te dirons merveilles, s’es poras esprover.
La sus en ces desers pues ii Arbres trover
Qui c pies ont de haut, et de grossor sunt per.
Li Solaus et La Lune les ont fait si serer
Que sevent tous langages et entendre et parler.’”
(Ed. 1861 (Dinan), p. 357.)
Maundevile informs us precisely where these trees are: “A 15 journeys in lengthe, goynge be the Deserts of the tother side of the Ryvere Beumare,” if one could only tell where that is![3] A mediæval chronicler also tells us that Ogerus the Dane (temp. Caroli Magni) conquered all the parts beyond sea from Hierusalem to the Trees of the Sun. In the old Italian romance also of Guerino detto il Meschino, still a chapbook in S. Italy, the Hero (ch. lxiii.) visits the Trees of the Sun and Moon. But this is mere imitation of the Alexandrian story, and has nothing of interest. (Maundevile, pp. 297–298; Fasciculus Temporum in Germ. Script. Pistorii Nidani, II.)
It will be observed that the letter ascribed to Alexander describes the two oracular trees as resembling two cypress-trees. As such the Trees of the Sun and Moon are represented on several extant ancient medals, e.g. on two struck at Perga in Pamphylia in the time of Aurelian. And Eastern story tells us of two vast cypress-trees, sacred among the Magians, which grew in Khorasan, one at Kashmar near Turshiz, and the other at Farmad near Tuz, and which were said to have risen from shoots that Zoroaster brought from Paradise. The former of these was sacrilegiously cut down by the order of the Khalif Motawakkil, in the 9th century. The trunk was despatched to Baghdad on rollers at a vast expense, whilst the branches alone formed a load for 1300 camels. The night that the convoy reached within one stage of the palace, the Khalif was cut in pieces by his own guards. This tree was said to be 1450 years old, and to measure 33¾ cubits in girth. The locality of this “Arbor Sol” we see was in Khorasan, and possibly its fame may have been transferred to a representative of another species. The plane, as well as the cypress, was one of the distinctive trees of the Magian Paradise.
In the Peutingerian Tables we find in the N.E. of Asia the rubric “Hic Alexander Responsum accepit,” which looks very like an allusion to the tale of the Oracular Trees. If so, it is remarkable as a suggestion of the antiquity of the Alexandrian Legends, though the rubric may of course be an interpolation. The Trees of the Sun and Moon appear as located in India Ultima to the east of Persia, in a map which is found in MSS. (12th century) of the Floridus of Lambertus; and they are indicated more or less precisely in several maps of the succeeding centuries. (Ouseley’s Travels, I. 387; Dabistan, I. 307–308; Santarem, H. de la Cosmog. II. 189, III. 506–513, etc.)
Nothing could show better how this legend had possessed men in the Middle Ages than the fact that Vincent of Beauvais discerns an allusion to these Trees of the Sun and Moon in the blessing of Moses on Joseph (as it runs in the Vulgate), “de pomis fructuum Solis ac Lunae.” (Deut. xxxiii. 14.)
Marco has mixt up this legend of the Alexandrian Romance, on the authority, as we shall see reason to believe, of some of the recompilers of that Romance, with a famous subject of Christian Legend in that age, the Arbre Sec or Dry Tree, one form of which is related by Maundevile and by Johan Schiltberger. “A lytille fro Ebron,” says the former, “is the Mount of Mambre, of the whyche the Valeye taketh his name. And there is a Tree of Oke that the Saracens clepen Dirpe, that is of Abraham’s Tyme, the which men clepen the Drye Tree.” [Schiltberger adds that the heathen call it Kurru Thereck, i.e. (Turkish) Ḳúrú Dirakht = Dry Tree.] “And theye seye that it hathe ben there sithe the beginnynge of the World; and was sumtyme grene and bare Leves, unto the Tyme that Oure Lord dyede on the Cros; and thanne it dryede; and so dyden alle the Trees that weren thanne in the World. And summe seyn be hire Prophecyes that a Lord, a Prynce of the West syde of the World, shalle wynnen the Lond of Promyssioun, i.e. the Holy Lond, withe Helpe of Cristene Men, and he schalle do synge a Masse under that Drye Tree, and than the Tree shall wexen grene and bere both Fruyt and Leves. And thorghe that Myracle manye Sarazines and Jewes schulle ben turned to Cristene Feithe. And, therefore, they dou gret Worschipe thereto, and kepen it fulle besyly. And alle be it so that it be drye, natheless yit he berethe great vertue,” etc.
The tradition seems to have altered with circumstances, for a traveller of nearly two centuries later (Friar Anselmo, 1509) describes the oak of Abraham at Hebron as a tree of dense and verdant foliage: “The Saracens make their devotions at it, and hold it in great veneration, for it has remained thus green from the days of Abraham until now; and they tie scraps of cloth on its branches inscribed with some of their writing, and believe that if any one were to cut a piece off that tree he would die within the year.” Indeed even before Maundevile’s time Friar Burchard (1283) had noticed that though the famous old tree was dry, another had sprung from its roots. And it still has a representative.
As long ago as the time of Constantine a fair was held under the Terebinth of Mamre, which was the object of many superstitious rites and excesses. The Emperor ordered these to be put a stop to, and a church to be erected at the spot. In the time of Arculph (end of 7th century) the dry trunk still existed under the roof of this church; just as the immortal Banyan-tree of Prág exists to this day in a subterranean temple in the Fort of Allahabad.
It is evident that the story of the Dry Tree had got a great vogue in the 13th century. In the Jus du Pelerin, a French drama of Polo’s age, the Pilgrim says:—
“S’ai puis en maint bon lieu et à maint saint esté,
S’ai esté au Sec-Arbre et dusc’à Duresté.”
And in another play of slightly earlier date (Le Jus de St. Nicolas), the King of Africa, invaded by the Christians, summons all his allies and feudatories, among whom appear the Admirals of Coine (Iconium) and Orkenie (Hyrcania), and the Amiral d’outre l’Arbre-Sec (as it were of “the Back of Beyond”) in whose country the only current coin is millstones! Friar Odoric tells us that he heard at Tabriz that the Arbor Secco existed in a mosque of that city; and Clavijo relates a confused story about it in the same locality. Of the Dürre Baum at Tauris there is also a somewhat pointless legend in a Cologne MS. of the 14th century, professing to give an account of the East. There are also some curious verses concerning a mystical Dürre Bom quoted by Fabricius from an old Low German Poem; and we may just allude to that other mystic Arbor Secco of Dante—
——“una pianta dispogliata
Di fiori e d’altra fronda in ciascun ramo,”
though the dark symbolism in the latter case seems to have a different bearing.
(Maundevile, p. 68; Schiltberger, p. 113; Anselm. in Canisii Thesaurus, IV. 781; Pereg. Quat. p. 81; Niceph. Callist. VIII. 30; Théâtre Français au Moyen Age, pp. 97, 173; Cathay, p. 48; Clavijo, p. 90; Orient und Occident, Göttingen, 1867, vol. i.; Fabricii Vet. Test. Pseud., etc., I. 1133; Dante, Purgat. xxxii. 35.)
But why does Polo bring this Arbre Sec into connection with the Sun Tree of the Alexandrian Legend? I cannot answer this to my own entire satisfaction, but I can show that such a connection had been imagined in his time.
Paulin Paris, in a notice of MS. No. 6985. (Fonds Ancien) of the National Library, containing a version of the Chansons de Geste d’Alixandre, based upon the work of L. Le Court and Alex. de Bernay, but with additions of later date, notices amongst these latter the visit of Alexander to the Valley Perilous, where he sees a variety of wonders, among others the Arbre des Pucelles. Another tree at a great distance from the last is called the Arbre Sec, and reveals to Alexander the secret of the fate which attends him in Babylon. (Les MSS. Français de la Bibl. du Roi, III. 105.)[4] Again the English version of King Alisaundre, published in Weber’s Collection, shows clearly enough that in its French original the term Arbre Sec was applied to the Oracular Trees, though the word has been miswritten, and misunderstood by Weber. The King, as in the Greek and French passages already quoted, meeting two old churls, asks if they know of any marvel in those parts:—
“‘Ye, par ma fay,’ quoth heo,
‘A great merveille we wol telle the;
That is hennes in even way
The mountas of ten daies journey,
Thou shalt find trowes[5] two:
Seyntes and holy they buth bo;
Higher than in othir countray all.
Arbeset men heom callith.’
* * * * *
‘Sire Kyng,’ quod on, ‘by myn eyghe
Either Trough is an hundrod feet hygh,
They stondith up into the skye;
That on to the Sonne, sikirlye;
That othir, we tellith the nowe,
Is sakret in the Mone vertue.’”
(Weber, I. 277.)
Weber’s glossary gives “Arbeset = Strawberry Tree, arbous, arbousier, arbutus”; but that is nonsense.
Further, in the French Prose Romance of Alexander, which is contained in the fine volume in the British Museum known as the Shrewsbury Book (Reg. XV. e. 6), though we do not find the Arbre Sec so named, we find it described and pictorially represented. The Romance (fol. xiiii. v.) describes Alexander and his chief companions as ascending a certain mountain by 2500 steps which were attached to a golden chain. At the top they find the golden Temple of the Sun and an old man asleep within. It goes on:—
“Quant le viellart les vit si leur demanda s’ils vouloient veoir les Arbres sacrez de la Lune et du Soleil que nous annuncent les choses qui sont à avenir. Quant Alexandre ouy ce si fut rempli de mult grant ioye. Si lui respondirent, ‘Ouye sur, nous les voulons veoir.’ Et cil lui dist, ‘Se tu es nez de prince malle et de femelle il te convient entrer en celui lieu.’ Et Alexandre lui respondi, ‘Nous somes nez de compagne malle et de femelle.’ Dont se leve le viellart du lit ou il gesoit, et leur dist, ‘Hostez vos vestemens et vos chauces.’ Et Tholomeus et Antigonus et Perdiacas le suivrent. Lors comencèrent à aler parmy la forest qui estoit enclose en merveilleux labour. Illec trouvèrent les arbres semblables à loriers et oliviers. Et estoient de cent pies de haults, et decouroit d’eulz incens ypobaume[6] à grant quantité. Après entrèrent plus avant en la forest, et trouvèrent une arbre durement hault qui n’avoit ne fueille ne fruit. Si seoit sur cet arbre une grant oysel qui avoit en son chief une creste qui estoit semblable au paon, et les plumes du col resplendissants come fin or. Et avoit la couleur de rose. Dont lui dist le viellart, ‘Cet oysel dont vous vous merveillez est appelés Fenis, lequel n’a nul pareil en tout le monde.’ Dont passèrent outre, et allèrent aux Arbres du Soleil et de la Lune. Et quant ils y furent venus, si leur dist le viellart, ‘Regardez en haut, et pensez en votre coeur ce que vous vouldrez demander, et ne le dites de la bouche.’ Alisandre luy demanda en quel language donnent les Arbres response aux gens. Et il lui respondit, ‘L’Arbre du Soleil commence à parler Indien.’ Dont baisa Alexandre les arbres, et comença en son ceur à penser s’il conquesteroit tout le monde et retourneroit en Macedonie atout son ost. Dont lui respondit l’Arbre du Soleil, ‘Alexandre tu seras Roy de tout le monde, mais Macedonie tu ne verras jamais,’” etc.
The appearance of the Arbre Sec in Maps of the 15th century, such as those of Andrea Bianco (1436) and Fra Mauro (1459), may be ascribed to the influence of Polo’s own work; but a more genuine evidence of the prevalence of the legend is found in the celebrated Hereford Map constructed in the 13th century by Richard de Haldingham. This, in the vicinity of India and the Terrestrial Paradise, exhibits a Tree with the rubric “Albor Balsami est Arbor Sicca.”
The legends of the Dry Tree were probably spun out of the words of the Vulgate in Ezekiel xvii. 24: “Humiliavi lignum sublime et exaltavi lignum humile; et siccavi lignum viride et frondescere feci lignum aridum.” Whether the Rue de l’Arbre Sec in Paris derives its name from the legend I know not. [The name of the street is taken from an old sign-board; some say it is derived from the gibbet placed in the vicinity, but this is more than doubtful.—H. C.]
Comment les arbres du soleil et De la lune prophetiserent la mort alixandre.
The actual tree to which Polo refers in the text was probably one of those so frequent in Persia, to which age, position, or accident has attached a character of sanctity, and which are styled Dirakht-i-Fazl, Trees of Excellence or Grace, and often receive titles appropriate to Holy Persons. Vows are made before them, and pieces torn from the clothes of the votaries are hung upon the branches or nailed to the trunks. To a tree of such a character, imposing in decay, Lucan compares Pompey:
“Stat magni nominis umbra.
Qualis frugifero quercus sublimis in agro,
Exuvias veteres populi sacrataque gestans
Dona ducum * * * *
——Quamvis primo nutet casura sub Euro,
Tot circum silvae firmo se robore tollant,
Sola tamen colitur.”
(Pharsalia, I. 135.)
The Tree of Mamre was evidently precisely one of this class; and those who have crossed the Suez Desert before railway days will remember such a Dirakht-i-Fazl, an aged mimosa, a veritable Arbre Seul (could we accept that reading), that stood just half-way across the Desert, streaming with the exuviae veteres of Mecca Pilgrims. The majority of such holy trees in Persia appear to be Plane-trees. Admiration for the beauty of this tree seems to have occasionally risen into superstitious veneration from a very old date. Herodotus relates that the Carians, after their defeat by the Persians on the Marsyas, rallied in the sacred grove of Plane-trees at Labranda. And the same historian tells how, some years later, Xerxes on his march to Greece decorated a beautiful Chinar with golden ornaments. Mr. Hamilton, in the same region, came on the remains of a giant of the species, which he thought might possibly be the very same. Pliny rises to enthusiasm in speaking of some noble Plane-trees in Lycia and elsewhere. Chardin describes one grand and sacred specimen, called King Hosain’s Chinar, and said to be more than 1000 years old, in a suburb of Ispahan, and another hung with amulets, rags, and tapers in a garden at Shiraz.[7] One sacred tree mentioned by the Persian geographer Hamd Allah as distinguishing the grave of a holy man at Bostam in Khorasan (the species is not named, at least by Ouseley, from whom I borrow this) comes into striking relation with the passage in our text. The story went that it had been the staff of Mahomed; as such it had been transmitted through many generations, until it was finally deposited in the grave of Abu Abdallah Dásitáni, where it struck root and put forth branches. And it is explicitly called Dirakht-i-Khushk, i.e. literally L’ARBRE SEC.
This last legend belongs to a large class. The staff of Adam, which was created in the twilight of the approaching Sabbath, was bestowed on him in Paradise and handed down successively to Enoch and the line of Patriarchs. After the death of Joseph it was set in Jethro’s garden, and there grew untouched, till Moses came and got his rod from it. In another form of the legend it is Seth who gets a branch of the Tree of Life, and from this Moses afterwards obtains his rod of power. These Rabbinical stories seem in later times to have been developed into the Christian legends of the wood destined to form the Cross, such as they are told in the Golden Legend or by Godfrey of Viterbo, and elaborated in Calderon’s Sibila del Oriente. Indeed, as a valued friend who has consulted the latter for me suggests, probably all the Arbre Sec Legends of Christendom bore mystic reference to the Cross. In Calderon’s play the Holy Rood, seen in vision, is described as a Tree:—
——“cuyas hojas,
Secas mustias y marchitas,
Desnudo el tronco dejaban
Que, entre mil copas floridas
De los árboles, el solo
Sin pompa y sin bizaria
Era cadáver del prado.”
There are several Dry-Tree stories among the wonders of Buddhism; one is that of a sacred tree visited by the Chinese pilgrims to India, which had grown from the twig which Sakya, in Hindu fashion, had used as a tooth-brush; and I think there is a like story in our own country of the Glastonbury Thorn having grown from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea.
[“St Francis’ Church is a large pile, neere which, yet a little without the Citty, growes a tree which they report in their legend grew from the Saint’s Staff, which on going to sleepe he fixed in the ground, and at his waking found it had grown a large tree. They affirm that the wood of its decoction cures sundry diseases.” (Evelyn’s Diary, October, 1644.)—H. C.]
In the usual form of the mediæval legend, Adam, drawing near his end, sends Seth to the gate of Paradise, to seek the promised Oil of Mercy. The Angel allows Seth to put his head in at the gate. Doing so (as an old English version gives it)—
——“he saw a fair Well,
Of whom all the waters on earth cometh, as the Book us doth tell;
Over the Well stood a Tree, with bowës broad and lere
Ac it ne bare leaf ne rind, but as it for-olded were;
A nadder it had beclipt about, all naked withouten skin,
That was the Tree and the Nadder that first made Adam do sin!”
The Adder or Serpent is coiled about the denuded stem; the upper branches reach to heaven, and bear at the top a new-born wailing infant, swathed in linen, whilst (here we quote a French version)—
“Les larmes qui de lui issoient
Contreval l’Arbre en avaloient;
Adonc regarda l’enfant Seth
Tout contreval de l’arbre secq;
Les rachines qui le tenoient
Jusques en Enfer s’en aloient,
Les larmes qui de lui issirent
Jusques dedans Enfer cheïrent.”
The Angel gives Seth three kernels from the fruit of the Tree. Seth returns home and finds his father dead. He buries him in the valley of Hebron, and places the three grains under his tongue. A triple shoot springs up of Cedar, Cypress, and Pine, symbolising the three Persons of the Trinity. The three eventually unite into one stem, and this tree survives in various forms, and through various adventures in connection with the Scripture History, till it is found at the bottom of the Pool of Bethesda, to which it had imparted healing Virtue, and is taken thence to form the Cross on which Our Lord suffered.
The English version quoted above is from a MS. of the 14th century in the Bodleian, published by Dr. Morris in his collection of Legends of the Holy Rood. I have modernised the spelling of the lines quoted, without altering the words. The French citation is from a MS. in the Vienna Library, from which extracts are given by Sign. Adolfo Mussafia in his curious and learned tract (Sulla Legenda del Legno della Croce, Vienna, 1870), which gives a full account of the fundamental legend and its numerous variations. The examination of these two works, particularly Sign. Mussafia’s, gives an astonishing impression of the copiousness with which such Christian Mythology, as it may fairly be called, was diffused and multiplied. There are in the paper referred to notices of between fifty and sixty different works (not MSS. or copies of works merely) containing this legend in various European languages.
(Santarem, III. 380, II. 348; Ouseley, I. 359 seqq. and 391; Herodotus, VII. 31; Pliny, XII. 5; Chardin, VII. 410, VIII. 44 and 426; Fabricius, Vet. Test. Pseud. I. 80 seqq.; Cathay, p. 365; Beal’s Fah-Hian, 72 and 78; Pèlerins Bouddhistes, II. 292; Della Valle, II. 276–277.)
He who injured the holy tree of Bostam, we are told, perished the same day: a general belief in regard to those Trees of Grace, of which we have already seen instances in regard to the sacred trees of Zoroaster and the Oak of Hebron. We find the same belief in Eastern Africa, where certain trees, regarded by the natives with superstitious reverence, which they express by driving in votive nails and suspending rags, are known to the European residents by the vulgar name of Devil Trees. Burton relates a case of the verification of the superstition in the death of an English merchant who had cut down such a tree, and of four members of his household. It is the old story which Ovid tells; and the tree which Erisichthon felled was a Dirakht-i-Fazl:
“Vittae mediam, memoresque tabellae
Sertaque cingebant, voti argumenta potentis.”
(Metamorph. VIII. 744.)
Chinar, or Oriental Plane.
Though the coincidence with our text of Hamd Allah’s Dry Tree is very striking, I am not prepared to lay stress on it as an argument for the geographical determination of Marco’s Arbre Sec. His use of the title more than once to characterise the whole frontier of Khorasan can hardly have been a mere whim of his own: and possibly some explanation of that circumstance will yet be elicited from the Persian historians or geographers of the Mongol era.
Meanwhile it is in the vicinity of Bostam or Damghan that I should incline to place this landmark. If no one very cogent reason points to this, a variety of minor ones do so; such as the direction of the traveller’s journey from Kermán through Kuh Banán; the apparent vicinity of a great Ismailite fortress, as will be noticed in the next chapter; the connection twice indicated (see Prologue, [ch. xviii. note 6], and Bk. IV. ch. v.) of the Arbre Sec with the headquarters of Ghazan Khan in watching the great passes, of which the principal ones debouche at Bostam, at which place also buildings erected by Ghazan still exist; and the statement that the decisive battle between Alexander and Darius was placed there by local tradition. For though no such battle took place in that region, we know that Darius was murdered near Hecatompylos. Some place this city west of Bostam, near Damghan; others east of it, about Jah Jerm; Ferrier has strongly argued for the vicinity of Bostam itself. Firdusi indeed places the final battle on the confines of Kermán, and the death of Darius within that province. But this could not have been the tradition Polo met with.
I may add that the temperate climate of Bostam is noticed in words almost identical with Polo’s by both Fraser and Ferrier.
The Chinar abounds in Khorasan (as far as any tree can be said to abound in Persia), and even in the Oases of Tun-o-Kain wherever there is water. Travellers quoted by Ritter notice Chinars of great size and age at Shahrúd, near Bostam, at Meyomid, and at Mehr, west of Sabzawar, which last are said to date from the time of Naoshirwan (7th century). There is a town to the N.W. of Meshid called Chinárán, “The Planes.” P. Della Valle, we may note, calls Tehran “la città dei platani.”
The following note by De Sacy regarding the Chinar has already been quoted by Marsden, and though it may be doubtful whether the term Arbre Sec had any relation to the idea expressed, it seems to me too interesting to be omitted: “Its sterility seems to have become proverbial among certain people of the East. For in a collection of sundry moral sentences pertaining to the Sabaeans or Christians of St. John ... we find the following: ‘The vainglorious man is like a showy Plane Tree, rich in boughs but producing nothing, and affording no fruit to its owner.’” The same reproach of sterility is cast at the Plane by Ovid’s Walnut:—
“At postquam platanis, sterilem praebentibus umbram,
Uberior quâvis arbore venit honos;
Nos quoque fructiferae, si nux modo ponor in illis,
Coepimus in patulas luxuriare comas.” (Nux, 17–20.)
I conclude with another passage from Khanikoff, though put forward in special illustration of what I believe to be a mistaken reading (Arbre Seul): “Where the Chinar is of spontaneous growth, or occupies the centre of a vast and naked plain, this tree is even in our own day invested with a quite exceptional veneration, and the locality often comes to be called ‘The Place of the Solitary Tree.’” (J. R. G. S. XXIX. 345; Ferrier, 69–76; Fraser, 343; Ritter, VIII. 332, XI. 512 seqq.; Della Valle, I. 703; De Sacy’s Abdallatif, p. 81; Khanikoff, Not. p. 38.)
[See in Fr. Zarncke, Der Priester Johannes, II., in the chap. Der Baum des Seth, pp. 127–128, from MS. (14th century) from Cambridge, this curious passage (p. 128): “Tandem rogaverunt eum, ut arborem siccam, de qua multum saepe loqui audierant, liceret videre. Quibus dicebat: ‘Non est appellata arbor sicca recto nomine, sed arbor Seth, quoniam Seth, filius Adae, primi patris nostri, eam plantavit.’ Et ad arborem Seth fecit eos ducere, prohibens eos, ne arborem transmearent, sed [si?] ad patriam suam redire desiderarent. Et cum appropinquassent, de pulcritudine arboris mirati sunt; erat enim magnae immensitatis et miri decoris. Omnium enim colorum varietas inerat arbori, condensitas foliorum et fructuum diversorum; diversitas avium omnium, quae sub coelo sunt. Folia vero invicem se repercutientia dulcissimae melodiae modulamine resonabant, et aves amoenos cantus ultra quam credi potest promebant; et odor suavissimus profudit eos, ita quod paradisi amoenitate fuisse. Et cum admirantes tantam pulcritudinem aspicerent, unus sociorum aliquo eorum maior aetate, cogitans [cogitavit?] intra se, quod senior esset et, si inde rediret, cito aliquo casu mori posset. Et cum haec secum cogitasset, coepit arborem transire, et cum transisset, advocans socios, iussit eos post se ad locum amoenissimum, quem ante se videbat plenum deliciis sibi paratum [paratis?] festinare. At illi retrogressi sunt ad regem, scilicet presbiterum Iohannem. Quos donis amplis ditavit, et qui cum eo morari voluerunt libenter et honorifice detinuit. Alii vero ad patriam reversi sunt.”—In common with Marsden and Yule, I have no doubt that the Arbre Sec is the Chínár. Odoric places it at Tabriz and I have given a very lengthy dissertation on the subject in my edition of this traveller (pp. 21–29), to which I must refer the reader, to avoid increasing unnecessarily the size of the present publication.—H. C.]
“Daz dritte Dier was ein Lebarte
Vier arin Vederich her havite;
Der beceichnote den Criechiskin Alexanderin,
Der mit vier Herin vür aftir Landin,
Unz her die Werilt einde,
Bi guldinin Siulin bikante.
In India her die Wusti durchbrach,
Mit zwein Boumin her sich da gesprach,” etc.
[2] It is odd how near the word Emaūsae comes to the E. African Mwezi; and perhaps more odd that “the elders of U-nya-Mwezi (‘the Land of the Moon’) declare that their patriarchal ancestor became after death the first Tree, and afforded shade to his children and descendants. According to the Arabs the people still perform pilgrimage to a holy tree, and believe that the penalty of sacrilege in cutting off a twig would be visited by sudden and mysterious death.” (Burton in F. R. G. S. XXIX. 167–168.)
[3] “The River Buemar, in the furthest forests of India,” appears to come up in one of the versions of Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle, though I do not find it in Müller’s edition. (See Zacher’s Pseudo-Callisthenes, p. 160.) ’Tis perhaps Ab-i-Ámú!
[4] It is right to notice that there may be some error in the reference of Paulin Paris; at least I could not trace the Arbre Sec in the MS. which he cites, nor in the celebrated Bodleian Alexander, which appears to contain the same version of the story. [The fact is that Paulin Paris refers to the Arbre, but without the word sec, at the top of the first column of fol. 79 recto of the MS. No. Fr. 368 (late 6985).—H. C.]
[5] Trees.
[6] Opobalsamum.
[7] A recent traveler in China gives a perfectly similar description of sacred trees in Shansi. Many bore inscriptions in large letters. “If you pray, you will certainly be heard.”—Rev. A. Williamson, Journeys in N. China, I. 163, where there is a cut of such a tree near Taiyuanfu. (See this work, I. ch. xvi.) Mr. Williamson describes such a venerated tree, an ancient acacia, known as the Acacia of the T’ang, meaning that it existed under that Dynasty (7th to 10th century). It is renowned for its healing virtues, and every available spot on its surface was crowded with votive tablets and inscriptions. (Ib. 303.)
CHAPTER XXIII.
Concerning the Old Man of the Mountain.
Mulehet is a country in which the Old Man of the Mountain dwelt in former days; and the name means “Place of the Aram.” I will tell you his whole history as related by Messer Marco Polo, who heard it from several natives of that region.
The Old Man was called in their language Aloadin. He had caused a certain valley between two mountains to be enclosed, and had turned it into a garden, the largest and most beautiful that ever was seen, filled with every variety of fruit. In it were erected pavilions and palaces the most elegant that can be imagined, all covered with gilding and exquisite painting. And there were runnels too, flowing freely with wine and milk and honey and water; and numbers of ladies and of the most beautiful damsels in the world, who could play on all manner of instruments, and sung most sweetly, and danced in a manner that it was charming to behold. For the Old Man desired to make his people believe that this was actually Paradise. So he had fashioned it after the description that Mahommet gave of his Paradise, to wit, that it should be a beautiful garden running with conduits of wine and milk and honey and water, and full of lovely women for the delectation of all its inmates. And sure enough the Saracens of those parts believed that it was Paradise!
Now no man was allowed to enter the Garden save those whom he intended to be his Ashishin. There was a Fortress at the entrance to the Garden, strong enough to resist all the world, and there was no other way to get in. He kept at his Court a number of the youths of the country, from 12 to 20 years of age, such as had a taste for soldiering, and to these he used to tell tales about Paradise, just as Mahommet had been wont to do, and they believed in him just as the Saracens believe in Mahommet. Then he would introduce them into his garden, some four, or six, or ten at a time, having first made them drink a certain potion which cast them into a deep sleep, and then causing them to be lifted and carried in. So when they awoke, they found themselves in the Garden.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—Says the venerable Sire de Joinville: “Le Vieil de la Montaingne ne créoit pas en Mahommet, ainçois créoit en la Loi de Haali, qui fu Oncle Mahommet.” This is a crude statement, no doubt, but it has a germ of truth. Adherents of the family of ’Ali as the true successors of the Prophet existed from the tragical day of the death of Husain, and among these, probably owing to the secrecy with which they were compelled to hold their allegiance, there was always a tendency to all manner of strange and mystical doctrines; as in one direction to the glorification of ’Ali as a kind of incarnation of the Divinity, a character in which his lineal representatives were held in some manner to partake; in another direction to the development of Pantheism, and release from all positive creed and precepts. Of these Aliites, eventually called Shiáhs, a chief sect, and parent of many heretical branches, were the Ismailites, who took their name, from the seventh Imam, whose return to earth they professed to expect at the end of the World. About A.D. 1090 a branch of the Ismaili stock was established by Hassan, son of Sabah, in the mountainous districts of Northern Persia; and, before their suppression by the Mongols, 170 years later, the power of the quasi-spiritual dynasty which Hassan founded had spread over the Eastern Kohistan, at least as far as Ḳáïn. Their headquarters were at Alamút (“Eagle’s Nest”), about 32 miles north-east of Ḳazwin, and all over the territory which they held they established fortresses of great strength. De Sacy seems to have proved that they were called Hashíshíya or Hashíshín, from their use of the preparation of hemp called Hashísh; and thence, through their system of murder and terrorism, came the modern application of the word Assassin. The original aim of this system was perhaps that of a kind of Vehmgericht, to punish or terrify orthodox persecutors who were too strong to be faced with the sword. I have adopted in the text one of the readings of the G. Text Asciscin, as expressing the original word with the greatest accuracy that Italian spelling admits. In another author we find it as Chazisii (see Bollandists, May, vol. ii. p. xi.); Joinville calls them Assacis; whilst Nangis and others corrupt the name into Harsacidae, and what not.
The explanation of the name Mulehet as it is in Ramusio, or Mulcete as it is in the G. Text (the last expressing in Rusticiano’s Pisan tongue the strongly aspirated Mulhĕtĕ), is given by the former: “This name of Mulehet is as much as to say in the Saracen tongue ‘The Abode of Heretics,’” the fact being that it does represent the Arabic term Mulhid, pl. Muláhidah, “Impii, heretici,” which is in the Persian histories (as of Rashíduddín and Wassáf) the title most commonly used to indicate this community, and which is still applied by orthodox Mahomedans to the Nosairis, Druses, and other sects of that kind, more or less kindred to the Ismaili. The writer of the Tabakat-i-Násiri calls the sectarians of Alamút Muláhidat-ul-maut, “Heretics of Death.”[1] The curious reading of the G. Text which we have preserved “vaut à dire des Aram,” should be read as we have rendered it. I conceive that Marco was here unconsciously using one Oriental term to explain another. For it seems possible to explain Aram only as standing for Harám, in the sense of “wicked” or “reprobate.”
In Pauthier’s Text, instead of des aram, we find “veult dire en françois Diex Terrien,” or Terrestrial God. This may have been substituted, in the correction of the original rough dictation, from a perception that the first expression was unintelligible. The new phrase does not indeed convey the meaning of Muláhidah, but it expresses a main characteristic of the heretical doctrine. The correction was probably made by Polo himself; it is certainly of very early date. For in the romance of Bauduin de Sebourc, which I believe dates early in the 14th century, the Caliph, on witnessing the extraordinary devotion of the followers of the Old Man (see [note 1, ch. xxiv.]), exclaims:
“Par Mahon ...
Vous estes Diex en terre, autre coze n’i a!” (I. p. 360.)
So also Fr. Jacopo d’Aqui in the Imago Mundi, says of the Assassins: “Dicitur iis quod sunt in Paradiso magno Dei Terreni”—expressions, no doubt, taken in both cases from Polo’s book.
Khanikoff, and before him J. R. Forster, have supposed that the name Mulehet represents Alamút. But the resemblance is much closer and more satisfactory to Mulhid or Muláhidah. Mulhet is precisely the name by which the kingdom of the Ismailites is mentioned in Armenian history, and Mulihet is already applied in the same way by Rabbi Benjamin in the 12th century, and by Rubruquis in the 13th. The Chinese narrative of Hulaku’s expedition calls it the kingdom of Mulahi. (Joinville, p. 138; J. As. sér. II., tom. xii. 285; Benj. Tudela, p. 106; Rub. p. 265; Rémusat, Nouv. Mélanges, I. 176; Gaubil, p. 128; Pauthier, pp. cxxxix.–cxli.; Mon. Hist. Patr. Scriptorum, III. 1559, Turin, 1848.) [Cf. on Mulehet, melahideh, Heretics, plural of molhid, Heretic, my note, pp. 476–482 of my ed. of Friar Odoric.—H. C.]
“Old Man of the Mountain” was the title applied by the Crusaders to the chief of that branch of the sect which was settled in the mountains north of Lebanon, being a translation of his popular Arabic title Shaikh-ul-Jibal. But according to Hammer this title properly belonged, as Polo gives it, to the Prince of Alamút, who never called himself Sultan, Malik, or Amir; and this seems probable, as his territory was known as the Balad-ul-Jibal. (See Abulf. in Büsching, V. 319.)
[1] Elliot, II. 290.
CHAPTER XXIV.
How the Old Man Used to Train His Assassins.
When therefore they awoke, and found themselves in a place so charming, they deemed that it was Paradise in very truth. And the ladies and damsels dallied with them to their hearts’ content, so that they had what young men would have; and with their own good will they never would have quitted the place.
Now this Prince whom we call the Old One kept his Court in grand and noble style, and made those simple hill-folks about him believe firmly that he was a great Prophet. And when he wanted one of his Ashishin to send on any mission, he would cause that potion whereof I spoke to be given to one of the youths in the garden, and then had him carried into his Palace. So when the young man awoke, he found himself in the Castle, and no longer in that Paradise; whereat he was not over well pleased. He was then conducted to the Old Man’s presence, and bowed before him with great veneration as believing himself to be in the presence of a true Prophet. The Prince would then ask whence he came, and he would reply that he came from Paradise! and that it was exactly such as Mahommet had described it in the Law. This of course gave the others who stood by, and who had not been admitted, the greatest desire to enter therein.
So when the Old Man would have any Prince slain, he would say to such a youth: “Go thou and slay So and So; and when thou returnest my Angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And shouldst thou die, natheless even so will I send my Angels to carry thee back into Paradise.” So he caused them to believe; and thus there was no order of his that they would not affront any peril to execute, for the great desire they had to get back into that Paradise of his. And in this manner the Old One got his people to murder any one whom he desired to get rid of. Thus, too, the great dread that he inspired all Princes withal, made them become his tributaries in order that he might abide at peace and amity with them.[{1}]
I should also tell you that the Old Man had certain others under him, who copied his proceedings and acted exactly in the same manner. One of these was sent into the territory of Damascus, and the other into Curdistan.[{2}]
[Note 1.]—Romantic as this story is, it seems to be precisely the same that was current over all the East. It is given by Odoric at length, more briefly by a Chinese author, and again from an Arabic source by Hammer in the Mines de l’Orient.
The following is the Chinese account as rendered by Rémusat: “The soldiers of this country (Mulahi) are veritable brigands. When they see a lusty youth, they tempt him with the hope of gain, and bring him to such a point that he will be ready to kill his father or his elder brother with his own hand. After he is enlisted, they intoxicate him, and carry him in that state into a secluded retreat, where he is charmed with delicious music and beautiful women. All his desires are satisfied for several days, and then (in sleep) he is transported back to his original position. When he awakes, they ask what he has seen. He is then informed that if he will become an Assassin, he will be rewarded with the same felicity. And with the texts and prayers that they teach him they heat him to such a pitch that whatever commission be given him he will brave death without regret in order to execute it.”
The Arabic narrative is too long to extract. It is from a kind of historical romance called The Memoirs of Hakim, the date of which Hammer unfortunately omits to give. Its close coincidence in substance with Polo’s story is quite remarkable. After a detailed description of the Paradise, and the transfer into it of the aspirant under the influence of bang, on his awaking and seeing his chief enter, he says, “O chief! am I awake or am I dreaming?” To which the chief: “O such an One, take heed that thou tell not the dream to any stranger. Know that Ali thy Lord hath vouchsafed to show thee the place destined for thee in Paradise.... Hesitate not a moment therefore in the service of the Imam who thus deigns to intimate his contentment with thee,” and so on.
William de Nangis thus speaks of the Syrian Shaikh, who alone was known to the Crusaders, though one of their historians (Jacques de Vitry, in Bongars, I. 1062) shows knowledge that the headquarters of the sect was in Persia: “He was much dreaded far and near, by both Saracens and Christians, because he so often caused princes of both classes indifferently to be murdered by his emissaries. For he used to bring up in his palace youths belonging to his territory, and had them taught a variety of languages, and above all things to fear their Lord and obey him unto death, which would thus become to them an entrance into the joys of Paradise. And whosoever of them thus perished in carrying out his Lord’s behests was worshipped as an angel.” As an instance of the implicit obedience rendered by the Fidáwí or devoted disciples of the Shaikh, Fra Pipino and Marino Sanuto relate that when Henry Count of Champagne (titular King of Jerusalem) was on a visit to the Old Man of Syria, one day as they walked together they saw some lads in white sitting on the top of a high tower. The Shaikh, turning to the Count, asked if he had any subjects as obedient as his own? and without giving time for reply made a sign to two of the boys, who immediately leapt from the tower, and were killed on the spot. The same story is told in the Cento Novelle Antiche, as happening when the Emperor Frederic was on a visit (imaginary) to the Veglio. And it is introduced likewise as an incident in the Romance of Bauduin de Sebourc:
“Vollés veioir merveilles? dist li Rois Seignouris”
to Bauduin and his friends, and on their assenting he makes the signal to one of his men on the battlements, and in a twinkling
“Quant le vinrent en l’air salant de tel avis,
Et aussi liément, et aussi esjois,
Qu’il deust conquester mil livres de parisis!
Ains qu’il venist a tière il fut mors et fenis,
Sur les roches agues desrompis corps et pis,”[1] etc.
(Cathay, 153; Rémusat, Nouv. Mél. I. 178; Mines de l’Orient, III. 201 seqq.; Nangis in Duchesne, V. 332; Pipino in Muratori, IX. 705; Defrémery in J. As. sér. V. tom. v. 34 seqq.; Cent. Nov. Antiche, Firenze, 1572, p. 91; Bauduin de Sebourc, I. 359.)
The following are some of the more notable murders or attempts at murder ascribed to the Ismailite emissaries either from Syria or from Persia:—
A.D. 1092. Nizum-ul-Mulk, formerly the powerful minister of Malik Shah, Seljukian sovereign of Persia, and a little later his two sons. 1102. The Prince of Homs, in the chief Mosque of that city. 1113. Maudúd, Prince of Mosul, in the chief Mosque of Damascus. About 1114. Abul Muzafar ’Ali, Wazir of Sanjár Shah, and Chakar Beg, grand-uncle of the latter. 1116. Ahmed Yel, Prince of Maragha, at Baghdad, in the presence of Mahomed, Sultan of Persia. 1121. The Amir Afdhal, the powerful Wazir of Egypt, at Cairo. 1126. Kasim Aksonkor, Prince of Mosul and Aleppo, in the Great Mosque at Mosul. 1127. Moyin-uddin, Wazir of Sanjár Shah of Persia. 1129. Amír Billah, Khalif of Egypt. 1131. Taj-ul Mulúk Buri, Prince of Damascus. 1134. Shams-ul-Mulúk, son of the preceding. 1135–38. The Khalif Mostarshid, the Khalif Rashíd, and Daùd, Seljukian Prince of Azerbaijan. 1149. Raymond, Count of Tripoli. 1191. Kizil Arzlan, Prince of Azerbaijan. 1192. Conrad of Montferrat, titular King of Jerusalem; a murder which King Richard has been accused of instigating. 1217. Oghulmish, Prince of Hamadán.
And in 1174 and 1176 attempts to murder the great Saladin. 1271. Attempt to murder Ala’uddin Juwaini, Governor of Baghdad, and historian of the Mongols. 1272. The attempt to murder Prince Edward of England at Acre.
In latter years the Fidáwí or Ismailite adepts appear to have let out their services simply as hired assassins. Bibars, in a letter to his court at Cairo, boasts of using them when needful. A Mahomedan author ascribes to Bibars the instigation of the attempt on Prince Edward. (Makrizi, II. 100; J. As. XI. 150.)
[Note 2.]—Hammer mentions as what he chooses to call “Grand Priors” under the Shaikh or “Grand Master” at Alamút, the chief, in Syria, one in the Kuhistan of E. Persia (Tun-o-Kaïn), one in Kumis (the country about Damghan and Bostam), and one in ’Irák; he does not speak of any in Kurdistan. Colonel Monteith, however, says, though without stating authority or particulars, “There were several divisions of them (the Assassins) scattered throughout Syria, Kurdistan (near the Lake of Wan), and Asia Minor, but all acknowledging as Imaum or High Priest the Chief residing at Alamut.” And it may be noted that Odoric, a generation after Polo, puts the Old Man at Millescorte, which looks like Malasgird, north of Lake Van. (H. des Assass. p. 104; J. R. G. S. III. 16; Cathay, p. ccxliii.)
[1] This story has been transferred to Peter the Great, who is alleged to have exhibited the docility of his subjects in the same way to the King of Denmark, by ordering a Cossack to jump from the Round Tower at Copenhagen, on the summit of which they were standing.
CHAPTER XXV.
How the Old Man came by His End.
Now it came to pass, in the year of Christ’s Incarnation, 1252, that Alaü, Lord of the Tartars of the Levant, heard tell of these great crimes of the Old Man, and resolved to make an end of him. So he took and sent one of his Barons with a great Army to that Castle, and they besieged it for three years, but they could not take it, so strong was it. And indeed if they had had food within it never would have been taken. But after being besieged those three years they ran short of victual, and were taken. The Old Man was put to death with all his men [and the Castle with its Garden of Paradise was levelled with the ground]. And since that time he has had no successor; and there was an end to all his villainies.[{1}]
Now let us go back to our journey.
[Note 1.]—The date in Pauthier is 1242; in the G. T. and in Ramusio 1262. Neither is right, nor certainly could Polo have meant the former.
When Mangku Kaan, after his enthronement (1251), determined at a great Kurultai or Diet, on perfecting the Mongol conquests, he entrusted his brother Kúblái with the completion of the subjugation of China and the adjacent countries, whilst his brother Hulaku received the command of the army destined for Persia and Syria. The complaints that came from the Mongol officers already in Persia determined him to commence with the reduction of the Ismailites, and Hulaku set out from Karakorum in February, 1254. He proceeded with great deliberation, and the Oxus was not crossed till January, 1256. But an army had been sent long in advance under “one of his Barons,” Kitubuka Noyan, and in 1253 it was already actively engaged in besieging the Ismailite fortresses. In 1255, during the progress of the war, Ala’uddin Mahomed, the reigning Prince of the Assassins (mentioned by Polo as Alaodin), was murdered at the instigation of his son Ruknuddin Khurshah, who succeeded to the authority. A year later (November, 1256) Ruknuddin surrendered to Hulaku. [Bretschneider (Med. Res. II. p. 109) says that Alamút was taken by Hulaku, 20th December, 1256.—H. C.] The fortresses given up, all well furnished with provisions and artillery engines, were 100 in number. Two of them, however, Lembeser and Girdkuh, refused to surrender. The former fell after a year; the latter is stated to have held out for twenty years—actually, as it would seem, about fourteen, or till December, 1270. Ruknuddin was well treated by Hulaku, and despatched to the Court of the Kaan. The accounts of his death differ, but that most commonly alleged, according to Rashiduddin, is that Mangku Kaan was irritated at hearing of his approach, asking why his post-horses should be fagged to no purpose, and sent executioners to put Ruknuddin to death on the road. Alamút had been surrendered without any substantial resistance. Some survivors of the sect got hold of it again in 1275–1276, and held out for a time. The dominion was extinguished, but the sect remained, though scattered indeed and obscure. A very strange case that came before Sir Joseph Arnould in the High Court at Bombay in 1866 threw much new light on the survival of the Ismailis.
Some centuries ago a Dai or Missionary of the Ismailis, named Sadruddín, made converts from the Hindu trading classes in Upper Sind. Under the name of Khojas the sect multiplied considerably in Sind, Kach’h, and Guzerat, whence they spread to Bombay and to Zanzibar. Their numbers in Western India are now probably not less than 50,000 to 60,000. Their doctrine, or at least the books which they revere, appear to embrace a strange jumble of Hindu notions with Mahomedan practices and Shiah mysticism, but the main characteristic endures of deep reverence, if not worship, of the person of their hereditary Imám. To his presence, when he resided in Persia, numbers of pilgrims used to betake themselves, and large remittances of what we may call Ismail’s Pence were made to him. Abul Hassan, the last Imám but one of admitted lineal descent from the later Shaikhs of Alamút, and claiming (as they did) descent from the Imám Ismail and his great ancestor ’Ali Abu Tálib, had considerable estates at Meheláti, between Kúm and Hamadán, and at one time held the Government of Kermán. His son and successor, Shah Khalilullah, was killed in a brawl at Yezd in 1818. Fatteh ’Ali Sháh, fearing Ismailite vengeance, caused the homicide to be severely punished, and conferred gifts and honours on the young Imám, Agha Khan, including the hand of one of his own daughters. In 1840 Agha Khan, who had raised a revolt at Kermán, had to escape from Persia. He took refuge in Sind, and eventually rendered good service both to General Nott at Kandahár and to Sir C. Napier in Sind, for which he receives a pension from our Government.
For many years this genuine Heir and successor of the Viex de la Montaingne has had his headquarters at Bombay, where he devotes, or for a long time did devote, the large income that he receives from the faithful to the maintenance of a racing stable, being the chief patron and promoter of the Bombay Turf!
A schism among the Khojas, owing apparently to the desire of part of the well-to-do Bombay community to sever themselves from the peculiarities of the sect and to set up as respectable Sunnis, led in 1866 to an action in the High Court, the object of which was to exclude Agha Khan from all rights over the Khojas, and to transfer the property of the community to the charge of Orthodox Mahomedans. To the elaborate addresses of Mr. Howard and Sir Joseph Arnould, on this most singular process before an English Court, I owe the preceding particulars. The judgment was entirely in favour of the Old Man of the Mountain.
H. H. Agha Khán Meheláti, late Representative of the Old Man of the Mountain.
“Le Seigneur Viel, que je vous ai dit si tient sa court ... et fait à croire à cele simple gent qui li est entour que il est un grant prophete.”
[Sir Bartle Frere writes of Agha Khan in 1875: “Like his ancestor, the Old One of Marco Polo’s time, he keeps his court in grand and noble style. His sons, popularly known as ‘The Persian Princes,’ are active sportsmen, and age has not dulled the Agha’s enjoyment of horse-racing. Some of the best blood of Arabia is always to be found in his stables. He spares no expense on his racers, and no prejudice of religion or race prevents his availing himself of the science and skill of an English trainer or jockey when the races come round. If tidings of war or threatened disturbance should arise from Central Asia or Persia, the Agha is always one of the first to hear of it, and seldom fails to pay a visit to the Governor or to some old friend high in office to hear the news and offer the services of a tried sword and an experienced leader to the Government which has so long secured him a quiet refuge for his old age.” Agha Khan died in April, 1881, at the age of 81. He was succeeded by his son Agha Ali Sháh, one of the members of the Legislative Council. (See The Homeward Mail, Overland Times of India, of 14th April, 1881.)]
The Bohras of Western India are identified with the Imámí-Ismáilís in some books, and were so spoken of in the first edition of this work. This is, however, an error, originally due, it would seem, to Sir John Malcolm. The nature of their doctrine, indeed, seems to be very much alike, and the Bohras, like the Ismáilís, attach a divine character to their Mullah or chief pontiff, and make a pilgrimage to his presence once in life. But the persons so reverenced are quite different; and the Bohras recognise all the 12 Imáms of ordinary Shiahs. Their first appearance in India was early, the date which they assign being A.H. 532 (A.D. 1137–1138). Their chief seat was in Yemen, from which a large emigration to India took place on its conquest by the Turks in 1538. Ibn Batuta seems to have met with Bohras at Gandár, near Baroch, in 1342. (Voyages, IV. 58.)
A Chinese account of the expedition of Hulaku will be found in Rémusat’s Nouveaux Mélanges (I.), and in Pauthier’s Introduction. (Q. R. 115–219, esp. 213; Ilch. vol. i.; J. A. S. B. VI. 842 seqq.) [A new and complete translation has been given by Dr. E. Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. 112 seqq.—H. C.]
There is some account of the rock of Alamút and its exceedingly slender traces of occupancy, by Colonel Monteith, in J. R. G. S. III. 15, and again by Sir Justin Sheil in vol. viii. p. 431. There does not seem to be any specific authority for assigning the Paradise of the Shaikh to Alamút; and it is at least worthy of note that another of the castles of the Muláhidah, destroyed by Hulaku, was called Firdús, i.e. Paradise. In any case, I see no reason to suppose that Polo visited Alamút, which would have been quite out of the road that he is following.
It is possible that “the Castle,” to which he alludes at the beginning of next chapter, and which set him off upon this digression, was Girdkuh.[1] It has not, as far as I know, been identified by modern travellers, but it stood within 10 or 12 miles of Damghan (to the west or north-west). It is probably the Tigado of Hayton, of which he thus speaks: “The Assassins had an impregnable castle called Tigado, which was furnished with all necessaries, and was so strong that it had no fear of attack on any side. Howbeit, Haloön commanded a certain captain of his that he should take 10,000 Tartars who had been left in garrison in Persia, and with them lay siege to the said castle, and not leave it till he had taken it. Wherefore the said Tartars continued besieging it for seven whole years, winter and summer, without being able to take it. At last the Assassins surrendered, from sheer want of clothing, but not of victuals or other necessaries.” So Ramusio; other copies read “27 years.” In any case it corroborates the fact that Girdkuh was said to have held out for an extraordinary length of time. If Rashiduddin is right in naming 1270 as the date of surrender, this would be quite a recent event when the Polo party passed, and draw special attention to the spot. (J. As. sér. IV. tom. xiii. 48; Ilch. I. 93, 104, 274; Q. R. p. 278; Ritter, VIII. 336.) A note which I have from Djihan Numa (I. 259) connects Girdkuh with a district called Chinar. This may be a clue to the term Arbre Sec; but there are difficulties.
[1] [Ghirdkuh means “round mountain”; it was in the district of Kumis, three parasangs west of Damghan. Under the year 1257, the Yüan shi mentions the taking of the fortress of Ghi-rh-du-kie by K’ie-di-bu-hua. (Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. p. 122; II. 110.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER XXVI.
Concerning the City of Sapurgan.
On leaving the Castle, you ride over fine plains and beautiful valleys, and pretty hill-sides producing excellent grass pasture, and abundance of fruits, and all other products. Armies are glad to take up their quarters here on account of the plenty that exists. This kind of country extends for six days’ journey, with a goodly number of towns and villages, in which the people are worshippers of Mahommet. Sometimes also you meet with a tract of desert extending for 50 or 60 miles, or somewhat less, and in these deserts you find no water, but have to carry it along with you. The beasts do without drink until you have got across the desert tract and come to watering places.
So after travelling for six days as I have told you, you come to a city called Sapurgan. It has great plenty of everything, but especially of the very best melons in the world. They preserve them by paring them round and round into strips, and drying them in the sun. When dry they are sweeter than honey, and are carried off for sale all over the country. There is also abundance of game here, both of birds and beasts.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—Sapurgan may closely express the pronunciation of the name of the city which the old Arabic writers call Sabúrḳán and Shabúrḳán, now called Shibrgán, lying some 90 miles west of Balkh; containing now some 12,000 inhabitants, and situated in a plain still richly cultivated, though on the verge of the desert.[1] But I have seen no satisfactory solution of the difficulties as to the time assigned. This in the G. T. and in Ramusio is clearly six days. The point of departure is indeed uncertain, but even if we were to place that at Sharakhs on the extreme verge of cultivated Khorasan, which would be quite inconsistent with other data, it would have taken the travellers something like double the time to reach Shibrgán. Where I have followed the G. T. in its reading “quant l’en a chevauchés six jornée tel che je vos ai contés, adunc treuve l’en une cité,” etc., Pauthier’s text has “Et quant l’en a chevauchié les vi cités, si treuve l’en une cité qui a nom Sapurgan,” and to this that editor adheres. But I suspect that cités is a mere lapsus for journées, as in the reading in one of his three MSS. What could be meant by “chevauchier les vi cités”?
Whether the true route be, as I suppose, by Nishapúr and Meshid, or, as Khanikoff supposes, by Herat and Badghis, it is strange that no one of those famous cities is mentioned. And we feel constrained to assume that something has been misunderstood in the dictation, or has dropt out of it. As a probable conjecture I should apply the six days to the extent of pleasing country described in the first lines of the chapter, and identify it with the tract between Sabzawur and the cessation of fertile country beyond Meshid. The distance would agree well, and a comparison with Fraser or Ferrier will show that even now the description, allowing for the compression of an old recollection, would be well founded; e.g. on the first march beyond Nishapúr: “Fine villages, with plentiful gardens full of trees, that bear fruit of the highest flavour, may be seen all along the foot of the hills, and in the little recesses formed by the ravines whence issues the water that irrigates them. It was a rich and pleasing scene, and out of question by far the most populous and cultivated tract that I had seen in Persia.... Next morning we quitted Derrood ... by a very indifferent but interesting road, the glen being finely wooded with walnut, mulberry, poplar, and willow-trees, and fruit-tree gardens rising one above the other upon the mountain-side, watered by little rills.... These gardens extended for several miles up the glen; beyond them the bank of the stream continued to be fringed with white sycamore, willow, ash, mulberry, poplar, and woods that love a moist situation,” and so on, describing a style of scenery not common in Persia, and expressing diffusely (as it seems to me) the same picture as Polo’s two lines. In the valley of Nishapúr, again (we quote Arthur Conolly): “‘This is Persia!’ was the vain exclamation of those who were alive to the beauty of the scene; ‘this is Persia!’ Bah! Bah! What grass, what grain, what water! Bah! Bah!
[‘If there be a Paradise on the face of the Earth,
This is it! This is it! This is it!’]”—(I. 209.)
(See Fraser, 405, 432–433, 434, 436.)
With reference to the dried melons of Shibrgán, Quatremère cites a history of Herat, which speaks of them almost in Polo’s words. Ibn Batuta gives a like account of the melons of Khárizm: “The surprising thing about these melons is the way the people have of slicing them, drying them in the sun, and then packing them in baskets, just as Malaga figs are treated in our part of the world. In this state they are sent to the remotest parts of India and China. There is no dried fruit so delicious, and all the while I lived at Delhi, when the travelling dealers came in, I never missed sending for these dried strips of melon.” (Q. R. 169; I. B. III. 15.) Here, in the 14th century, we seem to recognise the Afghan dealers arriving in the cities of Hindustan with their annual camel-loads of dried fruits, just as we have seen them in our own day.
[1] The oldest form of the name is Asapuragán, which Rawlinson thinks traceable to its being an ancient seat of the Asa or Asagartii. (J. R. A. S. XI. 63.)
CHAPTER XXVII.
Of the City of Balc.
Balc is a noble city and a great, though it was much greater in former days. But the Tartars and other nations have greatly ravaged and destroyed it. There were formerly many fine palaces and buildings of marble, and the ruins of them still remain. The people of the city tell that it was here that Alexander took to wife the daughter of Darius.
Here, you should be told, is the end of the empire of the Tartar Lord of the Levant. And this city is also the limit of Persia in the direction between east and north-east.[{1}]
Now, let us quit this city, and I will tell you of another country called Dogana.[{2}]
When you have quitted the city of which I have been speaking, you ride some 12 days between north-east and east, without finding any human habitation, for the people have all taken refuge in fastnesses among the mountains, on account of the Banditti and armies that harassed them. There is plenty of water on the road, and abundance of game; there are lions too. You can get no provisions on the road, and must carry with you all that you require for these 12 days.[{3}]
[Note 1.]—Balkh, “the mother of cities,” suffered mercilessly from Chinghiz. Though the city had yielded without resistance, the whole population was marched by companies into the plain, on the usual Mongol pretext of counting them, and then brutally massacred. The city and its gardens were fired, and all buildings capable of defence were levelled. The province long continued to be harried by the Chaghataian inroads. Ibn Batuta, sixty years after Marco’s visit, describes the city as still in ruins, and as uninhabited: “The remains of its mosques and colleges,” he says, “are still to be seen, and the painted walls traced with azure.” It is no doubt the Vaeq (Valq) of Clavijo, “very large, and surrounded by a broad earthen wall, thirty paces across, but breached in many parts.” He describes a large portion of the area within as sown with cotton. The account of its modern state in Burnes and Ferrier is much the same as Ibn Batuta’s, except that they found some population; two separate towns within the walls according to the latter. Burnes estimates the circuit of the ruins at 20 miles. The bulk of the population has been moved since 1858 to Takhtapul, 8 miles east of Balkh, where the Afghan Government is placed.
(Erdmann, 404–405; I. B. III. 59; Clavijo, p. 117; Burnes, II. 204–206; Ferrier, 206–207.)
According to the legendary history of Alexander, the beautiful Roxana was the daughter of Darius, and her father in a dying interview with Alexander requested the latter to make her his wife:—
“Une fille ai mult bele; se prendre le voles.
Vus en seres de l’mont tout li mius maries,” etc.
(Lambert Le Court, p. 256.)
[Note 2.]—The country called Dogana in the G. Text is a puzzle. In the former edition I suggested Juzgána, a name which till our author’s time was applied to a part of the adjoining territory, though not to that traversed in quitting Balkh for the east. Sir H. Rawlinson is inclined to refer the name to Dehgán, or “villager,” a term applied in Bactria, and in Kabul, to Tajik peasantry[1]. I may also refer to certain passages in Baber’s “Memoirs,” in which he speaks of a place, and apparently a district, called Dehánah, which seems from the context to have lain in the vicinity of the Ghori, or Aksarai River. There is still a village in the Ghori territory, called Dehánah. Though this is worth mentioning, where the true solution is so uncertain, I acknowledge the difficulty of applying it. I may add also that Baber calls the River of Ghori or Aksarai, the Dogh-ábah. (Sprenger, P. und R. Routen, p. 39 and Map; Anderson in J. A. S. B. XXII. 161; Ilch. II. 93; Baber, pp. 132, 134, 168, 200, also 146.)
[Note 3.]—Though Burnes speaks of the part of the road that we suppose necessarily to have been here followed from Balkh towards Taican, as barren and dreary, he adds that the ruins of aqueducts and houses proved that the land had at one time been peopled, though now destitute of water, and consequently of inhabitants. The country would seem to have reverted at the time of Burnes’ journey, from like causes, nearly to the state in which Marco found it after the Mongol devastations.
Lions seem to mean here the real king of beasts, and not tigers, as hereafter in the book. Tigers, though found on the S. and W. shores of the Caspian, do not seem to exist in the Oxus valley. On the other hand, Rashiduddin tells us that, when Hulaku was reviewing his army after the passage of the river, several lions were started, and two were killed. The lions are also mentioned by Sidi ’Ali, the Turkish Admiral, further down the valley towards Hazárasp: “We were obliged to fight with the lions day and night, and no man dared to go alone for water.” Moorcroft says of the plain between Kunduz and the Oxus: “Deer, foxes, wolves, hogs, and lions are numerous, the latter resembling those in the vicinity of Hariana” (in Upper India). Wood also mentions lions in Kuláb, and at Kila’chap on the Oxus. Q. Curtius tells how Alexander killed a great lion in the country north of the Oxus towards Samarkand. [A similar story is told of Timur in The Mulfuzat Timūry, translated by Major Charles Stewart, 1830 (p. 69): “During the march ‘(near Balkh)’ two lions made their appearance, one of them a male, the other a female. I (Timur) resolved to kill them myself, and having shot them both with arrows, I considered this circumstance as a lucky omen.”—H. C.] (Burnes, II. 200; Q. R. 155; Ilch. I. 90; J. As. IX. 217; Moorcroft, II. 430; Wood, ed. 1872, pp. 259,260; Q. C. VII. 2.)
[1] It may be observed that the careful Elphinstone distinguishes from this general application of Dehgán or Dehkán, the name Deggán applied to a tribe “once spread over the north-east of Afghanistan, but now as a separate people only in Kunar and Laghman.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Of Taican, and the Mountains of Salt. Also of the Province of Casem.
After those twelve days’ journey you come to a fortified place called Taican, where there is a great corn market.[{1}] It is a fine place, and the mountains that you see towards the south are all composed of salt. People from all the countries round, to some thirty days’ journey, come to fetch this salt, which is the best in the world, and is so hard that it can only be broken with iron picks. ’Tis in such abundance that it would supply the whole world to the end of time. [Other mountains there grow almonds and pistachioes, which are exceedingly cheap.][{2}]
When you leave this town and ride three days further between north-east and east, you meet with many fine tracts full of vines and other fruits, and with a goodly number of habitations, and everything to be had very cheap. The people are worshippers of Mahommet, and are an evil and a murderous generation, whose great delight is in the wine shop; for they have good wine (albeit it be boiled), and are great topers; in truth, they are constantly getting drunk. They wear nothing on the head but a cord some ten palms long twisted round it. They are excellent huntsmen, and take a great deal of game; in fact they wear nothing but the skins of the beasts they have taken in the chase, for they make of them both coats and shoes. Indeed, all of them are acquainted with the art of dressing skins for these purposes.[{3}]
When you have ridden those three days, you find a town called Casem,[{4}] which is subject to a count. His other towns and villages are on the hills, but through this town there flows a river of some size. There are a great many porcupines hereabouts, and very large ones too. When hunted with dogs, several of them will get together and huddle close, shooting their quills at the dogs, which get many a serious wound thereby.[{5}]
This town of Casem is at the head of a very great province, which is also called Casem. The people have a peculiar language. The peasants who keep cattle abide in the mountains, and have their dwellings in caves, which form fine and spacious houses for them, and are made with ease, as the hills are composed of earth.[{6}]
After leaving the town of Casem, you ride for three days without finding a single habitation, or anything to eat or drink, so that you have to carry with you everything that you require. At the end of those three days you reach a province called Badashan, about which we shall now tell you.[{7}]
[Note 1.]—The Taican of Polo is the still existing Talikan in the province of Kataghan or Kunduz, but it bears the former name (Tháîḳán) in the old Arab geographies. Both names are used by Baber, who says it lay in the Ulugh Bágh, or Great Garden, a name perhaps acquired by the Plains of Talikan in happier days, but illustrating what Polo says of the next three days’ march. The Castle of Talikan resisted Chinghiz for seven months, and met with the usual fate (1221). [In the Travels of Sidi Ali, son of Housaïn (Jour. Asiat., October, 1826, p. 203), “Talikan, in the country of Badakhschan” is mentioned.—H. C.] Wood speaks of Talikan in 1838 as a poor place of some 300 or 400 houses, mere hovels; a recent account gives it 500 families. Market days are not usual in Upper India or Kabul, but are universal in Badakhshan and the Oxus provinces. The bazaars are only open on those days, and the people from the surrounding country then assemble to exchange goods, generally by barter. Wood chances to note: “A market was held at Talikan.... The thronged state of the roads leading into it soon apprised us that the day was no ordinary one.” (Abulf. in Büsching, V. 352; Sprenger, p. 50; P. de la Croix, I. 63; Baber, 38, 130; Burnes, III. 8; Wood, 156; Pandit Manphul’s Report.)
The distance of Talikan from Balkh is about 170 miles, which gives very short marches, if twelve days be the correct reading. Ramusio has two days, which is certainly wrong. XII. is easily miswritten for VII., which would be a just number.
[Note 2.]—In our day, as I learn from Pandit Manphul, the mines of rock salt are at Ak Bulák, near the Lataband Pass, and at Darúná, near the Kokcha, and these supply the whole of Badakhshan, as well as Kunduz and Chitrál. These sites are due east of Talikan, and are in Badakhshan. But there is a mine at Chál, S.E. or S.S.E. of Talikan and within the same province. There are also mines of rock-salt near the famous “stone bridge” in Kuláb, north of the Oxus, and again on the south of the Alaï steppe. (Papers by Manphul and by Faiz Baksh; also Notes by Feachenko.)
Both pistachioes and wild almonds are mentioned by Pandit Manphul; and see Wood (p. 252) on the beauty and profusion of the latter.
[Note 3.]—Wood thinks that the Tajik inhabitants of Badakhshan and the adjoining districts are substantially of the same race as the Kafir tribes of Hindu Kúsh. At the time of Polo’s visit it would seem that their conversion to Islam was imperfect. They were probably in that transition state which obtains in our own day for some of the Hill Mahomedans adjoining the Kafirs on the south side of the mountains the reproachful title of Nímchah Musulmán, or Half-and-halfs. Thus they would seem to have retained sundry Kafir characteristics; among others that love of wine which is so strong among the Kafirs. The boiling of the wine is noted by Baber (a connoisseur) as the custom of Nijrao, adjoining, if not then included in, Kafir-land; and Elphinstone implies the continuance of the custom when he speaks of the Kafirs as having wine of the consistence of jelly, and very strong. The wine of Kápishí, the Greek Kapisa, immediately south of Hindu Kúsh, was famous as early as the time of the Hindu grammarian Pánini, say three centuries B.C. The cord twisted round the head was probably also a relic of Kafir costume: “Few of the Kafirs cover the head, and when they do, it is with a narrow band or fillet of goat’s hair ... about a yard or a yard and a half in length, wound round the head.” This style of head-dress seems to be very ancient in India, and in the Sanchi sculptures is that of the supposed Dasyas. Something very similar, i.e. a scanty turban cloth twisted into a mere cord, and wound two or three times round the head, is often seen in the Panjab to this day.
The Postín or sheepskin coat is almost universal on both sides of the Hindu Kúsh; and Wood notes: “The shoes in use resemble half-boots, made of goatskin, and mostly of home manufacture.” (Baber, 145; J. A. S. B. XXVIII. 348, 364; Elphinst. II. 384; Ind. Antiquary, I. 22; Wood, 174, 220; J. R. A. S. XIX. 2.)
[Note 4.]—Marsden was right in identifying Scassem or Casem with the Kechem of D’Anville’s Map, but wrong in confounding the latter with the Kishmabad of Elphinstone—properly, I believe, Kishnabad—in the Anderab Valley. Kashm, or Keshm, found its way into maps through Pétis de la Croix, from whom probably D’Anville adopted it; but as it was ignored by Elphinstone (or by Macartney, who constructed his map), and by Burnes, it dropped out of our geography. Indeed, Wood does not notice it except as giving name to a high hill called the Hill of Kishm, and the position even of that he omits to indicate. The frequent mention of Kishm in the histories of Timur and Humayun (e.g. P. de la Croix, I. 167; N. et E. XIV. 223, 491; Erskine’s Baber and Humayun, II. 330, 355, etc.) had enabled me to determine its position within tolerably narrow limits; but desiring to fix it definitely, application was made through Colonel Maclagan to Pandit Manphul, C.S.I., a very intelligent Hindu gentleman, who resided for some time in Badakhshan as agent of the Panjab Government, and from him arrived a special note and sketch, and afterwards a MS. copy of a Report,[1] which set the position of Kishm at rest.
Kishm is the Kilissemo, i.e. Karisma or Krishma, of Hiuen Tsang; and Sir H. Rawlinson has identified the Hill of Kishm with the Mount Kharesem of the Zend-Avesta, on which Jamshid placed the most sacred of all the fires. It is now a small town or large village on the right bank of the Varsach river, a tributary of the Kokcha. It was in 1866 the seat of a district ruler under the Mír of Badakhshan, who was styled the Mír of Kishm, and is the modern counterpart of Marco’s Quens or Count. The modern caravan-road between Kunduz and Badakhshan does not pass through Kishm, which is left some five miles to the right, but through the town of Mashhad, which stands on the same river. Kishm is the warmest district of Badakhshan. Its fruits are abundant, and ripen a month earlier than those at Faizabad, the capital of that country. The Varsach or Mashhad river is Marco’s “Flum auques grant.” Wood (247) calls it “the largest stream we had yet forded in Badakhshan.”
It is very notable that in Ramusio, in Pipino, and in one passage of the G. Text, the name is written Scasem, which has led some to suppose the Ish-Káshm of Wood to be meant. That place is much too far east—in fact, beyond the city which forms the subject of the next chapter. The apparent hesitation, however, between the forms Casem and Scasem suggests that the Kishm of our note may formerly have been termed S’kăshm or Ish-Kăshm, a form frequent in the Oxus Valley, e.g. Ish-Kimish, Ish-Káshm, Ishtrakh, Ishpingao. General Cunningham judiciously suggests (Ladak, 34) that this form is merely a vocal corruption of the initial S before a consonant, a combination which always troubles the Musulman in India, and converts every Mr. Smith or Mr. Sparks into Ismit or Ispak Sahib.
[There does not seem to me any difficulty about this note: “Shibarkhan (Afghan Turkistan), Balkh, Kunduz, Khanabad, Talikan, Kishm, Badakhshan.” I am tempted to look for Dogana at Khanabad.—H. C.]
[Note 5.]—The belief that the porcupine projected its quills at its assailants was an ancient and persistent one—“cum intendit cutem missiles,” says Pliny (VIII. 35, and see also Aelian. de Nat. An. I. 31), and is held by the Chinese as it was held by the ancients, but is universally rejected by modern zoologists. The huddling and coiling appears to be a true characteristic, for the porcupine always tries to shield its head.
[Note 6.]—The description of Kishm as a “very great” province is an example of a bad habit of Marco’s, which recurs in the next chapter. What he says of the cave-dwellings may be illustrated by Burnes’s account of the excavations at Bamian, in a neighbouring district. These “still form the residence of the greater part of the population.... The hills at Bamian are formed of indurated clay and pebbles, which renders this excavation a matter of little difficulty.” Similar occupied excavations are noticed by Moorcroft at Heibak and other places towards Khulm.
Curiously, Pandit Manphul says of the districts about the Kokcha: “Both their hills and plains are productive, the former being mostly composed of earth, having very little of rocky substance.”
[Note 7.]—The capital of Badakhshan is now Faizabad, on the right bank of the Kokcha, founded, according to Manphul, by Yarbeg, the first Mír of the present dynasty. When this family was displaced for a time, by Murad Beg of Kunduz, about 1829, the place was abandoned for years, but is now re-occupied. The ancient capital of Badakhshan stood in the Dasht (or Plain) of Bahárak, one of the most extensive pieces of level in Badakhshan, in which the rivers Vardoj, Zardeo, and Sarghalan unite with the Kokcha, and was apparently termed Jaúzgún. This was probably the city called Badakhshan by our traveller.[2] As far as I can estimate, by the help of Wood and the map I have compiled, this will be from 100 to 110 miles distant from Talikan, and will therefore suit fairly with the six marches that Marco lays down.
Wood, in 1838, found the whole country between Talikan and Faizabad nearly as depopulated as Marco found that between Kishm and Badakhshan. The modern depopulation was due—in part, at least—to the recent oppressions and razzias of the Uzbeks of Kunduz. On their decline, between 1840 and 1850, the family of the native Mírs was reinstated, and these now rule at Faizabad, under an acknowledgment, since 1859, of Afghan supremacy.
[1] Since published in J. K. G. S. vol. xlii.
[2] Wilford, in the end of the 18th century, speaks of Faizabad as “the new capital of Badakhshan, built near the site of the old one.” The Chinese map (vide J. R. G. S. vol. xlii.) represents the city of Badakhshan to the east of Faizabad. Faiz Bakhsh, in an unpublished paper, mentions a tradition that the Lady Zobeidah, dear to English children, the daughter of Al-Mansúr and wife of Ar-Rashid, delighted to pass the spring at Jaúzgún, and built a palace there, “the ruins of which are still visible.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
Of the Province of Badashan.
Badashan is a Province inhabited by people who worship Mahommet, and have a peculiar language. It forms a very great kingdom, and the royalty is hereditary. All those of the royal blood are descended from King Alexander and the daughter of King Darius, who was Lord of the vast Empire of Persia. And all these kings call themselves in the Saracen tongue Zulcarniain, which is as much as to say Alexander; and this out of regard for Alexander the Great.[{1}]
It is in this province that those fine and valuable gems the Balas Rubies are found. They are got in certain rocks among the mountains, and in the search for them the people dig great caves underground, just as is done by miners for silver. There is but one special mountain that produces them, and it is called Syghinan. The stones are dug on the king’s account, and no one else dares dig in that mountain on pain of forfeiture of life as well as goods; nor may any one carry the stones out of the kingdom. But the king amasses them all, and sends them to other kings when he has tribute to render, or when he desires to offer a friendly present; and such only as he pleases he causes to be sold. Thus he acts in order to keep the Balas at a high value; for if he were to allow everybody to dig, they would extract so many that the world would be glutted with them, and they would cease to bear any value. Hence it is that he allows so few to be taken out, and is so strict in the matter.[{2}]
There is also in the same country another mountain, in which azure is found; ’tis the finest in the world, and is got in a vein like silver. There are also other mountains which contain a great amount of silver ore, so that the country is a very rich one; but it is also (it must be said) a very cold one.[{3}] It produces numbers of excellent horses, remarkable for their speed. They are not shod at all, although constantly used in mountainous country, and on very bad roads. [They go at a great pace even down steep descents, where other horses neither would nor could do the like. And Messer Marco was told that not long ago they possessed in that province a breed of horses from the strain of Alexander’s horse Bucephalus, all of which had from their birth a particular mark on the forehead. This breed was entirely in the hands of an uncle of the king’s; and in consequence of his refusing to let the king have any of them, the latter put him to death. The widow then, in despite, destroyed the whole breed, and it is now extinct.[{4}]]
The mountains of this country also supply Saker falcons of excellent flight, and plenty of Lanners likewise. Beasts and birds for the chase there are in great abundance. Good wheat is grown, and also barley without husk. They have no olive oil, but make oil from sesamé, and also from walnuts.[{5}]
[In the mountains there are vast numbers of sheep—400, 500, or 600 in a single flock, and all of them wild; and though many of them are taken, they never seem to get aught the scarcer.[{6}]
Those mountains are so lofty that ’tis a hard day’s work, from morning till evening, to get to the top of them. On getting up, you find an extensive plain, with great abundance of grass and trees, and copious springs of pure water running down through rocks and ravines. In those brooks are found trout and many other fish of dainty kinds; and the air in those regions is so pure, and residence there so healthful, that when the men who dwell below in the towns, and in the valleys and plains, find themselves attacked by any kind of fever or other ailment that may hap, they lose no time in going to the hills; and after abiding there two or three days, they quite recover their health through the excellence of that air. And Messer Marco said he had proved this by experience: for when in those parts he had been ill for about a year, but as soon as he was advised to visit that mountain, he did so and got well at once.[{7}]]
Ancient Silver Patera of debased Greek art, formerly in the possession of the Princes of Badakhshan, now in the India Museum.
In this kingdom there are many strait and perilous passes, so difficult to force that the people have no fear of invasion. Their towns and villages also are on lofty hills, and in very strong positions.[{8}] They are excellent archers, and much given to the chase; indeed, most of them are dependent for clothing on the skins of beasts, for stuffs are very dear among them. The great ladies, however, are arrayed in stuffs, and I will tell you the style of their dress! They all wear drawers made of cotton cloth, and into the making of these some will put 60, 80, or even 100 ells of stuff. This they do to make themselves look large in the hips, for the men of those parts think that to be a great beauty in a woman.[{9}]
[Note 1.]—“The population of Badakhshan Proper is composed of Tajiks, Turks, and Arabs, who are all Sunnis, following the orthodox doctrines of the Mahomedan law, and speak Persian and Turki, whilst the people of the more mountainous tracts are Tajiks of the Shiá creed, having separate provincial dialects or languages of their own, the inhabitants of the principal places combining therewith a knowledge of Persian. Thus, the Shighnáni [sometimes called Shighni] is spoken in Shignán and Roshán, the Ishkáshami in Ishkásham, the Wakhi in Wakhán, the Sanglichì in Sanglich and Zebák, and the Minjáni in Minján. All these dialects materially differ from each other.” (Pand. Manphul.) It may be considered almost certain that Badakhshan Proper also had a peculiar dialect in Polo’s time. Mr. Shaw speaks of the strong resemblance to Kashmírís of the Badakhshán people whom he had seen.
The Legend of the Alexandrian pedigree of the Kings of Badakhshan is spoken of by Baber, and by earlier Eastern authors. This pedigree is, or was, claimed also by the chiefs of Karátegín, Darwáz, Roshán, Shighnán, Wakhán, Chitrál, Gilgít, Swát, and Khapolor in Bálti. Some samples of those genealogies may be seen in that strange document called “Gardiner’s Travels.”
In Badakhshan Proper the story seems now to have died out. Indeed, though Wood mentions one of the modern family of Mírs as vaunting this descent, these are in fact Sáhibzádahs of Samarkand, who were invited to the country about the middle of the 17th century, and were in no way connected with the old kings.
The traditional claims to Alexandrian descent were probably due to a genuine memory of the Græco-Bactrian kingdom, and might have had an origin analogous to the Sultan’s claim to be “Caesar of Rome”; for the real ancestry of the oldest dynasties on the Oxus was to be sought rather among the Tochari and Ephthalites than among the Greeks whom they superseded.
The cut on [p. 159] presents an interesting memorial of the real relation of Bactria to Greece, as well as of the pretence of the Badakhshan princes to Grecian descent. This silver patera was sold by the family of the Mírs, when captives, to the Minister of the Uzbek chief of Kunduz, and by him to Dr. Percival Lord in 1838. It is now in the India Museum. On the bottom is punched a word or two in Pehlvi, and there is also a word incised in Syriac or Uighúr. It is curious that a pair of paterae were acquired by Dr. Lord under the circumstances stated. The other, similar in material and form, but apparently somewhat larger, is distinctly Sassanian, representing a king spearing a lion.
Zu-’lḳarnain, “the Two-Horned,” is an Arabic epithet of Alexander, with which legends have been connected, but which probably arose from the horned portraits on his coins. [Capus, l.c. p. 121, says, “Iskandr Zoulcarneïn or Alexander le Cornu, horns being the emblem of strength.”—H. C.] The term appears in Chaucer (Troil. and Cress. III. 931) in the sense of non plus:—
“I am, till God me better minde send,
At dulcarnon, right at my wittes end.”
And it is said to have still colloquial existence in that sense in some corners of England. This use is said to have arisen from the Arabic application of the term (Bicorne) to the 47th Proposition of Euclid. (Baber, 13; N. et E. XIV. 490; N. An. des V. xxvi. 296; Burnes, III. 186 seqq.; Wood, 155, 244; J. A. S. B. XXII. 300; Ayeen Akbery, II. 185; see N. and Q. 1st Series, vol. v.)
[Note 2.]—I have adopted in the text for the name of the country that one of the several forms in the G. Text which comes nearest to the correct name, viz. Badascian. But Balacian also appears both in that and in Pauthier’s text. This represents Balakhshán, a form also sometimes used in the East. Hayton has Balaxcen, Clavijo Balaxia, the Catalan Map Baldassia. From the form Balakhsh the Balas Ruby got its name. As Ibn Batuta says: “The Mountains of Badakhshan have given their name to the Badakhshi Ruby, vulgarly called Al Balaksh.” Albertus Magnus says the Balagius is the female of the Carbuncle or Ruby Proper, “and some say it is his house, and hath thereby got the name, quasi Palatium Carbunculi!” The Balais or Balas Ruby is, like the Spinel, a kind inferior to the real Ruby of Ava. The author of the Masálak al Absár says the finest Balas ever seen in the Arab countries was one presented to Malek ’Adil Ketboga, at Damascus; it was of a triangular form and weighed 50 drachms. The prices of Balasci in Europe in that age may be found in Pegolotti, but the needful problems are hard to solve.
“No sapphire in Inde, no Rubie rich of price,
There lacked than, nor Emeraud so grene,
Balès, Turkès, ne thing to my device.”
(Chaucer, ‘Court of Love.’)
“L’altra letizia, che m’era già nota,
Preclara cosa mi si fece in vista,
Qual fin balascio in che lo Sol percuoto.”
(Paradiso, ix. 67.)
Some account of the Balakhsh from Oriental sources will be found in J. As. sér V. tom. xi. 109.
(I. B. III. 59, 394; Alb. Mag. de Mineralibus; Pegol. p. 307; N. et E. XIII. i. 246.)
[“The Mohammedan authors of the Mongol period mention Badakhshan several times in connection with the political and military events of that period. Guchluk, the ‘gurkhan of Karakhitai,’ was slain in Badakhshan in 1218 (d’Ohsson, I. 272). In 1221, the Mongols invaded the country (l.c. I. 272). On the same page, d’Ohsson translates a short account of Badakhshan by Yakut (✛1229), stating that this mountainous country is famed for its precious stones, and especially rubies, called Balakhsh.” (Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. p. 66.)—H. C.]
The account of the royal monopoly in working the mines, etc., has continued accurate down to our own day. When Murad Beg of Kunduz conquered Badakhshan some forty years ago, in disgust at the small produce of the mines, he abandoned working them, and sold nearly all the population of the place into slavery! They continue still unworked, unless clandestinely. In 1866 the reigning Mír had one of them opened at the request of Pandit Manphul, but without much result.
The locality of the mines is on the right bank of the Oxus, in the district of Ish Káshm and on the borders of Shignan, the Syghinan of the text. (P. Manph.; Wood, 206; N. Ann. des. V. xxvi. 300.)
[The ruby mines are really in the Gháran country, which extends along both banks of the Oxus. Barshar is one of the deserted villages; the boundary between Gháran and Shignán is the Kuguz Parin (in Shighai dialect means “holes in the rock”); the Persian equivalent is “Rafak-i-Somakh.” (Cf. Captain Trotter, Forsyth’s Mission, p. 277.)—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—The mines of Lájwurd (whence l’Azur and Lazuli) have been, like the Ruby mines, celebrated for ages. They lie in the Upper Valley of the Kokcha, called Korán, within the Tract called Yamgán, of which the popular etymology is Hamah-Kán, or “All-Mines,” and were visited by Wood in 1838. The produce now is said to be of very inferior quality, and in quantity from 30 to 60 poods (36 lbs each) annually. The best quality sells at Bokhara at 30 to 60 tillas, or 12l. to 24l. the pood (Manphul). Surely it is ominous when a British agent writing of Badakhshan products finds it natural to express weights in Russian poods!
The Yamgán Tract also contains mines of iron, lead, alum, salammoniac, sulphur, ochre, and copper. The last are not worked. But I do not learn of any silver mines nearer than those of Paryán in the Valley of Panjshir, south of the crest of the Hindu-Kúsh, much worked in the early Middle Ages. (See Cathay, p. 595.)
[Note 4.]—The Kataghan breed of horses from Badakhshan and Kunduz has still a high reputation. They do not often reach India, as the breed is a favourite one among the Afghan chiefs, and the horses are likely to be appropriated in transit. (Lumsden, Mission to Kandahar, p. 20.)
[The Kirghiz between the Yangi Hissar River and Sirikol are the only people using the horse generally in the plough, oxen being employed in the plains, and yaks in Sirikol. (Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon, p. 222, Forsyth’s Mission.)—H. C.]
What Polo heard of the Bucephalid strain was perhaps but another form of a story told by the Chinese, many centuries earlier, when speaking of this same region. A certain cave was frequented by a wonderful stallion of supernatural origin. Hither the people yearly brought their mares, and a famous breed was derived from the foals. (Rém. N. Mél. As. I. 245.)
[Note 5.]—The huskless barley of the text is thus mentioned by Burnes in the vicinity of the Hindu-Kúsh: “They rear a barley in this elevated country which has no husk, and grows like wheat; but it is barley.” It is not properly huskless, but when ripe it bursts the husk and remains so loosely attached as to be dislodged from it by a slight shake. It is grown abundantly in Ladak and the adjoining Hill States. Moorcroft details six varieties of it cultivated there. The kind mentioned by Marco and Burnes is probably that named by Royle Hordeum Ægiceras, and which has been sent to England under the name of Tartarian Wheat, though it is a genuine barley. Naked barley is mentioned by Galen as grown in Cappadocia; and Matthioli speaks of it as grown in France in his day (middle of 16th century). It is also known to the Arabs, for they have a name for it—Sult. (Burnes, III. 205; Moorc. II. 148 seqq.; Galen, de Aliment. Facult. Lat. ed. 13; Matthioli, Ven. 1585, p. 420; Eng. Cyc., art. Hordeum.)
Sesamé is mentioned by P. Manphul as one of the products of Badakhshan; linseed is another, which is also used for oil. Walnut-trees abound, but neither he nor Wood mention the oil. We know that walnut oil is largely manufactured in Kashmir. (Moorcroft, II. 148.)
[See on Saker and Lanner Falcons (F. Sakar, Briss.; F. lanarius, Schlegel) the valuable paper by Edouard Blanc, Sur l’utilisation des Oiseaux de proie en Asie centrale in Rev. des Sciences natur. appliquées, 20th June, 1895.
“Hawking is the favourite sport of Central Asian Lords,” says G. Capus. (A travers le royaume de Tamerlan, p. 132. See pp. 132–134.)
The Mirza says (l.c. p. 157) that the mountains of Wakhán “are only noted for producing a breed of hawks or falcons which the hardy Wâkhânis manage to catch among the cliffs. These hawks are much esteemed by the chiefs of Badakhshan, Bokhara, etc. They are celebrated for their swiftness, and known by their white colour.”—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—These wild sheep are probably the kind called Kachkár, mentioned by Baber, and described by Mr. Blyth in his Monograph of Wild Sheep, under the name of Ovis Vignei. It is extensively diffused over all the ramifications of Hindu-Kúsh, and westward perhaps to the Persian Elburz. “It is gregarious,” says Wood, “congregating in herds of several hundreds.” In a later chapter Polo speaks of a wild sheep apparently different and greater. (See J. A. S. B., X. 858 seqq.)
[Note 7.]—This pleasant passage is only in Ramusio, but it would be heresy to doubt its genuine character. Marco’s recollection of the delight of convalescence in such a climate seems to lend an unusual enthusiasm and felicity to his description of the scenery. Such a region as he speaks of is probably the cool Plateau of Shewá, of which we are told as extending about 25 miles eastward from near Faizabad, and forming one of the finest pastures in Badakhshan. It contains a large lake called by the frequent name Sar-i-Kol. No European traveller in modern times (unless Mr. Gardner) has been on those glorious table-lands. Burnes says that at Kunduz both natives and foreigners spoke rapturously of the vales of Badakhshan, its rivulets, romantic scenes and glens, its fruits, flowers, and nightingales. Wood is reticent on scenery, naturally, since nearly all his journey was made in winter. When approaching Faizabad on his return from the Upper Oxus, however, he says: “On entering the beautiful lawn at the gorge of its valley I was enchanted at the quiet loveliness of the scene. Up to this time, from the day we left Talikan, we had been moving in snow; but now it had nearly vanished from the valley, and the fine sward was enamelled with crocuses, daffodils, and snowdrops.” (P. Manphul; Burnes, III. 176; Wood, 252.)
[Note 8.]—Yet scarcely any country in the world has suffered so terribly and repeatedly from invasion. “Enduring decay probably commenced with the wars of Chinghiz, for many an instance in Eastern history shows the permanent effect of such devastations.... Century after century saw only progress in decay. Even to our own time the progress of depopulation and deterioration has continued.” In 1759, two of the Khojas of Kashgar, escaping from the dominant Chinese, took refuge in Badakhshan; one died of his wounds, the other was treacherously slain by Sultan Shah, who then ruled the country. The holy man is said in his dying moments to have invoked curses on Badakhshan, and prayed that it might be three times depopulated; a malediction which found ample accomplishment. The misery of the country came to a climax about 1830, when the Uzbek chief of Kunduz, Murad Beg Kataghan, swept away the bulk of the inhabitants, and set them down to die in the marshy plains of Kunduz. (Cathay, p. 542; Faiz Bakhsh, etc.)
[Note 9.]—This “bombasticall dissimulation of their garments,” as the author of Anthropometamorphosis calls such a fashion, is no longer affected by the ladies of Badakhshan. But a friend in the Panjab observes that it still survives there. “There are ladies’ trousers here which might almost justify Marco’s very liberal estimate of the quantity of stuff required to make them;” and among the Afghan ladies, Dr. Bellew says, the silken trousers almost surpass crinoline in amplitude. It is curious to find the same characteristic attaching to female figures on coins of ancient kings of these regions, such as Agathocles and Pantaleon. (The last name is appropriate!)
CHAPTER XXX.
Of the Province of Pashai
You must know that ten days’ journey to the south of Badashan there is a Province called Pashai, the people of which have a peculiar language, and are Idolaters, of a brown complexion. They are great adepts in sorceries and the diabolic arts. The men wear earrings and brooches of gold and silver set with stones and pearls. They are a pestilent people and a crafty; and they live upon flesh and rice. Their country is very hot.[{1}]
Now let us proceed and speak of another country which is seven days’ journey from this one towards the south-east, and the name of which is Keshimur.
[Note 1.]—The name of Pashai has already occurred (see [ch. xviii.]) linked with Dir, as indicating a tract, apparently of very rugged and difficult character, through which the partizan leader Nigúdar passed in making an incursion from Badakhshan towards Káshmir. The difficulty here lies in the name Pashai, which points to the south-west, whilst Dir and all other indications point to the south-east. But Pashai seems to me the reading to which all texts tend, whilst it is clearly expressed in the G. T. (Pasciai), and it is contrary to all my experience of the interpretation of Marco Polo to attempt to torture the name in the way which has been common with commentators professed and occasional. But dropping this name for a moment, let us see to what the other indications do point.
In the meagre statements of this and the next chapter, interposed as they are among chapters of detail unusually ample for Polo, there is nothing to lead us to suppose that the Traveller ever personally visited the countries of which these two chapters treat. I believe we have here merely an amplification of the information already sketched of the country penetrated by the Nigudarian bands whose escapade is related in [chapter xviii.], information which was probably derived from a Mongol source. And these countries are in my belief both regions famous in the legends of the Northern Buddhists, viz. Udyána and Káshmir.
Udyána lay to the north of Pesháwar on the Swát River, but from the extent assigned to it by Hiuen Tsang, the name probably covered a large part of the whole hill-region south of the Hindu-Kúsh from Chitrál to the Indus, as indeed it is represented in the Map of Vivien de St. Martin (Pèlerins Bouddhistes, II.). It is regarded by Fahian as the most northerly Province of India, and in his time the food and clothing of the people were similar to those of Gangetic India. It was the native country of Padma Sambhava, one of the chief apostles of Lamaism, i.e. of Tibetan Buddhism, and a great master of enchantments. The doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed in Udyána in old times, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic magic, and the Tibetans still regard that locality as the classic ground of sorcery and witchcraft.
Hiuen Tsang says of the inhabitants: “The men are of a soft and pusillanimous character, naturally inclined to craft and trickery. They are fond of study, but pursue it with no ardour. The science of magical formulae is become a regular professional business with them. They generally wear clothes of white cotton, and rarely use any other stuff. Their spoken language, in spite of some differences, has a strong resemblance to that of India.”
These particulars suit well with the slight description in our text, and the Indian atmosphere that it suggests; and the direction and distance ascribed to Pashai suit well with Chitral, which may be taken as representing Udyána when approached from Badakhshan. For it would be quite practicable for a party to reach the town of Chitrál in ten days from the position assigned to the old capital of Badakhshan. And from Chitrál the road towards Káshmir would lie over the high Lahori pass to Dir, which from its mention in [chapter xviii.] we must consider an obligatory point. (Fah-hian, p. 26; Koeppen, I. 70; Pèlerins Boud. II. 131–132.)
[“Tao-lin (a Buddhist monk like Hiuen Tsang) afterwards left the western regions and changed his road to go to Northern India; he made a pilgrimage to Kia-che-mi-louo (Káshmir), and then entered the country of U-ch’ang-na (Udyána)....” (Ed. Chavannes, I-tsing, p. 105.)—H. C.]
We must now turn to the name Pashai. The Pashai Tribe are now Mahomedan, but are reckoned among the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, which the Afghans are not. Baber mentions them several times, and counts their language as one of the dozen that were spoken at Kabul in his time. Burnes says it resembles that of the Kafirs. A small vocabulary of it was published by Leech, in the seventh volume of the J. A. S. B., which I have compared with vocabularies of Siah-posh Kafir, published by Raverty in vol. xxxiii. of the same journal, and by Lumsden in his Report of the Mission to Kandahar, in 1837. Both are Aryan, and seemingly of Professor Max Müller’s class Indic, but not very close to one another.[1]
Ibn Batuta, after crossing the Hindu-Kúsh by one of the passes at the head of the Panjshir Valley, reaches the Mountain Bashái (Pashai). In the same vicinity the Pashais are mentioned by Sidi ’Ali, in 1554. And it is still in the neighbourhood of Panjshir that the tribe is most numerous, though they have other settlements in the hill-country about Nijrao, and on the left bank of the Kabul River between Kabul and Jalalabad. Pasha and Pasha-gar is also named as one of the chief divisions of the Kafirs, and it seems a fair conjecture that it represents those of the Pashais who resisted or escaped conversion to Islam. (See Leech’s Reports in Collection pub. at Calcutta in 1839; Baber, 140; Elphinstone, I. 411; J. A. S. B. VII. 329, 731, XXVIII. 317 seqq., XXXIII. 271–272; I. B. III. 86; J. As. IX. 203, and J. R. A. S. n.s. V. 103, 278.)
The route of which Marco had heard must almost certainly have been one of those leading by the high Valley of Zebák, and by the Doráh or the Nuksán Pass, over the watershed of Hindu-Kúsh into Chitrál, and so to Dir, as already noticed. The difficulty remains as to how he came to apply the name Pashai to the country south-east of Badakhshan. I cannot tell. But it is at least possible that the name of the Pashai tribe (of which the branches even now are spread over a considerable extent of country) may have once had a wide application over the southern spurs of the Hindu-Kúsh.[2] Our Author, moreover, is speaking here from hearsay, and hearsay geography without maps is much given to generalising. I apprehend that, along with characteristics specially referable to the Tibetan and Mongol traditions of Udyána, the term Pashai, as Polo uses it, vaguely covers the whole tract from the southern boundary of Badakhshan to the Indus and the Kabul River.
But even by extending its limits to Attok, we shall not get within seven marches of Káshmir. It is 234 miles by road from Attok to Srinagar; more than twice seven marches. And, according to Polo’s usual system, the marches should be counted from Chitrál, or some point thereabouts.
Sir H. Rawlinson, in his Monograph on the Oxus, has indicated the probability that the name Pashai may have been originally connected with Aprasin or Paresín, the Zendavestian name for the Indian Caucasus, and which occurs in the Babylonian version of the Behistun Inscription as the equivalent of Gadára in the Persian, i.e. Gandhára, there applied to the whole country between Bactria and the Indus. (See J. R. G. S. XLII. 502.) Some such traditional application of the term Pashai might have survived.
[1] The Kafir dialect of which Mr. Trumpp collected some particulars shows in the present tense of the substantive verb these remarkable forms:— Ei sŭm, Tŭ sis, siga sĕ; Ima sĭmĭs, Wĭ sik, Sigĕ sin.
[2] In the Tabakāt-i-Násiri (Elliot, II. 317) we find mention of the Highlands of Pasha-Afroz, but nothing to define their position.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Of the Province of Keshimur.
Keshimur also is a Province inhabited by a people who are Idolaters and have a language of their own.[{1}] They have an astonishing acquaintance with the devilries of enchantment; insomuch that they make their idols to speak. They can also by their sorceries bring on changes of weather and produce darkness, and do a number of things so extraordinary that no one without seeing them would believe them.[{2}] Indeed, this country is the very original source from which Idolatry has spread abroad.[{3}]
In this direction you can proceed further till you come to the Sea of India.
The men are brown and lean, but the women, taking them as brunettes, are very beautiful. The food of the people is flesh, and milk, and rice. The clime is finely tempered, being neither very hot nor very cold. There are numbers of towns and villages in the country, but also forests and desert tracts, and strong passes, so that the people have no fear of anybody, and keep their independence, with a king of their own to rule and do justice.[{4}]
There are in this country Eremites (after the fashion of those parts), who dwell in seclusion and practise great abstinence in eating and drinking. They observe strict chastity, and keep from all sins forbidden in their law, so that they are regarded by their own folk as very holy persons. They live to a very great age.[{5}]
There are also a number of idolatrous abbeys and monasteries. [The people of the province do not kill animals nor spill blood; so if they want to eat meat they get the Saracens who dwell among them to play the butcher.[{6}]] The coral which is carried from our parts of the world has a better sale there than in any other country.[{7}]
Ancient Buddhist Temple at Pandrethan in Káshmir.
Now we will quit this country, and not go any further in the same direction; for if we did so we should enter India; and that I do not wish to do at present. For, on our return journey, I mean to tell you about India: all in regular order. Let us go back therefore to Badashan, for we cannot otherwise proceed on our journey.
[Note 1.]—I apprehend that in this chapter Marco represents Buddhism (which is to be understood by his expression Idolatry, not always, but usually) as in a position of greater life and prosperity than we can believe it to have enjoyed in Káshmir at the end of the 13th century, and I suppose that his knowledge of it was derived in great part from tales of the Mongol and Tibetan Buddhists about its past glories.
I know not if the spelling Kesciemur represents any peculiar Mongol pronunciation of the name. Plano Carpini, probably the first modern European to mention this celebrated region, calls it Casmir (p. 708).
“The Cashmeerians,” says Abu’l Fazl, “have a language of their own, but their books are written in the Shanskrit tongue, although the character is sometimes Cashmeerian. They write chiefly upon Tooz [birch-bark], which is the bark of a tree; it easily divides into leaves, and remains perfect for many years.” (Ayeen Akbery, II. 147.) A sketch of Kashmiri Grammar by Mr. Edgeworth will be found in vol. x. of the J. A. S. B., and a fuller one by Major Leech in vol. xiii. Other contributions on the language are in vol. xxxv. pt. i. p. 233 (Godwin-Austen); in vol. xxxix. pt. i. p. 95 (Dr. Elmslie); and in Proceedings for 1866, p. 62, seqq. (Sir G. Campbell and Bábú Rájendra Lál Mitra). The language, though in large measure of Sanskrit origin, has words and forms that cannot be traced in any other Indian vernacular. (Campbell, pp. 67, 68). The character is a modification of the Panjáb Nagari.
[Note 2.]—The Kashmirian conjurers had made a great impression on Marco, who had seen them at the Court of the Great Kaan, and he recurs in a later chapter to their weather sorceries and other enchantments, when we shall make some remarks. Meanwhile let us cite a passage from Bernier, already quoted by M. Pauthier. When crossing the Pír Panjál (the mountain crossed on entering Káshmir from Lahore) with the camp of Aurangzíb, he met with “an old Hermit who had dwelt upon the summit of the Pass since the days of Jehangir, and whose religion nobody knew, although it was said that he could work miracles, and used at his pleasure to produce extraordinary thunderstorms, as well as hail, snow, rain, and wind. There was something wild in his countenance, and in his long, spreading, and tangled hoary beard. He asked alms fiercely, allowing the travellers to drink from earthen cups that he had set out upon a great stone, but signing to them to go quickly by without stopping. He scolded those who made a noise, ‘for,’ said he to me (after I had entered his cave and smoothed him down with a half rupee which I put in his hand with all humility), ‘noise here raises furious storms. Aurangzíb has done well in taking my advice and prohibiting it. Shah Jehan always did the like. But Jehangir once chose to laugh at what I said, and made his drums and trumpets sound; the consequence was he nearly lost his life.’” (Bernier, Amst. ed. 1699, II. 290.) A successor of this hermit was found on the same spot by P. Desideri in 1713, and another by Vigne in 1837.
[Note 3.]—Though the earliest entrance of Buddhism into Tibet was from India Proper, yet Káshmir twice in the history of Tibetan Buddhism played a most important part. It was in Káshmir that was gathered, under the patronage of the great King Kanishka, soon after our era, the Fourth Buddhistic Council, which marks the point of separation between Northern and Southern Buddhism. Numerous missionaries went forth from Káshmir to spread the doctrine in Tibet and in Central Asia. Many of the Pandits who laboured at the translation of the sacred books into Tibetan were Kashmiris, and it was even in Káshmir that several of the translations were made. But these were not the only circumstances that made Káshmir a holy land to the Northern Buddhists. In the end of the 9th century the religion was extirpated in Tibet by the Julian of the Lamas, the great persecutor Langdarma, and when it was restored, a century later, it was from Káshmir in particular that fresh missionaries were procured to reinstruct the people in the forgotten Law. (See Koeppen, II. 12–13, 78; J. As. sér. VI. tom. vi. 540.)
“The spread of Buddhism to Káshmir is an event of extraordinary importance in the history of that religion. Thenceforward that country became a mistress in the Buddhist Doctrine and the headquarters of a particular school.... The influence of Káshmir was very marked, especially in the spread of Buddhism beyond India. From Káshmir it penetrated to Kandahar and Kabul, ... and thence over Bactria. Tibetan Buddhism also had its essential origin from Káshmir; ... so great is the importance of this region in the History of Buddhism.” (Vassilyev, Der Buddhismus, I. 44.)
In the account which the Mahawanso gives of the consecration of the great Tope at Ruanwelli, by Dutthagamini, King of Ceylon (B.C. 157), 280,000 priests (!) come from Káshmir, a far greater number than is assigned to any other country except one. (J. A. S. B. VII. 165.)
It is thus very intelligible how Marco learned from the Mongols and the Lamas with whom he came in contact to regard Káshmir as “the very original source from which their Religion had spread abroad.” The feeling with which they looked to Káshmir must have been nearly the same as that with which the Buddhists of Burma look to Ceylon. But this feeling towards Káshmir does not now, I am informed, exist in Tibet. The reverence for the holy places has reverted to Bahár and the neighbouring “cradle-lands” of Buddhism.
It is notable that the historian Firishta, in a passage quoted by Tod, uses Marco’s expression in reference to Káshmir, almost precisely, saying that the Hindoos derived their idolatry from Káshmir, “the foundry of magical superstition.” (Rajasthan, I. 219.)
[Note 4.]—The people of Káshmir retain their beauty, but they are morally one of the most degraded races in Asia. Long oppression, now under the Lords of Jamu as great as ever, has no doubt aggravated this. Yet it would seem that twelve hundred years ago the evil elements were there as well as the beauty. The Chinese traveller says: “Their manners are light and volatile, their characters effeminate and pusillanimous.... They are very handsome, but their natural bent is to fraud and trickery.” (Pèl. Boud. II. 167–168.) Vigne’s account is nearly the same. (II. 142–143.) “They are as mischievous as monkeys, and far more malicious,” says Mr. Shaw (p. 292).
[Bernier says: “The women [of Kachemire] especially are very handsome; and it is from this country that nearly every individual, when first admitted to the court of the Great Mogul, selects wives or concubines, that his children may be whiter than the Indians, and pass for genuine Moguls. Unquestionably, there must be beautiful women among the higher classes, if we may judge by those of the lower orders seen in the streets and in the shops.” (Travels in the Mogul Empire, edited by Archibald Constable, 1891, p. 404.)]
[Note 5.]—In the time of Hiuen Tsang, who spent two years studying in Káshmir in the first half of the 7th century, though there were many Brahmans in the country, Buddhism was in a flourishing state; there were 100 convents with about 5000 monks. In the end of the 11th century a King (Harshadeva, 1090–1102) is mentioned exceptionally as a protector of Buddhism. The supposition has been intimated above that Marco’s picture refers to a traditional state of things, but I must notice that a like picture is presented in the Chinese account of Hulaku’s war. One of the thirty kingdoms subdued by the Mongols was “The kingdom of Fo (Buddha) called Kishimi. It lies to the N.W. of India. There are to be seen the men who are counted the successors of Shakia; their ancient and venerable air recalls the countenance of Bodi-dharma as one sees it in pictures. They abstain from wine, and content themselves with a gill of rice for their daily food, and are occupied only in reciting the prayers and litanies of Fo.” (Rém. N. Mél. Asiat. I. 179.) Abu’l Fazl says that on his third visit with Akbar to Káshmir he discovered some old men of the religion of Buddha, but none of them were literati. The Rishis, of whom he speaks with high commendation as abstaining from meat and from female society, as charitable and unfettered by traditions, were perhaps a modified remnant of the Buddhist Eremites. Colonel Newall, in a paper on the Rishis of Káshmir, traces them to a number of Shiáh Sayads, who fled to Káshmir in the time of Timur. But evidently the genus was of much earlier date, long preceding the introduction of Islam. (Vie et V. de H. T. p. 390; Lassen, III. 709; Ayeen Akb. II. 147, III. 151; J. A. S. B. XXXIX. pt. i. 265.)
We see from the Dabistan that in the 17th century Káshmir continued to be a great resort of Magian mystics and sages of various sects, professing great abstinence and credited with preternatural powers. And indeed Vámbéry tells us that even in our own day the Kashmiri Dervishes are pre-eminent among their Mahomedan brethren for cunning, secret arts, skill in exorcisms, etc. (Dab. I. 113 seqq. II. 147–148; Vámb. Sk. of Cent. Asia, 9.)
[Note 6.]—The first precept of the Buddhist Decalogue, or Ten Obligations of the Religious Body, is not to take life. But animal food is not forbidden, though restricted. Indeed it is one of the circumstances in the Legendary History of Sakya Muni, which looks as if it must be true, that he is related to have aggravated his fatal illness by eating a dish of pork set before him by a hospitable goldsmith. Giorgi says the butchers in Tibet are looked on as infamous; and people selling sheep or the like will make a show of exacting an assurance that these are not to be slaughtered. In Burma, when a British party wanted beef, the owner of the bullocks would decline to make one over, but would point one out that might be shot by the foreigners.
In Tibetan history it is told of the persecutor Langdarma that he compelled members of the highest orders of the clergy to become hunters and butchers. A Chinese collection of epigrams, dating from the 9th century, gives a facetious list of Incongruous Conditions, among which we find a poor Parsi, a sick Physician, a fat Bride, a Teacher who does not know his letters, and a Butcher who reads the Scriptures (of Buddhism)! (Alph. Tib. 445; Koeppen, I. 74; N. and Q., C. and J. III. 33.)
[Note 7.]—Coral is still a very popular adornment in the Himalayan countries. The merchant Tavernier says the people to the north of the Great Mogul’s territories and in the mountains of Assam and Tibet were the greatest purchasers of coral. (Tr. in India, [Bk. II. ch. xxiii.])
CHAPTER XXXII.
Of the Great River of Badashan.
In leaving Badashan you ride twelve days between east and north-east, ascending a river that runs through land belonging to a brother of the Prince of Badashan, and containing a good many towns and villages and scattered habitations. The people are Mahommetans, and valiant in war. At the end of those twelve days you come to a province of no great size, extending indeed no more than three days’ journey in any direction, and this is called Vokhan. The people worship Mahommet, and they have a peculiar language. They are gallant soldiers, and they have a chief whom they call None, which is as much as to say Count, and they are liegemen to the Prince of Badashan.[{1}]
There are numbers of wild beasts of all sorts in this region. And when you leave this little country, and ride three days north-east, always among mountains, you get to such a height that ’tis said to be the highest place in the world! And when you have got to this height you find The plain is called Pamier, and you ride across it for twelve days together, finding nothing but a desert without habitations or any green thing, so that travellers are obliged to carry with them whatever they have need of. The region is so lofty and cold that you do not even see any birds flying. And I must notice also that because of this great cold, fire does not burn so brightly, nor give out so much heat as usual, nor does it cook food so effectually.[{2}] Now, if we go on with our journey towards the east-north-east, we travel a good forty days, continually passing over mountains and hills, or through valleys, and crossing many rivers and tracts of wilderness. And in all this way you find neither habitation of man, nor any green thing, but must carry with you whatever you require. The country is called Bolor. The people dwell high up in the mountains, and are savage Idolaters, living only by the chase, and clothing themselves in the skins of beasts. They are in truth an evil race.[{3}] [Note 1.]—[“The length of Little Pamir, according to Trotter, is 68 miles.... To find the twelve days’ ride in the plain of Marco Polo, it must be admitted, says Severtsof (Bul. Soc. Géog. XI. 1890, pp. 588–589), that he went down a considerable distance along the south-north course of the Aksu, in the Aktash Valley, and did not turn towards Tásh Kurgán, by the Neza Tash Pass, crossed by Gordon and Trotter. The descent from this pass to Tásh Kurgán finishes with a difficult and narrow defile, which may well be overflowed at the great melting of snow, from the end of May till the middle of June, even to July. “Therefore he must have left the Aksu Valley to cross the Pass of Tagharma, about 50 or 60 kilometres to the north of the Neza Tash Pass; thence to Kashgar, the distance, in a straight line, is about 200 kilometres, and less than 300 by the shortest route which runs from the Tagharma Pass to little Kara Kul, and from there down to Yangi Hissar, along the Ghidjik. And Marco Polo assigns forty days for this route, while he allows but thirty for the journey of 500 kilometres (at least) from Jerm to the foot of the Tagharma Pass.” Professor Paquier (Bul. Soc. Géog. 6e Sér. XII. pp. 121–125) remarks that the Moonshee, sent by Captain Trotter to survey the Oxus between Ishkashm and Kila Wamár, could not find at the spot marked by Yule on his map, the mouth of the Shakh-Dara, but northward 7 or 8 miles from the junction of the Murghab with the Oxus, he saw the opening of an important water-course, the Suchnan River, formed by the Shakh-Dara and the Ghund-Dara. Marco arrived at a place between Northern Wakhán and Shihgnan; from the Central Pamir, Polo would have taken a route identical with that of the Mirza (1868–1869) by the Chichiklik Pass. Professor Paquier adds: “I have no hesitation in believing that Marco Polo was in the neighbourhood of that great commercial road, which by the Vallis Comedarum reached the foot of the Imaüs. He probably did not venture on a journey of fifty marches in an unknown country. At the top of the Shihgnan Valley, he doubtless found a road marked out to Little Bukharia. This was the road followed in ancient times from Bactrian to Serica; and Ptolemy has, so to speak, given us its landmarks after Marinus of Tyre, by the Vallis Comedarum (Valley of actual Shihgnan); the Turris Lapidea and the Statio Mercatorum, neighbourhood of Tásh Kurgán, capital of the present province of Sar-i-kol.” I must say that accepting, as I do, for Polo’s Itinerary, the route from Wakhán to Kashgar by the Taghdum-Bash Pamir, and Tásh Kurgán, I do not agree with Professor Paquier’s theory. But though I prefer Sir H. Yule’s route from Badakhshan, by the River Vardoj, the Pass of Ishkashm, the Panja, to Wakhán, I do not accept his views for the Itinerary from Wakhán to Kashgar; see [p. 175].—H. C.] The river along which Marco travels from Badakhshan is no doubt the upper stream of the Oxus, known locally as the Panja, along which Wood also travelled, followed of late by the Mirza and Faiz Bakhsh. It is true that the river is reached from Badaskhshan Proper by ascending another river (the Vardoj) and crossing the Pass of Ishkáshm, but in the brief style of our narrative we must expect such condensation. Wakhán was restored to geography by Macartney, in the able map which he compiled for Elphinstone’s Caubul, and was made known more accurately by Wood’s journey through it. [The district of Wakhán “comprises the valleys containing the two heads of the Panjah branch of the Oxus, and the valley of the Panjah itself, from the junction at Zung down to Ishkashím. The northern branch of the Panjah has its principal source in the Lake Victoria in the Great Pamir, which as well as the Little Pamir, belongs to Wakhán, the Aktash River forming the well recognized boundary between Kashgaria and Wakhán.” (Captain Trotter, Forsyth’s Mission, p. 275.) The southern branch is the Sarhadd Valley.—H. C.] The lowest part is about 8000 feet above the sea, and the highest Kishlak, or village, about 11,500. A few willows and poplars are the only trees that can stand against the bitter blasts that blow down the valley. Wood estimated the total population of the province at only 1000 souls, though it might be capable of supporting 5000.[1] He saw it, however, in the depth of winter. As to the peculiar language, see note I, ch. xxix. It is said to be a very old dialect of Persian. A scanty vocabulary was collected by Hayward. (J. R. G. S. XXI. p. 29.) The people, according to Shaw, have Aryan features, resembling those of the Kashmiris, but harsher. [Cf. Captain Trotter’s The Oxus below Wakhan, Forsyth’s Mission, p. 276.] We appear to see in the indications of this paragraph precisely the same system of government that now prevails in the Oxus valleys. The central districts of Faizabad and Jerm are under the immediate administration of the Mír of Badakhshan, whilst fifteen other districts, such as Kishm, Rusták, Zebák, Ishkáshm, Wakhán, are dependencies “held by the relations of the Mír, or by hereditary rulers, on a feudal tenure, conditional on fidelity and military service in time of need, the holders possessing supreme authority in their respective territories, and paying little or no tribute to the paramount power.” (Pandit Manphul.) The first part of the valley of which Marco speaks as belonging to a brother of the Prince, may correspond to Ishkáshm, or perhaps to Vardoj; the second, Wakhán, seems to have had a hereditary ruler; but both were vassals of the Prince of Badakhshan, and therefore are styled Counts, not kings or Seigneurs. The native title which Marco gives as the equivalent of Count is remarkable. Non or None, as it is variously written in the texts, would in French form represent Nono in Italian. Pauthier refers this title to the “Rao-nana (or nano) Rao” which figures as the style of Kanerkes in the Indo-Scythic coinage. But Wilson (Ariana Antiqua, p. 358) interprets Raonano as most probably a genitive plural of Rao, whilst the whole inscription answers precisely to the Greek one ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΝ ΚΑΝΗΡΚΟΥ, which is found on other coins of the same prince. General Cunningham, a very competent authority, adheres to this view, and writes: “I do not think None or Non can have any connection with the Nana of the coins.” It is remarkable, however, that Nono (said to signify “younger,” or lesser) is in Tibet the title given to a younger brother, deputy, or subordinate prince. In Cunningham’s Ladak (259) we read: “Nono is the usual term of respect which is used in addressing any young man of the higher ranks, and when prefixed to Kahlon it means the younger or deputy minister.” And again (p. 352): “Nono is the title given to a younger brother. Nono Sungnam was the younger brother of Chang Raphtan, the Kahlon of Bazgo.” I have recently encountered the word used independently, and precisely in Marco’s application of it. An old friend, in speaking of a journey that he had made in our Tibetan provinces, said incidentally that he had accompanied the commissioner to the installation of a new Nono (I think in Spiti). The term here corresponds so precisely with the explanation which Marco gives of None as a Count subject to a superior sovereign, that it is difficult to regard the coincidence as accidental. The Yuechi or Indo-Scyths who long ruled the Oxus countries are said to have been of Tibetan origin, and Al-Biruni repeats a report that this was so. (Elliot. II. 9.)[2] Can this title have been a trace of their rule? Or is it Indian? [Note 2.]—This chapter is one of the most interesting in the book, and contains one of its most splendid anticipations of modern exploration, whilst conversely Lieutenant John Wood’s narrative presents the most brilliant confirmation in detail of Marco’s narrative. We have very old testimony to the recognition of the great altitude of the Plateau of Pamir (the name which Marco gives it and which it still retains), and to the existence of the lake (or lakes) upon its surface. The Chinese pilgrims Hwui Seng and Sung Yun, who passed this way A.D. 518, inform us that these high lands of the Tsung Ling were commonly said to be midway between heaven and earth. The more celebrated Hiuen Tsang, who came this way nearly 120 years later (about 644) on his return to China, “after crossing the mountains for 700 li, arrived at the valley of Pomilo (Pamir). This valley is 1000 li (about 200 miles) from east to west, and 100 li (20 miles) from north to south, and lies between two snowy ranges in the centre of the Tsung Ling mountains. The traveller is annoyed by sudden gusts of wind, and the snow-drifts never cease, spring or summer. As the soil is almost constantly frozen, you see but a few miserable plants, and no crops can live. The whole tract is but a dreary waste, without a trace of human kind. In the middle of the valley is a great lake 300 li (60 miles) from east to west, and 500 li from north to south. This stands in the centre of Jambudwipa (the Buddhist οἰκουμένη) on a plateau of prodigious elevation. An endless variety of creatures peoples its waters. When you hear the murmur and clash of its waves you think you are listening to the noisy hum of a great market in which vast crowds of people are mingling in excitement.... The lake discharges to the west, and a river runs out of it in that direction and joins the Potsu (Oxus).... The lake likewise discharges to the east, and a great river runs out, which flows eastward to the western frontier of Kiesha (Káshgar), where it joins the River Sita, and runs eastward with it into the sea.” The story of an eastern outflow from the lake is, no doubt, legend, connected with an ancient Hindu belief (see Cathay, p. 347), but Burnes in modern times heard much the same story. And the Mirza, in 1868, took up the same impression regarding the smaller lake called Pamir Kul, in which the southern branch of the Panja originates. “After quitting the (frozen) surface of the river,” says Wood, “we ... ascended a low hill, which apparently bounded the valley to the eastward. On surmounting this, at 3 P.M. of the 19th February, 1838, we stood, to use a native expression, upon the Bám-i-Duniah, or ‘Roof of the World,’ while before us lay stretched a noble but frozen sheet of water, from whose western end issued the infant river of the Oxus. This fine lake (Sirikol) lies in the form of a crescent, about 14 miles long from east to west, by an average breadth of 1 mile. On three sides it is bordered by swelling hills about 500 feet high, while along its southern bank they rise into mountains 3500 feet above the lake, or 19,000 feet above the sea, and covered with perpetual snow, from which never-failing source the lake is supplied.... Its elevation, measured by the temperature of boiling water, is 15,600 feet.” The absence of birds on Pamir, reported by Marco, probably shows that he passed very late or early in the season. Hiuen Tsang, we see, gives a different account; Wood was there in the winter, but heard that in summer the lake swarmed with water-fowl. [Cf. Captain Trotter, p. 263, in Forsyth’s Mission.] The Pamir Steppe was crossed by Benedict Goës late in the autumn of 1603, and the narrative speaks of the great cold and desolation, and the difficulty of breathing. We have also an abstract of the journey of Abdul Mejid, a British Agent, who passed Pamir on his way to Kokan in 1861:—“Fourteen weary days were occupied in crossing the steppe; the marches were long, depending on uncertain supplies of grass and water, which sometimes wholly failed them; food for man and beast had to be carried with the party, for not a trace of human habitation is to be met with in those inhospitable wilds.... The steppe is interspersed with tamarisk jungle and the wild willow, and in the summer with tracts of high grass.” (Neumann, Pilgerfahrten Buddh. Priester, p. 50; V. et V. de H. T. 271–272; Wood, 232; Proc. R. G. S. X. 150.) There is nothing absolutely to decide whether Marco’s route from Wakhán lay by Wood’s Lake “Sirikol,” or Victoria, or by the more southerly source of the Oxus in Pamir Kul. These routes would unite in the valley of Táshkurgán, and his road thence to Kashgar was, I apprehend, nearly the same as the Mirza’s in 1868–1869, by the lofty Chichiklik Pass and Kin Valley. But I cannot account for the forty days of wilderness. The Mirza was but thirty-four days from Faizabad to Kashgar, and Faiz Bakhsh only twenty-five. [Severtsof (Bul. Soc. Géog. XI. 1890, p. 587), who accepts Trotter’s route, by the Pamir Khurd (Little Pamir), says there are three routes from Wakhán to Little Pamir, going up the Sarhadd: one during the winter, by the frozen river; the two others available during the spring and the summer, up and down the snowy chain along the right bank of the Sarhadd, until the valley widens out into a plain, where a swelling is hardly to be seen, so flat is it; this chain is the dividing ridge between the Sarhadd and the Aksu. From the summit, the traveller, looking towards the west, sees at his feet the mountains he has crossed; to the east, the Pamir Kul and the Aksu, the river flowing from it. The pasture grounds around the Pamir Kul and the sources of the Sarhadd are magnificent; but lower down, the Aksu valley is arid, dotted only with pasture grounds of little extent, and few and far between. It is to this part of Pamir that Marco Polo’s description applies; more than any other part of this ensemble of high valleys, this line of water parting, of the Sarhadd and the Aksu, has the aspect of a Roof of the World (Bam-i-dunya, Persian name of Pamir).—H. C.]. [We can trace Marco Polo’s route from Wakhán, on comparing it with Captain Younghusband’s Itinerary from Kashgar, which he left on the 22nd July, 1891, for Little Pamir: Little Pamir at Bozai-Gumbaz, joins with the Pamir-i-Wakhán at the Wakhijrui Pass, first explored by Colonel Lockhart’s mission. Hence the route lies by the old fort of Kurgan-i-Ujadbai at the junction of the two branches of the Tagh-dum-bash Pamir (Supreme Head of the Mountains), the Tagh-dum-bash Pamir, Tásh Kurgán, Bulun Kul, the Gez Defile and Kashgar. (Proc. R. G. S. XIV. 1892, pp. 205–234.)—H. C.] We may observe that Severtsof asserts Pamir to be a generic term, applied to all high plateaux in the Thian Shan.[3] [“The Pámír plateau may be described as a great, broad, rounded ridge, extending north and south, and crossed by thick mountain chains, between which lie elevated valleys, open and gently sloping towards the east, but narrow and confined, with a rapid fall towards the west. The waters which run in all, with the exception of the eastern flow from the Tághdúngbásh, collect in the Oxus; the Áksú from the Little Pámír lake receiving the eastern drainage, which finds an outlet in the Áktásh Valley, and joining the Múrgháb, which obtains that from the Alichór and Síríz Pámírs. As the eastern Tághdúngbásh stream finds its way into the Yarkand river, the watershed must be held as extending from that Pámír, down the range dividing it from the Little Pámír, and along the Neza Tásh mountains to the Kizil Art Pass, leading to the Alái.” (Colonel Gordon, Forsyth’s Mission, p. 231.) Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon (Forsyth’s Mission, p. 231) says also: “Regarding the name ‘Pámír,’ the meaning appears to be wilderness—a place depopulated, abandoned, waste, yet capable of habitation. I obtained this information on the Great Pámír from one of our intelligent guides, who said in explanation—‘In former days, when this part was inhabited by Kirghiz, as is shown by the ruins of their villages and burial-grounds, the valley was not all called Pámír, as it is now. It was known by its village names, as is the country beyond Sirikol, which being now occupied by Kirghiz is not known by one name, but partly as Chárling, Bas Robát, etc. If deserted it would be Pámír.’” In a note Sir T. D. Forsyth adds that the same explanation of the word was given to him at Yangi-Hissar, and that it is in fact a Khokandi-Turki word.—H. C.] It would seem, from such notices as have been received, that there is not, strictly speaking, one steppe called Pamir, but a variety of Pamirs, which are lofty valleys between ranges of hills, presenting luxuriant summer pasture, and with floors more or less flat, but nowhere more than 5 or 6 miles in width and often much less. [This is quite exact; Mr. E. Delmar Morgan writes in the Scottish Geog. Mag. January, 1892, p. 17: “Following the terminology of Yule adopted by geographers, and now well established, we have (1) Pamir Alichur; (2) Pamir Khurd (or “Little”); (3) Pamir Kalan (or “Great”); (4) Pamir Khargosi (“of the hare”); (5) Pamir Sares; (6) Pamir Rang-kul.”—H. C.] Horns of Ovis Poli. Wood speaks of the numerous wolves in this region. And the great sheep is that to which Blyth, in honour of our traveller, has given the name of Ovis Poli.[4] A pair of horns, sent by Wood to the Royal Asiatic Society, and of which a representation is given above, affords the following dimensions:—Length of one horn on the curve, 4 feet 8 inches; round the base 14¼ inches; distance of tips apart 3 feet 9 inches. This sheep appears to be the same as the Rass, of which Burnes heard that the horns were so big that a man could not lift a pair, and that foxes bred in them; also that the carcass formed a load for two horses. Wood says that these horns supply shoes for the Kirghiz horses, and also a good substitute for stirrup-irons. “We saw numbers of horns strewed about in every direction, the spoils of the Kirghiz hunter. Some of these were of an astonishingly large size, and belonged to an animal of a species between a goat and a sheep, inhabiting the steppes of Pamir. The ends of the horns projecting above the snow often indicated the direction of the road; and wherever they were heaped in large quantities and disposed in a semicircle, there our escort recognised the site of a Kirghiz summer encampment.... We came in sight of a rough-looking building, decked out with the horns of the wild sheep, and all but buried amongst the snow. It was a Kirghiz burying-ground.” (Pp. 223, 229, 231.) [With reference to Wood’s remark that the horns of the Ovis Poli supply shoes for the Kirghiz horses, Mr. Rockhill writes to me that a Paris newspaper of 24th November, 1894, observes: “Horn shoes made of the horn of sheep are successfully used in Lyons. They are especially adapted to horses employed in towns, where the pavements are often slippery. Horses thus shod can be driven, it is said, at the most rapid pace over the worst pavement without slipping.” (Cf. Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 69; Chasses et Explorations dans la Région des Pamirs, par le Vte. Ed. de Poncins, Paris, 1897, 8vo.—H. C.).] In 1867 this great sheep was shot by M. Severtsof, on the Plateau of Aksai, in the western Thian Shan. He reports these animals to go in great herds, and to be very difficult to kill. However, he brought back two specimens. The Narin River is stated to be the northern limit of the species.[5] Severtsof also states that the enemies of the Ovis Poli are the wolves, [and Colonel Gordon says that the leopards and wolves prey almost entirely upon them. (On the Ovis Poli, see Captain Deasy, In Tibet, p. 361.)—H. C.] Ovis Poli, the Great Sheep of Pamir. (After Severtsof.) “Il hi a grant moutitude de mouton sauvages qe sunt grandisme, car ont les cornes bien six paumes” ... Colonel Gordon, the head of the exploring party detached by Sir Douglas Forsyth, brought away a head of Ovis Poli, which quite bears out the account by its eponymus of horns “good 6 palms in length,” say 60 inches. This head, as I learn from a letter of Colonel Gordon’s to a friend, has one horn perfect which measures 65½ inches on the curves; the other, broken at the tip, measures 64 inches; the straight line between the tips is 55 inches. [Captain Younghusband [1886] “before leaving the Altai Mountains, picked up several heads of the Ovis Poli, called Argali by the Mongols. They were somewhat different from those which I afterwards saw at Yarkand, which had been brought in from the Pamir. Those I found in the Gobi were considerably thicker at the base, there was a less degree of curve, and a shorter length of horn.” A full description of the Ovis Poli, with a large plate drawing of the horns, may be seen in Colonel Gordon’s Roof of the World. (See p. 81.) (Proc. R. G. S. X. 1888, p. 495.) Some years later, Captain Younghusband speaks repeatedly of the great sport of shooting Ovis Poli. (Proc. R. G. S. XIV. 1892, pp. 205, 234.)—H. C.] As to the pasture, Timkowski heard that “the pasturage of Pamir is so luxuriant and nutritious, that if horses are left on it for more than forty days they die of repletion.” (I. 421.) And Wood: “The grass of Pamir, they tell you, is so rich that a sorry horse is here brought into good condition in less than twenty days; and its nourishing qualities are evidenced in the productiveness of their ewes, which almost invariably bring forth two lambs at a birth.” (P. 365.) With regard to the effect upon fire ascribed to the “great cold,” Ramusio’s version inserts the expression “gli fu affermato per miracolo,” “it was asserted to him as a wonderful circumstance.” And Humboldt thinks it so strange that Marco should not have observed this personally that he doubts whether Polo himself passed the Pamir. “How is it that he does not say that he himself had seen how the flames disperse and leap about, as I myself have so often experienced at similar altitudes in the Cordilleras of the Andes, especially when investigating the boiling-point of water?” (Cent. Asia, Germ. Transl. I. 588.) But the words quoted from Ramusio do not exist in the old texts, and they are probably an editorial interpolation indicating disbelief in the statement. MM. Huc and Gabet made a like observation on the high passes of north-eastern Tibet: “The argols gave out much smoke, but would not burn with any flame”; only they adopted the native idea that this as well as their own sufferings in respiration was caused by some pernicious exhalation. Major Montgomerie, R.E., of the Indian Survey, who has probably passed more time nearer the heavens than any man living, sends me the following note on this passage: “What Marco Polo says as to fire at great altitudes not cooking so effectually as usual is perfectly correct as far as anything boiled is concerned, but I doubt if it is as to anything roasted. The want of brightness in a fire at great altitudes is, I think, altogether attributable to the poorness of the fuel, which consists of either small sticks or bits of roots, or of argols of dung, all of which give out a good deal of smoke, more especially the latter if not quite dry; but I have often seen a capital blaze made with the argols when perfectly dry. As to cooking, we found that rice, dál, and potatoes would never soften properly, no matter how long they were boiled. This, of course, was due to the boiling-point being only from 170° to 180°. Our tea, moreover, suffered from the same cause, and was never good when we were over 15,000 feet. This was very marked. Some of my natives made dreadful complaints about the rice and dál that they got from the village-heads in the valleys, and vowed that they only gave them what was very old and hard, as they could not soften it!” [Note 3.]—Bolor is a subject which it would take several pages to discuss with fulness, and I must refer for such fuller discussion to a paper in the J. R. G. S. vol. xlii. p. 473. The name Bolor is very old, occurring in Hiuen Tsang’s Travels (7th century), and in still older Chinese works of like character. General Cunningham has told us that Balti is still termed Balor by the Dards of Gilghit; and Mr. Shaw, that Palor is an old name still sometimes used by the Kirghiz for the upper part of Chitrál. The indications of Hiuen Tsang are in accordance with General Cunningham’s information; and the fact that Chitrál is described under the name of Bolor in Chinese works of the last century entirely justifies that of Mr. Shaw. A Pushtu poem of the 17th century, translated by Major Raverty, assigns the mountains of Bilaur-istán, as the northern boundary of Swát. The collation of these indications shows that the term Bolor must have been applied somewhat extensively to the high regions adjoining the southern margin of Pamir. And a passage in the Táríkh Rashídí, written at Kashgar in the 16th century by a cousin of the great Baber, affords us a definition of the tract to which, in its larger sense, the name was thus applied: “Malaur (i.e. Balaur or Bolor) ... is a country with few level spots. It has a circuit of four months’ march. The eastern frontier borders on Kashgar and Yarkand; it has Badakhshan to the north, Kabul to the west, and Kashmír to the south.” The writer was thoroughly acquainted with his subject, and the region which he so defines must have embraced Sirikol and all the wild country south of Yarkand, Balti, Gilghit, Yasin, Chitrál, and perhaps Kafiristán. This enables us to understand Polo’s use of the term. MARCO POLO’S ITINERARIES No. III. The name of Bolor in later days has been in a manner a symbol of controversy. It is prominent in the apocryphal travels of George Ludwig von ————, preserved in the Military Archives at St. Petersburg. That work represents a town of Bolor as existing to the north of Badakhshan, with Wakhán still further to the north. This geography we now know to be entirely erroneous, but it is in full accordance with the maps and tables of the Jesuit missionaries and their pupils, who accompanied the Chinese troops to Kashgar in 1758–1759. The paper in the Geographical Society’s Journal, which has been referred to, demonstrates how these erroneous data must have originated. It shows that the Jesuit geography was founded on downright accidental error, and, as a consequence, that the narratives which profess de visu to corroborate that geography must be downright forgeries. When the first edition was printed, I retained the belief in a Bolor where the Jesuits placed it. [The Chinese traveller, translated by M. Gueluy (Desc. de la Chine occid. p. 53), speaks of Bolor, to the west of Yarkand, inhabited by Mahomedans who live in huts; the country is sandy and rather poor. Severtsof says, (Bul. Soc. Géog. XI. 1890, p. 591) that he believes that the name of Bolor should be expunged from geographical nomenclature as a source of confusion and error. Humboldt, with his great authority, has too definitely attached this name to an erroneous orographical system. Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon says that he “made repeated enquiries from Kirghiz and Wakhis, and from the Mír [of Wakhán], Fatteh Ali Shah, regarding ‘Bólór,’ as a name for any mountain, country, or place, but all professed perfect ignorance of it.” (Forsyth’s Mission.)—H. C.] The J. A. S. Bengal for 1853 (vol. xxii.) contains extracts from the diary of a Mr. Gardiner in those central regions of Asia. These read more like the memoranda of a dyspeptic dream than anything else, and the only passage I can find illustrative of our traveller is the following; the region is described as lying twenty days south-west of Kashgar: “The Keiaz tribe live in caves on the highest peaks, subsist by hunting, keep no flocks, said to be anthropophagous, but have handsome women; eat their flesh raw.” (P. 295; Pèlerins Boud. III. 316, 421, etc.; Ladak, 34, 45, 47; Mag. Asiatique, I. 92, 96–97; Not. et Ext. II. 475, XIV. 492; J. A. S. B. XXXI. 279; Mr. R. Shaw in Geog. Proceedings, XVI. 246, 400; Notes regarding Bolor, etc., J. R. G. S. XLII. 473.) As this sheet goes finally to press we hear of the exploration of Pamir by officers of Mr. Forsyth’s Mission. [I have made use of the information collected by them.—H. C.]
Regions on and near the Upper Oxus
[1] “Yet this barren and inaccessible upland, with its scanty handful of wild people, finds a place in Eastern history and geography from an early period, and has now become the subject of serious correspondence between two great European Governments, and its name, for a few weeks at least, a household word in London. Indeed, this is a striking accident of the course of modern history. We see the Slav and the Englishman—representatives of two great branches of the Aryan race, but divided by such vast intervals of space and time from the original common starting-point of their migration—thus brought back to the lap of Pamir to which so many quivering lines point as the centre of their earliest seats, there by common consent to lay down limits to mutual encroachment.” (Quarterly Review, April, 1873, p. 548.)
[2] Ibn Haukal reckons Wakhán as an Indian country. It is a curious coincidence (it can scarcely be more) that Nono in the Garo tongue of Eastern Bengal signifies “a younger brother.” (J. A. S. B. XXII. 153, XVIII. 208.)
[3] According to Colonel Tod, the Hindu bard Chand speaks of “Pamer, chief of mountains.” (I. p. 24.) But one may like and respect Colonel Tod without feeling able to rely on such quotations of his unconfirmed.
[4] Usually written Polii, which is nonsense.
[5] [“The Tian Shan wild sheep has since been described as the Ovis Karelini, a species somewhat smaller than the true Ovis Poli which frequents the Pamirs.” (Colonel Gordon, Roof of the World, p. 83, note.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Of the Kingdom of Cascar.
Head of a Native of Kashgar.
Cascar is a region lying between north-east and east, and constituted a kingdom in former days, but now it is subject to the Great Kaan. The people worship Mahommet. There are a good number of towns and villages, but the greatest and finest is Cascar itself. The inhabitants live by trade and handicrafts; they have beautiful gardens and vineyards, and fine estates, and grow a great deal of cotton. From this country many merchants go forth about the world on trading journeys. The natives are a wretched, niggardly set of people; they eat and drink in miserable fashion. There are in the country many Nestorian Christians, who have churches of their own. The people of the country have a peculiar language, and the territory extends for five days’ journey.[{1}]
View of Kashgar. (From Shaw’s “Tartary.”)
[Note 1.]—[There is no longer any difficulty in understanding how the travellers, after crossing Pamir, should have arrived at Kashgar if they followed the route from Táshkurgán through the Gez Defile.
The Itinerary of the Mirza from Badakhshan (Fáizabad) is the following: Zebák, Ishkashm, on the Panja, which may be considered the beginning of the Wakhán Valley, Panja Fort, in Wakhán, Raz Khan, Patur, near Lunghar (commencement of Pamir Steppe), Pamir Kul, or Barkút Yassin, 13,300 feet, Aktash, Sirikul Táshkurgán, Shukrab, Chichik Dawan, Akul, Kotul, Chahul Station (road to Yarkand), Kila Karawal, Aghiz Gah, Yangi-Hissar, Opechan, Yanga Shahr, Kashgar, where he arrived on the 3rd February, 1869. (Cf. Report of “The Mirza’s” Exploration from Caubul to Kashgar. By Major T. G. Montgomerie, R.E.... (Jour. R. Geog. Soc. XLI. 1871, pp. 132–192.)
Major Montgomerie (l.c. p. 144) says: “The alterations in the positions of Kashgar and Yarkund in a great measure explains why Marco Polo, in crossing from Badakhshan to Eastern Turkestan, went first to Kashgar and then to Yarkund. With the old positions of Yarkund and Kashgar it appeared that the natural route from Badakhshan would have led first to Yarkund; with the new positions, and guided by the light of the Mirza’s route, from which it is seen that the direct route to Yarkund is not a good one, it is easy to understand how a traveller might prefer going to Kashgar first, and then to Yarkund. It is satisfactory to have elicited this further proof of the general accuracy of the great traveller’s account of his journey through Central Asia.”
The Itinerary of Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon (Sirikol, the Pámírs and Wakhán, ch. vi. of Forsyth’s Mission to Yarkund in 1873) runs thus: “Left Káshgar (21st March), Yangi-Hissar, Kaskasú Pass, descent to Chihil Gumbaz (forty Domes), where the road branches off to Yárkand (110 miles), Torut Pass, Tangi-Tár (defile), ‘to the foot of a great elevated slope leading to the Chichiklik Pass, plain, and lake (14,700 feet), below the Yámbulák and Kok-Moinok Passes, which are used later in the season on the road between Yangi-Hissar and Sirikol, to avoid the Tangi-Tár and Shindi defiles. As the season advances, these passes become free from snow, while the defiles are rendered dangerous and difficult by the rush of the melting snow torrents. From the Chichiklik plain we proceeded down the Shindi ravine, over an extremely bad stony road, to the Sirikol River, up the banks of which we travelled to Táshkurgán, reaching it on the tenth day from Yangi-Hissar. The total distance is 125 miles.’ Then Táshkurgán (ancient name Várshídi): ‘the open part of the Sirikol Valley extends from about 8 miles below Táshkurgán to apparently a very considerable distance towards the Kunjút mountain range;’ left Táshkurgán for Wákhan (2nd April, 1873); leave Sirikol Valley, enter the Shindán defile, reach the Áktásh Valley, follow the Áktásh stream (called Áksú by the Kirghiz) through the Little Pamir to the Gházkul (Little Pamir) Lake or Barkat Yássín, from which it takes its rise, four days from Táshkurgán. Little Pamir ‘is bounded on the south by the continuation of the Neza Tásh range, which separates it from the Tághdúngbásh Pámir,’ west of the lake, Langar, Sarhadd, 30 miles from Langar, and seven days from Sirikol, and Kila Panj, twelve days from Sirikol.”—H. C.]
[I cannot admit with Professor Paquier (l.c. pp. 127–128) that Marco Polo did not visit Kashgar.—Grenard (II. p. 17) makes the remark that it took Marco Polo seventy days from Badakhshan to Kashgar, a distance that, in the Plain of Turkestan, he shall cross in sixteen days.—The Chinese traveller, translated by M. Gueluy (Desc. de la Chine occidentale, p. 45), says that the name Kashgar is made of Kash, fine colour, and gar, brick house.—H. C.]
Kashgar was the capital, from 1865 to 1877, of Ya’kúb Kúshbegi, a soldier of fortune, by descent it is said a Tajik of Shighnan, who, when the Chinese yoke was thrown off, made a throne for himself in Eastern Turkestan, and subjected the whole basin to his authority, taking the title of Atalik Gházi.
It is not easy to see how Kashgar should have been subject to the Great Kaan, except in the sense in which all territories under Mongol rule owed him homage. Yarkand, Polo acknowledges to have belonged to Kaidu, and the boundary between Kaidu’s territory and the Kaan’s lay between Karashahr and Komul [[Bk. I. ch. xli.]], much further east.
[Bretschneider, Med. Res. (II. p. 47), says: “Marco Polo states with respect to the kingdom of Cascar (I. 189) that it was subject to the Great Khan, and says the same regarding Cotan (I. 196), whilst Yarcan (I. 195), according to Marco Polo, belonged to Kaidu. This does not agree with Rashid’s statements about the boundary between Kaidu’s territory and the Khan’s.”—H. C.]
Kashgar was at this time a Metropolitan See of the Nestorian Church. (Cathay, etc. 275, ccxlv.)
Many strange sayings have been unduly ascribed to our traveller, but I remember none stranger than this by Colonel Tod: “Marco Polo calls Cashgar, where he was in the 6th century, the birthplace of the Swedes”! (Rajasthan, I. 60.) Pétis de la Croix and Tod between them are answerable for this nonsense. (See The Hist. of Genghizcan the Great, p. 116.)
On cotton, see ch. xxxvi.—On Nestorians, see Kanchau.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Of the Great City of Samarcan.
Samarcan is a great and noble city towards the north-west, inhabited by both Christians and Saracens, who are subject to the Great Kaan’s nephew, Caidou by name; he is, however, at bitter enmity with the Kaan.[{1}] I will tell you of a great marvel that happened at this city.
View of Samarcand. (From a sketch by Mr. Ivanoff.)
“Samarcan est une grandisme cité et noble.”
It is not a great while ago that Sigatay, own brother to the Great Kaan, who was Lord of this country and of many an one besides, became a Christian.[{2}] The Christians rejoiced greatly at this, and they built a great church in the city, in honour of John the Baptist; and by his name the church was called. And they took a very fine stone which belonged to the Saracens, and placed it as the pedestal of a column in the middle of the church, supporting the roof. It came to pass, however, that Sigatay died. Now the Saracens were full of rancour about that stone that had been theirs, and which had been set up in the church of the Christians; and when they saw that the Prince was dead, they said one to another that now was the time to get back their stone, by fair means or by foul. And that they might well do, for they were ten times as many as the Christians. So they gat together and went to the church and said that the stone they must and would have. The Christians acknowledged that it was theirs indeed, but offered to pay a large sum of money and so be quit. Howbeit, the others replied that they never would give up the stone for anything in the world. And words ran so high that the Prince heard thereof, and ordered the Christians either to arrange to satisfy the Saracens, if it might be, with money, or to give up the stone. And he allowed them three days to do either the one thing or the other.
What shall I tell you? Well, the Saracens would on no account agree to leave the stone where it was, and this out of pure despite to the Christians, for they knew well enough that if the stone were stirred the church would come down by the run. So the Christians were in great trouble and wist not what to do. But they did do the best thing possible; they besought Jesus Christ that he would consider their case, so that the holy church should not come to destruction, nor the name of its Patron Saint, John the Baptist, be tarnished by its ruin. And so when the day fixed by the Prince came round, they went to the church betimes in the morning, and lo, they found the stone removed from under the column; the foot of the column was without support, and yet it bore the load as stoutly as before! Between the foot of the column and the ground there was a space of three palms. So the Saracens had away their stone, and mighty little joy withal. It was a glorious miracle, nay, it is so, for the column still so standeth, and will stand as long as God pleaseth.[{3}]
Now let us quit this and continue our journey.
[Note 1.]—Of Kaidu, Kúblái Kaan’s kinsman and rival, and their long wars, we shall have to speak later. He had at this time a kind of joint occupancy of Samarkand and Bokhara with the Khans of Chagatai, his cousins.
[On Samarkand generally see: Samarqand, by W. Radloff, translated into French by L. Leger, Rec. d’Itin. dans l’Asie Centrale, École des Langues Orient., Paris, 1878, p. 284 et seq.; A travers le royaume de Tamerlan (Asie Centrale) ... par Guillaume Capus ... Paris, 1892, 8vo.—H. C.]
Marco evidently never was at Samarkand, though doubtless it was visited by his Father and Uncle on their first journey, when we know they were long at Bokhara. Having, therefore, little to say descriptive of a city he had not seen, he tells us a story:—
“So geographers, in Afric maps,
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o’er unhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.”
As regards the Christians of Samarkand who figure in the preceding story, we may note that the city had been one of the Metropolitan Sees of the Nestorian Church since the beginning of the 8th century, and had been a bishopric perhaps two centuries earlier. Prince Sempad, High Constable of Armenia, in a letter written from Samarkand in 1246 or 1247, mentions several circumstances illustrative of the state of things indicated in this story: “I tell you that we have found many Christians scattered all over the East, and many fine churches, lofty, ancient, and of good architecture, which have been spoiled by the Turks. Hence, the Christians of this country came to the presence of the reigning Kaan’s grandfather (i.e. Chinghiz); he received them most honourably, and granted them liberty of worship, and issued orders to prevent their having any just cause of complaint by word or deed. And so the Saracens, who used to treat them with contempt, have now the like treatment in double measure.”
Shortly after Marco’s time, viz. in 1328, Thomas of Mancasola, a Dominican, who had come from Samarkand with a Mission to the Pope (John XXII.) from Ilchigadai, Khan of Chagatai, was appointed Latin Bishop of that city. (Mosheim, p. 110, etc.; Cathay, p. 192.)
[Note 2.]—Chagatai, here called Sigatay, was Uncle, not Brother, to the Great Kaan (Kúblái). Nor was Kaidu either Chagatai’s son or Kúblái’s nephew, as Marco here and elsewhere represents him to be. (See Bk. IV. ch. i.) The term used to describe Chagatai’s relationship is frère charnel, which excludes ambiguity, cousinship, or the like (such as is expressed by the Italian fratello cugíno), and corresponds, I believe, to the brother german of Scotch law documents.
[Note 3.]—One might say, These things be an allegory! We take the fine stone that belongs to the Saracens (or Papists) to build our church on, but the day of reckoning comes at last, and our (Irish Protestant) Christians are afraid that the Church will come about their ears. May it stand, and better than that of Samarkand has done!
There is a story somewhat like this in D’Herbelot, about the Karmathian Heretics carrying off the Black Stone from Mecca, and being obliged years after to bring it back across the breadth of Arabia; on which occasion the stone conducted itself in a miraculous manner.
There is a remarkable Stone at Samarkand, the Kok-Tash or Green Stone, on which Timur’s throne was set. Tradition says that, big as it is, it was brought by him from Brusa;—but tradition may be wrong. (See Vámbéry’s Travels, p. 206.) [Also H. Moser, A travers l’Asie centrale, 114–115.—H. C.]
[The Archimandrite Palladius (Chinese Recorder, VI. p. 108) quotes from the Chi shun Chin-kiang chi (Description of Chin-Kiang), 14th century, the following passage regarding the pillar: “There is a temple (in Samarcand) supported by four enormous wooden pillars, each of them 40 feet high. One of these pillars is in a hanging position, and stands off from the floor more than a foot.”—H. C.]
CHAPTER XXXV.
Of the Province of Yarcan.
Yarcan is a province five days’ journey in extent. The people follow the Law of Mahommet, but there are also Nestorian and Jacobite Christians. They are subject to the same Prince that I mentioned, the Great Kaan’s nephew. They have plenty of everything, [particularly of cotton. The inhabitants are also great craftsmen, but a large proportion of them have swoln legs, and great crops at the throat, which arises from some quality in their drinking-water.] As there is nothing else worth telling we may pass on.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—Yarkan or Yarken seems to be the general pronunciation of the name to this day, though we write Yarkand.
[A Chinese traveller, translated by M. Gueluy (Desc. de la Chine occidentale, p. 41), says that the word Yarkand is made of Iar, earth, and Kiang (Kand?), large, vast, but this derivation is doubtful. The more probable one is that Yarkand is made up of Yar, new, and Kand, Kend, or Kent, city.—H. C.]
Mir ’Izzat Ullah in modern days speaks of the prevalence of goitre at Yarkand. And Mr. Shaw informs me that during his recent visit to Yarkand (1869) he had numerous applications for iodine as a remedy for that disease. The theory which connects it with the close atmosphere of valleys will not hold at Yarkand. (J. R. A. S. VII. 303.)
[Dr. Sven Hedin says that three-fourths of the population of Yarkand are suffering from goitre; he ascribes the prevalence of the disease to the bad quality of the water, which is kept in large basins, used indifferently for bathing, washing, or draining. Only Hindu and “Andijdanlik” merchants, who drink well water, are free from goitre.
Lieutenant Roborovsky, the companion of Pievtsov, in 1889, says: “In the streets one meets many men and women with large goitres, a malady attributed to the bad quality of the water running in the town conduits, and drunk by the inhabitants in its natural state. It appears in men at the age of puberty, and in women when they marry.” (Proc. R. G. S. 2 ser. XII. 1890, p. 36.)
Formerly the Mirza (J. R. G. S. 1871, p. 181) said: “Goitre is very common in the city [of Yarkund], and in the country round, but it is unknown in Kashgar.”
General Pievtsov gives to the small oasis of Yarkand (264 square miles) a population of 150,000, that is, 567 inhabitants per square mile. He, after Prjevalsky’s death, started, with V. L. Roborovsky (botanist) and P. K. Kozlov (zoologist), who were later joined by K. I. Bogdanovich (geologist), on his expedition to Tibet (1889–1890). He followed the route Yarkand, Khotan, Kiria, Nia, and Charchan.—H. C.]
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Of a Province called Cotan.
Cotan is a province lying between north-east and east, and is eight days’ journey in length. The people are subject to the Great Kaan,[{1}] and are all worshippers of Mahommet.[{2}] There are numerous towns and villages in the country, but Cotan, the capital, is the most noble of all, and gives its name to the kingdom. Everything is to be had there in plenty, including abundance of cotton, [with flax, hemp, wheat, wine, and the like]. The people have vineyards and gardens and estates. They live by commerce and manufactures, and are no soldiers.[{3}]
[Note 1.]—[The Buddhist Government of Khotan was destroyed by Boghra Khân (about 980–990); it was temporarily restored by the Buddhist Kutchluk Khân, chief of the Naïmans, who came from the banks of the Ili, destroyed the Mahomedan dynasty of Boghra Khân (1209), but was in his turn subjugated by Chinghiz Khan.
The only Christian monument discovered in Khotan is a bronze cross brought back by Grenard (III. pp. 134–135); see also Devéria, Notes d’Epigraphie Mongole, p. 80.—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—“Aourent Mahommet”. Though this is Marco’s usual formula to define Mahomedans, we can scarcely suppose that he meant it literally. But in other cases it was very literally interpreted. Thus in Baudouin de Sebourc, the Dame de Pontieu, a passionate lady who renounces her faith before Saladin, says:—
“‘Et je renoië Dieu, et le pooir qu’il a;
Et Marie, sa Mère, qu’on dist qui le porta;
Mahom voel aourer, aportez-le-moi chà!’
* * * * Li Soudans commanda
Qu’on aportast Mahom; et celle l’aoura.” (I. p. 72.)
The same romance brings in the story of the Stone of Samarkand, adapted from [ch. xxxiv.], and accounts for its sanctity in Saracen eyes because it had long formed a pedestal for Mahound!
And this notion gave rise to the use of Mawmet for an idol in general; whilst from the Mahommerie or place of Islamite worship the name of mummery came to be applied to idolatrous or unmeaning rituals; both very unjust etymologies. Thus of mosques in Richard Cœur-de-Lion:
“Kyrkes they made of Crystene Lawe,
And her Mawmettes lete downe drawe.” (Weber, II. 228.)
So Correa calls a golden idol, which was taken by Da Gama in a ship of Calicut, “an image of Mahomed” (372). Don Quixote too, who ought to have known better, cites with admiration the feat of Rinaldo in carrying off, in spite of forty Moors, a golden image of Mahomed.
[Note 3.]—800 li (160 miles) east of Chokiuka or Yarkand, Hiuen Tsang comes to Kiustanna (Kustána) or Khotan. “The country chiefly consists of plains covered with stones and sand. The remainder, however, is favourable to agriculture, and produces everything abundantly. From this country are got woollen carpets, fine felts, well woven taffetas, white and black jade.” Chinese authors of the 10th century speak of the abundant grapes and excellent wine of Khotan.
Chinese annals of the 7th and 8th centuries tell us that the people of Khotan had chronicles of their own, a glimpse of a lost branch of history. Their writing, laws, and literature were modelled upon those of India.
Ilchi, the modern capital, was visited by Mr. Johnson, of the Indian Survey, in 1865. The country, after the revolt against the Chinese in 1863, came first under the rule of Habíb-ullah, an aged chief calling himself Khán Bádshah of Khotan; and since the treacherous seizure and murder of Habíb-ullah by Ya’kub Beg of Kashgar in January 1867, it has formed a part of the kingdom of the latter.
Mr. Johnson says: “The chief grains of the country are Indian corn, wheat, barley of two kinds, bájra, jowár (two kinds of holcus), buckwheat and rice, all of which are superior to the Indian grains, and are of a very fine quality.... The country is certainly superior to India, and in every respect equal to Kashmir, over which it has the advantage of being less humid, and consequently better suited to the growth of fruits. Olives (?), pears, apples, peaches, apricots, mulberries, grapes, currants, and melons, all exceedingly large in size and of a delicious flavour, are produced in great variety and abundance.... Cotton of valuable quality, and raw silk, are produced in very large quantities.”
[Khotan is the chief place of Turkestan for cotton manufactures; its khàm is to be found everywhere. This name, which means raw in Persian, is given to a stuff made with cotton thread, which has not undergone any preparation; they manufacture also two other cotton stuffs: alatcha with blue and red stripes, and tchekmen, very thick and coarse, used to make dresses and sacks; if khàm is better at Khotan, alatcha and tchekmen are superior at Kashgar. (Grenard, II. pp. 191–192.)
Grenard (II. pp. 175–177), among the fruits, mentions apricots (ourouk), ripe in June, and so plentiful that to keep them they are dried up to be used like garlic against mountain sickness; melons (koghoun); water-melons (tarbouz, the best are from Hami); vine (tâl)—the best grapes (uzum) come from Boghâz langar, near Keria; the best dried grapes are those from Turfan; peaches (shaptâlou); pomegranates (anár, best from Kerghalyk), etc.; the best apples are those of Nia and Sadju; pears are very bad; cherries and strawberries are unknown. Grenard (II. p. 106) also says that grapes are very good, but that Khotan wine is detestable, and tastes like vinegar.
The Chinese traveller, translated by M. Gueluy (Desc. de la Chine occidentale, p. 45), says that all the inhabitants of Khotan are seeking for precious stones, and that melons and fruits are more plentiful than at Yarkand.—H. C.]
Mr. Johnson reports the whole country to be rich in soil and very much under-peopled. Ilchi, the capital, has a population of about 40,000, and is a great place for manufactures. The chief articles produced are silks, felts, carpets (both silk and woollen), coarse cotton cloths, and paper from the mulberry fibre. The people are strict Mahomedans, and speak a Turki dialect. Both sexes are good-looking, with a slightly Tartar cast of countenance. (V. et V. de H. T. 278; Rémusat, H. de la V. de Khotan, 37, 73–84; Chin. Repos. IX. 128; J. R. G. S. XXXVII. 6 seqq.)
[In 1891, Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard at the small village of Yotkàn, about 8 miles to the west of the present Khotan, came across what they considered the most important and probably the most ancient city of southern Chinese Turkestan. The natives say that Yotkàn is the site of the old Capital. (Cf. Grenard, III. p. 127 et seq. for a description and drawings of coins and objects found at this place.)
The remains of the ancient capital of Khotan were accidentally discovered, some thirty-five years ago, at Yotkàn, a village of the Borazân Tract. A great mass of highly interesting finds of ancient art pottery, engraved stones, and early Khotan coins with Kharoṣṭhi-Chinese legends, coming from this site, have recently been thoroughly examined in Dr. Hoernle’s Report on the “British Collection of Central Asian Antiquities.” Stein.—(See Three further Collections of Ancient Manuscripts from Central Asia, by Dr. A. F. R. Hoernle ... Calcutta, 1897, 8vo.)
“The sacred sites of Buddhist Khotan which Hiuen Tsang and Fa-hian describe, can be shown to be occupied now, almost without exception, by Mohamedan shrines forming the object of popular pilgrimages.” (M. A. Stein, Archæological Work about Khotan, Jour. R. As. Soc., April, 1901, p. 296.)
It may be justly said that during the last few years numerous traces of Hindu civilisation have been found in Central Asia, extending from Khotan, through the Takla-Makan, as far as Turfan, and perhaps further up.
Dr. Sven Hedin, in the year 1896, during his second journey through Takla-Makan from Khotan to Shah Yar, visited the ruins between the Khotan Daria and the Kiria Daria, where he found the remains of the city of Takla-Makan now buried in the sands. He discovered figures of Buddha, a piece of papyrus with unknown characters, vestiges of habitations. This Asiatic Pompei, says the traveller, at least ten centuries old, is anterior to the Mahomedan invasion led by Kuteïbe Ibn-Muslim, which happened at the beginning of the 8th century. Its inhabitants were Buddhist, and of Aryan race, probably originating from Hindustan.—Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard discovered in the Kumâri grottoes, in a small hill on the right bank of the Karakash Daria, a manuscript written on birch bark in Kharosḥthi characters; these grottoes of Kumâri are mentioned in Hiuen Tsang. (II. p. 229.)
Dr. Sven Hedin followed the route Kashgar, Yangi-Hissar, Yarkand to Khotan, in 1895. He made a stay of nine days at Ilchi, the population of which he estimated at 5500 inhabitants (5000 Musulmans, 500 Chinese).
(See also Sven Hedin, Die Geog. wissenschaft. Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien, 1894–1897. Petermann’s Mitt., Ergänz. XXVIII. (Hft. 131), Gotha, 1900.—H. C.]
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Of the Province of Pein.
Pein is a province five days in length, lying between east and north-east. The people are worshippers of Mahommet, and subjects of the Great Kaan. There are a good number of towns and villages, but the most noble is Pein, the capital of the kingdom.[{1}] There are rivers in this country, in which quantities of Jasper and Chalcedony are found.[{2}] The people have plenty of all products, including cotton. They live by manufactures and trade. But they have a custom that I must relate. If the husband of any woman go away upon a journey and remain away for more than 20 days, as soon as that term is past the woman may marry another man, and the husband also may then marry whom he pleases.[{3}]
I should tell you that all the provinces that I have been speaking of, from Cascar forward, and those I am going to mention [as far as the city of Lop] belong to Great Turkey.
[Note 1.]—“In old times,” says the Haft Iklím., “travellers used to go from Khotan to Cathay in 14 (?) days, and found towns and villages all along the road [excepting, it may be presumed, on the terrible Gobi], so that there was no need to travel in caravans. In later days the fear of the Kalmaks caused this line to be abandoned, and the circuitous one occupied 100 days.” This directer route between Khotan and China must have been followed by Fa-hian on his way to India; by Hiuen Tsang on his way back; and by Shah Rukh’s ambassadors on their return from China in 1421. The circuitous route alluded to appears to have gone north from Khotan, crossed the Tarimgol, and fallen into the road along the base of the Thian Shan, eventually crossing the Desert southward from Komul.
Former commentators differed very widely as to the position of Pein, and as to the direction of Polo’s route from Khotan. The information acquired of late years leaves the latter no longer open to doubt. It must have been nearly coincident with that of Hiuen Tsang.
The perusal of Johnson’s Report of his journey to Khotan, and the Itineraries attached to it, enabled me to feel tolerable certainty as to the position of Charchan (see next chapter), and as to the fact that Marco followed a direct route from Khotan to the vicinity of Lake Lop. Pein, then, was identical with Pima,[1] which was the first city reached by Hiuen Tsang on his return to China after quitting Khotan, and which lay 330 li east of the latter city.[2] Other notices of Pima appear in Rémusat’s history of Khotan; some of these agree exactly as to the distance from the capital, adding that it stood on the banks of a river flowing from the East and entering the sandy Desert; whilst one account seems to place it at 500 li from Khotan. And in the Turkish map of Central Asia, printed in the Jahán Numá, as we learn from Sir H. Rawlinson, the town of Pím is placed a little way north of Khotan. Johnson found Khotan rife with stories of former cities overwhelmed by the shifting sands of the Desert, and these sands appear to have been advancing for ages; for far to the north-east of Pima, even in the 7th century, were to be found the deserted and ruined cities of the ancient kingdoms of Tuholo and Shemathona. “Where anciently were the seats of flourishing cities and prosperous communities,” says a Chinese author speaking of this region, “is nothing now to be seen but a vast desert; all has been buried in the sands, and the wild camel is hunted on those arid plains.”
Pima cannot have been very far from Kiria, visited by Johnson. This is a town of 7000 houses, lying east of Ilchi, and about 69 miles distant from it. The road for the most part lies through a highly cultivated and irrigated country, flanked by the sandy desert at three or four miles to the left. After passing eastward by Kiria it is said to make a great elbow, turning north; and within this elbow lie the sands that have buried cities and fertile country. Here Mr. Shaw supposes Pima lay (perhaps upon the river of Kiria). At Pima itself, in A.D. 644, there was a story of the destruction of a city lying further north, a judgment on the luxury and impiety of the people and their king, who, shocked at the eccentric aspect of a holy man, had caused him to be buried in sand up to the mouth.
(N. et E. XIV. 477; H. de la Ville de Khotan, 63–66; Klap. Tabl. Historiques, p. 182; Proc. R. G. S. XVI. 243.)
[Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard took the road from Khotan to Charchan; they left Khotan on the 4th May, 1893, passed Kiria, Nia, and instead of going direct to Charchan through the desert, they passed Kara Say at the foot of the Altyn tâgh, a route three days longer than the other, but one which was less warm, and where water, meat, milk, and barley could be found. Having passed Kapa, they crossed the Karamuren, and went up from Achan due north to Charchan, where they stayed three months. Nowhere do they mention Pein, or Pima, for it appears to be Kiria itself, which is the only real town between Khotan and the Lobnor. Grenard says in a note (p. 54, vol. ii.): “Pi-mo (Keria) recalls the Tibetan byé-ma, which is pronounced Péma, or Tchéma, and which means sand. Such is perhaps also the origin of Pialma, a village near Khotan, and of the old name of Charchan, Tché-mo-to-na, of which the two last syllables would represent grong (pronounce tong = town), or kr’om (t’om = bazaar). Now, not only would this etymology be justified because these three places are indeed surrounded with sand remarkably deep, but as they were the first three important places with which the Tibetans met coming into the desert of Gobi, either by the route of Gurgutluk and of Polor, or by Karakoram and Sandju, or by Tsadam, and they had thus as good a pretext to call them ‘towns of sand’ as the Chinese had to give to T’un-hwang the name of Shachau, viz. City of Sand. Kiria is called Ou-mi, under the Han, and the name of Pi-mo is found for the first time in Hiuen Tsang, that is to say, before the Tibetan invasions of the 8th century. It is not possible to admit that the incursion of the Tu-ku-hun in the 5th century could be the cause of this change of name. The hypothesis remains that Pi-mo was really the ancient name forced by the first Tibetan invaders spoken of by legend, that Ou-mi was either another name of the town, or a fancy name invented by the Chinese, like Yu-t’ien for Khotan, Su-lo for Kashgar....” Sir T. D. Forsyth (J. R. G. S., XLVII., 1877, p. 3) writes: “I should say that Peim or Pima must be identical with Kiria.”—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—The Jasper and Chalcedony of our author are probably only varieties of the semi-precious mineral called by us popularly Jade, by the Chinese Yü, by the Eastern Turks Kásh, by the Persians Yashm, which last is no doubt the same word with ἴασπις, and therefore with Jasper. The Greek Jaspis was in reality, according to Mr. King, a green Chalcedony.
The Jade of Turkestan is largely derived from water-rolled boulders fished up by divers in the rivers of Khotan, but it is also got from mines in the valley of the Karákásh River. “Some of the Jade,” says Timkowski, “is as white as snow, some dark green, like the most beautiful emerald (?), others yellow, vermilion, and jet black. The rarest and most esteemed varieties are the white speckled with red and the green veined with gold.” (I. 395.) The Jade of Khotan appears to be first mentioned by Chinese authors in the time of the Han Dynasty under Wu-ti (B.C. 140–86). In A.D. 541 an image of Buddha sculptured in Jade was sent as an offering from Khotan; and in 632 the process of fishing for the material in the rivers of Khotan, as practised down to modern times, is mentioned. The importation of Jade or Yü from this quarter probably gave the name of Kia-yü Kwan or “Jade Gate” to the fortified Pass looking in this direction on the extreme N.W. of China Proper, between Shachau and Suhchau. Since the detachment from China the Jade industry has ceased, the Musulmans having no taste for that kind of virtù. (H. de la V. de Khotan, 2, 17, 23; also see J. R. G. S. XXXVI. 165, and Cathay, 130, 564; Ritter, II. 213; Shaw’s High Tartary, pp. 98, 473.)
[On the 11th January, 1895, Dr. Sven Hedin visited one of the chief places where Jade is to be found. It is to the north-east of Khotan, in the old bed of the Yurun Kash. The bed of the river is divided into claims like gold-fields; the workmen are Chinese for the greater part, some few are Musulmans.
Grenard (II. pp. 186–187) says that the finest Jade comes from the high Karákásh (black Jade) River and Yurungkásh (white Jade); the Jade River is called Su-tásh. At Khotan, Jade is polished up by sixty or seventy individuals belonging to twenty-five workshops.
“At 18 miles from Su-chau, Kia-yu-kwan, celebrated as one of the gates of China, and as the fortress guarding the extreme north-west entrance into the empire, is passed.” (Colonel M. S. Bell, Proc. R. G. S. XII. 1890, p. 75.)
According to the Chinese characters, the name of Kia-yü Kwan does not mean “Jade Gate,” and as Mr. Rockhill writes to me, it can only mean something like “barrier of the pleasant Valley.”—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—Possibly this may refer to the custom of temporary marriages which seems to prevail in most towns of Central Asia which are the halting-places of caravans, and the morals of which are much on a par with those of seaport towns, from analogous causes. Thus at Meshid, Khanikoff speaks of the large population of young and pretty women ready, according to the accommodating rules of Shiah Mahomedanism, to engage in marriages which are perfectly lawful, for a month, a week, or even twenty-four hours. Kashgar is also noted in the East for its chaukans, young women with whom the traveller may readily form an alliance for the period of his stay, be it long or short. (Khan. Mém. p. 98; Russ. in Central Asia, 52; J. A. S. B. XXVI. 262; Burnes, III. 195; Vigne, II. 201.)
[1] Pein may easily have been miscopied for Pem, which is indeed the reading of some MSS. Ramusio has Peym.
[2] M. Vivien de St. Martin, in his map of Hiuen Tsang’s travels, places Pima to the west of Khotan. Though one sees how the mistake originated, there is no real ground for this in either of the versions of the Chinese pilgrim’s journey. (See Vie et Voyages, p. 288, and Mémoires, vol. ii. 242–243.)
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Of the Province of Charchan.
Charchan is a Province of Great Turkey, lying between north-east and east. The people worship Mahommet. There are numerous towns and villages, and the chief city of the kingdom bears its name, Charchan. The Province contains rivers which bring down Jasper and Chalcedony, and these are carried for sale into Cathay, where they fetch great prices. The whole of the Province is sandy, and so is the road all the way from Pein, and much of the water that you find is bitter and bad. However, at some places you do find fresh and sweet water. When an army passes through the land, the people escape with their wives, children, and cattle a distance of two or three days’ journey into the sandy waste; and knowing the spots where water is to be had, they are able to live there, and to keep their cattle alive, whilst it is impossible to discover them; for the wind immediately blows the sand over their track.
Quitting Charchan, you ride some five days through the sands, finding none but bad and bitter water, and then you come to a place where the water is sweet. And now I will tell you of a province called Lop, in which there is a city, also called Lop, which you come to at the end of those five days. It is at the entrance of the great Desert, and it is here that travellers repose before entering on the Desert.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—Though the Lake of Lob or Lop appears on all our maps, from Chinese authority, the latter does not seem to have supplied information as to a town so called. We have, however, indications of the existence of such a place, both mediæval and recent. The History of Mirza Haidar, called the Táríkh-i-Rashídí, already referred to, in describing the Great Basin of Eastern Turkestan, says: “Formerly there were several large cities in this plain; the names of two have survived—Lob and Kank, but of the rest there is no trace or tradition; all is buried under the sand.” [Forsyth (J. R. G. S. XLVII. 1877, p. 5) says that he thinks that this Kank is probably the Katak mentioned by Mirza Haidar.—H. C.] In another place the same history says that a boy heir of the house of Chaghatai, to save him from a usurper, was sent away to Sárígh Uighúr and Lob-Kank, far in the East. Again, in the short notices of the cities of Turkestan which Mr. Wathen collected at Bombay from pilgrims of those regions on their way to Mecca, we find the following: “Lopp.—Lopp is situated at a great distance from Yarkand. The inhabitants are principally Chinese; but a few Uzbeks reside there. Lopp is remarkable for a salt-water lake in its vicinity.” Johnson, speaking of a road from Tibet into Khotan, says: “This route ... leads not only to Ilchi and Yarkand, but also viâ Lob to the large and important city of Karashahr.” And among the routes attached to Mr. Johnson’s original Report, we have:—
“Route No. VII. Kiria (see note 1 to last chapter) to Chachan and Lob (from native information).”
This first revealed to me the continued existence of Marco’s Charchan; for it was impossible to doubt that in the Chachan and Lob of this Itinerary we had his Charchan and Lop; and his route to the verge of the Great Desert was thus made clear.
Mr. Johnson’s information made the journey from Kiria to Charchan to be 9 marches, estimated by him to amount to 154 miles, and adding 69 miles from Ilchi to Kiria (which he actually traversed) we have 13 marches or 223 miles for the distance from Ilchi to Charchan. Mr. Shaw has since obtained a route between Ilchi and Lob on very good authority. This makes the distance to Charchan, or Charchand, as it is called, 22 marches, which Mr. Shaw estimates at 293 miles. Both give 6 marches from Charchand to Lob, which is in fair accordance with Polo’s 5, and Shaw estimates the whole distance from Ilchi to Lob at 373, or by another calculation at 384 miles, say roundly 380 miles. This higher estimate is to be preferred to Mr. Johnson’s for a reason which will appear under next chapter.
Mr. Shaw’s informant, Rozi of Khotan, who had lived twelve years at Charchand, described the latter as a small town with a district extending on both sides of a stream which flows to Lob, and which affords Jade. The people are Musulmans. They grow wheat, Indian corn, pears, and apples, etc., but no cotton or rice. It stands in a great plain, but the mountains are not far off. The nature of the products leads Mr. Shaw to think it must stand a good deal higher than Ilchi (4000), perhaps at about 6000 feet. I may observe that the Chinese hydrography of the Kashgar Basin, translated by Julien in the N. An. des Voyages for 1846 (vol. iii.), seems to imply that mountains from the south approach within some 20 miles of the Tarim River, between the longitude of Shayar and Lake Lop. The people of Lob are Musulman also, but very uncivilised. The Lake is salt. The hydrography calls it about 200 li (say 66 miles) from E. to W. and half that from N. to S., and expresses the old belief that it forms the subterranean source of the Hwang-Ho. Shaw’s Itinerary shows “salt pools” at six of the stations between Kiria and Charchand, so Marco’s memory in this also was exact.
Nia, a town two marches from Kiria according to Johnson, or four according to Shaw, is probably the ancient city of Ni-jang of the ancient Chinese Itineraries, which lay 30 or 40 miles on the China side of Pima, in the middle of a great marsh, and formed the eastern frontier of Khotan bordering on the Desert. (J. R. G. S. XXXVII. pp. 13 and 44; also Sir H. Rawlinson in XLII. p. 503; Erskine’s Baber and Humayun, I. 42; Proc. R. G. S. vol. xvi. pp. 244–249; J. A. S. B. IV. 656; H. de la V. de Khotan, u.s.)
[The Charchan of Marco Polo seems to have been built to the west of the present oasis, a little south of the road to Kiria, where ruined houses have been found. It must have been destroyed before the 16th century, since Mirza Haidar does not mention it. It was not anterior to the 7th century, as it did not exist at the time of Hiuen Tsang. (Cf. Grenard, III. p. 146.)
Grenard says (pp. 183–184) that he examined the remains of what is called the old town of Charchan, traces of the ancient canal, ruins of dwellings deep into the sand, of which the walls built of large and solid-baked bricks, are pretty well preserved. Save these bricks, “I found hardly anything, the inhabitants have pillaged everything long ago. I attempted some excavating, which turned out to be without result, as far as I was concerned; but the superstitious natives declared that they were the cause of a violent storm which took place soon after. There are similar ruins in the environs, at Yantak Koudouk, at Tatrang, one day’s march to the north, and at Ouadjchahari at five days to the north-east, which corresponds to the position assigned to Lop by Marco Polo.” (See Grenard’s Haute Asie on Nia.)
Palladius is quite mistaken (l.c. p. 3) in saying that the “Charchan” of Marco Polo is to be found in the present province of Karashar. (Cf. T. W. Kingsmill’s Notes on Marco Polo’s Route from Khoten to China, Chinese Recorder, VII. pp. 338–343; Notes on Doctor Sven Hedin’s Discoveries in the Valley of the Tarim, its Cities and Peoples, China Review, XXIV. No. II. pp. 59–64.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Of the City of Lop and the Great Desert.
Lop is a large town at the edge of the Desert, which is called the Desert of Lop, and is situated between east and north-east. It belongs to the Great Kaan, and the people worship Mahommet. Now, such persons as propose to cross the Desert take a week’s rest in this town to refresh themselves and their cattle; and then they make ready for the journey, taking with them a month’s supply for man and beast. On quitting this city they enter the Desert.
The length of this Desert is so great that ’tis said it would take a year and more to ride from one end of it to the other. And here, where its breadth is least, it takes a month to cross it. ’Tis all composed of hills and valleys of sand, and not a thing to eat is to be found on it. But after riding for a day and a night you find fresh water, enough mayhap for some 50 or 100 persons with their beasts, but not for more. And all across the Desert you will find water in like manner, that is to say, in some 28 places altogether you will find good water, but in no great quantity; and in four places also you find brackish water.[{1}]
Beasts there are none; for there is nought for them to eat. But there is a marvellous thing related of this Desert, which is that when travellers are on the move by night, and one of them chances to lag behind or to fall asleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company again he will hear spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his comrades. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name; and thus shall a traveller ofttimes be led astray so that he never finds his party. And in this way many have perished. [Sometimes the stray travellers will hear as it were the tramp and hum of a great cavalcade of people away from the real line of road, and taking this to be their own company they will follow the sound; and when day breaks they find that a cheat has been put on them and that they are in an ill plight.[{2}]] Even in the day-time one hears those spirits talking. And sometimes you shall hear the sound of a variety of musical instruments, and still more commonly the sound of drums. [Hence in making this journey ’tis customary for travellers to keep close together. All the animals too have bells at their necks, so that they cannot easily get astray. And at sleeping-time a signal is put up to show the direction of the next march.]
So thus it is that the Desert is crossed.[{3}]
[Note 1.]—Lop appears to be the Napopo, i.e. Navapa, of Hiuen Tsang, called also the country of Leulan, in the Desert. (Mém. II. p. 247.) Navapa looks like Sanskrit. If so, this carries ancient Indian influence to the verge of the great Gobi. [See supra, [p. 190].] It is difficult to reconcile with our maps the statement of a thirty days’ journey across the Desert from Lop to Shachau. Ritter’s extracts, indeed, regarding this Desert, show that the constant occurrence of sandhills and deep drifts (our traveller’s “hills and valleys of sand”) makes the passage extremely difficult for carts and cattle. (III. 375.) But I suspect that there is some material error in the longitude of Lake Lop as represented in our maps, and that it should be placed something like three degrees more to the westward than we find it (e.g.) in Kiepert’s Map of Asia. By that map Khotan is not far short of 600 miles from the western extremity of Lake Lop. By Johnson’s Itinerary (including his own journey to Kiria) it is only 338 miles from Ilchi to Lob. Mr. Shaw, as we have seen, gives us a little more, but it is only even then 380. Polo unfortunately omits his usual estimate for the extent of the “Province of Charchan,” so he affords us no complete datum. But his distance between Charchan and Lob agrees fairly, as we have seen, with that both of Johnson and of Shaw, and the elbow on the road from Kiria to Charchan (supra, [p. 192]) necessitates our still further abridging the longitude between Khotan and Lop. (See Shaw’s remarks in Proc. R. G. S. XVI. 243.)
[This desert was known in China of old by the name of Lew-sha, i.e. “Quicksand,” or literally, “Flowing sands.” (Palladius, Jour. N. China B. R. As. Soc. N.S. X. 1875, p. 4.)
A most interesting problem is connected with the situation of Lob-nor which led to some controversy between Baron von Richthofen and Prjevalsky. The latter placed the lake one degree more to the south than the Chinese did, and found that its water was sweet. Richthofen agreed with the Chinese Topographers and wrote in a letter to Sir Henry Yule: “I send you two tracings; one of them is a true copy of the Chinese map, the other is made from a sketch which I constructed to-day, and on which I tried to put down the Chinese Topography together with that of Prjevalsky. It appears evident—(1) That Prjevalsky travelled by the ancient road to a point south of the true Lop-noor; (2) that long before he reached this point he found the river courses quite different from what they had been formerly; and (3) that following one of the new rivers which flows due south by a new road, he reached the two sweet-water lakes, one of which answers to the ancient Khas-omo. I use the word ‘new’ merely by way of comparison with the state of things in Kien-long’s time, when the map was made. It appears that the Chinese map shows the Khas Lake too far north to cover the Kara-Koshun. The bifurcation of the roads south of the lake nearly resembles that which is marked by Prjevalsky.” (Preface of E. D. Morgan’s transl. of From Kulja across the Tian Shan to Lob-nor, by Colonel N. Prjevalsky, London, 1879, p. iv.) In this same volume Baron von Richthofen’s remarks are given (pp. 135–159, with a map, p. 144), showing comparison between Chinese and Prjevalsky’s Geography from tracings by Baron von Richthofen and (pp. 160–165) a translation of Prjevalsky’s replies to the Baron’s criticisms.
Now the Swedish traveller, Dr. Sven Hedin, claims to have settled this knotty point. Going from Korla, south-west of Kara-shahr, by a road at the foot of the Kurugh-tagh and between these mountains and the Koncheh Daria, he discovered the ruins of two fortresses, and a series of milestones (potaïs). These tall pyramids of clay and wood, indicating distances in lis, show the existence at an ancient period of a road with a large traffic between Korla and an unknown place to the south-east, probably on the shores of the Chinese Lob-nor. Prjevalsky, who passed between the Lower Tarim and the Koncheh Daria, could not see a lake or the remains of a lake to the east of this river. The Koncheh Daria expands into a marshy basin, the Malta Kul, from which it divides into two branches, the Kuntiekkich Tarim (East River) and the Ilek (river) to the E.S.E. Dr. Sven Hedin, after following the course of the Ilek for three days (4th April, 1896) found a large sheet of water in the valley at the very place marked by the Chinese Topographers and Richthofen for the Lob-nor. This mass of water is divided up by the natives into Avullu Kul, Kara Kul, Tayek Kul, and Arka Kul, which are actually almost filled up with reeds. Dr. Sven Hedin afterwards visited the Lob-nor of Prjevalsky, and reached its western extremity, the Kara-buran (black storm) on the 17th April. In 1885, Prjevalsky had found the Lob-nor an immense lake; four years later Prince Henri d’Orléans saw it greatly reduced in size, and Dr. Sven Hedin discovered but pools of water. In the meantime, since 1885, the northern (Chinese) Lob-nor has gradually filled up, so the lake is somewhat vagrant. Dr. Sven Hedin says that from his observations he can assert that Prjevalsky’s lake is of recent formation.
So Marco Polo’s Lob-nor should be the northern or Chinese lake.
Another proof of this given by Dr. Sven Hedin is that the Chinese give the name of Lob to the region between Arghan and Tikkenlik, unknown in the country of the southern lake. The existence of two lakes shows what a quantity of water from the Thian Shan, the Eastern Pamir, and Northern Tibet flows into the basin of the Tarim. The Russian Lieutenant K. P. Kozlov has tried since to prove that the Chinese Lob-nor is the Kara-Koshun (Black district), which is a second lake formed by the Tarim, which discharges into and issues from the lake Kara-buran. Kozlov’s arguments are published in the Isvestia of the Russian Geographical Society, and in a separate pamphlet. The Geog. Jour. (June, 1898, pp. 652–658) contains The Lob-nor Controversy, a full statement of the case, summarising Kozlov’s pamphlet. Among the documents relating to the controversy, Kozlov “quotes passages from the Chinese work Si-yui-shui-dao-tsi, published in 1823, relative to the region, and gives a reduced copy of the Chinese Map published by Dr. Georg Wegener in 1863, upon which map Richthofen and Sven Hedin based their arguments.” Kozlov’s final conclusions (Geog. Jour. l.c. pp. 657–658) are the following: “The Koncheh-daria, since very remote times till the present day, has moved a long way. The spot Gherelgan may be taken as a spot of relative permanence of its bed, while the basis of its delta is a line traced from the farthest northern border of the area of salt clays surrounding the Lob-nor to the Tarim. At a later period the Koncheh-daria mostly influenced the lower Tarim, and each time a change occurred in the latter’s discharge, the Koncheh took a more westward course, to the detriment of its old eastern branch (Ilek). Always following the gradually receding humidity, the vegetable life changed too, while moving sands were taking its place, conquering more and more ground for the desert, and marking their conquest by remains of old shore-lines....
“The facts noticed by Sven Hedin have thus another meaning—the desert to the east of the lakes, which he discovered, was formed, not by Lob-nor, which is situated 1° southwards, but by the Koncheh-daria, in its unremitted deflection to the west. The old bed Ilek, lake-shaped in places, and having a belt of salt lagoons and swamps along its eastern shores, represents remains of waters belonging, not to Lob-nor, but to the shifting river which has abandoned this old bed.
“These facts and explanations refute the second point of the arguments which were brought forward by Sven Hedin in favour of his hypothesis, asserting the existence of some other Lob-nor.
“I accept the third point of his objections, namely, that the grandfathers of the present inhabitants of the Lob-nor lived by a lake whose position was more to the north of Lob-nor; that was mentioned already by Pievtsov, and the lake was Uchu-Kul.
“Why Marco Polo never mentioned the Lob-nor, I leave to more competent persons to decide.
“The only inference which I can make from the preceding account is that the Kara-Koshun-Kul is not only the Lob-nor of my lamented teacher, N. M. Prjevalsky, but also the ancient, the historical, and the true Lob-nor of the Chinese geographers. So it was during the last thousand years, and so will it remain, if ‘the river of time’ in its running has not effaced it from the face of the Earth.”
To Kozlov’s query: “Why Marco Polo never mentioned the Lob-nor, I leave to more competent persons to decide,” I have little hesitation in replying that he did not mention the Lob-nor because he did not see it. From Charchan, he followed, I believe, neither Prjevalsky’s nor Pievtsov’s route, but the old route from Khotan to Si-ngan fu, in the old bed of the Charchan daria, above and almost parallel to the new bed, to the Tarim,—then between Sven Hedin’s and Prjevalsky’s lakes, and across the desert to Shachau to join the ancient Chinese road of the Han Dynasty, partly explored by M. Bonin from Shachau.
There is no doubt as to the discovery of Prjevalsky’s Lob-nor, but this does not appear to be the old Chinese Lob-nor; in fact, there may have been several lakes co-existent; probably there was one to the east of the mass of water described by Dr. Sven Hedin, near the old route from Korla to Shachau; there is no fixity in these waterspreads and the soil of this part of Asia, and in the course of a few years some discrepancies will naturally arise between the observations of different travellers. But as I think that Marco Polo did not see one of the Lob-nor, but travelled between them, there is no necessity to enlarge on this question, fully treated of in this note.
See besides the works mentioned above: Nord—Tibet und Lob-nur Gebiet.... herausg. von Dr. G. Wegener. Berlin, 1893. (Sep. abd. Zeit. Ges. f. Erdk.)—Die Geog. wiss. Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien, 1894–1897, von Dr. Sven Hedin, Gotha, J. Perthes, 1900.
Bonvalot and Prince Henri d’Orléans (De Paris au Tonkin, à travers le Tibet inconnu, Paris, 1892) followed this Itinerary: Semipalatinsk, Kulja, Korla, Lob-nor, Charkalyk, Altyn Tagh, almost a straight line to Tengri Nor, then to Batang, Ta Tsien lu, Ning-yuan, Yun-nan-fu, Mong-tsŭ, and Tung-King.
Bonvalot (28th October, 1889) describes Lob in this manner: “The village of Lob is situated at some distance from [the Charchan daria]; its inhabitants come to see us; they are miserable, hungry, étiques; they offer us for sale smoked fish, duck taken with lacet. Some small presents soon make friends of them. They apprize us that news has spread that Pievtsov, the Russian traveller, will soon arrive” (l.c. p. 75). From Charkalyk, Prince Henri d’Orléans and Father Dedeken visited Lob-nor (l.c. p. 77 et seq.), but it was almost dry; the water had receded since Prjevalsky’s visit, thirteen years before. The Prince says the Lob-nor he saw was not Prjevalsky’s, nor was the latter’s lake the mass of water on Chinese maps; an old sorceress gave confirmation of the fact to the travellers. According to a tradition known from one generation to another, there was at this place a large inland sea without reeds, and the elders had seen in their youth large ponds; they say that the earth impregnated with saltpetre absorbs the water. The Prince says, according to tradition, Lob is a local name meaning “wild animals,” and it was given to the country at the time it was crossed by Kalmuk caravans; they added to the name Lob the Mongol word Nor (Great Lake). The travellers (p. 109) note that in fact the name Lob-nor does not apply to a Lake, but to the whole marshy part of the country watered by the Tarim, from the village of Lob to end of the river.
The Pievtsov expedition “visited the Lob-nor (2650 feet) and the Tarim, whose proper name is Yarkend-daria (tarim means ‘a tilled field’ in Kashgarian). The lake is rapidly drying up, and a very old man, 110 years old, whom Pievtsov spoke to (his son, 52 years old, was the only one who could understand the old man), said that he would not have recognized the land if he had been absent all this time. Ninety years ago there was only a narrow strip of rushes in the south-west part of the lake, and the Yarkend-daria entered it 2½ miles to the west of its present mouth, where now stands the village of Abdal. The lake was then much deeper, and several villages, now abandoned, stood on its shores. There was also much more fish, and otters, which used to live there, but have long since disappeared. As to the Yarkend-daria, tradition says that two hundred years ago it used to enter another smaller lake, Uchukul, which was connected by a channel with the Lob-nor. This old bed, named Shirga-chapkan, can still be traced by the trees which grew along it. The greater previous extension of the Lob-nor is also confirmed by the freshwater molluscs (Limnaea uricularia, var. ventricosa, L. stagnalis, L. peregra, and Planorbis sibiricus), which are found at a distance from its present banks. Another lake, 400 miles in circumference, Kara-boyön (black isthmus), lies, as is known, 27 miles to the south-west of Lob-nor. To the east of the lake, a salt desert stretches for a seven days’ march, and further on begin the Kum-tagh sands, where wild camels live.” (Geog. Jour. IX. 1897, p. 552.)
Grenard (III. pp. 194–195) discusses the Lob-nor question and the formation of four new lakes by the Koncheh-daria called by the natives beginning at the north; Kara Kul, Tayek Kul, Sugut Kul, Tokum Kul. He does not accept Baron v. Richthofen’s theory, and believes that the old Lob is the lake seen by Prjevalsky.
He says (p. 149): “Lop must be looked for on the actual road from Charchan to Charkalyk. Ouash Shahri, five days from Charchan, and where small ruins are to be found, corresponds well to the position of Lop according to Marco Polo, a few degrees of the compass near. But the stream which passes at this spot could never be important enough for the wants of a considerable centre of habitation and the ruins of Ouash Shahri are more of a hamlet than of a town. Moreover, Lop was certainly the meeting point of the roads of Kashgar, Urumtsi, Shachau, L’Hasa, and Khotan, and it is to this fact that this town, situated in a very poor country, owed its relative importance. Now, it is impossible that these roads crossed at Ouash Shahri. I believe that Lop was built on the site of Charkalyk itself. The Venetian traveller gives five days’ journey between Charchan and Lop, whilst Charkalyk is really seven days from Charchan; but the objection does not appear sufficient to me: Marco Polo may well have made a mistake of two days.” (III. pp. 149–150.)
The Chinese Governor of Urumtsi found some years ago to the north-west of the Lob-nor, on the banks of the Tarim, and within five days of Charkalyk, a town bearing the same name, though not on the same site as the Lop of Marco Polo.—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—“The waste and desert places of the Earth are, so to speak, the characters which sin has visibly impressed on the outward creation; its signs and symbols there.... Out of a true feeling of this, men have ever conceived of the Wilderness as the haunt of evil spirits. In the old Persian religion Ahriman and his evil Spirits inhabit the steppes and wastes of Turan, to the north of the happy Iran, which stands under the dominion of Ormuzd; exactly as with the Egyptians, the evil Typhon is the Lord of the Libyan sand-wastes, and Osiris of the fertile Egypt.” (Archbp. Trench, Studies in the Gospels, p. 7.) Terror, and the seeming absence of a beneficent Providence, are suggestions of the Desert which must have led men to associate it with evil spirits, rather than the figure with which this passage begins; no spontaneous conception surely, however appropriate as a moral image.
“According to the belief of the nations of Central Asia,” says I. J. Schmidt, “the earth and its interior, as well as the encompassing atmosphere, are filled with Spiritual Beings, which exercise an influence, partly beneficent, partly malignant, on the whole of organic and inorganic nature.... Especially are Deserts and other wild or uninhabited tracts, or regions in which the influences of nature are displayed on a gigantic and terrible scale, regarded as the chief abode or rendezvous of evil Spirits.... And hence the steppes of Turan, and in particular the great sandy Desert of Gobi have been looked on as the dwelling-place of malignant beings, from days of hoar antiquity.”
The Chinese historian Ma Twan-lin informs us that there were two roads from China into the Uighúr country (towards Karashahr). The longest but easiest road was by Kamul. The other was much shorter, and apparently corresponded, as far as Lop, to that described in this chapter. “By this you have to cross a plain of sand, extending for more than 100 leagues. You see nothing in any direction but the sky and the sands, without the slightest trace of a road; and travellers find nothing to guide them but the bones of men and beasts and the droppings of camels. During the passage of this wilderness you hear sounds, sometimes of singing, sometimes of wailing; and it has often happened that travellers going aside to see what those sounds might be have strayed from their course and been entirely lost; for they were voices of spirits and goblins. ’Tis for these reasons that travellers and merchants often prefer the much longer route by Kamul.” (Visdelou, p. 139.)
“In the Desert” (this same desert), says Fa-hian, “there are a great many evil demons; there are also sirocco winds, which kill all who encounter them. There are no birds or beasts to be seen; but so far as the eye can reach, the route is marked out by the bleached bones of men who have perished in the attempt to cross.”
[“The Lew-sha was the subject of various most exaggerated stories. We find more trustworthy accounts of it in the Chow shu; thus it is mentioned in that history, that there sometimes arises in this desert a ‘burning wind,’ pernicious to men and cattle; in such cases the old camels of the caravan, having a presentiment of its approach, flock shrieking to one place, lie down on the ground and hide their heads in the sand. On this signal, the travellers also lie down, close nose and mouth, and remain in this position until the hurricane abates. Unless these precautions are taken, men and beasts inevitably perish.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 4.)
A friend writes to me that he thinks that the accounts of strange noises in the desert would find a remarkable corroboration in the narratives of travellers through the central desert of Australia. They conjecture that they are caused by the sudden falling of cliffs of sand as the temperature changes at night time.—H. C.]
Hiuen Tsang, in his passage of the Desert, both outward and homeward, speaks of visual illusions; such as visions of troops marching and halting with gleaming arms and waving banners, constantly shifting, vanishing, and reappearing, “imagery created by demons.” A voice behind him calls, “Fear not! fear not!” Troubled by these fantasies on one occasion, he prays to Kwan-yin (a Buddhist divinity); still he could not entirely get rid of them; but as soon as he had pronounced a few words from the Prajna (a holy book), they vanished in the twinkling of an eye.
These Goblins are not peculiar to the Gobi, though that appears to be their most favoured haunt. The awe of the vast and solitary Desert raises them in all similar localities. Pliny speaks of the phantoms that appear and vanish in the deserts of Africa; Aethicus, the early Christian cosmographer, speaks, though incredulous, of the stories that were told of the voices of singers and revellers in the desert; Mas’udi tells of the Ghúls, which in the deserts appear to travellers by night and in lonely hours; the traveller, taking them for comrades, follows and is led astray. But the wise revile them and the Ghúls vanish. Thus also Apollonius of Tyana and his companions, in a desert near the Indus by moonlight, see an Empusa or Ghúl taking many forms. They revile it, and it goes off uttering shrill cries. Mas’udi also speaks of the mysterious voices heard by lone wayfarers in the Desert, and he gives a rational explanation of them. Ibn Batuta relates a like legend of the Western Sahara: “If the messenger be solitary, the demons sport with him and fascinate him, so that he strays from his course and perishes.” The Afghan and Persian wildernesses also have their Ghúl-i-Beában or Goblin of the Waste, a gigantic and fearful spectre which devours travellers; and even the Gael of the West Highlands have the Direach Ghlinn Eitidh, the Desert Creature of Glen Eiti, which, one-handed, one-eyed, one-legged, seems exactly to answer to the Arabian Nesnás or Empusa. Nicolò Conti in the Chaldaean desert is aroused at midnight by a great noise, and sees a vast multitude pass by. The merchants tell him that these are demons who are in the habit of traversing the deserts. (Schmidt’s San. Setzen, p. 352; V. et V. de H. T. 23, 28, 289; Pliny, VII. 2; Philostratus, Bk. II. ch. iv.; Prairies d’Or, III. 315, 324; Beale’s Fahian; Campbell’s Popular Tales of the W. Highlands, IV. 326; I. B. IV. 382; Elphinstone, I. 291; Chodzko’s Pop. Poetry of Persia, p. 48; Conti, p. 4; Forsyth, J. R. G. S. XLVII. 1877, p. 4.)
The sound of musical instruments, chiefly of drums, is a phenomenon of another class, and is really produced in certain situations among sandhills when the sand is disturbed. [See supra.] A very striking account of a phenomenon of this kind regarded as supernatural is given by Friar Odoric, whose experience I fancy I have traced to the Reg Ruwán or “Flowing Sand” north of Kabul. Besides this celebrated example, which has been described also by the Emperor Baber, I have noted that equally well-known one of the Jibal Naḳús, or “Hill of the Bell,” in the Sinai Desert; Wadi Hamade, in the vicinity of the same Desert; the Jibal-ul-Thabúl, or “Hill of the Drums,” between Medina and Mecca; one on the Island of Eigg, in the Hebrides, discovered by Hugh Miller; one among the Medanos or Sandhills of Arequipa, described to me by Mr. C. Markham; the Bramador or rumbling mountain of Tarapaca; one in hills between the Ulba and the Irtish, in the vicinity of the Altai, called the Almanac Hills, because the sounds are supposed to prognosticate weather-changes; and a remarkable example near Kolberg on the shore of Pomerania. A Chinese narrative of the 10th century mentions the phenomenon as known near Kwachau, on the eastern border of the Lop Desert, under the name of the “Singing Sands”; and Sir F. Goldsmid has recently made us acquainted with a second Reg Ruwán, on a hill near the Perso-Afghan frontier, a little to the north of Sístán. The place is frequented in pilgrimage. (See Cathay, pp. ccxliv. 156, 398; Ritter, II. 204; Aus der Natur, Leipzig, No. 47 [of 1868], p. 752; Rémusat, H. de Khotan, p. 74; Proc. R. G. S. XVII. 91.)
[Note 3.]—[We learn from Joseph Martin, quoted by Grenard, p. 170 (who met this unfortunate French traveller at Khotan, on his way from Peking to Marghelan, where he died), that from Shachau to Abdal, on the Lob-nor, there are twelve days of desert, sandy only during the first two days, stony afterwards. Occasionally a little grass is to be found for the camels; water is to be found everywhere. M. Bonin went from Shachau to the north-west towards the Kara-nor, then to the west, but lack of water compelled him to go back to Shachau. Along this road, every five lis, are to be found towers built with clay, and about 30 feet high, abandoned by the Chinese, who do not seem to have kept a remembrance of them in the country; this route seems to be a continuation of the Kan Suh Imperial highway. A wall now destroyed connected these towers together. “There is no doubt,” writes M. Bonin, “that all these remains are those of the great route, vainly sought after till now, which, under the Han Dynasty, ran to China through Bactria, Pamir, Eastern Turkestan, the Desert of Gobi, and Kan Suh: it is in part the route followed by Marco Polo, when he went from Charchan to Shachau, by the city of Lob.” The route of the Han has been also looked for, more to the south, and it was believed that it was the same as that of the Astyn Tagh, followed by Mr. Littledale in 1893, who travelled one month from Abdal (Lob-nor) to Shachau; M. Bonin, who explored also this route, and was twenty-three days from Shachau to Lob-nor, says it could not be a commercial road. Dr. Sven Hedin saw four or five towers eastward of the junction of the Tarim and the Koncheh-daria; it may possibly have been another part of the road seen by M. Bonin. (See La Géographie, 15th March, 1901, p. 173.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER XL.
Concerning the Great Province of Tangut.
After you have travelled thirty days through the Desert, as I have described, you come to a city called Sachiu, lying between north-east and east; it belongs to the Great Kaan, and is in a province called Tangut.[{1}] The people are for the most part Idolaters, but there are also some Nestorian Christians and some Saracens. The Idolaters have a peculiar language, and are no traders, but live by their agriculture.[{2}] They have a great many abbeys and minsters full of idols of sundry fashions, to which they pay great honour and reverence, worshipping them and sacrificing to them with much ado. For example, such as have children will feed up a sheep in honour of the idol, and at the New Year, or on the day of the Idol’s Feast, they will take their children and the sheep along with them into the presence of the idol with great ceremony. Then they will have the sheep slaughtered and cooked, and again present it before the idol with like reverence, and leave it there before him, whilst they are reciting the offices of their worship and their prayers for the idol’s blessing on their children. And, if you will believe them, the idol feeds on the meat that is set before it! After these ceremonies they take up the flesh and carry it home, and call together all their kindred to eat it with them in great festivity [the idol-priests receiving for their portion the head, feet, entrails, and skin, with some part of the meat]. After they have eaten, they collect the bones that are left and store them carefully in a hutch.[{3}]
And you must know that all the Idolaters in the world burn their dead. And when they are going to carry a body to the burning, the kinsfolk build a wooden house on the way to the spot, and drape it with cloths of silk and gold. When the body is going past this building they call a halt and set before it wine and meat and other eatables; and this they do with the assurance that the defunct will be received with the like attentions in the other world. All the minstrelsy in the town goes playing before the body; and when it reaches the burning-place the kinsfolk are prepared with figures cut out of parchment and paper in the shape of men and horses and camels, and also with round pieces of paper like gold coins, and all these they burn along with the corpse. For they say that in the other world the defunct will be provided with slaves and cattle and money, just in proportion to the amount of such pieces of paper that has been burnt along with him.[{4}]
But they never burn their dead until they have [sent for the astrologers, and told them the year, the day, and the hour of the deceased person’s birth, and when the astrologers have ascertained under what constellation, planet, and sign he was born, they declare the day on which, by the rules of their art, he ought to be burnt]. And till that day arrive they keep the body, so that ’tis sometimes a matter of six months, more or less, before it comes to be burnt.[{5}]
Now the way they keep the body in the house is this: They make a coffin first of a good span in thickness, very carefully joined and daintily painted. This they fill up with camphor and spices, to keep off corruption [stopping the joints with pitch and lime], and then they cover it with a fine cloth. Every day as long as the body is kept, they set a table before the dead covered with food; and they will have it that the soul comes and eats and drinks: wherefore they leave the food there as long as would be necessary in order that one should partake. Thus they do daily. And worse still! Sometimes those soothsayers shall tell them that ’tis not good luck to carry out the corpse by the door, so they have to break a hole in the wall, and to draw it out that way when it is taken to the burning.[{6}] And these, I assure you, are the practices of all the Idolaters of those countries.
However, we will quit this subject, and I will tell you of another city which lies towards the north-west at the extremity of the desert.
[Note 1.]—[The Natives of this country were called by the Chinese T’ang-hiang, and by the Mongols T’angu or T’ang-wu, and with the plural suffix Tangut. The kingdom of Tangut, or in Chinese, Si Hia (Western Hia), or Ho si (West of the Yellow River), was declared independent in 982 by Li Chi Ch’ien, who had the dynastic title or Miao Hao of Tai Tsu. “The rulers of Tangut,” says Dr. Bushell, “were scions of the Toba race, who reigned over North China as the Wei Dynasty (A.D. 386–557), as well as in some of the minor dynasties which succeeded. Claiming descent from the ancient Chinese Hsia Dynasty of the second millennium B.C., they adopted the title of Ta Hsia (‘Great Hsia’), and the dynasty is generally called by the Chinese Hsi Hsia, or Western Hsia.” This is a list of the Tangut sovereigns, with the date of their accession to the throne: Tai Tsu (982), Tai Tsung (1002), Ching Tsung (1032), Yi Tsung (1049), Hui Tsung (1068), Ch’ung Tsung (1087), Jen Tsung (1140), Huan Tsung (1194), Hsiang Tsung (1206), Shên Tsung (1213), Hien Tsung (1223), Mo Chu (1227). In fact, the real founder of the Dynasty was Li Yuan-hao, who conquered in 1031, the cities of Kanchau and Suhchau from the Uighúr Turks, declaring himself independent in 1032, and who adopted in 1036 a special script of which we spoke when mentioning the archway at Kiuyung Kwan. His capital was Hia chau, now Ning hia, on the Yellow River. Chinghiz invaded Tangut three times, in 1206, 1217, and at last in 1225; the final struggle took place the following year, when Kanchau, Liangchau, and Suhchau fell into the hands of the Mongols. After the death of Chinghiz (1227), the last ruler of Tangut, Li H’ien, who surrendered the same year to Okkodaï, son of the conqueror, was killed. The dominions of Tangut in the middle of the 11th century, according to the Si Hia Chi Shih Pên Mo, quoted by Dr. Bushell, “were bounded, according to the map, by the Sung Empire on the south and east, by the Liao (Khitan) on the north-east, the Tartars (Tata) on the north, the Uighúr Turks (Hui-hu) on the west, and the Tibetans on the south-west. The Alashan Mountains stretch along the northern frontier, and the western extends to the Jade Gate (Yü Mên Kwan) on the border of the Desert of Gobi.” Under the Mongol Dynasty, Kan Suh was the official name of one of the twelve provinces of the Empire, and the popular name was Tangut.
(Dr. S. W. Bushell: Inscriptions in the Juchen and Allied Scripts and The Hsi Hsia Dynasty of Tangut. See above, p. 29.)
“The word Tangutan applied by the Chinese and by Colonel Prjevalsky to a Tibetan-speaking people around the Koko-nor has been explained to me in a variety of ways by native Tangutans. A very learned lama from the Gserdkog monastery, south-east of the Koko-nor, told me that Tangutan, Amdoans, and Sifan were interchangeable terms, but I fear his geographical knowledge was a little vague. The following explanation of the term Tangut is taken from the Hsi-tsang-fu. ‘The Tangutans are descendants of the Tang-tu-chüeh. The origin of this name is as follows: In early days, the Tangutans lived in the Central Asian Chin-shan, where they were workers of iron. They made a model of the Chin-shan, which, in shape, resembled an iron helmet. Now, in their language, “iron helmet” is Tang-küeh, hence the name of the country. To the present day, the Tangutans of the Koko-nor wear a hat shaped like a pot, high crowned and narrow, rimmed with red fringe sewn on it, so that it looks like an iron helmet, and this is a proof of [the accuracy of the derivation].’ Although the proof is not very satisfactory, it is as good as we are often offered by authors with greater pretension to learning.
“If I remember rightly, Prjevalsky derives the name from two words meaning ‘black tents.’” (W. W. Rockhill, China Br. R. As. Soc., XX. pp. 278–279.)
“Chinese authorities tell us that the name [Tangut] was originally borne by a people living in the Altaï, and that the word is Turkish.... The population of Tangut was a mixture of Tibetans, Turks, Uighúrs, Tukuhuns, Chinese, etc.” (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 150, note.—H. C.)]
Sachiu is Shachau, “Sand-district,” an outpost of China Proper, at the eastern verge of the worst part of the Sandy Desert. It is recorded to have been fortified in the 1st century as a barrier against the Hiongnu.
[The name of Shachau dates from A.D. 622, when it was founded by the first emperor of the T’ang Dynasty. Formerly, Shachau was one of the Chinese colonies established by the Han, at the expense of the Hiongnu; it was called T’ung hoang (B.C. 111), a name still given to Shachau; the other colonies were Kiu-kaan (Suhchau, B.C. 121) and Chang-yé (Kanchau, B.C. 111). (See Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. 18.)
“Sha-chow, the present Tun-hwang-hien (a few li east of the ancient town).... In 1820, or about that time, an attempt was made to re-establish the ancient direct way between Sha-chow and Khotan. With this object in view, an exploring party of ten men was sent from Khotan towards Sha-chow; this party wandered in the desert over a month, and found neither dwellings nor roads, but pastures and water everywhere. M. Polo omits to mention a remarkable place at Sha-chow, a sandy hillock (a short distance south of this town) known under the name of Ming-sha shan—the ‘rumbling sandhill.’ The sand, in rolling down the hill, produces a particular sound, similar to that of distant thunder. In M. Polo’s time (1292), Khubilaï removed the inhabitants of Sha-chow to the interior of China; fearing, probably, the aggression of the seditious princes; and his successor, in 1303, placed there a garrison of ten thousand men.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 5.)
“Sha-chau is one of the best oases of Central Asia. It is situated at the foot of the Nan-shan range, at a height of 3700 feet above the sea, and occupies an area of about 200 square miles, the whole of which is thickly inhabited by Chinese. Sha-chau is interesting as the meeting-place of three expeditions started independently from Russia, India, and China. Just two months before Prjevalsky reached this town, it was visited by Count Szechényi [April, 1879], and eighteen months afterwards Pundit A-k, whose report of it agrees fairly well with that of our traveller, also stayed here. Both Prejevalsky and Szechényi remark on some curious caves in a valley near Sha-chau containing Buddhistic clay idols.[1] These caves were in Marco Polo’s time the resort of numerous worshippers, and are said to date back to the Han Dynasty.” (Prejevalsky’s Journeys ... by E. Delmar Morgan, Proc. R. G. S. IX. 1887, pp. 217–218.)—H. C.]
(Ritter, II. 205; Neumann, p. 616; Cathay, 269, 274; Erdmann, 155; Erman, II. 267; Mag. Asiat. II. 213.)
[Note 2.]—By Idolaters, Polo here means Buddhists, as generally. We do not know whether the Buddhism here was a recent introduction from Tibet, or a relic of the old Buddhism of Khotan and other Central Asian kingdoms, but most probably it was the former, and the “peculiar language” ascribed to them may have been, as Neumann supposes, Tibetan. This language in modern Mongolia answers to the Latin of the Mass Book, indeed with a curious exactness, for in both cases the holy tongue is not that of the original propagators of the respective religions, but that of the hierarchy which has assumed their government. In the Lamaitic convents of China and Manchuria also the Tibetan only is used in worship, except at one privileged temple at Peking. (Koeppen, II. 288.) The language intended by Polo may, however, have been a Chinese dialect. (See notes 1 and 4.) The Nestorians must have been tolerably numerous in Tangut, for it formed a metropolitan province of their Church.
[Note 3.]—A practice resembling this is mentioned by Pallas as existing among the Buddhist Kalmaks, a relic of their old Shaman superstitions, which the Lamas profess to decry, but sometimes take part in. “Rich Kalmaks select from their flock a ram for dedication, which gets the name of Tengri Tockho, ‘Heaven’s Ram.’ It must be a white one with a yellow head. He must never be shorn or sold, but when he gets old, and the owner chooses to dedicate a fresh one, then the old one must be sacrificed. This is usually done in autumn, when the sheep are fattest, and the neighbours are called together to eat the sacrifice. A fortunate day is selected, and the ram is slaughtered amid the cries of the sorcerer directed towards the sunrise, and the diligent sprinkling of milk for the benefit of the Spirits of the Air. The flesh is eaten, but the skeleton with a part of the fat is burnt on a turf altar erected on four pillars of an ell and a half high, and the skin, with the head and feet, is then hung up in the way practised by the Buraets.” (Sammlungen, II. 346.)
[Note 4.]—Several of the customs of Tangut mentioned in this chapter are essentially Chinese, and are perhaps introduced here because it was on entering Tangut that the traveller first came in contact with Chinese peculiarities. This is true of the manner of forming coffins, and keeping them with the body in the house, serving food before the coffin whilst it is so kept, the burning of paper and papier-maché figures of slaves, horses, etc., at the tomb. Chinese settlers were very numerous at Shachau and the neighbouring Kwachau, even in the 10th century. (Ritter, II. 213.) [“Keeping a body unburied for a considerable time is called khǹg koan, ‘to conceal or store away a coffin,’ or thîng koan, ‘to detain a coffin.’ It is, of course, a matter of necessity in such cases to have the cracks and fissures, and especially the seam where the case and the lid join, hermetically caulked. This is done by means of a mixture of chunam and oil. The seams, sometimes even the whole coffin, are pasted over with linen, and finally everything is varnished black, or, in case of a mandarin of rank, red. In process of time, the varnishing is repeated as many times as the family think desirable or necessary. And in order to protect the coffin still better against dust and moisture, it is generally covered with sheets of oiled paper, over which comes a white pall.” (De Groot, I. 106.)—H. C.] Even as regards the South of China many of the circumstances mentioned here are strictly applicable, as may be seen in Doolittle’s Social Life of the Chinese. (See, for example, p. 135; also Astley, IV. 93–95, or Marsden’s quotations from Duhalde.) The custom of burning the dead has been for several centuries disused in China, but we shall see hereafter that Polo represents it as general in his time. On the custom of burning gilt paper in the form of gold coin, as well as of paper clothing, paper houses, furniture, slaves, etc., see also Medhurst, p. 213, and Kidd, 177–178. No one who has read Père Huc will forget his ludicrous account of the Lama’s charitable distribution of paper horses for the good of disabled travellers. The manufacture of mock money is a large business in Chinese cities. In Fuchau there are more than thirty large establishments where it is kept for sale. (Doolittle, 541.) [The Chinese believe that sheets of paper, partly tinned over on one side, are, “according to the prevailing conviction, turned by the process of fire into real silver currency available in the world of darkness, and sent there through the smoke to the soul; they are called gûn-tsoá, ‘silver paper.’ Most families prefer to previously fold every sheet in the shape of a hollow ingot, a ‘silver ingot,’ gûn-khò, as they call it. This requires a great amount of labour and time, but increases the value of the treasure immensely.” (De Groot, I. 25.) “Presenting paper money when paying a visit of condolence is a custom firmly established, and accordingly complied with by everybody with great strictness.... The paper is designed for the equipment of the coffin, and, accordingly, always denoted by the term koan-thaô-tsoá, ‘coffin paper.’ But as the receptacle of the dead is, of course, not spacious enough to hold the whole mass offered by so many friends, it is regularly burned by lots by the side of the corpse, the ashes being carefully collected to be afterwards wrapped in paper and placed in the coffin, or at the side of the coffin, in the tomb.” (De Groot, I. 31–32.)—H. C.] There can be little doubt that these latter customs are symbols of the ancient sacrifices of human beings and valuable property on such occasions; so Manetho states that the Egyptians in days of yore used human sacrifices, but a certain King Amosis abolished them and substituted images of wax. Even when the present Manchu Dynasty first occupied the throne of China, they still retained the practice of human sacrifice. At the death of Kanghi’s mother, however, in 1718, when four young girls offered themselves for sacrifice on the tomb of their mistress, the emperor would not allow it, and prohibited for the future the sacrifice of life or the destruction of valuables on such occasions. (Deguignes, Voy. I. 304.)
[Note 5.]—Even among the Tibetans and Mongols burning is only one of the modes of disposing of the dead. “They sometimes bury their dead: often they leave them exposed in their coffins, or cover them with stones, paying regard to the sign under which the deceased was born, his age, the day and hour of his death, which determine the mode in which he is to be interred (or otherwise disposed of). For this purpose they consult some books which are explained to them by the Lamas.” (Timk. II. 312.) The extraordinary and complex absurdities of the books in question are given in detail by Pallas, and curiously illustrate the paragraph in the text. (See Sammlungen, II. 254 seqq.) [“The first seven days, including that on which the demise has taken place, are generally deemed to be lucky for the burial, especially the odd ones. But when they have elapsed, it becomes requisite to apply to a day-professor.... The popular almanac which chiefly wields sway in Amoy and the surrounding country, regularly stigmatises a certain number of days as tîng-sng jít: ‘days of reduplication of death,’ because encoffining or burying a dead person on such a day will entail another loss in the family shortly afterwards.” (De Groot, I. 103, 99–100.)—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—The Chinese have also, according to Duhalde, a custom of making a new opening in the wall of a house by which to carry out the dead; and in their prisons a special hole in the wall is provided for this office. This same custom exists among the Esquimaux, as well as, according to Sonnerat, in Southern India, and it used to exist in certain parts both of Holland and of Central Italy. In the “clean village of Broek,” near Amsterdam, those special doors may still be seen. And in certain towns of Umbria, such as Perugia, Assisi, and Gubbio, this opening was common, elevated some feet above the ground, and known as the “Door of the Dead.”
I find in a list, printed by Liebrecht, of popular French superstitions, amounting to 479 in number, condemned by Maupas du Tour, Bishop of Evreux in 1664, the following: “When a woman lies in of a dead child, it must not be taken out by the door of the chamber but by the window, for if it were taken out by the door the woman would never lie in of any but dead children.” The Samoyedes have the superstition mentioned in the text, and act exactly as Polo describes.
[“The body [of the Queen of Bali, 17th century] was drawn out of a large aperture made in the wall to the right hand side of the door, in the absurd opinion of cheating the devil, whom these islanders believe to lie in wait in the ordinary passage.” (John Crawford, Hist. of the Indian Archipelago, II. p. 245.)—H. C.]
And the Rev. Mr. Jaeschke writes to me from Lahaul, in British Tibet: “Our Lama (from Central Tibet) tells us that the owner of a house and the members of his family when they die are carried through the house-door; but if another person dies in the house his body is removed by some other aperture, such as a window, or the smokehole in the roof, or a hole in the wall dug expressly for the purpose. Or a wooden frame is made, fitting into the doorway, and the body is then carried through; it being considered that by this contrivance the evil consequences are escaped that might ensue, were it carried through the ordinary, and, so to say, undisguised house-door! Here, in Lahaul and the neighbouring countries, we have not heard of such a custom.”
(Duhalde, quoted by Marsden; Semedo, p. 175; Mr. Sala in N. and Q., 2nd S. XI. 322; Lubbock, p. 500; Sonnerat I. 86; Liebrecht’s Gervasius of Tilbury, Hanover, 1856, p. 224; Mag. Asiat. II. 93.)
[1] M. Bonin visited in 1899 these caves which he calls “Grottoes of Thousand Buddhas” (Tsien Fo tung). (La Géographie, 15th March, 1901, p. 171.) He found a stèle dated 1348, bearing a Buddhist prayer in six different scripts like the inscription at Kiu Yung Kwan. (Rev. Hist. des Religions, 1901, p. 393.)—H. C.
CHAPTER XLI.
Of the Province of Camul.
Camul is a province which in former days was a kingdom. It contains numerous towns and villages, but the chief city bears the name of Camul. The province lies between the two deserts; for on the one side is the Great Desert of Lop, and on the other side is a small desert of three days’ journey in extent.[{1}] The people are all Idolaters, and have a peculiar language. They live by the fruits of the earth, which they have in plenty, and dispose of to travellers. They are a people who take things very easily, for they mind nothing but playing and singing, and dancing and enjoying themselves.[{2}]
And it is the truth that if a foreigner comes to the house of one of these people to lodge, the host is delighted, and desires his wife to put herself entirely at the guest’s disposal, whilst he himself gets out of the way, and comes back no more until the stranger shall have taken his departure. The guest may stay and enjoy the wife’s society as long as he lists, whilst the husband has no shame in the matter, but indeed considers it an honour. And all the men of this province are made wittols of by their wives in this way.[{3}] The women themselves are fair and wanton.
Now it came to pass during the reign of Mangu Kaan, that as lord of this province he came to hear of this custom, and he sent forth an order commanding them under grievous penalties to do so no more [but to provide public hostelries for travellers]. And when they heard this order they were much vexed thereat. [For about three years’ space they carried it out. But then they found that their lands were no longer fruitful, and that many mishaps befell them.] So they collected together and prepared a grand present which they sent to their Lord, praying him graciously to let them retain the custom which they had inherited from their ancestors; for it was by reason of this usage that their gods bestowed upon them all the good things that they possessed, and without it they saw not how they could continue to exist.[{4}] When the Prince had heard their petition his reply was “Since ye must needs keep your shame, keep it then,” and so he left them at liberty to maintain their naughty custom. And they always have kept it up, and do so still.
Now let us quit Camul, and I will tell you of another province which lies between north-west and north, and belongs to the Great Kaan.
[Note 1.]—Kamul (or Komul) does not fall into the great line of travel towards Cathay which Marco is following. His notice of it, and of the next province, forms a digression like that which he has already made to Samarkand. It appears very doubtful if Marco himself had visited it; his father and uncle may have done so on their first journey, as one of the chief routes to Northern China from Western Asia lies through this city, and has done so for many centuries. This was the route described by Pegolotti as that of the Italian traders in the century following Polo; it was that followed by Marignolli, by the envoys of Shah Rukh at a later date, and at a much later by Benedict Goës. The people were in Polo’s time apparently Buddhist, as the Uighúrs inhabiting this region had been from an old date: in Shah Rukh’s time (1420) we find a mosque and a great Buddhist Temple cheek by jowl; whilst Ramusio’s friend Hajji Mahomed (circa 1550) speaks of Kamul as the first Mahomedan city met with in travelling from China.
Kamul stands on an oasis carefully cultivated by aid of reservoirs for irrigation, and is noted in China for its rice and for some of its fruits, especially melons and grapes. It is still a place of some consequence, standing near the bifurcation of two great roads from China, one passing north and the other south of the Thian Shan, and it was the site of the Chinese Commissariat depôts for the garrisons to the westward. It was lost to the Chinese in 1867.
Kamul appears to have been the see of a Nestorian bishop. A Bishop of Kamul is mentioned as present at the inauguration of the Catholicos Denha in 1266. (Russians in Cent. Asia, 129; Ritter, II. 357 seqq.; Cathay, passim; Assemani, II. 455–456.)
[Kamul is the Turkish name of the province called by the Mongols Khamil, by the Chinese Hami; the latter name is found for the first time in the Yuen Shi, but it is first mentioned in Chinese history in the 1st century of our Era under the name of I-wu-lu or I-wu (Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. p. 20); after the death of Chinghiz, it belonged to his son Chagataï. From the Great Wall, at the Pass of Kia Yü, to Hami there is a distance of 1470 li. (C. Imbault-Huart. Le Pays de Hami ou Khamil ... d’après les auteurs chinois, Bul. de Géog. hist. et desc., Paris, 1892, pp. 121–195.) The Chinese general Chang Yao was in 1877 at Hami, which had submitted in 1867 to the Athalik Ghazi, and made it the basis of his operations against the small towns of Chightam and Pidjam, and Yakúb Khan himself stationed at Turfan. The Imperial Chinese Agent in this region bears the title of K’u lun Pan She Ta Ch’en and resides at K’urun (Urga); of lesser rank are the agents (Pan She Ta Ch’en) of Kashgar, Kharashar, Kuché, Aksu, Khotan, and Hami. (See a description of Hami by Colonel M. S. Bell, Proc. R. G. S. XII. 1890, p. 213.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Expressed almost in the same words is the character attributed by a Chinese writer to the people of Kuché in the same region. (Chin. Repos. IX. 126.) In fact, the character seems to be generally applicable to the people of East Turkestan, but sorely kept down by the rigid Islam that is now enforced. (See Shaw, passim, and especially the Mahrambáshi’s lamentations over the jolly days that were no more, pp. 319, 376.)
[Note 3.]—Pauthier’s text has “sont si honni de leur moliers comme vous avez ouy.” Here the Crusca has “sono bozzi delle loro moglie,” and the Lat. Geog. “sunt bezzi de suis uxoribus.” The Crusca Vocab. has inserted bozzo with the meaning we have given, on the strength of this passage. It occurs also in Dante (Paradiso, XIX. 137), in the general sense of disgraced.
The shameful custom here spoken of is ascribed by Polo also to a province of Eastern Tibet, and by popular report in modern times to the Hazaras of the Hindu-Kush, a people of Mongolian blood, as well as to certain nomad tribes of Persia, to say nothing of the like accusation against our own ancestors which has been drawn from Laonicus Chalcondylas. The old Arab traveller Ibn Muhalhal (10th century) also relates the same of the Hazlakh (probably Kharlikh) Turks: “Ducis alicujus uxor vel filia vel soror, quum mercatorum agmen in terram venit, eos adit, eorumque lustrat faciem. Quorum siquis earum afficit admiratione hunc domum suam ducit, eumque apud se hospitio excipit, eique benigne facit. Atque marito suo et filio fratrique rerum necessariarum curam demandat; neque dum hospes apud eam habitat, nisi necessarium est, maritus eam adit.” A like custom prevails among the Chukchis and Koryaks in the vicinity of Kamtchatka. (Elphinstone’s Caubul; Wood, p. 201; Burnes, who discredits, II. 153, III. 195; Laon. Chalcond. 1650, pp. 48–49; Kurd de Schloezer, p. 13; Erman, II. 530.)
[“It is remarkable that the Chinese author, Hung Hao, who lived a century before M. Polo, makes mention in his memoirs nearly in the same words of this custom of the Uighúrs, with whom he became acquainted during his captivity in the kingdom of the Kin. According to the chronicle of the Tangut kingdom of Si-hia, Hami was the nursery of Buddhism in Si-hia, and provided this kingdom with Buddhist books and monks.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 6.)—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—So the Jewish rabble to Jeremiah: “Since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.” (Jerem. xliv. 18.)
CHAPTER XLII.
Of the Province of Chingintalas.
Chingintalas is also a province at the verge of the Desert, and lying between north-west and north. It has an extent of sixteen days’ journey, and belongs to the Great Kaan, and contains numerous towns and villages. There are three different races of people in it—Idolaters, Saracens, and some Nestorian Christians.[{1}] At the northern extremity of this province there is a mountain in which are excellent veins of steel and ondanique.[{2}] And you must know that in the same mountain there is a vein of the substance from which Salamander is made.[{3}] For the real truth is that the Salamander is no beast, as they allege in our part of the world, but is a substance found in the earth; and I will tell you about it.
Everybody must be aware that it can be no animal’s nature to live in fire, seeing that every animal is composed of all the four elements.[{4}] Now I, Marco Polo, had a Turkish acquaintance of the name of Zurficar, and he was a very clever fellow. And this Turk related to Messer Marco Polo how he had lived three years in that region on behalf of the Great Kaan, in order to procure those Salamanders for him.[{5}] He said that the way they got them was by digging in that mountain till they found a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed, and when so treated it divides as it were into fibres of wool, which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded in a great copper mortar, and then washed, so as to remove all the earth and to leave only the fibres like fibres of wool. These were then spun, and made into napkins. When first made these napkins are not very white, but by putting them into the fire for a while they come out as white as snow. And so again whenever they become dirty they are bleached by being put in the fire.
Now this, and nought else, is the truth about the Salamander, and the people of the country all say the same. Any other account of the matter is fabulous nonsense. And I may add that they have at Rome a napkin of this stuff, which the Grand Kaan sent to the Pope to make a wrapper for the Holy Sudarium of Jesus Christ.[{6}]
We will now quit this subject, and I will proceed with my account of the countries lying in the direction between north-east and east.
[Note 1.]—The identification of this province is a difficulty, because the geographical definition is vague, and the name assigned to it has not been traced in other authors. It is said to lie between north-west and north, whilst Kamul was said to lie towards the north-west. The account of both provinces forms a digression, as is clear from the last words of the present chapter, where the traveller returns to take up his regular route “in the direction between north-east and east.” The point from which he digresses, and to which he reverts, is Shachau, and ’tis presumably from Shachau that he assigns bearings to the two provinces forming the subject of the digression. Hence, as Kamul lies vers maistre, i.e. north-west, and Chingintalas entre maistre et tramontaine, i.e. nor’-nor’-west, Chingintalas can scarcely lie due west of Kamul, as M. Pauthier would place it, in identifying it with an obscure place called Saiyintala, in the territory of Urumtsi. Moreover, the province is said to belong to the Great Kaan. Now, Urumtsi or Bishbalik seems to have belonged, not to the Great Kaan, but to the empire of Chagatai, or possibly at this time to Kaidu. Rashiduddin, speaking of the frontier between the Kaan and Kaidu, says:—“From point to point are posted bodies of troops under the orders of princes of the blood or other generals, and they often come to blows with the troops of Kaidu. Five of these are cantoned on the verge of the Desert; a sixth in Tangut, near Chagan-Nor (White Lake); a seventh in the vicinity of Karakhoja, a city of the Uighúrs, which lies between the two States, and maintains neutrality.”
Karakhoja, this neutral town, is near Turfan, to the south-east of Urumtsi, which thus would lie without the Kaan’s boundary; Kamul and the country north-east of it would lie within it. This country, to the north and north-east of Kamul, has remained till quite recently unexplored by any modern traveller, unless we put faith in Mr. Atkinson’s somewhat hazy narrative. But it is here that I would seek for Chingintalas.
Several possible explanations of this name have suggested themselves or been suggested to me. I will mention two.
1. Klaproth states that the Mongols applied to Tibet the name of Baron-tala, signifying the “Right Side,” i.e. the south-west or south quarter, whilst Mongolia was called Dzöhn (or Dzegun) Tala, i.e. the “Left,” or north-east side. It is possible that Chigin-talas might represent Dzegun Tala in some like application. The etymology of Dzungaria, a name which in modern times covers the territory of which we are speaking, is similar.
2. Professor Vámbéry thinks that it is probably Chingin Tala, “The Vast Plain.” But nothing can be absolutely satisfactory in such a case except historical evidence of the application of the name.
I have left the identity of this name undecided, though pointing to the general position of the region so-called by Marco, as indicated by the vicinity of the Tangnu-Ola Mountains ([p. 215]). A passage in the Journey of the Taouist Doctor, Changchun, as translated by Dr. Bretschneider (Chinese Recorder and Miss. Journ., Shanghai, Sept.–Oct., 1874, p. 258), suggests to me the strong probability that it may be the Kem-kém-jút of Rashiduddin, called by the Chinese teacher Kien-kien-chau.
Rashiduddin couples the territory of the Kirghiz with Kemkemjút, but defines the country embracing both with some exactness: “On one side (south-east?), it bordered on the Mongol country; on a second (north-east?), it was bounded by the Selenga; on a third (north), by the ‘great river called Angara, which flows on the confines of Ibir-Sibir’ (i.e. of Siberia); on a fourth side by the territory of the Naimans. This great country contained many towns and villages, as well as many nomad inhabitants.” Dr. Bretschneider’s Chinese Traveller speaks of it as a country where good iron was found, where (grey) squirrels abounded, and wheat was cultivated. Other notices quoted by him show that it lay to the south-east of the Kirghiz country, and had its name from the Kien or Ken R. (i.e. the Upper Yenisei).
The name (Kienkien), the general direction, the existence of good iron (“steel and ondanique”), the many towns and villages in a position where we should little look for such an indication, all point to the identity of this region with the Chingintalas of our text. The only alteration called for in the [Itinerary Map (No. IV.)] would be to spell the name Hinkin, or Ghinghin (as it is in the Geographic Text), and to shift it a very little further to the north.
(See Chingin in Kovalevski’s Mongol Dict., No. 2134; and for Baron-tala, etc., see Della Penna, Breve Notizia del Regno del Thibet, with Klaproth’s notes, p. 6; D’Avezac, p. 568; Relation prefixed to D’Anville’s Atlas, p. 11; Alphabetum Tibetanum, 454; and Kircher, China Illustrata, p. 65.)
Since the first edition was published, Mr. Ney Elias has traversed the region in question from east to west; and I learn from him that at Kobdo he found the most usual name for that town among Mongols, Kalmaks, and Russians to be Sankin-hoto. He had not then thought of connecting this name with Chinghin-talas, and has therefore no information as to its origin or the extent of its application. But he remarks that Polo’s bearing of between north and north-west, if understood to be from Kamul, would point exactly to Kobdo. He also calls attention to the Lake Sankin-dalai, to the north-east of Uliasut’ai, of which Atkinson gives a sketch. The recurrence of this name over so wide a tract may have something to do with the Chinghin-talas of Polo. But we must still wait for further light.[1]
[“Supposing that M. Polo mentions this place on his way from Sha-chow to Su-chow, it is natural to think that it is Chi-kin-talas, i.e. ‘Chi-kin plain’ or valley; Chi-kin was the name of a lake, called so even now, and of a defile, which received its name from the lake. The latter is on the way from Kia-yü kwan to Ansi chow.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 7.) “Chikin, or more correctly Chigin, is a Mongol word meaning ‘ear.’” (Ibid.) Palladius (p. 8) adds: “The Chinese accounts of Chi-kin are not in contradiction to the statements given by M. Polo regarding the same subject; but when the distances are taken into consideration, a serious difficulty arises; Chi-kin is two hundred and fifty or sixty li distant from Su-chow, whilst, according to M. Polo’s statement, ten days are necessary to cross this distance. One of the three following explanations of this discrepancy must be admitted: either Chingintalas is not Chi-kin, or the traveller’s memory failed, or, lastly, an error crept into the number of days’ journey. The two last suppositions I consider the most probable; the more so that similar difficulties occur several times in Marco Polo’s narrative.” (L.c. p. 8.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—[Ondanique.—We have already referred to this word, Kermán, p. 90. Cobinan, p. 124. La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (Dict.), F. Godefroy (Dict.), Du Cange (Gloss.), all give to andain the meaning of enjambée, from the Latin andare. Godefroy, s.v. andaine, calls it sorte d’acier ou de fer, and quotes besides Marco Polo:
“I. espiel, ou ot fer d’andaine,
Dont la lamele n’iert pas trouble.”
(Huon de Mery, Le Tornoiement de l’Antechrist, p. 3, Tarbé.)
There is a forest in the department of Orne, arrondissement of Domfront, which belonged to the Crown before 1669, and is now State property, called Forêt d’Andaine; it is situated near some bed of iron. Is this the origin of the name?—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—The Altai, or one of its ramifications, is probably the mountain of the text, but so little is known of this part of the Chinese territory that we can learn scarcely anything of its mineral products. Still Martini does mention that asbestos is found “in the Tartar country of Tangu,” which probably is the Tangnu Oola branch of the Altai to the south of the Upper Yenisei, and in the very region we have indicated as Chingintalas. Mr. Elias tells me he inquired for asbestos by its Chinese name at Uliasut’ai, but without success.
“Degli elementi quattro principali,
Che son la Terra, e l’Acqua, e l’Aria, e ’l Foco,
Composti sono gli universi Animali,
Pigliando di ciascuno assai o poco.”
(Dati, La Sfera, p. 9.)
Zurficar in the next sentence is a Mahomedan name, Zu’lfiḳár, the title of [the edge of] Ali’s sword.
[Note 5.]—Here the G. Text adds: “Et je meisme le vi,” intimating, I conceive, his having himself seen specimens of the asbestos—not to his having been at the place.
[Note 6.]—The story of the Salamander passing unhurt through fire is at least as old as Aristotle. But I cannot tell when the fable arose that asbestos was a substance derived from the animal. This belief, however, was general in the Middle Ages, both in Asia and Europe. “The fable of the Salamander,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “hath been much promoted by stories of incombustible napkins and textures which endure the fire, whose materials are called by the name of Salamander’s wool, which many, too literally apprehending, conceive some investing part or integument of the Salamander.... Nor is this Salamander’s wool desumed from any animal, but a mineral substance, metaphorically so called for this received opinion.”
Those who knew that the Salamander was a lizard-like animal were indeed perplexed as to its woolly coat. Thus the Cardinal de Vitry is fain to say the creature “profert ex cute quasi quamdam lanam de quâ zonae contextae comburi non possunt igne.” A Bestiary, published by Cahier and Martin, says of it: “De lui naist une cose qui n’est ne soie ne lin ne laine.” Jerome Cardan looked in vain, he says, for hair on the Salamander! Albertus Magnus calls the incombustible fibre pluma Salamandri; and accordingly Bold Bauduin de Sebourc finds the Salamander in the Terrestrial Paradise a kind of bird covered with the whitest plumage; of this he takes some, which he gets woven into a cloth; this he presents to the Pope, and the Pontiff applies it to the purpose mentioned in the text, viz. to cover the holy napkin of St. Veronica.
Gervase of Tilbury writes: “I saw, when lately at Rome, a broad strap of Salamander skin, like a girdle for the loins, which had been brought thither by Cardinal Peter of Capua. When it had become somewhat soiled by use, I myself saw it cleaned perfectly, and without receiving harm, by being put in the fire.”
In Persian the creature is called Samandar, Samandal, etc., and some derive the word from Sam, “fire,” and Andar, “within.” Doubtless it is a corruption of the Greek Σαλαμάνδρα, whatever be the origin of that. Bakui says the animal is found at Ghur, near Herat, and is like a mouse. Another author, quoted by D’Herbelot, says it is like a marten.
[Sir T. Douglas Forsyth, in his Introductory Remarks to Prjevalsky’s Travels to Lob-nor (p. 20), at Aksu says: “The asbestos mentioned by Marco Polo as a utilized product of this region is not even so known in this country.”—H. C.]
✛ Interesting details regarding the fabrication of cloth and paper from amianth or asbestos are contained in a report presented to the French Institute by M. Sage (Mém. Ac. Sciences, 2e Sem., 1806, p. 102), of which large extracts are given in the Diction. général des Tissus, par M. Bezon, 2e éd. vol. ii. Lyon, 1859, p. 5. He mentions that a Sudarium of this material is still shown at the Vatican; we hope it is the cover which Kúblái sent.
[This hope is not to be realized. Mgr. Duchesne, of the Institut de France, writes to me from Rome, from information derived from the keepers of the Vatican Museum, that there is no sudarium from the Great Khan, that indeed part of a sudarium made of asbestos is shown (under glass) in this Museum, about 20 inches long, but it is ancient, and was found in a Pagan tomb of the Appian Way.—H. C.]
M. Sage exhibited incombustible paper made from this material, and had himself seen a small furnace of Chinese origin made from it. Madame Perpenté, an Italian lady, who experimented much with asbestos, found that from a crude mass of that substance threads could be elicited which were ten times the length of the mass itself, and were indeed sometimes several metres in length, the fibres seeming to be involved, like silk in a cocoon. Her process of preparation was much like that described by Marco. She succeeded in carding and reeling the material, made gloves and the like, as well as paper, from it, and sent to the Institute a work printed on such paper.
The Rev. A. Williamson mentions asbestos as found in Shantung. The natives use it for making stoves, crucibles, and so forth.
(Sir T. Browne, I. 293; Bongars, I. 1104; Cahier et Martin, III. 271; Cardan, de Rer. Varietate, VII. 33; Alb. Mag. Opera, 1551, II. 227, 233; Fr. Michel, Recherches, etc., II. 91; Gerv. of Tilbury, p. 13; N. et E. II. 493; D. des Tissus, II. 1–12; J. N. China Branch R. A. S., December, 1867, p. 70.) [Berger de Xivrey, Traditions tératologiques, 457–458, 460–463.—H. C.]
[1] The late Mr. Atkinson has been twice alluded to in this note. I take the opportunity of saying that Mr. Ney Elias, a most competent judge, who has travelled across the region in question whilst admitting, as every one must, Atkinson’s vagueness and sometimes very careless statements, is not at all disposed to discredit the truth of his narrative.
CHAPTER XLIII.
Of the Province of Sukchur.
On leaving the province of which I spoke before,[{1}] you ride ten days between north-east and east, and in all that way you find no human dwelling, or next to none, so that there is nothing for our book to speak of.
At the end of those ten days you come to another province called Sukchur, in which there are numerous towns and villages. The chief city is called Sukchu.[{2}] The people are partly Christians and partly Idolaters, and all are subject to the Great Kaan.
The great General Province to which all these three provinces belong is called Tangut.
Over all the mountains of this province rhubarb is found in great abundance, and thither merchants come to buy it, and carry it thence all over the world.[{3}] [Travellers, however, dare not visit those mountains with any cattle but those of the country, for a certain plant grows there which is so poisonous that cattle which eat it lose their hoofs. The cattle of the country know it and eschew it.[{4}]] The people live by agriculture, and have not much trade. [They are of a brown complexion. The whole of the province is healthy.]
[Note 1.]—Referring apparently to Shachau; see Note 1 and the closing words of last chapter.
[Note 2.]—There is no doubt that the province and city are those of Suhchau, but there is a great variety in the readings, and several texts have a marked difference between the name of the province and that of the city, whilst others give them as the same. I have adopted those to which the resultants of the readings of the best texts seem to point, viz. Succiur and Succiu, though with considerable doubt whether they should not be identical. Pauthier declares that Suctur, which is the reading of his favourite MS., is the exact pronunciation, after the vulgar Mongol manner, of Suh-chau-lu, the Lu or circuit of Suhchau; whilst Neumann says that the Northern Chinese constantly add an euphonic particle or to the end of words. I confess to little faith in such refinements, when no evidence is produced.
[Suhchau had been devastated and its inhabitants massacred by Chinghiz Khan in 1226.—H. C.]
Suhchau is called by Rashiduddin, and by Shah Rukh’s ambassadors, Sukchú, in exact correspondence with the reading we have adopted for the name of the city, whilst the Russian Envoy Boikoff, in the 17th century, calls it “Suktsey, where the rhubarb grows”; and Anthony Jenkinson, in Hakluyt, by a slight metathesis, Sowchick. Suhchau lies just within the extreme north-west angle of the Great Wall. It was at Suhchau that Benedict Goës was detained, waiting for leave to go on to Peking, eighteen weary months, and there he died just as aid reached him.
[Note 3.]—The real rhubarb [Rheum palmatum] grows wild, on very high mountains. The central line of its distribution appears to be the high range dividing the head waters of the Hwang-Ho, Yalung, and Min-Kiang. The chief markets are Siningfu (see [ch. lvii.]), and Kwan-Kian in Szechwan. In the latter province an inferior kind is grown in fields, but the genuine rhubarb defies cultivation. (See Richthofen, Letters, No. VII. p. 69.) Till recently it was almost all exported by Kiakhta and Russia, but some now comes viâ Hankau and Shanghai.
[“See, on the preparation of the root in China, Gemelli-Careri. (Churchill’s Collect., Bk. III. ch. v. 365.) It is said that when Chinghiz Khan was pillaging Tangut, the only things his minister, Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai, would take as his share of the booty were a few Chinese books and a supply of rhubarb, with which he saved the lives of a great number of Mongols, when, a short time after, an epidemic broke out in the army.” (D’Ohsson, I. 372.—Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 193, note.)
“With respect to rhubarb ... the Suchowchi also makes the remark, that the best rhubarb, with golden flowers in the breaking, is gathered in this province (district of Shan-tan), and that it is equally beneficial to men and beasts, preserving them from the pernicious effects of the heat.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 9.)—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—Erba is the title applied to the poisonous growth, which may be either “plant” or “grass.” It is not unlikely that it was a plant akin to the Andromeda ovalifolia, the tradition of the poisonous character of which prevails everywhere along the Himalaya from Nepal to the Indus.
It is notorious for poisoning sheep and goats at Simla and other hill sanitaria; and Dr. Cleghorn notes the same circumstance regarding it that Polo heard of the plant in Tangut, viz. that its effects on flocks imported from the plains are highly injurious, whilst those of the hills do not appear to suffer, probably because they shun the young leaves, which alone are deleterious. Mr. Marsh attests the like fact regarding the Kalmia angustifolia of New England, a plant of the same order (Ericaceae). Sheep bred where it abounds almost always avoid browsing on its leaves, whilst those brought from districts where it is unknown feed upon it and are poisoned.
Firishta, quoting from the Zafar-Námah, says: “On the road from Kashmir towards Tibet there is a plain on which no other vegetable grows but a poisonous grass that destroys all the cattle that taste of it, and therefore no horsemen venture to travel that route.” And Abbé Desgodins, writing from E. Tibet, mentions that sheep and goats are poisoned by rhododendron leaves. (Dr. Hugh Cleghorn in J. Agricultural and Hortic. Society of India, XIV. part 4; Marsh’s Man and Nature, p. 40; Brigg’s Firishta, IV. 449; Bul. de la Soc. de Géog. 1873, I. 333.)
[“This poisonous plant seems to be the Stipa inebrians described by the late Dr. Hance in the Journal of Bot. 1876, p. 211, from specimens sent to me by Belgian Missionaries from the Ala Shan Mountains, west of the Yellow River.” (Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc. I. p. 5.)
“M. Polo notices that the cattle not indigenous to the province lose their hoofs in the Suh-chau Mountains; but that is probably not on account of some poisonous grass, but in consequence of the stony ground.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 9.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER XLIV.
Of the City of Campichu.
Campichu is also a city of Tangut, and a very great and noble one. Indeed it is the capital and place of government of the whole province of Tangut.[{1}] The people are Idolaters, Saracens, and Christians, and the latter have three very fine churches in the city, whilst the Idolaters have many minsters and abbeys after their fashion. In these they have an enormous number of idols, both small and great, certain of the latter being a good ten paces in stature; some of them being of wood, others of clay, and others yet of stone. They are all highly polished, and then covered with gold. The great idols of which I speak lie at length.[{2}] And round about them there are other figures of considerable size, as if adoring and paying homage before them.
Now, as I have not yet given you particulars about the customs of these Idolaters, I will proceed to tell you about them.
You must know that there are among them certain religious recluses who lead a more virtuous life than the rest. These abstain from all lechery, though they do not indeed regard it as a deadly sin; howbeit if any one sin against nature they condemn him to death. They have an Ecclesiastical Calendar as we have; and there are five days in the month that they observe particularly; and on these five days they would on no account either slaughter any animal or eat flesh meat. On those days, moreover, they observe much greater abstinence altogether than on other days.[{3}]
Among these people a man may take thirty wives, more or less, if he can but afford to do so, each having wives in proportion to his wealth and means; but the first wife is always held in highest consideration. The men endow their wives with cattle, slaves, and money, according to their ability. And if a man dislikes any one of his wives, he just turns her off and takes another. They take to wife their cousins and their fathers’ widows (always excepting the man’s own mother), holding to be no sin many things that we think grievous sins, and, in short, they live like beasts.[{4}]
Messer Maffeo and Messer Marco Polo dwelt a whole year in this city when on a mission.[{5}]
Now we will leave this and tell you about other provinces towards the north, for we are going to take you a sixty days’ journey in that direction.
[Note 1.]—Campichiu is undoubtedly Kanchau, which was at this time, as Pauthier tells us, the chief city of the administration of Kansuh, corresponding to Polo’s Tangut. Kansuh itself is a name compounded of the names of the two cities Kan-chau and Suh-chau.
[Kanchau fell under the Tangut dominion in 1208. (Palladius, p. 10.) The Musulmans mentioned by Polo at Shachau and Kanchau probably came from Khotan.—H. C.]
The difficulties that have been made about the form of the name Campiciou, etc., in Polo, and the attempts to explain these, are probably alike futile. Quatremère writes the Persian form of the name after Abdurrazzak as Kamtcheou, but I see that Erdmann writes it after Rashid, I presume on good grounds, as Ckamidschu, i.e. Ḳamiju or Ḳamichu. And that this was the Western pronunciation of the name is shown by the form which Pegolotti uses, Camexu, i.e. Camechu. The p in Polo’s spelling is probably only a superfluous letter, as in the occasional old spelling of dampnum, contempnere, hympnus, tirampnus, sompnour, Dampne Deu. In fact, Marignolli writes Polo’s Quinsai as Campsay.
It is worthy of notice that though Ramusio’s text prints the names of these two cities as Succuir and Campion, his own pronunciation of them appears to have been quite well understood by the Persian traveller Hajji Mahomed, for it is perfectly clear that the latter recognized in these names Suhchau and Kanchau. (See Ram. II. f. 14v.) The second volume of the Navigationi, containing Polo, was published after Ramusio’s death, and it is possible that the names as he himself read them were more correct (e.g. Succiur, Campjou).
Colossal Figure, Buddha entering Nirvana.
“Et si voz di qu’il ont de ydres que sunt grant dix pas.... Ceste grant ydres gigent.” ...[Note 2.]—This is the meaning of the phrase in the G. T.: “Ceste grande ydre gigent,” as may be seen from Ramusio’s giaciono distesi. Lazari renders the former expression, “giganteggia un idolo,” etc., a phrase very unlike Polo. The circumstance is interesting, because this recumbent Colossus at Kanchau is mentioned both by Hajji Mahomed and by Shah Rukh’s people. The latter say: “In this city of Kanchú there is an Idol-Temple 500 cubits square. In the middle is an idol lying at length which measures 50 paces. The sole of the foot is nine paces long, and the instep is 21 cubits in girth. Behind this image and overhead are other idols of a cubit (?) in height, besides figures of Bakshis as large as life. The action of all is hit off so admirably that you would think they were alive.” These great recumbent figures are favourites in Buddhist countries still, e.g. in Siam, Burma, and Ceylon. They symbolise Sakya Buddha entering Nirvána. Such a recumbent figure, perhaps the prototype of these, was seen by Hiuen Tsang in a Vihara close to the Sál Grove at Kusinágara, where Sakya entered that state, i.e. died. The stature of Buddha was, we are told, 12 cubits; but Brahma, Indra, and the other gods vainly tried to compute his dimensions. Some such rude metaphor is probably embodied in these large images. I have described one 69 feet long in Burma (represented in the cut), but others exist of much greater size, though probably none equal to that which Hiuen Tsang, in the 7th century, saw near Bamian, which was 1000 feet in length! I have heard of but one such image remaining in India, viz. in one of the caves at Dhamnár in Málwa. This is 15 feet long, and is popularly known as “Bhim’s Baby.” (Cathay, etc., pp. cciii., ccxviii.; Mission to Ava, p. 52; V. et V. de H. T., p. 374: Cunningham’s Archæl. Reports, ii. 274; Tod, ii. 273.)
[“The temple, in which M. Polo saw an idol of Buddha, represented in a lying position, is evidently Wo-fo-sze, i.e. ‘Monastery of the lying Buddha.’ It was built in 1103 by a Tangut queen, to place there three idols representing Buddha in this posture, which have since been found in the ground on this very spot.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 10.)
Rubruck (p. 144) says: “A Nestorian, who had come from Cathay told me that in that country there is an idol so big that it can be seen from two days off.” Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 144, note) writes: “The largest stone image I have seen is in a cave temple at Yung-kán, about 10 miles north-west of Ta t’ung Fu in Shan-si. Père Gerbillon says the Emperor K’ang-hsi measured it himself and found it to be 57 chih high (61 feet). (Duhalde, Description, IV. 352.) I have seen another colossal statue in a cave near Pinchou in north-west Shan-si, and there is another about 45 miles south of Ning-hsia Fu, near the left bank of the Yellow River. (Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, 26, and Diary, 47.) The great recumbent figure of the ‘Sleeping Buddha’ in the Wo Fo ssŭ, near Peking, is of clay.”
King Haython (Brosset’s ed. p. 181) mentions the statue in clay, of an extraordinary height, of a God (Buddha) aged 3040 years, who is to live 370,000 years more, when he will be superseded by another god called Madri (Maitreya).—H. C.]
Great Lama Monastery.
[Note 3.]—Marco is now speaking of the Lamas, or clergy of Tibetan Buddhism. The customs mentioned have varied in details, both locally and with the changes that the system has passed through in the course of time.
The institutes of ancient Buddhism set apart the days of new and full moon to be observed by the Sramanas or monks, by fasting, confession, and listening to the reading of the law. It became usual for the laity to take part in the observance, and the number of days was increased to three and then to four, whilst Hiuen Tsang himself speaks of “the six fasts of every month,” and a Chinese authority quoted by Julien gives the days as the 8th, 14th, 15th, 23rd, 29th, and 30th. Fahian says that in Ceylon preaching took place on the 8th, 14th, and 15th days of the month. Four is the number now most general amongst Buddhist nations, and the days may be regarded as a kind of Buddhist Sabbath. In the southern countries and in Nepal they occur at the moon’s changes. In Tibet and among the Mongol Buddhists they are not at equal intervals, though I find the actual days differently stated by different authorities. Pallas says the Mongols observed the 13th, 14th, and 15th, the three days being brought together, he thought, on account of the distance many Lamas had to travel to the temple—just as in some Scotch country parishes they used to give two sermons in one service for like reason! Koeppen, to whose work this note is much indebted, says the Tibetan days are the 14th, 15th, 29th, 30th, and adds as to the manner of observance: “On these days, by rule, among the Lamas, nothing should be tasted but farinaceous food and tea; the very devout refrain from all food from sunrise to sunset. The Temples are decorated, and the altar tables set out with the holy symbols, with tapers, and with dishes containing offerings in corn, meal, tea, butter, etc., and especially with small pyramids of dough, or of rice or clay, and accompanied by much burning of incense-sticks. The service performed by the priests is more solemn, the music louder and more exciting, than usual. The laity make their offerings, tell their beads, and repeat Om mani padma hom,” etc. In the concordat that took place between the Dalai-Lama and the Altun Khaghan, on the reconversion of the Mongols to Buddhism in the 16th century, one of the articles was the entire prohibition of hunting and the slaughter of animals on the monthly fast days. The practice varies much, however, even in Tibet, with different provinces and sects—a variation which the Ramusian text of Polo implies in these words: “For five days, or four days, or three in each month, they shed no blood,” etc.
In Burma the Worship Day, as it is usually called by Europeans, is a very gay scene, the women flocking to the pagodas in their brightest attire. (H. T. Mémoires, I. 6, 208; Koeppen, I. 563–564, II. 139, 307–308; Pallas, Samml. II. 168–169).
[Note 4.]—These matrimonial customs are the same that are afterwards ascribed to the Tartars, so we defer remark.
[Note 5.]—So Pauthier’s text, “en legation.” The G. Text includes Nicolo Polo, and says, “on business of theirs that is not worth mentioning,” and with this Ramusio agrees.
CHAPTER XLV.
Of the City of Etzina.
When you leave the city of Campichu you ride for twelve days, and then reach a city called Etzina, which is towards the north on the verge of the Sandy Desert; it belongs to the Province of Tangut.[{1}] The people are Idolaters, and possess plenty of camels and cattle, and the country produces a number of good falcons, both Sakers and Lanners. The inhabitants live by their cultivation and their cattle, for they have no trade. At this city you must needs lay in victuals for forty days, because when you quit Etzina, you enter on a desert which extends forty days’ journey to the north, and on which you meet with no habitation nor baiting-place.[{2}] In the summer-time, indeed, you will fall in with people, but in the winter the cold is too great. You also meet with wild beasts (for there are some small pine-woods here and there), and with numbers of wild asses.[{3}] When you have travelled these forty days across the Desert you come to a certain province lying to the north. Its name you shall hear presently.
Wild Ass of Mongolia.
[Note 1.]—Deguignes says that Yetsina is found in a Chinese Map of Tartary of the Mongol era, and this is confirmed by Pauthier, who reads it Itsinai, and adds that the text of the Map names it as one of the seven Lu or Circuits of the Province of Kansuh (or Tangut). Indeed, in D’Anville’s Atlas we find a river called Etsina Pira, running northward from Kanchau, and a little below the 41st parallel joining another from Suhchau. Beyond the junction is a town called Hoa-tsiang, which probably represents Etzina. Yetsina is also mentioned in Gaubil’s History of Chinghiz as taken by that conqueror in 1226, on his last campaign against Tangut. This capture would also seem from Pétis de la Croix to be mentioned by Rashiduddin. Gaubil says the Chinese Geography places Yetsina north of Kanchau and north-east of Suhchau, at a distance of 120 leagues from Kanchau, but observes that this is certainly too great. (Gaubil, p. 49.)
[I believe there can be no doubt that Etzina must be looked for on the river Hei-shui, called Etsina by the Mongols, east of Suhchau. This river empties its waters into the two lakes Soho-omo and Sopo-omo. Etzina would have been therefore situated on the river on the border of the Desert, at the top of a triangle whose bases would be Suhchau and Kanchau. This river was once part of the frontier of the kingdom of Tangut. (Cf. Devéria, Notes d’épigraphie mongolo-chinoise, p. 4.) Reclus (Géog. Univ., Asie Orientale, p. 159) says: “To the east [of Hami], beyond the Chukur Gobi, are to be found also some permanent villages and the remains of cities. One of them is perhaps the ‘cité d’Etzina’ of which Marco Polo speaks, and the name is to be found in that of the river Az-sind.”
“Through Kanchau was the shortest, and most direct and convenient road to I-tsi-nay.... I-tsi-nay, or Echiné, is properly the name of a lake. Khubilaï, disquieted by his factious relatives on the north, established a military post near lake I-tsi-nay, and built a town, or a fort on the south-western shore of this lake. The name of I-tsi-nay appears from that time; it does not occur in the chronicle of the Tangut kingdom; the lake had then another name. Vestiges of the town are seen to this day; the buildings were of large dimensions, and some of them were very fine. In Marco Polo’s time there existed a direct route from I-tsi-nay to Karakorum; traces of this road are still noticeable, but it is no more used. This circumstance, i.e. the existence of a road from I-tsi-nay to Karakorum, probably led Marco Polo to make an excursion (a mental one, I suppose) to the residence of the Khans in Northern Mongolia.” (Palladius, l.c. pp. 10–11.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—“Erberge” (G. T.). Pauthier has Herbage.
[Note 3.]—The Wild Ass of Mongolia is the Dshiggetai of Pallas (Asinus hemionus of Gray), and identical with the Tibetan Kyang of Moorcroft and Trans-Himalayan sportsmen. It differs, according to Blyth, only in shades of colour and unimportant markings from the Ghor Khar of Western India and the Persian Deserts, the Kulan of Turkestan, which Marco has spoken of in a previous passage (suprà, ch. xvi.; J. A. S. B. XXVIII. 229 seqq.). There is a fine Kyang in the Zoological Gardens, whose portrait, after Wolf, is given here. But Mr. Ney Elias says of this animal that he has little of the aspect of his nomadic brethren. [The wild ass (Tibetan Kyang, Mongol Holu or Hulan) is called by the Chinese yeh ma, “wild horse,” though “every one admits that it is an ass, and should be called yeh lo-tzŭ.” (Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, 151, note.)—H. C.]
[Captain Younghusband (1886) saw in the Altaï Mountains “considerable numbers of wild asses, which appeared to be perfectly similar to the Kyang of Ladak and Tibet, and wild horses too—the Equus Prejevalskii—roaming about these great open plains.” (Proc. R. G. S. X. 1888, p. 495.) Dr. Sven Hedin says the habitat of the Kulan is the heights of Tibet as well as the valley of the Tarim; it looks like a mule with the mane and tail of an ass, but shorter ears, longer than those of a horse; he gives a picture of it.—H. C.]
CHAPTER XLVI.
Of the City of Caracoron.
Caracoron is a city of some three miles in compass. [It is surrounded by a strong earthen rampart, for stone is scarce there. And beside it there is a great citadel wherein is a fine palace in which the Governor resides.] ’Tis the first city that the Tartars possessed after they issued from their own country. And now I will tell you all about how they first acquired dominion and spread over the world.[{1}]
Originally the Tartars[{2}] dwelt in the north on the borders of Chorcha.[{3}] Their country was one of great plains; and there were no towns or villages in it, but excellent pasture-lands, with great rivers and many sheets of water; in fact it was a very fine and extensive region. But there was no sovereign in the land. They did, however, pay tax and tribute to a great prince who was called in their tongue Unc Can, the same that we call Prester John, him in fact about whose great dominion all the world talks.[{4}] The tribute he had of them was one beast out of every ten, and also a tithe of all their other gear.
Now it came to pass that the Tartars multiplied exceedingly. And when Prester John saw how great a people they had become, he began to fear that he should have trouble from them. So he made a scheme to distribute them over sundry countries, and sent one of his Barons to carry this out. When the Tartars became aware of this they took it much amiss, and with one consent they left their country and went off across a desert to a distant region towards the north, where Prester John could not get at them to annoy them. Thus they revolted from his authority and paid him tribute no longer. And so things continued for a time.
[Note 1.]—Karákorum, near the upper course of the River Orkhon, is said by Chinese authors to have been founded by Búkú Khan of the Hoei-Hu or Uigúrs, in the 8th century. In the days of Chinghiz, we are told that it was the headquarters of his ally, and afterwards enemy, Togrul Wang Khan, the Prester John of Polo. [“The name of this famous city is Mongol, Kara, ‘black,’ and Kuren, ‘a camp,’ or properly ‘pailing.’” It was founded in 1235 by Okkodai, who called it Ordu Balik, or “the City of the Ordu,” otherwise “The Royal City.” Mohammedan authors say it took its name of Karákorum from the mountains to the south of it, in which the Orkhon had its source. (D’Ohsson, ii. 64.) The Chinese mention a range of mountains from which the Orkhon flows, called Wu-tê kien shan. (T’ang shu, bk. 43b.) Probably these are the same. Rashiduddin speaks of a tribe of Utikien Uigúrs living in this country. (Bretschneider, Med. Geog. 191; D’Ohsson, i. 437; Rockhill, Rubruck, 220, note.)—Karákorum was called by the Chinese Ho-lin and was chosen by Chinghiz, in 1206, as his capital; the full name of it, Ha-la Ho-lin, was derived from a river to the west. (Yuen shi, ch. lviii.) Gaubil (Holin, p. 10) says that the river, called in his days in Tartar Karoha, was, at the time of the Mongol Emperors, named by the Chinese Ha-la Ho-lin, in Tartar language Ka la Ko lin, or Cara korin, or Kara Koran. In the spring of 1235, Okkodai had a wall raised round Ho-lin and a palace called Wang an, built inside the city. (Gaubil, Gentchiscan, 89.) After the death of Kúblái, Ho-lin was altered into Ho-Ning, and, in 1320, the name of the province was changed into Ling-pé (mountainous north, i.e. the Yin-shan chain, separating China Proper from Mongolia). In 1256, Mangu Kaan decided to transfer the seat of government to Kaipingfu, or Shangtu, near the present Dolonnor, north of Peking. (Suprà in Prologue, [ch. xiii. note 1].) In 1260, Kúblái transferred his capital to Ta-Tu (Peking).
Plano Carpini (1246) is the first Western traveller to mention it by name which he writes Caracoron; he visited the Sira Orda, at half a day’s journey from Karákorum, where Okkodai used to pass the summer; it was situated at a place Ormektua. (Rockhill, Rubruck, 21, 111.) Rubruquis (1253) visited the city itself; the following is his account of it: “As regards the city of Caracoron, you must understand that if you set aside the Kaan’s own Palace, it is not as good as the Borough of St. Denis; and as for the Palace, the Abbey of St. Denis is worth ten of it! There are two streets in the town; one of which is occupied by the Saracens, and in that is the marketplace. The other street is occupied by the Cathayans, who are all craftsmen. Besides these two streets there are some great palaces occupied by the court secretaries. There are also twelve idol temples belonging to different nations, two Mahummeries in which the Law of Mahomet is preached, and one church of the Christians at the extremity of the town. The town is enclosed by a mud-wall and has four gates. At the east gate they sell millet and other corn, but the supply is scanty; at the west gate they sell rams and goats; at the south gate oxen and waggons; at the north gate horses.... Mangu Kaan has a great Court beside the Town Rampart, which is enclosed by a brick wall, just like our priories. Inside there is a big palace, within which he holds a drinking-bout twice a year; ... there are also a number of long buildings like granges, in which are kept his treasures and his stores of victual” (345–6; 334).
Where was Karákorum situated?
The Archimandrite Palladius is very prudent (l.c. p. 11): “Everything that the studious Chinese authors could gather and say of the situation of Karakhorum is collected in two Chinese works, Lo fung low wen kao (1849), and Mungku yew mu ki (1859). However, no positive conclusion can be derived from these researches, chiefly in consequence of the absence of a tolerably correct map of Northern Mongolia.”
Abel Rémusat (Mém. sur Géog. Asie Centrale, p. 20) made a confusion between Karábalgasun and Karákorum which has misled most writers after him.
Sir Henry Yule says: “The evidence adduced in Abel Rémusat’s paper on Karákorum (Mém. de l’Acad. R. des Insc. VII. 288) establishes the site on the north bank of the Orkhon, and about five days’ journey above the confluence of the Orkhon and Tula. But as we have only a very loose knowledge of these rivers, it is impossible to assign the geographical position with accuracy. Nor is it likely that ruins exist beyond an outline perhaps of the Kaan’s Palace walls.”
In the Geographical Magazine for July, 1874 (p. 137), Sir Henry Yule has been enabled, by the kind aid of Madame Fedtchenko in supplying a translation from the Russian, to give some account of Mr. Paderin’s visit to the place, in the summer of 1873, along with a sketch-map.
“The site visited by Mr. Paderin is shown, by the particulars stated in that paper, to be sufficiently identified with Karákorum. It is precisely that which Rémusat indicated, and which bears in the Jesuit maps, as published by D’Anville, the name of Talarho Hara Palhassoun (i.e. Kará Balghásun), standing 4 or 5 miles from the left bank of the Orkhon, in lat. (by the Jesuit Tables) 47° 32′ 24″. It is now known as Kara-Khărăm (Rampart) or Kara Balghasun (city). The remains consist of a quadrangular rampart of mud and sun-dried brick, of about 500 paces to the side, and now about 9 feet high, with traces of a higher tower, and of an inner rampart parallel to the other. But these remains probably appertain to the city as re-occupied by the descendants of the Yuen in the end of the 14th century, after their expulsion from China.”
Dr. Bretschneider (Med. Res. I. p. 123) rightly observes: “It seems, however, that Paderin is mistaken in his supposition. At least it does not agree with the position assigned to the ancient Mongol residence in the Mongol annals Erdenin erikhe, translated into Russian, in 1883, by Professor Pozdneiev. It is there positively stated (p. 110, note 2) that the monastery of Erdenidsu, founded in 1585, was erected on the ruins of that city, which once had been built by order of Ogotai Khan, and where he had established his residence; and where, after the expulsion of the Mongols from China, Toghon Temur again had fixed the Mongol court. This vast monastery still exists, one English mile, or more, east of the Orkhon. It has even been astronomically determined by the Jesuit missionaries, and is marked on our maps of Mongolia. Pozdneiev, who visited the place in 1877, obligingly informs me that the square earthen wall surrounding the monastery of Erdenidsu, and measuring about an English mile in circumference, may well be the very wall of ancient Karákorum.”
Recent researches have fully confirmed the belief that the Erdeni Tso, or Erdeni Chao, Monastery occupies the site of Karákorum, near the bank of the Orkhon, between this river and the Kokchin (old) Orkhon. (See map in Inscriptions de l’Orkhon, Helsingfors, 1892; a plan of the vicinity and of the Erdeni Tso is given (plate 36) in W. Radloff’s Atlas der Alterthümer der Mongolei, St. Pet., 1892.)
According to a work of the 13th century quoted by the late Professor G. Devéria, the distance between the old capital of the Uighúr, Kara Balgasún, on the left bank of the Orkhon, north of Erdeni Tso, and the Ho-lin or Karákorum of the Mongols, would be 70 li (about 30 miles), and such is the space between Erdeni Tso and Kara Balgasún. M. Marcel Monnier (Itinéraires, p. 107) estimates the bird’s-eye distance from Erdeni Tso to Kara Balgasún at 33 kilom. (about 20½ miles). “When the brilliant epoch of the power of the Chinghizkhanides,” says Professor Axel Heikel, “was at an end, the city of Karákorum fell into oblivion, and towards the year 1590 was founded, in the centre of this historically celebrated region of the Orkhon, the most ancient of Buddhist monasteries of Mongolia, this of Erdeni Tso [Erdeni Chao]. It was built, according to a Mongol chronicle, on the ruins of the town built by Okkodaï, son of Chinghiz Khan, that is to say, on the ancient Karákorum.” (Inscriptions de l’Orkhon.) So Professor Heikel, like Professor Pozdneiev, concludes that Erdeni Tso was built on the site of Karákorum and cannot be mistaken for Karabalgásun. Indeed it is highly probable that one of the walls of the actual convent belonged to the old Mongol capital. The travels and researches by expeditions from Finland and Russia have made these questions pretty clear. Some most interesting inscriptions have been brought home and have been studied by a number of Orientalists: G. Schlegel, O. Donner, G. Devéria, Vasiliev, G. von der Gabelentz, Dr. Hirth, G. Huth, E. H. Parker, W. Bang, etc., and especially Professor Vilh. Thomsen, of Copenhagen, who deciphered them (Déchiffrement des Inscriptions de l’Orkhon et de l’Iénissei, Copenhague, 1894, 8vo; Inscriptions de l’Orkhon déchiffrées, par V. Thomsen, Helsingfors, 1894, 8vo), and Professor W. Radloff of St. Petersburg (Atlas der Alterthümer der Mongolei, 1892–6, fol.; Die alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei, 1894–7, etc.). There is an immense literature on these inscriptions, and for the bibliography, I must refer the reader to H. Cordier, Etudes Chinoises (1891–1894), Leide, 1895, 8vo. Id. (1895–1898), Leide, 1898, 8vo. The initiator of these discoveries was N. Iarindsev, of Irkutsk, who died at Barnaoul in 1894, and the first great expedition was started from Finland in 1890, under the guidance of Professor Axel Heikel. (Inscriptions de l’Orkhon recueillies par l’expédition finnoise, 1890, et publiées par la Société Finno-Ougrienne, Helsingfors, 1892, fol.) The Russian expedition left the following year, 1891, under the direction of the Academician W. Radloff.
M. Chaffanjon (Nouv. Archiv. des Missions Scient. IX., 1899, p. 81), in 1895, does not appear to know that there is a difference between Kará Korum and Kará Balgásun, as he writes: “Forty kilometres south of Kara Korum or Kara Balgásun, the convent of Erdin Zoun.”
A plan of Kara Balgásun is given (plate 27) in Radloff’s Atlas. See also Henri Cordier et Gaubil, Situation de Holin en Tartarie, Leide, 1893.
In Rubruquis’s account of Karákorum there is one passage of great interest: “Then master William [Guillaume L’Orfèvre] had made for us an iron to make wafers ... he made also a silver box to put the body of Christ in, with relics in little cavities made in the sides of the box.” Now M. Marcel Monnier, who is one of the last, if not the last traveller who visited the region, tells me that he found in the large temple of Erdeni Tso an iron (the cast bore a Latin cross; had the wafer been Nestorian, the cross should have been Greek) and a silver box, which are very likely the objects mentioned by Rubruquis. It is a new proof of the identity of the sites of Erdeni Tso and Karákorum.—H. C.]
Entrance to the Erdeni Tso Great Temple.
[Note 2.]—[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 113, note) says: “The earliest date to which I have been able to trace back the name Tartar is A.D. 732. We find mention made in a Turkish inscription found on the river Orkhon and bearing that date, of the Tokuz Tatar, or ‘Nine (tribes of) Tatars,’ and of the Otuz Tatar, or ‘Thirty (tribes of) Tatars.’ It is probable that these tribes were then living between the Oguz or Uigúr Turks on the west, and the Kitan on the east. (Thomsen, Inscriptions de l’Orkhon, 98, 126, 140.) Mr. Thos. Watters tells me that the Tartars are first mentioned by the Chinese in the period extending from A.D. 860 to 874; the earliest mention I have discovered, however, is under date of A.D. 880. (Wu tai shih, Bk. 4.) We also read in the same work (Bk. 74, 2) that ‘The Ta-ta were a branch of the Mo-ho (the name the Nû-chēn Tartars bore during the Sui and T’ang periods: Ma Tuan-lin, Bk. 327, 5). They first lived to the north of the Kitan. Later on they were conquered by this people, when they scattered, a part becoming tributaries of the Kitan, another to the P’o-hai (a branch of the Mo-ho), while some bands took up their abode in the Yin Shan in Southern Mongolia, north of the provinces of Chih-li and Shan-si, and took the name of Ta-ta.’ In 981 the Chinese ambassador to the Prince of Kao-chang (Karakhodjo, some 20 miles south-east of Turfan) traversed the Ta-ta country. They then seem to have occupied the northern bend of the Yellow River. He gives the names of some nine tribes of Ta-ta living on either side of the river. He notes that their neighbours to the east were Kitan, and that for a long time they had been fighting them after the occupation of Kan-chou by the Uigúrs. (Ma Tuan-lin, Bk. 336, 12–14.) We may gather from this that these Tartars were already settled along the Yellow River and the Yin Shan (the valley in which is now the important frontier mart of Kwei-hua Ch’eng) at the beginning of the ninth century, for the Uigúrs, driven southward by the Kirghiz, first occupied Kan-chou in north-western Kan-suh, somewhere about A.D. 842.”]
[Note 3.]—Chorcha (Ciorcia) is the Manchu country, whose people were at that time called by the Chinese Yuché or Niuché, and by the Mongols Churché, or as it is in Sanang Setzen, Jurchid. The country in question is several times mentioned by Rashiduddin as Churché. The founders of the Kin Dynasty, which the Mongols superseded in Northern China, were of Churché race. [It was part of Nayan’s appanage. (See [Bk. II. ch. v.])—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—The idea that a Christian potentate of enormous wealth and power, and bearing this title, ruled over vast tracts in the far East, was universal in Europe from the middle of the 12th to the end of the 13th century, after which time the Asiatic story seems gradually to have died away, whilst the Royal Presbyter was assigned to a locus in Abyssinia; the equivocal application of the term India to the East of Asia and the East of Africa facilitating this transfer. Indeed I have a suspicion, contrary to the view now generally taken, that the term may from the first have belonged to the Abyssinian Prince, though circumstances led to its being applied in another quarter for a time. It appears to me almost certain that the letter of Pope Alexander III., preserved by R. Hoveden, and written in 1177 to the Magnificus Rex Indorum, Sacerdotum sanctissimus, was meant for the King of Abyssinia.
Be that as it may, the inordinate report of Prester John’s magnificence became especially diffused from about the year 1165, when a letter full of the most extravagant details was circulated, which purported to have been addressed by this potentate to the Greek Emperor Manuel, the Roman Emperor Frederick, the Pope, and other Christian sovereigns. By the circulation of this letter, glaring fiction as it is, the idea of this Christian Conqueror was planted deep in the mind of Europe, and twined itself round every rumour of revolution in further Asia. Even when the din of the conquests of Chinghiz began to be audible in the West, he was invested with the character of a Christian King, and more or less confounded with the mysterious Prester John.
The first notice of a conquering Asiatic potentate so styled had been brought to Europe by the Syrian Bishop of Gabala (Jibal, south of Laodicea in Northern Syria), who came, in 1145, to lay various grievances before Pope Eugene III. He reported that not long before a certain John, inhabiting the extreme East, king and Nestorian priest, and claiming descent from the Three Wise Kings, had made war on the Samiard Kings of the Medes and Persians, and had taken Ecbatana their capital. He was then proceeding to the deliverance of Jerusalem, but was stopped by the Tigris, which he could not cross, and compelled by disease in his host to retire.
M. d’Avezac first showed to whom this account must apply, and the subject has more recently been set forth with great completeness and learning by Dr. Gustavus Oppert. The conqueror in question was the founder of Kara Khitai, which existed as a great Empire in Asia during the last two-thirds of the 12th century. This chief was a prince of the Khitan dynasty of Liao, who escaped with a body of followers from Northern China on the overthrow of that dynasty by the Kin or Niuchen about 1125. He is called by the Chinese historians Yeliu Tashi; by Abulghazi, Nuzi Taigri Ili; and by Rashiduddin, Nushi (or Fushi) Taifu. Being well received by the Uighúrs and other tribes west of the Desert who had been subject to the Khitan Empire, he gathered an army and commenced a course of conquest which eventually extended over Eastern and Western Turkestan, including Khwarizm, which became tributary to him. He took the title of Gurkhan, said to mean Universal or Suzerain Khan, and fixed at Bala Sagun, north of the Thian Shan, the capital of his Empire, which became known as Kará (Black) Khitai.[1] [The dynasty being named by the Chinese Si-Liao (Western Liao) lasted till it was destroyed in 1218.—H. C.] In 1141 he came to the aid of the King of Khwarizm against Sanjar the Seljukian sovereign of Persia (whence the Samiard of the Syrian Bishop), who had just taken Samarkand, and defeated that prince with great slaughter. Though the Gurkhan himself is not described to have extended his conquests into Persia, the King of Khwarizm followed up the victory by an invasion of that country, in which he plundered the treasury and cities of Sanjar.
Admitting this Karacathayan prince to be the first conqueror (in Asia, at all events) to whom the name of Prester John was applied, it still remains obscure how that name arose. Oppert supposes that Gurkhan or Kurkhan, softened in West Turkish pronunciation into Yurkan, was confounded with Yochanan or Johannes; but he finds no evidence of the conqueror’s profession of Christianity except the fact, notable certainly, that the daughter of the last of his brief dynasty is recorded to have been a Christian. Indeed, D’Ohsson says that the first Gurkhan was a Buddhist, though on what authority is not clear. There seems a probability at least that it was an error in the original ascription of Christianity to the Karacathayan prince, which caused the confusions as to the identity of Prester John which appear in the next century, of which we shall presently speak. Leaving this doubtful point, it has been plausibly suggested that the title of Presbyter Johannes was connected with the legends of the immortality of John the Apostle (ὁ πρεσβύτερος, as he calls himself in the 2nd and 3rd epistles), and the belief referred to by some of the Fathers that he would be the Forerunner of our Lord’s second coming, as John the Baptist had been of His first.
A new theory regarding the original Prester John has been propounded by Professor Bruun of Odessa, in a Russian work entitled The Migrations of Prester John. The author has been good enough to send me large extracts of this essay in (French) translation; and I will endeavour to set forth the main points as well as the small space that can be given to the matter will admit. Some remarks and notes shall be added, but I am not in a position to do justice to Professor Bruun’s views, from the want of access to some of his most important authorities, such as Brosset’s History of Georgia, and its appendices.
It will be well, before going further, to give the essential parts of the passage in the History of Bishop Otto of Freisingen (referred to in vol i. p. 229), which contains the first allusion to a personage styled Prester John:
“We saw also there [at Rome in 1145] the afore-mentioned Bishop of Gabala, from Syria.... We heard him bewailing with tears the peril of the Church beyond-sea since the capture of Edessa, and uttering his intention on that account to cross the Alps and seek aid from the King of the Romans and the King of the Franks. He was also telling us how, not many years before, one John, King and Priest, who dwells in the extreme Orient beyond Persia and Armenia, and is (with his people) a Christian, but a Nestorian, had waged war against the brother Kings of the Persians and Medes who are called the Samiards, and had captured Ecbatana, of which we have spoken above, the seat of their dominion. The said Kings having met him with their forces made up of Persians, Medes, and Assyrians, the battle had been maintained for 3 days, either side preferring death to flight. But at last Presbyter John (for so they are wont to style him), having routed the Persians, came forth the victor from a most sanguinary battle. After this victory (he went on to say) the aforesaid John was advancing to fight in aid of the Church at Jerusalem; but when he arrived at the Tigris, and found there no possible means of transport for his army, he turned northward, as he had heard that the river in that quarter was frozen over in winter-time. Halting there for some years[2] in expectation of a frost, which never came, owing to the mildness of the season, he lost many of his people through the unaccustomed climate, and was obliged to return homewards. This personage is said to be of the ancient race of those Magi who are mentioned in the Gospel, and to rule the same nations that they did, and to have such glory and wealth that he uses (they say) only an emerald sceptre. It was (they say) from his being fired by the example of his fathers, who came to adore Christ in the cradle, that he was proposing to go to Jerusalem, when he was prevented by the cause already alleged.”
Professor Bruun will not accept Oppert’s explanation, which identifies this King and Priest with the Gur-Khan of Karacathay, for whose profession of Christianity there is indeed (as has been indicated—supra) no real evidence; who could not be said to have made an attack upon any pair of brother Kings of the Persians and the Medes, nor to have captured Ecbatana (a city, whatever its identity, of Media); who could never have had any intention of coming to Jerusalem; and whose geographical position in no way suggested the mention of Armenia.
Professor Bruun thinks he finds a warrior much better answering to the indications in the Georgian prince John Orbelian, the general-in-chief under several successive Kings of Georgia in that age.
At the time when the Gur-Khan defeated Sanjar the real brothers of the latter had been long dead; Sanjar had withdrawn from interference with the affairs of Western Persia; and Hamadán (if this is to be regarded as Ecbatana) was no residence of his. But it was the residence of Sanjar’s nephew Mas’úd, in whose hands was now the dominion of Western Persia; whilst Mas’úd’s nephew, Dáúd, held Media, i.e. Azerbeiján, Arrán, and Armenia. It is in these two princes that Professor Bruun sees the Samiardi fratres of the German chronicler.
Again the expression “extreme Orient” is to be interpreted by local usage. And with the people of Little Armenia, through whom probably such intelligence reached the Bishop of Gabala, the expression the East signified specifically Great Armenia (which was then a part of the kingdom of Georgia and Abkhasia), as Dulaurier has stated.[3]
It is true that the Georgians were not really Nestorians, but followers of the Greek Church. It was the fact, however, that in general, the Armenians, whom the Greeks accused of following the Jacobite errors, retorted upon members of the Greek Church with the reproach of the opposite heresy of Nestorianism. And the attribution of Nestorianism to a Georgian Prince is, like the expression “extreme East,” an indication of the Armenian channel through which the story came.
The intention to march to the aid of the Christians in Palestine is more like the act of a Georgian General than that of a Karacathayan Khan; and there are in the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem several indications of the proposal at least of Georgian assistance.
The personage in question is said to have come from the country of the Magi, from whom he was descended. But these have frequently been supposed to come from Great Armenia. E.g. Friar Jordanus says they came from Moghán.[4]
The name Ecbatana has been so variously applied that it was likely to lead to ambiguities. But it so happens that, in a previous passage of his History, Bishop Otto of Freisingen, in rehearsing some Oriental information gathered apparently from the same Bishop of Gabala, has shown what was the place that he had been taught to identify with Ecbatana, viz. the old Armenian city of Ani.[5] Now this city was captured from the Turks, on behalf of the King of Georgia, David the Restorer, by his great sbasalar,[6] John Orbelian, in 1123–24.
Professor Bruun also lays stress upon a passage in a German chronicle of date some years later than Otho’s work:
“1141. Liupoldus dux Bawariorum obiit, Henrico fratre ejus succedente in ducatu. Iohannes Presbyter Rex Armeniæ et Indiæ cum duobus regibus fratribus Persarum et Medorum pugnavit et vicit.”[7]
He asks how the Gur-Khan of Karakhitai could be styled King of Armenia and of India? It may be asked, per contra, how either the King of Georgia or his Peshwa (to use the Mahratta analogy of John Orbelian’s position) could be styled King of Armenia and of India? In reply to this, Professor Bruun adduces a variety of quotations which he considers as showing that the term India was applied to some Caucasian region.
My own conviction is that the report of Otto of Freisingen is not merely the first mention of a great Asiatic potentate called Prester John, but that his statement is the whole and sole basis of good faith on which the story of such a potentate rested; and I am quite as willing to believe, on due evidence, that the nucleus of fact to which his statement referred, and on which such a pile of long-enduring fiction was erected, occurred in Armenia as that it occurred in Turan. Indeed in many respects the story would thus be more comprehensible. One cannot attach any value to the quotation from the Annalist in Pertz, because there seems no reason to doubt that the passage is a mere adaptation of the report by Bishop Otto, of whose work the Annalist makes other use, as is indeed admitted by Professor Bruun, who (be it said) is a pattern of candour in controversy. But much else that the Professor alleges is interesting and striking. The fact that Azerbeijan and the adjoining regions were known as “the East” is patent to the readers of this book in many a page, where the Khan and his Mongols in occupation of that region are styled by Polo Lord of the Levant, Tartars of the Levant (i.e. of the East), even when the speaker’s standpoint is in far Cathay.[8] The mention of Aní as identical with the Ecbatana of which Otto had heard is a remarkable circumstance which I think even Oppert has overlooked. That this Georgian hero was a Christian and that his name was John are considerable facts. Oppert’s conversion of Korkhan into Yokhanan or John is anything but satisfactory. The identification proposed again makes it quite intelligible how the so-called Prester John should have talked about coming to the aid of the Crusaders; a point so difficult to explain on Oppert’s theory, that he has been obliged to introduce a duplicate John in the person of a Greek Emperor to solve that knot; another of the weaker links in his argument. In fact, Professor Bruun’s thesis seems to me more than fairly successful in paving the way for the introduction of a Caucasian Prester John; the barriers are removed, the carpets are spread, the trumpets sound royally—but the conquering hero comes not!
He does very nearly come. The almost royal power and splendour of the Orbelians at this time is on record: “They held the office of Sbasalar or Generalissimo of all Georgia. All the officers of the King’s Palace were under their authority. Besides that they had 12 standards of their own, and under each standard 1000 warriors mustered. As the custom was for the King’s flag to be white and the pennon over it red, it was ruled that the Orpelian flag should be red and the pennon white.... At banquets they alone had the right to couches whilst other princes had cushions only. Their food was served on silver; and to them it belonged to crown the kings.”[9] Orpel Ivané, i.e. John Orbelian, Grand Sbasalar, was for years the pride of Georgia and the hammer of the Turks. In 1123–1124 he wrested from them Tiflis and the whole country up to the Araxes, including Ani, as we have said. His King David, the Restorer, bestowed on him large additional domains from the new conquests; and the like brilliant service and career of conquest was continued under David’s sons and successors, Demetrius and George; his later achievements, however, and some of the most brilliant, occurring after the date of the Bishop of Gabala’s visit to Rome. But still we hear of no actual conflict with the chief princes of the Seljukian house, and of no event in his history so important as to account for his being made to play the part of Presbyter Johannes in the story of the Bishop of Gabala. Professor Bruun’s most forcible observation in reference to this rather serious difficulty is that the historians have transmitted to us extremely little detail concerning the reign of Demetrius II., and do not even agree as to its duration. Carebat vate sacro: “It was,” says Brosset, “long and glorious, but it lacked a commemorator.” If new facts can be alleged, the identity may still be proved. But meantime the conquests of the Gur-Khan and his defeat of Sanjar, just at a time which suits the story, are indubitable, and this great advantage Oppert’s thesis retains. As regards the claim to the title of Presbyter nothing worth mentioning is alleged on either side.
When the Mongol Conquests threw Asia open to Frank travellers in the middle of the 13th century, their minds were full of Prester John; they sought in vain for an adequate representative, but it was not in the nature of things but they should find some representative. In fact they found several. Apparently no real tradition existed among the Eastern Christians of any such personage, but the persistent demand produced a supply, and the honour of identification with Prester John, after hovering over one head and another, settled finally upon that of the King of the Keraits, whom we find to play the part in our text.
Thus in Plano Carpini’s single mention of Prester John as the King of the Christians of India the Greater, who defeats the Tartars by an elaborate stratagem, Oppert recognizes Sultan Jaláluddín of Khwarizm and his temporary success over the Mongols in Afghanistan. In the Armenian Prince Sempad’s account, on the other hand, this Christian King of India is aided by the Tartars to defeat and harass the neighbouring Saracens, his enemies, and becomes the Mongol’s vassal. In the statement of Rubruquis, though distinct reference is made to the conquering Gurkhan (under the name of Coir Cham of Caracatay), the title of King John is assigned to the Naiman Prince (Kushluk), who had married the daughter of the last lineal sovereign of Karakhitai, and usurped his power, whilst, with a strange complication of confusion, Unc, Prince of the Crit and Merkit (Kerait and Merkit, two great tribes of Mongolia)[10] and Lord of Karákorum, is made the brother and successor of this Naiman Prince. His version of the story, as it proceeds, has so much resemblance to Polo’s, that we shall quote the words. The Crit and Merkit, he says, were Nestorian Christians. “But their Lord had abandoned the worship of Christ to follow idols, and kept by him those priests of the idols who are all devil-raisers and sorcerers. Beyond his pastures, at the distance of ten or fifteen days’ journey, were the pastures of the Moal (Mongol), who were a very poor people, without a leader and without any religion except sorceries and divinations, such as all the people of those parts put so much faith in. Next to Moal was another poor tribe called Tartar. King John having died without an heir, his brother Unc got his wealth, and caused himself to be proclaimed Cham, and sent out his flocks and herds even to the borders of Moal. At that time there was a certain blacksmith called Chinghis among the tribe of Moal, and he used to lift the cattle of Unc Chan as often as he had a chance, insomuch that the herdsmen of Unc Chan made complaint to their master. The latter assembled an army, and invaded the land of the Moal in search of Chinghis, but he fled and hid himself among the Tartars. So Unc, having plundered the Moal and Tartars, returned home. And Chinghis addressed the Tartars and Moal, saying: ‘It is because we have no leader that we are thus oppressed by our neighbours.’ So both Tartars and Moal made Chinghis himself their leader and captain. And having got a host quietly together, he made a sudden onslaught upon Unc and conquered him, and compelled him to flee into Cathay. On that occasion his daughter was taken, and given by Chinghis to one of his sons, to whom she bore Mangu, who now reigneth.... The land in which they (the Mongols) first were, and where the residence of Chinghis still exists, is called Onan Kerule.[11] But because Caracoran is in the country which was their first conquest, they regard it as a royal city, and there hold the elections of their Chan.”
Here we see plainly that the Unc Chan of Rubruquis is the Unc Can or Unecan of Polo. In the narrative of the former, Unc is only connected with King or Prester John; in that of the latter, rehearsing the story as heard some 20 or 25 years later, the two are identified. The shadowy rôle of Prester John has passed from the Ruler of Kara Khitai to the Chief of the Keraits. This transfer brings us to another history.
We have already spoken of the extensive diffusion of Nestorian Christianity in Asia during the early and Middle Ages. The Christian historian Gregory Abulfaraj relates a curious history of the conversion, in the beginning of the 11th century, of the King of Kerith with his people, dwelling in the remote north-east of the land of the Turks. And that the Keraits continued to profess Christianity down to the time of Chinghiz is attested by Rashiduddin’s direct statement, as well as by the numerous Christian princesses from that tribe of whom we hear in Mongol history. It is the chief of this tribe of whom Rubruquis and Polo speak under the name of Unc Khan, and whom the latter identifies with Prester John. His proper name is called Tuli by the Chinese, and Togrul by the Persian historians, but the Kin sovereign of Northern China had conferred on him the title of Wang or King, from which his people gave him the slightly corrupted cognomen of اونک خان, which some scholars read Awang, and Avenk Khan, but which the spelling of Rubruquis and Polo shows probably to have been pronounced as Aung or Ung Khan.[12] The circumstance stated by Rubruquis of his having abandoned the profession of Christianity, is not alluded to by Eastern writers; but in any case his career is not a credit to the Faith. I cannot find any satisfactory corroboration of the claims of supremacy over the Mongols which Polo ascribes to Aung Khan. But that his power and dignity were considerable, appears from the term Pádsháh which Rashiduddin applies to him. He had at first obtained the sovereignty of the Keraits by the murder of two of his brothers and several nephews. Yesugai, the father of Chinghiz, had been his staunch friend, and had aided him effectually to recover his dominion from which he had been expelled. After a reign of many years he was again ejected, and in the greatest necessity sought the help of Temujin (afterwards called Chinghiz Khan), by whom he was treated with the greatest consideration. This was in 1196. For some years the two chiefs conducted their forays in alliance, but differences sprang up between them; the son of Aung Khan entered into a plot to kill Temujin, and in 1202–1203 they were in open war. The result will be related in connection with the next chapters.
We may observe that the idea which Joinville picked up in the East about Prester John corresponds pretty closely with that set forth by Marco. Joinville represents him as one of the princes to whom the Tartars were tributary in the days of their oppression, and as “their ancient enemy”; one of their first acts, on being organized under a king of their own, was to attack him and conquer him, slaying all that bore arms, but sparing all monks and priests. The expression used by Joinville in speaking of the original land of the Tartars, “une grande berrie de sablon,” has not been elucidated in any edition that I have seen. It is the Arabic بريه Băríya, “a Desert.” No doubt Joinville learned the word in Palestine. (See Joinville, p. 143 seqq.; see also Oppert, Der Presb. Johannes in Sage und Geschichte, and Cathay, etc., pp. 173–182.) [Fried. Zarncke, Der Priester Johannes; Cordier, Odoric.—H. C.]
[1] A passage in Mirkhond extracted by Erdmann (Temudschín, p. 532) seems to make Bálá Sághún the same as Bishbálik, now Urumtsi, but this is inconsistent with other passages abstracted by Oppert (Presbyter Johan. 131–32); and Vámbéry indicates a reason for its being sought very much further west (H. of Bokhara, 116). [Dr. Bretschneider (Med. Res.) has a chapter on Kara-Khitaí (I. 208 seqq.) and in a long note on Bala Sagun, which he calls Belasagun, he says (p. 226) that “according to the Tarikh Djihan Kúshai (d’Ohsson, i. 433), the city of Belasagun had been founded by Buku Khan, sovereign of the Uigurs, in a well-watered plain of Turkestan with rich pastures. The Arabian geographers first mention Belasagun, in the ninth or tenth century, as a city beyond the Sihun or Yaxartes, depending on Isfidjab (Sairam, according to Lerch), and situated east of Taras. They state that the people of Turkestan considered Belasagun to represent ‘the navel of the earth,’ on account of its being situated in the middle between east and west, and likewise between north and south.” (Sprenger’s Poststr. d. Or., Mavarannahar). Dr. Bretschneider adds (p. 227): “It is not improbable that ancient Belasagun was situated at the same place where, according to the T’ang history, the Khan of one branch of the Western T’u Kuë (Turks) had his residence in the seventh century. It is stated in the T’ang shu that Ibi Shabolo Shehu Khan, who reigned in the first half of the seventh century, placed his ordo on the northern border of the river Sui ye. This river, and a city of the same name, are frequently mentioned in the T’ang annals of the seventh and eighth centuries, in connection with the warlike expeditions of the Chinese in Central Asia. Sui ye was situated on the way from the river Ili to the city of Ta-lo-sz’ (Talas). In 679 the Chinese had built on the Sui ye River a fortress; but in 748 they were constrained to destroy it.” (Comp. Visdelou in Suppl. Bibl. Orient. pp. 110–114; Gaubil’s Hist. de la Dyn. des Thang, in Mém. conc. Chin. xv. p. 403 seqq.).—H. C.]
[2] Sic: per aliquot annos, but an evident error.
[3] J. As. sér. V. tom. xi. 449.
[4] The Great Plain on the Lower Araxes and Cyrus. The word Moghán = Magi: and Abulfeda quotes this as the etymology of the name. (Reinaud’s Abulf. I. 300.)—Y. [Cordier, Odoric, 36.]
[5] Here is the passage, which is worth giving for more reasons than one:
“That portion of ancient Babylon which is still occupied is (as we have heard from persons of character from beyond sea) styled Baldach, whilst the part that lies, according to the prophecy, deserted and pathless extends some ten miles to the Tower of Babel. The inhabited portion called Baldach is very large and populous; and though it should belong to the Persian monarchy it has been conceded by the Kings of the Persians to their High Priest, whom they call the Caliph; in order that in this also a certain analogy [quaedam habitudo] such as has been often remarked before, should be exhibited between Babylon and Rome. For the same (privilege) that here in the city of Rome has been made over to our chief Pontiff by the Christian Emperor, has there been conceded to their High Priest by the Pagan Kings of Persia, to whom Babylonia has for a long time been subject. But the Kings of the Persians (just as our Kings have their royal city, like Aachen) have themselves established the seat of their kingdom at Egbatana, which, in the Book of Judith, Arphaxat is said to have founded, and which in their tongue is called Hani, containing as they allege 100,000 or more fighting men, and have reserved to themselves nothing of Babylon except the nominal dominion. Finally, the place which is now vulgarly called Babylonia, as I have mentioned, is not upon the Euphrates (at all) as people suppose, but on the Nile, about 6 days’ journey from Alexandria, and is the same as Memphis, to which Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, anciently gave the name of Babylon.”—Ottonis Frising. Lib. VII. cap. 3, in Germanic Hist. Illust. etc. Christiani Urstisii Basiliensis, Francof. 1585.—Y.
[6] Sbasalar, or “General-in-chief,” = Pers. Sipáhsálár.—Y.
[7] Continuatio Ann. Admutensium, in Pertz, Scriptores, IX. 580.
[8] E.g. ii. 42.
[9] St. Martin, Mém. sur l’Arménie, II. 77.
[10] [“The Keraits,” says Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 111, note), “lived on the Orkhon and the Tula, south-east of Lake Baikal; Abulfaraj relates their conversion to Christianity in 1007 by the Nestorian Bishop of Merv. Rashid-eddin, however, says their conversion took place in the time of Chingis Khan. (D’Ohsson, I. 48; Chabot, Mar Jabalaha, III. 14.) D’Avezac (536) identifies, with some plausibility, I think, the Keraits with the Kí-lê (or T’íeh-lê) of the early Chinese annals. The name K’í-lê was applied in the 3rd century A.D. to all the Turkish tribes, such as the Hui-hu (Uigúrs), Kieh-Ku (Kirghiz) Alans, etc., and they are said to be the same as the Kao-ch’ê, from whom descended the Cangle of Rubruck. (T’ang shu, Bk. 217, i.; Ma Tuan-lin, Bk. 344, 9, Bk. 347, 4.) As to the Merkits, or Merkites, they were a nomadic people of Turkish stock, with a possible infusion of Mongol blood. They are called by Mohammedan writers Uduyut, and were divided into four tribes. They lived on the Lower Selinga and its feeders. (D’Ohsson, i. 54; Howorth, History, I., pt. i. 22, 698.)”—H. C.]
[11] [Onan Kerule is “the country watered by the Orkhon and Kerulun Rivers, i.e. the country to the south and south-east of Lake Baikal. The headquarters (ya-chang) of the principal chief of the Uigurs in the eighth century was 500 li (about 165 miles) south-west of the confluence of the Wen-Kun ho (Orkhon) and the Tu-lo ho (Tura). Its ruins, sometimes, but wrongly, confounded with those of the Mongol city of Karakorum, some 20 miles from it, built in 1235 by Ogodai, are now known by the name of Kara Balgasun, ‘Black City.’” [See [p. 228].] The name Onankerule seems to be taken from the form Onan-ou-Keloran, which occurs in Mohammedan writers. (Quatremère, 115 et seq.; see also T’ang shu, Bk. 43b; Rockhill, Rubruck, 116, note.)—H. C.]
[12] Vámbéry makes Ong an Uighúr word, signifying “right.” [Palladius (l.c. 23) says: “The consonance of the names of Wang-Khan and Wang-Ku (Ung-Khan and Ongu—Ongot of Rashiduddin, a Turkish Tribe) led to the confusion regarding the tribes and persons, which at M. Polo’s time seems to have been general among the Europeans in China; M. Polo and Johannes de Monte Corvino transfer the title of Prester John from Wang-Khan, already perished at that time, to the distinguished family of Wang-Ku.”—H. C.]
CHAPTER XLVII.
Of Chinghis, and how he became the First Kaan of the Tartars.
Now it came to pass in the year of Christ’s Incarnation 1187 that the Tartars made them a King whose name was Chinghis Kaan.[{1}] He was a man of great worth, and of great ability (eloquence), and valour. And as soon as the news that he had been chosen King was spread abroad through those countries, all the Tartars in the world came to him and owned him for their Lord. And right well did he maintain the Sovereignty they had given him. What shall I say? The Tartars gathered to him in astonishing multitude, and when he saw such numbers he made a great furniture of spears and arrows and such other arms as they used, and set about the conquest of all those regions till he had conquered eight provinces. When he conquered a province he did no harm to the people or their property, but merely established some of his own men in the country along with a proportion of theirs, whilst he led the remainder to the conquest of other provinces. And when those whom he had conquered became aware how well and safely he protected them against all others, and how they suffered no ill at his hands, and saw what a noble prince he was, then they joined him heart and soul and became his devoted followers. And when he had thus gathered such a multitude that they seemed to cover the earth, he began to think of conquering a great part of the world. Now in the year of Christ 1200 he sent an embassy to Prester John, and desired to have his daughter to wife. But when Prester John heard that Chinghis Kaan demanded his daughter in marriage he waxed very wroth, and said to the Envoys, “What impudence is this, to ask my daughter to wife! Wist he not well that he was my liegeman and serf? Get ye back to him and tell him that I had liever set my daughter in the fire than give her in marriage to him, and that he deserves death at my hand, rebel and traitor that he is!” So he bade the Envoys begone at once, and never come into his presence again. The Envoys, on receiving this reply, departed straightway, and made haste to their master, and related all that Prester John had ordered them to say, keeping nothing back.[{2}]
[Note 1.]—Temujin was born in the year 1155, according to all the Persian historians, who are probably to be relied on; the Chinese put the event in 1162. 1187 does not appear to be a date of special importance in his history. His inauguration as sovereign under the name of Chinghiz Kaan was in 1202 according to the Persian authorities, in 1206 according to the Chinese.
In a preceding note ([p. 236]) we have quoted a passage in which Rubruquis calls Chinghiz “a certain blacksmith.” This mistaken notion seems to have originated in the resemblance of his name Temújin to the Turki Temúrjí, a blacksmith; but it was common throughout Asia in the Middle Ages, and the story is to be found not only in Rubruquis, but in the books of Hayton, the Armenian prince, and of Ibn Batuta, the Moor. That cranky Orientalist, Dr. Isaac Jacob Schmidt, positively reviles William Rubruquis, one of the most truthful and delightful of travellers, and certainly not inferior to his critic in mother-wit, for adopting this story, and rebukes Timkowski—not for adopting it, but for merely telling us the very interesting fact that the story was still, in 1820, current in Mongolia. (Schmidt’s San. Setz. 376, and Timkowski, I. 147.)
[Note 2.]—Several historians, among others Abulfaraj, represent Chinghiz as having married a daughter of Aung Khan; and this is current among some of the mediæval European writers, such as Vincent of Beauvais. It is also adopted by Pétis de la Croix in his history of Chinghiz, apparently from a comparatively late Turkish historian; and both D’Herbelot and St. Martin state the same; but there seems to be no foundation for it in the best authorities: either Persian or Chinese. (See Abulfaragius, p. 285; Speculum Historiale, Bk. XXIX. ch. lxix.; Hist. of Genghiz Can, p. 29; and Golden Horde, pp. 61–62.) But there is a real story at the basis of Polo’s, which seems to be this: About 1202, when Aung Khan and Chinghiz were still acting in professed alliance, a double union was proposed between Aung Khan’s daughter Jaur Bigi and Chinghiz’s son Juji, and between Chinghiz’s daughter Kijin Bigi and Togrul’s grandson Kush Buka. From certain circumstances this union fell through, and this was one of the circumstances which opened the breach between the two chiefs. There were, however, several marriages between the families. (Erdmann, 283; others are quoted under [ch. lix., note 2].)
CHAPTER XLVIII.
How Chinghis mustered his People to march against Prester John.
When Chinghis Kaan heard the brutal message that Prester John had sent him, such rage seized him that his heart came nigh to bursting within him, for he was a man of a very lofty spirit. At last he spoke, and that so loud that all who were present could hear him: “Never more might he be prince if he took not revenge for the brutal message of Prester John, and such revenge that insult never in this world was so dearly paid for. And before long Prester John should know whether he were his serf or no!”
So then he mustered all his forces, and levied such a host as never before was seen or heard of, sending word to Prester John to be on his defence. And when Prester John had sure tidings that Chinghis was really coming against him with such a multitude, he still professed to treat it as a jest and a trifle, for, quoth he, “these be no soldiers.” Natheless he marshalled his forces and mustered his people, and made great preparations, in order that if Chinghis did come, he might take him and put him to death. In fact he marshalled such an host of many different nations that it was a world’s wonder.
And so both sides gat them ready to battle. And why should I make a long story of it? Chinghis Kaan with all his host arrived at a vast and beautiful plain which was called Tanduc, belonging to Prester John, and there he pitched his camp; and so great was the multitude of his people that it was impossible to number them. And when he got tidings that Prester John was coming, he rejoiced greatly, for the place afforded a fine and ample battle-ground, so he was right glad to tarry for him there, and greatly longed for his arrival.
But now leave we Chinghis and his host, and let us return to Prester John and his people.
CHAPTER XLIX.
How Prester John marched to meet Chinghis.
Now the story goes that when Prester John became aware that Chinghis with his host was marching against him, he went forth to meet him with all his forces, and advanced until he reached the same plain of Tanduc, and pitched his camp over against that of Chinghis Kaan at a distance of 20 miles. And then both armies remained at rest for two days that they might be fresher and heartier for battle.[{1}]
So when the two great hosts were pitched on the plains of Tanduc as you have heard, Chinghis Kaan one day summoned before him his astrologers, both Christians and Saracens, and desired them to let him know which of the two hosts would gain the battle, his own or Prester John’s. The Saracens tried to ascertain, but were unable to give a true answer; the Christians, however, did give a true answer, and showed manifestly beforehand how the event should be. For they got a cane and split it lengthwise, and laid one half on this side and one half on that, allowing no one to touch the pieces. And one piece of cane they called Chinghis Kaan, and the other piece they called Prester John. And then they said to Chinghis: “Now mark! and you will see the event of the battle, and who shall have the best of it; for whose cane soever shall get above the other, to him shall victory be.” He replied that he would fain see it, and bade them begin. Then the Christian astrologers read a Psalm out of the Psalter, and went through other incantations. And lo! whilst all were beholding, the cane that bore the name of Chinghis Kaan, without being touched by anybody, advanced to the other that bore the name of Prester John, and got on the top of it. When the Prince saw that he was greatly delighted, and seeing how in this matter he found the Christians to tell the truth, he always treated them with great respect, and held them for men of truth for ever after.[{2}]
[Note 1.]—Polo in the preceding chapter has stated that this plain of Tanduc was in Prester John’s country. He plainly regards it as identical with the Tanduc of which he speaks more particularly in [ch. lix.] as belonging to Prester John’s descendants, and which must be located near the Chinese Wall. He is no doubt wrong in placing the battle there. Sanang Setzen puts the battle between the two, the only one which he mentions, “at the outflow of the Onon near Kulen Buira.” The same action is placed by De Mailla’s authorities at Calantschan, by P. Hyacinth at Kharakchin Schatu, by Erdmann after Rashid in the vicinity of Hulun Barkat and Kalanchinalt, which latter was on the borders of the Churché or Manchus. All this points to the vicinity of Buir Nor and Hulan or Kalon Nor (though the Onon is far from these). But this was not the final defeat of Aung Khan or Prester John, which took place some time later (in 1203) at a place called the Chacher Ondur (or Heights), which Gaubil places between the Tula and the Kerulun, therefore near the modern Urga. Aung Khan was wounded, and fled over the frontier of the Naiman; the officers of that tribe seized and killed him. (Schmidt, 87, 383; Erdmann, 297; Gaubil, p. 10.)
[Note 2.]—A Tartar divination by twigs, but different from that here employed, is older than Herodotus, who ascribes it to the Scythians. We hear of one something like the last among the Alans, and (from Tacitus) among the Germans. The words of Hosea (iv. 12), “My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them,” are thus explained by Theophylactus: “They stuck up a couple of sticks, whilst murmuring certain charms and incantations; the sticks then, by the operation of devils, direct or indirect, would fall over, and the direction of their fall was noted,” etc. The Chinese method of divination comes still nearer to that in the text. It is conducted by tossing in the air two symmetrical pieces of wood or bamboo of a peculiar form. It is described by Mendoza, and more particularly, with illustrations, by Doolittle.[1]
But Rubruquis would seem to have witnessed nearly the same process that Polo describes. He reprehends the conjuring practices of the Nestorian priests among the Mongols, who seem to have tried to rival the indigenous Káms or Medicine-men. Visiting the Lady Kuktai, a Christian Queen of Mangu Kaan, who was ill, he says: “The Nestorians were repeating certain verses, I know not what (they said it was part of a Psalm), over two twigs which were brought into contact in the hands of two men. The monk stood by during the operation” (p. 326).[2] Pétis de la Croix quotes from Thévenot’s travels, a similar mode of divination as much used, before a fight, among the Barbary corsairs. Two men sit on the deck facing one another and each holding two arrows by the points, and hitching the notches of each pair of arrows into the other pair. Then the ship’s writer reads a certain Arabic formula, and it is pretended that whilst this goes on, the two sets of arrows, of which one represents the Turks and the other the Christians, struggle together in spite of the resistance of the holders, and finally one rises over the other. This is perhaps the divination by arrows which is prohibited in the Koran. (Sura, V. v. 92.) It is related by Abulfeda that Mahomed found in the Kaaba an image of Abraham with such arrows in his hand.
P. della Valle describes the same process, conducted by a Mahomedan conjuror of Aleppo: “By his incantations he made the four points of the arrows come together without any movement of the holders, and by the way the points spontaneously placed themselves, obtained answers to interrogatories.”
And Mr. Jaeschke writes from Lahaul: “There are many different ways of divination practised among the Buddhists; and that also mentioned by Marco Polo is known to our Lama, but in a slightly different way, making use of two arrows instead of a cane split up, wherefore this kind is called da-mo, ‘Arrow-divination.’” Indeed the practice is not extinct in India, for in 1833 Mr. Vigne witnessed its application to detect the robber of a government chest at Lodiana.
As regards Chinghiz’s respect for the Christians there are other stories. Abulfaragius has one about Chinghiz seeing in a dream a religious person who promised him success. He told the dream to his wife, Aung Khan’s daughter, who said the description answered to that of the bishop who used to visit her father. Chinghiz then inquired for a bishop among the Uighúr Christians in his camp, and they indicated Mar Denha. Chinghiz thenceforward was milder towards the Christians, and showed them many distinctions ([p. 285]). Vincent of Beauvais also speaks of Rabbanta, a Nestorian monk, who lived in the confidence of Chinghiz’s wife, daughter of “the Christian King David or Prester John,” and who used by divination to make many revelations to the Tartars. We have already said that there seems no ground for assigning a daughter of Aung Khan as wife to Chinghiz. But there was a niece of the former, named Abika, among the wives of Chinghiz. And Rashiduddin does relate a dream of the Kaan’s in relation to her. But it was to the effect that he was divinely commanded to give her away; and this he did next morning!
(Rawlins. Herod. IV. 67; Amm. Marcell. XXXI. 2; Delvio, Disq. Magic. 558; Mendoza, Hak. Soc. I. 47; Doolittle, 435–436; Hist. of Genghizcan, pp. 52–53; Preston’s al-Hariri, p. 183; P. della V. II. 865–866; Vigne, I. 46; D’Ohsson, I. 418–419).
[1] [On the Chinese divining-twig, see Dennys, Folk-lore of China, 57.—H. C.]
[2] [With reference to this passage from Rubruck, Mr. Rockhill says (195, note): “The mode of divining here referred to is apparently the same as that described by Polo. It must not however be confounded with rabdomancy, in which bundles of wands or arrows were used.” Ammianus Marcellinus (XXXI. 2. 350) says this mode of divination was practised by the Alans. “They have a singular way of divining: they take straight willow wands and make bundles of them, and on examining them at a certain time, with certain secret incantations, they know what is going to happen.”—H. C.]
CHAPTER L.
The Battle between Chinghis Kaan and Prester John.
And after both sides had rested well those two days, they armed for the fight and engaged in desperate combat; and it was the greatest battle that ever was seen. The numbers that were slain on both sides were very great, but in the end Chinghis Kaan obtained the victory. And in the battle Prester John was slain. And from that time forward, day by day, his kingdom passed into the hands of Chinghis Kaan till the whole was conquered.
A. Housselin D.
Death of Chinghiz Khan. (From a miniature in the Livre des Merveilles.)
I may tell you that Chinghis Kaan reigned six years after this battle, engaged continually in conquest, and taking many a province and city and stronghold. But at the end of those six years he went against a certain castle that was called Caaju, and there he was shot with an arrow in the knee, so that he died of his wound. A great pity it was, for he was a valiant man and a wise.[{1}]
I will now tell you who reigned after Chinghis, and then about the manners and customs of the Tartars.
[Note 1.]—Chinghiz in fact survived Aung Khan some 24 years, dying during his fifth expedition against Tangut, 18th August 1227, aged 65 according to the Chinese accounts, 72 according to the Persian. Sanang Setzen says that Kurbeljin Goa Khatún, the beautiful Queen of Tangut, who had passed into the tents of the conqueror, did him some bodily mischief (it is not said what), and then went and drowned herself in the Karamuren (or Hwang-ho), which thenceforth was called by the Mongols the Khátún-gol, or Lady’s River, a name which it in fact still bears. Carpini relates that Chinghiz was killed by lightning. The Persian and Chinese historians, however, agree in speaking of his death as natural. Gaubil calls the place of his death Lou-pan, which he says was in lat. 38°. Rashiduddin calls it Leung-Shan, which appears to be the mountain range still so called in the heart of Shensi.
The name of the place before which Polo represents him as mortally wounded is very variously given. According to Gaubil, Chinghiz was in reality dangerously wounded by an arrow-shot at the siege of Taitongfu in 1212. And it is possible, as Oppert suggests, that Polo’s account of his death before Caagiu (as I prefer the reading), arose out of a confusion between this circumstance and those of the death of Mangku Kaan, which is said to have occurred at the assault of Hochau in Sze-ch’uan, a name which Polo would write Caagiu, or nearly so. Abulfaragius specifically says that Mangku Kaan died by an arrow; though it is true that other authors say he died of disease, and Haiton that he was drowned; all which shows how excusable were Polo’s errors as to events occurring 50 to 100 years before his time. (See Oppert’s Presbyter Johannes, p. 76; De Mailla, IX. 275, and note; Gaubil, 18, 50, 52, 121; Erdmann, 443; San. Setzen, 103.)
It is only by referring back to ch. xlvii., where we are told that Chinghiz “began to think of conquering a great part of the world,” that we see Polo to have been really aware of the vast extent and aim of the conquests of Chinghiz; the aim being literally the conquest of the world as he conceived it; the extent of the empire which he initiated actually covering (probably) one half of the whole number of the human race. (See remarks in Koeppen, Die Relig. des Buddha, II. 86.)
CHAPTER LI.
Of those who did Reign after Chinghis Kaan, and of the Customs of the Tartars.
Now the next that reigned after Chinghis Kaan, their first Lord,[{1}] was Cuy Kaan, and the third Prince was Batuy Kaan, and the fourth was Alacou Kaan, the fifth Mongou Kaan, the sixth Cublay Kaan, who is the sovereign now reigning, and is more potent than any of the five who went before him; in fact, if you were to take all those five together, they would not be so powerful as he is.[{2}] Nay, I will say yet more; for if you were to put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole of these Christians,—aye, and throw in the Saracens to boot,—would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Cublay, who is the Lord of all the Tartars in the world, those of the Levant and of the Ponent included; for these are all his liegemen and subjects. I mean to show you all about this great power of his in this book of ours.
You should be told also that all the Grand Kaans, and all the descendants of Chinghis their first Lord, are carried to a mountain that is called Altay to be interred. Wheresoever the Sovereign may die, he is carried to his burial in that mountain with his predecessors; no matter an the place of his death were 100 days’ journey distant, thither must he be carried to his burial.[{3}]
Let me tell you a strange thing too. When they are carrying the body of any Emperor to be buried with the others, the convoy that goes with the body doth put to the sword all whom they fall in with on the road, saying: “Go and wait upon your Lord in the other world!” For they do in sooth believe that all such as they slay in this manner do go to serve their Lord in the other world. They do the same too with horses; for when the Emperor dies, they kill all his best horses, in order that he may have the use of them in the other world, as they believe. And I tell you as a certain truth, that when Mongou Kaan died, more than 20,000 persons, who chanced to meet the body on its way, were slain in the manner I have told.[{4}]
[Note 1.]—Before parting with Chinghiz let me point out what has not to my knowledge been suggested before, that the name of “Cambuscan bold” in Chaucer’s tale is only a corruption of the name of Chinghiz. The name of the conqueror appears in Fr. Ricold as Camiuscan, from which the transition to Cambuscan presents no difficulty. Camius was, I suppose, a clerical corruption out of Canjus or Cianjus. In the chronicle of St. Antonino, however, we have him called “Chinghiscan rectius Tamgius Cam” (XIX. c. 8). If this is not merely the usual blunder of t for c, it presents a curious analogy to the form Tankiz Khán always used by Ibn Batuta. I do not know the origin of the latter, unless it was suggested by tankis (Ar.) “Turning upside down.” (See Pereg. Quat., p. 119; I. B. III. 22, etc.)
[Note 2.]—Polo’s history here is inadmissible. He introduces into the list of the supreme Kaans Batu, who was only Khan of Kipchak (the Golden Horde), and Hulaku who was Khan of Persia, whilst he omits Okkodai, the immediate successor of Chinghiz. It is also remarkable that he uses the form Alacou here instead of Alaü as elsewhere; nor does he seem to mean the same person, for he was quite well aware that Alaü was Lord of the Levant, who sent ambassadors to the Great Khan Cúbláy, and could not therefore be one of his predecessors. The real succession ran: 1. Chinghiz; 2. Okkodai; 3. Kuyuk; 4. Mangku; 5. Kúblái.
There are quite as great errors in the history of Haiton, who had probably greater advantages in this respect than Marco. And I may note that in Teixeira’s abridgment of Mirkhond, Hulaku is made to succeed Mangku Kaan on the throne of Chinghiz. (Relaciones, p. 338.)
[Note 3.]—The Altai here certainly does not mean the Great South Siberian Range to which the name is now applied. Both Altai and Altun-Khan appear sometimes to be applied by Sanang Setzen to the Khingan of the Chinese, or range running immediately north of the Great Wall near Kalgan. (See [ch. lxi. note 1].) But in reference to this matter of the burial of Chinghiz, he describes the place as “the district of Yekeh Utek, between the shady side of the Altai-Khan and the sunny side of the Kentei-Khan.” Now the Kentei-Khan (khan here meaning “mountain”) is near the sources of the Onon, immediately to the north-east of Urga; and Altai-Khan in this connection cannot mean the hills near the Great Wall, 500 miles distant.
According to Rashiduddin, Chinghiz was buried at a place called Búrkán Káldún (“God’s Hill”), or Yekeh Kúrúk (“The Great Sacred or Tabooed Place”); in another passage he calls the spot Búdah Undúr (which means, I fancy, the same as Búrkán Káldún), near the River Selenga. Búrkán Káldún is often mentioned by Sanang Setzen, and Quatremère seems to demonstrate the identity of this place with the mountain called by Pallas (and Timkowski) Khanoolla. This is a lofty mountain near Urga, covered with dense forest, and is indeed the first woody mountain reached in travelling from Peking. It is still held sacred by the Mongols and guarded from access, though the tradition of Chinghiz’s grave seems to be extinct. Now, as this Khanoolla (“Mount Royal,” for khan here means “sovereign,” and oolla “mountain”) stands immediately to the south of the Kentei mentioned in the quotation from S. Setzen, this identification agrees with his statement, on the supposition that the Khanoolla is the Altai of the same quotation. The Khanoolla must also be the Han mountain which Mongol chiefs claiming descent from Chinghiz named to Gaubil as the burial-place of that conqueror. Note that the Khanoolla, which we suppose to be the Altai of Polo, and here of Sanang Setzen, belongs to a range known as Khingan, whilst we see that Setzen elsewhere applies Altai and Altan-Khan to the other Khingan near the Great Wall.
Erdmann relates, apparently after Rashiduddin, that Chinghiz was buried at the foot of a tree which had taken his fancy on a hunting expedition, and which he had then pointed out as the place where he desired to be interred. It was then conspicuous, but afterwards the adjoining trees shot up so rapidly, that a dense wood covered the whole locality, and it became impossible to identify the spot. (Q. R. 117 seqq.; Timk. I. 115 seqq., II. 475–476; San. Setz. 103, 114–115, 108–109; Gaubil, 54; Erd. 444.)
[“There are no accurate indications,” says Palladius (l.c. pp. 11–13), “in the documents of the Mongol period on the burial-places of Chingiz Khan and of the Khans who succeeded him. The Yuan-shi or ‘History of the Mongol Dynasty in China,’ in speaking of the burial of the Khans, mentions only that they used to be conveyed from Peking to the north, to their common burial-ground in the K’i-lien Valley. This name cannot have anything in common with the ancient K’i-lien of the Hiung-nu, a hill situated to the west of the Mongol desert; the K’i-lien of the Mongols is to be sought more to the east. When Khubilai marched out against Prince Nayan, and reached the modern Talnor, news was received of the occupation of the Khan’s burial-ground by the rebels. They held out there very long, which exceedingly afflicted Khubilai [Yüan shi lui pien]; and this goes to prove that the tombs could not be situated much to the west. Some more positive information on this subject is found in the diary of the campaign in Mongolia in 1410, of the Ming Emperor Yung-lo [Pe ching lu]. He reached the Kerulen at the place where this river, after running south, takes an easterly direction. The author of the diary notes, that from a place one march and a half before reaching the Kerulen, a very large mountain was visible to the north-east, and at its foot a solitary high and pointed hillock, covered with stones. The author says, that the sovereigns of the house of Yuan used to be buried near this hill. It may therefore be plausibly supposed that the tombs of the Mongol Khans were near the Kerulen, and that the ‘K’i-lien’ of the Yüan shi is to be applied to this locality; it seems to me even, that K’i-lien is an abbreviation, customary to Chinese authors, of Kerulen. The way of burying the Mongol Khans is described in the Yüan shi (ch. ‘On the national religious rites of the Mongols’), as well as in the Ch’ue keng lu, ‘Memoirs of the time of the Yuan Dynasty.’ When burying, the greatest care was taken to conceal from outside people the knowledge of the locality of the tomb. With this object in view, after the tomb was closed, a drove of horses was driven over it, and by this means the ground was, for a considerable distance, trampled down and levelled. It is added to this (probably from hearsay) in the Ts’ao mu tze Memoirs (also of the time of the Yuan Dynasty), that a young camel used to be killed (in the presence of its mother) on the tomb of the deceased Khan; afterwards, when the time of the usual offerings of the tomb approached, the mother of this immolated camel was set at liberty, and she came crying to the place where it was killed; the locality of the tomb was ascertained in this way.”
The Archimandrite Palladius adds in a footnote: “Our well-known Mongolist N. Golovkin has told us, that according to a story actually current among the Mongols, the tombs of the former Mongol Khans are situated near Tasola Hill, equally in the vicinity of the Kerulen. He states also that even now the Mongols are accustomed to assemble on that hill on the seventh day of the seventh moon (according to an ancient custom), in order to adore Chingiz Khan’s tomb. Altan tobchi (translated into Russian by Galsan Gomboeff), in relating the history of the Mongols after their expulsion from China, and speaking of the Khans’ tombs, calls them Naiman tzagan gher, i.e. ‘Eight White Tents’ (according to the number of chambers for the souls of the chief deceased Khans in Peking), and sometimes simply Tzagan gher, ‘the White Tent,’ which, according to the translator’s explanation, denotes only Chingiz Khan’s tomb.”
“According to the Chinese Annals (T’ung kien kang mu), quoted by Dr. E. Bretschneider (Med. Res. I. p. 157), Chinghiz died near the Liu p’an shan in 1227, after having subdued the Tangut empire. On modern Chinese maps Liu p’an shan is marked south of the city of Ku yüan chou, department of P’ing liang, in Kan suh. The Yüan shi however, implies that he died in Northern Mongolia. We read there, in the annals, s.a. 1227, that in the fifth intercalary month the Emperor moved to the mountain Liu p’an shan in order to avoid the heat of the summer. In the sixth month the empire of the Hia (Tangut) submitted. Chinghiz rested on the river Si Kiang in the district of Ts’ing shui (in Kansuh; it has still the same name). In autumn, in the seventh month (August), on the day jen wu, the Emperor fell ill, and eight days later died in his palace Ha-lao-t’u on the River Sa-li. This river Sali is repeatedly mentioned in the Yüan shi, viz. in the first chapter, in connection with the first military doings of Chinghiz. Rashid reports (D’Ohsson, I. 58) that Chinghiz in 1199 retired to his residence Sari Kihar. The Yüan chao pi shi (Palladius’ transl., 81) writes the same name Saari Keher (Keher in modern Mongol means ‘a plain’). On the ancient map of Mongolia found in the Yüan shi lei pien, Sa-li K’ie-rh is marked south of the river Wa-nan (the Onon of our maps), and close to Sa-li K’ie-rh we read: ‘Here was the original abode of the Yüan’ (Mongols). Thus it seems the passage in the Yüan history translated above intimates that Chinghiz died in Mongolia, and not near the Liu p’an shan, as is generally believed. The Yüan ch’ao pi shi (Palladius’ transl., 152) and the ’Ts’in cheng lu (Palladius’ transl., 195) both agree in stating that, after subduing the Tangut empire, Chinghiz returned home, and then died. Colonel Yule, in his Marco Polo (I. 245), states ‘that Rashid calls the place of Chinghiz’ death Leung shan, which appears to be the mountain range still so-called in the heart of Shensi.’ I am not aware from what translation of Rashid, Yule’s statement is derived, but d’Ohsson (I. 375, note) seems to quote the same passage in translating from Rashid: ‘Liu-p’an-shan was situated on the frontiers of the Churche (empire of the Kin), Nangias (empire of the Sung) and Tangut;’ which statement is quite correct.”
We now come to the Mongol tradition, which places the tomb of Chinghiz in the country of the Ordos, in the great bend of the Yellow River.
Two Belgian missionaries, MM. de Vos and Verlinden, who visited the tomb of Chinghiz Khan, say that before the Mahomedan invasion, on a hill a few feet high, there were two courtyards, one in front of the other, surrounded by palisades. In the second courtyard, there were a building like a Chinese dwelling-house and six tents. In a double tent are kept the remains of the bokta (the Holy). The neighbouring tents contained various precious objects, such as a gold saddle, dishes, drinking-cups, a tripod, a kettle, and many other utensils, all in solid silver. (Missions Catholiques, No. 315, 18th June, 1875.)—This periodical gives (p. 293) a sketch of the tomb of the Conqueror, according to the account of the two missionaries.
Prjevalsky (Mongolia and Tangut) relates the story of the Khatún Gol (see supra, [p. 245]), and says that her tomb is situated at 11 versts north-east of lake of Dzaïdemin Nor, and is called by the Mongols Tumir-Alku, and by the Chinese Djiou-Djin Fu; one of the legends mentioned by the Russian traveller gives the Ordo country as the burial-place of Chinghiz, 200 versts south of lake Dabasun Nor; the remains are kept in two coffins, one of wood, the other of silver; the Khan prophesied that after eight or ten centuries he would come to life again and fight the Emperor of China, and being victorious, would take the Mongols from the Ordos back to their country of Khalka; Prjevalsky did not see the tomb, nor did Potanin.
“Their holiest place [of the Mongols of Ordos] is a collection of felt tents called ‘Edjen-joro,’ reputed to contain the bones of Jenghiz Khan. These sacred relics are entrusted to the care of a caste of Darhats, numbering some fifty families. Every summer, on the twenty-first day of the sixth moon, sacrifices are offered up in his honour, when numbers of people congregate to join in the celebration, such gatherings being called táilgan.” On the southern border of the Ordos are the ruins of Boro-balgasun [Grey town], said to date from Jenghiz Khan’s time. (Potanin, Proc. R. G. S. IX. 1887, p. 233.)
The last traveller who visited the tomb of Chinghiz is M. C. E. Bonin, in July 1896; he was then on the banks of the Yellow River in the northern part of the Ordo country, which is exclusively inhabited by nomadic and pastoral Mongols, forming seven tribes or hords, Djungar, Talat, Wan, Ottok, Djassak, Wushun and Hangkin, among which are eastward the Djungar and in the centre the Wan; according to their own tradition, these tribes descend from the seven armies encamped in the country at the time of Chinghiz’s death; the King of Djungar was 67 years of age, and was the chief of all the tribes, being considered the 37th descendant of the conqueror in a direct line. His predecessor was the Wushun Wang. M. Bonin gives (Revue de Paris, 15th February 1898) the following description of the tomb and of the country surrounding it. Between the yamen (palace) of the King (Wang) of Djungar and the tomb of Chinghiz-Khan, there are five or six marches made difficult by the sands of the Gobi, but horses and camels may be used for the journey. The road, southward through the desert, passes near the great lama-monastery called Barong-tsao or Si-tsao (Monastery of the West), and in Chinese San-t’ang sse (Three Temples). This celebrated monastery was built by the King of Djungar to hold the tablets of his ancestors—on the ruins of an old temple, said to have been erected by Chinghiz himself. More than a thousand lamas are registered there, forty of them live at the expense of the Emperor of China. Crossing afterwards the two upper branches of the Ulan Muren (Red River) on the banks of which Chinghiz was murdered, according to local tradition, close to the lake of Chahan Nor (White Lake), near which are the tents of the Prince of Wan, one arrives at last at the spot called Yeke-Etjen-Koro, in Mongol: the abode of the Great Lord, where the tomb is to be found. It is erected to the south-east of the village, comprising some twenty tents or tent-like huts built of earth. Two large white felt tents, placed side by side, similar to the tents of the modern Mongols, but much larger, cover the tomb; a red curtain, when drawn, discloses the large and low silver coffin, which contains the ashes of the Emperor, placed on the ground of the second tent; it is shaped like a big trunk, with great rosaces engraved upon it. The Emperor, according to local tradition, was cremated on the bank of the Ulan Muren, where he is supposed to have been slain. On the twenty-first day of the third moon the anniversary fête of Mongolia takes place; on this day of the year only are the two mortuary tents opened, and the coffin is exhibited to be venerated by people coming from all parts of Mongolia. Many other relics, dispersed all over the Ordo land, are brought thither on this occasion; these relics called in Mongol Chinghiz Bogdo (Sacred remains of Chinghiz) number ten; they are in the order adopted by the Mongols: the saddle of Chinghiz, hidden in the Wan territory; the bow, kept at a place named Hu-ki-ta-lao Hei, near Yeke-Etjen-Koro; the remains of his war-horse, called Antegan-tsegun (more), preserved at Kebere in the Djungar territory; a fire-arm kept in the palace of the King of Djungar; a wooden and leather vase called Pao-lao-antri, kept at the place Shien-ni-chente; a wax figure containing the ashes of the Khan’s equerry, called Altaqua-tosu, kept at Ottok (one of the seven tribes); the remains of the second wife, who lay at Kiasa, on the banks of the Yellow River, at a place called on Prjevalsky’s map in Chinese Djiou-Djin-fu, and in Mongol Tumir-Alku; the tomb of the third wife of Chinghiz, who killed him, and lay to-day at Bagha-Ejen-Koro, “the abode of the little Sovereign,” at a day’s march to the south of the Djungar King’s palace; the very tomb of Yeke-Etjen-Koro, which is supposed to contain also the ashes of the first wife of the Khan; and last, his great standard, a black wood spear planted in the desert, more than 150 miles to the south of the tomb; the iron of it never gets rusty; no one dares touch it, and therefore it is not carried to Yeke-Etjen-Koro with the other relics for the yearly festival. (See also Rockhill, Diary, p. 29.)—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—Rashiduddin relates that the escort, in carrying Chinghiz to his burial, slew all whom they met, and that forty noble and beautiful girls were despatched to serve him in the other world, as well as superb horses. As Mangku Kaan died in the heart of China, any attempt to carry out the barbarous rule in his case would involve great slaughter. (Erd. 443; D’Ohsson, I. 381, II. 13; and see Cathay, 507–508.)
Sanang Setzen ignores these barbarities. He describes the body of Chinghiz as removed to his native land on a two-wheeled waggon, the whole host escorting it, and wailing as they went: “And Kiluken Bahadur of the Sunid Tribe (one of the Khan’s old comrades) lifted up his voice and sang—
‘Whilom Thou didst swoop like a Falcon: A rumbling waggon now trundles thee off:
O My King!
Hast thou in truth then forsaken thy wife and thy children and the Diet of thy People?
O My King!
Circling in pride like an Eagle whilom Thou didst lead us,
O My King!
But now Thou hast stumbled and fallen, like an unbroken Colt,
O My King!’” (p. 108.)
[“The burying of living men with the dead was a general custom with the tribes of Eastern Asia. Favourite servants and wives were usually buried in this way. In China, the chief wives and those concubines who had already borne children, were exempted from this lot. The Tunguz and other tribes were accustomed to kill the selected victims by strangulation. In China they used to be buried alive; but the custom of burying living men ceased in A.D. 1464. [Hwang ming ts’ung sin lu.] In the time of the present Manchu Dynasty, the burying of living men was prohibited by the Emperor Kang-hi, at the close of the 17th century, i.e. the forced burying; but voluntary sepulture remained in force [Yu chi wen]. Notwithstanding this prohibition, cases of forced burying occurred again in remote parts of Manchuria; when a concubine refused to follow her deceased master, she was forcibly strangled with a bow-string [Ninguta chi]. I must observe, however, that there is no mention made in historical documents of the existence of this custom with the Mongols; it is only an hypothesis based on the analogy between the religious ideas and customs of the Mongols and those of other tribes.” (Palladius, p. 13.)
In his Religious System of China, II., Dr. J. J. M. de Groot devotes a whole chapter (ix. 721 seqq.), Concerning the Sacrifice of Human Beings at Burials, and Usages connected therewith. The oldest case on record in China dates as far back as B.C. 677, when sixty-six men were killed after the ruler Wu of the state of Ts’in died.
The Official Annals of the Tartar Dynasty of Liao, quoted by Professor J. J. M. de Groot (Religious System of China, vol. ii. 698), state that “in the tenth year of the T’ung hwo period (A.D. 692) the killing of horses for funeral and burial rites was interdicted, as also the putting into the tombs of coats of mail, helmets, and articles and trinkets of gold and silver.” Professor de Groot writes (l.c. 709): “But, just as the placing of victuals in the graves was at an early date changed into sacrifices of food outside the graves, so burying horses with the dead was also modified under the Han Dynasty into presenting them to the dead without interring them, and valueless counterfeits were on such occasions substituted for the real animals.”—H. C.]
CHAPTER LII.
Concerning the Customs of the Tartars.
Now that we have begun to speak of the Tartars, I have plenty to tell you on that subject. The Tartar custom is to spend the winter in warm plains, where they find good pasture for their cattle, whilst in summer they betake themselves to a cool climate among the mountains and valleys, where water is to be found as well as woods and pastures.
Their houses are circular, and are made of wands covered with felts.[{1}] These are carried along with them whithersoever they go; for the wands are so strongly bound together, and likewise so well combined, that the frame can be made very light. Whenever they erect these huts the door is always to the south. They also have waggons covered with black felt so efficaciously that no rain can get in. These are drawn by oxen and camels, and the women and children travel in them.[{2}] The women do the buying and selling, and whatever is necessary to provide for the husband and household; for the men all lead the life of gentlemen, troubling themselves about nothing but hunting and hawking, and looking after their goshawks and falcons, unless it be the practice of warlike exercises.
They live on the milk and meat which their herds supply, and on the produce of the chase; and they eat all kinds of flesh, including that of horses and dogs, and Pharaoh’s rats, of which last there are great numbers in burrows on those plains.[{3}] Their drink is mare’s milk.
They are very careful not to meddle with each other’s wives, and will not do so on any account, holding that to be an evil and abominable thing. The women too are very good and loyal to their husbands, and notable housewives withal.[{4}] [Ten or twenty of them will dwell together in charming peace and unity, nor shall you ever hear an ill word among them.]
The marriage customs of Tartars are as follows. Any man may take a hundred wives an he so please, and if he be able to keep them. But the first wife is ever held most in honour, and as the most legitimate [and the same applies to the sons whom she may bear]. The husband gives a marriage payment to his wife’s mother, and the wife brings nothing to her husband. They have more children than other people, because they have so many wives. They may marry their cousins, and if a father dies, his son may take any of the wives, his own mother always excepted; that is to say the eldest son may do this, but no other. A man may also take the wife of his own brother after the latter’s death. Their weddings are celebrated with great ado.[{5}]
[Note 1.]—The word here in the G. T. is “fennes,” which seems usually to mean ropes, and in fact Pauthier’s text reads: “Il ont mesons de verges et les cueuvrent de cordes.” Ramusio’s text has feltroni, and both Müller and the Latin of the S. G. have filtro. This is certainly the right reading. But whether fennes was ever used as a form of feltres (as pennes means peltry) I cannot discover. Perhaps some words have dropped out. A good description of a Kirghiz hut (35 feet in diameter), and exactly corresponding to Polo’s account, will be found in Atkinson’s Siberia, and another in Vámbéry’s Travels. How comfortable and civilised the aspect of such a hut may be, can be seen also in Burnes’s account of a Turkoman dwelling of this kind. This description of hut or tent is common to nearly all the nomade tribes of Central Asia. The trellis-work forming the skeleton of the tent-walls is (at least among the Turkomans) loosely pivoted, so as to draw out and compress like “lazy-tongs.”
Dressing up a tent.
Rubruquis, Pallas, Timkowski, and others, notice the custom of turning the door to the south; the reason is obvious. (Atkinson, 285; Vámb. 316; Burnes, III. 51; Conolly, I. 96) But throughout the Altai, Mr. Ney Elias informs me, K’alkas, Kirghiz, and Kalmaks all pitch their tents facing east. The prevailing winter wind is there westerly.
[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 56, note) says that he has often seen Mongol tents facing east and south-east. He adds: “It is interesting to find it noted in the Chou Shu (Bk. 50, 3) that the Khan of the Turks, who lived always on the Tu-kin mountains, had his tent invariably facing south, so as to show reverence to the sun’s rising place.”—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Æschylus already knows the
“wandering Scyths who dwell
In latticed huts high-poised on easy wheels.”
(Prom. Vinct. 709–710.)
And long before him Hesiod says Phineus was carried by the Harpies—
“To the Land of the Milk-fed nations, whose houses are waggons.”
(Strabo, vii. 3–9.)
Ibn Batuta describes the Tartar waggon in which he travelled to Sarai as mounted on four great wheels, and drawn by two or more horses:—
“On the waggon is put a sort of pavilion of wands laced together with narrow thongs. It is very light, and is covered with felt or cloth, and has latticed windows, so that the person inside can look out without being seen. He can change his position at pleasure, sleeping or eating, reading or writing, during the journey.” These waggons were sometimes of enormous size. Rubruquis declares that he measured between the wheel-tracks of one and found the interval to be 20 feet. The axle was like a ship’s mast, and twenty-two oxen were yoked to the waggon, eleven abreast. (See opposite cut.) He describes the huts as not usually taken to pieces, but carried all standing. The waggon just mentioned carried a hut of 30 feet diameter, for it projected beyond the wheels at least 5 feet on either side. In fact, Carpini says explicitly, “Some of the huts are speedily taken to pieces and put up again; such are packed on the beasts. Others cannot be taken to pieces, but are carried bodily on the waggons. To carry the smaller tents on a waggon one ox may serve; for the larger ones three oxen or four, or even more, according to the size.” The carts that were used to transport the Tartar valuables were covered with felt soaked in tallow or ewe’s milk, to make them waterproof. The tilts of these were rectangular, in the form of a large trunk. The carts used in Kashgar, as described by Mr. Shaw, seem to resemble these latter. (I. B. II. 381–382; Rub. 221; Carp. 6, 16.)
The words of Herodotus, speaking generally of the Scyths, apply perfectly to the Mongol hordes under Chinghiz: “Having neither cities nor forts, and carrying their dwellings with them wherever they go; accustomed, moreover, one and all, to shoot from horseback; and living not by husbandry but on their cattle, their waggons the only houses that they possess, how can they fail of being unconquerable?” (Bk. IV. ch. 46, p. 41, Rawlins.) Scythian prisoners in their waggons are represented on the Column of Theodosius at Constantinople; but it is difficult to believe that these waggons, at least as figured in Banduri, have any really Scythian character.
It is a curious fact that the practice of carrying these yurts or felt tents upon waggons appears to be entirely obsolete in Mongolia. Mr. Ney Elias writes: “I frequently showed your picture [that opposite] to Mongols, Chinese, and Russian border-traders, but none had ever seen anything of the kind. The only cart I have ever seen used by Mongols is a little low, light, roughly-made bullock-dray, certainly of Chinese importation.” The old system would, however, appear to have been kept up to our own times by the Nogai Tartars, near the Sea of Azof. (See note from Heber, in Clark’s Travels, 8vo ed. I. 440, and Dr. Clark’s vignette at p. 394 in the same volume.)
J. Cooper Sc
Mediæval Tartar Huts and Waggons.
[Note 3.]—Pharaoh’s Rat was properly the Gerboa of Arabia and North Africa, which the Arabs also regard as a dainty. There is a kindred animal in Siberia, called Alactaga, and a kind of Kangaroo-rat (probably the same) is mentioned as very abundant on the Mongolian Steppe. There is also the Zieselmaus of Pallas, a Dormouse, I believe, which he says the Kalmaks, even of distinction, count a delicacy, especially cooked in sour milk. “They eat not only the flesh of all their different kinds of cattle, including horses and camels, but also that of many wild animals which other nations eschew, e.g. marmots and zieselmice, beavers, badgers, otters, and lynxes, leaving none untouched except the dog and weasel kind, and also (unless very hard pressed) the flesh of the fox and the wolf.” (Pallas, Samml. I. 128; also Rubr. 229–230.)
[“In the Mongol biography of Chinghiz Khan (Mongol text of the Yuan ch’ao pi shi), mention is made of two kinds of animals (mice) used for food; the tarbagat (Aritomys Bobac) and kuchugur.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 14.) Regarding the marmots called Sogur by Rubruquis, Mr. Rockhill writes (p. 69): “Probably the Mus citillus, the Suslik of the Russians.... M. Grenard tells me that Soghur, more usually written sour in Turki, is the ordinary name of the marmot.”—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—“Their wives are chaste; nor does one ever hear any talk of their immodesty,” says Carpini;—no Boccaccian and Chaucerian stories.
[Note 5.]—“The Mongols are not prohibited from having a plurality of wives; the first manages the domestic concerns, and is the most respected.” (Timk. II. 310.) Naturally Polygamy is not so general among the Mongols as when Asia lay at their feet. The Buraets, who seem to retain the old Mongol customs in great completeness, are polygamists, and have as many wives as they choose. Polygamy is also very prevalent among the Yakuts, whose lineage seems to be Eastern Turk. (Ritter, III. 125; Erman, II. 346.)
Of the custom that entitled the son on succeeding to take such as he pleased of his deceased father’s wives, we have had some illustration (see Prologue, [ch. xvii. note 2]), and many instances will be found in Hammer’s or other Mongol Histories. The same custom seems to be ascribed by Herodotus to the Scyths (IV. 78). A number of citations regarding the practice are given by Quatremère. (Q. R. p. 92.) A modern Mongol writer in the Mélanges Asiatiques of the Petersburg Academy, states that the custom of taking a deceased brother’s wives is now obsolete, but that a proverb preserves its memory (II. 656). It is the custom of some Mahomedan nations, notably of the Afghans, and is one of those points that have been cited as a supposed proof of their Hebrew lineage.
“The Kalin is a present which the Bridegroom or his parents make to the parents of the Bride. All the Pagan nations of Siberia have this custom; they differ only in what constitutes the present, whether money or cattle.” (Gmelin, I. 29; see also Erman, II. 348.)
CHAPTER LIII.
Concerning the God of the Tartars.
This is the fashion of their religion. [They say there is a Most High God of Heaven, whom they worship daily with thurible and incense, but they pray to Him only for health of mind and body. But] they have [also] a certain [other] god of theirs called Natigay, and they say he is the god of the Earth, who watches over their children, cattle, and crops. They show him great worship and honour, and every man hath a figure of him in his house, made of felt and cloth; and they also make in the same manner images of his wife and children. The wife they put on the left hand, and the children in front. And when they eat, they take the fat of the meat and grease the god’s mouth withal, as well as the mouths of his wife and children. Then they take of the broth and sprinkle it before the door of the house; and that done, they deem that their god and his family have had their share of the dinner.[{1}]
Their drink is mare’s milk, prepared in such a way that you would take it for white wine; and a right good drink it is, called by them Kemiz.[{2}]
The clothes of the wealthy Tartars are for the most part of gold and silk stuffs, lined with costly furs, such as sable and ermine, vair and fox-skin, in the richest fashion.
[Note 1.]—There is no reference here to Buddhism, which was then of recent introduction among the Mongols; indeed, at the end of the chapter, Polo speaks of their new adoption of the Chinese idolatry, i.e. Buddhism. We may add here that the Buddhism of the Mongols decayed and became practically extinct after their expulsion from China (1368–1369). The old Shamanism then apparently revived; nor was it till 1577 that the great reconversion of Mongolia to Lamaism began. This reconversion is the most prominent event in the Mongol history of Sanang Setzen, whose great-grandfather Khutuktai Setzen, Prince of the Ordos, was a chief agent in the movement.
The Supreme Good Spirit appears to have been called by the Mongols Tengri (Heaven), and Khormuzda, and is identified by Schmidt with the Persian Hormuzd. In Buddhist times he became identified with Indra.
Plano Carpini’s account of this matter is very like Marco’s: “They believe in one God, the Maker of all things, visible and invisible, and the Distributor of good and evil in this world; but they worship Him not with prayers or praises or any kind of service. Natheless, they have certain idols of felt, imitating the human face, and having underneath the face something resembling teats; these they place on either side of the door. These they believe to be the guardians of the flocks, from whom they have the boons of milk and increase. Others they fabricate of bits of silk, and these are highly honoured; ... and whenever they begin to eat or drink, they first offer these idols a portion of their food or drink.”
The account agrees generally with what we are told of the original Shamanism of the Tunguses, which recognizes a Supreme Power over all, and a small number of potent spirits called Ongot. These spirits among the Buraets are called, according to one author, Nougait or Nogat, and according to Erman Ongotui. In some form of this same word, Nogait, Ongot, Onggod, Ongotui, we are, I imagine, to trace the Natigay of Polo. The modern representative of this Shamanist Lar is still found among the Buraets, and is thus described by Pallas under the name of Immegiljin: “He is honoured as the tutelary god of the sheep and other cattle. Properly, the divinity consists of two figures, hanging side by side, one of whom represents the god’s wife. These two figures are merely a pair of lanky flat bolsters with the upper part shaped into a round disk, and the body hung with a long woolly fleece; eyes, nose, breasts, and navel, being indicated by leather knobs stitched on. The male figure commonly has at his girdle the foot-rope with which horses at pasture are fettered, whilst the female, which is sometimes accompanied by smaller figures representing her children, has all sorts of little nicknacks and sewing implements.” Galsang Czomboyef, a recent Russo-Mongol writer already quoted, says also: “Among the Buryats, in the middle of the hut and place of honour, is the Dsaiagaçhi or ‘Chief Creator of Fortune.’ At the door is the Emelgelji, the Tutelary of the Herds and Young Cattle, made of sheepskins. Outside the hut is the Chandaghatu, a name implying that the idol was formed of a white hare-skin, the Tutelary of the Chase and perhaps of War. All these have been expelled by Buddhism except Dsaiagachi, who is called Tengri, and introduced among the Buddhist divinities.”
Tartar Idols and Kumis Churn.
[Dorji Banzaroff, in his dissertation On the Black Religion, i.e. Shamanism, 1846, “is disposed to see in Natigay of M. Polo, the Ytoga of other travellers, i.e. the Mongol Etugen—‘earth,’ as the object of veneration of the Mongol Shamans. They look upon it as a divinity, for its power as Delegei in echen, i.e. ‘the Lord of Earth,’ and on account of its productiveness, Altan delegei, i.e. ‘Golden Earth.’” Palladius (l.c. pp. 14–16) adds one new variant to what the learned Colonel Yule has collected and set forth with such precision, on the Shaman household gods. “The Dahurs and Barhus have in their dwellings, according to the number of the male members of the family, puppets made of straw, on which eyes, eyebrows, and mouth are drawn; these puppets are dressed up to the waist. When some one of the family dies, his puppet is taken out of the house, and a new puppet is made for every newly-born member of the family. On New Year’s Day offerings are made to the puppets, and care is taken not to disturb them (by moving them, etc.), in order to avoid bringing sickness upon the family.” (He lung kiang wai ki.)
(Cf. Rubruck, 58–59, and Mr. Rockhill’s note, 59–60.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Kimiz or Kumiz, the habitual drink of the Mongols, as it still is of most of the nomads of Asia. It is thus made. Fresh mare’s milk is put in a well-seasoned bottle-necked vessel of horse-skin; a little kurút (see [note 5, ch. liv.]) or some sour cow’s milk is added; and when acetous fermentation is commencing it is violently churned with a peculiar staff which constantly stands in the vessel. This interrupts fermentation and introduces a quantity of air into the liquid. It is customary for visitors who may drop in to give a turn or two at the churn-stick. After three or four days the drink is ready.
Kumiz keeps long; it is wonderfully tonic and nutritious, and it is said that it has cured many persons threatened with consumption. The tribes using it are said to be remarkably free from pulmonary disease; and indeed I understand there is a regular Galactopathic establishment somewhere in the province of Orenburg for treating pulmonary patients with Kumiz diet.
It has a peculiar fore- and after-taste which, it is said, everybody does not like. Yet I have found no confession of a dislike to Kumiz. Rubruquis tells us it is pungent on the tongue, like vinum raspei (vin rapé of the French), whilst you are drinking it, but leaves behind a pleasant flavour like milk of almonds. It makes a man’s inside feel very cosy, he adds, even turning a weak head, and is strongly diuretic. To this last statement, however, modern report is in direct contradiction. The Greeks and other Oriental Christians considered it a sort of denial of the faith to drink Kumiz. On the other hand, the Mahomedan converts from the nomad tribes seem to have adhered to the use of Kumiz even when strict in abstinence from wine; and it was indulged in by the early Mamelukes as a public solemnity. Excess on such an occasion killed Bibars Bundukdari, who was passionately fond of this liquor.
The intoxicating power of Kumiz varies according to the brew. The more advanced is the vinous fermentation the less acid is the taste and the more it sparkles. The effect, however, is always slight and transitory, and leaves no unpleasant sensation, whilst it produces a strong tendency to refreshing sleep. If its good qualities amount to half what are ascribed to it by Dr. W. F. Dahl, from whom we derive some of these particulars, it must be the pearl of all beverages. “With the nomads it is the drink of all from the suckling upwards, it is the solace of age and illness, and the greatest of treats to all!”
There was a special kind called Ḳará Ḳumiz, which is mentioned both by Rubruquis and in the history of Wassáf. It seems to have been strained and clarified. The modern Tartars distil a spirit from Kumiz of which Pallas gives a detailed account. (Dahl, Ueber den Kumyss in Baer’s Beiträge, VII.; Lettres sur le Caucase et la Crimée, Paris, 1859, p. 81; Makrizi, II. 147; J. As. XI. 160; Levchine, 322–323; Rubr. 227–228, 335; Gold. Horde, p. 46; Erman, I. 296; Pallas, Samml. I. 132 seqq.)
[In the Si yu ki, Travels to the West of Ch’ang ch’un, we find a drink called tung lo. “The Chinese characters, tung lo,” says Bretschneider (Med. Res. I. 94), “denote according to the dictionaries preparations from mare’s or cow’s milk, as Kumis, sour milk, etc. In the Yüan shi (ch. cxxviii.) biography of the Kipchak prince Tú-tú-ha, it is stated that ‘black mare’s milk’ (evidently the cara cosmos of Rubruck), very pleasant to the taste, used to be sent from Kipchak to the Mongol court in China.” (On the drinks of the Mongols, see Mr. Rockhill’s note, Rubruck, p. 62.)—The Mongols indulge in sour milk (tarak) and distilled mare’s milk (arreki), but Mr. Rockhill (Land of the Lamas, 130) says he never saw them drink kumiz.—H. C.]
The mare’s-milk drink of Scythian nomads is alluded to by many ancient authors. But the manufacture of Kumiz is particularly spoken of by Herodotus. “The (mare’s) milk is poured into deep wooden casks, about which the blind slaves are placed, and then the milk is stirred round. That which rises to the top is drawn off, and considered the best part; the under portion is of less account.” Strabo also speaks of the nomads beyond the Cimmerian Chersonesus, who feed on horse-flesh and other flesh, mare’s-milk cheese, mare’s milk, and sour milk (ὀξυγάλακτα) “which they have a particular way of preparing.” Perhaps Herodotus was mistaken about the wooden tubs. At least all modern attempts to use anything but the orthodox skins have failed. Priscus, in his narrative of the mission of himself and Maximin to Attila, says the Huns brought them a drink made from barley which they called Κάμος. The barley was, no doubt, a misapprehension of his. (Herod. Bk. iv. p. 2, in Rawl.; Strabo, VII. 4, 6; Excerpta de Legationibus, in Corp. Hist. Byzant. I. 55.)
CHAPTER LIV.
Concerning the Tartar Customs of War.
All their harness of war is excellent and costly. Their arms are bows and arrows, sword and mace; but above all the bow, for they are capital archers, indeed the best that are known. On their backs they wear armour of cuirbouly, prepared from buffalo and other hides, which is very strong.[{1}] They are excellent soldiers, and passing valiant in battle. They are also more capable of hardships than other nations; for many a time, if need be, they will go for a month without any supply of food, living only on the milk of their mares and on such game as their bows may win them. Their horses also will subsist entirely on the grass of the plains, so that there is no need to carry store of barley or straw or oats; and they are very docile to their riders. These, in case of need, will abide on horseback the livelong night, armed at all points, while the horse will be continually grazing.
Of all troops in the world these are they which endure the greatest hardship and fatigue, and which cost the least; and they are the best of all for making wide conquests of country. And this you will perceive from what you have heard and shall hear in this book; and (as a fact) there can be no manner of doubt that now they are the masters of the biggest half of the world. Their troops are admirably ordered in the manner that I shall now relate.
You see, when a Tartar prince goes forth to war, he takes with him, say, 100,000 horse. Well, he appoints an officer to every ten men, one to every hundred, one to every thousand, and one to every ten thousand, so that his own orders have to be given to ten persons only, and each of these ten persons has to pass the orders only to other ten, and so on; no one having to give orders to more than ten. And every one in turn is responsible only to the officer immediately over him; and the discipline and order that comes of this method is marvellous, for they are a people very obedient to their chiefs. Further, they call the corps of 100,000 men a Tuc; that of 10,000 they call a Toman; the thousand they call ...; the hundred Guz; the ten ....[{2}] And when the army is on the march they have always 200 horsemen, very well mounted, who are sent a distance of two marches in advance to reconnoitre, and these always keep ahead. They have a similar party detached in the rear, and on either flank, so that there is a good look-out kept on all sides against a surprise. When they are going on a distant expedition they take no gear with them except two leather bottles for milk; a little earthenware pot to cook their meat in, and a little tent to shelter them from rain.[{3}] And in case of great urgency they will ride ten days on end without lighting a fire or taking a meal. On such an occasion they will sustain themselves on the blood of their horses, opening a vein and letting the blood jet into their mouths, drinking till they have had enough, and then staunching it.[{4}]
They also have milk dried into a kind of paste to carry with them; and when they need food they put this in water, and beat it up till it dissolves, and then drink it. [It is prepared in this way; they boil the milk, and when the rich part floats on the top they skim it into another vessel, and of that they make butter; for the milk will not become solid till this is removed. Then they put the milk in the sun to dry. And when they go on an expedition, every man takes some ten pounds of this dried milk with him. And of a morning he will take a half pound of it and put it in his leather bottle, with as much water as he pleases. So, as he rides along, the milk-paste and the water in the bottle get well churned together into a kind of pap, and that makes his dinner.[{5}]]
When they come to an engagement with the enemy, they will gain the victory in this fashion. [They never let themselves get into a regular medley, but keep perpetually riding round and shooting into the enemy. And] as they do not count it any shame to run away in battle, they will [sometimes pretend to] do so, and in running away they turn in the saddle and shoot hard and strong at the foe, and in this way make great havoc. Their horses are trained so perfectly that they will double hither and thither, just like a dog, in a way that is quite astonishing. Thus they fight to as good purpose in running away as if they stood and faced the enemy, because of the vast volleys of arrows that they shoot in this way, turning round upon their pursuers, who are fancying that they have won the battle. But when the Tartars see that they have killed and wounded a good many horses and men, they wheel round bodily, and return to the charge in perfect order and with loud cries; and in a very short time the enemy are routed. In truth they are stout and valiant soldiers, and inured to war. And you perceive that it is just when the enemy sees them run, and imagines that he has gained the battle, that he has in reality lost it; for the Tartars wheel round in a moment when they judge the right time has come. And after this fashion they have won many a fight.[{6}]
All this that I have been telling you is true of the manners and customs of the genuine Tartars. But I must add also that in these days they are greatly degenerated; for those who are settled in Cathay have taken up the practices of the Idolaters of the country, and have abandoned their own institutions; whilst those who have settled in the Levant have adopted the customs of the Saracens.[{7}]
[Note 1.]—The bow was the characteristic weapon of the Tartars, insomuch that the Armenian historians often call them “The Archers.” (St. Martin, II. 133.) “Cuirbouly, leather softened by boiling, in which it took any form or impression required, and then hardened.” (Wright’s Dict.) The English adventurer among the Tartars, whose account of them is given by Archbishop Ivo of Narbonne, in Matthew Paris (sub. 1243), says: “De coriis bullitis sibi arma levia quidem, sed tamen impenetrabilia coaptarunt.” This armour is particularly described by Plano Carpini (p. 685). See the tail-piece to Book IV.
[Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, XXIV. iv. p. 205) remarks that “the first coats of mail were made in China in 1288: perhaps the idea was obtained from the Malays or Arabs.”—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—M. Pauthier has judiciously pointed out the omissions that have occurred here, perhaps owing to Rusticiano’s not properly catching the foreign terms applied to the various grades. In the G. Text the passage runs: “Et sachiés que les cent mille est apellé un Tut (read tuc) et les dix mille un Toman, et les por milier et por centenier et por desme.” In Pauthier’s (uncorrected) text one of the missing words is supplied: “Et appellent les C.M. un Tuc; et les X.M. un Toman; et un millier Guz por centenier et por disenier.” The blanks he supplies thus from Abulghazi: “Et un millier: [un Miny]; Guz, por centenier et [Un] por disenier.” The words supplied are Turki, but so is the Guz, which appears already in Pauthier’s text, whilst Toman and Tuc are common to Turki and Mongol. The latter word, Túk or Túgh, is the horse-tail or yak-tail standard which among so many Asiatic nations has marked the supreme military command. It occurs as Taka in ancient Persian, and Cosmas Indicopleustes speaks of it as Tupha. The Nine Orloks or Marshals under Chinghiz were entitled to the Tuk, and theirs is probably the class of command here indicated as of 100,000, though the figure must not be strictly taken. Timur ordains that every Amir who should conquer a kingdom or command in a victory should receive a title of honour, the Tugh and the Naḳḳárá. (infra, [Bk. II. ch. iv. note 3].) Baber on several occasions speaks of conferring the Tugh upon his generals for distinguished service. One of the military titles at Bokhara is still Tokhsabai, a corruption of Túgh-Sáhibi (Master of the Tugh).
We find the whole gradation except the Tuc in a rescript of Janibeg, Khan of Sarai, in favour of Venetian merchants dated February 1347. It begins in the Venetian version: “La parola de Zanibeck allo puovolo di Mogoli, alli Baroni di Thomeni,[1] delli miera, delli centenera, delle dexiene.” (Erdmann, 576; D’Avezac, 577–578; Rémusat, Langues Tartares, 303; Pallas, Samml. I. 283; Schmidt, 379, 381; Baber, 260, etc.; Vámbéry, 374; Timour Inst. pp. 283 and 292–293; Bibl. de l’Ec. des Chartes, tom. lv. p. 585.)
The decimal division of the army was already made by Chinghiz at an early period of his career, and was probably much older than his time. In fact we find the Myriarch and Chiliarch already in the Persian armies of Darius Hystaspes. From the Tartars the system passed into nearly all the Musulman States of Asia, and the titles Min-bashi or Bimbashi, Yuzbashi, Onbashi, still subsist not only in Turkestan, but also in Turkey and Persia. The term Tman or Tma was, according to Herberstein, still used in Russia in his day for 10,000. (Ramus. II. 159.)
[The King of An-nam, Dinh Tiên-hòang (A.D. 968) had an army of 1,000,000 men forming 10 corps of 10 legions; each legion forming 10 cohorts of 10 centuries; each century forming 10 squads of 10 men.—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—Ramusio’s edition says that what with horses and mares there will be an average of eighteen beasts (?) to every man.
[Note 4.]—See the Oriental account quoted below in [Note 6].
So Dionysius, combining this practice with that next described, relates of the Massagetæ that they have no delicious bread nor native wine:
“But with horse’s blood
And white milk mingled set their banquets forth.”
(Orbis Desc. 743–744.)
And Sidonius:
“Solitosque cruentum
Lac potare Getas, et pocula tingere venis.”
(Parag. ad Avitum.)
[“The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle.” (Herodotus, Rawlinson, Bk. IV. ch. 64, p. 54.)—H. C.] “When in lack of food, they bleed a horse and suck the vein. If they need something more solid, they put a sheep’s pudding full of blood under the saddle; this in time gets coagulated and cooked by the heat, and then they devour it.” (Georg. Pachymeres, V. 4.) The last is a well-known story, but is strenuously denied and ridiculed by Bergmann. (Streifereien, etc. I. 15.) Joinville tells the same story. Hans Schiltberger asserts it very distinctly: “Ich hon och gesehen wann sie in reiss ylten, das sie ein fleisch nemen, und es dunn schinden und legents unter den sattel, und riten doruff; und essents wann sie hungert” (ch. 35). Botero had “heard from a trustworthy source that a Tartar of Perekop, travelling on the steppes, lived for some days on the blood of his horse, and then, not daring to bleed it more, cut off and ate its ears!” (Relazione Univers. p. 93.) The Turkmans speak of such practices, but Conolly says he came to regard them as hyperbolical talk (I. 45).
[Abul-Ghazi Khan, in his History of Mongols, describing a raid of Russian (Ourous) Cossacks, who were hemmed in by the Uzbeks, says: “The Russians had in continued fighting exhausted all their water. They began to drink blood; the fifth day they had not even blood remaining to drink.” (Transl. by Baron Des Maisons, St. Petersburg, II. 295.)]
[Note 5.]—Rubruquis thus describes this preparation, which is called Kurút: “The milk that remains after the butter has been made, they allow to get as sour as sour can be, and then boil it. In boiling, it curdles, and that curd they dry in the sun; and in this way it becomes as hard as iron-slag. And so it is stored in bags against the winter. In the winter time, when they have no milk, they put that sour curd, which they call Griut, into a skin, and pour warm water on it, and they shake it violently till the curd dissolves in the water, to which it gives an acid flavour; that water they drink in place of milk. But above all things they eschew drinking plain water.” From Pallas’s account of the modern practice, which is substantially the same, these cakes are also made from the leavings of distillation in making milk-arrack. The Kurút is frequently made of ewe-milk. Wood speaks of it as an indispensable article in the food of the people of Badakhshan, and under the same name it is a staple food of the Afghans. (Rubr. 229; Samml. I. 136; Dahl, u.s.; Wood, 311.)
[It is the ch’ura of the Tibetans. “In the Kokonor country and Tibet, this krut or chura is put in tea to soften, and then eaten either alone or mixed with parched barley meal (tsamba).” (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 68, note.)—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—Compare with Marco’s account the report of the Mongols, which was brought by the spies of Mahomed, Sultan of Khwarizm, when invasion was first menaced by Chinghiz: “The army of Chinghiz is countless, as a swarm of ants or locusts. Their warriors are matchless in lion-like valour, in obedience, and endurance. They take no rest, and flight or retreat is unknown to them. On their expeditions they are accompanied by oxen, sheep, camels, and horses, and sweet or sour milk suffices them for food. Their horses scratch the earth with their hoofs and feed on the roots and grasses they dig up, so that they need neither straw nor oats. They themselves reck nothing of the clean or the unclean in food, and eat the flesh of all animals, even of dogs, swine, and bears. They will open a horse’s vein, draw blood, and drink it.... In victory they leave neither small nor great alive; they cut up women great with child and cleave the fruit of the womb. If they come to a great river, as they know nothing of boats, they sew skins together, stitch up all their goods therein, tie the bundle to their horses’ tails, mount with a hard grip of the mane, and so swim over.” This passage is an absolute abridgment of many chapters of Carpini. Still more terse was the sketch of Mongol proceedings drawn by a fugitive from Bokhara after Chinghiz’s devastations there. It was set forth in one unconscious hexameter:
“Ámdand u khandand u sokhtand u kushtand u burdand u raftand!”
“They came and they sapped, they fired and they slew, trussed up their loot and were gone!”
Juwaini, the historian, after telling the story, adds: “The cream and essence of whatever is written in this volume might be represented in these few words.”
A Musulman author quoted by Hammer, Najmuddin of Rei, gives an awful picture of the Tartar devastations, “Such as had never been heard of, whether in the lands of unbelief or of Islam, and can only be likened to those which the Prophet announced as signs of the Last Day, when he said: ‘The Hour of Judgment shall not come until ye shall have fought with the Turks, men small of eye and ruddy of countenance, whose noses are flat, and their faces like hide-covered shields. Those shall be Days of Horror!’ ‘And what meanest thou by horror?’ said the Companions; and he replied, ‘Slaughter! Slaughter!’ This beheld the Prophet in vision 600 years ago. And could there well be worse slaughter than there was in Rei, where I, wretch that I am, was born and bred, and where the whole population of five hundred thousand souls was either butchered or dragged into slavery?”
Marco habitually suppresses or ignores the frightful brutalities of the Tartars, but these were somewhat less, no doubt, in Kúblái’s time.
The Hindustani poet Amir Khosru gives a picture of the Mongols more forcible than elegant, which Elliot has translated (III. 528).
This is Hayton’s account of the Parthian tactics of the Tartars: “They will run away, but always keeping their companies together; and it is very dangerous to give them chase, for as they flee they shoot back over their heads, and do great execution among their pursuers. They keep very close rank, so that you would not guess them for half their real strength.” Carpini speaks to the same effect. Baber, himself of Mongol descent, but heartily hating his kindred, gives this account of their military usage in his day: “Such is the uniform practice of these wretches the Moghuls; if they defeat the enemy they instantly seize the booty; if they are defeated, they plunder and dismount their own allies, and, betide what may, carry off the spoil.” (Erdmann, 364, 383, 620; Gold. Horde, 77, 80; Elliot, II. 388; Hayton in Ram. ch. xlviii.; Baber, 93; Carpini, p. 694.)
[Note 7.]—“The Scythians” (i.e. in the absurd Byzantine pedantry, Tartars), says Nicephorus Gregoras, “from converse with the Assyrians, Persians, and Chaldæans, in time acquired their manners and adopted their religion, casting off their ancestral atheism.... And to such a degree were they changed, that though in former days they had been wont to cover the head with nothing better than a loose felt cap, and for other clothing had thought themselves well off with the skins of wild beasts or ill-dressed leather, and had for weapons only clubs and slings, or spears, arrows, and bows extemporised from the oaks and other trees of their mountains and forests, now, forsooth, they will have no meaner clothing than brocades of silk and gold! And their luxury and delicate living came to such a pitch that they stood far as the poles asunder from their original habits” (II. v. 6).
[1] This is Chomeni in the original, but I have ventured to correct it.
CHAPTER LV.
Concerning the administering of Justice among the Tartars.
The way they administer justice is this. When any one has committed a petty theft, they give him, under the orders of authority, seven blows of a stick, or seventeen, or twenty-seven, or thirty-seven, or forty-seven, and so forth, always increasing by tens in proportion to the injury done, and running up to one hundred and seven. Of these beatings sometimes they die.[{1}] But if the offence be horse-stealing, or some other great matter, they cut the thief in two with a sword. Howbeit, if he be able to ransom himself by paying nine times the value of the thing stolen, he is let off. Every Lord or other person who possesses beasts has them marked with his peculiar brand, be they horses, mares, camels, oxen, cows, or other great cattle, and then they are sent abroad to graze over the plains without any keeper. They get all mixt together, but eventually every beast is recovered by means of its owner’s brand, which is known. For their sheep and goats they have shepherds. All their cattle are remarkably fine, big, and in good condition.[{2}]
They have another notable custom, which is this. If any man have a daughter who dies before marriage, and another man have had a son also die before marriage, the parents of the two arrange a grand wedding between the dead lad and lass. And marry them they do, making a regular contract! And when the contract papers are made out they put them in the fire, in order (as they will have it) that the parties in the other world may know the fact, and so look on each other as man and wife. And the parents thenceforward consider themselves sib to each other, just as if their children had lived and married. Whatever may be agreed on between the parties as dowry, those who have to pay it cause to be painted on pieces of paper and then put these in the fire, saying that in that way the dead person will get all the real articles in the other world.[{3}]
Now I have told you all about the manners and customs of the Tartars; but you have heard nothing yet of the great state of the Grand Kaan, who is the Lord of all the Tartars and of the Supreme Imperial Court. All that I will tell you in this book in proper time and place, but meanwhile I must return to my story which I left off in that great plain when we began to speak of the Tartars.[{4}]
[Note 1.]—The cudgel among the Mongols was not confined to thieves and such like. It was the punishment also of military and state offences, and even princes were liable to it without fatal disgrace. “If they give any offence,” says Carpini, “or omit to obey the slightest beck, the Tartars themselves are beaten like donkeys.” The number of blows administered was, according to Wassáf, always odd, 3, 5, and so forth, up to 77. (Carp. 712; Ilchan. I. 37.)
[“They also punish with death grand larceny, but as for petty thefts, such as that of a sheep, so long as one has not repeatedly been taken in the act, they beat him cruelly, and if they administer an hundred blows they must use an hundred sticks.” (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 80.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—“They have no herdsmen or others to watch their cattle, because the laws of the Turks (i.e. Tartars) against theft are so severe.... A man in whose possession a stolen horse is found is obliged to restore it to its owner, and to give nine of the same value; if he cannot, his children are seized in compensation; if he have no children, he is slaughtered like a mutton.” (Ibn Batuta, II. 364.)
[Note 3.]—This is a Chinese custom, though no doubt we may trust Marco for its being a Tartar one also. “In the province of Shansi they have a ridiculous custom, which is to marry dead folks to each other. F. Michael Trigault, a Jesuit, who lived several years in that province, told it us whilst we were in confinement. It falls out that one man’s son and another man’s daughter die. Whilst the coffins are in the house (and they used to keep them two or three years, or longer) the parents agree to marry them; they send the usual presents, as if the pair were alive, with much ceremony and music. After this they put the two coffins together, hold the wedding dinner in their presence, and, lastly, lay them together in one tomb. The parents, from this time forth, are looked on not merely as friends but as relatives—just as they would have been had their children been married when in life.” (Navarrete, quoted by Marsden.) Kidd likewise, speaking of the Chinese custom of worshipping at the tombs of progenitors, says: “So strongly does veneration for this tribute after death prevail that parents, in order to secure the memorial of the sepulchre for a daughter who has died during her betrothal, give her in marriage after her decease to her intended husband, who receives with nuptial ceremonies at his own house a paper effigy made by her parents, and after he has burnt it, erects a tablet to her memory—an honour which usage forbids to be rendered to the memory of unmarried persons. The law seeks without effect to abolish this absurd custom.” (China, etc., pp. 179–180.)
[Professor J. J. M. de Groot (Religious System of China) gives several instances of marriages after death; the following example (II. 804–805) will illustrate the custom: “An interesting account of the manner in which such post-mortem marriages were concluded at the period when the Sung Dynasty governed the Empire, is given by a contemporary work in the following words: ‘In the northern parts of the Realm it is customary, when an unmarried youth and an unmarried girl breathe their last, that the two families each charge a match-maker to demand the other party in marriage. Such go-betweens are called match-makers for disembodied souls. They acquaint the two families with each other’s circumstances, and then cast lots for the marriage by order of the parents on both sides. If they augur that the union will be a happy one, (wedding) garments for the next world are cut out, and the match-makers repair to the grave of the lad, there to set out wine and fruit for the consummation of the marriage. Two seats are placed side by side, and a small streamer is set up near each seat. If these streamers move a little after the libation has been performed, the souls are believed to approach each other; but if one of them does not move, the party represented thereby is considered to disapprove of the marriage. Each family has to reward its match-maker with a present of woven stuffs. Such go-betweens make a regular livelihood out of these proceedings.’”—H. C.]
The Ingushes of the Caucasus, according to Klaproth, have the same custom: “If a man’s son dies, another who has lost his daughter goes to the father and says, ‘Thy son will want a wife in the other world; I will give him my daughter; pay me the price of the bride.’ Such a demand is never refused, even though the purchase of the bride amount to thirty cows.” (Travels, Eng. Trans. 345.)
[Note 4.]—There is a little doubt about the reading of this last paragraph. The G. T. has—“Mès desormès volun retorner à nostre conte en la grant plaingne où nos estion quant nos comechames des fais des Tartars,” whilst Pauthier’s text has “Mais desormais vueil retourner à mon conte que Je lessai d’or plain quant nous commençames des faiz des Tatars.” The former reading looks very like a misunderstanding of one similar to the latter, where d’or plain seems to be an adverbial expression, with some such meaning as “just now,” “a while ago.” I have not, however, been able to trace the expression elsewhere. Cotgrave has or primes, “but even now,” etc.; and has also de plain, “presently, immediately, out of hand.” It seems quite possible that d’or plain should have had the meaning suggested.
CHAPTER LVI.
Sundry Particulars of the Plain beyond Caracoron.
And when you leave Caracoron and the Altay, in which they bury the bodies of the Tartar Sovereigns, as I told you, you go north for forty days till you reach a country called the Plain of Bargu.[{1}] The people there are called Mescript; they are a very wild race, and live by their cattle, the most of which are stags, and these stags, I assure you, they used to ride upon. Their customs are like those of the Tartars, and they are subject to the Great Kaan. They have neither corn nor wine. [They get birds for food, for the country is full of lakes and pools and marshes, which are much frequented by the birds when they are moulting, and when they have quite cast their feathers and can’t fly, those people catch them. They also live partly on fish.[{2}]]
And when you have travelled forty days over this great plain you come to the ocean, at the place where the mountains are in which the Peregrine falcons have their nests. And in those mountains it is so cold that you find neither man or woman, nor beast nor bird, except one kind of bird called Barguerlac, on which the falcons feed. They are as big as partridges, and have feet like those of parrots and a tail like a swallow’s, and are very strong in flight. And when the Grand Kaan wants Peregrines from the nest, he sends thither to procure them.[{3}] It is also on islands in that sea that the Gerfalcons are bred. You must know that the place is so far to the north that you leave the North Star somewhat behind you towards the south! The gerfalcons are so abundant there that the Emperor can have as many as he likes to send for. And you must not suppose that those gerfalcons which the Christians carry into the Tartar dominions go to the Great Kaan; they are carried only to the Prince of the Levant.[{4}]
Now I have told you all about the provinces northward as far as the Ocean Sea, beyond which there is no more land at all; so I shall proceed to tell you of the other provinces on the way to the Great Kaan. Let us, then, return to that province of which I spoke before, called Campichu.
[Note 1.]—The readings differ as to the length of the journey. In Pauthier’s text we seem to have first a journey of forty days from near Karakorúm to the Plain of Bargu, and then a journey of forty days more across the plain to the Northern Ocean. The G. T. seems to present only one journey of forty days (Ramusio, of sixty days), but leaves the interval from Karakorúm undefined. I have followed the former, though with some doubt.
[Note 2.]—This paragraph from Ramusio replaces the following in Pauthier’s text: “In the summer they got abundance of game, both beasts and birds, but in winter, there is none to be had because of the great cold.”
Marco is here dealing, I apprehend, with hearsay geography, and, as is common in like cases, there is great compression of circumstances and characteristics, analogous to the like compression of little-known regions in mediæval maps.
The name Bargu appears to be the same with that often mentioned in Mongol history as Barguchin Tugrum or Barguti, and which Rashiduddin calls the northern limit of the inhabited earth. This commenced about Lake Baikal, where the name still survives in that of a river (Barguzin) falling into the Lake on the east side, and of a town on its banks (Barguzinsk). Indeed, according to Rashid himself, Bargu was the name of one of the tribes occupying the plain; and a quotation from Father Hyacinth would seem to show that the country is still called Barakhu.
[The Archimandrite Palladius (Elucidations, 16–17) writes:—“In the Mongol text of Chingis Khan’s biography, this country is called Barhu and Barhuchin; it is to be supposed, according to Colonel Yule’s identification of this name with the modern Barguzin, that this country was near Lake Baikal. The fact that Merkits were in Bargu is confirmed by the following statement in Chingis Khan’s biography: ‘When Chingis Khan defeated his enemies, the Merkits, they fled to Barhuchin tokum.’ Tokum signifies ‘a hollow, a low place,’ according to the Chinese translation of the above-mentioned biography, made in 1381; thus Barhuchin tokum undoubtedly corresponds to M. Polo’s Plain of Bargu. As to M. Polo’s statement that the inhabitants of Bargu were Merkits, it cannot be accepted unconditionally. The Merkits were not indigenous to the country near Baikal, but belonged originally,—according to a division set forth in the Mongol text of the Yuan ch’ao pi shi,—to the category of tribes living in yurts, i.e. nomad tribes, or tribes of the desert. Meanwhile we find in the same biography of Chingis Khan, mention of a people called Barhun, which belonged to the category of tribes living in the forests; and we have therefore reason to suppose that the Barhuns were the aborigines of Barhu. After the time of Chingis Khan, this ethnographic name disappears from Chinese history; it appears again in the middle of the 16th century. The author of the Yyu (1543–1544), in enumerating the tribes inhabiting Mongolia and the adjacent countries, mentions the Barhu, as a strong tribe, able to supply up to several tens of thousands (?) of warriors, armed with steel swords; but the country inhabited by them is not indicated. The Mongols, it is added, call them Black Ta-tze (Khara Mongols, i.e. ‘Lower Mongols’).
“At the close of the 17th century, the Barhus are found inhabiting the western slopes of the interior Hing’an, as well as between Lake Kulon and River Khalkha, and dependent on a prince of eastern Khalkhas, Doro beile. (Manchu title.)
“At the time of Galdan Khan’s invasion, a part of them fled to Siberia with the eastern Khalkhas, but afterwards they returned. [Mung ku yew mu ki and Lung sha ki lio.] After their rebellion in 1696, quelled by a Manchu General, they were included with other petty tribes (regarding which few researches have been made) in the category butkha, or hunters, and received a military organisation. They are divided into Old and New Barhu, according to the time when they were brought under Manchu rule. The Barhus belong to the Mongolian, not to the Tungusian race; they are sometimes considered even to have been in relationship with the Khalkhas. (He lung kiang wai ki and Lung sha ki lio.)
“This is all the substantial information we possess on the Barhu. Is there an affinity to be found between the modern Barhus and the Barhuns of Chingis Khan’s biography?—and is it to be supposed, that in the course of time, they spread from Lake Baikal to the Hing’an range? Or is it more correct to consider them a branch of the Mongol race indigenous to the Hing’an Mountains, and which received the general archaic name of Bargu, which might have pointed out the physical character of the country they inhabited [Kin Shi], just as we find in history the Urianhai of Altai and the Urianhai of Western Manchuria? It is difficult to solve this question for want of historical data.”—H. C.]
Mescript, or Mecri, as in G. T. The Merkit, a great tribe to the south-east of the Baikal, were also called Mekrit, and sometimes Megrin. The Mekrit are spoken of also by Carpini and Rubruquis. D’Avezac thinks that the Kerait, and not the Merkit, are intended by all three travellers. As regards Polo, I see no reason for this view. The name he uses is Mekrit, and the position which he assigns to them agrees fairly with that assigned on good authority to the Merkit or Mekrit. Only, as in other cases, where he is rehearsing hearsay information, it does not follow that the identification of the name involves the correctness of all the circumstances that he connects with that name. We saw in [ch. xxx.] that under Pashai he seemed to lump circumstances belonging to various parts of the region from Badakhshan to the Indus; so here under Mekrit he embraces characteristics belonging to tribes extending far beyond the Mekrit, and which in fact are appropriate to the Tunguses. Rashiduddin seems to describe the latter under the name of Uriangkut of the Woods, a people dwelling beyond the frontier of Barguchin, and in connection with whom he speaks of their Reindeer obscurely, as well as of their tents of birch bark, and their hunting on snow-shoes.
The mention of the Reindeer by Polo in this passage is one of the interesting points which Pauthier’s text omits. Marsden objects to the statement that the stags are ridden upon, and from this motive mis-renders “li qual’anche cavalcano,” as, “which they make use of for the purpose of travelling.” Yet he might have found in Witsen that the Reindeer are ridden by various Siberian Tribes, but especially by the Tunguses. Erman is very full on the reindeer-riding of the latter people, having himself travelled far in that way in going to Okhotsk, and gives a very detailed description of the saddle, etc., employed. The reindeer of the Tunguses are stated by the same traveller to be much larger and finer animals than those of Lapland. They are also used for pack-carriage and draught. Old Richard Eden says that the “olde wryters” relate that “certayne Scythians doe ryde on Hartes.” I have not traced to what he refers, but if the statement be in any ancient author it is very remarkable. Some old editions of Olaus Magnus have curious cuts of Laplanders and others riding on reindeer, but I find nothing in the text appropriate. We hear from travellers of the Lapland deer being occasionally mounted, but only it would seem in sport, not as a practice. (Erdmann, 189, 191; D’Ohsson, I. 103; D’Avezac, 534 seqq.; J. As. sér. II. tom. xi.; sér. IV. tom. xvii. 107; N. et E. XIII. i. 274–276; Witsen, II. 670, 671, 680; Erman, II. 321, 374, 429, 449 seqq., and original German, II. 347 seqq.; Notes on Russia, Hac. Soc. II. 224; J. A. S. B. XXIX. 379.)
The numerous lakes and marshes swarming with water-fowl are very characteristic of the country between Yakutsk and the Kolyma. It is evident that Marco had his information from an eye-witness, though the whole picture is compressed. Wrangell, speaking of Nijni Kolyma, says: “It is at the moulting season that the great bird-hunts take place. The sportsmen surround the nests, and slip their dogs, which drive the birds to the water, on which they are easily knocked over with a gun or arrow, or even with a stick.... This chase is divided into several periods. They begin with the ducks, which moult first; then come the geese; then the swans.... In each case the people take care to choose the time when the birds have lost their feathers.” The whole calendar with the Yakuts and Russian settlers on the Kolyma is a succession of fishing and hunting seasons which the same author details. (I. 149, 150; 119–121.)
[Note 3.]—What little is said of the Barguerlac points to some bird of the genus Pterocles, or Sand Grouse (to which belong the so-called Rock Pigeons of India), or to the allied Tetrao paradoxus of Pallas, now known as Syrrhaptes Pallasii. Indeed, we find in Zenker’s Dictionary that Boghurtláḳ (or Baghírtláḳ, as it is in Pavet de Courteille’s) in Oriental Turkish is the Kata, i.e. I presume, the Pterocles alchata of Linnæus, or Large Pin-tailed Sand Grouse. Mr. Gould, to whom I referred the point, is clear that the Syrrhaptes is Marco’s bird, and I believe there can be no question of it.
[Passing through Ch’ang-k’ou, Mr. Rockhill found the people praying for rain. “The people told me,” he says, in his Journey (p. 9), “that they knew long ago the year would be disastrous, for the sand grouse had been more numerous of late than for years, and the saying goes Sha-ch’i kuo, mai lao-po, ‘when the sand grouse fly by, wives will be for sale.’”—H. C.]
The chief difficulty in identification with the Syrrhaptes or any known bird, would be “the feet like a parrot’s.” The feet of the Syrrhaptes are not indeed like a parrot’s, though its awkward, slow, and waddling gait on the ground, may have suggested the comparison; and though it has very odd and anomalous feet, a circumstance which the Chinese indicate in another way by calling the bird (according to Huc) Lung Kio, or “Dragon-foot.” [Mr. Rockhill (Journey) writes in a note (p. 9): “I, for my part, never heard any other name than sha-ch’i, ‘sand-fowl,’ given them. This name is used, however, for a variety of birds, among others the partridge.”—H. C.] The hind-toe is absent, the toes are unseparated, recognisable only by the broad flat nails, and fitted below with a callous couch, whilst the whole foot is covered with short dense feathers like hair, and is more like a quadruped’s paw than a bird’s foot.
The home of the Syrrhaptes is in the Altai, the Kirghiz Steppes, and the country round Lake Baikal, though it also visits the North of China in great flights. “On plains of grass and sandy deserts,” says Gould (Birds of Great Britain, Part IV.), “at one season covered with snow, and at another sun-burnt and parched by drought, it finds a congenial home; in these inhospitable and little-known regions it breeds, and when necessity compels it to do so, wings its way ... over incredible distances to obtain water or food.” Huc says, speaking of the bird on the northern frontier of China: “They generally arrive in great flights from the north, especially when much snow has fallen, flying with astonishing rapidity, so that the movement of their wings produces a noise like hail.” It is said to be very delicate eating. The bird owes its place in Gould’s Birds of Great Britain to the fact—strongly illustrative of its being moult volant, as Polo says it is—that it appeared in England in 1859, and since then, at least up to 1863, continued to arrive annually in pairs or companies in nearly all parts of our island, from Penzance to Caithness. And Gould states that it was breeding in the Danish islands. A full account by Mr. A. Newton of this remarkable immigration is contained in the Ibis for April, 1864, and many details in Stevenson’s Birds of Norfolk, I. 376 seqq. There are plates of Syrrhaptes in Radde’s Reisen im Süden von Ost-Sibirien, Bd. II.; in vol. v. of Temminck, Planches Coloriées, Pl. 95; in Gould, as above; in Gray, Genera of Birds, vol. iii. p. 517 (life size); and in the Ibis for April, 1860. From the last our cut is taken.
[See A. David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 389, on Syrrhaptes Pallasii or Syrrhaptes Paradoxus.—H. C.]
Syrrhaptes Pallasii.
[Note 4.]—Gerfalcons (Shonḳár) were objects of high estimation in the Middle Ages, and were frequent presents to and from royal personages. Thus among the presents sent with an embassy from King James II. of Aragon to the Sultan of Egypt, in 1314, we find three white gerfalcons. They were sent in homage to Chinghiz and to Kúblái, by the Kirghiz, but I cannot identify the mountains where they or the Peregrines were found. The Peregrine falcon was in Europe sometimes termed Faucon Tartare. (See Ménage s.v. Sahin.) The Peregrine of Northern Japan, and probably therefore that of Siberia, is identical with that of Europe. Witsen speaks of an island in the Sea of Tartary, from which falcons were got, apparently referring to a Chinese map as his authority; but I know nothing more of it. (Capmany, IV. 64–65; Ibis, 1862, p. 314; Witsen, II. 656.)
[On the Falco peregrinus, Lin., and other Falcons, see Ed. Blanc’s paper mentioned on p. 162. The Falco Saker is to be found all over Central Asia; it is called by the Pekingese Hwang-yng (yellow falcon). (David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 31–32.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER LVII.
Of the Kingdom of Erguiul, and Province of Sinju.
On leaving Campichu, then, you travel five days across a tract in which many spirits are heard speaking in the night season; and at the end of those five marches, towards the east, you come to a kingdom called Erguiul, belonging to the Great Kaan. It is one of the several kingdoms which make up the great Province of Tangut. The people consist of Nestorian Christians, Idolaters, and worshippers of Mahommet.[{1}]
There are plenty of cities in this kingdom, but the capital is Erguiul. You can travel in a south-easterly direction from this place into the province of Cathay. Should you follow that road to the south-east, you come to a city called Sinju, belonging also to Tangut, and subject to the Great Kaan, which has under it many towns and villages.[{2}] The population is composed of Idolaters, and worshippers of Mahommet, but there are some Christians also. There are wild cattle in that country [almost] as big as elephants, splendid creatures, covered everywhere but on the back with shaggy hair a good four palms long. They are partly black, partly white, and really wonderfully fine creatures [and the hair or wool is extremely fine and white, finer and whiter than silk. Messer Marco brought some to Venice as a great curiosity, and so it was reckoned by those who saw it]. There are also plenty of them tame, which have been caught young. [They also cross these with the common cow, and the cattle from this cross are wonderful beasts, and better for work than other animals.] These the people use commonly for burden and general work, and in the plough as well; and at the latter they will do full twice as much work as any other cattle, being such very strong beasts.[{3}]
In this country too is found the best musk in the world; and I will tell you how ’tis produced. There exists in that region a kind of wild animal like a gazelle. It has feet and tail like the gazelle’s, and stag’s hair of a very coarse kind, but no horns. It has four tusks, two below and two above, about three inches long, and slender in form, one pair growing upwards, and the other downwards. It is a very pretty creature. The musk is found in this way. When the creature has been taken, they find at the navel between the flesh and the skin something like an impostume full of blood, which they cut out and remove with all the skin attached to it. And the blood inside this impostume is the musk that produces that powerful perfume. There is an immense number of these beasts in the country we are speaking of. [The flesh is very good to eat. Messer Marco brought the dried head and feet of one of these animals to Venice with him.[{4}]]
The people are traders and artizans, and also grow abundance of corn. The province has an extent of 26 days’ journey. Pheasants are found there twice as big as ours, indeed nearly as big as a peacock, and having tails of 7 to 10 palms in length; and besides them other pheasants in aspect like our own, and birds of many other kinds, and of beautiful variegated plumage.[{5}] The people, who are Idolaters, are fat folks with little noses and black hair, and no beard, except a few hairs on the upper lip. The women too have very smooth and white skins, and in every respect are pretty creatures. The men are very sensual, and marry many wives, which is not forbidden by their religion. No matter how base a woman’s descent may be, if she have beauty she may find a husband among the greatest men in the land, the man paying the girl’s father and mother a great sum of money, according to the bargain that may be made.
[Note 1.]—No approximation to the name of Erguiul in an appropriate position has yet been elicited from Chinese or other Oriental sources. We cannot go widely astray as to its position, five days east of Kanchau. Klaproth identifies it with Liangchau-fu; Pauthier with the neighbouring city of Yungchang, on the ground that the latter was, in the time of Kúblái, the head of one of the Lús, or Circles, of Kansuh or Tangut, which he has shown some reason for believing to be the “kingdoms” of Marco.
It is probable, however, that the town called by Polo Erguiul lay north of both the cities named, and more in line with the position assigned below to Egrigaya. (See [note 1, ch. lviii.])
I may notice that the structure of the name Ergui-ul or Ergiu-ul, has a look of analogy to that of Tang-keu-ul, named in the next note.
[“Erguiul is Erichew of the Mongol text of the Yuen ch’ao pi shi, Si-liang in the Chinese history, the modern Liang chow fu. Klaproth, on the authority of Rashid-eddin, has already identified this name with that of Si-liang.” (Palladius, p. 18.) M. Bonin left Ning-h’ia at the end of July, 1899, and he crossed the desert to Liangchau in fifteen days from east to west; he is the first traveller who took this route: Prjevalsky went westward, passing by the residence of the Prince of Alashan, and Obrutchev followed the route south of Bonin’s.—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—No doubt Marsden is right in identifying this with Sining-Chau, now Sining-fu, the Chinese city nearest to Tibet and the Kokonor frontier. Grueber and Dorville, who passed it on their way to Lhasa, in 1661, call it urbs ingens. Sining was visited also by Huc and Gabet, who are unsatisfactory, as usually on geographical matters. They also call it “an immense town,” but thinly peopled, its commerce having been in part transferred to Tang-keu-ul, a small town closer to the frontier.
[Sining belonged to the country called Hwang chung; in 1198, under the Sung Dynasty, it was subjugated by the Chinese, and was named Si-ning chau; at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (from 1368), it was named Si-ning wei, and since 1726 Si-ning fu. (Cf. Gueluy, Chine, p. 62.) From Liangchau, M. Bonin went to Sining through the Lao kou kau pass and the Ta-Tung ho. Obrutchev and Grum Grijmaïlo took the usual route from Kanchau to Sining. After the murder of Dutreuil de Rhins at Tung bu mdo, his companion, Grenard, arrived at Sining, and left it on the 29th July, 1894. Dr. Sven Hedin gives in his book his own drawing of a gate of Sining-fu, where he arrived on the 25th November, 1896.—H. C.]
Sining is called by the Tibetans Ziling or Jiling, by the Mongols Seling Khoto. A shawl wool texture, apparently made in this quarter, is imported into Kashmir and Ladak, under the name of S’ling. I have supposed Sining to be also the Zilm of which Mr. Shaw heard at Yarkand, and am answerable for a note to that effect on p. 38 of his High Tartary. But Mr. Shaw, on his return to Europe, gave some rather strong reasons against this. (See Proc. R. G. S. XVI. 245; Kircher, pp. 64, 66; Della Penna, 27; Davies’s Report, App. p. ccxxix.; Vigne, II. 110, 129.) [At present Sining is called by the Tibetans Seling K’ar or Kuar, and by the Mongols, Seling K’utun, K’ar and K’utun meaning “fortified city.” (Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, 49, note.)—H. C.]
[Mr. Rockhill (Diary of a Journey, 65) writes: “There must be some Scotch blood in the Hsi-ningites, for I find they are very fond of oatmeal and of cracked wheat. The first is called yen-mei ch’en, and is eaten boiled with the water in which mutton has been cooked, or with neat’s-foot oil (yang-t’i yu). The cracked wheat (mei-tzŭ fan) is eaten prepared in the same way, and is a very good dish.”—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—The Dong, or Wild Yak, has till late years only been known by vague rumour. It has always been famed in native reports for its great fierceness. The Haft Iḳlím says that “it kills with its horns, by its kicks, by treading under foot, and by tearing with its teeth,” whilst the Emperor Humáyún himself told Sidi ’Ali, the Turkish admiral, that when it had knocked a man down it skinned him from head to heels by licking him with its tongue! Dr. Campbell states, in the Journal of the As. Soc. of Bengal, that it was said to be four times the size of the domestic Yak. The horns are alleged to be sometimes three feet long, and of immense girth; they are handed round full of strong drink at the festivals of Tibetan grandees, as the Urus horns were in Germany, according to Cæsar.
A note, with which I have been favoured by Dr. Campbell (long the respected Superintendent of British Sikkim) says: “Captain Smith, of the Bengal Army, who had travelled in Western Tibet, told me that he had shot many wild Yaks in the neighbourhood of the Mansarawar Lake, and that he measured a bull which was 18 hands high, i.e. 6 feet. All that he saw were black all over. He also spoke to the fierceness of the animal. He was once charged by a bull that he had wounded, and narrowly escaped being killed. Perhaps my statement (above referred to) in regard to the relative size of the Wild and Tame Yak, may require modification if applied to all the countries in which the Yak is found. At all events, the finest specimen of the tame Yak I ever saw, was not in Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet, or Bootan, but in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris; and that one, a male, was brought from Shanghai. The best drawing of a Yak I know is that in Turner’s Tibet.”
[Lieutenant Samuel Turner gave a very good description of the Yak of Tartary, which he calls Soora-Goy, or the Bushy-tailed Bull of Tibet. (Asiat. Researches, No. XXIII, pp. 351–353, with a plate.) He says with regard to the colour: “There is a great variety of colours amongst them, but black or white are the most prevalent. It is not uncommon to see the long hair upon the ridge of the back, the tail, tuft upon the chest, and the legs below the knee white, when all the rest of the animal is jet black.” A good drawing of “an enormous” Yak is to be found on p. 183 of Captain Wellby’s Unknown Tibet. (See also Captain Deasy’s work on Tibet, p. 363.) Prince Henri d’Orléans brought home a fine specimen, which he shot during his journey with Bonvalot; it is now exhibited in the galleries of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. Some Yaks were brought to Paris on the 1st April, 1854, and the celebrated artist, Mme. Rosa Bonheur, made sketches after them. (See Jour. Soc. Acclimatation, June, 1900, 39–40.)—H. C.]
Captain Prjevalsky, in his recent journey (1872–1873), shot twenty wild Yaks south of the Koko Nor. He specifies one as 11 feet in length exclusive of the tail, which was 3 feet more; the height 6 feet. He speaks of the Yak as less formidable than it looks, from apathy and stupidity, but very hard to kill; one having taken eighteen bullets before it succumbed.
[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 151, note) writes: “The average load carried by a Yak is about 250 lbs. The wild Yak bull is an enormous animal, and the people of Turkestan and North Tibet credit him with extraordinary strength. Mirza Haidar, in the Tarikhi Rashidi, says of the wild Yak or kutás: ‘This is a very wild and ferocious beast. In whatever manner it attacks one it proves fatal. Whether it strikes with its horns, or kicks, or overthrows its victim. If it has no opportunity of doing any of these things, it tosses its enemy with its tongue twenty gaz into the air, and he is dead before reaching the ground. One male kutás is a load for twelve horses. One man cannot possibly raise a shoulder of the animal.’”—Captain Deasy (In Tibet, 363) says: “In a few places on lofty ground in Tibet we found Yaks in herds numbering from ten to thirty, and sometimes more. Most of the animals are black, brown specimens being very rare. Their roving herds move with great agility over the steep and stony ground, apparently enjoying the snow and frost and wind, which seldom fail.... Yaks are capable of offering formidable resistance to the sportsman....”—H. C.]
The tame Yaks are never, I imagine, “caught young,” as Marco says; it is a domesticated breed, though possibly, as with buffaloes in Bengal, the breed may occasionally be refreshed by a cross of wild blood. They are employed for riding, as beasts of burden, and in the plough. [Lieutenant S. Turner, l.c., says, on the other hand: “They are never employed in agriculture, but are extremely useful as beasts of burthen.”—H. C.] In the higher parts of our Himalayan provinces, and in Tibet, the Yak itself is most in use; but in the less elevated tracts several breeds crossed with the common Indian cattle are more used. They have a variety of names according to their precise origin. The inferior Yaks used in the plough are ugly enough, and “have more the appearance of large shaggy bears than of oxen,” but the Yak used for riding, says Hoffmeister, “is an infinitely handsomer animal. It has a stately hump, a rich silky hanging tail nearly reaching the ground, twisted horns, a noble bearing, and an erect head.” Cunningham, too, says that the Dso, one of the mixed breeds, is “a very handsome animal, with long shaggy hair, generally black and white.” Many of the various tame breeds appear to have the tail and back white, and also the fringe under the body, but black and red are the prevailing colours. Some of the crossbred cows are excellent milkers, better than either parent stock.
Notice in this passage the additional and interesting particulars given by Ramusio, e.g. the use of the mixed breeds. “Finer than silk,” is an exaggeration, or say an hyberbole, as is the following expression, “As big as elephants,” even with Ramusio’s apologetic quasi. Cæsar says the Hercynian Urus was magnitudine paullo infra elephantos.
The tame Yak is used across the breadth of Mongolia. Rubruquis saw them at Karakorum, and describes them well. Mr. Ney Elias tells me he found Yaks common everywhere along his route in Mongolia, between the Tui river (long. circa 101°) and the upper valleys of the Kobdo near the Siberian frontier. At Uliasut’ai they were used occasionally by Chinese settlers for drawing carts, but he never saw them used for loads or for riding, as in Tibet. He has also seen Yaks in the neighbourhood of Kwei-hwa-ch’eng. (Tenduc, see [ch. lix. note 1.]) This may be taken as the eastern limit of the employment of the Yak; the western limit is in the highlands of Khokand.
These animals had been noticed by Cosmas [who calls them agriobous] in the 6th century, and by Ælian in the 3rd. The latter speaks of them as black cattle with white tails, from which fly-flappers were made for Indian kings. And the great Kalidása thus sang of the Yak, according to a learned (if somewhat rugged) version ascribed to Dr. Mill. The poet personifies the Himálaya:—
“For Him the large Yaks in his cold plains that bide
Whisk here and there, playful, their tails’ bushy pride,
And evermore flapping those fans of long hair
Which borrowed moonbeams have made splendid and fair,
Proclaim at each stroke (what our flapping men sing)
His title of Honour, ‘The Dread Mountain King.’”
Who can forget Père Huc’s inimitable picture of the hairy Yaks of their caravan, after passing a river in the depth of winter, “walking with their legs wide apart, and bearing an enormous load of stalactites, which hung beneath their bellies quite to the ground. The monstrous beasts looked exactly as if they were preserved in sugar-candy.” Or that other, even more striking, of a great troop of wild Yaks, caught in the upper waters of the Kin-sha Kiang, as they swam, in the moment of congelation, and thus preserved throughout the winter, gigantic “flies in amber.”
(N. et E. XIV. 478; J. As. IX. 199; J. A. S. B. IX. 566, XXIV. 235; Shaw, p. 91; Ladak, p. 210; Geog. Magazine, April, 1874; Hoffmeister’s Travels, p. 441; Rubr. 288; Æl. de Nat. An. XV. 14; J. A. S. B. I. 342; Mrs. Sinnett’s Huc, pp. 228, 235.)
[Note 4.]—Ramusio adds that the hunters seek the animal at New Moon, at which time the musk is secreted.
The description is good except as to the four tusks, for the musk deer has canine teeth only in the upper jaw, slender and prominent as he describes them. The flesh of the animal is eaten by the Chinese, and in Siberia by both Tartars and Russians, but that of the males has a strong musk flavour.
The “immense number” of these animals that existed in the Himalayan countries may be conceived from Tavernier’s statement, that on one visit to Patna, then the great Indian mart for this article, he purchased 7673 pods of musk. These presumably came by way of Nepal; but musk pods of the highest class were also imported from Khotan viâ Yarkand and Leh, and the lowest price such a pod fetched at Yarkand was 250 tankas, or upwards of 4l. This import has long been extinct, and indeed the trade in the article, except towards China, has altogether greatly declined, probably (says Mr. Hodgson) because its repute as a medicine is becoming fast exploded. In Sicily it is still so used, but apparently only as a sort of decent medical viaticum, for when it is said “the Doctors have given him musk,” it is as much as to say that they have given up the patient.
[“Here Marco Polo speaks of musk; musk and rhubarb (which he mentions before, Sukchur, [ch. xliii.]) are the most renowned and valuable of the products of the province of Kansu, which comparatively produces very little; the industry in both these articles is at present in the hands of the Tanguts of that province [Su chow chi].” (Palladius, p. 18.)
Writing under date 15th February, 1892, from Lusar (coming from Sining), Mr. Rockhill says: “The musk trade here is increasing, Cantonese and Ssŭ-ch’uanese traders now come here to buy it, paying for good musk four times its weight in silver (ssŭ huan, as they say). The best test of its purity is an examination of the colour. The Tibetans adulterate it by mixing tsamba and blood with it. The best time to buy it is from the seventh to the ninth moon (latter part of August to middle of November).” Mr. Rockhill adds in a note: “Mongols call musk owo; Tibetans call it latsé. The best musk they say is ‘white musk,’ tsahan owo in Mongol, in Tibetan latsé karpo. I do not know whether white refers to the colour of the musk itself or to that of the hair on the skin covering the musk pouch.” (Diary of a Journey, p. 71.)—H. C.]
Three species of the Moschus are found in the Mountains of Tibet, and M. Chrysogaster, which Mr. Hodgson calls “the loveliest,” and which chiefly supplies the highly-prized pod called Kághazi, or “Thin-as-paper,” is almost exclusively confined to the Chinese frontier. Like the Yak, the Moschus is mentioned by Cosmas (circa A.D. 545), and musk appears in a Greek prescription by Aëtius of Amida, a physician practising at Constantinople about the same date.
(Martini, p. 39; Tav., Des Indes, Bk. II. ch. xxiv.; J. A. S. B. XI. 285; Davies’s Rep. App. p. ccxxxvii.; Dr. Flückiger in Schweiz. Wochenschr. für Pharmacie, 1867; Heyd, Commerce du Levant, II. 636–640.)
Reeves’s Pheasant.
[Note 5.]—The China pheasant answering best to the indications in the text, appears to be Reeves’s Pheasant. Mr. Gould has identified this bird with Marco’s in his magnificent Birds of Asia, and has been kind enough to show me a specimen which, with the body, measured 6 feet 8 inches. The tail feathers alone, however, are said to reach to 6 and 7 feet, so that Marco’s ten palms was scarcely an exaggeration. These tail-feathers are often seen on the Chinese stage in the cap of the hero of the drama, and also decorate the hats of certain civil functionaries.
Size is the point in which the bird fails to meet Marco’s description. In that respect the latter would rather apply to the Crossoptilon auritum, which is nearly as big as a turkey, or to the glorious Múnál (Lophophorus impeyanus), but then that has no length of tail. The latter seems to be the bird described by Ælian: “Magnificent cocks which have the crest variegated and ornate like a crown of flowers, and the tail feathers not curved like a cock’s, but broad and carried in a train like a peacock’s; the feathers are partly golden, and partly azure or emerald-coloured.” (Wood’s Birds, 610, from which I have copied the illustration; Williams, M. K. I. 261; Æl. De Nat. An. XVI. 2.) A species of Crossoptilon has recently been found by Captain Prjevalsky in Alashan, the Egrigaia (as I believe) of next chapter, and one also by Abbé Armand David at the Koko Nor.
[See on the Phasianidæ family in Central and Western Asia, David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 401–421; the Phasianus Reevesii or veneratus is called by the Chinese of Tung-lin, near Peking, Djeu-ky (hen-arrow); the Crossoptilon auritum is named Ma-ky.—H. C.]
CHAPTER LVIII.
Of the Kingdom of Egrigaia.
Starting again from Erguiul you ride eastward for eight days, and then come to a province called Egrigaia, containing numerous cities and villages, and belonging to Tangut.[{1}] The capital city is called Calachan.[{2}] The people are chiefly Idolaters, but there are fine churches belonging to the Nestorian Christians. They are all subjects of the Great Kaan. They make in this city great quantities of camlets of camel’s wool, the finest in the world; and some of the camlets that they make are white, for they have white camels, and these are the best of all. Merchants purchase these stuffs here, and carry them over the world for sale.[{3}]
We shall now proceed eastward from this place and enter the territory that was formerly Prester John’s.
[Note 1.]—Chinghiz invaded Tangut in all five times, viz. in 1205, 1207, 1209 (or according to Erdmann, 1210–1211), 1218, and 1226–1227, on which last expedition he died.
A. In the third invasion, according to D’Ohsson’s Chinese guide (Father Hyacinth), he took the town of Uiraca, and the fortress of Imen, and laid siege to the capital, then called Chung-sing or Chung-hing, now Ning-hsia.
Rashid, in a short notice of this campaign, calls the first city Erica, Erlaca, or, as Erdmann has it, Artacki. In De Mailla it is Ulahai.
B. On the last invasion (1226), D’Ohsson’s Chinese authority says that Chinghiz took Kanchau and Suhchau, Cholo and Khola in the province of Liangcheu, and then proceeded to the Yellow River, and invested Lingchau, south of Ning-hsia.
Erdmann, following his reading of Rashiduddin, says Chinghiz took the cities of Tangut, called Arucki, Kachu, Sichu, and Kamichu, and besieged Deresgai (D’Ohsson, Derssekai), whilst Shidergu, the King of Tangut, betook himself to his capital Artackin.
D’Ohsson, also professing to follow Rashid, calls this “his capital Irghai, which the Mongols call Ircaya.” Klaproth, illustrating Polo, reads “Eyircai, which the Mongols call Eyircayá.”
Pétis de la Croix, relating the same campaign and professing to follow Fadlallah, i.e. Rashiduddin, says the king “retired to his fortress of Arbaca.”
C. Sanang Setzen several times mentions a city called Irghai, apparently in Tangut; but all we can gather as to his position is that it seems to have lain east of Kanchau.
We perceive that the Arbaca of P. de la Croix, the Eyircai of Klaproth, the Uiraca of D’Ohsson, the Artacki or Artackin of Erdmann, are all various readings or forms of the same name, and are the same with the Chinese form Ulahai of De Mailla, and most probably the place is the Egrigaia of Polo.
We see also that Erdmann mentions another place Aruki (ارقى?) in connection with Kanchau and Suhchau. This is, I suspect, the Erguiul of Polo, and perhaps the Irghai of Sanang Setzen.
Rashiduddin seems wrong in calling Ircayá the capital of the king, a circumstance which leads Klaproth to identify it with Ning-hsia. Pauthier, identifying Ulahai with Egrigaya, shows that the former was one of the circles of Tangut, but not that of Ning-hsia. Its position, he says, is uncertain. Klaproth, however, inserts it in his map of Asia, in the era of Kúblái (Tabl. Hist. pl. 22), as Ulakhai to the north of Ning-hsia, near the great bend eastward of the Hwang-Ho. Though it may have extended in this direction, it is probable, from the name referred to in next note, that Egrigaia or Ulahai is represented by the modern principality of Alashan, visited by Prjevalsky in 1871 and 1872.
[New travels and researches enable me to say that there can be no doubt that Egrigaia = Ning-hsia. Palladius (l.c. 18) says: “Egrigaia is Erigaia of the Mongol text. Klaproth was correct in his supposition that it is modern Ning-h’ia. Even now the Eleuths of Alashan call Ning-h’ia, Yargai. In M. Polo’s time this department was famous for the cultivation of the Safflower (carthamus tinctorius). [Siu t’ung kien, A.D. 1292.]” Mr. Rockhill (cf. his Diary of a Journey) writes to me that Ning-hsia is still called Irge Khotun by Mongols at the present day. M. Bonin (J. As., 1900. I. 585) mentions the same fact.
Palladius (19) adds: “Erigaia is not to be confounded with Urahai, often mentioned in the history of Chingis Khan’s wars with the Tangut kingdom. Urahai was a fortress in a pass of the same name in the Alashan Mountains. Chingis Khan spent five months there (an. 1208), during which he invaded and plundered the country in the neighbourhood. [Si hia shu shi.] The Alashan Mountains form a semicircle 500 li in extent, and have over forty narrow passes leading to the department of Ning-hia; the broadest and most practicable of these is now called Ch’i-mu-K’ow; it is not more than 80 feet broad. [Ning hia fu chi.] It may be that the Urahai fortress existed near this pass.”
“From Liang-chow fu, M. Polo follows a special route, leaving the modern postal route on his right; the road he took has, since the time of the Emperor K’ang-hi, been called the courier’s route.” (Palladius, 18.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Calachan, the chief town of Egrigaia, is mentioned, according to Klaproth, by Rashiduddin, among the cities of Tangut, as Kalaján. The name and approximate position suggest, as just noticed, identity with Alashan, the modern capital of which, called by Prjevalsky Dyn-yuan-yin, stands some distance west of the Hwang-Ho, in about lat. 39°. Polo gives no data for the interval between this and his next stage.
[The Dyn-yuan-yin of Prjevalsky is the camp of Ting-yuan-yng or Fu-ma-fu of M. Bonin, the residence of the Si-wang (western prince), of Alashan, an abbreviation of Alade-shan (shan, mountain in Chinese), Alade = Eleuth or Œlöt; the sister of this prince married a son of Prince Tuan, the chief of the Boxers. (La Géographie, 1901. I. 118.) Palladius (l.c. 19) says: “Under the name of Calachan, Polo probably means the summer residence of the Tangut kings, which was 60 li from Ning-hia, at the foot of the Alashan Mountains. It was built by the famous Tangut king Yuen-hao, on a large scale, in the shape of a castle, in which were high terraces and magnificent buildings. Traces of these buildings are visible to this day. There are often found coloured tiles and iron nails 1 foot, and even 2 feet long. The last Tangut kings made this place their permanent residence, and led there an indolent and sensual life. The Chinese name of this residence was Ho-lan shan Li-Kung. There is sufficient reason to suppose that this very residence is named (under the year 1226) in the Mongol text Alashai nuntuh; and in the chronicles of the Tangut Kingdom, Halahachar, otherwise Halachar, apparently in the Tangut language. Thus M. Polo’s Calachan can be identified with the Halachar of the Si hia shu shi, and can be taken to designate the Alashan residence of the Tangut kings.”—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—Among the Buraets and Chinese at Kiakhta snow-white camels, without albino character, are often seen, and probably in other parts of Mongolia. (See Erdmann, II. 261.) Philostratus tells us that the King of Taxila furnished white camels to Apollonius. I doubt if the present King of Taxila, whom Anglo-Indians call the Commissioner of Ráwal Pindi, could do the like.
Cammellotti appear to have been fine woollen textures, by no means what are now called camlets, nor were they necessarily of camel’s wool, for those of Angora goat’s wool were much valued. M. Douet d’Arcq calls it “a fine stuff of wool approaching to our Cashmere, and sometimes of silk.” Indeed, as Mr. Marsh points out, the word is Arabic, and has nothing to do with Camel in its origin; though it evidently came to be associated therewith. Khamlat is defined in F. Johnson’s Dict.: “Camelot, silk and camel’s hair; also all silk or velvet, especially pily and plushy,” and Khaml is “pile or plush.” Camelin was a different and inferior material. There was till recently a considerable import of different kinds of woollen goods from this part of China into Ladakh, Kashmir, and the northern Panjáb. [Leaving Ning-hsia, Mr. Rockhill writes (Diary, 1892, 44): “We passed on the road a cart with Jardine and Matheson’s flag, coming probably from Chung-Wei Hsien, where camel’s wool is sold in considerable quantities to foreigners. This trade has fallen off very much in the last three or four years on account of the Chinese middlemen rolling the wool in the dirt so as to add to its weight, and practising other tricks on buyers.”—H. C.] Among the names of these were Sling, Shirum, Gurun, and Khoza, said to be the names of the towns in China where the goods were made. We have supposed Sling to be Sining ([note 2, ch. lvii.]), but I can make nothing of the others. Cunningham also mentions “camlets of camel’s hair,” under the name of Suḳlát, among imports from the same quarter. The term Suḳlát is, however, applied in the Panjáb trade returns to broadcloth. Does not this point to the real nature of the siclatoun of the Middle Ages? It is, indeed, often spoken of as used for banners, which implies that it was not a heavy woollen:
“There was mony gonfanoun
Of gold, sendel, and siclatoun.”
(King Alisaundre, in Weber, I. 85.)
But it was also a material for ladies’ robes, for quilts, leggings, housings, pavilions. Franc. Michel does not decide what it was, only that it was generally red and wrought with gold. Dozy renders it “silk stuff brocaded with gold”; but this seems conjectural. Dr. Rock says it was a thin glossy silken stuff, often with a woof of gold thread, and seems to derive it from the Arabic ṣaḳl, “polishing” (a sword), which is improbable. Perhaps the name is connected with Ṣiḳiliyat, “Sicily.”
(Marsh on Wedgwood, and on Webster in N. Y. Nation, 1867; Douet D’Arcq, p. 355; Punjab Trade Rep., App. ccxix.–xx.; Ladak, 242; Fr.-Michel Rech. I. 221 seqq.; Dozy, Dict. des Vêtements, etc.; Dr. Rock’s Kens. Catal. xxxix.–xl.)
CHAPTER LIX.
Concerning the Province of Tenduc, and the Descendants of Prester John.
Tenduc is a province which lies towards the east, and contains numerous towns and villages; among which is the chief city, also called Tenduc. The king of the province is of the lineage of Prester John, George by name, and he holds the land under the Great Kaan; not that he holds anything like the whole of what Prester John possessed.[{1}] It is a custom, I may tell you, that these kings of the lineage of Prester John always obtain to wife either daughters of the Great Kaan or other princesses of his family.[{2}]
In this province is found the stone from which Azure is made. It is obtained from a kind of vein in the earth, and is of very fine quality.[{3}] There is also a great manufacture of fine camlets of different colours from camel’s hair. The people get their living by their cattle and tillage, as well as by trade and handicraft.
The rule of the province is in the hands of the Christians, as I have told you; but there are also plenty of Idolaters and worshippers of Mahommet. And there is also here a class of people called Argons, which is as much as to say in French Guasmul, or, in other words, sprung from two different races: to wit, of the race of the Idolaters of Tenduc and of that of the worshippers of Mahommet. They are handsomer men than the other natives of the country, and having more ability, they come to have authority; and they are also capital merchants.[{4}]
You must know that it was in this same capital city of Tenduc that Prester John had the seat of his government when he ruled over the Tartars, and his heirs still abide there; for, as I have told you, this King George is of his line, in fact, he is the sixth in descent from Prester John.
Here also is what we call the country of Gog and Magog; they, however, call it Ung and Mungul, after the names of two races of people that existed in that Province before the migration of the Tartars. Ung was the title of the people of the country, and Mungul a name sometimes applied to the Tartars.[{5}]
And when you have ridden seven days eastward through this province you get near the provinces of Cathay. You find throughout those seven days’ journey plenty of towns and villages, the inhabitants of which are Mahommetans, but with a mixture also of Idolaters and Nestorian Christians. They get their living by trade and manufactures; weaving those fine cloths of gold which are called Nasich and Naques, besides silk stuffs of many other kinds. For just as we have cloths of wool in our country, manufactured in a great variety of kinds, so in those regions they have stuffs of silk and gold in like variety.[{6}]
All this region is subject to the Great Kaan. There is a city you come to called Sindachu, where they carry on a great many crafts such as provide for the equipment of the Emperor’s troops. In a mountain of the province there is a very good silver mine, from which much silver is got: the place is called Ydifu. The country is well stocked with game, both beast and bird.[{7}]
Now we will quit that province and go three days’ journey forward.
[Note 1.]—Marco’s own errors led commentators much astray about Tanduc or Tenduc, till Klaproth put the matter in its true light.
Our traveller says that Tenduc had been the seat of Aung Khan’s sovereignty; he has already said that it had been the scene of his final defeat, and he tells us that it was still the residence of his descendants in their reduced state. To the last piece of information he can speak as a witness, and he is corroborated by other evidence; but the second statement we have seen to be almost certainly erroneous; about the first we cannot speak positively.
Klaproth pointed out the true position of Tenduc in the vicinity of the great northern bend of the Hwang-Ho, quoting Chinese authorities to show that Thianté or Thianté-Kiun was the name of a district or group of towns to the north of that bend, a name which he supposes to be the original of Polo’s Tenduc. The general position entirely agrees with Marco’s indications; it lies on his way eastward from Tangut towards Chagannor, and Shangtu (see ch. [lx.], [lxi.]), whilst in a later passage (Bk. II. ch. lxiv.), he speaks of the Caramoran or Hwang-Ho in its lower course, as “coming from the lands of Prester John.”
M. Pauthier finds severe fault with Klaproth’s identification of the name Tenduc with the Thianté of the Chinese, belonging to a city which had been destroyed 300 years before, whilst he himself will have that name to be a corruption of Tathung. The latter is still the name of a city and Fu of northern Shansi, but in Mongol time its circle of administration extended beyond the Chinese wall, and embraced territory on the left of the Hwang-Ho, being in fact the first Lu, or circle, entered on leaving Tangut, and therefore, Pauthier urges, the “Kingdom of Tanduc” of our text.
I find it hard to believe that Marco could get no nearer Tathung than in the form of Tanduc or Tenduc. The origin of the last may have been some Mongol name, not recovered. But it is at least conceivable that a name based on the old Thianté-Kiun might have been retained among the Tartars, from whom, and not from the Chinese, Polo took his nomenclature. Thianté had been, according to Pauthier’s own quotations, the military post of Tathung; Klaproth cites a Chinese author of the Mongol era, who describes the Hwang-Ho as passing through the territory of the ancient Chinese city of Thianté; and Pauthier’s own quotation from the Modern Imperial Geography seems to imply that a place in that territory was recently known as Fung-chau-Thianté-Kiun.
In the absence of preciser indications, it is reasonable to suppose that the Plain of Tenduc, with its numerous towns and villages, was the extensive and well-cultivated plain which stretches from the Hwang-Ho, past the city of Kuku-Khotan, or “Blue Town.” This tract abounds in the remains of cities attributed to the Mongol era. And it is not improbable that the city of Tenduc was Kuku-Khotan itself, now called by the Chinese Kwei-hwa Ch’eng, but which was known to them in the Middle Ages as Tsing-chau, and to which we find the Kin Emperor of Northern China sending an envoy in 1210 to demand tribute from Chinghiz. The city is still an important mart and a centre of Lamaitic Buddhism, being the residence of a Khutukhtu, or personage combining the characters of cardinal and voluntarily re-incarnate saint, as well as the site of five great convents and fifteen smaller ones. Gerbillon notes that Kuku Khotan had been a place of great trade and population during the Mongol Dynasty.
[The following evidence shows, I think, that we must look for the city of Tenduc to Tou Ch’eng or Toto Ch’eng, called Togto or Tokto by the Mongols. Mr. Rockhill (Diary, 18) passed through this place, and 5 li south of it, reached on the Yellow River, Ho-k’ou (in Chinese) or Dugus or Dugei (in Mongol). Gerbillon speaks of Toto in his sixth voyage in Tartary. (Du Halde, IV. 345.) Mr. Rockhill adds that he cannot but think that Yule overlooked the existence of Togto when he identified Kwei-hwa Ch’eng with Tenduc. Tou Ch’eng is two days’ march west of Kwei-hwa Ch’eng, “On the loess hill behind this place are the ruins of a large camp, Orch’eng, in all likelihood the site of the old town” (l.c. 18). M. Bonin (J. As. XV. 1900, 589) shares Mr. Rockhill’s opinion. From Kwei-hwa Ch’eng, M. Bonin went by the valley of the Hei Shui River to the Hwang Ho; at the junction of the two rivers stands the village of Ho-k’au (Ho-k’ou) south of the small town To Ch’eng, surmounted by the ruins of the old square Mongol stronghold of Tokto, the walls of which are still in a good state of preservation.—(La Géographie, I. 1901, p. 116.)
On the other hand, it is but fair to state that Palladius (21) says: “The name of Tenduc obviously corresponds to T’ien-te Kiun, a military post, the position of which Chinese geographers identify correctly with that of the modern Kuku-hoton (Ta tsing y t’ung chi, ch. on the Tumots of Kuku-hoton). The T’ien-te Kiun post existed under this name during the K’itan (Liao) and Kin Dynasties up to Khubilai’s time (1267); when under the name of Fung-chow it was left only a district town in the department of Ta-t’ung fu. The Kin kept in T’ien-te Kiun a military chief, Chao-t’ao-shi, whose duty it was to keep an eye on the neighbouring tribes, and to use, if needed, military force against them. The T’ien-te Kiun district was hardly greater in extent than the modern aïmak of Tumot, into which Kuku-hoton was included since the 16th century, i.e. 370 li from north to south, and 400 li from east to west; during the Kin it had a settled population, numbering 22,600 families.”
In a footnote, Palladius refers to the geographical parts of the Liao shi, Kin shi, and Yuen shi, and adds: “M. Polo’s commentators are wrong in suspecting an anachronism in his statement, or trying to find Tenduc elsewhere.”
We find in the North-China Herald (29th April, 1887, p. 474) the following note from the Chinese Times: “There are records that the position of this city [Kwei-hwa Ch’eng] was known to the builder of the Great Wall. From very remote times, it appears to have been a settlement of nomadic tribes. During the last 1000 years it has been alternately possessed by the Mongols and Chinese. About A.D. 1573, Emperor Wan-Li reclaimed it, enclosed a space within walls, and called it Kwei-hwa Ch’êng.”
Potanin left Peking on the 13th May, 1884, for Kuku-khoto (or Kwei-hwa-Ch’eng), passing over the triple chain of mountains dividing the Plain of Peking from that on which Kuku-khoto is situate. The southernmost of these three ridges bears the Chinese name of Wu-tai-shan, “the mountain of five sacrificial altars,” after the group of five peaks, the highest of which is 10,000 feet above the sea, a height not exceeded by any mountain in Northern China. At its southern foot lies a valley remarkable for its Buddhist monasteries and shrines, one of which, “Shing-tung-tze,” is entirely made of brass, whence its name.
“Kuku-Khoto is the depôt for the Mongolian trade with China. It contains two hundred tea-shops, five theatres, fifteen temples, and six Mongol monasteries. Among its sights are the Buddhist convent of Utassa, with its five pinnacles and bas-reliefs, the convent of Fing-sung-si, and a temple containing a statue erected in honour of the Chinese general, Pai-jin-jung, who avenged an insult offered to the Emperor of China.” (Proc. R. G. S. IX. 1887, p. 233.)—H. C.]
A passage in Rashiduddin does seem to intimate that the Kerait, the tribe of Aung Khan, alias Prester John, did occupy territory close to the borders of Cathay or Northern China; but neither from Chinese nor from other Oriental sources has any illustration yet been produced of the existence of Aung Khan’s descendants as rulers in this territory under the Mongol emperors. There is, however, very positive evidence to that effect supplied by other European travellers, to whom the fables prevalent in the West had made the supposed traces of Prester John a subject of strong interest.
Thus John of Monte Corvino, afterwards Archbishop of Cambaluc or Peking, in his letter of January, 1305, from that city, speaks of Polo’s King George in these terms: “A certain king of this part of the world, by name George, belonging to the sect of the Nestorian Christians, and of the illustrious lineage of that great king who was called Prester John of India, in the first year of my arrival here [circa 1295–1296] attached himself to me, and, after he had been converted by me to the verity of the Catholic 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 Kúblái’s generals against Kaidu, in a battle fought near Karakorúm. (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 Ḳunguráts; 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, Serḳuḳteni Bigi, being the mother of Mangú, Hulaku, and Kúblái. Duḳuz 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 Gurgán, “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. Gurgán in this sense was one of the titles borne by Timur.[1]
[The following note by the Archimandrite Palladius (Eluc. 21–23) throws a great light on the relations between the families of Chinghiz Khan and of Prester John.
“T’ien-te Kiun was bounded on the north by the Yn-shan Mountains, in and beyond which was settled the Sha-t’o Tu-K’iu tribe, i.e. Tu-K’iu of the sandy desert. The K’itans, when they conquered the northern borders of China, brought also under their rule the dispersed family of these Tu-K’iu. With the accession of the Kin, a Wang Ku [Ongot] family made its appearance as the ruling family of those tribes; it issued from those Sha- t’o Tu-K’iu, who once reigned in the north of China as the How T’ang Dynasty (923–936 A.D.). It split into two branches, the Wang-Ku of the Yn-shan, and the Wang-Ku of the Lin-t’ao (west of Kan-su). The Kin removed the latter branch to Liao-tung (in Manchuria). The Yn-shan Wang-Ku guarded the northern borders of China belonging to the Kin, and watched their herds. When the Kin, as a protection against the inroads of the tribes of the desert, erected a rampart, or new wall, from the boundary of the Tángut Kingdom down to Manchuria, they intrusted the defence of the principal places of the Yn-shan portion of the wall to the Wang-Ku, and transferred there also the Liao-tung Wang-Ku. At the time Chingiz Khan became powerful, the chief of the Wang-Ku of the Yn-shan was Alahush; and at the head of the Liao-tung Wang-Ku stood Pa-sao-ma-ie-li. Alahush proved a traitor to the Kin, and passed over to Chinghiz Khan; for this he was murdered by the malcontents of his family, perhaps by Pa-sao-ma-ie-li, who remained true to the Kin. Later on, Chingiz Khan married one of his daughters to the son of Alahush, by name Po-yao-ho, who, however, had no children by her. He had three sons by a concubine, the eldest of whom, Kiun-pu-hwa, was married to Kuyuk Khan’s daughter. Kiun-pu-hwa’s son, Ko-li-ki-sze, had two wives, both of imperial blood. During a campaign against Haidu, he was made prisoner in 1298, and murdered. His title and dignities passed over in A.D. 1310 to his son Chuan. Nothing is known of Alahush’s later descendants; they probably became entirely Chinese, like their relatives of the Liao-tung branch.
“The Wang-Ku princes were thus de jure the sons-in-law of the Mongol Khans, and they had, moreover, the hereditary title of Kao-t’ang princes (Kao-t’ang wang); it is very possible that they had their residence in ancient T’ien-te Kiun (although no mention is made of it in history), just as at present the Tumot princes reside in Kuku-hoton.
“The consonance of the names of Wang-Khan and Wang-Ku (Ung-Khan and Ongu) led to the confusion regarding the tribes and persons, which at Marco Polo’s time seems to have been general among the Europeans in China; Marco Polo and Johannes de Monte Corvino transfer the title of Prester John from Wang-Khan, already perished at that time, to the distinguished family of Wang-Ku. Their Georgius is undoubtedly Ko-li-ki-sze, Alahush’s great-grandson. That his name is a Christian one is confirmed by other testimonies; thus in the Asu (Azes) regiment of the Khan’s guards was Ko-li-ki-sze, alias Kow-r-ki (†1311), and his son Ti-mi-ti-r. There is no doubt that one of them was Georgius, and the other Demetrius. Further, in the description of Chin-Kiang in the time of the Yuen, mention is made of Ko-li-ki-sze Ye-li-ko-wen, i.e. Ko-li-ki-sze, the Christian, and of his son Lu-ho (Luke).
“Ko-li-ki-sze of Wang-ku is much praised in history for his valour and his love for Confucian doctrine; he had in consequence of a special favour of the Khan two Mongol princesses for wives at the same time (which is rather difficult to conciliate with his being a Christian). The time of his death is correctly indicated in a letter of Joannes de M. Corvino of the year 1305: ante sex annos migravit ad Dominum. He left a young son Chu-an, who probably is the Joannes of the letter of Ioannes (Giovani) de M. Corvino, so called propter nomen meum, says the missionary. In another Wang-ku branch, Si-li-ki-sze reminds one also of the Christian name Sergius.”—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—“The Lapis Armenus, or Azure, ... is produced in the district of Tayton-fu (i.e. Tathung), belonging to Shansi.” (Du Halde in Astley, IV. 309; see also Martini, p. 36.)
[Note 4.]—This is a highly interesting passage, but difficult, from being corrupt in the G. Text, and over-curt in Pauthier’s MSS. In the former it runs as follows: “Hil hi a une jenerasion de jens que sunt appellés Argon, qe vaut à dire en françois Guasmul, ce est à dire qu’il sunt né del deus generasions de la lengnée des celz Argon Tenduc et des celz reduc et des celz que aorent Maomet. Il sunt biaus homes plus que le autre dou païs et plus sajes et plus mercaant.” Pauthier’s text runs thus: “Il ont une generation de gens, ces Crestiens qui ont la Seigneurie, qui s’appellent Argon, qui vaut a dire Gasmul; et sont plus beaux hommes que les autres mescreans et plus sages. Et pour ce ont il la seigneurie et sont bons marchans.” And Ramusio: “Vi è anche una sorte di gente che si chiamano Argon, per che sono nati di due generazioni, cioè da quella di Tenduc che adorano gl’idoli, e da quella che osservano la legge di Macometto. E questi sono i piu belli uomini che si trovino in quel paese e più savi, e più accorti nella mercanzia.”
In the first quotation the definition of the Argon as sprung de la lengnée, 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 Arkhaiún, 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 Bōt (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 Arghún, and not considered their true king.” [See [p. 291], my reference to Wellby’s Tibet.—H. C.] Cunningham says the word is probably Turki, ارغون, Arghún, “Fair,” “not white,” as he writes to me, “but ruddy or pink, and therefore ‘fair.’ Arghún 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 Arghún tribe named in Timur’s Institutes, which probably derived its descent from such half-breeds. And though the Arghún Dynasty of Kandahar and Sind claimed their descent and name from Arghún Khan of Persia, this may have had no other foundation.
There are some curious analogies between these Argons of whom Marco speaks and those Mahomedans of Northern China and Chinese Turkestan lately revolted against Chinese authority, who are called Tungăni, or as the Russians write it Dungen, a word signifying, according to Professor Vámbéry, in Turki, “a convert.”[4] These Tungani are said by one account to trace their origin to a large body of Uighúrs, who were transferred to the vicinity of the Great Wall during the rule of the Thang Dynasty (7th to 10th century). Another tradition derives their origin from Samarkand. And it is remarkable that Rashiduddin speaks of a town to the west or north-west of Peking, “most of the inhabitants of which are natives of Samarkand, and have planted a number of gardens in the Samarkand style.”[5] The former tradition goes on to say that marriages were encouraged between the Western settlers and the Chinese women. In after days these people followed the example of their kindred in becoming Mahomedans, but they still retained the practice of marrying Chinese wives, though bringing up their children in Islam. The Tungani are stated to be known in Central Asia for their commercial integrity; and they were generally selected by the Chinese for police functionaries. They are passionate and ready to use the knife; but are distinguished from both Manchus and Chinese by their strength of body and intelligent countenances. Their special feature is their predilection for mercantile speculations.
Looking to the many common features of the two accounts—the origin as a half-breed between Mahomedans of Western extraction and Northern Chinese, the position in the vicinity of the Great Wall, the superior physique, intelligence, and special capacity for trade, it seems highly probable that the Tungani of our day are the descendants of Marco’s Argons. Otherwise we may at least point to these analogies as a notable instance of like results produced by like circumstances on the same scene; in fact, of history repeating itself. (See The Dungens, by Mr. H. K. Heins, in the Russian Military Journal for August, 1866, and Western China, in the Ed. Review for April, 1868;[6] Cathay, p. 261.)
[Palladius (pp. 23–24) says that “it is impossible to admit that Polo had meant to designate by this name the Christians, who were called by the Mongols Erkeun [Ye li ke un]. He was well acquainted with the Christians in China, and of course could not ignore the name under which they were generally known to such a degree as to see in it a designation of a cross-race of Mahommetans and heathens.” From the Yuen ch’ao pi shi and the Yuen shi, Palladius gives some examples which refer to Mahommedans.
Professor Devéria (Notes d’Épig. 49) says that the word Ἄρχων was used by the Mongol Government as a designation for the members of the Christian clergy at large; the word is used between 1252 and 1315 to speak of Christian priests by the historians of the Yuen Dynasty; it is not used before nor is it to be found in the Si-ngan-fu inscription (l.c. 82). Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, xxiv. p. 157) supplies a few omissions in Devéria’s paper; we note among others: “Ninth moon of 1329. Buddhist services ordered to be held by the Uighúr priests, and by the Christians [Ye li ke un].”
Captain Wellby writes (Unknown Tibet, p. 32): “We impressed into our service six other muleteers, four of them being Argoons, who are really half-castes, arising from the merchants of Turkestan making short marriages with the Ladakhi women.”—H. C.]
Our author gives the odd word Guasmul as the French equivalent of Argon. M. Pauthier has first, of Polo’s editors, given the true explanation from Ducange. The word appears to have been in use in the Levant among the Franks as a name for the half-breeds sprung from their own unions with Greek women. It occurs three times in the history of George Pachymeres. Thus he says (Mich. Pal. III. 9), that the Emperor Michael “depended upon the Gasmuls, or mixt breeds (συμμíκτοι), which is the sense of this word of the Italian tongue, for these were born of Greeks and Italians, and sent them to man his ships; for the race in question inherited at once the military wariness and quick wit of the Greeks, and the dash and pertinacity of the Latins.” Again (IV. 26) he speaks of these “Gasmuls, whom a Greek would call διγενεῖς, men sprung from Greek mothers and Italian fathers.” Nicephorus Gregoras also relates how Michael Palaeologus, to oppose the projects of Baldwin for the recovery of his fortunes, manned 60 galleys, chiefly with the tribe of Gasmuls (γένος τοῦ Γασμουλικοῦ), to whom he assigns the same characteristics as Pachymeres. (IV. v. 5, also VI. iii. 3, and XIV. x. 11.) One MS. of Nicetas Choniates also, in his annals of Manuel Comnenus (see Paris ed. p. 425), speaks of “the light troops whom we call Basmuls.” Thus it would seem that, as in the analogous case of the Turcopuli, sprung from Turk fathers and Greek mothers, their name had come to be applied technically to a class of troops. According to Buchon, the laws of the Venetians in Candia mention, as different races in that island, the Vasmulo, Latino, Blaco, and Griego.
Ducange, in one of his notes on Joinville, says: “During the time that the French possessed Constantinople, they gave the name of Gas-moules to those who were born of French fathers and Greek mothers; or more probably Gaste-moules, by way of derision, as if such children by those irregular marriages ... had in some sort debased the wombs of their mothers!” I have little doubt (pace tanti viri) that the word is in a Gallicized form the same with the surviving Italian Guazzabúglio, a hotch-potch, or mish-mash. In Davanzati’s Tacitus, the words “Colluviem illam nationum” (Annal. II. 55) are rendered “quello guazzabuglio di nazioni,” in which case we come very close to the meaning assigned to Guasmul. The Italians are somewhat behind in matters of etymology, and I can get no light from them on the history of this word. (See Buchon, Chroniques Etrangères, p. xv.; Ducange, Gloss. Graecitatis, and his note on Joinville, in Bohn’s Chron. of the Crusades, 466.)
[Note 5.]—It has often been cast in Marco’s teeth that he makes no mention of the Great Wall of China, and that is true; whilst the apologies made for the omission have always seemed to me unsatisfactory. [I find in Sir G. Staunton’s account of Macartney’s Embassy (II. p. 185) this most amusing explanation of the reason why Marco Polo did not mention the wall: “A copy of Marco Polo’s route to China, taken from the Doge’s Library at Venice, is sufficient to decide this question. By this route it appears that, in fact, that traveller did not pass through Tartary to Pekin, but that after having followed the usual track of the caravans, as far to the eastward from Europe as Samarcand and Cashgar, he bent his course to the south-east across the River Ganges to Bengal (!), and, keeping to the southward of the Thibet mountains, reached the Chinese province of Shensee, and through the adjoining province of Shansee to the capital, without interfering with the line of the Great Wall.”—H. C.] We shall see presently that the Great Wall is spoken of by Marco’s contemporaries Rashiduddin and Abulfeda. Yet I think, if we read “between the lines,” we shall see reason to believe that the Wall was in Polo’s mind at this point of the dictation, whatever may have been his motive for withholding distincter notice of it.[7] I cannot conceive why he should say: “Here is what we call the country of Gog and Magog,” except as intimating “Here we are beside the Great Wall known as the Rampart of Gog and Magog,” and being there he tries to find a reason why those names should have been applied to it. Why they were really applied to it we have already seen. (Supra, [ch. iv. note 3.]) Abulfeda says: “The Ocean turns northward along the east of China, and then expands in the same direction till it passes China, and comes opposite to the Rampart of Yájúj and Májúj;” whilst the same geographer’s definition of the boundaries of China exhibits that country as bounded on the west by the Indo-Chinese wildernesses; on the south, by the seas; on the east, by the Eastern Ocean; on the north, by the land of Yájúj and Májúj, and other countries unknown. Ibn Batuta, with less accurate geography in his head than Abulfeda, maugre his travels, asks about the Rampart of Gog and Magog (Sadd Yájúj wa Májúj) when he is at Sin Kalán, i.e. Canton, and, as might be expected, gets little satisfaction.
The Rampart of Gog and Magog.
Apart from this interesting point Marsden seems to be right in the general bearing of his explanation of the passage, and I conceive that the two classes of people whom Marco tries to identify with Gog and Magog do substantially represent the two genera or species, Turks and Mongols, or, according to another nomenclature used by Rashiduddin, the White and Black Tartars. To the latter class belonged Chinghiz and his Mongols proper, with a number of other tribes detailed by Rashiduddin, and these I take to be in a general way the Mungul of our text. The Ung, on the other hand, are the Ung-ḳut, the latter form being presumably only the Mongol plural of Ung. The Ung-ḳut were a Turk tribe who were vassals of the Kin Emperors of Cathay, and were intrusted with the defence of the Wall of China, or an important portion of it, which was called by the Mongols Ungu, a name which some connect with that of the tribe. [See note [pp. 288–9].] Erdmann indeed asserts that the wall by which the Ung-ḳut dwelt was not the Great Wall, but some other. There are traces of other great ramparts in the steppes north of the present wall. But Erdmann’s arguments seem to me weak in the extreme.
[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 112) writes: “The earliest mention I have found of the name Mongol in Oriental works occurs in the Chinese annals of the After T’ang period (A.D. 923–934), where it occurs in the form Meng-ku. In the annals of the Liao Dynasty (A.D. 916–1125) it is found under the form Meng-ku-li. The first occurrence of the name in the Tung chien kang mu is, however, in the 6th year Shao-hsing of Kao-tsung of the Sung (A.D. 1136). It is just possible that we may trace the word back a little earlier than the After T’ang period, and that the Meng-wa (or ngo, as this character may have been pronounced at the time), a branch of the Shih-wei, a Tungusic or Kitan people living around Lake Keule, to the east of the Baikal, and along the Kerulun, which empties into it, during the 7th and subsequent centuries, and referred to in the T’ang shu (Bk. 219), is the same as the later Meng-ku. Though I have been unable to find, as stated by Howorth (History, i. pt. I. 28), that the name Meng-ku occurs in the T’ang shu, his conclusion that the northern Shih-wei of that time constituted the Mongol nation proper is very likely correct.... I. J. Schmidt (Sanang Setzen, 380) derives the name Mongol from mong, meaning ‘brave, daring, bold,’ while Rashid-eddin says it means ‘simple, weak’ (d’Ohsson, i. 22). The Chinese characters used to transcribe the name mean ‘dull, stupid,’ and ‘old, ancient,’ but they are used purely phonetically.... The Mongols of the present day are commonly called by the Chinese Ta-tzŭ, but this name is resented by the Mongols as opprobrious, though it is but an abbreviated form of the name Ta-ta-tzŭ, in which, according to Rubruck, they once gloried.”—H. C.]
Vincent of Beauvais has got from some of his authorities a conception of the distinction of the Tartars into two races, to which, however, he assigns no names: “Sunt autem duo genera Tartarorum, diversa quidem habentia idiomata, sed unicam legem ac ritum, sicut Franci et Theutonici.” But the result of his effort to find a realisation of Gog and Magog is that he makes Guyuk Kaan into Gog, and Mangu Kaan into Magog. Even the intelligent Friar Ricold says of the Tartars: “They say themselves that they are descended from Gog and Magog: and on this account they are called Mogoli, as if from a corruption of Magogoli.” (Abulfeda in Büsching, IV. 140, 274–275; I. B. IV. 274; Golden Horde, 34, 68; Erdmann, 241–242, 257–258; Timk. I. 259, 263, 268; Vinc. Bellov. Spec. Hist. XXIX. 73, XXXI. 32–34; Pereg. Quat. 118; Not. et Ext. II. 536.)
[Note 6.]—The towns and villages were probably those immediately north of the Great Wall, between 112° and 115° East longitude, of which many remains exist, ascribed to the time of the Yuen or Mongol Dynasty. This tract, between the Great Wall and the volcanic plateau of Mongolia, is extensively colonised by Chinese, and has resumed the flourishing aspect that Polo describes. It is known now as the Ku-wei, or extramural region.
[After Kalgan, Captain Younghusband, on the 12th April, 1886, “passed through the [outer] Great Wall ... entering what Marco Polo calls the land of Gog and Magog. For the next two days I passed through a hilly country inhabited by Chinese, though it really belongs to Mongolia; but on the 14th I emerged on to the real steppes, which are the characteristic features of Mongolia Proper.” (Proc. R. G. S. X., 1888, p. 490.)—H. C.]
Of the cloths called nakh and nasij we have spoken before (supra [ch. vi. note 4]). These stuffs, or some such as these, were, I believe, what the mediæval writers called Tartary cloth, not because they were made in Tartary, but because they were brought from China and its borders through the Tartar dominions; as we find that for like reason they were sometimes called stuffs of Russia. Dante alludes to the supposed skill of Turks and Tartars in weaving gorgeous stuffs, and Boccaccio, commenting thereon, says that Tartarian cloths are so skilfully woven that no painter with his brush could equal them. Maundevile often speaks of cloths of Tartary (e.g. pp. 175, 247). So also Chaucer:
“On every trumpe hanging a broad banere
Of fine Tartarium.”
Again, in the French inventory of the Garde-Meuble of 1353 we find two pieces of Tartary, one green and the other red, priced at 15 crowns each. (Flower and Leaf, 211; Dante, Inf. XVII. 17, and Longfellow, p. 159; Douet d’Arcq, p. 328; Fr.-Michel, Rech. I. 315, II. 166 seqq.)
[Note 7.]—Sindachu (Sindacui, Suidatui, etc., of the MSS.) is Siuen-hwa-fu, called under the Kin Dynasty Siuen-te-chau, more than once besieged and taken by Chinghiz. It is said to have been a summer residence of the later Mongol Emperors, and fine parks full of grand trees remain on the western side. It is still a large town and the capital of a Fu, about 25 miles south of the Gate on the Great Wall at Chang Kia Kau, which the Mongols and Russians call Kalgan. There is still a manufacture of felt and woollen articles here.
[Mr. Rockhill writes to me that this place is noted for the manufacture of buckskins.—H. C.]
Ydifu has not been identified. But Baron Richthofen saw old mines north-east of Kalgan, which used to yield argentiferous galena; and Pumpelly heard of silver-mines near Yuchau, in the same department.
[In the Yuen-shi it is “stated that there were gold and silver mines in the districts of Siuen-te-chow and Yuchow, as well as in the Kiming shan Mountains. These mines were worked by the Government itself up to 1323, when they were transferred to private enterprise. Marco Polo’s Ydifu is probably a copyist’s error, and stands instead of Yuchow.” (Palladius, 24, 25.)—H. C.]
[1] Mr. Ney Elias favours me with a curious but tantalising communication on this subject: “An old man called on me at Kwei-hwa Ch’eng (Tenduc), who said he was neither Chinaman, Mongol, nor Mahomedan, and lived on ground a short distance to the north of the city, especially allotted to his ancestors by the Emperor, and where there now exist several families of the same origin. He then mentioned the connection of his family with that of the Emperor, but in what way I am not clear, and said that he ought to be, or had been, a prince. Other people coming in, he was interrupted and went away.... He was not with me more than ten minutes, and the incident is a specimen of the difficulty in obtaining interesting information, except by mere chance.... The idea that struck me was, that he was perhaps a descendant of King George of Tenduc; for I had your M. P. before me, and had been inquiring as much as I dared about subjects it suggested.... At Kwei-hwa Ch’eng I was very closely spied, and my servant was frequently told to warn me against asking too many questions.”
I should mention that Oppert, in his very interesting monograph, Der Presbyter Johannes, refuses to recognise the Kerait chief at all in that character, and supposes Polo’s King George to be the representative of a prince of the Liao (supra, [p. 205]), who, as we learn from De Mailla’s History, after the defeat of the Kin, in which he had assisted Chinghiz, settled in Liaotung, and received from the conqueror the title of King of the Liao. This seems to me geographically and otherwise quite inadmissible.
[2] The term Arkaiun, or Arkaun, in this sense, occurs in the Armenian History of Stephen Orpelian, quoted by St. Martin. The author of the Tárikh Jahán Kushai, cited by D’Ohsson, says that Christians were called by the Mongols Arkáún. When Hulaku invested Baghdad we are told that he sent a letter to the Judges, Shaikhs, Doctors and Arkauns, promising to spare such as should act peaceably. And in the subsequent sack we hear that no houses were spared except those of a few Arkauns and foreigners. In Rashiduddin’s account of the Council of State at Peking, we are told that the four Fanchan, or Ministers of the Second Class, were taken from the four nations of Tájiks, Cathayans, Uighúrs, and Arkaun. Sabadin Arkaun was the name of one of the Envoys sent by Arghun Khan of Persia to the Pope in 1288. Traces of the name appear also in Chinese documents of the Mongol era, as denoting some religious body. Some of these have been quoted by Mr. Wylie; but I have seen no notice taken of a very curious extract given by Visdelou. This states that Kúblái in 1289 established a Board of nineteen chief officers to have surveillance of the affairs of the Religion of the Cross, of the Marha, the Siliepan, and the Yelikhawen. This Board was raised to a higher rank in 1315: and at that time 72 minor courts presiding over the religion of the Yelikhawen existed under its supervision. Here we evidently have the word Arkhaiun in a Chinese form; and we may hazard the suggestion that Marha, Siliepan and Yelikhawen meant respectively the Armenian, Syrian, or Jacobite, and Nestorian Churches. (St. Martin, Mém. II. 133, 143, 279; D’Ohsson, II. 264; Ilchan, I. 150, 152; Cathay, 264; Acad. VII. 359; Wylie in J. As. V. xix. 406. Suppt. to D’Herbelot, 142.)
[3] The word is not in Zenker or Pavet de Courteille.
[4] Mr. Shaw writes Toongânee. The first mention of this name that I know of is in Izzat Ullah’s Journal. (Vide J. R. A. S. VII. 310.) The people are there said to have got the name from having first settled in Tungan. Tung-gan is in the same page the name given to the strong city of T’ung Kwan on the Hwang-ho. (See Bk. II. ch. xli. note 1.) A variety of etymologies have been given, but Vámbéry’s seems the most probable.
[5] Probably no man could now say what this means. But the following note from Mr. Ney Elias is very interesting in its suggestion of analogy: “In my report to the Geographical Society I have noticed the peculiar Western appearance of Kwei-hwa-ch’eng, and the little gardens of creepers and flowers in pots which are displayed round the porches in the court-yards of the better class of houses, and which I have seen in no other part of China. My attention was especially drawn to these by your quotation from Rashiduddin.”
[6] A translation of Heins’ was kindly lent me by the author of this article, the lamented Mr. J. W. S. Wyllie.
[7] I owe the suggestion of this to a remark in Oppert’s Presbyter Johannes, p. 77.
CHAPTER LX.
Concerning the Kaan’s Palace of Chagannor.
At the end of those three days you find a city called Chagan Nor [which is as much as to say White Pool], at which there is a great Palace of the Grand Kaan’s;[{1}] and he likes much to reside there on account of the Lakes and Rivers in the neighbourhood, which are the haunt of swans[{2}] and of a great variety of other birds. The adjoining plains too abound with cranes, partridges, pheasants, and other game birds, so that the Emperor takes all the more delight in staying there, in order to go a-hawking with his gerfalcons and other falcons, a sport of which he is very fond.[{3}]
There are five different kinds of cranes found in those tracts, as I shall tell you. First, there is one which is very big, and all over as black as a crow; the second kind again is all white, and is the biggest of all; its wings are really beautiful, for they are adorned with round eyes like those of a peacock, but of a resplendent golden colour, whilst the head is red and black on a white ground. The third kind is the same as ours. The fourth is a small kind, having at the ears beautiful long pendent feathers of red and black. The fifth kind is grey all over and of great size, with a handsome head, red and black.[{4}]
Near this city there is a valley in which the Emperor has had several little houses erected in which he keeps in mew a huge number of cators, which are what we call the Great Partridge. You would be astonished to see what a quantity there are, with men to take charge of them. So whenever the Kaan visits the place he is furnished with as many as he wants.[{5}]
[Note 1.]—[According to the Siu t’ung kien, quoted by Palladius, the palace in Chagannor was built in 1280.—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—“Ou demeurent sesnes.” Sesnes, Cesnes, Cecini, Cesanae, is a mediæval form of cygnes, cigni, which seems to have escaped the dictionary-makers. It occurs in the old Italian version of Brunetto Latini’s Tresor, Bk. V. ch. xxv., as cecino; and for other examples, see Cathay, p. 125.
[Note 3.]—The city called by Polo Chagan-nor (meaning in Mongol, as he says, “White Lake”) is the Chaghan Balghasun mentioned by Timkowski as an old city of the Mongol era, the ruined rampart of which he passed about 30 miles north of the Great Wall at Kalgan, and some 55 miles from Siuen-hwa, adjoining the Imperial pastures. It stands near a lake still called Chaghan-Nor, and is called by the Chinese Pe-ching-tzu, or White City, a translation of Chaghan Balghasun. Dr. Bushell says of one of the lakes (Ichi-Nor), a few miles east of Chaghan-Nor: “We ... found the water black with waterfowl, which rose in dense flocks, and filled the air with discordant noises. Swans, geese, and ducks predominated, and three different species of cranes were distinguished.”
The town appears as Tchahan Toloho in D’Anville. It is also, I imagine, the Arulun Tsaghan Balghasun which S. Setzen says Kúblái built about the same time with Shangtu and another city “on the shady side of the Altai,” by which here he seems to mean the Khingan range adjoining the Great Wall. (Timk. II. 374, 378–379; J. R. G. S. vol. xliii.; S. Setz. 115.) I see Ritter has made the same identification of Chaghan-Nor (II. 141).
[Note 4.]—The following are the best results I can arrive at in the identification of these five cranes.
1. Radde mentions as a rare crane in South Siberia Grus monachus, called by the Buraits Kará Togorü, or “Black Crane.” Atkinson also speaks of “a beautiful black variety of crane,” probably the same. The Grus monachus is not, however, jet black, but brownish rather. (Radde, Reisen, Bd. II. p. 318; Atkinson. Or. and W. Sib. 548.)
2. Grus leucogeranus (?) whose chief habitat is Siberia, but which sometimes comes as far south as the Punjab. It is the largest of the genus, snowy white, with red face and beak; the ten largest quills are black, but this barely shows as a narrow black line when the wings are closed. The resplendent golden eyes on the wings remain unaccounted for; no naturalist whom I have consulted has any knowledge of a crane or crane-like bird with such decorations. When ’tis discovered, let it be the Grus Poli!
3. Grus cinerea.
4. The colour of the pendants varies in the texts. Pauthier’s and the G. Text have red and black; the Lat. S. G. black only, the Crusca black and white, Ramusio feathers red and blue (not pendants). The red and black may have slipt in from the preceding description. I incline to believe it to be the Demoiselle, Anthropoides Virgo, which is frequently seen as far north as Lake Baikal. It has a tuft of pure white from the eye, and a beautiful black pendent ruff or collar; the general plumage purplish-grey.
5. Certainly the Indian Sáras (vulgo Cyrus), or Grus antigone, which answers in colours and grows to 52 inches high.
[Note 5.]—Cator occurs only in the G. Text and the Crusca, in the latter with the interpolated explanation “cioè contornici” (i.e. quails), whilst the S. G. Latin has coturnices only. I suspect this impression has assisted to corrupt the text, and that it was originally written or dictated ciacor or çacor, viz. chakór, a term applied in the East to more than one kind of “Great Partridge.” Its most common application in India is to the Himalayan red-legged partridge, much resembling on a somewhat larger scale the bird so called in Europe. It is the “Francolin” of Moorcroft’s Travels, and the Caccabis Chukor of Gray. According to Cunningham the name is applied in Ladak to the bird sometimes called the Snow-pheasant, Jerdan’s Snow-cock, Tetraogallus himalayensis of Gray. And it must be the latter which Moorcroft speaks of as “the gigantic Chukor, much larger than the common partridge, found in large coveys on the edge of the snow; ... one plucked and drawn weighed 5 lbs.”; described by Vigne as “a partridge as large as a hen-turkey”; the original perhaps of that partridge “larger than a vulture” which formed one of the presents from an Indian King to Augustus Caesar. [With reference to the large Tibetan partridge found in the Nan-shan Mountains in the meridian of Sha-chau by Prjevalsky, M. E. D. Morgan in a note (P. R. Geog. S. ix. 1887, p. 219), writes: “Megaloperdrix thibetanus. Its general name in Asia is ullar, a word of Kirghiz or Turkish origin; the Mongols call it hailik, and the Tibetans kung-mo. There are two other varieties of this bird found in the Himalaya and Altai Mountains, but the habits of life and call-note of all three are the same.”] From the extensive diffusion of the term, which seems to be common to India, Tibet, and Persia (for the latter, see Abbott in J. R. G. S. XXV. 41), it is likely enough to be of Mongol origin, not improbably Tsokhor, “dappled or pied.” (Kovalevsky, No. 2196, and Strahlenberg’s Vocabulary; see also Ladak, 205; Moorcr. I. 313, 432; Jerdan’s Birds of India, III. 549, 572; Dunlop, Hunting in Himalaya, 178; J. A. S. B. VI. 774.)
The chakór is mentioned by Baber (p. 282); and also by the Hindi poet Chand (Rás Mála, I. 230, and Ind. Antiquary, I. 273). If the latter passage is genuine, it is adverse to my Mongol etymology, as Chand lived before the Mongol era.
The keeping of partridges for the table is alluded to by Chaucer in his portrait of the Franklin, Prologue, Cant. Tales:
“It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke,
Of alle deyntees that men coud of thinke,
After the sondry sesons of the yere,
So changed he his mete and his soupere.
Full many a fat partrich hadde he in mewe,
And many a breme and many a luce in stewe.”
CHAPTER LXI.
Of the City of Chandu, and the Kaan’s Palace there.
And when you have ridden three days from the city last mentioned, between north-east and north, you come to a city called Chandu,[{1}] which was built by the Kaan now reigning. There is at this place a very fine marble Palace, the rooms of which are all gilt and painted with figures of men and beasts and birds, and with a variety of trees and flowers, all executed with such exquisite art that you regard them with delight and astonishment.[{2}]
Round this Palace a wall is built, inclosing a compass of 16 miles, and inside the Park there are fountains and rivers and brooks, and beautiful meadows, with all kinds of wild animals (excluding such as are of ferocious nature), which the Emperor has procured and placed there to supply food for his gerfalcons and hawks, which he keeps there in mew. Of these there are more than 200 gerfalcons alone, without reckoning the other hawks. The Kaan himself goes every week to see his birds sitting in mew, and sometimes he rides through the park with a leopard behind him on his horse’s croup; and then if he sees any animal that takes his fancy, he slips his leopard at it,[{3}] and the game when taken is made over to feed the hawks in mew. This he does for diversion.
Moreover [at a spot in the Park where there is a charming wood] he has another Palace built of cane, of which I must give you a description. It is gilt all over, and most elaborately finished inside. [It is stayed on gilt and lackered columns, on each of which is a dragon all gilt, the tail of which is attached to the column whilst the head supports the architrave, and the claws likewise are stretched out right and left to support the architrave.] The roof, like the rest, is formed of canes, covered with a varnish so strong and excellent that no amount of rain will rot them. These canes are a good 3 palms in girth, and from 10 to 15 paces in length. [They are cut across at each knot, and then the pieces are split so as to form from each two hollow tiles, and with these the house is roofed; only every such tile of cane has to be nailed down to prevent the wind from lifting it.] In short, the whole Palace is built of these canes, which (I may mention) serve also for a great variety of other useful purposes. The construction of the Palace is so devised that it can be taken down and put up again with great celerity; and it can all be taken to pieces and removed whithersoever the Emperor may command. When erected, it is braced [against mishaps from the wind] by more than 200 cords of silk.[{4}]
The Lord abides at this Park of his, dwelling sometimes in the Marble Palace and sometimes in the Cane Palace for three months of the year, to wit, June, July, and August; preferring this residence because it is by no means hot; in fact it is a very cool place. When the 28th day of [the Moon of] August arrives he takes his departure, and the Cane Palace is taken to pieces.[{5}] But I must tell you what happens when he goes away from this Palace every year on the 28th of the August [Moon].
You must know that the Kaan keeps an immense stud of white horses and mares; in fact more than 10,000 of them, and all pure white without a speck. The milk of these mares is drunk by himself and his family, and by none else, except by those of one great tribe that have also the privilege of drinking it. This privilege was granted them by Chinghis Kaan, on account of a certain victory that they helped him to win long ago. The name of the tribe is Horiad.[{6}]
Now when these mares are passing across the country, and any one falls in with them, be he the greatest lord in the land, he must not presume to pass until the mares have gone by; he must either tarry where he is, or go a half-day’s journey round if need so be, so as not to come nigh them; for they are to be treated with the greatest respect. Well, when the Lord sets out from the Park on the 28th of August, as I told you, the milk of all those mares is taken and sprinkled on the ground. And this is done on the injunction of the Idolaters and Idol-priests, who say that it is an excellent thing to sprinkle that milk on the ground every 28th of August, so that the Earth and the Air and the False Gods shall have their share of it, and the Spirits likewise that inhabit the Air and the Earth. And thus those beings will protect and bless the Kaan and his children and his wives and his folk and his gear, and his cattle and his horses, his corn and all that is his. After this is done, the Emperor is off and away.[{7}]
But I must now tell you a strange thing that hitherto I have forgotten to mention. During the three months of every year that the Lord resides at that place, if it should happen to be bad weather, there are certain crafty enchanters and astrologers in his train, who are such adepts in necromancy and the diabolic arts, that they are able to prevent any cloud or storm from passing over the spot on which the Emperor’s Palace stands. The sorcerers who do this are called Tebet and Kesimur, which are the names of two nations of Idolaters. Whatever they do in this way is by the help of the Devil, but they make those people believe that it is compassed by dint of their own sanctity and the help of God.[{8}] [They always go in a state of dirt and uncleanness, devoid of respect for themselves, or for those who see them, unwashed, unkempt, and sordidly attired.]
These people also have a custom which I must tell you. If a man is condemned to death and executed by the lawful authority, they take his body and cook and eat it. But if any one die a natural death then they will not eat the body.[{9}]
There is another marvel performed by those Bacsi, of whom I have been speaking as knowing so many enchantments.[{10}] For when the Great Kaan is at his capital and in his great Palace, seated at his table, which stands on a platform some eight cubits above the ground, his cups are set before him [on a great buffet] in the middle of the hall pavement, at a distance of some ten paces from his table, and filled with wine, or other good spiced liquor such as they use. Now when the Lord desires to drink, these enchanters by the power of their enchantments cause the cups to move from their place without being touched by anybody, and to present themselves to the Emperor! This every one present may witness, and there are ofttimes more than 10,000 persons thus present. ’Tis a truth and no lie! and so will tell you the sages of our own country who understand necromancy, for they also can perform it.[{11}]
And when the Idol Festivals come round, these Bacsi go to the Prince and say: “Sire, the Feast of such a god is come” (naming him). “My Lord, you know,” the enchanter will say, “that this god, when he gets no offerings, always sends bad weather and spoils our seasons. So we pray you to give us such and such a number of black-faced sheep,” naming whatever number they please. “And we beg also, good my lord, that we may have such a quantity of incense, and such a quantity of lignaloes, and”—so much of this, so much of that, and so much of t’other, according to their fancy—“that we may perform a solemn service and a great sacrifice to our Idols, and that so they may be induced to protect us and all that is ours.”
The Bacsi say these things to the Barons entrusted with the Stewardship, who stand round the Great Kaan, and these repeat them to the Kaan, and he then orders the Barons to give everything that the Bacsi have asked for. And when they have got the articles they go and make a great feast in honour of their god, and hold great ceremonies of worship with grand illuminations and quantities of incense of a variety of odours, which they make up from different aromatic spices. And then they cook the meat, and set it before the idols, and sprinkle the broth hither and thither, saying that in this way the idols get their bellyful. Thus it is that they keep their festivals. You must know that each of the idols has a name of his own, and a feast-day, just as our Saints have their anniversaries.[{12}]
They have also immense Minsters and Abbeys, some of them as big as a small town, with more than two thousand monks (i.e. after their fashion) in a single abbey.[{13}] These monks dress more decently than the rest of the people, and have the head and beard shaven. There are some among these Bacsi who are allowed by their rule to take wives, and who have plenty of children.[{14}]
Then there is another kind of devotees called Sensin, who are men of extraordinary abstinence after their fashion, and lead a life of such hardship as I will describe. All their life long they eat nothing but bran,[{15}] which they take mixt with hot water. That is their food: bran, and nothing but bran; and water for their drink. ’Tis a lifelong fast! so that I may well say their life is one of extraordinary asceticism. They have great idols, and plenty of them; but they sometimes also worship fire. The other Idolaters who are not of this sect call these people heretics—Patarins as we should say[{16}]—because they do not worship their idols in their own fashion. Those of whom I am speaking would not take a wife on any consideration.[{17}] They wear dresses of hempen stuff, black and blue,[{18}] and sleep upon mats; in fact their asceticism is something astonishing. Their idols are all feminine, that is to say, they have women’s names.[{19}]
Now let us have done with this subject, and let me tell you of the great state and wonderful magnificence of the Great Lord of Lords; I mean that great Prince who is the Sovereign of the Tartars, Cublay by name, that most noble and puissant Lord.
[Note 1.]—[There were two roads to go from Peking to Shangtu: the eastern road through Tu-shi-k’ow, and the western (used for the return journey) road by Ye-hu ling. Polo took this last road, which ran from Peking to Siuen-te chau through the same places as now; but from the latter town it led, not to Kalgan as it does now, but more to the west, to a place called now Shan-fang pú where the pass across the Ye-hu ling range begins. “On both these roads nabo, or temporary palaces, were built, as resting-places for the Khans; eighteen on the eastern road, and twenty-four on the western.” (Palladius, p. 25.) The same author makes (p. 26) the following remarks: “M. Polo’s statement that he travelled three days from Siuen-te chau to Chagannor, and three days also from the latter place to Shang-tu, agrees with the information contained in the ‘Researches on the Routes to Shangtu.’ The Chinese authors have not given the precise position of Lake Chagannor; there are several lakes in the desert on the road to Shangtu, and their names have changed with time. The palace in Chagannor was built in 1280” (according to the Siu t’ung kien).—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Chandu, called more correctly in Ramusio Xandu, i.e. Shandu, and by Fr. Odorico Sandu, viz. Shang-Tu or “Upper Court,” the Chinese title of Kúblái’s summer residence at Kaipingfu, Mongolicè Keibung (see [ch. xiii.] of Prologue) [is called also Loan king, i.e. “the capital on the Loan River,” according to Palladius, p. 26.—H. C.]. The ruins still exist, in about lat. 40° 22′, and a little west of the longitude of Peking. The site is 118 miles in direct line from Chaghan-nor, making Polo’s three marches into rides of unusual length.[1] The ruins bear the Mongol name of Chao Naiman Sumé Khotan, meaning “city of the 108 temples,” and are about 26 miles to the north-west of Dolon-nor, a bustling, dirty town of modern origin, famous for the manufactory of idols, bells, and other ecclesiastical paraphernalia of Buddhism. The site was visited (though not described) by Père Gerbillon in 1691, and since then by no European traveller till 1872, when Dr. Bushell of the British Legation at Peking, and the Hon. T. G. Grosvenor, made a journey thither from the capital, by way of the Nan-kau Pass (supra [p. 26]), Kalgan, and the vicinity of Chaghan-nor, the route that would seem to have been habitually followed, in their annual migration, by Kúblái and his successors.
The deserted site, overgrown with rank weeds and grass, stands but little above the marshy bed of the river, which here preserves the name of Shang-tu, and about a mile from its north or left bank. The walls, of earth faced with brick and unhewn stone, still stand, forming, as in the Tartar city of Peking, a double enceinte, of which the inner line no doubt represents the area of the “Marble Palace” of which Polo speaks. This forms a square of about 2 li (⅔ of a mile) to the side, and has three gates—south, east, and west, of which the southern one still stands intact, a perfect arch, 20 ft. high and 12 ft. wide. The outer wall forms a square of 4 li (1⅓ mile) to the side, and has six gates. The foundations of temples and palace-buildings can be traced, and both enclosures are abundantly strewn with blocks of marble and fragments of lions, dragons, and other sculptures, testifying to the former existence of a flourishing city, but exhibiting now scarcely one stone upon another. A broken memorial tablet was found, half buried in the ground, within the north-east angle of the outer rampart, bearing an inscription in an antique form of the Chinese character, which proves it to have been erected by Kúblái, in honour of a Buddhist ecclesiastic called Yun-Hien. Yun-Hien was the abbot of one of those great minsters and abbeys of Bacsis, of which Marco speaks, and the exact date (no longer visible) of the monument was equivalent to A.D. 1288.[2]
Heading
In the Old Chinese Seal-Character, of an Inscription on a Memorial raised by Kúblái-Kaan
to a Buddhist Ecclesiastic in the vicinity of his Summer-Palace
at Shang-tu in Mongolia.
Reduced from a facsimile obtained on the spot by Dr. S. W. Bushell,
1872.This city occupies the south-east angle of a more extensive enclosure, bounded by what is now a grassy mound, and embracing, on Dr. Bushell’s estimate, about 5 square miles. Further knowledge may explain the discrepancy from Marco’s dimension, but this must be the park of which he speaks.[3] The woods and fountains have disappeared, like the temples and palaces; all is dreary and desolate, though still abounding in the game which was one of Kúblái’s attractions to the spot. A small monastery, occupied by six or seven wretched Lamas, is the only building that remains in the vicinity. The river Shangtu, which lower down becomes the Lan [or Loan]-Ho, was formerly navigated from the sea up to this place by flat grain-boats.
[Mgr. de Harlez gave in the T’oung Pao (x. p. 73) an inscription in Chuen character on a stele found in the ruins of Shangtu, and built by an officer with the permission of the Emperor; it is probably a token of imperial favour; the inscription means: Great Longevity.—H. C.]
In the wail which Sanang Setzen, the poetical historian of the Mongols, puts, perhaps with some traditional basis, into the mouth of Toghon Temur, the last of the Chinghizide Dynasty in China, when driven from his throne, the changes are rung on the lost glories of his capital Daïtu (see infra, Book II. ch. xi.) and his summer palace Shangtu; thus (I translate from Schott’s amended German rendering of the Mongol):
“My vast and noble Capital, My Daïtu, My splendidly adorned!
And Thou my cool and delicious Summer-seat, my Shangtu-Keibung!
Ye, also, yellow plains of Shangtu, Delight of my godlike Sires!
I suffered myself to drop into dreams,—and lo! my Empire was gone!
Ah Thou my Daïtu, built of the nine precious substances!
Ah my Shangtu-Keibung, Union of all perfections!
Ah my Fame! Ah my Glory, as Khagan and Lord of the Earth!
When I used to awake betimes and look forth, how the breezes blew loaded with fragrance!
And turn which way I would all was glorious perfection of beauty!
•••••
Alas for my illustrious name as the Sovereign of the World!
Alas for my Daïtu, seat of Sanctity, Glorious work of the Immortal Kúblái!
All, all is rent from me!”
It was, in 1797, whilst reading this passage of Marco’s narrative in old Purchas that Coleridge fell asleep, and dreamt the dream of Kúblái’s Paradise, beginning:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred River, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”
It would be a singular coincidence in relation to this poem were Klaproth’s reading correct of a passage in Rashiduddin which he renders as saying that the palace at Kaiminfu was “called Langtin, and was built after a plan that Kúblái had seen in a dream, and had retained in his memory.” But I suspect D’Ohsson’s reading is more accurate, which runs: “Kúblái caused a Palace to be built for him east of Kaipingfu, called Lengten; but he abandoned it in consequence of a dream.” For we see from Sanang Setzen that the Palaces of Lengten and Kaiming or Shangtu were distinct; “Between the year of the Rat (1264), when Kúblái was fifty years old, and the year of the Sheep (1271), in the space of eight years, he built four great cities, viz. for Summer Residence Shangtu Keibung Kürdu Balgasun, for Winter Residence Yeke Daïtu Khotan, and on the shady side of the Altai (see [ch. li. note 3], supra) Arulun Tsaghan Balgasun, and Erchügin Langting Balgasun.” A valuable letter from Dr. Bushell enables me now to indicate the position of Langtin: “The district through which the river flows eastward from Shangtu is known to the Mongolians of the present day by the name of Lang-tírh (Lang-ting’rh).... The ruins of the city are marked on a Chinese map in my possession Pai-dseng-tzu, i.e. ‘White City,’ implying that it was formerly an Imperial residence. The remains of the wall are 7 or 8 li in diameter, of stone, and situated about 40 li north-north-west from Dolon-nor.”
(Gerbillon in Astley, IV. 701–716; Klaproth, in J. As. sér. II. tom. xi. 345–350; Schott, Die letzten Jahre der Mongolenherrschaft in China (Berl. Acad. d. Wissensch. 1850, pp. 502–503); Huc’s Tartary, etc., p. 14 seqq.; Cathay, 134, 261; S. Setzen, p. 115; Dr. S. W. Bushell, Journey outside the Great Wall, in J. R. G. S. for 1874, and MS. notes.)
One of the pavilions of the celebrated Yuen-ming-Yuen may give some idea of the probable style, though not of the scale, of Kúblái’s Summer Palace.
Hiuen Tsang’s account of the elaborate and fantastic ornamentation of the famous Indian monasteries at Nalanda in Bahár, where Mr. Broadley has lately made such remarkable discoveries, seems to indicate that these fantasies of Burmese and Chinese architecture may have had a direct origin in India, at a time when timber was still a principal material of construction there: “The pavilions had pillars adorned with dragons, and posts that glowed with all the colours of the rainbow, sculptured frets, columns set with jade, richly chiselled and lackered, with balustrades of vermilion, and carved open work. The lintels of the doors were tastefully ornamented, and the roofs covered with shining tiles, the splendours of which were multiplied by mutual reflection and from moment to moment took a thousand forms.” (Vie et Voyages, 157.)
[Note 3.]—[Rubruck says (Rockhill, p. 248): “I saw also the envoy of a certain Soldan of India, who had brought eight leopards and ten greyhounds, taught to sit on horses’ backs, as leopards sit.”—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—Ramusio’s is here so much more lucid than the other texts, that I have adhered mainly to his account of the building. The roof described is of a kind in use in the Indian Archipelago, and in some other parts of Transgangetic India, in which the semi-cylinders of bamboo are laid just like Roman tiles.
Rashiduddin gives a curious account of the way in which the foundations of the terrace on which this palace stood were erected in a lake. He says, too, in accord with Polo: “Inside the city itself a second palace was built, about a bowshot from the first: but the Kaan generally takes up his residence in the palace outside the town,” i.e., as I imagine, in Marco’s Cane Palace. (Cathay, pp. 261–262.)
[“The Palace of canes is probably the Palm Hall, Tsung tien, alias Tsung mao tien, of the Chinese authors, which was situated in the western palace garden of Shangtu. Mention is made also in the Altan Tobchi of a cane tent in Shangtu.” (Palladius, p. 27.)—H. C.]
Marco might well say of the bamboo that “it serves also a great variety of other purposes.” An intelligent native of Arakan who accompanied me in wanderings on duty in the forests of the Burmese frontier in the beginning of 1853, and who used to ask many questions about Europe, seemed able to apprehend almost everything except the possibility of existence in a country without bamboos! “When I speak of bamboo huts, I mean to say that posts and walls, wall-plates and rafters, floor and thatch, and the withes that bind them, are all of bamboo. In fact, it might almost be said that among the Indo-Chinese nations the staff of life is a bamboo! Scaffolding and ladders, landing-jetties, fishing apparatus, irrigation wheels and scoops, oars, masts, and yards [and in China, sails, cables, and caulking, asparagus, medicine, and works of fantastic art], spears and arrows, hats and helmets, bow, bowstring and quiver, oil-cans, water-stoups and cooking-pots, pipe-sticks [tinder and means of producing fire], conduits, clothes-boxes, pawn-boxes, dinner-trays, pickles, preserves, and melodious musical instruments, torches, footballs, cordage, bellows, mats, paper; these are but a few of the articles that are made from the bamboo;” and in China, to sum up the whole, as Barrow observes, it maintains order throughout the Empire! (Ava Mission, p. 153; and see also Wallace, Ind. Arch. I. 120 seqq.)
Pavilion at Yuen-ming-Yuen.
[Note 5.]—“The Emperor ... began this year (1264) to depart from Yenking (Peking) in the second or third month for Shangtu, not returning until the eighth month. Every year he made this passage, and all the Mongol emperors who succeeded him followed his example.” (Gaubil, p. 144.)
[“The Khans usually resorted to Shangtu in the 4th moon and returned to Peking in the 9th. On the 7th day of the 7th moon there were libations performed in honour of the ancestors; a shaman, his face to the north, uttered in a loud voice the names of Chingiz Khan and of other deceased Khans, and poured mare’s milk on the ground. The propitious day for the return journey to Peking was also appointed then.” (Palladius, p. 26.)—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—White horses were presented in homage to the Kaan on New Year’s Day (the White Feast), as we shall see below. ([Bk. II. ch. xv.]) Odoric also mentions this practice; and, according to Huc, the Mongol chiefs continued it at least to the time of the Emperor K’ang-hi. Indeed Timkowski speaks of annual tributes of white camels and white horses from the Khans of the Kalkas and other Mongol dignitaries, in the present century. (Huc’s Tartary, etc.; Tim. II. 33.)
By the Horiad are no doubt intended the Uirad or Oirad, a name usually interpreted as signifying the “Closely Allied,” or Confederates; but Vámbéry explains it as (Turki) Oyurat, “Grey horse,” to which the statement in our text appears to lend colour. They were not of the tribes properly called Mongol, but after their submission to Chinghiz they remained closely attached to him. In Chinghiz’s victory over Aung-Khan, as related by S. Setzen, we find Turulji Taishi, the son of the chief of the Oirad, one of Chinghiz’s three chief captains; perhaps that is the victory alluded to. The seats of the Oirad appear to have been about the head waters of the Kem, or Upper Yenisei.
In A.D. 1295 there took place a curious desertion from the service of Gházán Khan of Persia of a vast corps of the Oirad, said to amount to 18,000 tents. They made their way to Damascus, where they were well received by the Mameluke Sultan. But their heathenish practices gave dire offence to the Faithful. They were settled in the Sáhil, or coast districts of Palestine. Many died speedily; the rest embraced Islam, spread over the country, and gradually became absorbed in the general population. Their sons and daughters were greatly admired for their beauty. (S. Setz. p. 87; Erdmann, 187; Pallas, Samml. I. 5 seqq.; Makrizi, III. 29; Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. p. 159 seqq.)
[With reference to Yule’s conjecture, I may quote Palladius (l.c. p. 27): “It is, however, strange that the Oirats alone enjoyed the privilege described by Marco Polo; for the highest position at the Mongol Khan’s court belonged to the Kunkrat tribe, out of which the Khans used to choose their first wives, who were called Empresses of the first ordo.”—H. C.]
[Note 7.]—Rubruquis assigns such a festival to the month of May: “On the 9th day of the May Moon they collect all the white mares of their herds and consecrate them. The Christian priests also must then assemble with their thuribles. They then sprinkle new cosmos (kumíz) on the ground, and make a great feast that day, for according to their calendar, it is their time of first drinking new cosmos, just as we reckon of our new wine at the feast of St. Bartholomew (24th August), or that of St. Sixtus (6th August), or of our fruit on the feast of St. James and St. Christopher” (25th July). [With reference to this feast, Mr. Rockhill gives (Rubruck, p. 241, note) extracts from Pallas, Voyages, IV. 579, and Professor Radloff, Aus Siberien, I. 378.—H. C.] The Yakuts also hold such a festival in June or July, when the mares foal, and immense wooden goblets of kumíz are emptied on that occasion. They also pour out kumíz for the Spirits to the four quarters of heaven.
The following passage occurs in the narrative of the Journey of Chang Te-hui, a Chinese teacher, who was summoned to visit the camp of Kúblái in Mongolia, some twelve years before that Prince ascended the throne of the Kaans:[4]
“On the 9th day of the 9th Moon (October), the Prince, having called his subjects before his chief tent, performed the libation of the milk of a white mare. This was the customary sacrifice at that time. The vessels used were made of birch-bark, not ornamented with either silver or gold. Such here is the respect for simplicity....
“At the last day of the year the Mongols suddenly changed their camping-ground to another place, for the mutual congratulation on the 1st Moon. Then there was every day feasting before the tents for the lower ranks. Beginning with the Prince, all dressed themselves in white fur clothing....[5]
“On the 9th day of the 4th Moon (May) the Prince again collected his vassals before the chief tent for the libation of the milk of a white mare. This sacrifice is performed twice a year.”
It has been seen (p. 308) that Rubruquis also names the 9th day of the May moon as that of the consecration of the white mares. The autumn libation is described by Polo as performed on the 28th day of the August moon, probably because it was unsuited to the circumstances of the Court at Cambaluc, where the Kaan was during October, and the day named was the last of his annual stay in the Mongolian uplands.
Baber tells that among the ceremonies of a Mongol Review the Khan and his staff took kumíz and sprinkled it towards the standards. An Armenian author of the Mongol era says that it was the custom of the Tartars, before drinking, to sprinkle drink towards heaven, and towards the four quarters. Mr. Atkinson notices the same practice among the Kirghiz; and I found the like in old days among the Kasias of the eastern frontier of Bengal.
The time of year assigned by Polo for the ceremony implies some change. Perhaps it had been made to coincide with the Festival of Water Consecration of the Lamas, with which the time named in the text seems to correspond. On that occasion the Lamas go in procession to the rivers and lakes and consecrate them by benediction and by casting in offerings, attended by much popular festivity.
Rubruquis seems to intimate that the Nestorian priests were employed to consecrate the white mares by incensing them. In the rear of Lord Canning’s camp in India I once came upon the party of his Shutr Suwárs, or dromedary-express riders, busily engaged in incensing with frankincense the whole of the dromedaries, which were kneeling in a circle. I could get no light on the practice, but it was very probably a relic of the old Mongol custom. (Rubr. 363; Erman, II. 397; Billings’ Journey, Fr. Tr. I. 217; Baber, 103; J. As. sér. V. tom. xi. p. 249; Atk. Amoor, p. 47; J. A. S. B. XIII. 628; Koeppen, II. 313.)
[Note 8.]—The practice of weather-conjuring was in great vogue among the Mongols, and is often alluded to in their history.
The operation was performed by means of a stone of magical virtues, called Yadah or Jadah-Tásh, which was placed in or hung over a basin of water with sundry ceremonies. The possession of such a stone is ascribed by the early Arab traveller Ibn Mohalhal to the Ḳímák, a great tribe of the Turks. In the war raised against Chinghiz and Aung Khan, when still allies, by a great confederation of the Naiman and other tribes in 1202, we are told that Sengun, the son of Aung Khan, when sent to meet the enemy, caused them to be enchanted, so that all their attempted movements against him were defeated by snow and mist. The fog and darkness were indeed so dense that many men and horses fell over precipices, and many also perished with cold. In another account of (apparently) the same matter, given by Mir-Khond, the conjuring is set on foot by the Yadachi of Buyruk Khan, Prince of the Naiman, but the mischief all rebounds on the conjurer’s own side.
In Tului’s invasion of Honan in 1231–1232, Rashiduddin describes him, when in difficulty, as using the Jadah stone with success.
Timur, in his Memoirs, speaks of the Jets using incantations to produce heavy rains which hindered his cavalry from acting against them. A Yadachi was captured, and when his head had been taken off the storm ceased.
Baber speaks of one of his early friends, Khwaja Ka Mulai, as excelling in falconry and acquainted with Yadagarí or the art of bringing on rain and snow by means of enchantment. When the Russians besieged Kazan in 1552 they suffered much from the constant heavy rains, and this annoyance was universally ascribed to the arts of the Tartar Queen, who was celebrated as an enchantress. Sháh Abbás believed he had learned the Tartar secret, and put much confidence in it. (P. Della V. I. 869.)
[Grenard says (II. p. 256) the most powerful and most feared of sorcerers [in Chinese Turkestan] is the djâduger, who, to produce rain or fine weather, uses a jade stone, given by Noah to Japhet. Grenard adds (II. 406–407) there are sorcerers (Ngag-pa-snags-pa) whose specialty is to make rain fall; they are similar to the Turkish Yadachi and like them use a stone called “water cristal,” chu shel; probably jade stone.
Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 245, note) writes: “Rashideddin states that when the Urianghit wanted to bring a storm to an end, they said injuries to the sky, the lightning and thunder. I have seen this done myself by Mongol storm-dispellers. (See Diary, 201, 203.) ‘The other Mongol people,’ he adds, ‘do the contrary. When the storm rumbles, they remain shut up in their huts, full of fear.’ The subject of storm-making, and the use of stones for that purpose, is fully discussed by Quatremère, Histoire, 438–440.” (Cf. also Rockhill, l.c. p. 254.)—H. C.]
An edict of the Emperor Shi-tsung, of the reigning dynasty, addressed in 1724–1725 to the Eight Banners of Mongolia, warns them against this rain-conjuring: “If I,” indignantly observes the Emperor, “offering prayer in sincerity have yet room to fear that it may please Heaven to leave MY prayer unanswered, it is truly intolerable that mere common people wishing for rain should at their own caprice set up altars of earth, and bring together a rabble of Hoshang (Buddhist Bonzes) and Taossé to conjure the spirits to gratify their wishes.”
[“Lamas were of various extraction; at the time of the great assemblies, and of the Khan’s festivities in Shangtu, they erected an altar near the Khan’s tent and prayed for fine weather; the whistling of shells rose up to heaven.” These are the words in which Marco Polo’s narrative is corroborated by an eye-witness who has celebrated the remarkable objects of Shangtu (Loan king tsa yung). These Lamas, in spite of the prohibition by the Buddhist creed of bloody sacrifices, used to sacrifice sheep’s hearts to Mahakala. It happened, as it seems, that the heart of an executed criminal was also considered an agreeable offering; and as the offerings could be, after the ceremony, eaten by the sacrificing priests, Marco Polo had some reason to accuse the Lamas of cannibalism. (Palladius, 28.)—H. C.]
The practice of weather-conjuring is not yet obsolete in Tartary, Tibet, and the adjoining countries.[6]
Weather-conjuring stories were also rife in Europe during the Middle Ages. One such is conspicuously introduced in connection with a magical fountain in the romance of the Chevalier au Lyon:
“Et s’i pant uns bacins d’or fin
A une si longue chaainne
Qui dure jusqu’a la fontainne.
Lez la fontainne troveras
Un perron tel con tu verras
* * * *
S’au bacin viaus de l’iaue prandre
Et dessor le perron espandre,
La verras une tel tanpeste
Qu’an cest bois ne remandra beste,”
etc. etc.[7]
The effect foretold in these lines is the subject of a woodcut illustrating a Welsh version of the same tale in the first volume of the Mabinogion. And the existence of such a fountain is alluded to by Alexander Neckam. (De Naturis Rerum, Bk. II. ch. vii.)
In the Cento Novelle Antiche also certain necromancers exhibit their craft before the Emperor Frederic (Barbarossa apparently): “The weather began to be overcast, and lo! of a sudden rain began to fall with continued thunders and lightnings, as if the world were come to an end, and hailstones that looked like steel-caps,” etc. Various other European legends of like character will be found in Liebrecht’s Gervasius von Tilbury, pp. 147–148.
Rain-makers there are in many parts of the world; but it is remarkable that those also of Samoa in the Pacific operate by means of a rain-stone.
Such weather conjurings as we have spoken of are ascribed by Ovid to Circe:
“Concipit illa preces, et verba venefica dicit;
Ignotosque Deos ignoto carmine adorat,
* * * *
Tunc quoque cantato densetur carmine caelum,
Et nebulas exhalat humus.”—Metam. XIV. 365.
And to Medea:—
——“Quum volui, ripis mirantibus, amnes
In fontes rediere suos ... (another feat of the Lamas)
... Nubila pello,
Nubilaque induco; ventos abigoque, vocoque.”—Ibid. VII. 199.
And by Tibullus to the Saga (Eleg. I. 2, 45); whilst Empedocles, in verses ascribed to him by Diogenes Laertius, claims power to communicate like secrets of potency:—
“By my spells thou may’st
To timely sunshine turn the purple rains,
And parching droughts to fertilising floods.”
(See Cathay, p. clxxxvii.; Erdm. 282; Oppert, 182 seqq.; Erman, I. 153; Pallas, Samml. II. 348 seqq.; Timk. I. 402; J. R. A. S. VII. 305–306; D’Ohsson, II. 614; and for many interesting particulars, Q. R. p. 428 seqq., and Hammer’s Golden Horde, 207 and 435 seqq.)
[Note 9.]—It is not clear whether Marco attributes this cannibalism to the Tibetans and Kashmirians, or brings it in as a particular of Tartar custom which he had forgotten to mention before.
The accusations of cannibalism indeed against the Tibetans in old accounts are frequent, and I have elsewhere (see Cathay, p. 151) remarked on some singular Tibetan practices which go far to account for such charges. Della Penna, too, makes a statement which bears curiously on the present passage. Remarking on the great use made by certain classes of the Lamas of human skulls for magical cups, and of human thigh bones for flutes and whistles, he says that to supply them with these the bodies of executed criminals were stored up at the disposal of the Lamas; and a Hindu account of Tibet in the Asiatic Researches asserts that when one is killed in a fight both parties rush forward and struggle for the liver, which they eat (vol. xv).
[Carpini says of the people of Tibet: “They are pagans; they have a most astonishing, or rather horrible, custom, for, when any one’s father is about to give up the ghost, all the relatives meet together, and they eat him, as was told to me for certain.” Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 152, note) writes: “So far as I am aware, this charge [of cannibalism] is not made by any Oriental writer against the Tibetans, though both Arab travellers to China in the ninth century and Armenian historians of the thirteenth century say the Chinese practised cannibalism. The Armenians designate China by the name Nankas, which I take to be Chinese Nan-kuo, ‘southern country,’ the Manzi country of Marco Polo.”—H. C.]
But like charges of cannibalism are brought against both Chinese and Tartars very positively. Thus, without going back to the Anthropophagous Scythians of Ptolemy and Mela, we read in the Relations of the Arab travellers of the ninth century: “In China it occurs sometimes that the governor of a province revolts from his duty to the emperor. In such a case he is slaughtered and eaten. In fact, the Chinese eat the flesh of all men who are executed by the sword.” Dr. Rennie mentions a superstitious practice, the continued existence of which in our own day he has himself witnessed, and which might perhaps have given rise to some such statement as that of the Arab travellers, if it be not indeed a relic, in a mitigated form, of the very practice they assert to have prevailed. After an execution at Peking certain large pith balls are steeped in the blood, and under the name of blood-bread are sold as a medicine for consumption. It is only to the blood of decapitated criminals that any such healing power is attributed. It has been asserted in the annals of the Propagation de la Foi that the Chinese executioners of M. Chapdelaine, a missionary who was martyred in Kwang-si in 1856 (28th February), were seen to eat the heart of their victim; and M. Huot, a missionary in the Yun-nan province, recounts a case of cannibalism which he witnessed. Bishop Chauveau, at Ta Ts’ien-lu, told Mr. Cooper that he had seen men in one of the cities of Yun-nan eating the heart and brains of a celebrated robber who had been executed. Dr. Carstairs Douglas of Amoy also tells me that the like practices have occurred at Amoy and Swatau.
[With reference to cannibalism in China see Medical Superstitions an Incentive to Anti-Foreign Riots in China, by D. J. Macgowan, North China Herald, 8th July, 1892, pp. 60–62. Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, February–March, 1901, 136) relates that the inhabitants of a part of Kwang-si boiled and ate a Chinese officer who had been sent to pacify them. “The idea underlying this horrible act [cannibalism] is, that by eating a portion of the victim, especially the heart, one acquires the valour with which he was endowed.” (Dennys’ Folk-lore of China, 67.)—H. C.]
Hayton, the Armenian, after relating the treason of a Saracen, called Parwana (he was an Iconian Turk), against Abaka Khan, says: “He was taken and cut in two, and orders were issued that in all the food eaten by Abaka there should be put a portion of the traitor’s flesh. Of this Abaka himself ate, and caused all his barons to partake. And this was in accordance with the custom of the Tartars.” The same story is related independently and differently by Friar Ricold, thus: “When the army of Abaga ran away from the Saracens in Syria, a certain great Tartar baron was arrested who had been guilty of treason. And when the Emperor Khan was giving the order for his execution the Tartar ladies and women interposed, and begged that he might be made over to them. Having got hold of the prisoner they boiled him alive, and cutting his body up into mince-meat gave it to eat to the whole army, as an example to others.” Vincent of Beauvais makes a like statement: “When they capture any one who is at bitter enmity with them, they gather together and eat him in vengeance of his revolt, and like infernal leeches suck his blood,” a custom of which a modern Mongol writer thinks that he finds a trace in a surviving proverb. Among more remote and ignorant Franks the cannibalism of the Tartars was a general belief. Ivo of Narbonne, in his letter written during the great Tartar invasion of Europe (1242), declares that the Tartar chiefs, with their dog’s head followers and other Lotophagi (!), ate the bodies of their victims like so much bread; whilst a Venetian chronicler, speaking of the council of Lyons in 1274, says there was a discussion about making a general move against the Tartars, “porce qu’il manjuent la char humaine.” These latter writers no doubt rehearsed mere popular beliefs, but Hayton and Ricold were both intelligent persons well acquainted with the Tartars, and Hayton at least not prejudiced against them.
The old belief was revived in Prussia during the Seven Years’ War, in regard to the Kalmaks of the Russian army; and Bergmann says the old Kalmak warriors confessed to him that they had done what they could to encourage it by cutting up the bodies of the slain in presence of their prisoners, and roasting them! But Levchine relates an act on the part of the Kirghiz Kazaks which was no jest. They drank the blood of their victim if they did not eat his flesh.
There is some reason to believe that cannibalism was in the Middle Ages generally a less strange and unwonted horror than we should at first blush imagine, and especially that it was an idea tolerably familiar in China. M. Bazin, in the second part of Chine Moderne, p. 461, after sketching a Chinese drama of the Mongol era (“The Devotion of Chao-li”), the plot of which turns on the acts of a body of cannibals, quotes several other passages from Chinese authors which indicate this. Nor is this wonderful in the age that had experienced the horrors of the Mongol wars.
That was no doubt a fable which Carpini heard in the camp of the Great Kaan, that in one of the Mongol sieges in Cathay, when the army was without food, one man in ten of their own force was sacrificed to feed the remainder.[8] But we are told in sober history that the force of Tului in Honan, in 1231–1232, was reduced to such straits as to eat grass and human flesh. At the siege of the Kin capital Kaifongfu, in 1233, the besieged were reduced to the like extremity; and the same occurred the same year at the siege of Tsaichau; and in 1262, when the rebel general Litan was besieged in Tsinanfu. The Taiping wars the other day revived the same horrors in all their magnitude. And savage acts of the same kind by the Chinese and their Turk partisans in the defence of Kashgar were related to Mr. Shaw.
Probably, however, nothing of the kind in history equals what Abdallatif, a sober and scientific physician, describes as having occurred before his own eyes in the great Egyptian famine of A.H. 597 (1200). The horrid details fill a chapter of some length, and we need not quote from them.
Nor was Christendom without the rumour of such barbarities. The story of King Richard’s banquet in presence of Saladin’s ambassadors on the head of a Saracen curried (for so it surely was),—
“soden full hastily
With powder and with spysory,
And with saffron of good colour”—
fable as it is, is told with a zest that makes one shudder; but the tale in the Chanson d’Antioche, of how the licentious bands of ragamuffins, who hung on the army of the First Crusade, and were known as the Tafurs,[9] ate the Turks whom they killed at the siege, looks very like an abominable truth, corroborated as it is by the prose chronicle of worse deeds at the ensuing siege of Marrha:—
“A lor cotiaus qu’il ont trenchans et afilés
Escorchoient les Turs, aval parmi les près.
Voiant Paiens, les ont par pièces découpés.
En l’iave et el carbon les ont bien quisinés,
Volontiers les menjuent sans pain et dessalés.”[10]
(Della Penna, p. 76; Reinaud, Rel. I. 52; Rennie’s Peking, II. 244; Ann. de la Pr. de la F. XXIX. 353, XXI. 298; Hayton in Ram. ch. xvii.; Per. Quat. p. 116; M. Paris, sub. 1243; Mél. Asiat. Acad. St. Pétersb. II. 659; Canale in Arch. Stor. Ital. VIII.; Bergm. Nomad. Streifereien, I. 14; Carpini, 638; D’Ohsson, II. 30, 43, 52; Wilson’s Ever Victorious Army, 74; Shaw, p. 48; Abdallatif, p. 363 seqq.; Weber, II. 135; Littré, H. de la Langue Franç. I. 191; Gesta Tancredi in Thes. Nov. Anecd. III. 172.)
[Note 10.]—Bakhshi is generally believed to be a corruption of Bhikshu, the proper Sanscrit term for a religious mendicant, and in particular for the Buddhist devotees of that character. Bakhshi was probably applied to a class only of the Lamas, but among the Turks and Persians it became a generic name for them all. In this sense it is habitually used by Rashiduddin, and thus also in the Ain Akbari: “The learned among the Persians and Arabians call the priests of this (Buddhist) religion Bukshee, and in Tibbet they are styled Lamas.”
According to Pallas the word among the modern Mongols is used in the sense of Teacher, and is applied to the oldest and most learned priest of a community, who is the local ecclesiastical chief. Among the Kirghiz Kazaks again, who profess Mahomedanism, the word also survives, but conveys among them just the idea that Polo seems to have associated with it, that of a mere conjuror or “medicine-man”; whilst in Western Turkestan it has come to mean a Bard.
The word Bakhshi has, however, wandered much further from its original meaning. From its association with persons who could read and write, and who therefore occasionally acted as clerks, it came in Persia to mean a clerk or secretary. In the Petrarchian Vocabulary, published by Klaproth, we find scriba rendered in Comanian, i.e. Turkish of the Crimea, by Bacsi. The transfer of meaning is precisely parallel to that in regard to our Clerk. Under the Mahomedan sovereigns of India, Bakhshi was applied to an officer performing something like the duties of a quartermaster-general; and finally, in our Indian army, it has come to mean a paymaster. In the latter sense, I imagine it has got associated in the popular mind with the Persian bakhshídan, to bestow, and bakhshísh. (See a note in Q. R. p. 184 seqq.; Cathay, p. 474; Ayeen Akbery, III. 150; Pallas, Samml. II. 126; Levchine, p. 355; Klap. Mém. III.; Vámbéry, Sketches, p. 81.)
The sketch from the life, on [p. 326], of a wandering Tibetan devotee, whom I met once at Hardwár, may give an idea of the sordid Bacsis spoken of by Polo.
[Note 11.]—This feat is related more briefly by Odoric: “And jugglers cause cups of gold full of good wine to fly through the air, and to offer themselves to all who list to drink.” (Cathay, p. 143.) In the note on that passage I have referred to a somewhat similar story in the Life of Apollonius. “Such feats,” says Mr. Jaeschke, “are often mentioned in ancient as well as modern legends of Buddha and other saints; and our Lamas have heard of things very similar performed by conjuring Bonpos.” (See [p. 323].) The moving of cups and the like is one of the sorceries ascribed in old legends to Simon Magus: “He made statues to walk; leapt into the fire without being burnt; flew in the air; made bread of stones; changed his shape; assumed two faces at once; converted himself into a pillar; caused closed doors to fly open spontaneously; made the vessels in a house seem to move of themselves,” etc. The Jesuit Delrio laments that credulous princes, otherwise of pious repute, should have allowed diabolic tricks to be played before them, “as, for example, things of iron, and silver goblets, or other heavy articles, to be moved by bounds from one end of a table to the other, without the use of a magnet or of any attachment.” The pious prince appears to have been Charles IX., and the conjuror a certain Cesare Maltesio. Another Jesuit author describes the veritable mango-trick, speaking of persons who “within three hours’ space did cause a genuine shrub of a span in length to grow out of the table, besides other trees that produced both leaves and fruit.”
In a letter dated 1st December, 1875, written by Mr. R. B. Shaw, after his last return from Kashgar and Lahore, this distinguished traveller says: “I have heard stories related regarding a Buddhist high priest whose temple is said to be not far to the east of Lanchau, which reminds me of Marco Polo and Kúblái Khan. This high priest is said to have the magic power of attracting cups and plates to him from a distance, so that things fly through the air into his hands.” (MS. Note.—H. Y.)
The profession and practice of exorcism and magic in general is greatly more prominent in Lamaism or Tibetan Buddhism than in any other known form of that religion. Indeed, the old form of Lamaism as it existed in our traveller’s day, and till the reforms of Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), and as it is still professed by the Red sect in Tibet, seems to be a kind of compromise between Indian Buddhism and the old indigenous Shamanism. Even the reformed doctrine of the Yellow sect recognises an orthodox kind of magic, which is due in great measure to the combination of Sivaism with the Buddhist doctrines, and of which the institutes are contained in the vast collection of the Jud or Tantras, recognised among the holy books. The magic arts of this code open even a short road to the Buddhahood itself. To attain that perfection of power and wisdom, culminating in the cessation of sensible existence, requires, according to the ordinary paths, a period of three asankhyas (or say Uncountable Time × 3), whereas by means of the magic arts of the Tantras it may be reached in the course of three rebirths only, nay, of one! But from the Tantras also can be learned how to acquire miraculous powers for objects entirely selfish and secular, and how to exercise these by means of Dhárani or mystic Indian charms.
Still the orthodox Yellow Lamas professedly repudiate and despise the grosser exhibitions of common magic and charlatanism which the Reds still practise, such as knife-swallowing, blowing fire, cutting off their own heads, etc. But as the vulgar will not dispense with these marvels, every great orthodox monastery in Tibet keeps a conjuror, who is a member of the unreformed, and does not belong to the brotherhood of the convent, but lives in a particular part of it, bearing the name of Choichong, or protector of religion, and is allowed to marry. The magic of these Choichong is in theory and practice different from the orthodox Tantrist magic. The practitioners possess no literature, and hand down their mysteries only by tradition. Their fantastic equipments, their frantic bearing, and their cries and howls, seem to identify them with the grossest Shamanist devil dancers.
Sanang Setzen enumerates a variety of the wonderful acts which could be performed through the Dhárani. Such were, sticking a peg into solid rock; restoring the dead to life; turning a dead body into gold; penetrating everywhere as air does; flying; catching wild beasts with the hand; reading thoughts; making water flow backwards; eating tiles; sitting in the air with the legs doubled under, etc. Some of these are precisely the powers ascribed to Medea, Empedocles, and Simon Magus, in passages already cited. Friar Ricold says on this subject: “There are certain men whom the Tartars honour above all in the world, viz. the Baxitae (i.e. Bakhshis), who are a kind of idol-priests. These are men from India, persons of deep wisdom, well-conducted, and of the gravest morals. They are usually acquainted with magic arts, and depend on the counsel and aid of demons; they exhibit many illusions, and predict some future events. For instance, one of eminence among them was said to fly; the truth, however, was (as it proved), that he did not fly, but did walk close to the surface of the ground without touching it; and would seem to sit down without having any substance to support him.” This last performance was witnessed by Ibn Batuta at Delhi, in the presence of Sultan Mahomed Tughlak; and it was professedly exhibited by a Brahmin at Madras in the present century, a descendant doubtless of those Brahmans whom Apollonius saw walking two cubits from the ground. It is also described by the worthy Francis Valentyn as a performance known and practised in his own day in India. It is related, he says, that “a man will first go and sit on three sticks put together so as to form a tripod; after which, first one stick, then a second, then the third shall be removed from under him, and the man shall not fall but shall still remain sitting in the air! Yet I have spoken with two friends who had seen this at one and the same time; and one of them, I may add, mistrusting his own eyes, had taken the trouble to feel about with a long stick if there were nothing on which the body rested; yet, as the gentleman told me, he could neither feel nor see any such thing. Still, I could only say that I could not believe it, as a thing too manifestly contrary to reason.”
Akin to these performances, though exhibited by professed jugglers without claim to religious character, is a class of feats which might be regarded as simply inventions if told by one author only, but which seem to deserve prominent notice from their being recounted by a series of authors, certainly independent of one another, and writing at long intervals of time and place. Our first witness is Ibn Batuta, and it will be necessary to quote him as well as the others in full, in order to show how closely their evidence tallies. The Arab Traveller was present at a great entertainment at the Court of the Viceroy of Khansa (Kinsay of Polo, or Hang-chau fu): “That same night a juggler, who was one of the Kán’s slaves, made his appearance, and the Amír said to him, ‘Come and show us some of your marvels.’ Upon this he took a wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs were passed, and, laying hold of one of these, slung it into the air. It went so high that we lost sight of it altogether. (It was the hottest season of the year, and we were outside in the middle of the palace court.) There now remained only a little of the end of a thong in the conjuror’s hand, and he desired one of the boys who assisted him to lay hold of it and mount. He did so, climbing by the thong, and we lost sight of him also! The conjuror then called to him three times, but getting no answer, he snatched up a knife as if in a great rage, laid hold of the thong, and disappeared also! By and bye he threw down one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, then the other hand, and then the other foot, then the trunk, and last of all the head! Then he came down himself, all puffing and panting, and with his clothes all bloody, kissed the ground before the Amír, and said something to him in Chinese. The Amír gave some order in reply, and our friend then took the lad’s limbs, laid them together in their places, and gave a kick, when, presto! there was the boy, who got up and stood before us! All this astonished me beyond measure, and I had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the same kind. They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The Kazi Afkharuddin was next to me, and quoth he, ‘Wallah! ’tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring nor mending; ’tis all hocus pocus!’”
Now let us compare with this, which Ibn Batuta the Moor says he saw in China about the year 1348, the account which is given us by Edward Melton, an Anglo-Dutch traveller, of the performances of a Chinese gang of conjurors, which he witnessed at Batavia about the year 1670 (I have forgotten to note the year). After describing very vividly the basket-murder trick, which is well known in India, and now also in Europe, and some feats of bamboo balancing similar to those which were recently shown by Japanese performers in England, only more wonderful, he proceeds: “But now I am going to relate a thing which surpasses all belief, and which I should scarcely venture to insert here had it not been witnessed by thousands before my own eyes. One of the same gang took a ball of cord, and grasping one end of the cord in his hand slung the other up into the air with such force that its extremity was beyond reach of our sight. He then immediately climbed up the cord with indescribable swiftness, and got so high that we could no longer see him. I stood full of astonishment, not conceiving what was to come of this; when lo! a leg came tumbling down out of the air. One of the conjuring company instantly snatched it up and threw it into the basket whereof I have formerly spoken. A moment later a hand came down, and immediately on that another leg. And in short all the members of the body came thus successively tumbling from the air and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted now no longer that these misguided men did it by the help of the Devil. For it seems to me totally impossible that such things should be accomplished by natural means.” The same performance is spoken of by Valentyn, in a passage also containing curious notices of the basket-murder trick, the mango trick, the sitting in the air (quoted above), and others; but he refers to Melton, and I am not sure whether he had any other authority for it. The cut on this page is taken from Melton’s plate.
Chinese Conjuring Extraordinary.
Again we have in the Memoirs of the Emperor Jahángir a detail of the wonderful performances of seven jugglers from Bengal who exhibited before him. Two of their feats are thus described: “Ninth. They produced a man whom they divided limb from limb, actually severing his head from the body. They scattered these mutilated members along the ground, and in this state they lay for some time. They then extended a sheet or curtain over the spot, and one of the men putting himself under the sheet, in a few minutes came from below, followed by the individual supposed to have been cut into joints, in perfect health and condition, and one might have safely sworn that he had never received wound or injury whatever ... Twenty-third. They produced a chain of 50 cubits in length, and in my presence threw one end of it towards the sky, where it remained as if fastened to something in the air. A dog was then brought forward, and being placed at the lower end of the chain, immediately ran up, and reaching the other end, immediately disappeared in the air. In the same manner a hog, a panther, a lion, and a tiger were successively sent up the chain, and all equally disappeared at the upper end of the chain. At last they took down the chain and put it into a bag, no one ever discovering in what way the different animals were made to vanish into the air in the mysterious manner above described.”
[There would appear (says the Times of India, quoted by the Weekly Dispatch, 15th September, 1889) to be a fine field of unworked romance in the annals of Indian jugglery. One Siddeshur Mitter, writing to the Calcutta paper, gives a thrilling account of a conjurer’s feat which he witnessed recently in one of the villages of the Hooghly district. He saw the whole thing himself, he tells us, so there need be no question about the facts. On the particular afternoon when he visited the village the place was occupied by a company of male and female jugglers, armed with bags and boxes and musical instruments, and all the mysterious paraphernalia of the peripatetic Jadugar. While Siddeshur was looking on, and in the broad, clear light of the afternoon, a man was shut up in a box, which was then carefully nailed up and bound with cords. Weird spells and incantations of the style we are all familiar with were followed by the breaking open of the box, which, “to the unqualified amazement of everybody, was found to be perfectly empty.” All this is much in the usual style; but what followed was so much superior to the ordinary run of modern Indian jugglery that we must give it in the simple Siddeshur’s own words. When every one was satisfied that the man had really disappeared, the principal performer, who did not seem to be at all astonished, told his audience that the vanished man had gone up to the heavens to fight Indra. “In a few moments,” says Siddeshur, “he expressed anxiety at the man’s continued absence in the aerial regions, and said that he would go up to see what was the matter. A boy was called, who held upright a long bamboo, up which the man climbed to the top, whereupon we suddenly lost sight of him, and the boy laid the bamboo on the ground. Then there fell on the ground before us the different members of a human body, all bloody,—first one hand, then another, a foot, and so on, until complete. The boy then elevated the bamboo, and the principal performer, appearing on the top as suddenly as he had disappeared, came down, and seeming quite disconsolate, said that Indra had killed his friend before he could get there to save him. He then placed the mangled remains in the same box, closed it, and tied it as before. Our wonder and astonishment reached their climax when, a few minutes later, on the box being again opened, the man jumped out perfectly hearty and unhurt.” Is not this rather a severe strain on one’s credulity, even for an Indian jugglery story?]
In Philostratus, again, we may learn the antiquity of some juggling tricks that have come up as novelties in our own day. Thus at Taxila a man set his son against a board, and then threw darts tracing the outline of the boy’s figure on the board. This feat was shown in London some fifteen or twenty years ago, and humorously commemorated in Punch by John Leech.
(Philostratus, Fr. Transl. Bk. III. ch. xv. and xxvii.; Mich. Glycas, Ann. II. 156, Paris ed.; Delrio, Disquis. Magic. pp. 34, 100; Koeppen, I. 31, II. 82, 114–115, 260, 262, 280; Vassilyev, 156; Della Penna, 36; S. Setzen, 43, 353; Pereg. Quat. 117; I. B. IV. 39 and 290 seqq.; Asiat. Researches, XVII. 186; Valentyn, V. 52–54; Edward Melton, Engelsch Edelmans, Zeldzaame en Gedenkwaardige Zee en Land Reizen, etc., aangevangen in den Jaare 1660 en geendigd in den Jaare 1677, Amsterdam, 1702, p. 468; Mem. of the Emp. Jahangueir, pp. 99, 102.)
CHO-KHANG
The Grand Temple of Buddha at LHASA
[Note 12.]—[“The maintenance of the Lamas, of their monasteries, the expenses for the sacrifices and for transcription of sacred books, required enormous sums. The Lamas enjoyed a preponderating influence, and stood much higher than the priests of other creeds, living in the palace as if in their own house. The perfumes, which M. Polo mentions, were used by the Lamas for two purposes; they used them for joss-sticks, and for making small turrets, known under the name of ts’a-ts’a; the joss-sticks used to be burned in the same way as they are now; the ts’a-ts’a were inserted in suburgas or buried in the ground. At the time when the suburga was built in the garden of the Peking palace in 1271, there were used, according to the Empress’ wish, 1008 turrets made of the most expensive perfumes, mixed with pounded gold, silver, pearls, and corals, and 130,000 ts’a-ts’a made of ordinary perfumes.” (Palladius, 29.)—H. C.]
[Note 13.]—There is no exaggeration in this number. Turner speaks of 2500 monks in one Tibetan convent. Huc mentions Chorchi, north of the Great Wall, as containing 2000; and Kúnbúm, where he and Gabet spent several months, on the borders of Shensi and Tibet, had nearly 4000. The missionary itinerary from Nepal to L’hasa given by Giorgi, speaks of a group of convents at a place called Brephung, which formerly contained 10,000 inmates, and at the time of the journey (about 1700) still contained 5000, including attendants. Dr. Campbell gives a list of twelve chief convents in L’hasa and its vicinity (not including the Potala or Residence of the Grand Lama), of which one is said to have 7500 members, resident and itinerary. Major Montgomerie’s Pandit gives the same convent 7700 Lamas. In the great monastery at L’hasa called Labrang, they show a copper kettle holding more than 100 buckets, which was used to make tea for the Lamas who performed the daily temple service. The monasteries are usually, as the text says, like small towns, clustered round the great temples. That represented at [p. 224] is at Jehol, and is an imitation of the Potala at L’hasa. (Huc’s Tartary, etc., pp. 45, 208, etc.; Alph. Tibetan, 453; J. A. S. B. XXIV. 219; J. R. G. S. XXXVIII. 168; Koeppen, II. 338.) [La Géographie, II. 1901, pp. 242–247, has an article by Mr. J. Deniker, La Première Photographie de Lhassa, with a view of Potala, in 1901, from a photograph by M. O. Norzunov; it is interesting to compare it with the view given by Kircher in 1670.—H. C.]
[“The monasteries with numbers of monks, who, as M. Polo asserts, behaved decently, evidently belonged to Chinese Buddhists, ho-shang; in Kúblái’s time they had two monasteries in Shangtu, in the north-east and north-west parts of the town.” (Palladius, 29.) Rubruck (Rockhill’s ed. p. 145) says: “All the priests (of the idolaters) shave their heads, and are dressed in saffron colour, and they observe chastity from the time they shave their heads, and they live in congregations of one or two hundred.”—H. C.]
[Note 14.]—There were many anomalies in the older Lamaism, and it permitted, at least in some sects of it which still subsist, the marriage of the clergy under certain limitations and conditions. One of Giorgi’s missionaries speaks of a Lama of high hereditary rank as a spiritual prince who marries, but separates from his wife as soon as he has a son, who after certain trials is deemed worthy to be his successor. [“A good number of Lamas were married, as M. Polo correctly remarks; their wives were known amongst the Chinese, under the name of Fan-sao.” (Ch’ue keng lu, quoted by Palladius, 28.)—H. C.] One of the “reforms” of Tsongkhapa was the absolute prohibition of marriage to the clergy, and in this he followed the institutes of the oldest Buddhism. Even the Red Lamas, or unreformed, cannot now marry without a dispensation.
But even the oldest orthodox Buddhism had its Lay brethren and Lay sisters (Upásaka and Upásiká), and these are to be found in Tibet and Mongolia (Voués au blanc, as it were). They are called by the Mongols, by a corruption of the Sanskrit, Ubashi and Ubashanza. Their vows extend to the strict keeping of the five great commandments of the Buddhist Law, and they diligently ply the rosary and the prayer-wheel, but they are not pledged to celibacy, nor do they adopt the tonsure. As a sign of their amphibious position, they commonly wear a red or yellow girdle. These are what some travellers speak of as the lowest order of Lamas, permitted to marry; and Polo may have regarded them in the same light.
(Koeppen, II. 82, 113, 276, 291; Timk. II. 354; Erman, II. 304; Alph. Tibet. 449.)
Monastery of Lamas.
[Note 15.]—[Mr. Rockhill writes to me that “bran” is certainly Tibetan tsamba (parched barley).—H. C.]
[Note 16.]—Marco’s contempt for Patarins slips out in a later passage (Bk. III. ch. xx.). The name originated in the eleventh century in Lombardy, where it came to be applied to the “heretics,” otherwise called “Cathari.” Muratori has much on the origin of the name Patarini, and mentions a monument, which still exists, in the Piazza de’ Mercanti at Milan, in honour of Oldrado Podestà of that city in 1233, and which thus, with more pith than grammar, celebrates his meritorious acts:—
“Qui solium struxit Catharos ut debuit Uxit.”
Other cities were as piously Catholic. A Mantuan chronicler records under 1276: “Captum fuit Sermionum seu redditum fuit Ecclesiæ, et capti fuerunt cercha cl Patarini contra fidem, inter masculos et feminas; qui omnes ducti fuerunt Veronam, et ibi incarcerati, et pro magna parte Combusti.” (Murat. Dissert. III. 238; Archiv. Stor. Ital. N.S. I. 49.)
[Note 17.]—Marsden, followed by Pauthier, supposes these unorthodox ascetics to be Hindu Sanyasis, and the latter editor supposes even the name Sensi or Sensin to represent that denomination. Such wanderers do occasionally find their way to Tartary; Gerbillon mentions having encountered five of them at Kuku Khotan (supra, [p. 286]), and I think John Bell speaks of meeting one still further north. But what is said of the great and numerous idols of the Sensin is inconsistent with such a notion, as is indeed, it seems to me, the whole scope of the passage. Evidently no occasional vagabonds from a far country, but some indigenous sectaries, are in question. Nor would bran and hot water be a Hindu regimen. The staple diet of the Tibetans is Chamba, the meal of toasted barley, mixed sometimes with warm water, but more frequently with hot tea, and I think it is probable that these were the elements of the ascetic diet rather than the mere bran which Polo speaks of. Semedo indeed says that some of the Buddhist devotees professed never to take any food but tea; knowing people said they mixed with it pellets of sun-dried beef. The determination of the sect intended in the text is, I conceive, to be sought in the history of Chinese or Tibetan Buddhism and their rivals.
Both Baldelli and Neumann have indicated a general opinion that the Taossé or some branch of that sect is meant, but they have entered into no particulars except in a reference by the former to Shien-sien, a title of perfection affected by that sect, as the origin of Polo’s term Sensin. In the substance of this I think they are right. But I believe that in the text this Chinese sect are, rightly or wrongly, identified with the ancient Tibetan sect of Bon-po, and that part of the characters assigned belong to each.
First with regard to the Taossé. These were evidently the Patarini of the Buddhists in China at this time, and Polo was probably aware of the persecution which the latter had stirred up Kúblái to direct against them in 1281—persecution at least it is called, though it was but a mild proceeding in comparison with the thing contemporaneously practised in Christian Lombardy, for in heathen Cathay, books, and not human creatures, were the subjects doomed to burn, and even that doom was not carried out.
[“The Tao-sze,” says M. Polo, “were looked upon as heretics by the other sects; that is, of course, by the Lamas and Ho-shangs; in fact in his time a passionate struggle was going on between Buddhists and Tao-sze, or rather a persecution of the latter by the former; the Buddhists attributed to the doctrine of the Tao-sze a pernicious tendency, and accused them of deceit; and in support of these assertions they pointed to some of their sacred books. Taking advantage of their influence at Court, they persuaded Kúblái to decree the burning of these books, and it was carried out in Peking.” (Palladius, 30.)—H. C.]
The term which Polo writes as Sensin appears to have been that popularly applied to the Taossé sect at the Mongol Court. Thus we are told by Rashíduddín in his History of Cathay: “In the reign of Din-Wang, the 20th king of this (the 11th) Dynasty, Tai Shang Lái Kún, was born. This person is stated to have been accounted a prophet by the people of Khitá; his father’s name was Hán; like Shák-múni he is said to have been conceived by light, and it is related that his mother bore him in her womb no less a period than 80 years. The people who embraced his doctrine were called شن شن (Shăn-shăn or Shinshin).” This is a correct epitome of the Chinese story of Laokiun or Lao-tsé, born in the reign of Ting Wang of the Cheu Dynasty. The whole title used by Rashíduddín, Tai Shang Lao Kiun, “The Great Supreme Venerable Ruler,” is that formerly applied by the Chinese to this philosopher.
Further, in a Mongol [and Chinese] inscription of the year 1314 from the department of Si-ngan fu, which has been interpreted and published by Mr. Wylie, the Taossé priests are termed Senshing. [See Devéria, Notes d’Épigraphie, pp. 39–43, and Prince R. Bonaparte’s Recueil, Pl. xii. No. 3.—H. C.]
Seeing then that the very term used by Polo is that applied by both Mongol and Persian authorities of the period to the Taossé, we can have no doubt that the latter are indicated, whether the facts stated about them be correct or not.
The word Senshing-ud (the Mongol plural) is represented in the Chinese version of Mr. Wylie’s inscription by Sín-săng, a conventional title applied to literary men, and this perhaps is sufficient to determine the Chinese word which Sensin represents. I should otherwise have supposed it to be the Shin-sian alluded to by Baldelli, and mentioned in the quotations which follow; and indeed it seems highly probable that two terms so much alike should have been confounded by foreigners. Semedo says of the Taossé: “They pretend that by means of certain exercises and meditations one shall regain his youth, and others shall attain to be Shien-sien, i.e. ‘Terrestrial Beati,’ in whose state every desire is gratified, whilst they have the power to transport themselves from one place to another, however distant, with speed and facility.” Schott, on the same subject, says: “By Sian or Shin-sian are understood in the old Chinese conception, and particularly in that of the Tao-Kiao [or Taossé] sect, persons who withdraw to the hills to lead the life of anchorites, and who have attained, either through their ascetic observances or by the power of charms and elixirs, to the possession of miraculous gifts and of terrestrial immortality.” And M. Pauthier himself, in his translation of the Journey of Khieu, an eminent doctor of this sect, to the camp of the Great Chinghiz in Turkestan, has related how Chinghiz bestowed upon this personage “a seal with a tiger’s head and a diploma” (surely a lion’s head, P’aizah and Yarligh; see infra, [Bk. II. ch. vii. note 2]), “wherein he was styled Shin Sien or Divine Anchorite.” Sian-jin again is the word used by Hiuen Tsang as the equivalent to the name of the Indian Rishis, who attain to supernatural powers.
[“Sensin is a sufficiently faithful transcription of Sien-seng (Sien-shing in Pekingese); the name given by the Mongols in conversation as well as in official documents, to the Tao-sze, in the sense of preceptors, just as Lamas were called by them Bacshi, which corresponds to the Chinese Sien-seng. M. Polo calls them fasters and ascetics. It was one of the sects of Taouism. There was another one which practised cabalistic and other mysteries. The Tao-sze had two monasteries in Shangtu, one in the eastern, the other in the western part of the town.” (Palladius, 30.)—H. C.]
One class of the Tao priests or devotees does marry, but another class never does. Many of them lead a wandering life, and derive a precarious subsistence from the sale of charms and medical nostrums. They shave the sides of the head, and coil the remaining hair in a tuft on the crown, in the ancient Chinese manner; moreover, says Williams, they “are recognised by their slate-coloured robes.” On the feast of one of their divinities whose title Williams translates as “High Emperor of the Sombre Heavens,” they assemble before his temple, “and having made a great fire, about 15 or 20 feet in diameter, go over it barefoot, preceded by the priests and bearing the gods in their arms. They firmly assert that if they possess a sincere mind they will not be injured by the fire; but both priests and people get miserably burnt on these occasions.” Escayrac de Lauture says that on those days they leap, dance, and whirl round the fire, striking at the devils with a straight Roman-like sword, and sometimes wounding themselves as the priests of Baal and Moloch used to do.
(Astley, IV. 671; Morley in J. R. A. S. VI. 24; Semedo, 111, 114; De Mailla, IX. 410; J. As. sér. V. tom. viii. 138; Schott über den Buddhismus etc. 71; Voyage de Khieou in J. As. sér. VI. tom. ix. 41; Middle Kingdom, II. 247; Doolittle, 192; Esc. de Lauture, Mém. sur la Chine, Religion, 87, 102; Pèler. Boudd. II. 370, and III. 468.)
Let us now turn to the Bon-po. Of this form of religion and its sectaries not much is known, for it is now confined to the eastern and least known part of Tibet. It is, however, believed to be a remnant of the old pre-Buddhistic worship of the powers of nature, though much modified by the Buddhistic worship with which it has so long been in contact. Mr. Hodgson also pronounces a collection of drawings of Bonpo divinities, which were made for him by a mendicant friar of the sect from the neighbourhood of Tachindu, or Ta-t’sien-lu, to be saturated with Sakta attributes, i.e. with the spirit of the Tantrika worship, a worship which he tersely defines as “a mixture of lust, ferocity, and mummery,” and which he believes to have originated in an incorporation with the Indian religions of the rude superstitions of the primitive Turanians. Mr. Hodgson was told that the Bonpo sect still possessed numerous and wealthy Vihars (or abbeys) in Tibet. But from the information of the Catholic missionaries in Eastern Tibet, who have come into closest contact with the sect, it appears to be now in a state of great decadence, “oppressed by the Lamas of other sects, the Peunbo (Bonpo) think only of shaking off the yoke, and getting deliverance from the vexations which the smallness of their number forces them to endure.” In June, 1863, apparently from such despairing motives, the Lamas of Tsodam, a Bonpo convent in the vicinity of the mission settlement of Bonga in E. Tibet, invited the Rev. Gabriel Durand to come and instruct them. “In this temple,” he writes, “are the monstrous idols of the sect of Peunbo; horrid figures, whose features only Satan could have inspired. They are disposed about the enclosure according to their power and their seniority. Above the pagoda is a loft, the nooks of which are crammed with all kinds of diabolical trumpery; little idols of wood or copper, hideous masques of men and animals, superstitious Lama vestments, drums, trumpets of human bones, sacrificial vessels, in short, all the utensils with which the devil’s servants in Tibet honour their master. And what will become of it all? The Great River, whose waves roll to Martaban (the Lu-kiang or Salwen), is not more than 200 or 300 paces distant.... Besides the infernal paintings on the walls, eight or nine monstrous idols, seated at the inner end of the pagoda, were calculated by their size and aspect to inspire awe. In the middle was Tamba-Shi-Rob, the great doctor of the sect of the Peunbo, squatted with his right arm outside his red scarf, and holding in his left the vase of knowledge.... On his right hand sat Keumta-Zon-bo, ‘the All-Good,’ ... with ten hands and three heads, one over the other.... At his right is Dreuma, the most celebrated goddess of the sect. On the left of Tamba-Shi-Rob was another goddess, whose name they never could tell me. On the left again of this anonymous goddess appeared Tam-pla-mi-ber, ... a monstrous dwarf environed by flames and his head garnished with a diadem of skulls. He trod with one foot on the head of Shakia-tupa [Shakya Thubba, i.e. ‘the Mighty Shakya,’ the usual Tibetan appellation of Sakya Buddha himself].... The idols are made of a coarse composition of mud and stalks kneaded together, on which they put first a coat of plaster and then various colours, or even silver or gold.... Four oxen would scarcely have been able to draw one of the idols.” Mr. Emilius Schlagintweit, in a paper on the subject of this sect, has explained some of the names used by the missionary. Tamba-Shi-Rob is “bstanpa gShen-rabs,” i.e. the doctrine of Shen-rabs, who is regarded as the founder of the Bon religion. [Cf. Grenard, II. 407.—H. C.] Keun-tu-zon-bo is “Kun-tu-bzang-po,” “the All Best.”
[Bon-po seems to be (according to Grenard, II. 410) a “coarse naturism combined with ancestral worship” resembling Taoism. It has, however, borrowed a good deal from Buddhism. “I noticed,” says Mr. Rockhill (Journey, 86), “a couple of grimy volumes of Bönbo sacred literature. One of them I examined; it was a funeral service, and was in the usual Bönbo jargon, three-fourths Buddhistic in its nomenclature.” The Bon-po Lamas are above all sorcerers and necromancers, and are very similar to the kam of the Northern Turks, the bô of the Mongols, and lastly to the Shamans. During their operations, they wear a tall pointed black hat, surmounted by the feather of a peacock, or of a cock, and a human skull. Their principal divinities are the White God of Heaven, the Black Goddess of Earth, the Red Tiger and the Dragon; they worship an idol called Kye’-p’ang formed of a mere block of wood covered with garments. Their sacred symbol is the svastika turned from right to left 卍. The most important of their monasteries is Zo-chen gum-pa, in the north-east of Tibet, where they print most of their books. The Bonpos Lamas “are very popular with the agricultural Tibetans, but not so much so with the pastoral tribes, who nearly all belong to the Gélupa sect of the orthodox Buddhist Church.” A. K. says, “Buddhism is the religion of the country; there are two sects, one named Mangba and the other Chiba or Baimbu.” Explorations made by A—— K——, 34. Mangba means “Esoteric,” Chiba (p’yi-ba), “Exoteric,” and Baimbu is Bönbo. Rockhill, Journey, 289, et passim.; Land of the Lamas, 217–218; Grenard, Mission Scientifique, II. 407 seqq.—H. C.]
There is an indication in Koeppen’s references that the followers of the Bon doctrine are sometimes called in Tibet Nag-choi, or “Black Sect,” as the old and the reformed Lamas are called respectively the “Red” and the “Yellow.” If so, it is reasonable to conclude that the first appellation, like the two last, has a reference to the colour of clothing affected by the priesthood.
The Rev. Mr. Jaeschke writes from Lahaul: “There are no Bonpos in our part of the country, and as far as we know there cannot be many of them in the whole of Western Tibet, i.e. in Ladak, Spiti, and all the non-Chinese provinces together; we know, therefore, not much more of them than has been made known to the European public by different writers on Buddhism in Tibet, and lately collected by Emil de Schlagintweit.... Whether they can be with certainty identified with the Chinese Taossé I cannot decide, as I don’t know if anything like historical evidence about their Chinese origin has been detected anywhere, or if it is merely a conclusion from the similarity of their doctrines and practices.... But the Chinese author of the Wei-tsang-tu-Shi, translated by Klaproth, under the title of Description du Tubet (Paris, 1831), renders Bonpo by Taossé. So much seems to be certain that it was the ancient religion of Tibet, before Buddhism penetrated into the country, and that even at later periods it several times gained the ascendancy when the secular power was of a disposition averse to the Lamaitic hierarchy. Another opinion is that the Bon religion was originally a mere fetishism, and related to or identical with Shamanism; this appears to me very probable and easy to reconcile with the former supposition, for it may afterwards, on becoming acquainted with the Chinese doctrine of the ‘Taossé,’ have adorned itself with many of its tenets.... With regard to the following particulars, I have got most of my information from our Lama, a native of the neighbourhood of Tashi Lhunpo, whom we consulted about all your questions. The extraordinary asceticism which struck Marco Polo so much is of course not to be understood as being practised by all members of the sect, but exclusively, or more especially, by the priests. That these never marry, and are consequently more strictly celibatary than many sects of the Lamaitic priesthood, was confirmed by our Lama.” (Mr. Jaeschke then remarks upon the bran to much the same effect as I have done above.) “The Bonpos are by all Buddhists regarded as heretics. Though they worship idols partly the same, at least in name, with those of the Buddhists, ... their rites seem to be very different. The most conspicuous and most generally known of their customs, futile in itself, but in the eyes of the common people the greatest sign of their sinful heresy, is that they perform the religious ceremony of making a turn round a sacred object in the opposite direction to that prescribed by Buddhism. As to their dress, our Lama said that they had no particular colour of garments, but their priests frequently wore red clothes, as some sects of the Buddhist priesthood do. Mr. Heyde, however, once on a journey in our neighbouring county of Langskar, saw a man clothed in black with blue borders, who the people said was a Bonpo.”
[Mr. Rockhill (Journey , 63) saw at Kao miao-tzŭ “a red-gowned, long-haired Bönbo Lama,” and at Kumbum (p. 68), “was surprised to see quite a large number of Bönbo Lamas, recognisable by their huge mops of hair and their red gowns, and also from their being dirtier than the ordinary run of people.”—H. C.]
The identity of the Bonpo and Taossé seems to have been accepted by Csoma de Körös, who identifies the Chinese founder of the latter, Lao-tseu, with the Shen-rabs of the Tibetan Bonpos. Klaproth also says, “Bhonbp’o, Bhanpo, and Shen, are the names by which are commonly designated (in Tibetan) the Taoszu, or followers of the Chinese philosopher Laotseu.”[11] Schlagintweit refers to Schmidt’s Tibetan Grammar (p. 209) and to the Calcutta edition of the Fo-kouè-ki (p. 218) for the like identification, but I do not know how far any two of these are independent testimonies. General Cunningham, however, fully accepts the identity, and writes to me: “Fahian (ch. xxiii.) calls the heretics who assembled at Râmagrâma Taossé,[12] thus identifying them with the Chinese Finitimists. The Taossé are, therefore, the same as the Swâstikas, or worshippers of the mystic cross Swasti, who are also Tirthakaras, or ‘Pure-doers.’ The synonymous word Punya is probably the origin of Pon or Bon, the Tibetan Finitimists. From the same word comes the Burmese P’ungyi or Pungi.” I may add that the Chinese envoy to Cambodia in 1296, whose narrative Rémusat has translated, describes a sect which he encountered there, apparently Brahminical, as Taossé. And even if the Bonpo and the Taossé were not fundamentally identical, it is extremely probable that the Tibetan and Mongol Buddhists should have applied to them one name and character. Each played towards them the same part in Tibet and in China respectively; both were heretic sects and hated rivals; both made high pretensions to asceticism and supernatural powers; both, I think we see reason to believe, affected the dark clothing which Polo assigns to the Sensin; both, we may add, had “great idols and plenty of them.” We have seen in the account of the Taossé the ground that certain of their ceremonies afford for the allegation that they “sometimes also worship fire,” whilst the whole account of that rite and of others mentioned by Duhalde,[13] shows what a powerful element of the old devil-dancing Shamanism there is in their practice. The French Jesuit, on the other hand, shows us what a prominent place female divinities occupied in the Bon-po Pantheon,[14] though we cannot say of either sect that “their idols are all feminine.” A strong symptom of relation between the two religions, by the way, occurs in M. Durand’s account of the Bon Temple. We see there that Shen-rabs, the great doctor of the sect, occupies a chief and central place among the idols. Now in the Chinese temples of the Taossé the figure of their Doctor Lao-tseu is one member of the triad called the “Three Pure Ones,” which constitute the chief objects of worship. This very title recalls General Cunningham’s etymology of Bonpo.
Tibetan Bacsi.
[At the quarterly fair (yueh kai) of Ta-li (Yun-Nan), Mr. E. C. Baber (Travels, 158–159) says: “A Fakir with a praying machine, which he twirled for the salvation of the pious at the price of a few cash, was at once recognised by us; he was our old acquaintance, the Bakhsi, whose portrait is given in Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo.”—H. C.]
(Hodgson, in J. R. A. S. XVIII. 396 seqq.; Ann. de la Prop. de la Foi, XXXVI. 301–302, 424–427; E. Schlagintweit, Ueber die Bon-pa Sekte in Tibet, in the Sitzensberichte of the Munich Acad. for 1866, Heft I. pp. 1–12; Koeppen, II. 260; Ladak, p. 358; J. As. sér. II. tom. i. 411–412; Rémusat. Nouv. Mél. Asiat. I. 112; Astley, IV. 205; Doolittle, 191.)
[Note 18.]—Pauthier’s text has blons, no doubt an error for blous. In the G. Text it is bloies. Pauthier interprets the latter term as “blond ardent,” whilst the glossary to the G. Text explains it as both blue and white. Raynouard’s Romance Dict. explains Bloi as “Blond.” Ramusio has biave, and I have no doubt that blue is the meaning. The same word (bloie) is used in the G. Text, where Polo speaks of the bright colours of the Palace tiles at Cambaluc, and where Pauthier’s text has “vermeil et jaune et vert et blou,” and again (infra, [Bk. II. ch. xix.]), where the two corps of huntsmen are said to be clad respectively in vermeil and in bloie. Here, again, Pauthier’s text has bleu. The Crusca in the description of the Sensin omits the colours altogether; in the two other passages referred to it has bioda, biodo.
[“The Tao-sze, says Marco Polo, wear dresses of black and blue linen; i.e. they wear dresses made of tatters of black and blue linen, as can be seen also at the present day.” (Palladius, 30.)—H. C.]
[Note 19.]—[“The idols of the Tao-sze, according to Marco Polo’s statement, have female names; in fact, there are in the pantheon of Taoism a great many female divinities, still enjoying popular veneration in China; such are Tow Mu (the ‘Ursa major,’ constellation), Pi-hia-yuen Kiun (the celestial queen), female divinities for lying-in women, for children, for diseases of the eyes; and others, which are to be seen everywhere. The Tao-sze have, besides these, a good number of male divinities, bearing the title of Kiun in common with female divinities; both these circumstances might have led Marco Polo to make the above statement.” (Palladius, p. 30.)—H. C.]
[1] This distance is taken from a tracing of the map prepared for Dr. Bushell’s paper quoted below. But there is a serious discrepancy between this tracing and the observed position of Dolon-nor, which determines that of Shang-tu, as stated to me in a letter from Dr. Bushell. [See [Note 1].]
[2] These particulars were obtained by Dr. Bushell through the Archimandrite Palladius, from the MS. account of a Chinese traveller who visited Shangtu about two hundred years ago, when probably the whole inscription was above ground. The inscription is also mentioned in the Imp. Geography of the present Dynasty, quoted by Klaproth. This work gives the interior wall 5 li to the side, instead of 2 li, and the outer wall 10 li, instead of 4 li. By Dr. Bushell’s kindness, I give a reduction of his sketch plan (see [Itinerary Map, No. IV.] at end of this volume), and also a plate of the heading of the inscription. The translation of this is: “Monument conferred by the Emperor of the August Yuen (Dynasty) in memory of His High Eminence Yun Hien (styled) Chang-Lao (canonised as) Shou-Kung (Prince of Longevity).” [See Missions de Chine et du Congo, No. 28, Mars, 1891, Bruxelles.]
[3] Ramusio’s version runs thus: “The palace presents one side to the centre of the city and the other to the city wall. And from either extremity of the palace where it touches the city wall, there runs another wall, which fetches a compass and encloses a good 16 miles of plain, and so that no one can enter this enclosure except by passing through the palace.”
[4] This narrative, translated from Chinese into Russian by Father Palladius, and from the Russian into English by Mr. Eugene Schuyler, Secretary of the U.S. Legation at St. Petersburg, was obligingly sent to me by the latter gentleman, and appeared in the Geographical Magazine for January, 1875, p. 7.
[5] See [Bk. II. chap. xiv. note 3].
[6] In the first edition I had supposed a derivation of the Persian words Jádú and Jádúgari, used commonly in India for conjuring, from the Tartar use of Yadah. And Pallas says the Kirghiz call their witches Jádugar. (Voy. II. 298.) But I am assured by Sir H. Rawlinson that this etymology is more than doubtful, and that at any rate the Persian (Jádú) is probably older than the Turkish term. I see that M. Pavet de Courteille derives Yadah from a Mongol word signifying “change of weather,” etc.
[7] [See W. Foerster’s ed., Halle, 1887, p. 15, 386.—H. C.]
[8] A young Afghan related in the presence of Arthur Conolly at Herat that on a certain occasion when provisions ran short the Russian General gave orders that 50,000 men should be killed and served out as rations! (I. 346.)
[9] Ar. Táfir, a sordid, squalid fellow.
[10] [Cf. Paulin Paris’s ed., 1848, II. p. 5.—H. C.]
[11] Shen, or coupled with jin “people,” Shenjin, in this sense affords another possible origin of the word Sensin; but it may in fact be at bottom, as regards the first syllable, the same with the etymology we have preferred.
[12] I do not find this allusion in Mr. Beal’s new version of Fahian. [See Rémusat’s éd. p. 227; Klaproth says (Ibid. p. 230) that the Tao-szu are called in Tibetan Bonbò and Youngdhroungpa.—H. C.]
[13] Apparently they had at their command the whole encyclopædia of modern “Spiritualists.” Duhalde mentions among their sorceries the art of producing by their invocations the figures of Lao-tseu and their divinities in the air, and of making a pencil to write answers to questions without anybody touching it.
[14] It is possible that this may point to some report of the mystic impurities of the Tantrists. The Saktián, or Tantrists, according to the Dabistan, hold that the worship of a female divinity affords a greater recompense. (II. 155.)
BOOK SECOND.
(1.) ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT KAAN CUBLAY; OF HIS PALACES AND CAPITAL; HIS COURT, GOVERNMENT, AND SPORTS.
(2.) CITIES AND PROVINCES VISITED BY THE TRAVELLER ON ONE JOURNEY WESTWARD FROM THE CAPITAL TO THE FRONTIERS OF MIEN IN THE DIRECTION OF INDIA.
(3.) AND ON ANOTHER SOUTHWARD FROM THE CAPITAL TO FUCHU AND ZAYTON.
BOOK II.
PART I.—THE KAAN, HIS COURT AND CAPITAL.
CHAPTER I.
Of Cublay Kaan, the Great Kaan now Reigning, and of his Great Puissance.
Now am I come to that part of our Book in which I shall tell you of the great and wonderful magnificence of the Great Kaan now reigning, by name Cublay Kaan; Kaan being a title which signifyeth “The Great Lord of Lords,” or Emperor. And of a surety he hath good right to such a title, for all men know for a certain truth that he is the most potent man, as regards forces and lands and treasure, that existeth in the world, or ever hath existed from the time of our First Father Adam until this day. All this I will make clear to you for truth, in this book of ours, so that every one shall be fain to acknowledge that he is the greatest Lord that is now in the world, or ever hath been. And now ye shall hear how and wherefore.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—According to Sanang Setzen, Chinghiz himself discerned young Kúblái’s superiority. On his deathbed he said: “The words of the lad Kúblái are well worth attention; see, all of you, that ye heed what he says! One day he will sit in my seat and bring you good fortune such as you have had in my day!” (p. 105).
The Persian history of Wassáf thus exalts Kúblái: “Although from the frontiers of this country (’Irák) to the Centre of Empire, the Focus of the Universe, the genial abode of the ever-Fortunate Emperor and Just Kaan, is a whole year’s journey, yet the stories that have been spread abroad, even in these parts, of his glorious deeds, his institutes, his decisions, his justice, the largeness and acuteness of his intellect, his correctness of judgment, his great powers of administration, from the mouths of credible witnesses, of well-known merchants and eminent travellers, are so surpassing, that one beam of his glories, one fraction of his great qualities, suffices to eclipse all that history tells of the Cæsars of Rome, of the Chosroes of Persia, of the Khagans of China, of the (Himyarite) Kails of Arabia, of the Tobbas of Yemen, and the Rajas of India, of the monarchs of the houses of Sassan and Búya, and of the Seljukian Sultans.” (Hammer’s Wassaf, orig. p. 37.)
Some remarks on Kúblái and his government by a Chinese author, in a more rational and discriminative tone, will be found below under [ch. xxiii., note 2].
A curious Low-German MS. at Cologne, giving an account of the East, says of the “Keyser von Kathagien—syn recht Name is der groisse Hunt!” (Magnus Canis, the Big Bow-wow as it were. See Orient und Occident, vol. i. p. 640.)
CHAPTER II.
Concerning the Revolt of Nayan, who was Uncle to the Great Kaan Cublay.
Now this Cublay Kaan is of the right Imperial lineage, being descended from Chinghis Kaan, the first sovereign of all the Tartars. And he is the sixth Lord in that succession, as I have already told you in this book. He came to the throne in the year of Christ, 1256, and the Empire fell to him because of his ability and valour and great worth, as was right and reason.[{1}] His brothers, indeed, and other kinsmen disputed his claim, but his it remained, both because maintained by his great valour, and because it was in law and right his, as being directly sprung of the imperial line.
Up to the year of Christ now running, to wit 1298, he hath reigned two-and-forty years, and his age is about eighty-five, so that he must have been about forty-three years of age when he first came to the throne.[{2}] Before that time he had often been to the wars, and had shown himself a gallant soldier and an excellent captain. But after coming to the throne he never went to the wars in person save once.[{3}] This befel in the year of Christ, 1286, and I will tell you why he went.
There was a great Tartar Chief, whose name was Nayan,[{4}] a young man [of thirty], Lord over many lands and many provinces; and he was Uncle to the Emperor Cublay Kaan of whom we are speaking. And when he found himself in authority this Nayan waxed proud in the insolence of his youth and his great power; for indeed he could bring into the field 300,000 horsemen, though all the time he was liegeman to his nephew, the Great Kaan Cublay, as was right and reason. Seeing then what great power he had, he took it into his head that he would be the Great Kaan’s vassal no longer; nay more, he would fain wrest his empire from him if he could. So this Nayan sent envoys to another Tartar Prince called Caidu, also a great and potent Lord, who was a kinsman of his, and who was a nephew of the Great Kaan and his lawful liegeman also, though he was in rebellion and at bitter enmity with his sovereign Lord and Uncle. Now the message that Nayan sent was this: That he himself was making ready to march against the Great Kaan with all his forces (which were great), and he begged Caidu to do likewise from his side, so that by attacking Cublay on two sides at once with such great forces they would be able to wrest his dominion from him.
And when Caidu heard the message of Nayan, he was right glad thereat, and thought the time was come at last to gain his object. So he sent back answer that he would do as requested; and got ready his host, which mustered a good hundred thousand horsemen.
Now let us go back to the Great Kaan, who had news of all this plot.
[Note 1.]—There is no doubt that Kúblái was proclaimed Kaan in 1260 (4th month), his brother Mangku Kaan having perished during the seige of Hochau in Szechwan in August of the preceding year. But Kúblái had come into Cathay some years before as his brother’s Lieutenant.
He was the fifth, not sixth, Supreme Kaan, as we have already noticed. ([Bk. I. ch. li. note 2].)
[Note 2.]—Kúblái was born in the eighth month of the year corresponding to 1216, and had he lived to 1298 would have been eighty-two years old. [According to Dr. E. Bretschneider (Peking, 30), quoting the Yuen-Shi, Kúblái died at Khanbaligh, in the Tze-t’an tien in February, 1294.—H. C.] But by Mahomedan reckoning he would have been close upon eighty-five. He was the fourth son of Tuli, who was the youngest of Chinghiz’s four sons by his favourite wife Burté Fujin. (See De Mailla, IX. 255, etc.)
[Note 3.]—This is not literally true; for soon after his accession (in 1261) Kúblái led an army against his brother and rival Arikbuga, and defeated him. And again in his old age, if we credit the Chinese annalist, in 1289, when his grandson Kanmala (or Kambala) was beaten on the northern frontier by Kaidu, Kúblái took the field himself, though on his approach the rebels disappeared.
Kúblái and his brother Hulaku, young as they were, commenced their military career on Chinghiz’s last expedition (1226–1227). His most notable campaign was the conquest of Yunnan in 1253–1254. (De Mailla, IX. 298, 441.)
[Note 4.]—Nayan was no “uncle” of Kúblái’s, but a cousin in a junior generation. For Kúblái was the grandson of Chinghiz, and Nayan was the great-great-grandson of Chinghiz’s brother Uchegin, called in the Chinese annals Pilgutai. [Belgutai was Chinghiz’s step-brother. (Palladius.)—H. C.] On this brother, the great-uncle of Kúblái, and the commander of the latter’s forces against Arikbuga in the beginning of the reign, both Chinghiz and Kúblái had bestowed large territories in Eastern Tartary towards the frontier of Corea, and north of Liaotong towards the Manchu country. [“The situation and limits of his appanage are not clearly defined in history. According to Belgutai’s biography, it was between the Onon and Kerulen (Yuen shi), and according to Shin Yao’s researches (Lo fung low wen kao), at the confluence of the Argun and Shilka. Finally, according to Harabadur’s biography, it was situated in Abalahu, which geographically and etymologically corresponds to modern Butkha (Yuen shi); Abalahu, as Kúblái himself said, was rich in fish; indeed, after the suppression of Nayan’s rebellion, the governor of that country used to send to the Peking Court fishes weighing up to a thousand Chinese pounds (kin.). It was evidently a country near the Amur River.” (Palladius, l.c. 31.)—H. C.] Nayan had added to his inherited territory, and become very powerful. [“History has apparently connected Nayan’s appanage with that of Hatan (a grandson of Hachiun, brother of Chinghiz Khan), whose ordo was contiguous to Nayan’s, on the left bank of the Amur, hypothetically east of Blagovietschensk, on the spot, where still the traces of an ancient city can be seen. Nayan’s possessions stretched south to Kwang-ning, which belonged to his appanage, and it was from this town that he had the title of prince of Kwang-ning (Yuen shi).” (Palladius, l.c. 31.)—H. C.] Kaidu had gained influence over Nayan, and persuaded him to rise against Kúblái. A number of the other Mongol princes took part with him. Kúblái was much disquieted at the rumours, and sent his great lieutenant Bayan to reconnoitre. Bayan was nearly captured, but escaped to court and reported to his master the great armament that Nayan was preparing. Kúblái succeeded by diplomacy in detaching some of the princes from the enterprise, and resolved to march in person to the scene of action, whilst despatching Bayan to the Karakorum frontier to intercept Kaidu. This was in the summer of 1287. What followed will be found in a subsequent note ([ch. iv. note 6]). (For Nayan’s descent, see the Genealogical Table in the Appendix (A).)
CHAPTER III.
How the Great Kaan marched against Nayan.
When the Great Kaan heard what was afoot, he made his preparations in right good heart, like one who feared not the issue of an attempt so contrary to justice. Confident in his own conduct and prowess, he was in no degree disturbed, but vowed that he would never wear crown again if he brought not those two traitorous and disloyal Tartar chiefs to an ill end. So swiftly and secretly were his preparations made, that no one knew of them but his Privy Council, and all were completed within ten or twelve days. In that time he had assembled good 360,000 horsemen, and 100,000 footmen,—but a small force indeed for him, and consisting only of those that were in the vicinity. For the rest of his vast and innumerable forces were too far off to answer so hasty a summons, being engaged under orders from him on distant expeditions to conquer divers countries and provinces. If he had waited to summon all his troops, the multitude assembled would have been beyond all belief, a multitude such as never was heard of or told of, past all counting. In fact, those 360,000 horsemen that he got together consisted merely of the falconers and whippers-in that were about the court![{1}]
And when he had got ready this handful (as it were) of his troops, he ordered his astrologers to declare whether he should gain the battle and get the better of his enemies. After they had made their observations, they told him to go on boldly, for he would conquer and gain a glorious victory: whereat he greatly rejoiced.
So he marched with his army, and after advancing for 20 days they arrived at a great plain where Nayan lay with all his host, amounting to some 400,000 horse. Now the Great Kaan’s forces arrived so fast and so suddenly that the others knew nothing of the matter. For the Kaan had caused such strict watch to be made in every direction for scouts that every one that appeared was instantly captured. Thus Nayan had no warning of his coming and was completely taken by surprise; insomuch that when the Great Kaan’s army came up, he was asleep in the arms of a wife of his of whom he was extravagantly fond. So thus you see why it was that the Emperor equipped his force with such speed and secrecy.
[Note 1.]—I am afraid Marco, in his desire to impress on his readers the great power of the Kaan, is here giving the reins to exaggeration on a great scale.
Ramusio has here the following explanatory addition:—“You must know that in all the Provinces of Cathay and Mangi, and throughout the Great Kaan’s dominions, there are too many disloyal folk ready to break into rebellion against their Lord, and hence it is needful in every province containing large cities and much population, to maintain garrisons. These are stationed four or five miles from the cities, and the latter are not allowed to have walls or gates by which they might obstruct the entrance of the troops at their pleasure. These garrisons as well as their commanders the Great Kaan causes to be relieved every two years; and bridled in this way the people are kept quiet, and can make no disturbance. The troops are maintained not only by the pay which the Kaan regularly assigns from the revenues of each province, but also by the vast quantities of cattle which they keep, and by the sale of milk in the cities, which furnishes the means of buying what they require. They are scattered among their different stations, at distances of 30, 40, or 60 days (from the capital); and had Cublay decided to summon but the half of them, the number would have been incredible,” etc.
[Palladius says (p. 37) that in the Mongol-Chinese documents, the Mongol garrisons cantoned near the Chinese towns are mentioned under the name of Aolu, but no explanation of the term is given.—H. C.]
The system of controlling garrisons, quartered at a few miles from the great cities, is that which the Chinese followed at Kashgar, Yarkand, etc. It is, in fact, our own system in India, as at Barrackpúr, Dinapúr, Sikandarábád, Mián Mír.
CHAPTER IV.
Of the Battle that the Great Kaan fought with Nayan.
What shall I say about it? When day had well broken, there was the Kaan with all his host upon a hill overlooking the plain where Nayan lay in his tent, in all security, without the slightest thought of any one coming thither to do him hurt. In fact, this confidence of his was such that he kept no vedettes whether in front or in rear; for he knew nothing of the coming of the Great Kaan, owing to all the approaches having been completely occupied as I told you. Moreover, the place was in a remote wilderness, more than thirty marches from the Court, though the Kaan had made the distance in twenty, so eager was he to come to battle with Nayan.
And what shall I tell you next? The Kaan was there on the hill, mounted on a great wooden bartizan,[{1}] which was borne by four well-trained elephants, and over him was hoisted his standard, so high aloft that it could be seen from all sides. His troops were ordered in battles of 30,000 men apiece; and a great part of the horsemen had each a foot-soldier armed with a lance set on the crupper behind him (for it was thus that the footmen were disposed of);[{2}] and the whole plain seemed to be covered with his forces. So it was thus that the Great Kaan’s army was arrayed for battle.
When Nayan and his people saw what had happened, they were sorely confounded, and rushed in haste to arms. Nevertheless they made them ready in good style and formed their troops in an orderly manner. And when all were in battle array on both sides as I have told you, and nothing remained but to fall to blows, then might you have heard a sound arise of many instruments of various music, and of the voices of the whole of the two hosts loudly singing. For this is a custom of the Tartars, that before they join battle they all unite in singing and playing on a certain two-stringed instrument of theirs, a thing right pleasant to hear. And so they continue in their array of battle, singing and playing in this pleasing manner, until the great Naccara of the Prince is heard to sound. As soon as that begins to sound the fight also begins on both sides; and in no case before the Prince’s Naccara sounds dare any commence fighting.[{3}]
So then, as they were thus singing and playing, though ordered and ready for battle, the great Naccara of the Great Khan began to sound. And that of Nayan also began to sound. And thenceforward the din of battle began to be heard loudly from this side and from that. And they rushed to work so doughtily with their bows and their maces, with their lances and swords, and with the arblasts of the footmen, that it was a wondrous sight to see. Now might you behold such flights of arrows from this side and from that, that the whole heaven was canopied with them and they fell like rain. Now might you see on this side and on that full many a cavalier and man-at-arms fall slain, insomuch that the whole field seemed covered with them. From this side and from that such cries arose from the crowds of the wounded and dying that had God thundered, you would not have heard Him! For fierce and furious was the battle, and quarter there was none given.[{4}]
But why should I make a long story of it? You must know that it was the most parlous and fierce and fearful battle that ever has been fought in our day. Nor have there ever been such forces in the field in actual fight, especially of horsemen, as were then engaged—for, taking both sides, there were not fewer than 760,000 horsemen, a mighty force! and that without reckoning the footmen, who were also very numerous. The battle endured with various fortune on this side and on that from morning till noon. But at the last, by God’s pleasure and the right that was on his side, the Great Khan had the victory, and Nayan lost the battle and was utterly routed. For the army of the Great Kaan performed such feats of arms that Nayan and his host could stand against them no longer, so they turned and fled. But this availed nothing for Nayan; for he and all the barons with him were taken prisoners, and had to surrender to the Kaan with all their arms.
Now you must know that Nayan was a baptized Christian, and bore the cross on his banner; but this nought availed him, seeing how grievously he had done amiss in rebelling against his Lord. For he was the Great Kaan’s liegeman,[{5}] and was bound to hold his lands of him like all his ancestors before him.[{6}]
[Note 1.]—“Une grande bretesche.” Bretesche, Bertisca (whence old English Brattice, and Bartizan), was a term applied to any boarded structure of defence or attack, but especially to the timber parapets and roofs often placed on the top of the flanking-towers in mediæval fortifications; and this use quite explains the sort of structure here intended. The term and its derivative Bartizan came later to be applied to projecting guérites or watch-towers of masonry. Brattice in English is now applied to a fence round a pit or dangerous machinery. (See Muratori, Dissert. I. 334; Wedgwood’s Dict. of Etym. sub. v. Brattice; Viollet le Duc, by Macdermott, p. 40; La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Dict.; F. Godefroy, Dict.)
[John Ranking (Hist. Res. on the Wars and Sports of the Mongols and Romans) in a note regarding this battle writes (p. 60): “It appears that it is an old custom in Persia, to use four elephants a-breast.” The Senate decreed Gordian III. to represent him triumphing after the Persian mode, with chariots drawn with four elephants. Augustan Hist. vol. ii. p. 65. See plate, p. 52.—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—This circumstance is mentioned in the extract below from Gaubil. He may have taken it from Polo, as it is not in Pauthier’s Chinese extracts; but Gaubil has other facts not noticed in these.
[Elephants came from the Indo-Chinese Kingdoms, Burma, Siam, Champa.—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—The specification of the Tartar instrument of two strings is peculiar to Pauthier’s texts. It was no doubt what Dr. Clarke calls “the balalaika or two-stringed lyre,” the most common instrument among the Kalmaks.
The sounding of the Nakkára as the signal of action is an old Pan-Asiatic custom, but I cannot find that this very striking circumstance of the whole host of Tartars playing and singing in chorus, when ordered for battle and waiting the signal from the boom of the Big Drum, is mentioned by any other author.
The Naḳḳárah or Nagárah was a great kettledrum, formed like a brazen caldron, tapering to the bottom and covered with buffalo-hide—at least 3½ or 4 feet in diameter. Bernier, indeed, tells of Naḳḳáras in use at the Court of Delhi that were not less than a fathom across; and Tod speaks of them in Rájpútána as “about 8 or 10 feet in diameter.” The Tartar Naḳḳárahs were usually, I presume, carried on a camel; but as Kúblái had begun to use elephants, his may have been carried on an elephant, as is sometimes the case in India. Thus, too, P. della Valle describes those of an Indian Embassy at Ispahan: “The Indian Ambassador was also accompanied by a variety of warlike instruments of music of strange kinds, and particularly by certain Naccheras of such immense size that each pair had an elephant to carry them, whilst an Indian astride upon the elephant between the two Naccheras played upon them with both hands, dealing strong blows on this one and on that; what a din was made by these vast drums, and what a spectacle it was, I leave you to imagine.”
Joinville also speaks of the Nakkara as the signal for action: “So he was setting his host in array till noon, and then he made those drums of theirs to sound that they call Nacaires, and then they set upon us horse and foot.” The Great Nakkara of the Tartars appears from several Oriental histories to have been called Ḳúrḳah. I cannot find this word in any dictionary accessible to me, but it is in the Ain Akbari (Kawargah) as distinct from the Naḳḳárah. Abulfazl tells us that Akbar not only had a rare knowledge of the science of music, but was likewise an excellent performer—especially on the Naḳḳárah!
Nakkaras. (From a Chinese original.)
The privilege of employing the Nakkara in personal state was one granted by the sovereign as a high honour and reward.
The crusades naturalised the word in some form or other in most European languages, but in our own apparently with a transfer of meaning. For Wright defines Naker as “a cornet or horn of brass.” And Chaucer’s use seems to countenance this:—
“Pipes, Trompes, Nakeres, and Clariounes,
That in the Bataille blowen blody sounes.”
—The Knight’s Tale.
On the other hand, Nacchera, in Italian, seems always to have retained the meaning of kettle-drum, with the slight exception of a local application at Siena to a metal circle or triangle struck with a rod. The fact seems to be that there is a double origin, for the Arabic dictionaries not only have Naḳḳárah, but Naḳír and Náḳúr, “cornu, tuba.” The orchestra of Bibars Bunduḳdári, we are told, consisted of 40 pairs of kettle-drums, 4 drums, 4 hautbois, and 20 trumpets (Naḳír). (Sir B. Frere; Della Valle, II. 21; Tod’s Rájasthán, I. 328; Joinville, p. 83; N. et E. XIV. 129, and following note; Blochmann’s Ain-i-Akbari, pp. 50–51; Ducange, by Haenschel, s.v.; Makrizi, I. 173.)
[Dozy (Supp. aux Dict. Arabes) has نقّارة [naqqārè] “petit tambour ou timbale, bassin de cuivre ou de terre recouvert d’une peau tendue,” and “grosses timbales en cuivre portées sur un chameau ou un mulet.”—Devic (Dict. Étym.) writes: “Bas Latin, nacara; bas grec, ἀνάχαρα. Ce n’est point comme on l’a dit, l’Arabe نقير naqïr ou ناقور náqör, qui signifient trompette, clairon, mais le persan نقاره, en arabe, نقارة naqāra, timbale.” It is to be found also in Abyssinia and south of Gondokoro; it is mentioned in the Sedjarat Malayu.
In French, it gives nacaire and gnacare from the Italian gnacare. “Quatre jouent de la guitare, quatre des castagnettes, quatre des gnacares.” (Molière, Pastorale Comique.)—H. C.]
Nakkaras. (From an Indian original.)
[Note 4.]—This description of a fight will recur again and again till we are very tired of it. It is difficult to say whether the style is borrowed from the historians of the East or the romancers of the West. Compare the two following parallels. First from an Oriental history:—
“The Ear of Heaven was deafened with the din of the great Kurkahs and Drums, and the Earth shook at the clangour of the Trumpets and Clarions. The shafts began to fall like the rain-drops of spring, and blood flowed till the field looked like the Oxus.” (J. A. S. sér. IV. tom. xix. 256.)
Next from an Occidental Romance:—
“Now rist grete tabour betyng,
Blaweyng of pypes, and ek trumpyng,
Stedes lepyng, and ek arnyng,
Of sharp speres, and avalyng
Of stronge knighttes, and wyghth meetyng;
Launces breche and increpyng;
Knighttes fallyng, stedes lesyng;
Herte and hevedes thorough kervyng;
Swerdes draweyng, lymes lesyng
Hard assaylyng, strong defendyng,
Stiff withstondyng and wighth fleigheyng.
Sharp of takyng armes spoylyng;
So gret bray, so gret crieyng,
Ifor the folk there was dyeyng;
So muche dent, noise of sweord,
The thondur blast no myghte beo hirde,
No the sunne hadde beo seye,
For the dust of the poudré!
No the weolkyn seon be myght,
So was arewes and quarels flyght.”
—King Alisaunder, in Weber, I. 93–94.
And again:—
“The eorthe quaked heom undur,
No scholde mon have herd the thondur.”
—Ibid. 142.
Also in a contemporary account of the fall of Acre (1291): “Renovatur ergo bellum terribile inter alterutros ... clamoribus interjectis hinc et inde ad terrorem; ita ut nec Deus tonans in sublime coaudiri potuisset.” (De Excidio Acconis, in Martene et Durand, V. 780.)
[Note 5.]—“Car il estoit homme au Grant Kaan.” (See [note 2, ch. xiv.], in Prologue.)
[Note 6.]—In continuation of [note 4, chap. ii.], we give Gaubil’s conclusion of the story of Nayan: “The Emperor had gone ahead with a small force, when Nayan’s General came forward with 100,000 men to make a reconnaissance. The Sovereign, however, put on a bold front, and though in great danger of being carried off, showed no trepidation. It was night, and an urgent summons went to call troops to the Emperor’s aid. They marched at once, the horsemen taking the foot soldiers on the crupper behind them. Nayan all this while was taking it quietly in his camp, and his generals did not venture to attack the Emperor, suspecting an ambuscade. Liting then took ten resolute men, and on approaching the General’s camp, caused a Fire-Pao to be discharged; the report caused a great panic among Nayan’s troops, who were very ill disciplined at the best. Meanwhile the Chinese and Tartar troops had all come up, and Nayan was attacked on all sides: by Liting at the head of the Chinese, by Yusitemur at the head of the Mongols, by Tutuha and the Emperor in person at the head of his guards and the troops of Kincha (Kipchak). The presence of the Emperor rendered the army invincible, and Nayan’s forces were completely defeated. That prince himself was taken, and afterwards put to death. The battle took place in the vicinity of the river Liao, and the Emperor returned in triumph to Shangtu” (207). The Chinese record given in detail by Pauthier is to the like effect, except as to the Kaan’s narrow escape, of which it says nothing.
As regards the Fire-Pao (the latter word seems to have been applied to military machines formerly, and now to artillery), I must refer to Favé and Reinaud’s very curious and interesting treatise on the Greek fire (du Feu Grégeois). They do not seem to assent to the view that the arms of this description which are mentioned in the Mongol wars were cannon, but rather of the nature of rockets.
[Dr. G. Schlegel (T’oung Pao, No. 1, 1902), in a paper entitled, On the Invention and Use of Fire-Arms and Gunpowder in China, prior to the Arrival of Europeans, says that “now, notwithstanding all what has been alleged by different European authors against the use of gunpowder and fire-arms in China, I maintain that not only the Mongols in 1293 had cannon, but that they were already acquainted with them in 1232.” Among his many examples, we quote the following from the Books of the Ming Dynasty: “What were anciently called P’ao were all machines for hurling stones. In the beginning of the Mongol Dynasty (A.D. 1260), p’ao (catapults) of the Western regions were procured. In the siege [in 1233] of the city of Ts’ai chow of the Kin (Tatars), fire was for the first time employed (in these p’ao), but the art of making them was not handed down, and they were afterwards seldom used.”—H. C.]
CHAPTER V.
How the Great Kaan caused Nayan to be put to death.
And when the Great Kaan learned that Nayan was taken right glad was he, and commanded that he should be put to death straightway and in secret, lest endeavours should be made to obtain pity and pardon for him, because he was of the Kaan’s own flesh and blood. And this was the way in which he was put to death: he was wrapt in a carpet, and tossed to and fro so mercilessly that he died. And the Kaan caused him to be put to death in this way because he would not have the blood of his Line Imperial spilt upon the ground or exposed in the eye of Heaven and before the Sun.[{1}]
And when the Great Kaan had gained this battle, as you have heard, all the Barons and people of Nayan’s provinces renewed their fealty to the Kaan. Now these provinces that had been under the Lordship of Nayan were four in number; to wit, the first called Chorcha; the second Cauly; the third Barscol; the fourth Sikintinju. Of all these four great provinces had Nayan been Lord; it was a very great dominion.[{2}]
And after the Great Kaan had conquered Nayan, as you have heard, it came to pass that the different kinds of people who were present, Saracens and Idolaters and Jews,[{3}] and many others that believed not in God, did gibe those that were Christians because of the cross that Nayan had borne on his standard, and that so grievously that there was no bearing it. Thus they would say to the Christians: “See now what precious help this God’s Cross of yours hath rendered Nayan, who was a Christian and a worshipper thereof.” And such a din arose about the matter that it reached the Great Kaan’s own ears. When it did so, he sharply rebuked those who cast these gibes at the Christians; and he also bade the Christians be of good heart, “for if the Cross had rendered no help to Nayan, in that It had done right well; nor could that which was good, as It was, have done otherwise; for Nayan was a disloyal and traitorous Rebel against his Lord, and well deserved that which had befallen him. Wherefore the Cross of your God did well in that It gave him no help against the right.” And this he said so loud that everybody heard him. The Christians then replied to the Great Kaan: “Great King, you say the truth indeed, for our Cross can render no one help in wrong-doing; and therefore it was that It aided not Nayan, who was guilty of crime and disloyalty, for It would take no part in his evil deeds.”
And so thenceforward no more was heard of the floutings of the unbelievers against the Christians; for they heard very well what the Sovereign said to the latter about the Cross on Nayan’s banner, and its giving him no help.
[Note 1.]—Friar Ricold mentions this Tartar maxim: “One Khan will put another to death, to get possession of the throne, but he takes great care that the blood be not spilt. For they say that it is highly improper that the blood of the Great Khan should be spilt upon the ground; so they cause the victim to be smothered somehow or other.” The like feeling prevails at the Court of Burma, where a peculiar mode of execution without bloodshed is reserved for Princes of the Blood. And Kaempfer, relating the conspiracy of Faulcon at the Court of Siam, says that two of the king’s brothers, accused of participation, were beaten to death with clubs of sandal-wood, “for the respect entertained for the blood-royal forbids its being shed.” See also [note 6, ch. vi. Bk. I.], on the death of the Khalif Mosta’sim Billah. (Pereg. Quat. p. 115; Mission to Ava, p. 229; Kaempfer, I. 19.)
[Note 2.]—Chorcha is the Manchu country, Niuché of the Chinese. (Supra, [note 2, ch. xlvi. Bk. I.]) [“Chorcha is Churchin.—Nayan, as vassal of the Mongol khans, had the commission to keep in obedience the people of Manchuria (subdued in 1233), and to care for the security of the country (Yuen shi); there is no doubt that he shared these obligations with his relative Hatan, who stood nearer to the native tribes of Manchuria.” (Palladius, 32.)—H. C.]
Kauli is properly Corea, probably here a district on the frontier thereof, as it is improbable that Nayan had any rule over Corea. [“The Corean kingdom proper could not be a part of the prince’s appanage. Marco Polo might mean the northern part of Corea, which submitted to the Mongols in A.D. 1269, with sixty towns, and which was subordinated entirely to the central administration in Liao-yang. As to the southern part of Corea, it was left to the king of Corea, who, however, was a vassal of the Mongols.” (Palladius, 32.) The king of Corea (Ko rye, Kao-li) was in 1288 Chyoung ryel wang (1274–1298); the capital was Syong-to, now Kăi syeng (K’ai-ch’eng).—H. C.]
Barskul, “Leopard-Lake,” is named in Sanang Setsen (p. 217), but seems there to indicate some place in the west of Mongolia, perhaps the Barkul of our maps. This Barskul must have been on the Manchu frontier. [There are in the Yuen-shi the names of the department of P’u-yü-lu, and of the place Pu-lo-ho, which, according to the system of Chinese transcription, approach to Barscol; but it is difficult to prove this identification, since our knowledge of these places is very scanty; it only remains to identify Barscol with Abalahu, which is already known; a conjecture all the more probable as the two names of P’u-yü-lu and Pu-lo-ho have also some resemblance to Abalahu. (Palladius, 32.) Mr. E. H. Parker says (China Review, xviii. p. 261) that Barscol may be Pa-la ssŭ or Bars Koto [in Tsetsen]. “This seems the more probable in that Cauly and Chorcha are clearly proved to be Corea and Niuché or Manchuria, so that Bars Koto would naturally fall within Nayan’s appanage.”—H. C.]
The reading of the fourth name is doubtful, Sichuigiu, Sichingiu (G. T.), Sichin-tingiu, etc. The Chinese name of Mukden is Shing-king, but I know not if it be so old as our author’s time. I think it very possible that the real reading is Sinchin-tingin, and that it represents Shangking-Tungking, expressing the two capitals of the Khitan Dynasty in this region, the position of which will be found indicated in [No. IV. map] of Polo’s itineraries. (See Schott, Aelteste Nachrichten von Mongolen und Tartaren, Berlin Acad. 1845, pp. 11–12.)
[Sikintinju is Kien chau “belonging to a town which was in Nayan’s appanage, and is mentioned in the history of his rebellion. There were two Kien-chow, one in the time of the Kin in the modern aimak of Khorchin; the other during the Mongol Dynasty, on the upper part of the river Ta-ling ho, in the limits of the modern aimak of Kharachin (Man chow yuen lew k’ao); the latter depended on Kuang-ning (Yuen-shi). Mention is made of Kien-chow, in connection with the following circumstance. When Nayan’s rebellion broke out, the Court of Peking sent orders to the King of Corea, requiring from him auxiliary troops; this circumstance is mentioned in the Corean Annals, under the year 1288 (Kao li shi, ch. xxx. f. 11) in the following words:—‘In the present year, in the fourth month, orders were received from Peking to send five thousand men with provisions to Kien-chow, which is 3000 li distant from the King’s residence.’ This number of li cannot of course be taken literally; judging by the distances estimated at the present day, it was about 2000 li from the Corean K’ai-ch’eng fu (then the Corean capital) to the Mongol Kien-chow; and as much to the Kien-chow of the Kin (through Mukden and the pass of Fa-k’u mun in the willow palisade). It is difficult to decide to which of these two cities of the same name the troops were ordered to go, but at any rate, there are sufficient reasons to identify Sikintinju of Marco Polo with Kien-chow.” (Palladius, 33.)—H. C.]
We learn from Gaubil that the rebellion did not end with the capture of Nayan. In the summer of 1288 several of the princes of Nayan’s league, under Hatan (apparently the Abkan of Erdmann’s genealogies), the grandson of Chinghiz’s brother Kajyun [Hachiun], threatened the provinces north-east of the wall. Kúblái sent his grandson and designated heir, Teimur, against them, accompanied by some of his best generals. After a two days’ fight on the banks of the River Kweilei, the rebels were completely beaten. The territories on the said River Kweilei, the Tiro, or Torro, and the Liao, are mentioned both by Gaubil and De Mailla as among those which had belonged to Nayan. As the Kweilei and Toro appear on our maps and also the better-known Liao, we are thus enabled to determine with tolerable precision Nayan’s country. (See Gaubil, p. 209, and De Mailla, 431 seqq.)
[“The rebellion of Nayan and Hatan is incompletely and contradictorily related in Chinese history. The suppression of both these rebellions lasted four years. In 1287 Nayan marched from his ordo with sixty thousand men through Eastern Mongolia. In the 5th moon (var. 6th) of the same year Khubilai marched against him from Shangtu. The battle was fought in South-Eastern Mongolia, and gained by Khubilai, who returned to Shangtu in the 8th month. Nayan fled to the south-east, across the mountain range, along which a willow palisade now stands; but forces had been sent beforehand from Shin-chow (modern Mukden) and Kuang-ning (probably to watch the pass), and Nayan was made prisoner.
“Two months had not passed, when Hatan’s rebellion broke out (so that it took place in the same year 1287). It is mentioned under the year 1288, that Hatan was beaten, and that the whole of Manchuria was pacified; but in 1290, it is again recorded that Hatan disturbed Southern Manchuria, and that he was again defeated. It is to this time that the narratives in the biographies of Liting, Yuesi Femur, and Mangwu ought to be referred. According to the first of these biographies, Hatan, after his defeat by Liting on the river Kui lui (Kuilar?), fled, and perished. According to the second biography, Hatan’s dwelling (on the Amur River) was destroyed, and he disappeared. According to the third, Mangwu and Naimatai pursued Hatan to the extreme north, up to the eastern sea-coast (the mouth of the Amur). Hatan fled, but two of his wives and his son Lao-ti were taken; the latter was executed, and this was the concluding act of the suppression of the rebellion in Manchuria. We find, however, an important variante in the history of Corea; it is stated there that in 1290, Hatan and his son Lao-ti were carrying fire and slaughter to Corea, and devastated that country; they slew the inhabitants and fed on human flesh. The King of Corea fled to the Kiang-hwa island. The Coreans were not able to withstand the invasion. The Mongols sent to their aid in 1291, troops under the command of two generals, Seshekan (who was at that time governor of Liao-tung) and Namantai (evidently the above-mentioned Naimatai). The Mongols conjointly with the Coreans defeated the insurgents, who had penetrated into the very heart of the country; their corpses covered a space 30 li in extent; Hatan and his son made their way through the victorious army and fled, finding a refuge in the Niuchi (Djurdji) country, from which Laotai made a later incursion into Corea. Such is the discrepancy between historians in relating the same fact. The statement found in the Corean history seems to me more reliable than the facts given by Chinese history.” (Palladius, 35–37.)—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—This passage, and the extract from Ramusio’s version attached to the following chapter, contain the only allusions by Marco to Jews in China. John of Monte Corvino alludes to them, and so does Marignolli, who speaks of having held disputations with them at Cambaluc; Ibn Batuta also speaks of them at Khansa or Hangchau. Much has been written about the ancient settlement of Jews at Kaifungfu, in Honan. One of the most interesting papers on the subject is in the Chinese Repository, vol. xx. It gives the translation of a Chinese-Jewish Inscription, which in some respects forms a singular parallel to the celebrated Christian Inscription of Si-ngan fu, though it is of far more modern date (1511). It exhibits, as that inscription does, the effect of Chinese temperament or language, in modifying or diluting doctrinal statements. Here is a passage: “With respect to the Israelitish religion, we find on inquiry that its first ancestor, Adam, came originally from India, and that during the (period of the) Chau State the Sacred Writings were already in existence. The Sacred Writings, embodying Eternal Reason, consist of 53 sections. The principles therein contained are very abstruse, and the Eternal Reason therein revealed is very mysterious, being treated with the same veneration as Heaven. The founder of the religion is Abraham, who is considered the first teacher of it. Then came Moses, who established the Law, and handed down the Sacred Writings. After his time, during the Han Dynasty (B.C. 206 to A.D. 221), this religion entered China. In (A.D.) 1164, a synagogue was built at P’ien. In (A.D.) 1296, the old Temple was rebuilt, as a place in which the Sacred Writings might be deposited with veneration.”
[According to their oral tradition, the Jews came to China from Si Yĭh (Western Regions), probably Persia, by Khorasan and Samarkand, during the first century of our era, in the reign of the Emperor Ming-ti (A.D. 58–75) of the Han Dynasty. They were at times confounded with the followers of religions of India, T’ien Chu kiao, and very often with the Mohammedans Hwui-Hwui or Hwui-tzŭ; the common name of their religion was Tiao kin kiao, “Extract Sinew Religion.” However, three lapidary inscriptions, kept at Kaï-fung, give different dates for the arrival of the Jews in China: one dated 1489 (2nd year Hung Che, Ming Dynasty) says that seventy Jewish families arrived at P’ien liang (Kaï-fung) at the time of the Sung (A.D. 960–1278); one dated 1512 (7th year Chêng Têh) says that the Jewish religion was introduced into China under the Han Dynasty (B.C. 206–A.D. 221), and the last one dated 1663 (2nd year K’ang-hi) says that this religion was first preached in China under the Chau Dynasty (B.C. 1122–255); this will not bear discussion.
The synagogue, according to these inscriptions, was built in 1163, under the Sung Emperor Hiao; under the Yuen, in 1279, the rabbi rebuilt the ancient temple known as Ts’ing Chen sse, probably on the site of a ruined mosque; the synagogue was rebuilt in 1421 during the reign of Yung-lo; it was destroyed by an inundation of the Hwang-ho in 1642, and the Jews began to rebuild it once more in 1653.
The first knowledge Europeans had of a colony of Jews at K’aï-fung fu, in the Ho-nan province, was obtained through the Jesuit missionaries at Peking, at the beginning of the 17th century; the celebrated Matteo Ricci having received the visit of a young Jew, the Jesuits Aleni (1613), Gozani (1704), Gaubil and Domenge who made in 1721 two plans of the synagogue, visited Kaï-fung and brought back some documents. In 1850, a mission of enquiry was sent to that place by the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews; the results of this mission were published at Shang-haï, in 1851, by Bishop G. Smith of Hongkong; fac-similes of the Hebrew manuscripts obtained at the synagogue of Kaï-fung were also printed at Shang-haï at the London Missionary Society’s Press, in the same year. The Jewish merchants of London sent in 1760 to their brethren of Kaï-fung a letter written in Hebrew; a Jewish merchant of Vienna, J. L. Liebermann, visited the Kaï-fung colony in 1867. At the time of the T’aï-P’ing rising, the rebels marched against Kaï-fung in 1857, and with the rest of the population, the Jews were dispersed. (J. Tobar, Insc. juives de Kaï-fong-fou, 1900; Henri Cordier, Les Juifs en Chine, and Fung and Wagnall’s Jewish Encyclopedia.) Palladius writes (p. 38), “The Jews are mentioned for the first time in the Yuen shi (ch. xxxiii. p. 7), under the year 1329, on the occasion of the re-establishment of the law for the collection of taxes from dissidents. Mention of them is made again under the year 1354, ch. xliii. fol. 10, when on account of several insurrections in China, rich Mahommetans and Jews were invited to the capital in order to join the army. In both cases they are named Chu hu (Djuhud).”—H. C.]
The synagogue at Kaifungfu has recently been demolished for the sake of its materials, by the survivors of the Jewish community themselves, who were too poor to repair it. The tablet that once adorned its entrance, bearing in gilt characters the name Eszloyih (Israel), has been appropriated by a mosque. The 300 or 400 survivors seem in danger of absorption into the Mahomedan or heathen population. The last Rabbi and possessor of the sacred tongue died some thirty or forty years ago, the worship has ceased, and their traditions have almost died away.
(Cathay, 225, 341, 497; Ch. Rep. XX. 436; Dr. Martin, in J. N. China Br. R. A. S. 1866, pp. 32–33.)
CHAPTER VI.
How the Great Kaan went back to the City of Cambaluc.
And after the Great Kaan had defeated Nayan in the way you have heard, he went back to his capital city of Cambaluc and abode there, taking his ease and making festivity. And the other Tartar Lord called Caydu was greatly troubled when he heard of the defeat and death of Nayan, and held himself in readiness for war; but he stood greatly in fear of being handled as Nayan had been.[{1}]
I told you that the Great Kaan never went on a campaign but once, and it was on this occasion; in all other cases of need he sent his sons or his barons into the field. But this time he would have none go in command but himself, for he regarded the presumptuous rebellion of Nayan as far too serious and perilous an affair to be otherwise dealt with.
[Note 1.]—Here Ramusio has a long and curious addition. Kúblái, it says, remained at Cambaluc till March, “in which our Easter occurs; and learning that this was one of our chief festivals, he summoned all the Christians, and bade them bring with them the Book of the Four Gospels. This he caused to be incensed many times with great ceremony, kissing it himself most devoutly, and desiring all the barons and lords who were present to do the same. And he always acts in this fashion at the chief Christian festivals, such as Easter and Christmas. And he does the like at the chief feasts of the Saracens, Jews, and Idolaters. On being asked why, he said: ‘There are Four Prophets worshipped and revered by all the world. The Christians say their God is Jesus Christ; the Saracens, Mahommet; the Jews, Moses; the Idolaters, Sogomon Borcan [Sakya-Muni Burkhan or Buddha], who was the first god among the idols; and I worship and pay respect to all four, and pray that he among them who is greatest in heaven in very truth may aid me.’ But the Great Khan let it be seen well enough that he held the Christian Faith to be the truest and best—for, as he says, it commands nothing that is not perfectly good and holy. But he will not allow the Christians to carry the Cross before them, because on it was scourged and put to death a person so great and exalted as Christ.
“Some one may say: ‘Since he holds the Christian faith to be best, why does he not attach himself to it, and become a Christian?’ Well, this is the reason that he gave to Messer Nicolo and Messer Maffeo, when he sent them as his envoys to the Pope, and when they sometimes took occasion to speak to him about the faith of Christ. He said: ‘How would you have me to become a Christian? You see that the Christians of these parts are so ignorant that they achieve nothing and can achieve nothing, whilst you see the Idolaters can do anything they please, insomuch that when I sit at table the cups from the middle of the hall come to me full of wine or other liquor without being touched by anybody, and I drink from them. They control storms, causing them to pass in whatever direction they please, and do many other marvels; whilst, as you know, their idols speak, and give them predictions on whatever subjects they choose. But if I were to turn to the faith of Christ and become a Christian, then my barons and others who are not converted would say: “What has moved you to be baptised and to take up the faith of Christ? What powers or miracles have you witnessed on His part?” (You know the Idolaters here say that their wonders are performed by the sanctity and power of their idols.) Well, I should not know what answer to make; so they would only be confirmed in their errors, and the Idolaters, who are adepts in such surprising arts, would easily compass my death. But now you shall go to your Pope, and pray him on my part to send hither an hundred men skilled in your law, who shall be capable of rebuking the practices of the Idolaters to their faces, and of telling them that they too know how to do such things but will not, because they are done by the help of the devil and other evil spirits, and shall so control the Idolaters that these shall have no power to perform such things in their presence. When we shall witness this we will denounce the Idolaters and their religion, and then I will receive baptism; and when I shall have been baptised, then all my barons and chiefs shall be baptised also, and their followers shall do the like, and thus in the end there will be more Christians here than exist in your part of the world!’
“And if the Pope, as was said in the beginning of this book, had sent men fit to preach our religion, the Grand Kaan would have turned Christian; for it is an undoubted fact that he greatly desired to do so.”
In the simultaneous patronage of different religions, Kúblái followed the practice of his house. Thus Rubruquis writes of his predecessor Mangku Kaan: “It is his custom, on such days as his diviners tell him to be festivals, or any of the Nestorian priests declare to be holydays, to hold a court. On these occasions the Christian priests enter first with their paraphernalia, and pray for him, and bless his cup. They retire, and then come the Saracen priests and do likewise; the priests of the Idolaters follow. He all the while believes in none of them, though they all follow his court as flies follow honey. He bestows his gifts on all of them, each party believes itself to be his favourite, and all prophesy smooth things to him.” Abulfaragius calls Kúblái “a just prince and a wise, who loved Christians and honoured physicians of learning, whatsoever their nation.”
There is a good deal in Kúblái that reminds us of the greatest prince of that other great Mongol house, Akbar. And if we trusted the first impression of the passage just quoted from Ramusio, we might suppose that the grandson of Chinghiz too had some of that real wistful regard towards the Lord Jesus Christ, of which we seem to see traces in the grandson of Baber. But with Kúblái, as with his predecessors, religion seems to have been only a political matter; and this aspect of the thing will easily be recognised in a re-perusal of his conversation with Messer Nicolas and Messer Maffeo. The Kaan must be obeyed; how man shall worship God is indifferent; this was the constant policy of his house in the days of its greatness. Kúblái, as Koeppen observes, the first of his line to raise himself above the natural and systematic barbarism of the Mongols, probably saw in the promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, already spread to some extent among them, the readiest means of civilising his countrymen. But he may have been quite sincere in saying what is here ascribed to him in this sense, viz.: that if the Latin Church, with its superiority of character and acquirement, had come to his aid as he had once requested, he would gladly have used its missionaries as his civilising instruments instead of the Lamas and their trumpery. (Rubr. 313; Assemani, III. pt. ii. 107; Koeppen, II. 89, 96.)
CHAPTER VII.
How the Kaan rewarded the Valour of his Captains.
So we will have done with this matter of Nayan, and go on with our account of the great state of the Great Kaan.
We have already told you of his lineage and of his age; but now I must tell you what he did after his return, in regard to those barons who had behaved well in the battle. Him who was before captain of 100 he made captain of 1000; and him who was captain of 1000 men he made to be captain of 10,000, advancing every man according to his deserts and to his previous rank. Besides that, he also made them presents of fine silver plate and other rich appointments; gave them Tablets of Authority of a higher degree than they held before; and bestowed upon them fine jewels of gold and silver, and pearls and precious stones; insomuch that the amount that fell to each of them was something astonishing. And yet ’twas not so much as they had deserved; for never were men seen who did such feats of arms for the love and honour of their Lord, as these had done on that day of the battle.[{1}]
Now those Tablets of Authority, of which I have spoken, are ordered in this way. The officer who is a captain of 100 hath a tablet of silver; the captain of 1000 hath a tablet of gold or silver-gilt; the commander of 10,000 hath a tablet of gold, with a lion’s head on it. And I will tell you the weight of the different tablets, and what they denote. The tablets of the captains of 100 and 1000 weigh each of them 120 saggi; and the tablet with the lion’s head engraven on it, which is that of the commander of 10,000, weighs 220 saggi. And on each of the tablets is inscribed a device, which runs: “By the strength of the great God, and of the great grace which He hath accorded to our Emperor, may the name of the Kaan be blessed; and let all such as will not obey him be slain and be destroyed.” And I will tell you besides that all who hold these tablets likewise receive warrants in writing, declaring all their powers and privileges.
I should mention too that an officer who holds the chief command of 100,000 men, or who is general-in-chief of a great host, is entitled to a tablet that weighs 300 saggi. It has an inscription thereon to the same purport that I have told you already, and below the inscription there is the figure of a lion, and below the lion the sun and moon. They have warrants also of their high rank, command, and power.[{2}] Every one, moreover, who holds a tablet of this exalted degree is entitled, whenever he goes abroad, to have a little golden canopy, such as is called an umbrella, carried on a spear over his head in token of his high command. And whenever he sits, he sits in a silver chair.[{3}]
To certain very great lords also there is given a tablet with gerfalcons on it; this is only to the very greatest of the Kaan’s barons, and it confers on them his own full power and authority; so that if one of those chiefs wishes to send a messenger any whither, he can seize the horses of any man, be he even a king, and any other chattels at his pleasure.[{4}]
[Note 1.]—So Sanang Setzen relates that Chinghiz, on returning from one of his great campaigns, busied himself in reorganising his forces and bestowing rank and title, according to the deserts of each, on his nine Orlok, or marshals, and all who had done good service. “He named commandants over hundreds, over thousands, over ten thousands, over hundred thousands, and opened his treasury to the multitude of the people” (p. 91).
[Note 2.]—We have several times already had mention of these tablets. (See Prologue, [ch. viii.] and [xviii.]) The earliest European allusion to them is in Rubruquis: “And Mangu gave to the Moghul (whom he was going to send to the King of France) a bull of his, that is to say, a golden plate of a palm in breadth and half a cubit in length, on which his orders were inscribed. Whosoever is the bearer of that may order what he pleases, and his order shall be executed straightway.”
These golden bulls of the Mongol Kaans appear to have been originally tokens of high favour and honour, though afterwards they became more frequent and conventional. They are often spoken of by the Persian historians of the Mongols under the name of Páïzah, and sometimes Páïzah Sir-i-Sher, or “Lion’s Head Paizah.” Thus, in a firmán of Ghazan Khan, naming a viceroy to his conquests in Syria, the Khan confers on the latter “the sword, the august standard, the drum, and the Lion’s Head Paizah.” Most frequently the grant of this honour is coupled with Yarlígh; “to such an one were granted Yarlígh and Páïzah,” the former word (which is still applied in Turkey to the Sultan’s rescripts) denoting the written patent which accompanies the grant of the tablet, just as the sovereign’s warrant accompanies the badge of a modern Order. Of such written patents also Marco speaks in this passage, and as he uttered it, no doubt the familiar words Yarlígh u Páïzah were in his mind. The Armenian history of the Orpelians, relating the visit of Prince Sempad, brother of King Hayton, to the court of Mangku Kaan, says: “They gave him also a P’haiza of gold, i.e. a tablet whereon the name of God is written by the Great Kaan himself; and this constitutes the greatest honour known among the Mongols. Farther, they drew up for him a sort of patent, which the Mongols call Iarlekh,” etc. The Latin version of a grant by Uzbek Khan of Kipchak to the Venetian Andrea Zeno, in 1333,[1] ends with the words: “Dedimus baisa et privilegium cum bullis rubeis,” where the latter words no doubt represent the Yarlígh al-tamghá, the warrant with the red seal or stamp,[2] as it may be seen upon the letter of Arghun Khan. (See plate at ch. xvii. of Bk. IV.) So also Janibek, the son of Uzbek, in 1344, confers privileges on the Venetians, “eisdem dando baissinum de auro”; and again Bardibeg, son, murderer, and successor of Janibeg, in 1358, writes: “Avemo dado comandamento [i.e. Yarlíg] cum le bolle rosse, et lo paysam.”
Seljukian Coin with the Lion and Sun.
Under the Persian branch, at least, of the house the degree of honour was indicated by the number of lions’ heads upon the plate, which varied from 1 to 5. The Lion and Sun, a symbol which survives, or has been revived, in the modern Persian decoration so called, formed the emblem of the Sun in Leo, i.e. in highest power. It had already been used on the coins of the Seljukian sovereigns of Persia and Iconium; it appears on coins of the Mongol Ilkhans Ghazan, Oljaïtu, and Abusaid, and it is also found on some of those of Mahomed Uzbek Khan of Kipchak.
Hammer gives regulations of Ghazan Khan’s on the subject of the Paizah, from which it is seen that the latter were of different kinds as well as degrees. Some were held by great governors and officers of state, and these were cautioned against letting the Paizah out of their own keeping; others were for officers of inferior order; and, again, “for persons travelling on state commissions with post-horses, particular paizah (which Hammer says were of brass) are appointed, on which their names are inscribed.” These last would seem therefore to be merely such permissions to travel by the Government post-horses as are still required in Russia, perhaps in lineal derivation from Mongol practice. The terms of Ghazan’s decree and other contemporary notices show that great abuses were practised with the Paizah, as an authority for living at free quarters and making other arbitrary exactions.
The word Paizah is said to be Chinese, Pai-tseu, “a tablet.” A trace of the name and the thing still survives in Mongolia. The horse-Bai is the name applied to a certain ornament on the horse caparison, which gives the rider a title to be furnished with horses and provisions on a journey.
“TABLE D’OR DE COMMANDEMENT,”
THE PAÏZA OF THE MONGOLS
FROM A SPECIMEN FOUND IN
E. SIBERIA.Where I have used the Venetian term saggio, the French texts have here and elsewhere saics and saies, and sometimes pois. Saic points to saiga, which, according to Dupré de St. Maur, is in the Salic laws the equivalent of a denier or the twelfth part of a sol. Saggio is possibly the same word, or rather may have been confounded with it, but the saggio was a recognised Venetian weight equal to ⅙ of an ounce. We shall see hereafter that Polo appears to use it to indicate the misḳál, a weight which may be taken at 74 grains Troy. On that supposition the smallest tablet specified in the text would weigh 18½ ozs. Troy.
I do not know if any gold Paizah has been discovered, but several of silver have been found in the Russian dominions; one near the Dnieper, and two in Eastern Siberia. The first of our plates represents one of these, which was found in the Minusinsk circle of the Government of Yenisei in 1846, and is now in the Asiatic Museum of the Academy of St. Petersburg. For the sake of better illustration of our text, I have taken the liberty to represent the tablet as of gold, instead of silver with only the inscription gilt. The moulded ring inserted in the orifice, to suspend the plate by, is of iron. On the reverse side the ring bears some Chinese characters engraved, which are interpreted as meaning “Publication No. 42.” The inscription on the plate itself is in the Mongol language and Baspa character (supra, [Prologue, note 1, ch. xv.]), and its purport is a remarkable testimony to the exactness of Marco’s account, and almost a proof of his knowledge of the language and character in which the inscriptions were engraved. It runs, according to Schmidt’s version: “By the strength of the eternal heaven! May the name of the Khagan be holy! Who pays him not reverence is to be slain, and must die!” The inscriptions on the other plates discovered were essentially similar in meaning. Our second plate shows one of them with the inscription in the Uighúr character.
The superficial dimensions of the Yenisei tablet, as taken from Schmidt’s full-size drawing, are 12·2 in. by 3·65 in. The weight is not given.
In the French texts nothing is said of the size of the tablets. But Ramusio’s copy in the Prologue, where the tables given by Kiacatu are mentioned (supra, [p. 35]), says that they were a cubit in length and 5 fingers in breadth, and weighed 3 to 4 marks each, i.e. 24 to 32 ounces.
(Dupré de St. Maur, Essai sur les Monnoies, etc., 1746, p. viii.; also (on saiga) see Pertz, Script. XVII. 357; Rubruq. 312; Golden Horde, 219–220, 521; Ilch. II. 166 seqq., 355–356; D’Ohsson, III. 412–413; Q. R. 177–180; Ham. Wassáf, 154, 176; Makrizi, IV. 158; St. Martin, Mém. sur l’Arménie, II. 137, 169; M. Mas Latrie in Bibl. de l’Éc. des Chartes, IV. 585 seqq.; J. As. sér. V. tom. xvii. 536 seqq.; Schmidt, über eine Mongol. Quadratinschrift, etc., Acad. St. P., 1847; Russian paper by Grigorieff on same subject, 1846.)
[“The History tells us (Liao Shih, Bk. LVII. f. 2) that the official silver tablets p’ai tzŭ of the period were 600 in number, about a foot in length, and that they were engraved with an inscription like the above [‘Our imperial order for post horses. Urgent.’] in national characters (kuo tzŭ), and that when there was important state business the Emperor personally handed the tablet to the envoy, which entitled him to demand horses at the post stations, and to be treated as if he were the Emperor himself travelling. When the tablet was marked ‘Urgent,’ he had the right to take private horses, and was required to ride, night and day, 700 li in twenty-four hours. On his return he had to give back the tablet to the Emperor, who handed it to the prince who had the custody of the state tablets and seals.” (Dr. S. W. Bushell, Actes XI. Cong. Int. Orient., Paris, p. 17.)
“The Kin, in the thirteenth century, used badges of office made of silver. They were rectangular, bore the imperial seal, and an inscription indicative of the duty of the bearer. (Chavannes, Voyageurs chez les Khitans, 102.) The Nü-chên at an earlier date used wooden pai-tzŭ tied to each horseman and horse, to distinguish them by. (Ma Tuan-lin, Bk. 327, 11.)” (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 181, note.)
“Tiger’s tablets—Sinice Hu fu, and p’ai tsze in the common language. The Mongols had them of several kinds, which differed by the metal, of which they were made, as well as by the number of pearls (one, two, or three in number), which were incrusted in the upper part of the tablet. Falcon’s tablets with the figure of a falcon were round, and used to be given only to special couriers and envoys of the Khan. [Yuen shi lui pien and Yuen ch’ao tien chang.] The use of the Hu-fu was adopted by the Mongols probably from the Kin.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 39.)
Rubruquis (Rockhill’s ed. pp. 153–154) says:—“And whenever the principal envoy [of Longa] came to court he carried a highly-polished tablet of ivory about a cubit long and half a palm wide. Every time he spoke to the chan or some great personage, he always looked at that tablet as if he found there what he had to say, nor did he look to the right or the left, nor in the face of him with whom he was talking. Likewise, when coming into the presence of the Lord, and when leaving it, he never looked at anything but his tablet.” Mr. Rockhill observes: “These tablets are called hu in Chinese, and were used in China and Korea; in the latter country down to quite recent times. They were made of jade, ivory, bamboo, etc., according to the rank of the owner, and were about three feet long. The hu was originally used to make memoranda on of the business to be submitted by the bearer to the Emperor or to write the answers to questions he had had submitted to them. Odoric also refers to ‘the tablets of white ivory which the Emperor’s barons held in their hands as they stood silent before him.’”
(Cf. the golden tablets which were of various classes with a tiger for image and pearls for ornaments, Devéria, Epigraphie, p. 15 et seq.)—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—Umbrella. The phrase in Pauthier’s text is “Palieque que on dit ombrel.” The Latin text of the Soc. de Géographie has “unum pallium de auro,” which I have adopted as probably correct, looking to Burma, where the old etiquettes as to umbrellas are in full force. These etiquettes were probably in both countries of old Hindu origin. Pallium, according to Muratori, was applied in the Middle Ages to a kind of square umbrella, by which is probably meant rather a canopy on four staves, which was sometimes assigned by authority as an honourable privilege.
But the genuine umbrella would seem to have been used also, for Polo’s contemporary, Martino da Canale, says that, when the Doge goes forth of his palace, “si vait apres lui un damoiseau qui porte une umbrele de dras à or sur son chief,” which umbrella had been given by “Monseigneur l’Apostoille.” There is a picture by Girolamo Gambarota, in the Sala del Gran Consiglio, at Venice, which represents the investiture of the Doge with the umbrella by Pope Alexander III., and Frederick Barbarossa (concerning which see Sanuto Junior, in Muratori, XXII. 512).
The word Parasol also occurs in the Petrarchian vocabulary, (14th century) as the equivalent of saioual (Pers. sáyában or sáiwán, an umbrella). Carpini notices that umbrellas (solinum vel tentoriolum in hastâ) were carried over the Tartar nobles and their wives, even on horseback; and a splendid one, covered with jewels, was one of the presents made to Kuyuk Kaan on his enthronement.
With respect to the honorary character attaching to umbrellas in China, I may notice that recently an English resident of Ningpo, on his departure for Europe, was presented by the Chinese citizens, as a token of honour, with a pair of Wan min sàn, umbrellas of enormous size.
The umbrella must have gone through some curious vicissitudes; for at one time we find it familiar, at a later date apparently unknown, and then reintroduced as some strange novelty. Arrian speaks of the σκιάδια, or umbrellas, as used by all Indians of any consideration; but the thing of which he spoke was familiar to the use of Greek and Roman ladies, and many examples of it, borne by slaves behind their mistresses, are found on ancient vase-paintings. Athenaeus quotes from Anacreon the description of a “beggar on horseback” who
“like a woman bears
An ivory parasol over his delicate head.”
Second Example of a
Mongol Païza,
with Superscription in the Uighúr Character,
found near the River Dnieper,
1845.An Indian prince, in a Sanskrit inscription of the 9th century, boasts of having wrested from the King of Márwár the two umbrellas pleasing to Parvati, and white as the summer moonbeams. Prithi Ráj, the last Hindu king of Delhi, is depicted by the poet Chand as shaded by a white umbrella on a golden staff. An unmistakable umbrella, copied from a Saxon MS. in the Harleian collection, is engraved in Wright’s History of Domestic Manners, p. 75. The fact that the gold umbrella is one of the paraphernalia of high church dignitaries in Italy seems to presume acquaintance with the thing from a remote period. A decorated umbrella also accompanies the host when sent out to the sick, at least where I write, in Palermo. Ibn Batuta says that in his time all the people of Constantinople, civil and military, great and small, carried great umbrellas over their heads, summer and winter. Ducange quotes, from a MS. of the Paris Library, the Byzantine court regulations about umbrellas, which are of the genuine Pan-Asiatic spirit;—σκιάδια χρυσοκóκκινα extend from the Hypersebastus to the grand Stratopedarchus, and so on; exactly as used to be the case, with different titles, in Java. And yet it is curious that John Marignolli, Ibn Batuta’s contemporary in the middle of the 14th century, and Barbosa in the 16th century, are alike at pains to describe the umbrella as some strange object. And in our own country it is commonly stated that the umbrella was first used in the last century, and that Jonas Hanway (died 1786) was one of the first persons who made a practice of carrying one. The word umbrello is, however, in Minsheu’s dictionary. [See Hobson-Jobson, s.v. Umbrella.—H. C.]
(Murat. Dissert. II. 229; Archiv. Storic. Ital. VIII. 274, 560; Klapr. Mém. III.; Carp. 759; N. and Q., C. and J. II. 180; Arrian, Indica, XVI.; Smith’s Dict., G. and R. Ant., s.v. umbraculum; J. R. A. S. v. 351; Rás Mála, I. 221; I. B. II. 440; Cathay, 381; Ramus. I. f. 301.)
Alexander, according to Athenaeus, feasted his captains to the number of 6000, and made them all sit upon silver chairs. The same author relates that the King of Persia, among other rich presents, bestowed upon Entimus the Gortynian, who went up to the king in imitation of Themistocles, a silver chair and a gilt umbrella. (Bk. I. Epit. ch. 31, and II. 31.)
The silver chair has come down to our own day in India, and is much affected by native princes.
[Note 4.]—I have not been able to find any allusion, except in our author, to tablets, with gerfalcons (shonḳár). The shonḳár appears, however, according to Erdmann, on certain coins of the Golden Horde, struck at Sarai.
There is a passage from Wassáf used by Hammer, in whose words it runs that the Sayad Imámuddín, appointed (A.D. 683) governor of Shiraz by Arghun Khan, “was invested with both the Mongol symbols of delegated sovereignty, the Golden Lion’s Head, and the golden Cat’s Head.” It would certainly have been more satisfactory to find “Gerfalcon’s Head” in lieu of the latter; but it is probable that the same object is meant. The cut below exhibits the conventional effigy of a gerfalcon as sculptured over one of the gates of Iconium, Polo’s Conia. The head might easily pass for a conventional representation of a cat’s head, and is indeed strikingly like the grotesque representation that bears that name in mediæval architecture. (Erdmann, Numi Asiatici, I. 339; Ilch. I. 370.)
Sculptured Gerfalcon. (From the Gate of Iconium.)
[1] “In anno Simiae, octavâ lunâ, die quarto exeunte, juxta fluvium Cobam (the Ḳuban), apud Ripam Rubeam existentes scripsimus.” The original was in linguâ Persaycâ.
[2] See Golden Horde, p. 218.
CHAPTER VIII.
Concerning the Person of the Great Kaan.
The personal appearance of the Great Kaan, Lord of Lords, whose name is Cublay, is such as I shall now tell you. He is of a good stature, neither tall nor short, but of a middle height. He has a becoming amount of flesh, and is very shapely in all his limbs. His complexion is white and red, the eyes black and fine,[{1}] the nose well formed and well set on. He has four wives, whom he retains permanently as his legitimate consorts; and the eldest of his sons by those four wives ought by rights to be emperor;—I mean when his father dies. Those four ladies are called empresses, but each is distinguished also by her proper name. And each of them has a special court of her own, very grand and ample; no one of them having fewer than 300 fair and charming damsels. They have also many pages and eunuchs, and a number of other attendants of both sexes; so that each of these ladies has not less than 10,000 persons attached to her court.[{2}]
When the Emperor desires the society of one of these four consorts, he will sometimes send for the lady to his apartment and sometimes visit her at her own. He has also a great number of concubines, and I will tell you how he obtains them.
You must know that there is a tribe of Tartars called Ungrat, who are noted for their beauty. Now every year an hundred of the most beautiful maidens of this tribe are sent to the Great Kaan, who commits them to the charge of certain elderly ladies dwelling in his palace. And these old ladies make the girls sleep with them, in order to ascertain if they have sweet breath [and do not snore], and are sound in all their limbs. Then such of them as are of approved beauty, and are good and sound in all respects, are appointed to attend on the Emperor by turns. Thus six of these damsels take their turn for three days and nights, and wait on him when he is in his chamber and when he is in his bed, to serve him in any way, and to be entirely at his orders. At the end of the three days and nights they are relieved by other six. And so throughout the year, there are reliefs of maidens by six and six, changing every three days and nights.[{3}]
Portrait of Kúblái Kaan. (From a Chinese Engraving.)
[Note 1.]—We are left in some doubt as to the colour of Kúblái’s eyes, for some of the MSS. read vairs and voirs, and others noirs. The former is a very common epithet for eyes in the mediæval romances. And in the ballad on the death of St. Lewis, we are told of his son Tristram:—
“Droiz fu comme un rosel, iex vairs comme faucon,
Dès le tens Moysel ne nasqui sa façon.”
The word has generally been interpreted bluish-grey, but in the passage just quoted, Fr.-Michel explains it by brillans. However, the evidence for noirs here seems strongest. Rashiduddin says that when Kúblái was born Chinghiz expressed surprise at the child’s being so brown, as its father and all his other sons were fair. Indeed, we are told that the descendants of Yesugai (the father of Chinghiz) were in general distinguished by blue eyes and reddish hair. (Michel’s Joinville, p. 324; D’Ohsson, II. 475; Erdmann, 252.)
[Note 2.]—According to Hammer’s authority (Rashid?) Kúblái had seven wives; Gaubil’s Chinese sources assign him five, with the title of empress (Hwang-heu). Of these the best beloved was the beautiful Jamúi Khátún (Lady or Empress Jamúi, illustrating what the text says of the manner of styling these ladies), who bore him four sons and five daughters. Rashiduddin adds that she was called Ḳún Ḳú, or the great consort, evidently the term Hwang-heu. (Gen. Tables in Hammer’s Ilkhans; Gaubil, 223; Erdmann, 200.)
[“Kúblái’s four wives, i.e. the empresses of the first, second, third, and fourth ordos. Ordo is, properly speaking, a separate palace of the Khan, under the management of one of his wives. Chinese authors translate therefore the word ordo by ‘harem.’ The four Ordo established by Chingis Khan were destined for the empresses, who were chosen out of four different nomad tribes. During the reign of the first four Khans, who lived in Mongolia, the four ordo were considerably distant one from another, and the Khans visited them in different seasons of the year; they existed nominally as long as China remained under Mongol domination. The custom of choosing the empress out of certain tribes, was in the course of time set aside by the Khans. The empress, wife of the last Mongol Khan in China, was a Corean princess by birth; and she contributed in a great measure to the downfall of the Mongol Dynasty.” (Palladius, 40.)
I do not believe that Rashiduddin’s Kún Kú is the term Hwang-keu; it is the term Kiūn Chu, King or Queen, a sovereign.—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—Ungrat, the reading of the Crusca, seems to be that to which the others point, and I doubt not that it represents the great Mongol tribe of Ḳungurat, which gave more wives than any other to the princes of the house of Chinghiz; a conclusion in which I find I have been anticipated by De Mailla or his editor (IX. 426). To this tribe (which, according to Vámbéry, took its name from (Turki) Kongur-At, “Chestnut Horse”) belonged Burteh Fujin, the favourite wife of Chinghiz himself, and mother of his four heirs; to the same tribe belonged the two wives of Chagatai, two of Hulaku’s seven wives, one of Mangku Kaan’s, two at least of Kúblái’s including the beloved Jamúi Khátún, one at least of Abaka’s, two of Ahmed Tigudar’s, two of Arghun’s, and two of Ghazan’s.
The seat of the Ḳungurats was near the Great Wall. Their name is still applied to one of the tribes of the Uzbeks of Western Turkestan, whose body appears to have been made up of fractions of many of the Turk and Mongol tribes. Kungurat is also the name of a town of Khiva, near the Sea of Aral, perhaps borrowed from the Uzbek clan.
The conversion of Ḳungurat into Ungrat is due, I suppose, to that Mongol tendency to soften gutturals which has been before noticed. (Erdm. 199–200; Hammer, passim; Burnes, III. 143, 225.)
The Ramusian version adds here these curious and apparently genuine particulars:—
“The Great Kaan sends his commissioners to the Province to select four or five hundred, or whatever number may be ordered, of the most beautiful young women, according to the scale of beauty enjoined upon them. And they set a value upon the comparative beauty of the damsels in this way. The commissioners on arriving assemble all the girls of the province, in presence of appraisers appointed for the purpose. These carefully survey the points of each girl in succession, as (for example) her hair, her complexion, eyebrows, mouth, lips, and the proportion of all her limbs. They will then set down some as estimated at 16 carats, some at 17, 18, 20, or more or less, according to the sum of the beauties or defects of each. And whatever standard the Great Kaan may have fixed for those that are to be brought to him, whether it be 20 carats or 21, the commissioners select the required number from those who have attained that standard, and bring them to him. And when they reach his presence he has them appraised anew by other parties, and has a selection made of 30 or 40 of those, who then get the highest valuation.”
Marsden and Murray miss the meaning of this curious statement in a surprising manner, supposing the carat to represent some absolute value, 4 grains of gold according to the former, whence the damsel of 20 carats was estimated at 13s. 4d.! This is sad nonsense; but Marsden would not have made the mistake had he not been fortunate enough to live before the introduction of Competitive Examinations. This Kungurat business was in fact a competitive examination in beauty; total marks attainable 24; no candidate to pass who did not get 20 or 21. Carat expresses n ÷ 24, not any absolute value.
Apart from the mode of valuation, it appears that a like system of selection was continued by the Ming, and that some such selection from the daughters of the Manchu nobles has been maintained till recent times. Herodotus tells that the like custom prevailed among the Adyrmachidae, the Libyan tribe next Egypt. Old Eden too relates it of the “Princes of Moscovia.” (Middle Km. I. 318; Herod. IV. 168, Rawl.; Notes on Russia, Hak. Soc. II. 253.)
CHAPTER IX.
Concerning the Great Kaan’s Sons.
The Emperor hath, by those four wives of his, twenty-two male children; the eldest of whom was called Chinkin for the love of the good Chinghis Kaan, the first Lord of the Tartars. And this Chinkin, as the Eldest Son of the Kaan, was to have reigned after his father’s death; but, as it came to pass, he died. He left a son behind him, however, whose name is Temur, and he is to be the Great Kaan and Emperor after the death of his Grandfather, as is but right; he being the child of the Great Kaan’s eldest son. And this Temur is an able and brave man, as he hath already proven on many occasions.[{1}]
The Great Kaan hath also twenty-five other sons by his concubines; and these are good and valiant soldiers, and each of them is a great chief. I tell you moreover that of his children by his four lawful wives there are seven who are kings of vast realms or provinces, and govern them well; being all able and gallant men, as might be expected. For the Great Kaan their sire is, I tell you, the wisest and most accomplished man, the greatest Captain, the best to govern men and rule an Empire, as well as the most valiant, that ever has existed among all the Tribes of Tartars.[{2}]
[Note 1.]—Kúblái had a son older than Chimkin or Chingkim, to whom Hammer’s Genealogical Table gives the name of Jurji, and attributes a son called Ananda. The Chinese authorities of Gaubil and Pauthier call him Turchi or Torchi, i.e. Dorjé, “Noble Stone,” the Tibetan name of a sacred Buddhist emblem in the form of a dumb-bell, representing the Vajra or Thunderbolt. Probably Dorjé died early, as in the passage we shall quote from Wassáf also Chingkim is styled the Eldest Son: Marco is probably wrong in connecting the name of the latter with that of Chinghiz. Schmidt says that he does not know what Chingkim means.
[Mr. Parker says that Chen kim was the third son of Kúblái (China Review, xxiv. p. 94). Teimur, son of Chen kim, wore the temple name (miao-hao) of Ch’êng Tsung and the title of reign (nien-hao) of Yuen Chêng and Ta Téh.—H. C.]
Chingkim died in the 12th moon of 1284–1285, aged 43. He had received a Chinese education, and the Chinese Annals ascribe to him all the virtues which so often pertain in history to heirs apparent who have not reigned.
“When Kúblái approached his 70th year,” says Wassáf, “he desired to raise his eldest son Chimkin to the position of his representative and declared successor, during his own lifetime; so he took counsel with the chiefs, in view to giving the Prince a share of his authority and a place on the Imperial Throne. The chiefs, who are the Pillars of Majesty and Props of the Empire, represented that His Majesty’s proposal to invest his Son, during his own lifetime, with Imperial authority, was not in accordance with the precedents and Institutes (Yasa) of the World-conquering Padshah Chinghiz Khan; but still they would consent to execute a solemn document, securing the Kaanship to Chimkin, and pledging themselves to lifelong obedience and allegiance to him. It was, however, the Divine Fiat that the intended successor should predecease him who bestowed the nomination.... The dignitaries of the Empire then united their voices in favour of Teimur, the son of Chimkin.”
Teimur, according to the same authority, was the third son of Chimkin; but the eldest, Kambala, squinted; the second, Tarmah (properly Tarmabala for Dharmaphala, a Buddhist Sanskrit name) was rickety in constitution; and on the death of the old Kaan (1294) Teimur was unanimously named to the Throne, after some opposition from Kambala, which was put down by the decided bearing of the great soldier Bayan. (Schmidt, p. 399; De Mailla, IX. 424; Gaubil, 203; Wassáf, 46.)
[The Rev. W. S. Ament (Marco Polo in Cambaluc, p. 106), makes the following remarks regarding this young prince (Chimkin): “The historians give good reasons for their regard for Chen Chin. He had from early years exhibited great promise and had shown great proficiency in the military art, in government, history, mathematics, and the Chinese classics. He was well acquainted with the condition and numbers of the inhabitants of Mongolia and China, and with the topography and commerce of the Empire (Howorth). He was much beloved by all, except by some of his father’s own ministers, whose lives were anything but exemplary. That Kúblái had full confidence in his son is shown by the fact that he put the collecting of taxes in his hands. The native historians represent him as economical in the use of money and wise in the choice of companions. He carefully watched the officers in his charge, and would tolerate no extortion of the people. After droughts, famines or floods, he would enquire into the condition of the people and liberally supply their needs, thus starting them in life again. Polo ascribes all these virtues to the Khan himself. Doubtless he possessed them in greater or less degree, but father and son were one in all these benevolent enterprises.”—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—The Chinese Annals, according to Pauthier and Gaubil, give only ten sons to Kúblái, at least by his legitimate wives; Hammer’s Table gives twelve. It is very probable that xxii. was an early clerical error in the texts of Polo for xii. Dodeci indeed occurs in one MS. (No. 37 of our Appendix F), though not one of much weight.
Of these legitimate sons Polo mentions, in different parts of his work, five by name. The following is the list from Hammer and D’Ohsson, with the Chinese forms from Pauthier in parentheses. The seven whose names are in capitals had the title of Wang or “King” of particular territories, as M. Pauthier has shown from the Chinese Annals, thus confirming Marco’s accuracy on that point.
I. Jurji or Dorjé (Torchi). II. Chimkin or Chingkim (Yu Tsung, King of Yen, i.e. Old Peking). III. Mangalai (Mankola, “King of the Pacified West”), mentioned by Polo (infra, ch. xli.) as King of Kenjanfu or Shensi. IV. Numugan (Numukan, “Pacifying King of the North”), mentioned by Polo (Bk. IV. ch. ii.) as with King George joint leader of the Kaan’s army against Kaidu. V. Kuridai (not in Chinese List). VI. Hukaji (Hukochi, “King of Yunnan”), mentioned by Polo (infra, ch. xlix.) as King of Carajan. VII. Aghrukji or Ukuruji (Gaoluchi, “King of Siping” or Tibet). VIII. Abaji (Gaiyachi?). IX. Kukju or Geukju (Khokhochu, “King of Ning” or Tangut). X. Kutuktemur (Hutulu Temurh). XI. Tukan (Thohoan, “King of Chinnan”). His command lay on the Tungking frontier, where he came to great grief in 1288, in consequence of which he was disgraced. (See Cathay, p. 272.) XII. Temkan (not in Chinese List). Gaubil’s Chinese List omits Hutulu Temurh, and introduces a prince called Gantanpouhoa as 4th son.
M. Pauthier lays great stress on Polo’s intimate knowledge of the Imperial affairs (p. 263) because he knew the name of the Hereditary Prince to be Teimur; this being, he says, the private name which could not be known until after the owner’s death, except by those in the most confidential intimacy. The public only then discovered that, like the Irishman’s dog, his real name was Turk, though he had always been called Toby! But M. Pauthier’s learning has misled him. At least the secret must have been very badly kept, for it was known in Teimur’s lifetime not only to Marco, but to Rashiduddin in Persia, and to Hayton in Armenia; to say nothing of the circumstance that the name Temur Khaghan is also used during that Emperor’s life by Oljaitu Khan of Persia in writing to the King of France a letter which M. Pauthier himself republished and commented upon. (See his book, p. 780.)
CHAPTER X.
Concerning the Palace of the Great Kaan.
You must know that for three months of the year, to wit December, January, and February, the Great Kaan resides in the capital city of Cathay, which is called Cambaluc, [and which is at the north-eastern extremity of the country]. In that city stands his great Palace, and now I will tell you what it is like.
It is enclosed all round by a great wall forming a square, each side of which is a mile in length; that is to say, the whole compass thereof is four miles. This you may depend on; it is also very thick, and a good ten paces in height, whitewashed and loop-holed all round.[{1}] At each angle of the wall there is a very fine and rich palace in which the war-harness of the Emperor is kept, such as bows and quivers,[{2}] saddles and bridles, and bowstrings, and everything needful for an army. Also midway between every two of these Corner Palaces there is another of the like; so that taking the whole compass of the enclosure you find eight vast Palaces stored with the Great Lord’s harness of war.[{3}] And you must understand that each Palace is assigned to only one kind of article; thus one is stored with bows, a second with saddles, a third with bridles, and so on in succession right round.[{4}]
The great wall has five gates on its southern face, the middle one being the great gate which is never opened on any occasion except when the Great Kaan himself goes forth or enters. Close on either side of this great gate is a smaller one by which all other people pass; and then towards each angle is another great gate, also open to people in general; so that on that side there are five gates in all.[{5}]
Inside of this wall there is a second, enclosing a space that is somewhat greater in length than in breadth. This enclosure also has eight palaces corresponding to those of the outer wall, and stored like them with the Lord’s harness of war. This wall also hath five gates on the southern face, corresponding to those in the outer wall, and hath one gate on each of the other faces, as the outer wall hath also. In the middle of the second enclosure is the Lord’s Great Palace, and I will tell you what it is like.[{6}]
You must know that it is the greatest Palace that ever was. [Towards the north it is in contact with the outer wall, whilst towards the south there is a vacant space which the Barons and the soldiers are constantly traversing.[{7}] The Palace itself] hath no upper story, but is all on the ground floor, only the basement is raised some ten palms above the surrounding soil [and this elevation is retained by a wall of marble raised to the level of the pavement, two paces in width and projecting beyond the base of the Palace so as to form a kind of terrace-walk, by which people can pass round the building, and which is exposed to view, whilst on the outer edge of the wall there is a very fine pillared balustrade; and up to this the people are allowed to come]. The roof is very lofty, and the walls of the Palace are all covered with gold and silver. They are also adorned with representations of dragons [sculptured and gilt], beasts and birds, knights and idols, and sundry other subjects. And on the ceiling too you see nothing but gold and silver and painting. [On each of the four sides there is a great marble staircase leading to the top of the marble wall, and forming the approach to the Palace.][{8}]
The Hall of the Palace is so large that it could easily dine 6000 people; and it is quite a marvel to see how many rooms there are besides. The building is altogether so vast, so rich, and so beautiful, that no man on earth could design anything superior to it. The outside of the roof also is all coloured with vermilion and yellow and green and blue and other hues, which are fixed with a varnish so fine and exquisite that they shine like crystal, and lend a resplendent lustre to the Palace as seen for a great way round.[{9}] This roof is made too with such strength and solidity that it is fit to last for ever.
[On the interior side of the Palace are large buildings with halls and chambers, where the Emperor’s private property is placed, such as his treasures of gold, silver, gems, pearls, and gold plate, and in which reside the ladies and concubines. There he occupies himself at his own convenience, and no one else has access.]
Between the two walls of the enclosure which I have described, there are fine parks and beautiful trees bearing a variety of fruits. There are beasts also of sundry kinds, such as white stags and fallow deer, gazelles and roebucks, and fine squirrels of various sorts, with numbers also of the animal that gives the musk, and all manner of other beautiful creatures,[{10}] insomuch that the whole place is full of them, and no spot remains void except where there is traffic of people going and coming. [The parks are covered with abundant grass; and the roads through them being all paved and raised two cubits above the surface, they never become muddy, nor does the rain lodge on them, but flows off into the meadows, quickening the soil and producing that abundance of herbage.]
From that corner of the enclosure which is towards the north-west there extends a fine Lake, containing foison of fish of different kinds which the Emperor hath caused to be put in there, so that whenever he desires any he can have them at his pleasure. A river enters this lake and issues from it, but there is a grating of iron or brass put up so that the fish cannot escape in that way.[{11}]
Moreover on the north side of the Palace, about a bow-shot off, there is a hill which has been made by art [from the earth dug out of the lake]; it is a good hundred paces in height and a mile in compass. This hill is entirely covered with trees that never lose their leaves, but remain ever green. And I assure you that wherever a beautiful tree may exist, and the Emperor gets news of it, he sends for it and has it transported bodily with all its roots and the earth attached to them, and planted on that hill of his. No matter how big the tree may be, he gets it carried by his elephants; and in this way he has got together the most beautiful collection of trees in all the world. And he has also caused the whole hill to be covered with the ore of azure,[{12}] which is very green. And thus not only are the trees all green, but the hill itself is all green likewise; and there is nothing to be seen on it that is not green; and hence it is called the Green Mount; and in good sooth ’tis named well.[{13}]
On the top of the hill again there is a fine big palace which is all green inside and out; and thus the hill, and the trees, and the palace form together a charming spectacle; and it is marvellous to see their uniformity of colour! Everybody who sees them is delighted. And the Great Kaan had caused this beautiful prospect to be formed for the comfort and solace and delectation of his heart.
You must know that beside the Palace (that we have been describing), i.e. the Great Palace, the Emperor has caused another to be built just like his own in every respect, and this he hath done for his son when he shall reign and be Emperor after him.[{14}] Hence it is made just in the same fashion and of the same size, so that everything can be carried on in the same manner after his own death. [It stands on the other side of the lake from the Great Kaan’s Palace, and there is a bridge crossing the water from one to the other.][{15}] The Prince in question holds now a Seal of Empire, but not with such complete authority as the Great Kaan, who remains supreme as long as he lives.
Now I am going to tell you of the chief city of Cathay, in which these Palaces stand; and why it was built, and how.
[Note 1.]—[According to the Ch’ue keng lu, translated by Bretschneider, 25, “the wall surrounding the palace ... is constructed of bricks, and is 35 ch’i in height. The construction was begun in A.D. 1271, on the 17th of the 8th month, between three and five o’clock in the afternoon, and finished next year on the 15th of the 3rd month.”—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—Tarcasci (G. T.). This word is worthy of note as the proper form of what has become in modern French carquois. The former is a transcript of the Persian Tărkăsh; the latter appears to be merely a corruption of it, arising perhaps clerically from the constant confusion of c and t in MSS. (See Defrémery, quoted by Pauthier, in loco.) [Old French tarquais (13th century), Hatzfeldt and Darmesteter’s Dict. gives; “Coivres orent ceinz et tarchais.” (Wace, Rou, III., 7698; 12th century).]
[Note 3.]—[“It seems to me [Dr. Bretschneider] that Polo took the towers, mentioned by the Chinese author, in the angles of the galleries and of the Kung-ch’eng for palaces; for further on he states, that ‘over each gate [of Cambaluc] there is a great and handsome palace.’ I have little doubt that over the gates of Cambaluc, stood lofty buildings similar to those over the gates of modern Peking. These tower-like buildings are called lou by the Chinese. It may be very likely, that at the time of Marco Polo, the war harness of the Khan was stored in these towers of the palace wall. The author of the Ch’ue keng lu, who wrote more than fifty years later, assigns to it another place.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 32.)—H. C.]
IDEAL PLAN
of the
ANCIENT PALACES
of the
MONGOL EMPERORS
AT KHANBALIGH
according to Dr. Bretschneider[Note 4.]—The stores are now outside the walls of the “Prohibited City,” corresponding to Polo’s Palace-Wall, but within the walls of the “Imperial City.” (Middle Kingdom, I. 61.) See the cut at p. 376.
[Note 5.]—The two gates near the corners apparently do not exist in the Palace now. “On the south side there are three gates to the Palace, both in the inner and the outer walls. The middle one is absolutely reserved for the entrance or exit of the Emperor; all other people pass in and out by the gate to the right or left of it.” (Trigautius, Bk. I. ch. vii.) This custom is not in China peculiar to Royalty. In private houses it is usual to have three doors leading from the court to the guest-rooms, and there is a great exercise of politeness in reference to these; the guest after much pressing is prevailed on to enter the middle door, whilst the host enters by the side. (See Deguignes, Voyages, I. 262.) [See also H. Cordier’s Hist. des Relat. de la Chine, III. ch. x. Audience Impériale.]
[“It seems Polo took the three gateways in the middle gate (Ta-ming men) for three gates, and thus speaks of five gates instead of three in the southern wall.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 27, note.)—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—Ramusio’s version here diverges from the old MSS. It makes the inner enclosure a mile square; and the second (the city of Taidu) six miles square, as here, but adds, at a mile interval, a third of eight miles square. Now it is remarkable that Mr. A. Wylie, in a letter dated 4th December 1873, speaking of a recent visit to Peking, says: “I found from various inquiries that there are several remains of a very much larger city wall, inclosing the present city; but time would not allow me to follow up the traces.”
Pauthier’s text (which I have corrected by the G. T.), after describing the outer inclosure to be a mile every way, says that the inner inclosure lay at an interval of a mile within it!
[Dr. Bretschneider observes “that in the ancient Chinese works, three concentric inclosures are mentioned in connection with the palace. The innermost inclosed the Ta-nei, the middle inclosure, called Kung-ch’eng or Huang-ch’eng, answering to the wall surrounding the present prohibited city, and was about 6 li in circuit. Besides this there was an outer wall (a rampart apparently) 20 li in circuit, answering to the wall of the present imperial city (which now has 18 li in circuit).” The Huang-ch’eng of the Yuen was measured by imperial order, and found to be 7 li in circuit; the wall of the Mongol palace was 6 li in circuit, according to the Ch’ue keng lu. (Bretschneider, Peking, 24.)—Marco Polo’s mile could be approximately estimated = 2·77 Chinese li. (Ibid. 24, note.) The common Chinese li = 360 pu, or 180 chang, or 1800 ch’i (feet); 1 li = 1894 English feet or 575 mètres; at least according to the old Venice measures quoted in Yule’s Marco Polo, II., one pace = 5 feet. Besides the common li, the Chinese have another li, used for measuring fields, which has only 240 pu or 1200 ch’i. This is the li spoken of in the Ch’ue keng lu. (Ibid. 13, note.)—H. C.]
[Note 7.]—[“Near the southern face of the wall are barracks for the Life Guards.” (Ch’ue keng lu, translated by Bretschneider, 25.)—H. C.]
[Note 8.]—This description of palace (see opposite cut), an elevated basement of masonry with a superstructure of timber (in general carved and gilded), is still found in Burma, Siam, and Java, as well as in China. If we had any trace of the palaces of the ancient Asokas and Vikramadityas of India, we should probably find that they were of the same character. It seems to be one of those things that belonged to some ancient Panasiatic fashion, as the palaces of Nineveh were of a somewhat similar construction. In the Audience Halls of the Moguls at Delhi and Agra we can trace the ancient form, though the superstructure has there become an arcade of marble instead of a pavilion on timber columns.
[“The Ta-ming tien (Hall of great brightness) is without doubt what Marco Polo calls ‘the Lord’s Great Palace.’... He states, that it ‘hath no upper story’; and indeed, the palace buildings which the Chinese call tien are always of one story. Polo speaks also of a ‘very fine pillared balustrade’ (the chu lang, pillared verandah, of the Chinese author). Marco Polo states that the basement of the great palace ‘is raised some ten palms above the surrounding soil.’ We find in the Ku kung i lu: ‘The basement of the Ta-ming tien is raised about 10 ch’i above the soil.’ There can also be no doubt that the Ta-ming tien stood at about the same place where now the T’ai-ho tien, the principal hall of the palace, is situated.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 28, note.)
A. Housselin d.
Palace at Khan-baligh. (From the Livre des Merveilles.)
Winter Palace at Peking.
The Ch’ue keng lu, translated by Bretschneider, 25, contains long articles devoted to the description of the palace of the Mongols and the adjacent palace grounds. They are too long to be reproduced here.—H. C.]
[Note 9.]—“As all that one sees of these palaces is varnished in those colours, when you catch a distant view of them at sunrise, as I have done many a time, you would think them all made of, or at least covered with, pure gold enamelled in azure and green, so that the spectacle is at once majestic and charming.” (Magaillans, p. 353.)
[Note 10.]—[This is the Ling yu or “Divine Park,” to the east of the Wan-sui shan, “in which rare birds and beasts are kept. Before the Emperor goes to Shangtu, the officers are accustomed to be entertained at this place.” (Ch’ue keng lu, quoted by Bretschneider, 36.)—H. C.]
[Note 11.]—“On the west side, where the space is amplest, there is a lake very full of fish. It is in the form of a fiddle, and is an Italian mile and a quarter in length. It is crossed at the narrowest part, which corresponds to gates in the walls, by a handsome bridge, the extremities of which are adorned by two triumphal arches of three openings each.... The lake is surrounded by palaces and pleasure houses, built partly in the water and partly on shore, and charming boats are provided on it for the use of the Emperor when he chooses to go a-fishing or to take an airing.” (Ibid. 282–283.) The marble bridge, as it now exists, consists of nine arches, and is 600 feet long. (Rennie’s Peking, II. 57.)
Ramusio specifies another lake in the city, fed by the same stream before it enters the palace, and used by the public for watering cattle.
[“The lake which Marco Polo saw is the same as the T’ai-yi ch’i of our days. It has, however, changed a little in its form. This lake and also its name T’ai-yi ch’i date from the twelfth century, at which time an Emperor of the Kin first gave orders to collect together the water of some springs in the hills, where now the summer palaces stand, and to conduct it to a place north of his capital, where pleasure gardens were laid out. The river which enters the lake and issues from it exists still, under its ancient name Kin-shui.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 34.)—H. C.]
[Note 12.]—The expression here is in the Geog. Text, “Roze de l’açur,” and in Pauthier’s “de rose et de l’asur.” Rose Minerale, in the terminology of the alchemists, was a red powder produced in the sublimation of gold and mercury, but I can find no elucidation of the term Rose of Azure. The Crusca Italian has in the same place Terra dello Azzurro. Having ventured to refer the question to the high authority of Mr. C. W. King, he expresses the opinion that Roze here stands for Roche, and that probably the term Roche de l’azur may have been used loosely for blue-stone, i.e. carbonate of copper, which would assume a green colour through moisture. He adds: “Nero, according to Pliny, actually used chrysocolla, the siliceous carbonate of copper, in powder, for strewing the circus, to give the course the colour of his favourite faction, the prasine (or green). There may be some analogy between this device and that of Kúblái Khan.” This parallel is a very happy one.
[Note 13.]—Friar Odoric gives a description, short, but closely agreeing in substance with that in the Text, of the Palace, the Park, the Lake, and the Green Mount.
A green mount, answering to the description, and about 160 feet in height, stands immediately in rear of the palace buildings. It is called by the Chinese King-Shan, “Court Mountain,” Wan-su-Shan, “Ten Thousand Year Mount,” and Mei-Shan, “Coal Mount,” the last from the material of which it is traditionally said to be composed (as a provision of fuel in case of siege).[1] Whether this is Kúblái’s Green Mount does not seem to be quite certain. Dr. Lockhart tells me that, according to the information he collected when living at Peking, it is not so, but was formed by the Ming Emperors from the excavation of the existing lake on the site which the Mongol Palace had occupied. There is another mount, he adds, adjoining the east shore of the lake, which must be of older date even than Kúblái, for a Dagoba standing on it is ascribed to the Kin.
Mei Shan.
[The “Green Mount” was an island called K’iung-hua at the time of the Kin; in 1271 it received the name of Wan-sui shan; it is about 100 feet in height, and is the only hill mentioned by Chinese writers of the Mongol time who refer to the palace grounds. It is not the present King-shan, north of the palace, called also Wan-sui-shan under the Ming, and now the Mei-shan, of more recent formation. “I have no doubt,” says Bretschneider (Peking, l.c. 35), “that Marco Polo’s handsome palace on the top of the Green Mount is the same as the Kuang-han tien” of the Ch’ue keng lu. It was a hall in which there was a jar of black jade, big enough to hold more than 30 piculs of wine; this jade had white veins, and in accordance with these veins, fish and animals have been carved on the jar. (Ibid. 35.) “The Ku kung i lu, in describing the Wan-sui-shan, praises the beautiful shady green of the vegetation there.” (Ibid. 37.)—H. C.]
[“Near the eastern end of the bridge (Kin-ao yü-tung which crosses the lake) the visitor sees a circular wall, which is called yüan ch’eng (round wall). It is about 350 paces in circuit. Within it is an imperial building Ch’eng-kuang tien, dating from the Mongol time. From this circular enclosure, another long and beautifully executed marble bridge leads northwards, to a charming hill, covered with shady trees, and capped by a magnificent white suburga.” (Bretschneider, p. 22.)—H. C.]
In a plate attached to next chapter, I have drawn, on a small scale, the existing cities of Peking, as compared with the Mongol and Chinese cities in the time of Kúblái. The plan of the latter has been constructed (1) from existing traces, as exhibited in the Russian Survey republished by our War Office; (2) from information kindly afforded by Dr. Lockhart; and (3) from Polo’s description and a few slight notices by Gaubil and others. It will be seen, even on the small scale of these plans, that the general arrangement of the palace, the park, the lakes (including that in the city, which appears in Ramusio’s version), the bridge, the mount, etc., in the existing Peking, very closely correspond with Polo’s indications; and I think the strong probability is that the Ming really built on the old traces, and that the lake, mount, etc., as they now stand, are substantially those of the Great Mongol, though Chinese policy or patriotism may have spread the belief that the foreign traces were obliterated. Indeed, if that belief were true, the Mongol Palace must have been very much out of the axis of the City of Kúblái, which is in the highest degree improbable. The Bulletin de la Soc. de Géographie for September 1873, contains a paper on Peking by the physician to the French Embassy there. Whatever may be the worth of the meteorological and hygienic details in that paper, I am bound to say that the historical and topographical part is so inaccurate as to be of no value.
[Note 14.]—For son, read grandson. But the G. T. actually names the Emperor’s son Chingkim, whose death our traveller has himself already mentioned.
[Note 15.]—[“Marco Polo’s bridge, crossing the lake from one side to the other, must be identified with the wooden bridge mentioned in the Ch’ue keng lu. The present marble bridge spanning the lake was only built in 1392.” “A marble bridge connects this island (an islet with the hall I-t’ien tien) with the Wan-sui shan. Another bridge, made of wood, 120 ch’i long and 22 broad, leads eastward to the wall of the Imperial Palace. A third bridge, a wooden draw-bridge 470 ch’i long, stretches to the west over the lake to its western border, where the palace Hing-sheng kung [built in 1308] stands.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 36.)—H. C.]
Yüan ch’eng.
[1] Some years ago, in Calcutta, I learned that a large store of charcoal existed under the soil of Fort William, deposited there, I believe, in the early days of that fortress.
[“The Jihia says that the name of Mei shan (Coal hill) was given to it from the stock of coal buried at its foot, as a provision in case of siege.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 38.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER XI.
Concerning the City of Cambaluc.
Now there was on that spot in old times a great and noble city called Cambaluc, which is as much as to say in our tongue “The city of the Emperor.”[{1}] But the Great Kaan was informed by his Astrologers that this city would prove rebellious, and raise great disorders against his imperial authority. So he caused the present city to be built close beside the old one, with only a river between them.[{2}] And he caused the people of the old city to be removed to the new town that he had founded; and this is called Taidu. [However, he allowed a portion of the people which he did not suspect to remain in the old city, because the new one could not hold the whole of them, big as it is.]
As regards the size of this (new) city you must know that it has a compass of 24 miles, for each side of it hath a length of 6 miles, and it is four-square. And it is all walled round with walls of earth which have a thickness of full ten paces at bottom, and a height of more than 10 paces;[{3}] but they are not so thick at top, for they diminish in thickness as they rise, so that at top they are only about 3 paces thick. And they are provided throughout with loop-holed battlements, which are all whitewashed.
There are 12 gates, and over each gate there is a great and handsome palace, so that there are on each side of the square three gates and five palaces; for (I ought to mention) there is at each angle also a great and handsome palace. In those palaces are vast halls in which are kept the arms of the city garrison.[{4}]
The streets are so straight and wide that you can see right along them from end to end and from one gate to the other. And up and down the city there are beautiful palaces, and many great and fine hostelries, and fine houses in great numbers. [All the plots of ground on which the houses of the city are built are four-square, and laid out with straight lines; all the plots being occupied by great and spacious palaces, with courts and gardens of proportionate size. All these plots were assigned to different heads of families. Each square plot is encompassed by handsome streets for traffic; and thus the whole city is arranged in squares just like a chess-board, and disposed in a manner so perfect and masterly that it is impossible to give a description that should do it justice.][{5}]
Moreover, in the middle of the city there is a great clock—that is to say, a bell—which is struck at night. And after it has struck three times no one must go out in the city, unless it be for the needs of a woman in labour, or of the sick.[{6}] And those who go about on such errands are bound to carry lanterns with them. Moreover, the established guard at each gate of the city is 1000 armed men; not that you are to imagine this guard is kept up for fear of any attack, but only as a guard of honour for the Sovereign, who resides there, and to prevent thieves from doing mischief in the town.[{7}]
[Note 1.]— ✛ The history of the city on the site of Peking goes back to very old times, for it had been [under the name of Ki] the capital of the kingdom of Yen, previous to B.C. 222, when it was captured by the Prince of the T’sin Dynasty. [Under the T’ang dynasty (618–907) it was known under the name of Yu-chau.] It became one of the capitals of the Khitans in A.D. 936, and of the Kin sovereigns, who took it in 1125, in 1151 under the name of Chung-tu. Under the name of Yenking, [given to this city in 1013] it has a conspicuous place in the wars of Chinghiz against the latter dynasty. He captured it in 1215. In 1264, Kúblái adopted it as his chief residence, and founded in 1267, the new city of Tatu (“Great Court”), called by the Mongols Taidu or Daitu since 1271 (see [Bk. I. ch. lxi. note 1]), at a little distance—Odoric says half a mile—to the north-east of the old Yenking. Tatu was completed in the summer of 1267.
Old Yenking had, when occupied by the Kin, a circuit of 27 li (commonly estimated at 9 miles, but in early works the li is not more than ⅕ of a mile), afterwards increased to 30 li. But there was some kind of outer wall about the city and its suburbs, the circuit of which is called 75 li. [“At the time of the Yuen the walls still existed, and the ancient city of the Kin was commonly called Nan-ch’eng (Southern city), whilst the Mongol capital was termed the northern city.” Bretschneider, Peking, 10.—H. C.] (Lockhart; and see Amyot, II. 553, and note 6 to last chapter.)
Polo correctly explains the name Cambaluc, i.e. Kaan-baligh, “The City of the Kaan.”
[Note 2.]—The river that ran between the old and new city must have been the little river Yu, which still runs through the modern Tartar city, and fills the city ditches.
[Dr. Bretschneider (Peking, 49) thinks that there is a strong probability that Polo speaks of the Wen-ming ho, a river which, according to the ancient descriptions, ran near the southern wall of the Mongol capital.—H. C.]
South Gate of Imperial City at Peking.
“Elle a douze portes, et sor chascune porte a une grandisme palais et biaus.”
[Note 3.]—This height is from Pauthier’s Text; the G. Text has, “twenty paces,” i.e. 100 feet. A recent French paper states the dimensions of the existing walls as 14 mètres (45½ feet) high, and 14·50 (47¼ feet) thick, “the top forming a paved promenade, unique of its kind, and recalling the legendary walls of Thebes and Babylon.” (Ann. d’Hygiène Publique, 2nd s. tom. xxxii. for 1869, p. 21.)
[According to the French astronomers (Fleuriais and Lapied) sent to Peking for the Transit of Venus in December, 1875, the present Tartar city is 23 kil. 55 in circuit, viz. if 1 li = 575 m., 41 li; from the north to the south 5400 mètres; from east to west 6700 mètres; the wall is 13 mètres in height and 12 mètres in width.—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—Our attempted plan of Cambaluc, as in 1290, differs somewhat from this description, but there is no getting over certain existing facts.
Peking
As it is
and As it was, about 1290
A.D. 1290.
The existing Tartar city of Peking (technically Neï-ch’ing, “The Interior City,” or King-ch’ing, “City of the Court”) stands on the site of Taidu, and represents it. After the expulsion of the Mongols (1368) the new native Dynasty of Ming established their capital at Nanking. But this was found so inconvenient that the third sovereign of the Dynasty re-occupied Taidu or Cambaluc, the repairs of which began in 1409. He reduced it in size by cutting off nearly a third part of the city at the north end. The remains of this abandoned portion of wall are, however, still in existence, approaching 30 feet in height all round. This old wall is called by the Chinese The Wall of the Yuen (i.e. the Mongol Dynasty), and it is laid down in the Russian Survey. [The capital of the Ming was 40 li in circuit, according to the Ch’ang an k’o hua.] The existing walls were built, or restored rather (the north wall being in any case, of course, entirely new), in 1437. There seems to be no doubt that the present south front of the Tartar city was the south front of Taidu. The whole outline of Taidu is therefore still extant, and easily measurable. If the scale on the War Office edition of the Russian Survey be correct, the long sides measure close upon 5 miles and 500 yards; the short sides, 3 miles and 1200 yards. Hence the whole perimeter was just about 18 English miles, or less than 16 Italian miles. If, however, a pair of compasses be run round Taidu and Yenking (as we have laid the latter down from such data as could be had) together, the circuit will be something like 24 Italian miles, and this may have to do with Polo’s error.
[“The Yuen shi states that Ta-tu was 60 li in circumference. The Ch’ue keng lu, a work published at the close of the Yuen Dynasty, gives the same number of li for the circuit of the capital, but explains that li of 240 pu each are meant. If this statement be correct, it would give only 40 common or geographical li for the circuit of the Mongol town.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 13.) Dr. Bretschneider writes (p. 20): “The outlines of Khanbaligh, partly in contradiction with the ancient Chinese records, if my view be correct, would have measured about 50 common li in circuit (13 li and more from north to south, 11·64 from east to west.”)—H. C.]
Polo [and Odoric] again says that there were 12 gates—3 to every side. Both Gaubil and Martini also say that there were 12 gates. But I believe that both are trusting to Marco. There are 9 gates in the present Tartar city—viz. 3 on the south side and 2 on each of the other sides. The old Chinese accounts say there were 11 gates in Taidu. (See Amyot, Mém. II. 553.) I have in my plan, therefore, assumed that one gate on the east and one on the west were obliterated in the reduction of the enceinte by the Ming. But I must observe that Mr. Lockhart tells me he did not find the traces of gates in those positions, whilst the 2 gates on the north side of the old Mongol rampart are quite distinct, with the barbicans in front, and the old Mongol bridge over the ditch still serving for the public thoroughfare.[1]
[“The Yuen shi as well as the Ch’ue keng lu, and other works of the Yuen, agree in stating that the capital had eleven gates. They are enumerated in the following order: Southern wall—(1) The gate direct south (mid.) was called Li-cheng men; (2) the gate to the left (east), Wen-ming men; (3) the gate to the right (west), Shun-ch’eng men. Eastern wall—(4) The gate direct east (mid.), Ch’ung-jen men; (5) the gate to the south-east, Ts’i-hua men; (6) the gate to the north-east, Kuang-hi men. Western wall—(7) The gate direct west (mid.), Ho-i men; (8) the gate to the south-west, P’ing-tse men; (9) the gate to the north-west, Su-ts’ing men. Northern Wall—(10) The gate to the north-west, K’ien-te men; (11) the gate to the north-east, An-chen men.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 13–14.)—H. C.]
When the Ming established themselves on the old Mongol site, population seems to have gathered close about the southern wall, probably using material from the remains of Yenking. This excrescence was inclosed by a new wall in 1554, and was called the “Outer Town.” It is what is called by Europeans the Chinese City. Its western wall exhibits in the base sculptured stones, which seem to have belonged to the old palace of Yenking. Some traces of Yenking still existed in Gaubil’s time; the only relic of it now pointed out is a pagoda outside of the Kwang-An-Măn, or western gate of the Outer City, marked in the War Office edition of the Russian Map as “Tower.” (Information from Dr. Lockhart.)
The “Great Palaces” over the gates and at the corner bastions are no doubt well illustrated by the buildings which still occupy those positions. There are two such lofty buildings at each of the gates of the modern city, the outer one (shown on [p. 376]) forming an elevated redoubt.
[Note 5.]—The French writer cited under note 3 says of the city as it stands: “La ville est de la sorte coupée en échiquier à peu près régulier dont les quadres circonscrits par des larges avenues sont percés eux-mêmes d’une multitude de rues et ruelles ... qui toutes à peu près sont orientées N. et S., E. et O. Une seule volonté a évidemment présidé à ce plan, et jamais édilité n’a eu à exécuter d’un seul coup aussi vaste entreprise.”
[Note 6.]—Martini speaks of the public clock-towers in the Chinese cities, which in his time were furnished with water-clocks. A watchman struck the hour on a great gong, at the same time exhibiting the hour in large characters. The same person watched for fires, and summoned the public with his gong to aid in extinguishing them.
[The Rev. G. B. Farthing mentions (North-China Herald, 7th September, 1884) at T’ai-yuen fu the remains of an object in the bell-tower, which was, and is still known, as one of the eight wonders of this city; it is a vessel of brass, a part of a water-clock from which water formerly used to flow down upon a drum beneath and mark off time into equal divisions.—H. C.]
The tower indicated by Marco appears still to exist. It occupies the place which I have marked as Alarm Tower in the plan of Taidu. It was erected in 1272, but probably rebuilt on the Ming occupation of the city. [“The Yuen yi t’ung chi, or ‘Geography of the Mongol Empire’ records: ‘In the year 1272, the bell-tower and the drum-tower were built in the middle of the capital.’ A bell-tower (chung-lou) and a drum-tower (ku-lou) exist still in Peking, in the northern part of the Tartar City. The ku-lou is the same as that built in the thirteenth century, but the bell-tower dates only from the last century. The bell-tower of the Yuen was a little to the east of the drum-tower, where now the temple Wan-ning sse stands. This temple is nearly in the middle of the position I (Bretschneider) assign to Khanbaligh.” (Bretschneider, Peking, 20.)—H. C.] In the Court of the Old Observatory at Peking there is preserved, with a few other ancient instruments, which date from the Mongol era, a very elaborate water-clock, provided with four copper basins embedded in brickwork, and rising in steps one above the other. A cut of this courtyard, with its instruments and aged trees, also ascribed to the Mongol time, will be found in [ch. xxxiii.] (Atlas Sinensis, p. 10; Magaillans, 149–151; Chine Moderne, p. 26; Tour du Monde for 1864, vol. ii. p. 34.)
[Note 7.]—“Nevertheless,” adds the Ramusian, “there does exist I know not what uneasiness about the people of Cathay.”
[1] Mr. Wylie confirms my assumption: “Whilst in Peking I traced the old mud wall, ... and found it quite in accordance with the outline in your map. Mr. Gilmour (a missionary to the Mongols) and I rode round it, he taking the outside and I the inside.... Neither of us observed the arch that Dr. Lockhart speaks of.... There are gate-openings about the middle of the east and west sides, but no barbicans.” (4th December 1873.)
CHAPTER XII.
How the Great Kaan Maintains a Guard of Twelve Thousand Horse, which are called Keshican.
You must know that the Great Kaan, to maintain his state, hath a guard of twelve thousand horsemen, who are styled Keshican, which is as much as to say “Knights devoted to their Lord.” Not that he keeps these for fear of any man whatever, but merely because of his own exalted dignity. These 12,000 men have four captains, each of whom is in command of 3000; and each body of 3000 takes a turn of three days and nights to guard the palace, where they also take their meals. After the expiration of three days and nights they are relieved by another 3000, who mount guard for the same space of time, and then another body takes its turn, so that there are always 3000 on guard. Thus it goes until the whole 12,000, who are styled (as I said) Keshican, have been on duty; and then the tour begins again, and so runs on from year’s end to year’s end.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—I have deduced a reading for the word Quescican (Keshican), which is not found precisely in any text. Pauthier reads Questiau and Quesitau; the G. Text has Quesitam and Quecitain; the Crusca Questi Tan; Ramusio, Casitan; the Riccardiana, Quescitam. Recollecting the constant clerical confusion between c and t, what follows will leave no doubt I think that the true reading to which all these variations point is Quescican.[1]
In the Institutes of Ghazan Khan, we find established among other formalities for the authentication of the royal orders, that they should be stamped on the back, in black ink, with the seals of the Four Commanders of the Four Kiziks, or Corps of the Life Guard.
Wassáf also, in detailing the different classes of the great dignitaries of the Mongol monarchy, names (1) the Noyáns of the Ulus, or princes of the blood; (2) the great chiefs of the tribes; (3) the Amírs of the four Keshik, or Corps of the Body Guard; (4) the officers of the army, commanding ten thousands, thousands, and so on.
Moreover, in Rashiduddin, we find the identical plural form used by our author. He says that, after the sack of Baghdad, Hulaku, who had escaped from the polluted atmosphere of the city, sent “Ilká Noyán and Ḳarábúgá, with 3000 Moghul horse into Baghdad, in order to have the buildings repaired, and to put things generally in order. These chiefs posted sentries from the Kishíkán (كشي كان), and from their own followings in the different quarters of the town, had the carcases of beasts removed from the streets, and caused the bazaars to be rebuilt.”
We find Kishik still used at the court of Hindustan, under the great kings of Timur’s House, for the corps on tour of duty at the palace; and even for the sets of matchlocks and sabres, which were changed weekly from Akbar’s armoury for the royal use. The royal guards in Persia, who watch the king’s person at night, are termed Keshikchi, and their captain Keshikchi Bashi. [“On the night of the 11th of Jemady ul Sany, A.H. 1160 (or 8th June, 1747), near the city of Khojoon, three days’ journey from Meshed, Mohammed Kuly Khan Ardemee, who was of the same tribe with Nadir Shah, his relation, and Kushukchee Bashee, with seventy of the Kukshek or guard, ... bound themselves by an oath to assassinate Nadir Shah.” (Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem ... transl. by F. Gladwin, Calcutta, 1788, pp. 166–167).]
Friar Odoric speaks of the four barons who kept watch by the Great Kaan’s side as the Cuthé, which probably represents the Chinese form Kiesie (as in De Mailla), or Kuesie (as in Gaubil). The latter applies the term to four devoted champions of Chinghiz, and their descendants, who were always attached to the Kaan’s body-guard, and he identifies them with the Quesitan of Polo, or rather with the captains of the latter; adding expressly that the word Kuesie is Mongol.
I see Kishik is a proper name among the Kalmak chiefs; and Keshikten also is the name of a Mongol tribe, whose territory lies due north of Peking, near the old site of Shangtu. ([Bk. I. ch. lxi.]) [Keshikhteng, a tribe (pu; mong. aimak) of the Chao Uda League (mêng; mong. chogolgân) among the twenty-four tribes of the Nei Mung-ku (Inner Mongols). (See Mayers’ Chinese Government, p. 81.)—H. C.] In Kovalevsky, I find the following:—
(No. 2459) “Keshik, grace, favour, bounty, benefit, good fortune, charity.”
(No. 2461) “Keshikten, fortunate, happy, blessed.”
(No. 2541) “Kichyeku, to be zealous, assiduous, devoted.”
(No. 2588) “Kushiku, to hinder, to bar the way to,” etc.
The third of these corresponds closely with Polo’s etymology of “knights devoted to their lord,” but perhaps either the first or the last may afford the real derivation.
In spite of the different initials (ق instead of ک), it can scarcely be doubted that the Ḳalchi and Ḳalaḳchi of Timur’s Institutes are mere mistranscriptions of the same word, e.g.: “I ordered that 12,000 Ḳalchi, men of the sword completely armed, should be cantoned in the Palace; to the right and to the left, to the front, and in the rear of the imperial diwán; thus, that 1000 of those 12,000 should be every night upon guard,” etc. The translator’s note says of Ḳalchi, “A Mogul word supposed to mean guards.” We see that even the traditional number of 12,000, and its division into four brigades, are maintained. (See Timour’s Inst., pp. 299 and 235, 237.)
I must add that Professor Vámbéry does not assent to the form Keshikán, on the ground that this Persian plural is impossible in an old Tartar dialect, and he supposes the true word to be Kechilan or Kechiklen, “the night-watchers,” from Kiche or Kichek (Chag. and Uighúr), = “night.”
I believe, however, that Persian was the colloquial language of foreigners at the Kaan’s court, who would not scruple to make a Persian plural when wanted; whilst Rashid has exemplified the actual use of this one.
(D’Ohsson, IV. 410; Gold. Horde, 228, 238; Ilch. II. 184; Q. R. pp. 308–309; Ayeen Aḳb. I. 270, and Blochmann’s, p. 115; J. As. sér. IV. tom. xix. 276; Olearius, ed. 1659, I. 656; Cathay, 135; De Mailla, ix. 106; Gaubil, p. 6; Pallas, Samml. I. 35.)
[“By Keshican in Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo, Keshikten is evidently meant. This is a general Mongol term to designate the Khan’s lifeguard. It is derived from the word Keshik, meaning a guard by turns; a corps on tour of duty. Keshik is one of the archaisms of the Mongol language, for now this word has another meaning in Mongol. Colonel Yule has brought together several explanations of the term. It seems to me that among his suppositions the following is the most consistent with the ancient meaning of the word:—
“We find Kishik still used at the court of Hindustan, under the great kings of Timur’s House, for the corps on tour of duty at the palace.... The royal guards in Persia, who watch the King’s person at night, are termed Keshikchi.”
“The Keshikten was divided into a day-watch called Turgaut and a night-watch Kebteul. The Kebte-ul consisted of pure Mongols, whilst the Turgaut was composed of the sons of the vassal princes and governors of the provinces, and of hostages. The watch of the Khan was changed every three days, and contained 400 men. In 1330 it was reduced to 100 men.” (Palladius, 42–43.) Mr. E. H. Parker writes in the China Review, XVIII. p. 262, that they “are evidently the ‘body guards’ of the modern viceroys, now pronounced Kashïha, but, evidently, originally Kêshigha.”—H. C.]
[1] One of the nearest readings is that of the Brandenburg Latin collated by Müller, which has Quaesicam.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Fashion of the Great Kaan’s Table at his High Feasts.
And when the Great Kaan sits at table on any great court occasion, it is in this fashion. His table is elevated a good deal above the others, and he sits at the north end of the hall, looking towards the south, with his chief wife beside him on the left. On his right sit his sons and his nephews, and other kinsmen of the Blood Imperial, but lower, so that their heads are on a level with the Emperor’s feet. And then the other Barons sit at other tables lower still. So also with the women; for all the wives of the Lord’s sons, and of his nephews and other kinsmen, sit at the lower table to his right; and below them again the ladies of the other Barons and Knights, each in the place assigned by the Lord’s orders. The tables are so disposed that the Emperor can see the whole of them from end to end, many as they are.[{1}] [Further, you are not to suppose that everybody sits at table; on the contrary, the greater part of the soldiers and their officers sit at their meal in the hall on the carpets.] Outside the hall will be found more than 40,000 people; for there is a great concourse of folk bringing presents to the Lord, or come from foreign countries with curiosities.
In a certain part of the hall near where the Great Kaan holds his table, there [is set a large and very beautiful piece of workmanship in the form of a square coffer, or buffet, about three paces each way, exquisitely wrought with figures of animals, finely carved and gilt. The middle is hollow, and in it] stands a great vessel of pure gold, holding as much as an ordinary butt; and at each corner of the great vessel is one of smaller size [of the capacity of a firkin], and from the former the wine or beverage flavoured with fine and costly spices is drawn off into the latter. [And on the buffet aforesaid are set all the Lord’s drinking vessels, among which are certain pitchers of the finest gold,] which are called verniques,[{2}] and are big enough to hold drink for eight or ten persons. And one of these is put between every two persons, besides a couple of golden cups with handles, so that every man helps himself from the pitcher that stands between him and his neighbour. And the ladies are supplied in the same way. The value of these pitchers and cups is something immense; in fact, the Great Kaan has such a quantity of this kind of plate, and of gold and silver in other shapes, as no one ever before saw or heard tell of, or could believe.[{3}]
[There are certain Barons specially deputed to see that foreigners, who do not know the customs of the Court, are provided with places suited to their rank; and these Barons are continually moving to and fro in the hall, looking to the wants of the guests at table, and causing the servants to supply them promptly with wine, milk, meat, or whatever they lack. At every door of the hall (or, indeed, wherever the Emperor may be) there stand a couple of big men like giants, one on each side, armed with staves. Their business is to see that no one steps upon the threshold in entering, and if this does happen, they strip the offender of his clothes, and he must pay a forfeit to have them back again; or in lieu of taking his clothes, they give him a certain number of blows. If they are foreigners ignorant of the order, then there are Barons appointed to introduce them, and explain it to them. They think, in fact, that it brings bad luck if any one touches the threshold. Howbeit, they are not expected to stick at this in going forth again, for at that time some are like to be the worse for liquor, and incapable of looking to their steps.[{4}]]
And you must know that those who wait upon the Great Kaan with his dishes and his drink are some of the great Barons. They have the mouth and nose muffled with fine napkins of silk and gold, so that no breath nor odour from their persons should taint the dish or the goblet presented to the Lord. And when the Emperor is going to drink, all the musical instruments, of which he has vast store of every kind, begin to play. And when he takes the cup all the Barons and the rest of the company drop on their knees and make the deepest obeisance before him, and then the Emperor doth drink. But each time that he does so the whole ceremony is repeated.[{5}]
I will say nought about the dishes, as you may easily conceive that there is a great plenty of every possible kind. But you should know that in every case where a Baron or Knight dines at those tables, their wives also dine there with the other ladies. And when all have dined and the tables have been removed, then come in a great number of players and jugglers, adepts at all sorts of wonderful feats,[{6}] and perform before the Emperor and the rest of the company, creating great diversion and mirth, so that everybody is full of laughter and enjoyment. And when the performance is over, the company breaks up and every one goes to his quarters.
[Note 1.]—We are to conceive of rows of small tables, at each of which were set probably but two guests. This seems to be the modern Chinese practice, and to go back to some very old accounts of the Tartar nations. Such tables we find in use in the tenth century, at the court of the King of Bolghar (see [Prologue, note 2, ch. ii.]), and at the Chinese entertainments to Shah Rukh’s embassy in the fifteenth century. Megasthenes described the guests at an Indian banquet as having a table set before each individual. (Athenaeus, IV. 39, Yonge’s Transl.)
[Compare Rubruck’s account, Rockhill’s ed., p. 210: “The Chan sits in a high place to the north, so that he can be seen by all....” (See also Friar Odoric, Cathay, p. 141.)—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—This word (G. T. and Ram.) is in the Crusca Italian transformed into an adjective, “vaselle vernicate d’oro,” and both Marsden and Pauthier have substantially adopted the same interpretation, which seems to me in contradiction with the text. In Pauthier’s text the word is vernigal, pl. vernigaux, which he explains, I know not on what authority, as “coupes sans anses vernies ou laquées d’or.” There is, indeed, a Venetian sea-term, Vernegal, applied to a wooden bowl in which the food of a mess is put, and it seems possible that this word may have been substituted for the unknown Vernique. I suspect the latter was some Oriental term, but I can find nothing nearer than the Persian Bărni, Ar. Al-Bărníya, “vas fictile in quo quid recondunt,” whence the Spanish word Albornia, “a great glazed vessel in the shape of a bowl, with handles.” So far as regards the form, the change of Barniya into Vernique would be quite analogous to that change of Hundwáníy into Ondanique, which we have already met with. (See Dozy et Engelmann, Glos. des Mots Espagnols, etc., 2nd ed., 1867, p. 73; and Boerio, Diz. del. Dial. Venez.)
[F. Godefroy, Dict., s.v. Vernigal, writes: “Coupe sans anse, vernie ou laquée d’or,” and quotes, besides Marco Polo, the Regle du Temple, p. 214, éd. Soc. Hist. de France:
“Les vernigaus et les escuelles.”
About vernegal, cf. Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 86, note. Rubruck says (Soc. de Géog. p. 241): “Implevimus unum veringal de biscocto et platellum unum de pomis et aliis fructibus.” Mr. Rockhill translates veringal by basket.
Dr. Bretschneider (Peking, 28) mentions “a large jar made of wood and varnished, the inside lined with silver,” and he adds in a note “perhaps this statement may serve to explain Marco Polo’s verniques or vaselle vernicate d’oro, big enough to hold drink for eight or ten persons.”—H. C.]
A few lines above we have “of the capacity of a firkin.” The word is bigoncio, which is explained in the Vocab. Univ. Ital. as a kind of tub used in the vintage, and containing 3 mine, each of half a stajo. This seems to point to the Tuscan mina, or half stajo, which is = ⅓ of a bushel. Hence the bigoncio would = a bushel, or, in old liquid measure, about a firkin.
[Note 3.]—A buffet, with flagons of liquor and goblets, was an essential feature in the public halls or tents of the Mongols and other Asiatic races of kindred manners. The ambassadors of the Emperor Justin relate that in the middle of the pavilion of Dizabulus, the Khan of the Turks, there were set out drinking-vessels, and flagons and great jars, all of gold; corresponding to the coupes (or hanas à mances), the verniques, and the grant peitere and petietes peiteres of Polo’s account. Rubruquis describes in Batu Khan’s tent a buffet near the entrance, where Kumiz was set forth, with great goblets of gold and silver, etc., and the like at the tent of the Great Kaan. At a festival at the court of Oljaitu, we are told, “Before the throne stood golden buffets ... set out with full flagons and goblets.” Even in the private huts of the Mongols there was a buffet of a humbler kind exhibiting a skin of Kumiz, with other kinds of drink, and cups standing ready; and in a later age at the banquets of Sháh Abbás we find the great buffet in a slightly different form, and the golden flagon still set to every two persons, though it no longer contained the liquor, which was handed round. (Cathay, clxiv., cci.; Rubr. 224, 268, 305; Ilch. II. 183; Della Valle, I. 654 and 750–751.)
[Referring to the “large and very beautiful piece of workmanship,” Mr. Rockhill, Rubruck, 208–209, writes: “Similar works of art and mechanical contrivances were often seen in Eastern courts. The earliest I know of is the golden plane-tree and grape vine with bunches of grapes in precious stones, which was given to Darius by Pythius the Lydian, and which shaded the king’s couch. (Herodotus, IV. 24.) The most celebrated, however, and that which may have inspired Mangu with the desire to have something like it at his court, was the famous Throne of Solomon (Σολομώντεος Θρóνος) of the Emperor of Constantinople, Theophilus (A.D. 829–842).... Abulfeda states that in A.D. 917 the envoys of Constantine Porphyrogenitus to the Caliph el Moktader saw in the palace of Bagdad a tree with eighteen branches, some of gold, some of silver, and on them were gold and silver birds, and the leaves of the tree were of gold and silver. By means of machinery, the leaves were made to rustle and the birds to sing. Mirkhond speaks also of a tree of gold and precious stones in the city of Sultanieh, in the interior of which were conduits through which flowed drinks of different kinds. Clavijo describes a somewhat similar tree at the court of Timur.”
Dr. Bretschneider (Peking, 28, 29) mentions a clepsydra with a lantern. By means of machinery put in motion by water, at fixed times a little man comes forward exhibiting a tablet, which announces the hours. He speaks also of a musical instrument which is connected, by means of a tube, with two peacocks sitting on a cross-bar, and when it plays, the mechanism causes the peacocks to dance.—H. C.]
Odoric describes the great jar of liquor in the middle of the palace hall, but in his time it was made of a great mass of jade (p. 130).
[Note 4.]—This etiquette is specially noticed also by Odoric, as well as by Makrizi, by Rubruquis, and by Plano Carpini. According to the latter the breach of it was liable to be punished with death. The prohibition to tread on the threshold is also specially mentioned in a Mahomedan account of an embassy to the court of Barka Khan. And in regard to the tents, Rubruquis says he was warned not to touch the ropes, for these were regarded as representing the threshold. A Russo-Mongol author of our day says that the memory of this etiquette or superstition is still preserved by a Mongol proverb: “Step not on the threshold; it is a sin!” But among some of the Mongols more than this survives, as is evident from a passage in Mr. Michie’s narrative: “There is a right and a wrong way of approaching a yourt also. Outside the door there are generally ropes lying on the ground, held down by stakes, for the purpose of tying up the animals when they want to keep them together. There is a way of getting over or round these ropes that I never learned, but on one occasion the ignorant breach of the rule on our part excluded us from the hospitality of the family.” The feeling or superstition was in full force in Persia in the 17th century, at least in regard to the threshold of the king’s palace. It was held a sin to tread upon it in entering. (Cathay, 132; Rubr. 255, 268, 319; Plan. Carp. 625, 741; Makrizi, I. 214; Mél. Asiat. Ac. St. Petersb. II. 660; The Siberian Overland Route, p. 97; P. Della Valle, II. 171.)
[Mr. Rockhill writes (Rubruck, p. 104): “The same custom existed among the Fijians, I believe. I may note that it also prevailed in ancient China. It is said of Confucius ‘when he was standing he did not occupy the middle of the gate-way; when he passed in or out, he did not tread on the threshold.’ (Lun-yü, Bk. X. ch. iv. 2.) In China, the bride’s feet must not touch the threshold of the bridegroom’s house. (Cf. Dennys’ Folk-lore in China, p. 18.)
“The author of the Ch’ue keng lu mentions also the athletes with clubs standing at the door, at the time of the khan’s presence in the hall. He adds, that next to the Khan, two other life-guards used to stand, who held in their hands ‘natural’ axes of jade (axes found fortuitously in the ground, probably primitive weapons).” (Palladius, p. 43.)—H. C.]
[Note 5.]—Some of these etiquettes were probably rather Chinese than Mongol, for the regulations of the court of Kúblái apparently combined the two. In the visit of Shah Rukh’s ambassadors to the court of the Emperor Ch’êng Tsu of the Ming Dynasty in 1421, we are told that by the side of the throne, at an imperial banquet, “there stood two eunuchs, each having a band of thick paper over his mouth, and extending to the tips of his ears.... Every time that a dish, or a cup of darassun (rice-wine) was brought to the emperor, all the music sounded.” (N. et Ext. XIV. 408, 409.) In one of the Persepolitan sculptures, there stands behind the King an eunuch bearing a fan, and with his mouth covered; at least so says Heeren. (Asia, I. 178.)
[Note 6.]—“Jongleours et entregetours de maintes plusieurs manieres de granz experimenz” (P.); “de Giuculer et de Tregiteor” (G. T.). Ital. Tragettatore, a juggler; Romance, Trasjitar, Tragitar, to juggle. Thus Chaucer:—
“There saw I playing Jogelours,
Magiciens, and Tragetours,
And Phetonisses, Charmeresses,
Old Witches, Sorceresses,” etc.
—House of Fame, III. 169.
And again:—
“For oft at festes have I wel herd say,
That Tregetoures, within an halle large,
Have made come in a water and a barge,
And in the halle rowen up and doun.
Somtime hath semed come a grim leoun;
* * * * *
Somtime a Castel al of lime and ston,
And whan hem liketh, voideth it anon.”
—The Franklin’s Tale, II. 454.
Performances of this kind at Chinese festivities have already been spoken of in note 9 to ch. lxi. of Book I. Shah Rukh’s people, Odoric, Ysbrandt Ides, etc., describe them also. The practice of introducing such artistes into the dining-hall after dinner seems in that age to have been usual also in Europe. See, for example, Wright’s Domestic Manners, pp. 165–166, and the Court of the Emperor Frederic II., in Kington’s Life of that prince, I. 470. (See also N. et E. XIV. 410; Cathay, 143; Ysb. Ides, p. 95.)
CHAPTER XIV.
Concerning the Great Feast held by the Grand Kaan every Year on his Birthday.
You must know that the Tartars keep high festival yearly on their birthdays. And the Great Kaan was born on the 28th day of the September moon, so on that day is held the greatest feast of the year at the Kaan’s Court, always excepting that which he holds on New Year’s Day, of which I shall tell you afterwards.[{1}]
Now, on his birthday, the Great Kaan dresses in the best of his robes, all wrought with beaten gold;[{2}] and full 12,000 Barons and Knights on that day come forth dressed in robes of the same colour, and precisely like those of the Great Kaan, except that they are not so costly; but still they are all of the same colour as his, and are also of silk and gold. Every man so clothed has also a girdle of gold; and this as well as the dress is given him by the Sovereign. And I will aver that there are some of these suits decked with so many pearls and precious stones that a single suit shall be worth full 10,000 golden bezants.
And of such raiment there are several sets. For you must know that the Great Kaan, thirteen times in the year, presents to his Barons and Knights such suits of raiment as I am speaking of.[{3}] And on each occasion they wear the same colour that he does, a different colour being assigned to each festival. Hence you may see what a huge business it is, and that there is no prince in the world but he alone who could keep up such customs as these.
On his birthday also, all the Tartars in the world, and all the countries and governments that owe allegiance to the Kaan, offer him great presents according to their several ability, and as prescription or orders have fixed the amount. And many other persons also come with great presents to the Kaan, in order to beg for some employment from him. And the Great Kaan has chosen twelve Barons on whom is laid the charge of assigning to each of these supplicants a suitable answer.
On this day likewise all the Idolaters, all the Saracens, and all the Christians and other descriptions of people make great and solemn devotions, with much chaunting and lighting of lamps and burning of incense, each to the God whom he doth worship, praying that He would save the Emperor, and grant him long life and health and happiness.
And thus, as I have related, is celebrated the joyous feast of the Kaan’s birthday.[{4}]
Now I will tell you of another festival which the Kaan holds at the New Year, and which is called the White Feast.
[Note 1.]—The Chinese Year commences, according to Duhalde, with the New Moon nearest to the Sun’s Passage of the middle point of Aquarius; according to Pauthier, with the New Moon immediately preceding the Sun’s entry into Pisces. (These would almost always be identical, but not always.) Generally speaking, the first month will include part of February and part of March. The eighth month will then be September–October (v. ante, ch. ii. note 2).
[According to Dr. S. W. Williams (Middle Kingdom, II. p. 70): “The year is lunar, but its commencement is regulated by the sun. New Year falls on the first new moon after the sun enters Aquarius, which makes it come not before January 21st nor after February 19th.” “The beginning of the civil year, writes Peter Hoang (Chinese Calendar, p. 13), depends upon the good pleasure of the Emperors. Under the Emperor Hwang-ti (2697 B.C.) and under the Hsia Dynasty (2205 B.C.), it was made to commence with the 3rd month yin-yüeh [Pisces]; under the Shang Dynasty (1766 B.C.) with the 2nd month ch’ou-yüeh [Aquarius], and under the Chou Dynasty (1122 B.C.) with the 1st month tzu-yüeh [Capricorn].”—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—The expression “à or batuz” as here applied to robes, is common among the mediæval poets and romance-writers, e.g. Chaucer:—
“Full yong he was and merry of thought,
And in samette with birdes wrought
And with gold beaten full fetously,
His bodie was clad full richely.”
—Rom. of the Rose, 836–839.
M. Michel thinks that in a stuff so termed the gold wire was beaten out after the execution of the embroidery, a process which widened the metallic surface and gave great richness of appearance. The fact was rather, however, according to Dr. Rock, that the gold used in weaving such tissues was not wire but beaten sheets of gold cut into narrow strips. This would seem sufficient to explain the term “beaten gold,” though Dr. Rock in another passage refers it to a custom which he alleges of sewing goldsmith’s work upon robes. (Fr. Michel, Recherches, II. 389, also I. 371; Rock’s Catalogue, pp. xxv. xxix. xxxviii. cvi.)
[Note 3.]—The number of these festivals and distributions of dresses is thirteen in all the old texts, except the Latin of the Geog. Soc., which has twelve. Thirteen would seem therefore to have been in the original copy. And the Ramusian version expands this by saying, “Thirteen great feasts that the Tartars keep with much solemnity to each of the thirteen moons of the year.”[1] It is possible, however, that this latter sentence is an interpolated gloss; for, besides the improbability of munificence so frequent, Pauthier has shown some good reasons why thirteen should be regarded as an error for three. The official History of the Mongol Dynasty, which he quotes, gives a detail of raiment distributed in presents on great state occasions three times a year. Such a mistake might easily have originated in the first dictation, treize substituted for trois, or rather for the old form tres; but we must note that the number 13 is repeated and corroborated in ch. xvi. Odoric speaks of four great yearly festivals, but there are obvious errors in what he says on this subject. Hammer says the great Mongol Feasts were three, viz. New Year’s Day, the Kaan’s Birthday, and the Feast of the Herds.
Something like the changes of costume here spoken of is mentioned by Rubruquis at a great festival of four days’ duration at the court of Mangku Kaan: “Each day of the four they appeared in different raiment, suits of which were given them for each day of a different colour, but everything on the same day of one colour, from the boots to the turban.” So also Carpini says regarding the assemblies of the Mongol nobles at the inauguration of Kuyuk Kaan: “The first day they were all clad in white pourpre (? albis purpuris, see [Bk. I. ch. vi. note 4]), the second day in ruby pourpre, the third day in blue pourpre, the fourth day in the finest baudekins.” (Cathay, 141; Rubr. 368; Pl. Car. 755.)
[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 247, note) makes the following remarks: “Odoric, however, says that the colours differed according to the rank. The custom of presenting khilats is still observed in Central Asia and Persia. I cannot learn from any other authority that the Mongols ever wore turbans. Odoric says the Mongols of the imperial feasts wore ‘coronets’ (in capite coronati).”—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—[“The accounts given by Marco Polo regarding the feasts of the Khan and the festival dresses at his Court, agree perfectly with the statements on the same subject of contemporary Chinese writers. Banquets were called in the common Mongol language chama, and festival dresses chisun. General festivals used to be held at the New Year and at the Birthday of the Khan. In the Mongol-Chinese Code, the ceremonies performed in the provinces on the Khan’s Birthday are described. One month before that day the civil and military officers repaired to a temple, where a service was performed to the Khan’s health. On the morning of the Birthday a sumptuously adorned table was placed in the open air, and the representatives of all classes and all confessions were obliged to approach the table, to prostrate themselves and exclaim three times: Wan-sui (i.e. ‘Ten thousand years’ life to the Khan). After that the banquet took place. In the same code (in the article on the Ye li ke un [Christians, Erke-un]) it is stated, that in the year 1304,—owing to a dispute, which had arisen in the province of Kiang-nan between the ho-shang (Buddhist priests) and the Christian missionaries, as to precedence in the above-mentioned ceremony,—a special edict was published, in which it was decided that in the rite of supplication, Christians should follow the Buddhist and Taouist priests.” (Palladius, pp. 44–45.)—H. C.]
[1] There are thirteen months to the Chinese year in seven out of every nineteen.
[“This interval of 10 years comprises 235 lunar months, generally 125 long months of 30 days, 110 short months of 29 days, (but sometimes 124 long and 111 short months), and 7 intercalary months. The year of twelve months is called a common year, that of thirteen months, an intercalary year.” (P. Hoang, Chinese Calendar, p. 12.—H. C.)]
CHAPTER XV.
Of the Great Festival which the Kaan holds on New Year’s Day.
The beginning of their New Year is the month of February, and on that occasion the Great Kaan and all his subjects made such a Feast as I now shall describe.
It is the custom that on this occasion the Kaan and all his subjects should be clothed entirely in white; so, that day, everybody is in white, men and women, great and small. And this is done in order that they may thrive all through the year, for they deem that white clothing is lucky.[{1}] On that day also all the people of all the provinces and governments and kingdoms and countries that own allegiance to the Kaan bring him great presents of gold and silver, and pearls and gems, and rich textures of divers kinds. And this they do that the Emperor throughout the year may have abundance of treasure and enjoyment without care. And the people also make presents to each other of white things, and embrace and kiss and make merry, and wish each other happiness and good luck for the coming year. On that day, I can assure you, among the customary presents there shall be offered to the Kaan from various quarters more than 100,000 white horses, beautiful animals, and richly caparisoned. [And you must know ’tis their custom in offering presents to the Great Kaan (at least when the province making the present is able to do so), to present nine times nine articles. For instance, if a province sends horses, it sends nine times nine or 81 horses; of gold, nine times nine pieces of gold, and so with stuffs or whatever else the present may consist of.][{2}]
On that day also, the whole of the Kaan’s elephants, amounting fully to 5000 in number, are exhibited, all covered with rich and gay housings of inlaid cloth representing beasts and birds, whilst each of them carries on his back two splendid coffers; all of these being filled with the Emperor’s plate and other costly furniture required for the Court on the occasion of the White Feast.[{3}] And these are followed by a vast number of camels which are likewise covered with rich housings and laden with things needful for the Feast. All these are paraded before the Emperor, and it makes the finest sight in the world.
Moreover, on the morning of the Feast, before the tables are set, all the Kings, and all the Dukes, Marquesses, Counts, Barons, Knights, and Astrologers, and Philosophers, and Leeches, and Falconers, and other officials of sundry kinds from all the places round about, present themselves in the Great Hall before the Emperor; whilst those who can find no room to enter stand outside in such a position that the Emperor can see them all well. And the whole company is marshalled in this wise. First are the Kaan’s sons, and his nephews, and the other Princes of the Blood Imperial; next to them all Kings; then Dukes, and then all others in succession according to the degree of each. And when they are all seated, each in his proper place, then a great prelate rises and says with a loud voice: “Bow and adore!” And as soon as he has said this, the company bow down until their foreheads touch the earth in adoration towards the Emperor as if he were a god. And this adoration they repeat four times, and then go to a highly decorated altar, on which is a vermilion tablet with the name of the Grand Kaan inscribed thereon, and a beautiful censer of gold. So they incense the tablet and the altar with great reverence, and then return each man to his seat.[{4}]
When all have performed this, then the presents are offered, of which I have spoken as being so rich and costly. And after all have been offered and been seen by the Emperor, the tables are set, and all take their places at them with perfect order as I have already told you. And after dinner the jugglers come in and amuse the Court as you have heard before; and when that is over, every man goes to his quarters.
[Note 1.]—The first month of the year is still called by the Mongols Chaghan or Chaghan Sara, “the White” or the “White Month”; and the wearing of white clothing on this festive occasion must have been purely a Mongol custom. For when Shah Rukh’s ambassadors were present at the New Year’s Feast at the Court of the succeeding Chinese Dynasty (2nd February, 1421) they were warned that no one must wear white, as that among the Chinese was the colour of mourning. (Koeppen, I. 574, II. 309; Cathay, p. ccvii.)
[Note 2.]—On the mystic importance attached to the number 9 on all such occasions among the Mongols, see Hammer’s Golden Horde, p. 208; Hayton, ch. iii. in Ramusio II.; Not. et Ext. XIV. Pt. I. 32; and Strahlenberg (II. 210 of Amsterd. ed. 1757). Vámbéry, speaking of the Ḳálín or marriage price among the Uzbegs, says: “The question is always how many times nine sheep, cows, camels, or horses, or how many times nine ducats (as is the custom in a town), the father is to receive for giving up his daughter.” (Sketches of Cent. Asia, p. 103.) Sheikh Ibrahim of Darband, making offerings to Timur, presented nines of everything else, but of slaves eight only. “Where is the ninth?” enquired the court official. “Who but I myself?” said the Sheikh, and so won the heart of Timur. (A. Arabsiadis ... Timuri Hist. p. 357.)
[Note 3.]—The elephant stud of the Son of Heaven had dwindled till in 1862 Dr. Rennie found but one animal; now none remain. [Dr. S. W. Williams writes (Middle Kingdom, I. pp. 323–324): “Elephants are kept at Peking for show, and are used to draw the state chariot when the Emperor goes to worship at the Altars of Heaven and Earth, but the sixty animals seen in the days of Kienlung, by Bell, have since dwindled to one or two. Van Braam met six going into Peking, sent thither from Yun-Nan.” These were no doubt carrying tribute from Burmah.—H. C.] It is worth noticing that the housings of cut cloth or appliqué work (“draps entaillez”) are still in fashion in India for the caparison of elephants.
[Note 4.]—In 1263 Kúblái adopted the Chinese fashion of worshipping the tablets of his own ancestors, and probably at the same time the adoration of his own tablet by his subjects was introduced. Van Braam ingenuously relates how he and the rest of the Dutch Legation of 1794 performed the adoration of the Emperor’s Tablet on first entering China, much in the way described in the text.
There is a remarkable amplification in the last paragraph of the chapter as given by Ramusio: “When all are in their proper places, a certain great personage, or high prelate as it were, gets up and says with a loud voice: ‘Bow yourselves and adore!’ On this immediately all bend and bow the forehead to the ground. Then the prelate says again: ‘God save and keep our Lord the Emperor, with length of years and with mirth and happiness.’ And all answer: ‘So may it be!’ And then again the prelate says: ‘May God increase and augment his Empire and its prosperity more and more, and keep all his subjects in peace and goodwill, and may all things go well throughout his Dominion!’ And all again respond: ‘So may it be!’ And this adoration is repeated four times.”
One of Pauthier’s most interesting notes is a long extract from the official Directory of Ceremonial under the Mongol Dynasty, which admirably illustrates the chapters we have last read. I borrow a passage regarding this adoration: “The Musician’s Song having ceased, the Ministers shall recite with a loud voice the following Prayer: ‘Great Heaven, that extendest over all! Earth which art under the guidance of Heaven! We invoke You and beseech You to heap blessings upon the Emperor and the Empress! Grant that they may live ten thousand, a hundred thousand years!’
“Then the first Chamberlain shall respond: ‘May it be as the prayer hath said!’ The Ministers shall then prostrate themselves, and when they rise return to their places, and take a cup or two of wine.”
The K’o-tow (Khéu-théu) which appears repeatedly in this ceremonial and which in our text is indicated by the four prostrations, was, Pauthier alleges, not properly a Chinese form, but only introduced by the Mongols. Baber indeed speaks of it as the Ḳornish, a Moghul ceremony, in which originally “the person who performed it kneeled nine times and touched the earth with his brow each time.” He describes it as performed very elaborately (nine times twice) by his younger uncle in visiting the elder. But in its essentials the ceremony must have been of old date at the Chinese Court; for the Annals of the Thang Dynasty, in a passage cited by M. Pauthier himself,[1] mention that ambassadors from the famous Hárún ar Rashíd in 798 had to perform the “ceremony of kneeling and striking the forehead against the ground.” And M. Pauthier can scarcely be right in saying that the practice was disused by the Ming Dynasty and only reintroduced by the Manchus; for in the story of Shah Rukh’s embassy the performance of the K’o-tow occurs repeatedly.
[“It is interesting to note,” writes Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 22), “that in A.D. 981 the Chinese Envoy, Wang Yen-tê, sent to the Uigur Prince of Kao-chang, refused to make genuflexions (pai) to him, as being contrary to the established usages as regards envoys. The prince and his family, however, on receiving the envoy, all faced eastward (towards Peking) and made an obeisance (pai) on receiving the imperial presents (shou-tzŭ).” (Ma Twan-lin, Bk. 336, 13.)—H. C.]
(Gaubil, 142; Van Braam, I. 20–21; Baber, 106; N. et E. XIV. Pt. I. 405, 407, 418.)
The enumeration of four prostrations in the text is, I fancy, quite correct. There are several indications that this number was used instead of the three times three of later days. Thus Carpini, when introduced to the Great Kaan, “bent the left knee four times.” And in the Chinese bridal ceremony of “Worshipping the Tablets,” the genuflexion is made four times. At the court of Sháh Abbás an obeisance evidently identical was repeated four times. (Carp. 759; Doolittle, p. 60; P. Della Valle, I. 646.)
[1] Gaubil, cited in Pauthier’s Hist. des Relations Politiques de la Chine, etc., p. 226.
CHAPTER XVI.
Concerning the Twelve Thousand Barons who receive robes of Cloth of Gold from the Emperor on the Great Festivals, thirteen changes a-piece.
Now you must know that the Great Kaan hath set apart 12,000 of his men who are distinguished by the name of Keshican, as I have told you before; and on each of these 12,000 Barons he bestows thirteen changes of raiment, which are all different from one another: I mean that in one set the 12,000 are all of one colour; the next 12,000 of another colour, and so on; so that they are of thirteen different colours. These robes are garnished with gems and pearls and other precious things in a very rich and costly manner.[{1}] And along with each of these changes of raiment, i.e. 13 times in the year, he bestows on each of those 12,000 Barons a fine golden girdle of great richness and value, and likewise a pair of boots of Camut, that is to say of Borgal, curiously wrought with silver thread; insomuch that when they are clothed in these dresses every man of them looks like a king![{2}] And there is an established order as to which dress is to be worn at each of those thirteen feasts. The Emperor himself also has his thirteen suits corresponding to those of his Barons; in colour, I mean (though his are grander, richer, and costlier), so that he is always arrayed in the same colour as his Barons, who are, as it were, his comrades. And you may see that all this costs an amount which it is scarcely possible to calculate.
Now I have told you of the thirteen changes of raiment received from the Prince by those 12,000 Barons, amounting in all to 156,000 suits of so great cost and value, to say nothing of the girdles and the boots which are also worth a great sum of money. All this the Great Lord hath ordered, that he may attach the more of grandeur and dignity to his festivals.
And now I must mention another thing that I had forgotten, but which you will be astonished to learn from this Book. You must know that on the Feast Day a great Lion is led to the Emperor’s presence, and as soon as it sees him it lies down before him with every sign of the greatest veneration, as if it acknowledged him for its lord; and it remains there lying before him, and entirely unchained. Truly this must seem a strange story to those who have not seen the thing![{3}]
[Note 1.]—On the Keshican, see [note 1 to chap. xii.], and on the changes of raiment [note 3 to chap. xiv.], and the remarks there as to the number of distributions. I confess that the stress laid upon the number 13 in this chapter makes the supposition of error more difficult. But there is something odd and unintelligible about the whole of the chapter except the last paragraph. For the 12,000 Keshican are here all elevated to Barons; and at the same time the statement about their changes of raiment seems to be merely that already made in chapter xiv. This repetition occurs only in the French MSS., but as it is in all these we cannot reject it.
[Note 2.]—The words Camut and Borgal appear both to be used here for what we call Russia-Leather. The latter word in one form or another, Bolghár, Borgháli, or Bulkál, is the term applied to that material to this day nearly all over Asia. Ibn Batuta says that in travelling during winter from Constantinople to the Wolga he had to put on three pairs of boots, one of wool (which we should call stockings), a second of wadded linen, and a third of Borgháli, “i.e. of horse-leather lined with wolf-skin.” Horse-leather seems to be still the favourite material for boots among all the Tartar nations. The name was undoubtedly taken from Bolghar on the Wolga, the people of which are traditionally said to have invented the art of preparing skins in that manner. This manufacture is still one of the staple trades of Kazan, the city which in position and importance is the nearest representative of Bolghar now.
Camut is explained by Klaproth to be “leather made from the back-skin of a camel.” It appears in Johnson’s Persian Dictionary as Kámú, but I do not know from what language it originally comes. The word is in the Latin column of the Petrarchian Vocabulary with the Persian rendering Sagri. This shows us what is meant, for Saghrí is just our word Shagreen, and is applied to a fine leather granulated in that way, which is much used for boots and the like by the people of Central Asia. [In Turkish ṣāghri or saghri is the name both for the buttocks of a horse and the leather called shagreen prepared with them. (See Devic, Dict. Étym.)—H. C.] In the commercial lists of our Indian north-west frontier we find as synonymous Saghri or Kímukht, “Horse or Ass-hide.” No doubt this latter word is a form of Kámú or Camut. It appears (as Keimukht, “a sort of leather”) in a detail of imports to Aden given by Ibn al Wardi, a geographer of the 13th century.
Instead of Camut, Ramusio has Camoscia, i.e. Chamois, and the same seems to be in all the editions based on Fra Pipino’s version. It may be a misrendering of camutum or camutium; or is there any real connexion between the Oriental Kámú Kímukht, and the Italian camoscia? (I. B. II. 445; Klapr. Mém. vol. III.; Davies’s Trade Report, App. p. ccxx.; Vámbéry’s Travels, 423; Not. et Ext. II. 43.)
Fraehn (writing in 1832) observes that he knew no use of the word Bolghár, in the sense of Russian leather, older than the 17th century. But we see that both Marco and Ibn Batuta use it. (F. on the Wolga Bulghars, pp. 8–9.)
Pauthier in a note (p. 285) gives a list of the garments issued to certain officials on these ceremonial occasions under the Mongols, and sure enough this list includes “pairs of boots in red leather.” Odoric particularly mentions the broad golden girdles worn at the Kaan’s court.
[La Curne, Dict., has Bulga, leather bag; old Gallic word from which are derived bouge et bougete, bourse; he adds in a note, “Festus writes: ‘Bulgas galli sacculos scorteos vocant.’”—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—“Then come mummers leading lions, which they cause to salute the Lord with reverence.” (Odoric, p. 143.) A lion sent by Mirza Baisangar, one of the Princes of Timur’s House, accompanied Shah Rukh’s embassy as a present to the Emperor; and like presents were frequently repeated. (See Amyot, XIV. 37, 38.)
CHAPTER XVII.
How the Great Kaan enjoineth his People to supply him with Game.
The three months of December, January, and February, during which the Emperor resides at his Capital City, are assigned for hunting and fowling, to the extent of some 40 days’ journey round the city; and it is ordained that the larger game taken be sent to the Court. To be more particular: of all the larger beasts of the chase, such as boars, roebucks, bucks, stags, lions, bears, etc., the greater part of what is taken has to be sent, and feathered game likewise. The animals are gutted and despatched to the Court on carts. This is done by all the people within 20 or 30 days’ journey, and the quantity so despatched is immense. Those at a greater distance cannot send the game, but they have to send the skins after tanning them, and these are employed in the making of equipments for the Emperor’s army.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—So Magaillans: “Game is so abundant, especially at the capital, that every year during the three winter months you see at different places, intended for despatch thither, besides great piles of every sort of wildfowl, rows of four-footed game of a gunshot or two in length: the animals being all frozen and standing on their feet. Among other species you see three sundry kinds of bears ... and great abundance of other animals, as stags and deer of different sorts, boars, elks, hares, rabbits, squirrels, wild-cats, rats, geese, ducks, very fine jungle-fowl, etc., and all so cheap that I never could have believed it” (pp. 177–178). As this writer mentions wild-cats, we may presume that the “lions” of Polo also were destined to be eaten.
[“Kubilai Khan kept a whole army, 14,000 men, huntsmen, distributed in Peking and other cities in the present province of Chili (Yuen-shi). The Khan used to hunt in the Peking plain from the beginning of spring, until his departure to Shang-tu. There are in the Peking department many low and marshy places, stretching often to a considerable extent and abounding in game. In the biography of Ai-sie (Yuen shi, chap. cxxxiv.), who was a Christian, it is mentioned that Kubilai was hunting also in the department of Pao-ting fu.” (Palladius, p. 45.)—H. C.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
Of the Lions and Leopards and Wolves that the Kaan keeps for the Chase.
The Emperor hath numbers of leopards[{1}] trained to the chase, and hath also a great many lynxes taught in like manner to catch game, and which afford excellent sport.[{2}] He hath also several great Lions, bigger than those of Babylonia, beasts whose skins are coloured in the most beautiful way, being striped all along the sides with black, red, and white. These are trained to catch boars and wild cattle, bears, wild asses, stags, and other great or fierce beasts. And ’tis a rare sight, I can tell you, to see those lions giving chase to such beasts as I have mentioned! When they are to be so employed the Lions are taken out in a covered cart, and every Lion has a little doggie with him. [They are obliged to approach the game against the wind, otherwise the animals would scent the approach of the Lion and be off.][{3}]
There are also a great number of eagles, all broken to catch wolves, foxes, deer, and wild goats, and they do catch them in great numbers. But those especially that are trained to wolf-catching are very large and powerful birds, and no wolf is able to get away from them.[{4}]
[Note 1.]—The Cheeta or Hunting-Leopard, still kept for the chase by native noblemen in India, is an animal very distinct from the true leopard. It is much more lanky and long-legged than the pure felines, is unable to climb trees, and has claws only partially retractile. Wood calls it a link between the feline and canine races. One thousand Cheetas were attached to Akbar’s hunting establishment; and the chief one, called Semend-Manik, was carried to the field in a palankin with a kettledrum beaten before him. Boldensel in the first half of the 14th century speaks of the Cheeta as habitually used in Cyprus; but, indeed, a hundred years before, these animals had been constantly employed by the Emperor Frederic II. in Italy, and accompanied him on all his marches. They were introduced into France in the latter part of the 15th century, and frequently employed by Lewis XI., Charles VIII., and Lewis XII. The leopards were kept in a ditch of the Castle of Amboise, and the name still borne by a gate hard by, Porte des Lions, is supposed to be due to that circumstance. The Mœurs et Usages du Moyen Age (Lacroix), from which I take the last facts, gives copy of a print by John Stradanus representing a huntsman with the leopard on his horse’s crupper, like Kúblái’s (supra, [Bk. I. ch. lxi.]); Frederic II. used to say of his Cheetas, “they knew how to ride.” This way of taking the Cheeta to the field had been first employed by the Khalif Yazid, son of Moáwiyah. The Cheeta often appears in the pattern of silk damasks of the 13th and 14th centuries, both Asiatic and Italian. (Ayeen Akbery, I. 304, etc.; Boldensel, in Canisii Thesaurus, by Basnage, vol. IV. p. 339; Kington’s Fred. II. I. 472, II. 156; Bochart, Hierozoica, 797; Rock’s Catalogue, passim.)
[The hunting equipment of the Sultan consisted of about thirty falconers on horseback who carried each a bird on his fist. These falconers were in front of seven horsemen, who had behind a kind of tamed tiger at times employed by His Highness for hare-hunting, notwithstanding what may be said to the contrary by those who are inclined not to believe the fact. It is a thing known by everybody here, and cannot be doubted except by those who admit that they believe nothing of foreign customs. These tigers were each covered with a brocade cloth—and their peaceful attitude, added to their ferocious and savage looks, caused at the same time astonishment and fear in the soul of those whom they looked upon. (Journal d’Antoine Galland, trad. par Ch. Schefer, I. p. 135.) The Cheeta (Gueparda jubata) was, according to Sir W. Jones, first employed in hunting antelopes by Hushing, King of Persia, 865 B.C.—H. C.]
[Note 2.]—The word rendered Lynxes is Leu cervers (G. Text), Louz serviers of Pauthier’s MS. C, though he has adopted from another Loups simply, which is certainly wrong. The Geog. Latin has “Linceos i.e. lupos cerverios.” There is no doubt that the Loup-cervier is the Lynx. Thus Brunetto Latini, describing the Loup-cervier, speaks of its remarkable powers of vision, and refers to its agency in the production of the precious stone called Liguire (i.e. Ligurium), which the ancients fancied to come from Lync-urium; the tale is in Theophrastus. Yet the quaint Bestiary of Philip de Thaun, published by Mr. Wright, identifies it with the Greek Hyena:—
“Hyena e Griu num, que nus beste apellum,
Ceo est Lucervere, oler fait et mult est fere.”
[The Abbé Armand David writes (Missions Cathol. XXI. 1889, p. 227) that there is in China, from the mountains of Manchuria to the mountains of Tibet, a lynx called by the Chinese T’u-pao (earth-coloured panther); a lynx somewhat similar to the loup-cervier is found on the western border of China, and has been named Lyncus Desgodinsi.—H. C.]
Hunting Lynxes were used at the Court of Akbar. They are also mentioned by A. Hamilton as so used in Sind at the end of the 17th century. This author calls the animal a Shoe-goose! i.e. Siya-gosh (Black-ear), the Persian name of the Lynx. It is still occasionally used in the chase by natives of rank in India. (Brunetto Lat. Tresor, p. 248; Popular Treatises on Science written during Mid. Ages, 94; Ayeen Akbery, u.s.; Hamilt. E. Indies, I. 125; Vigne, I. 42.)
[Note 3.]—The conception of a Tiger seems almost to have dropped out of the European mind during the Middle Ages. Thus in a mediæval Bestiary, a chapter on the Tiger begins: “Une Beste est qui est apelée Tigre c’est une manière de Serpent.” Hence Polo can only call the Tigers, whose portrait he draws here not incorrectly, Lions. So also nearly 200 years later Barbaro gives a like portrait, and calls the animal Leonza. Marsden supposes judiciously that the confusion may have been promoted by the ambiguity of the Persian Sher.
The Búrgút Eagle. (After Atkinson.)
“Il a encore aiglies qe sunt afaités à prendre leus et voupes et dain et chavriou, et en prennent assez.”
The Chinese pilgrim, Sung-Yun (A.D. 518), saw two young lions at the Court of Gandhára. He remarks that the pictures of these animals common in China, were not at all good likenesses. (Beal, p. 200.)
We do not hear in modern times of Tigers trained to the chase, but Chardin says of Persia: “In hunting the larger animals they make use of beasts of prey trained for the purpose, lions, leopards, tigers, panthers, ounces.”
[Note 4.]—This is perfectly correct. In Eastern Turkestan, and among the Kirghiz to this day, eagles termed Búrgút (now well known to be the Golden Eagle) are tamed and trained to fly at wolves, foxes, deer, wild goats, etc. A Kirghiz will give a good horse for an eagle in which he recognises capacity for training. Mr. Atkinson gives vivid descriptions and illustrations of this eagle (which he calls “Bear coote”), attacking both deer and wolves. He represents the bird as striking one claw into the neck, and the other into the back of its large prey, and then tearing out the liver with its beak. In justice both to Marco Polo and to Mr. Atkinson, I have pleasure in adding a vivid account of the exploits of this bird, as witnessed by one of my kind correspondents, the Governor-General’s late envoy to Kashgar. And I trust Sir Douglas Forsyth will pardon my quoting his own letter just as it stands[1]:—“Now for a story of the Burgoot—Atkinson’s ‘Bearcoote.’ I think I told you it was the Golden Eagle and supposed to attack wolves and even bears. One day we came across a wild hog of enormous size, far bigger than any that gave sport to the Tent Club in Bengal. The Burgoot was immediately let loose, and went straight at the hog, which it kicked, and flapped with its wings, and utterly flabbergasted, whilst our Kashgaree companions attacked him with sticks and brought him to the ground. As Friar Odoric would say, I, T. D. F., have seen this with mine own eyes.”—Shaw describes the rough treatment with which the Búrgút is tamed. Baber, when in the Bajaur Hills, notices in his memoirs: “This day Búrgút took a deer.” (Timkowski, I. 414; Levchine, p. 77; Pallas, Voyages, I. 421; J. R. A. S. VII. 305; Atkinson’s Siberia, 493; and Amoor, 146–147; Shaw, p. 157; Baber, p. 249.)
[The Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetus) is called at Peking Hoy tiao (black eagle). (David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, p. 8.)—H. C.]
[1] Dated Yangi Hissar, 10th April, 1874.
CHAPTER XIX.
Concerning the Two Brothers who have charge of the Kaan’s Hounds.
The Emperor hath two Barons who are own brothers, one called Baian and the other Mingan; and these two are styled Chinuchi (or Cunichi), which is as much as to say, “The Keepers of the Mastiff Dogs.”[{1}] Each of these brothers hath 10,000 men under his orders; each body of 10,000 being dressed alike, the one in red and the other in blue, and whenever they accompany the Lord to the chase, they wear this livery, in order to be recognized. Out of each body of 10,000 there are 2000 men who are each in charge of one or more great mastiffs, so that the whole number of these is very large. And when the Prince goes a-hunting, one of those Barons, with his 10,000 men and something like 5000 dogs, goes towards the right, whilst the other goes towards the left with his party in like manner. They move along, all abreast of one another, so that the whole line extends over a full day’s journey, and no animal can escape them. Truly it is a glorious sight to see the working of the dogs and the huntsmen on such an occasion! And as the Lord rides a-fowling across the plains, you will see these big hounds coming tearing up, one pack after a bear, another pack after a stag, or some other beast, as it may hap, and running the game down now on this side and now on that, so that it is really a most delightful sport and spectacle.
[The Two Brothers I have mentioned are bound by the tenure of their office to supply the Kaan’s Court from October to the end of March with 1000 head of game daily, whether of beasts or birds, and not counting quails; and also with fish to the best of their ability, allowing fish enough for three persons to reckon as equal to one head of game.]
Now I have told you of the Masters of the Hounds and all about them, and next will I tell you how the Lord goes off on an expedition for the space of three months.
[Note 1.]—Though this particular Bayan and Mingan are not likely to be mentioned in history, the names are both good Mongol names; Bayan that of a great soldier under Kúblái, of whom we shall hear afterwards; and Mingan that of one of Chinghiz’s generals.
The title of “Master of the Mastiffs” belonged to a high Court official at Constantinople in former days, Sámsúnji Báshi, and I have no doubt Marco has given the exact interpretation of the title of the two Barons: though it is difficult to trace its elements. It is read variously Cunici (i.e. Kunichi) and Cinuci (i.e. Chinuchi). It is evidently a word of analogous structure to Kushchi, the Master of the Falcons; Parschi, the Master of the Leopards. Professor Schiefner thinks it is probably corrupted from Noghaichi, which appears in Kovalevski’s Mongol Dict. as “chasseur qui a soins des chiens courants.” This word occurs, he points out, in Sanang Setzen, where Schmidt translates it Aufseher über Hunde. (See S. S. p. 39.)
The metathesis of Noghai-chi into Kuni-chi is the only drawback to this otherwise apt solution. We generally shall find Polo’s Oriental words much more accurately expressed than this would imply—as in the next chapter. I have hazarded a suggestion of (Or. Turkish) Chong-It-chi, “Keeper of the Big Dogs,” which Professor Vámbéry thinks possible. (See “chong, big, strong,” in his Tschagataische Sprachstudien, p. 282, and note in Lord Strangford’s Selected Writings, II. 169.) In East Turkestan they call the Chinese Chong Káfir, “The Big Heathen.” This would exactly correspond to the rendering of Pipino’s Latin translation, “hoc est canum magnorum Praefecti.” Chinuchi again would be (in Mongol) “Wolf-keepers.” It is at least possible that the great dogs which Polo terms mastiffs may have been known by such a name. We apply the term Wolf-dog to several varieties, and in Macbeth’s enumeration we have—
——“Hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water rugs, and Demi-Wolves.”
Lastly the root-word may be the Chinese Kiuen, “dog,” as Pauthier says. The mastiffs were probably Tibetan, but may have come through China, and brought a name with them, like Boule-dogues in France.
[Palladius (p. 46) says that Chinuchi or Cunici “have no resemblance with any of the names found in the Yuen shi, ch. xcix., article Ping chi (military organisation), and relating to the hunting staff of the Khan, viz.: Si pao ch’i (falconers), Ho r ch’i (archers), and Ke lien ch’i (probably those who managed the hounds).”—H. C.]
CHAPTER XX.
How the Emperor goes on a Hunting Expedition.
After he has stopped at his capital city those three months that I mentioned, to wit, December, January, February, he starts off on the 1st day of March, and travels southward towards the Ocean Sea, a journey of two days.[{1}] He takes with him full 10,000 falconers, and some 500 gerfalcons besides peregrines, sakers, and other hawks in great numbers; and goshawks also to fly at the water-fowl.[{2}] But do not suppose that he keeps all these together by him; they are distributed about, hither and thither, one hundred together, or two hundred at the utmost, as he thinks proper. But they are always fowling as they advance, and the most part of the quarry taken is carried to the Emperor. And let me tell you when he goes thus a-fowling with his gerfalcons and other hawks, he is attended by full 10,000 men who are disposed in couples; and these are called Toscaol, which is as much as to say, “Watchers.” And the name describes their business.[{3}] They are posted from spot to spot, always in couples, and thus they cover a great deal of ground! Every man of them is provided with a whistle and hood, so as to be able to call in a hawk and hold it in hand. And when the Emperor makes a cast, there is no need that he follow it up, for those men I speak of keep so good a look out that they never lose sight of the birds, and if these have need of help they are ready to render it.
All the Emperor’s hawks, and those of the Barons as well, have a little label attached to the leg to mark them, on which is written the names of the owner and the keeper of the bird. And in this way the hawk, when caught, is at once identified and handed over to its owner. But if not, the bird is carried to a certain Baron, who is styled the Bularguchi, which is as much as to say “The Keeper of Lost Property.” And I tell you that whatever may be found without a known owner, whether it be a horse, or a sword, or a hawk, or what not, it is carried to that Baron straightway, and he takes charge of it. And if the finder neglects to carry his trover to the Baron, the latter punishes him. Likewise the loser of any article goes to the Baron, and if the thing be in his hands it is immediately given up to the owner. Moreover, the said Baron always pitches on the highest spot of the camp, with his banner displayed, in order that those who have lost or found anything may have no difficulty in finding their way to him. Thus nothing can be lost but it shall be incontinently found and restored.[{4}]
And so the Emperor follows this road that I have mentioned, leading along in the vicinity of the Ocean Sea (which is within two days’ journey of his capital city, Cambaluc), and as he goes there is many a fine sight to be seen, and plenty of the very best entertainment in hawking; in fact, there is no sport in the world to equal it!
The Emperor himself is carried upon four elephants in a fine chamber made of timber, lined inside with plates of beaten gold, and outside with lions’ skins [for he always travels in this way on his fowling expeditions, because he is troubled with gout]. He always keeps beside him a dozen of his choicest gerfalcons, and is attended by several of his Barons, who ride on horseback alongside. And sometimes, as they may be going along, and the Emperor from his chamber is holding discourse with the Barons, one of the latter shall exclaim: “Sire! Look out for Cranes!” Then the Emperor instantly has the top of his chamber thrown open, and having marked the cranes he casts one of his gerfalcons, whichever he pleases; and often the quarry is struck within his view, so that he has the most exquisite sport and diversion, there as he sits in his chamber or lies on his bed; and all the Barons with him get the enjoyment of it likewise! So it is not without reason I tell you that I do not believe there ever existed in the world or ever will exist, a man with such sport and enjoyment as he has, or with such rare opportunities.[{5}]
And when he has travelled till he reaches a place called Cachar Modun,[{6}] there he finds his tents pitched, with the tents of his Sons, and his Barons, and those of his Ladies and theirs, so that there shall be full 10,000 tents in all, and all fine and rich ones. And I will tell you how his own quarters are disposed. The tent in which he holds his courts is large enough to give cover easily to a thousand souls. It is pitched with its door to the south, and the Barons and Knights remain in waiting in it, whilst the Lord abides in another close to it on the west side. When he wishes to speak with any one he causes the person to be summoned to that other tent. Immediately behind the great tent there is a fine large chamber where the Lord sleeps; and there are also many other tents and chambers, but they are not in contact with the Great Tent as these are. The two audience-tents and the sleeping-chamber are constructed in this way. Each of the audience-tents has three poles, which are of spice-wood, and are most artfully covered with lions’ skins, striped with black and white and red, so that they do not suffer from any weather. All three apartments are also covered outside with similar skins of striped lions, a substance that lasts for ever.[{7}] And inside they are all lined with ermine and sable, these two being the finest and most costly furs in existence. For a robe of sable, large enough to line a mantle, is worth 2000 bezants of gold, or 1000 at least, and this kind of skin is called by the Tartars “The King of Furs.” The beast itself is about the size of a marten.[{8}] These two furs of which I speak are applied and inlaid so exquisitely, that it is really something worth seeing. All the tent-ropes are of silk. And in short I may say that those tents, to wit the two audience-halls and the sleeping-chamber, are so costly that it is not every king could pay for them.
Round about these tents are others, also fine ones and beautifully pitched, in which are the Emperor’s ladies, and the ladies of the other princes and officers. And then there are the tents for the hawks and their keepers, so that altogether the number of tents there on the plain is something wonderful. To see the many people that are thronging to and fro on every side and every day there, you would take the camp for a good big city. For you must reckon the Leeches, and the Astrologers, and the Falconers, and all the other attendants on so great a company; and add that everybody there has his whole family with him, for such is their custom.
The Lord remains encamped there until the spring, and all that time he does nothing but go hawking round about among the canebrakes along the lakes and rivers that abound in that region, and across fine plains on which are plenty of cranes and swans, and all sorts of other fowl. The other gentry of the camp also are never done with hunting and hawking, and every day they bring home great store of venison and feathered game of all sorts. Indeed, without having witnessed it, you would never believe what quantities of game are taken, and what marvellous sport and diversion they all have whilst they are in camp there.
There is another thing I should mention; to wit, that for 20 days’ journey round the spot nobody is allowed, be he who he may, to keep hawks or hounds, though anywhere else whosoever list may keep them. And furthermore throughout all the Emperor’s territories, nobody however audacious dares to hunt any of these four animals, to wit, hare, stag, buck, and roe, from the month of March to the month of October. Anybody who should do so would rue it bitterly. But those people are so obedient to their Lord’s command, that even if a man were to find one of those animals asleep by the roadside he would not touch it for the world! And thus the game multiplies at such a rate that the whole country swarms with it, and the Emperor gets as much as he could desire. Beyond the term I have mentioned, however, to wit that from March to October, everybody may take these animals as he list.[{9}]
After the Emperor has tarried in that place, enjoying his sport as I have related, from March to the middle of May, he moves with all his people, and returns straight to his capital city of Cambaluc (which is also the capital of Cathay, as you have been told), but all the while continuing to take his diversion in hunting and hawking as he goes along.
[Note 1.]—“Vait vers midi jusques à la Mer Occeane, ou il y a deux journées.” It is not possible in any way to reconcile this description as it stands with truth, though I do not see much room for doubt as to the direction of the excursion. Peking is 100 miles as the crow flies from the nearest point of the coast, at least six or seven days’ march for such a camp, and the direction is south-east, or nearly so. The last circumstance would not be very material as Polo’s compass-bearings are not very accurate. We shall find that he makes the general line of bearing from Peking towards Kiangnan, Sciloc or S. East, hence his Midi ought in consistency to represent S. West, an impossible direction for the Ocean. It is remarkable that Ramusio has Greco or N. East, which would by the same relative correction represent East. And other circumstances point to the frontier of Liao-tong as the direction of this excursion. Leaving the two days out of question, therefore, I should suppose the “Ocean Sea” to be struck at Shan-hai-kwan near the terminus of the Great Wall, and that the site of the standing hunting-camp is in the country to the north of that point. The Jesuit Verbiest accompanied the Emperor Kanghi on a tour in this direction in 1682, and almost immediately after passing the Wall the Emperor and his party seem to have struck off to the left for sport. Kúblái started on the “1st of March,” probably however the 1st of the second Chinese month. Kanghi started from Peking on the 23rd of March, on the hunting-journey just referred to.
[Note 2.]—We are told that Bajazet had 7000 falconers and 6000 dog-keepers; whilst Sultan Mahomed Tughlak of India in the generation following Polo’s, is said to have had 10,000 falconers, and 3000 other attendants as beaters. (Not. et Ext. XIII. p. 185.)
The Oriental practice seems to have assigned one man to the attendance on every hawk. This Kaempfer says was the case at the Court of Persia at the beginning of last century. There were about 800 hawks, and each had a special keeper. The same was the case with the Emperor Kanghi’s hawking establishment, according to Gerbillon. (Am. Exot. p. 83; Gerb. 1st Journey, in Duhalde.)
[Note 3.]—The French MSS. read Toscaor; the reading in the text I take from Ramusio. It is Turki, Tosḳáúl, توسقاول, defined as “Gardien, surveillant de la route; Wächter, Wache, Wegehüter.” (See Zenker, and Pavet de Courteille.) The word is perhaps also Mongol, for Rémusat has Tosiyal = “Veille.” (Mél. As. I. 231.) Such an example of Polo’s correctness both in the form and meaning of a Turki word is worthy of especial note, and shows how little he merits the wild and random treatment which has been often applied to the solution of like phrases in his book.
[Palladius (p. 47) says that he has heard from men well acquainted with the customs of the Mongols, that at the present day in “battues,” the leaders of the two flanks which surround the game, are called toscaul in Mongol.—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—The remark in the previous note might be repeated here. The Bularguji was an officer of the Mongol camp, whose duties are thus described by Mahomed Hindú Shah in a work on the offices of the Perso-Mongol Court. “He is an officer appointed by the Council of State, who, at the time when the camp is struck, goes over the ground with his servants, and collects slaves of either sex, or cattle, such as horses, camels, oxen, and asses, that have been left behind, and retains them until the owners appear and prove their claim to the property, when he makes it over to them. The Bularguji sticks up a flag by his tent or hut to enable people to find him, and so recover their lost property.” (Golden Horde, p. 245.) And in the Appendix to that work (p. 476) there is a copy of a warrant to such a Bularguji or Provost Marshal. The derivation appears therein as from Bularghu, “Lost property.” Here again it was impossible to give both form and meaning of the word more exactly than Polo has done. Though Hammer writes these terminations in ji (dschi), I believe chi (tschi) is preferable. We have this same word Bularghu in a grant of privileges to the Venetians by the Ilkhan Abusaid, 22nd December, 1320, which has been published by M. Mas Latrie: “Item, se algun cavalo bolargo fosse trovado apreso de algun vostro veneciano,” etc.—“If any stray horse shall be found in the possession of a Venetian,” etc. (See Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 1870—tirage à part, p. 26.)
[“There are two Mongol terms, which resemble this word Bularguchi, viz. Balagachi and Buluguchi. But the first was the name used for the door-keeper of the tent of the Khan. By Buluguchi the Mongols understood a hunter and especially sable hunters. No one of these terms can be made consistent with the accounts given by M. Polo regarding the Bularguchi. In the Kui sin tsa shi, written by Chow Mi, in the former part of the 14th century, interesting particulars regarding Mongol hunting are found.” (Palladius, 47.) In chapter 101, Djan-ch’i, of the Yuen-shi, Falconers are called Ying fang pu lie, and a certain class of the Falconers are termed Bo-lan-ghi. (Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. p. 188.)—H. C.]
[Note 5.]—A like description is given by Odoric of the mode in which a successor of Kúblái travelled between Cambaluc and Shangtu, with his falcons also in the chamber beside him. What Kúblái had adopted as an indulgence to his years and gout, his successors probably followed as a precedent without these excuses.
[With regard to the gout of Kúblái Khan, Palladius (p. 48) writes: “In the Corean history allusion is made twice to the Khan’s suffering from this disease. Under the year 1267, it is there recorded that in the 9th month, envoys of the Khan with a letter to the King arrived in Corea. Kubilai asked for the skin of the Akirho munho, a fish resembling a cow. The envoy was informed that, as the Khan suffered from swollen feet it would be useful for him to wear boots made of the skin of this animal, and in the 10th month, the king of Corea forwarded to the Khan seventeen skins of it. It is further recorded in the Corean history, that in the 8th month of 1292, sorcerers and Shaman women from Corea were sent at the request of the Khan to cure him of a disease of the feet and hands. At that time the king of Corea was also in Peking, and the sorcerers and Shaman women were admitted during an audience the King had of the Khan. They took the Khan’s hands and feet and began to recite exorcisms, whilst Kubilai was laughing.”—H. C.]
[Note 6.]—Marsden and Pauthier identify Cachar Modun with Tchakiri Mondou, or Moudon, which appears in D’Anville’s atlas as the title of a “Levée de terre naturelle,” in the extreme east of Manchuria, and in lat. 44°, between the Khinga Lake and the sea. This position is out of the question. It is more than 900 miles, in a straight line from Peking, and the mere journey thither and back would have taken Kúblái’s camp something like six months. The name Kachar Modun is probably Mongol, and as Katzar is = “land, region,” and Modun = “wood” or “tree,” a fair interpretation lies on the surface. Such a name indeed has little individuality. But the Jesuit maps have a Modun Khotan (“Wood-ville”) just about the locality supposed, viz. in the region north of the eastern extremity of the Great Wall.
[Captain Gill writes (River of Golden Sand, I. p. 111): “This country around Urh-Chuang is admirably described [in Marco Polo, pp. 403, 406], and I should almost imagine that the Kaan must have set off south-east from Peking, and enjoyed some of his hawking not far from here, before he travelled to Cachar Modun, wherever that may have been.”
“With respect to Cachar Modun, Marco Polo intends perhaps by this name Ho-si wu, which place, together with Yang-ts’un, were comprised in the general name Ma t’ou (perhaps the Modun of M. Polo). Ma-t’ou is even now a general term for a jetty in Chinese. Ho-si in the Mongol spelling was Ha-shin. D’Ohsson, in his translation of Rashid-eddin renders Ho-si by Co-shi (Hist. des Mongols, I. p. 95), but Rashid in that case speaks not of Ho-si wu, but of the Tangut Empire, which in Chinese was called Ho-si, meaning west of the (Yellow) River. (See supra, [p. 205]). Ho-si wu, as well as Yang-ts’un, both exist even now as villages on the Pei-ho River, and near the first ancient walls can be seen. Ho-si wu means: ‘Custom’s barrier west of the (Pei-ho) river.’” (Palladius, p. 45.) This identification cannot be accepted on account of the position of Ho-si wu.—H. C.]
[Note 7.]—I suppose the best accessible illustration of the Kaan’s great tent may be that in which the Emperor Kienlung received Lord Macartney in the same region in 1793, of which one view is given in Staunton’s plates. Another exists in the Staunton Collection in the B. M., of which I give a reduced sketch.
Kúblái’s great tent, after all, was but a fraction of the size of Akbar’s audience-tents, the largest of which held 10,000 people, and took 1000 farráshes a week’s work to pitch it, with machines. But perhaps the manner of holding people is differently estimated. (Aín Akb. 53.)
In the description of the tent-poles, Pauthier’s text has “trois coulombes de fust de pieces moult bien encuierées,” etc. The G. T. has “de leing d’especies mout bien curés,” etc. The Crusca, “di spezie molto belle,” and Ramusio going off at a tangent, “di legno intagliate con grandissimo artificio e indorate.” I believe the translation in the text to indicate the true reading. It might mean camphor-wood, or the like. The tent-covering of tiger-skins is illustrated by a passage in Sanang Setzen, which speaks of a tent covered with panther-skins, sent to Chinghiz by the Khan of the Solongos (p. 77).
The Tents of the Emperor Kienlung.
[Grenard (pp. 160–162) gives us his experience of Tents in Central Asia (Khotan). “These Tents which we had purchased at Tashkent were the ‘tentes-abris’ which are used in campaign by Russian military workshops, only we made them larger by a third. They were made of grey Kirghiz felt, which cannot be procured at Khotan. The felt manufactured in this town not having enough consistency or solidity, we took Aksu felt, which is better than this of Khotan, though inferior to the felt of Russian Turkestan. These felt tents are extremely heavy, and, once damp, are dried with difficulty. These drawbacks are not compensated by any important advantage; it would be an illusion to believe that they preserve from the cold any better than other tents. In fact, I prefer the Manchu tent in use in the Chinese army, which is, perhaps, of all military tents the most practical and comfortable. It is made of a single piece of double cloth of cotton, very strong, waterproof for a long time, white inside, blue outside, and weighs with its three tipped sticks and its wooden poles, 25 kilog. Set up, it forms a ridge roof 7 feet high and shelters fully ten men. It suits servants perfectly well. For the master who wants to work, to write, to draw, occasionally to receive officials, the ideal tent would be one of the same material, but of larger proportions, and comprising two parallel vertical partitions and surmounted by a ridge roof. The round form of Kirghiz and Mongol tents is also very comfortable, but it requires a complicated and inconvenient wooden frame-work, owing to which it takes some considerable time to raise up the tent.”—H. C.]
[Note 8.]—The expressions about the sable run in the G. T., “et l’apellent les Tartarz les roi des pelaines,” etc. This has been curiously misunderstood both in versions based on Pipino, and in the Geog. Latin and Crusca Italian. The Geog. Latin gives us “vocant eas Tartari Lenoidae Pellonae”; the Crusca, “chiamanle li Tartari Leroide Pelame”; Ramusio in a very odd way combines both the genuine and the blundered interpretation: “E li Tartari la chiamano Regina delle Pelli; e gli animali si chiamano Rondes.” Fraehn ingeniously suggested that this Rondes (which proves to be merely a misunderstanding of the French words Roi des) was a mistake for Kunduz, usually meaning a “beaver,” but also a “sable.” (See Ibn Foszlan, p. 57.) Condux, no doubt with this meaning, appears coupled with vair, in a Venetian Treaty with Egypt (1344), quoted by Heyd. (II. 208.)
Ibn Batuta puts the ermine above the sable. An ermine pelisse, he says, was worth in India 1000 dinárs of that country, whilst a sable one was worth only 400 dinárs. As Ibn Batuta’s Indian dinárs are Rupees, the estimate of price is greatly lower than Polo’s. Some years ago I find the price of a Sack, as it is technically called by the Russian traders, or robe of fine sables, stated to be in the Siberian market about 7000 banco rubels, i.e. I believe about 350l. The same authority mentions that in 1591 the Tzar Theodore Ivanovich made a present of a pelisse valued at the equivalent of 5000 silver rubels of modern Russian money, or upwards of 750l. Atkinson speaks of a single sable skin of the highest quality, for which the trapper demanded 18l. The great mart for fine sables is at Olekma on the Lena. (See I. B. II. 401–402; Baer’s Beiträge, VII. 215 seqq.; Upper and Lower Amoor, 390.)
[Note 9.]—Hawking is still common in North China. Pétis de la Croix the elder, in his account of the Yasa, or institutes of Chinghiz, quotes one which lays down that between March and October “no one should take stags, deer, roebucks, hares, wild asses, nor some certain birds,” in order that there might be ample sport in winter for the court. This would be just the reverse of Polo’s statement, but I suspect it is merely a careless adoption of the latter. There are many such traps in Pétis de la Croix. (Engl. Vers. 1722, p. 82.)
CHAPTER XXI.
Rehearsal of the way the Year of the Great Kaan is distributed.
On arriving at his capital of Cambaluc,[{1}] he stays in his palace there three days and no more; during which time he has great court entertainments and rejoicings, and makes merry with his wives. He then quits his palace at Cambaluc, and proceeds to that city which he has built, as I told you before, and which is called Chandu, where he has that grand park and palace of cane, and where he keeps his gerfalcons in mew. There he spends the summer, to escape the heat, for the situation is a very cool one. After stopping there from the beginning of May to the 28th of August, he takes his departure (that is the time when they sprinkle the white mares’ milk as I told you), and returns to his capital Cambaluc. There he stops, as I have told you also, the month of September, to keep his Birthday Feast, and also throughout October, November, December, January, and February, in which last month he keeps the grand feast of the New Year, which they call the White Feast, as you have heard already with all particulars. He then sets out on his march towards the Ocean Sea, hunting and hawking, and continues out from the beginning of March to the middle of May; and then comes back for three days only to the capital, during which he makes merry with his wives, and holds a great court and grand entertainments. In truth, ’tis something astonishing, the magnificence displayed by the Emperor in those three days; and then he starts off again as you know.
Thus his whole year is distributed in the following manner: six months at his chief palace in the royal city of Cambaluc, to wit, September, October, November, December, January, February;
Then on the great hunting expedition towards the sea, March, April, May;
Then back to his palace at Cambaluc for three days;
Then off to the city of Chandu which he has built, and where the Cane Palace is, where he stays June, July, August;
Then back again to his capital city of Cambaluc.
So thus the whole year is spent; six months at the capital, three months in hunting, and three months at the Cane Palace to avoid the heat. And in this way he passes his time with the greatest enjoyment; not to mention occasional journeys in this or that direction at his own pleasure.
[Note 1.]—This chapter, with its wearisome and whimsical reiteration, reminding one of a game of forfeits, is peculiar to that class of MSS. which claims to represent the copy given to Thibault de Cepoy by Marco Polo.
Dr. Bushell has kindly sent me a notice of a Chinese document (his translation of which he had unfortunately mislaid), containing a minute contemporary account of the annual migration of the Mongol Court to Shangtu. Having traversed the Kiu Yung Kwan (or Nankau) Pass, where stands the great Mongol archway represented at the end of this volume, they left what is now the Kalgan post-road at Tumuyi, making straight for Chaghan-nor (supra, [p. 304]), and thence to Shangtu. The return journey in autumn followed the same route as far as Chaghan-nor, where some days were spent in fowling on the lakes, and thence by Siuen-hwa fu (“Sindachu,” supra, [p. 295]) and the present post-road to Cambaluc.
CHAPTER XXII.
Concerning the City of Cambaluc, and its Great Traffic and Population.
You must know that the city of Cambaluc hath such a multitude of houses, and such a vast population inside the walls and outside, that it seems quite past all possibility. There is a suburb outside each of the gates, which are twelve in number;[{1}] and these suburbs are so great that they contain more people than the city itself [for the suburb of one gate spreads in width till it meets the suburb of the next, whilst they extend in length some three or four miles]. In those suburbs lodge the foreign merchants and travellers, of whom there are always great numbers who have come to bring presents to the Emperor, or to sell articles at Court, or because the city affords so good a mart to attract traders. [There are in each of the suburbs, to a distance of a mile from the city, numerous fine hostelries[{2}] for the lodgment of merchants from different parts of the world, and a special hostelry is assigned to each description of people, as if we should say there is one for the Lombards, another for the Germans, and a third for the Frenchmen.] And thus there are as many good houses outside of the city as inside, without counting those that belong to the great lords and barons, which are very numerous.
Plain of Cambaluc; the City in the distance; from the Hills on the north-west.
You must know that it is forbidden to bury any dead body inside the city. If the body be that of an Idolater it is carried out beyond the city and suburbs to a remote place assigned for the purpose, to be burnt. And if it be of one belonging to a religion the custom of which is to bury, such as the Christian, the Saracen, or what not, it is also carried out beyond the suburbs to a distant place assigned for the purpose. And thus the city is preserved in a better and more healthy state.
Moreover, no public woman resides inside the city, but all such abide outside in the suburbs. And ’tis wonderful what a vast number of these there are for the foreigners; it is a certain fact that there are more than 20,000 of them living by prostitution. And that so many can live in this way will show you how vast is the population.
[Guards patrol the city every night in parties of 30 or 40, looking out for any persons who may be abroad at unseasonable hours, i.e. after the great bell hath stricken thrice. If they find any such person he is immediately taken to prison, and examined next morning by the proper officers. If these find him guilty of any misdemeanour they order him a proportionate beating with the stick. Under this punishment people sometimes die; but they adopt it in order to eschew bloodshed; for their Bacsis say that it is an evil thing to shed man’s blood.]
To this city also are brought articles of greater cost and rarity, and in greater abundance of all kinds, than to any other city in the world. For people of every description, and from every region, bring things (including all the costly wares of India, as well as the fine and precious goods of Cathay itself with its provinces), some for the sovereign, some for the court, some for the city which is so great, some for the crowds of Barons and Knights, some for the great hosts of the Emperor which are quartered round about; and thus between court and city the quantity brought in is endless.
As a sample, I tell you, no day in the year passes that there do not enter the city 1000 cart-loads of silk alone, from which are made quantities of cloth of silk and gold, and of other goods. And this is not to be wondered at; for in all the countries round about there is no flax, so that everything has to be made of silk. It is true, indeed, that in some parts of the country there is cotton and hemp, but not sufficient for their wants. This, however, is not of much consequence, because silk is so abundant and cheap, and is a more valuable substance than either flax or cotton.
Round about this great city of Cambaluc there are some 200 other cities at various distances, from which traders come to sell their goods and buy others for their lords; and all find means to make their sales and purchases, so that the traffic of the city is passing great.
[Note 1.]—It would seem to have been usual to reckon twelve suburbs to Peking down to modern times. (See Deguignes, III. 38.)
[Note 2.]—The word here used is Fondaco, often employed in mediæval Italian in the sense nearly of what we call a factory. The word is from the Greek πανδοκεῖον, but through the Arabic Fandúḳ. The latter word is used by Ibn Batuta in speaking of the hostelries at which the Mussulman merchants put up in China.
CHAPTER XXIII.
[Concerning the Oppressions of Achmath the Bailo, and the Plot that was formed against Him.[{1}]
You will hear further on how that there are twelve persons appointed who have authority to dispose of lands, offices, and everything else at their discretion. Now one of these was a certain Saracen named Achmath, a shrewd and able man, who had more power and influence with the Grand Kaan than any of the others; and the Kaan held him in such regard that he could do what he pleased. The fact was, as came out after his death, that Achmath had so wrought upon the Kaan with his sorcery, that the latter had the greatest faith and reliance on everything he said, and in this way did everything that Achmath wished him to do.
This person disposed of all governments and offices, and passed sentence on all malefactors; and whenever he desired to have any one whom he hated put to death, whether with justice or without it, he would go to the Emperor and say: “Such an one deserves death, for he hath done this or that against your imperial dignity.” Then the Lord would say: “Do as you think right,” and so he would have the man forthwith executed. Thus when people saw how unbounded were his powers, and how unbounded the reliance placed by the Emperor on everything that he said, they did not venture to oppose him in anything. No one was so high in rank or power as to be free from the dread of him. If any one was accused by him to the Emperor of a capital offence, and desired to defend himself, he was unable to bring proofs in his own exculpation, for no one would stand by him, as no one dared to oppose Achmath. And thus the latter caused many to perish unjustly.[{2}]
Moreover, there was no beautiful woman whom he might desire, but he got hold of her; if she were unmarried, forcing her to be his wife, if otherwise, compelling her to consent to his desires. Whenever he knew of any one who had a pretty daughter, certain ruffians of his would go to the father, and say: “What say you? Here is this pretty daughter of yours; give her in marriage to the Bailo Achmath (for they called him ‘the Bailo,’ or, as we should say, ‘the Vicegerent’),[{3}] and we will arrange for his giving you such a government or such an office for three years.” And so the man would surrender his daughter. And Achmath would go to the Emperor, and say: “Such a government is vacant, or will be vacant on such a day. So-and-So is a proper man for the post.” And the Emperor would reply: “Do as you think best;” and the father of the girl was immediately appointed to the government. Thus either through the ambition of the parents, or through fear of the Minister, all the beautiful women were at his beck, either as wives or mistresses. Also he had some five-and-twenty sons who held offices of importance, and some of these, under the protection of their father’s name, committed scandals like his own, and many other abominable iniquities. This Achmath also had amassed great treasure, for everybody who wanted office sent him a heavy bribe.
In such authority did this man continue for two-and-twenty years. At last the people of the country, to wit the Cathayans, utterly wearied with the endless outrages and abominable iniquities which he perpetrated against them, whether as regarded their wives or their own persons, conspired to slay him and revolt against the government. Amongst the rest there was a certain Cathayan named Chenchu, a commander of a thousand, whose mother, daughter, and wife had all been dishonoured by Achmath. Now this man, full of bitter resentment, entered into parley regarding the destruction of the Minister with another Cathayan whose name was Vanchu, who was a commander of 10,000. They came to the conclusion that the time to do the business would be during the Great Kaan’s absence from Cambaluc. For after stopping there three months he used to go to Chandu and stop there three months; and at the same time his son Chinkin used to go away to his usual haunts, and this Achmath remained in charge of the city; sending to obtain the Kaan’s orders from Chandu when any emergency arose.
So Vanchu and Chenchu, having come to this conclusion, proceeded to communicate it to the chief people among the Cathayans, and then by common consent sent word to their friends in many other cities that they had determined on such a day, at the signal given by a beacon, to massacre all the men with beards, and that the other cities should stand ready to do the like on seeing the signal fires. The reason why they spoke of massacring the bearded men was that the Cathayans naturally have no beard, whilst beards are worn by the Tartars, Saracens, and Christians. And you should know that all the Cathayans detested the Grand Kaan’s rule because he set over them governors who were Tartars, or still more frequently Saracens, and these they could not endure, for they were treated by them just like slaves. You see the Great Kaan had not succeeded to the dominion of Cathay by hereditary right, but held it by conquest; and thus having no confidence in the natives, he put all authority into the hands of Tartars, Saracens, or Christians who were attached to his household and devoted to his service, and were foreigners in Cathay.
Wherefore, on the day appointed, the aforesaid Vanchu and Chenchu having entered the palace at night, Vanchu sat down and caused a number of lights to be kindled before him. He then sent a messenger to Achmath the Bailo, who lived in the Old City, as if to summon him to the presence of Chinkin, the Great Kaan’s son, who (it was pretended) had arrived unexpectedly. When Achmath heard this he was much surprised, but made haste to go, for he feared the Prince greatly. When he arrived at the gate he met a Tartar called Cogatai, who was Captain of the 12,000 that formed the standing garrison of the City; and the latter asked him whither he was bound so late? “To Chinkin, who is just arrived.” Quoth Cogatai, “How can that be? How could he come so privily that I know nought of it?” So he followed the Minister with a certain number of his soldiers. Now the notion of the Cathayans was that, if they could make an end of Achmath, they would have nought else to be afraid of. So as soon as Achmath got inside the palace, and saw all that illumination, he bowed down before Vanchu, supposing him to be Chinkin, and Chenchu who was standing ready with a sword straightway cut his head off. As soon as Cogatai, who had halted at the entrance, beheld this, he shouted “Treason!” and instantly discharged an arrow at Vanchu and shot him dead as he sat. At the same time he called his people to seize Chenchu, and sent a proclamation through the city that any one found in the streets would be instantly put to death. The Cathayans saw that the Tartars had discovered the plot, and that they had no longer any leader, since Vanchu was killed and Chenchu was taken. So they kept still in their houses, and were unable to pass the signal for the rising of the other cities as had been settled. Cogatai immediately dispatched messengers to the Great Kaan giving an orderly report of the whole affair, and the Kaan sent back orders for him to make a careful investigation, and to punish the guilty as their misdeeds deserved. In the morning Cogatai examined all the Cathayans, and put to death a number whom he found to be ringleaders in the plot. The same thing was done in the other cities, when it was found that the plot extended to them also.
After the Great Kaan had returned to Cambaluc he was very anxious to discover what had led to this affair, and he then learned all about the endless iniquities of that accursed Achmath and his sons. It was proved that he and seven of his sons (for they were not all bad) had forced no end of women to be their wives, besides those whom they had ravished. The Great Kaan then ordered all the treasure that Achmath had accumulated in the Old City to be transferred to his own treasury in the New City, and it was found to be of enormous amount. He also ordered the body of Achmath to be dug up and cast into the streets for the dogs to tear; and commanded those of his sons that had followed the father’s evil example to be flayed alive.[{4}]
These circumstances called the Kaan’s attention to the accursed doctrines of the Sect of the Saracens, which excuse every crime, yea even murder itself, when committed on such as are not of their religion. And seeing that this doctrine had led the accursed Achmath and his sons to act as they did without any sense of guilt, the Kaan was led to entertain the greatest disgust and abomination for it. So he summoned the Saracens and prohibited their doing many things which their religion enjoined. Thus, he ordered them to regulate their marriages by the Tartar Law, and prohibited their cutting the throats of animals killed for food, ordering them to rip the stomach in the Tartar way.
Now when all this happened Messer Marco was upon the spot.][{5}]
[Note 1.]—This narrative is from Ramusio’s version, and constitutes one of the most notable passages peculiar to that version.
The name of the oppressive Minister is printed in Ramusio’s Collection Achmach. But the c and t are so constantly interchanged in MSS. that I think there can be no question this was a mere clerical error for Achmath, and so I write it. I have also for consistency changed the spelling of Xandu, Chingis, etc., to that hitherto adopted in our text of Chandu, Chinkin, etc.
[Note 2.]—The remarks of a Chinese historian on Kúblái’s administration may be appropriately quoted here: “Hupilai Han must certainly be regarded as one of the greatest princes that ever existed, and as one of the most successful in all that he undertook. This he owed to his judgment in the selection of his officers, and to his talent for commanding them. He carried his arms into the most remote countries, and rendered his name so formidable that not a few nations spontaneously submitted to his supremacy. Nor was there ever an Empire of such vast extent. He cultivated literature, protected its professors, and even thankfully received their advice. Yet he never placed a Chinese in his cabinet, and he employed foreigners only as Ministers. These, however, he chose with discernment, always excepting the Ministers of Finance. He really loved his subjects; and if they were not always happy under his government, it is because they took care to conceal their sufferings. There were in those days no Public Censors whose duty it is to warn the Sovereign of what is going on: and no one dared to speak out for fear of the resentment of the Ministers, who were the depositaries of the Imperial authority, and the authors of the oppressions under which the people laboured. Several Chinese, men of letters and of great ability, who lived at Hupilai’s court, might have rendered that prince the greatest service in the administration of his dominions, but they never were intrusted with any but subordinate offices, and they were not in a position to make known the malversations of those public blood-suckers.” (De Mailla, IX. 459–460.)
Ahmad was a native of Fenáket (afterwards Sháh-Rúkhia), near the Jaxartes, and obtained employment under Kúblái through the Empress Jamui Khatun, who had known him before her marriage. To her Court he was originally attached, but we find him already employed in high financial office in 1264. Kúblái’s demands for money must have been very large, and he eschewed looking too closely into the character of his financial agents or the means by which they raised money for him. Ahmad was very successful in this, and being a man of great talent and address, obtained immense influence over the Emperor, until at last nothing was done save by his direction, though he always appeared to be acting under the orders of Kúblái. The Chinese authorities in Gaubil and De Mailla speak strongly of his oppressions, but only in general terms, and without affording such particulars as we derive from the text.
The Hereditary Prince Chingkim was strongly adverse to Ahmad; and some of the high Chinese officials on various occasions made remonstrance against the Minister’s proceedings; but Kúblái turned a deaf ear to them, and Ahmad succeeded in ruining most of his opponents. (Gaubil, 141, 143, 151; De Mailla, IX. 316–317; D’Ohsson, II. 468–469.)
[The Rev. W. S. Ament (Marco Polo in Cambaluc, 105) writes: “No name is more execrated than that of Ah-ha-ma (called Achmath by Polo), a Persian, who was chosen to manage the finances of the Empire. He was finally destroyed by a combination against him while the Khan was absent with Crown Prince Chen Chin, on a visit to Shang Tu.” Achmath has his biography under the name of A-ho-ma (Ahmed) in the ch. 205 of the Yuen-shi, under the rubric “Villanous Ministers.” (Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. p. 272.)—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—This term Bailo was the designation of the representative of Venetian dignity at Constantinople, called Podestà during the period of the Latin rule there, and it has endured throughout the Turkish Empire to our own day in the form Balios as the designation of a Frank Consul. [There was also a Venetian bailo in Syria.—H. C.] But that term itself could scarcely have been in use at Cambaluc, even among the handful of Franks, to designate the powerful Minister, and it looks as if Marco had confounded the word in his own mind with some Oriental term of like sound, possibly the Arabic Wáli, “a Prince, Governor of a Province, ... a chief Magistrate.” (F. Johnson.) In the Roteiro of the Voyage of Vasco da Gama (2nd ed. Lisbon, 1861, pp. 53–54) it is said that on the arrival of the ships at Calicut the King sent “a man who was called the Bale, which is much the same as Alquaide.” And the Editor gives the same explanation that I have suggested.
I observe that according to Pandit Manphul the native governor of Kashgar, under the Chinese Amban, used to be called the Baili Beg. [In this case Baili stands for beilêh.—H. C.] (Panjab Trade Report, App. p. cccxxxvii.)
[Note 4.]—The story, as related in De Mailla and Gaubil, is as follows. It contains much less detail than the text, and it differs as to the manner of the chief conspirator’s death, whilst agreeing as to his name and the main facts of the episode.
In the spring of 1282 (Gaubil, 1281) Kúblái and Prince Chingkim had gone off as usual to Shangtu, leaving Ahmad in charge at the Capital. The whole country was at heart in revolt against his oppressions. Kúblái alone knew, or would know, nothing of them.
Wangchu, a chief officer of the city, resolved to take the opportunity of delivering the Empire from such a curse, and was joined in his enterprise by a certain sorcerer called Kao Hoshang. They sent two Lamas to the Council Board with a message that the Crown Prince was returning to the Capital to take part in certain Buddhist ceremonies, but no credit was given to this. Wangchu then, pretending to have received orders from the Prince, desired an officer called Chang-y (perhaps the Chenchu of Polo’s narrative) to go in the evening with a guard of honour to receive him. Late at night a message was sent to summon the Ministers, as the Prince (it was pretended) had already arrived. They came in haste with Ahmad at their head, and as he entered the Palace Wangchu struck him heavily with a copper mace and stretched him dead. Wangchu was arrested, or according to one account surrendered, though he might easily have escaped, confident that the Crown Prince would save his life. Intelligence was sent off to Kúblái, who received it at Chaghan-Nor. (See [Book I. ch. lx.]) He immediately despatched officers to arrest the guilty and bring them to justice. Wangchu, Chang-y, and Kao Hoshang were publicly executed at the Old City; Wangchu dying like a hero, and maintaining that he had done the Empire an important service which would yet be acknowledged. (De Mailla, IX. 412–413; Gaubil, 193–194; D’Ohsson, II. 470.) [Cf. G. Phillips, in T’oung-Pao, I. p. 220.—H. C.]
[Note 5.]—And it is a pleasant fact that Messer Marco’s presence, and his upright conduct upon this occasion, have not been forgotten in the Chinese Annals: “The Emperor having returned from Chaghan-Nor to Shangtu, desired Polo, Assessor of the Privy Council, to explain the reasons which had led Wangchu to commit this murder. Polo spoke with boldness of the crimes and oppressions of Ahama (Ahmad), which had rendered him an object of detestation throughout the Empire. The Emperor’s eyes were opened, and he praised the courage of Wangchu. He complained that those who surrounded him, in abstaining from admonishing him of what was going on, had thought more of their fear of displeasing the Minister than of the interests of the State.” By Kúblái’s order, the body of Ahmad was taken up, his head was cut off and publicly exposed, and his body cast to the dogs. His son also was put to death with all his family, and his immense wealth confiscated. 714 persons were punished, one way or other, for their share in Ahmad’s malversations. (De Mailla, IX. 413–414.)
What is said near the end of this chapter about the Kaan’s resentment against the Saracens has some confirmation in circumstances related by Rashiduddin. The refusal of some Mussulman merchants, on a certain occasion at Court, to eat of the dishes sent them by the Emperor, gave great offence, and led to the revival of an order of Chinghiz, which prohibited, under pain of death, the slaughter of animals by cutting their throats. This endured for seven years, and was then removed on the strong representation made to Kúblái of the loss caused by the cessation of the visits of the Mahomedan merchants. On a previous occasion also the Mahomedans had incurred disfavour, owing to the ill-will of certain Christians, who quoted to Kúblái a text of the Koran enjoining the killing of polytheists. The Emperor sent for the Mullahs, and asked them why they did not act on the Divine injunction? All they could say was that the time was not yet come! Kúblái ordered them for execution, and was only appeased by the intercession of Ahmad, and the introduction of a divine with more tact, who smoothed over obnoxious applications of the text. (D’Ohsson, II. 492–493.)
CHAPTER XXIV.
How the Great Kaan causeth the Bark of Trees, made into something like Paper, to pass for Money over all his Country.
Now that I have told you in detail of the splendour of this City of the Emperor’s, I shall proceed to tell you of the Mint which he hath in the same city, in the which he hath his money coined and struck, as I shall relate to you. And in doing so I shall make manifest to you how it is that the Great Lord may well be able to accomplish even much more than I have told you, or am going to tell you, in this Book. For, tell it how I might, you never would be satisfied that I was keeping within truth and reason!
The Emperor’s Mint then is in this same City of Cambaluc, and the way it is wrought is such that you might say he hath the Secret of Alchemy in perfection, and you would be right! For he makes his money after this fashion.
He makes them take of the bark of a certain tree, in fact of the Mulberry Tree, the leaves of which are the food of the silkworms,—these trees being so numerous that whole districts are full of them. What they take is a certain fine white bast or skin which lies between the wood of the tree and the thick outer bark, and this they make into something resembling sheets of paper, but black. When these sheets have been prepared they are cut up into pieces of different sizes. The smallest of these sizes is worth a half tornesel; the next, a little larger, one tornesel; one, a little larger still, is worth half a silver groat of Venice; another a whole groat; others yet two groats, five groats, and ten groats. There is also a kind worth one Bezant of gold, and others of three Bezants, and so up to ten. All these pieces of paper are [issued with as much solemnity and authority as if they were of pure gold or silver; and on every piece a variety of officials, whose duty it is, have to write their names, and to put their seals. And when all is prepared duly, the chief officer deputed by the Kaan smears the Seal entrusted to him with vermilion, and impresses it on the paper, so that the form of the Seal remains printed upon it in red; the Money is then authentic. Any one forging it would be punished with death.] And the Kaan causes every year to be made such a vast quantity of this money, which costs him nothing, that it must equal in amount all the treasure in the world.
With these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he causes all payments on his own account to be made; and he makes them to pass current universally over all his kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power and sovereignty extends. And nobody, however important he may think himself, dares to refuse them on pain of death. And indeed everybody takes them readily, for wheresoever a person may go throughout the Great Kaan’s dominions he shall find these pieces of paper current, and shall be able to transact all sales and purchases of goods by means of them just as well as if they were coins of pure gold. And all the while they are so light that ten bezants’ worth does not weigh one golden bezant.
Furthermore all merchants arriving from India or other countries, and bringing with them gold or silver or gems and pearls, are prohibited from selling to any one but the Emperor. He has twelve experts chosen for this business, men of shrewdness and experience in such affairs; these appraise the articles, and the Emperor then pays a liberal price for them in those pieces of paper. The merchants accept his price readily, for in the first place they would not get so good an one from anybody else, and secondly they are paid without any delay. And with this paper-money they can buy what they like anywhere over the Empire, whilst it is also vastly lighter to carry about on their journeys. And it is a truth that the merchants will several times in the year bring wares to the amount of 400,000 bezants, and the Grand Sire pays for all in that paper. So he buys such a quantity of those precious things every year that his treasure is endless, whilst all the time the money he pays away costs him nothing at all. Moreover, several times in the year proclamation is made through the city that any one who may have gold or silver or gems or pearls, by taking them to the Mint shall get a handsome price for them. And the owners are glad to do this, because they would find no other purchaser give so large a price. Thus the quantity they bring in is marvellous, though these who do not choose to do so may let it alone. Still, in this way, nearly all the valuables in the country come into the Kaan’s possession.
When any of those pieces of paper are spoilt—not that they are so very flimsy neither—the owner carries them to the Mint, and by paying three per cent. on the value he gets new pieces in exchange. And if any Baron, or any one else soever, hath need of gold or silver or gems or pearls, in order to make plate, or girdles, or the like, he goes to the Mint and buys as much as he list, paying in this paper-money.[{1}]
Now you have heard the ways and means whereby the Great Kaan may have, and in fact has, more treasure than all the Kings in the World; and you know all about it and the reason why. And now I will tell you of the great Dignitaries which act in this city on behalf of the Emperor.
[Note 1.]—It is surprising to find that, nearly two centuries ago, Magaillans, a missionary who had lived many years in China, and was presumably a Chinese scholar, should have utterly denied the truth of Polo’s statements about the paper-currency of China. Yet the fact even then did not rest on Polo’s statement only. The same thing had been alleged in the printed works of Rubruquis, Roger Bacon, Hayton, Friar Odoric, the Archbishop of Soltania, and Josaphat Barbaro, to say nothing of other European authorities that remained in manuscript, or of the numerous Oriental records of the same circumstance.
The issue of paper-money in China is at least as old as the beginning of the 9th century. In 1160 the system had gone to such excess that government paper equivalent in nominal value to 43,600,000 ounces of silver had been issued in six years, and there were local notes besides; so that the Empire was flooded with rapidly depreciating paper.
The Kin or “Golden” Dynasty of Northern Invaders who immediately preceded the Mongols took to paper, in spite of their title, as kindly as the native sovereigns. Their notes had a course of seven years, after which new notes were issued to the holders, with a deduction of 15 per cent.
The Mongols commenced their issues of paper-money in 1236, long before they had transferred the seat of their government to China. Kúblái made such an issue in the first year of his reign (1260), and continued to issue notes copiously till the end. In 1287 he put out a complete new currency, one note of which was to exchange against five of the previous series of equal nominal value! In both issues the paper-money was, in official valuation, only equivalent to half its nominal value in silver; a circumstance not very easy to understand. The paper-money was called Chao.
The notes of Kúblái’s first issue (1260–1287) with which Polo may be supposed most familiar, were divided into three classes; (1) Notes of Tens, viz. of 10, 20, 30, and 50 tsien or cash; (2) Notes of Hundreds, viz. of 100, 200, and 500 tsien; and (3) Notes of Strings or Thousands of cash, or in other words of Liangs or ounces of silver (otherwise Tael), viz. of 1000 and 2000 tsien. There were also notes printed on silk for 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 ounces each, valued at par in silver, but these would not circulate. In 1275, it should be mentioned, there had been a supplementary issue of small notes for 2, 3, and 5 cash each.
Marsden states an equation between Marco’s values of the Notes and the actual Chinese currency, to which Biot seems to assent. I doubt its correctness, for his assumed values of the groat or grosso and tornesel are surely wrong. The grosso ran at that time 18 to the gold ducat or sequin, and allowing for the then higher relative value of silver, should have contained about 5d. of silver. The ducat was also equivalent to 2 lire, and the tornese (Romanin, III. 343) was 4 deniers. Now the denier is always, I believe ¹⁄₂₄₀ of the líra. Hence the tornese would be ⁹⁄₆₀ of the grosso.
But we are not to look for exact correspondences, when we see Polo applying round figures in European coinage to Chinese currency.
Bank-Note of the Ming Dynasty.
His bezant notes, I agree with Marsden, here represent the Chinese notes for one and more ounces of silver. And here the correspondence of value is much nearer than it seems at first sight. The Chinese liang or ounce of silver is valued commonly at 6s. 7d., say roundly 80d.[1] But the relation of gold and silver in civilized Asia was then (see ch. I. note 4, and also Cathay, pp. ccl. and 442) as 10 to 1, not, as with us now, more than 15 to 1. Wherefore the liang in relation to gold would be worth 120d. or 10s., a little over the Venetian ducat and somewhat less than the bezant or dínár. We shall then find the table of Chinese issues, as compared with Marco’s equivalents, to stand thus:—
Chinese Issues, as recorded.
Marco Polo’s Statement.
For 10 ounces of silver (viz. the Chinese Ting)[2] 10
bezants.
For 1 ounce of silver, i.e. 1 liang, or 1000 tsien (cash) 1
„
For 500 tsien 10
groats.
200 „ 5
„
(should have been 4). 100 „ 2
„
50 „ 1
„
30 „ ½
„
(but the proportionate equivalent of half a groat would be 25 tsien). 20 „ 10 „ 1
tornesel
(but the proportionate equivalent would be 7½ tsien). 5 „ ½
„
(but prop. equivalent 3¾ tsien). Pauthier has given from the Chinese Annals of the Mongol Dynasty a complete Table of the Issues of Paper-Money during every year of Kúblái’s reign (1260–1294), estimated at their nominal value in Ting or tens of silver ounces. The lowest issue was in 1269, of 228,960 ounces, which at the rate of 120d. to the ounce (see above) = 114,480l., and the highest was in 1290, viz. 50,002,500 ounces, equivalent at the same estimate to 25,001,250l.! whilst the total amount in the 34 years was 249,654,290 ounces or 124,827,144l. in nominal value. Well might Marco speak of the vast quantity of such notes that the Great Kaan issued annually!
To complete the history of the Chinese paper-currency so far as we can:
In 1309, a new issue took place with the same provision as in Kúblái’s issue of 1287, i.e. each note of the new issue was to exchange against 5 of the old of the same nominal value. And it was at the same time prescribed that the notes should exchange at par with metals, which of course it was beyond the power of Government to enforce, and so the notes were abandoned. Issues continued from time to time to the end of the Mongol Dynasty. The paper-currency is spoken of by Odoric (1320–30), by Pegolotti (1330–40), and by Ibn Batuta (1348), as still the chief, if not sole, currency of the Empire. According to the Chinese authorities, the credit of these issues was constantly diminishing, as it is easy to suppose. But it is odd that all the Western Travellers speak as if the notes were as good as gold. Pegolotti, writing for mercantile men, and from the information (as we may suppose) of mercantile men, says explicitly that there was no depreciation.
The Ming Dynasty for a time carried on the system of paper-money; with the difference that while under the Mongols no other currency had been admitted, their successors made payments in notes, but accepted only hard cash from their people![3] In 1448 the chao of 1000 cash was worth but 3. Barbaro still heard talk of the Chinese paper-currency from travellers whom he met at Azov about this time; but after 1455 there is said to be no more mention of it in Chinese history.
I have never heard of the preservation of any note of the Mongols; but some of the Ming survive, and are highly valued as curiosities in China. The late Sir G. T. Staunton appears to have possessed one; Dr. Lockhart formerly had two, of which he gave one to Sir Harry Parkes, and retains the other. The paper is so dark as to explain Marco’s description of it as black. By Dr. Lockhart’s kindness I am enabled to give a reduced representation of this note, as near a facsimile as we have been able to render it, but with some restoration, e.g. of the seals, of which on the original there is the barest indication remaining.
[Mr. Vissering (Chinese Currency, Addenda, I.–III.) gives a facsimile and a description of a Chinese banknote of the Ming Dynasty belonging to the collection of the Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg. “In the eighth year of the period Hung-wu (1375), the Emperor Tai-tsu issued an order to his minister of finances to make the Pao-tsao (precious bills) of the Ta-Ming Dynasty, and to employ as raw material for the composition of those bills the fibres of the mulberry tree.”—H. C.]
Notwithstanding the disuse of Government issues of paper-money from that time till recent years, there had long been in some of the cities of China a large use of private and local promissory notes as currency. In Fuchau this was especially the case; bullion was almost entirely displaced, and the banking-houses in that city were counted by hundreds. These were under no government control; any individual or company having sufficient capital or credit could establish a bank and issue their bills, which varied in amount from 100 cash to 1000 dollars. Some fifteen years ago the Imperial Government seems to have been induced by the exhausted state of the Treasury, and these large examples of the local use of paper-currency, to consider projects for resuming that system after the disuse of four centuries. A curious report by a Committee of the Imperial Supreme Council, on a project for such a currency, appears among the papers published by the Russian Mission at Peking. It is unfavourable to the particular project, but we gather from other sources that the Government not long afterwards did open banks in the large cities of the Empire for the issue of a new paper-currency, but that it met with bad success. At Fuchau, in 1858, I learn from one notice, the dollar was worth from 18,000 to 20,000 cash in Government Bills. Dr. Rennie, in 1861, speaks of the dollar at Peking as valued at 15,000, and later at 25,000 paper cash. Sushun, the Regent, had issued a vast number of notes through banks of his own in various parts of Peking. These he failed to redeem, causing the failure of all the banks, and great consequent commotion in the city. The Regent had led the Emperor [Hien Fung] systematically into debauched habits which ended in paralysis. On the Emperor’s death the Empress caused the arrest and execution of Sushun. His conduct in connection with the bank failures was so bitterly resented that when the poor wretch was led to execution (8th November, 1861), as I learn from an eye-witness, the defrauded creditors lined the streets and cheered.[4]
The Japanese also had a paper-currency in the 14th century. It is different in form from that of China. That figured by Siebold is a strip of strong paper doubled, 6¼ in. long by 1¾ in. wide, bearing a representation of the tutelary god of riches, with long inscriptions in Chinese characters, seals in black and red, and an indication of value in ancient Japanese characters. I do not learn whether notes of considerable amount are still used in Japan; but Sir R. Alcock speaks of banknotes for small change from 30 to 500 cash and more, as in general use in the interior.
Two notable and disastrous attempts to imitate the Chinese system of currency took place in the Middle Ages; one of them in Persia, apparently in Polo’s very presence, the other in India some 36 years later.
The first was initiated in 1294 by the worthless Kaikhatu Khan, when his own and his ministers’ extravagance had emptied the Treasury, on the suggestion of a financial officer called ’Izzuddín Muzaffar. The notes were direct copies of Kúblái’s, even the Chinese characters being imitated as part of the device upon them.[5] The Chinese name Chao was applied to them, and the Mongol Resident at Tabriz, Pulad Chingsang, was consulted in carrying out the measure. Expensive preparations were made for this object; offices called Cháo-Khánahs were erected in the principal cities of the provinces, and a numerous staff appointed to carry out the details. Ghazan Khan in Khorasan, however, would have none of it, and refused to allow any of these preparations to be made within his government. After the constrained use of the Chao for two or three days Tabriz was in an uproar; the markets were closed; the people rose and murdered ’Izzuddín; and the whole project had to be abandoned. Marco was in Persia at this time, or just before, and Sir John Malcolm not unnaturally suggests that he might have had something to do with the scheme; a suggestion which excites a needless commotion in the breast of M. Pauthier. We may draw from the story the somewhat notable conclusion that Block-printing was practised, at least for this one purpose, at Tabriz in 1294.
The other like enterprise was that of Sultan Mahomed Tughlak of Delhi, in 1330–31. This also was undertaken for like reasons, and was in professed imitation of the Chao of Cathay. Mahomed, however, used copper tokens instead of paper; the copper being made apparently of equal weight to the gold or silver coin which it represented. The system seems to have had a little more vogue than at Tabriz, but was speedily brought to an end by the ease with which forgeries on an enormous scale were practised. The Sultan, in hopes of reviving the credit of his currency, ordered that every one bringing copper tokens to the Treasury should have them cashed in gold or silver. “The people who in despair had flung aside their copper coins like stones and bricks in their houses, all rushed to the Treasury and exchanged them for gold and silver. In this way the Treasury soon became empty, but the copper coins had as little circulation as ever, and a very grievous blow was given to the State.”
An odd issue of currency, not of paper, but of leather, took place in Italy a few years before Polo’s birth. The Emperor Frederic II., at the siege of Faenza in 1241, being in great straits for money, issued pieces of leather stamped with the mark of his mint at the value of his Golden Augustals. This leather coinage was very popular, especially at Florence, and it was afterwards honourably redeemed by Frederic’s Treasury. Popular tradition in Sicily reproaches William the Bad among his other sins with having issued money of leather, but any stone is good enough to cast at a dog with such a surname.
[Ma Twan-lin mentions that in the fourth year of the period Yuen Show (B.C. 119), a currency of white metal and deer-skin was made. Mr. Vissering (Chinese Currency, 38) observes that the skin-tallies “were purely tokens, and have had nothing in common with the leather-money, which was, during a long time, current in Russia. This Russian skin-money had a truly representative character, as the parcels were used instead of the skins from which they were cut; the skins themselves being too bulky and heavy to be constantly carried backward and forward, only a little piece was cut off, to figure as a token of possession of the whole skin. The ownership of the skin was proved when the piece fitted in the hole.”
Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 201 note) says: “As early as B.C. 118, we find the Chinese using ‘leather-money’ (p’i pi). These were pieces of white deer-skin, a foot square, with a coloured border. Each had a value of 40,000 cash. (Ma Twan-lin, Bk. 8, 5.)”
Mr. Charles F. Keary (Coins and Medals, by S. Lane Poole, 128) mentions that “in the reign of Elizabeth there was a very extensive issue of private tokens in lead, tin, latten, and leather.”—H. C.]
(Klapr. in Mém. Rel. à l’Asie, I. 375 seqq.; Biot, in J. As. sér. III. tom. iv.; Marsden and Pauthier, in loco; Parkes, in J. R. A. S. XIII. 179; Doolittle, 452 seqq.; Wylie, J. of Shanghai Lit. and Scient. Soc. No. I.; Arbeiten der kais. russ. Gesandsch. zu Peking, I. p. 48; Rennie, Peking, etc., I. 296, 347; Birch, in. Num. Chron. XII. 169; Information from Dr. Lockhart; Alcock, II. 86; D’Ohsson, IV. 53; Cowell, in J. A. S. B. XXIX. 183 seqq.; Thomas, Coins of Patan Sovs. of Hind., (from Numism. Chron. 1852), p. 139 seqq.; Kington’s Fred. II. II. 195; Amari, III. 816; W. Vissering, On Chinese Currency, Leiden, 1877.)
[“Without doubt the Mongols borrowed the bank-note system from the Kin. Up to the present time there is in Si-ngan-fu a block kept, which was used for printing the bank-notes of the Kin Dynasty. I have had the opportunity of seeing a print of those bank-notes, they were of the same size and shape as the bank-notes of the Ming. A reproduction of the text of the Kin bank-notes is found in the Kin shi ts’ui pien. This copy has the characters pao küan (precious charter) and the years of reign Chêng Yew, 1213–1216. The first essay of the Mongols to introduce bank-notes dates from the time of Ogodai Khan (1229–1242), but Chinese history only mentions the fact without giving details. At that time silk in skeins was the only article of a determinate value in the trade and on the project of Ye lü ch’u ts’ai, minister of Ogodai, the taxes were also collected in silk delivered by weight. It can therefore be assumed that the name sze ch’ao (i.e. bank-notes referring to the weight of silk) dates back to the same time. At any rate, at a later time, as, under the reign of Kubilai, the issuing of banknotes was decreed, silk was taken as the standard to express the value of silver and 1000 liang silk was estimated = 50 liang (or 1 ting) silver. Thus, in consequence of those measures, it gradually became a rule to transfer the taxes and rents originally paid in silk, into silver. The wealth of the Mongol Khans in precious metals was renowned. The accounts regarding their revenues, however, which we meet with occasionally in Chinese history, do not surprise by their vastness. In the year 1298, for instance, the amount of the revenue is stated in the Siu t’ung Kien to have been:—
19,000 liang of gold = (190,000 liang of silver, according to the exchange of that time at the rate of 1 to 10).
60,000 liang of silver.
3,600,000 ting of silver in bank-notes (i.e. 180 millions liang); altogether 180,250,000 liang of silver.
The number seems indeed very high for that time. But if the exceedingly low exchange of the bank-notes be taken into consideration, the sum will be reduced to a modest amount.” (Palladius, pp. 50–51.)—H. C.]
[Dr. Bretschneider (Hist. Bot. Disc., I. p. 4) makes the following remark:—“Polo states (I. 409) that the Great Kaan causeth the bark of great Mulberry-trees, made into something like paper, to pass for money.” He seems to be mistaken. Paper in China is not made from mulberry-trees but from the Broussonetia papyrifera, which latter tree belongs to the same order of Moraceae. The same fibres are used also in some parts of China for making cloth, and Marco Polo alludes probably to the same tree when stating (II. 108) “that in the province of Cuiju (Kwei chau) they manufacture stuff of the bark of certain trees, which form very fine summer clothing.”—H. C.]
Chinese Issues, as recorded. | Marco Polo’s Statement. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| For 10 ounces of silver (viz. the Chinese Ting)[2] | 10 | bezants. | |
| For 1 ounce of silver, i.e. 1 liang, or 1000 tsien (cash) | 1 | „ | |
| For 500 tsien | 10 | groats. | |
| 200 „ | 5 | „ | (should have been 4). |
| 100 „ | 2 | „ | |
| 50 „ | 1 | „ | |
| 30 „ | ½ | „ | (but the proportionate equivalent of half a groat would be 25 tsien). |
| 20 „ | |||
| 10 „ | 1 | tornesel | (but the proportionate equivalent would be 7½ tsien). |
| 5 „ | ½ | „ | (but prop. equivalent 3¾ tsien). |
[1] Even now there are at least eight different taels (or liangs) in extensive use over the Empire, and varying as much as from 96 to 106; and besides these are many local taels, with about the same limits of variation.—(Williamson’s Journeys, I. 60.)
[2] [The Archimandrite Palladius (l.c., p. 50, note) says that “the ting of the Mongol time, as well as during the reign of the Kin, was a unit of weight equivalent to fifty liang, but not to ten liang. Cf. Ch’u keng lu, and Yuen-shi, ch. xcv. The Yuen pao, which as everybody in China knows, is equivalent to fifty liang (taels) of silver, is the same as the ancient ting, and the character Yuen indicates that it dates from the Yuen Dynasty.”—H. C.]
[3] This is also, as regards Customs payments, the system of the Government of modern Italy.
[4] The first edition of this work gave a facsimile of one of this unlucky minister’s notes.
[5] On both sides, however, was the Mahomedan formula, and beneath that the words Yiranjín Túrjí, a title conferred on the kings of Persia by the Kaan. There was also an inscription to the following effect: that the Emperor in the year 693 (A.H.) had issued these auspicious chao, that all who forged or uttered false notes should be summarily punished, with their wives and children, and their property confiscated; and that when these auspicious notes were once in circulation, poverty would vanish, provisions become cheap, and rich and poor be equal (Cowell). The use of the term chao at Tabriz may be compared with that of Bănklōt, current in modern India.
CHAPTER XXV.
Concerning the Twelve Barons who are set over all the Affairs of the Great Kaan.
You must know that the Great Kaan hath chosen twelve great Barons to whom he hath committed all the necessary affairs of thirty-four great provinces; and now I will tell you particulars about them and their establishments.
You must know that these twelve Barons reside all together in a very rich and handsome palace, which is inside the city of Cambaluc, and consists of a variety of edifices, with many suites of apartments. To every province is assigned a judge and several clerks, and all reside in this palace, where each has his separate quarters. These judges and clerks administer all the affairs of the provinces to which they are attached, under the direction of the twelve Barons. Howbeit, when an affair is of very great importance, the twelve Barons lay in before the Emperor, and he decides as he thinks best. But the power of those twelve Barons is so great that they choose the governors for all those thirty-four great provinces that I have mentioned, and only after they have chosen do they inform the Emperor of their choice. This he confirms, and grants to the person nominated a tablet of gold such as is appropriate to the rank of his government.
Those twelve Barons also have such authority that they can dispose of the movements of the forces, and send them whither, and in such strength, as they please. This is done indeed with the Emperor’s cognizance, but still the orders are issued on their authority. They are styled Shieng, which is as much as to say “The Supreme Court,” and the palace where they abide is also called Shieng. This body forms the highest authority at the Court of the Great Kaan; and indeed they can favour and advance whom they will. I will not now name the thirty-four provinces to you, because they will be spoken of in detail in the course of this Book.[{1}]
[Note 1.]—Pauthier’s extracts from the Chinese Annals of the Dynasty, in illustration of this subject, are interesting. These, as he represents them, show the Council of Ministers usually to have consisted of twelve high officials, viz.: two Ch’ing-siang [丞 相] or (chief) ministers of state, one styled, “of the Right,” and the other “of the Left”; four called P’ing-chang ching-ssé, which seems to mean something like ministers in charge of special departments; four assistant ministers; two Counsellors.
Rashiduddin, however, limits the Council to the first two classes: “Strictly speaking, the Council of State is composed of four Ch’ing-sang (Ch’ing-siang) or great officers (Wazírs he afterwards terms them), and four Fanchán (P’ing-chang) or associated members, taken from the nations of the Tajiks, Cathayans, Ighurs, and Arkaun” (i.e. Nestorian Christians). (Compare [p. 418], supra.)
[A Samarkand man, Seyyd Tadj Eddin Hassan ben el Khallal, quoted in the Masálak al Absár, says: “Near the Khan are two amírs who are his ministers; they are called Djing San جينكصان (Ch’ing-siang). After them come the two Bidjan بجان (P’ing Chang), then the two Zoudjin زوجين (Tso Chen), then the two Yudjin يوجين (Yu Chen), and at last the Landjun لنجون (Lang Chang), head of the scribes, and secretary of the sovereign. The Khan holds a sitting every day in the middle of a large building called Chen شن (Sheng), which is very like our Palace of Justice.” (C. Schefer, Cent. Ec. Langues Or., pp. 18–19.)—H. C.]
In a later age we find the twelve Barons reappearing in the pages of Mendoza: “The King hath in this city of Tabin (Peking), where he is resident, a royal council of twelve counsellors and a president, chosen men throughout all the kingdom, and such as have had experience in government many years.” And also in the early centuries of the Christian era we hear that the Khan of the Turks had his twelve grandees, divided into those of the Right and those of the Left, probably a copy from a Chinese order then also existing.
But to return to Rashiduddin: “As the Kaan generally resides at the capital, he has erected a place for the sittings of the Great Council, called Sing.... The dignitaries mentioned above are expected to attend daily at the Sing, and to make themselves acquainted with all that passes there.”
The Sing of Rashid is evidently the Shieng or Sheng (Scieng) of Polo. M. Pauthier is on this point somewhat contemptuous towards Neumann, who, he says, confounds Marco Polo’s twelve Barons or Ministers of State with the chiefs of the twelve great provincial governments called Sing, who had their residence at the chief cities of those governments; whilst in fact Polo’s Scieng (he asserts) has nothing to do with the Sing, but represents the Chinese word Siang “a minister,” and “the office of a minister.” [There was no doubt a confusion between Siang 相 and Sheng 省.—H. C.]
It is very probable that two different words, Siang and Sing, got confounded by the non-Chinese attachés of the Imperial Court; but it seems to me quite certain that they applied the same word, Sing or Sheng, to both institutions, viz. to the High Council of State, and to the provincial governments. It also looks as if Marco Polo himself had made that very confusion with which Pauthier charges Neumann. For whilst here he represents the twelve Barons as forming a Council of State at the capital, we find further on, when speaking of the city of Yangchau, he says: “Et si siet en ceste cité uns des xii Barons du Grant Kaan; car elle est esleue pour un des xii sieges,” where the last word is probably a mistranscription of Sciengs, or Sings, and in any case the reference is to a distribution of the empire into twelve governments.
To be convinced that Sing was used by foreigners in the double sense that I have said, we have only to proceed with Rashiduddin’s account of the administration. After what we have already quoted, he goes on: “The Sing of Khanbaligh is the most eminent, and the building is very large.... Sings do not exist in all the cities, but only in the capitals of great provinces.... In the whole empire of the Kaan there are twelve of these Sings; but that of Khanbaligh is the only one which has Ching-sangs amongst its members.” Wassáf again, after describing the greatness of Khanzai (Kinsay of Polo) says: “These circumstances characterize the capital itself, but four hundred cities of note, and embracing ample territories, are dependent on its jurisdiction, insomuch that the most inconsiderable of those cities surpasses Baghdad and Shiraz. In the number of these cities are Lankinfu and Zaitun, and Chinkalán; for they call Khanzai a Shing, i.e. a great city in which the high and mighty Council of Administration holds its meetings.” Friar Odoric again says: “This empire hath been divided by the Lord thereof into twelve parts, each one thereof is termed a Singo.”
Polo, it seems evident to me, knew nothing of Chinese. His Shieng is no direct attempt to represent any Chinese word, but simply the term that he had been used to employ in talking Persian or Turki, in the way that Rashiduddin and Wassáf employ it.
I find no light as to the thirty-four provinces into which Polo represents the empire as divided, unless it be an enumeration of the provinces and districts which he describes in the second and third parts of Bk. II., of which it is not difficult to reckon thirty-three or thirty-four, but not worth while to repeat the calculation.
[China was then divided into twelve Sheng or provinces: Cheng-Tung, Liao-Yang, Chung-Shu, Shen-Si, Ling-Pe (Karakorum), Kan-Suh, Sze-ch’wan, Ho-Nan Kiang-Pe, Kiang-Ché, Kiang-Si, Hu-Kwang and Yun-Nan. Rashiduddin (J. As., XI. 1883, p. 447) says that of the twelve Sing, Khanbaligh was the only one with Chin-siang. We read in Morrison’s Dict. (Pt. II. vol. i. p. 70): “Chin-seang, a Minister of State, was so called under the Ming Dynasty.” According to Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, xxiv. p. 101), Ching Siang were abolished in 1395. I imagine that the thirty-four provinces refer to the Fu cities, which numbered however thirty-nine, according to Oxenham’s Historical Atlas.—H. C.]
(Cathay, 263 seqq. and 137; Mendoza, I. 96; Erdmann, 142; Hammer’s Wassáf, p. 42, but corrected.)
CHAPTER XXVI.
How the Kaan’s Posts and Runners are sped through many Lands and Provinces.
Now you must know that from this city of Cambaluc proceed many roads and highways leading to a variety of provinces, one to one province, another to another; and each road receives the name of the province to which it leads; and it is a very sensible plan.[{1}] And the messengers of the Emperor in travelling from Cambaluc, be the road whichsoever they will, find at every twenty-five miles of the journey a station which they call Yamb,[{2}] or, as we should say, the “Horse-Post-House.” And at each of those stations used by the messengers, there is a large and handsome building for them to put up at, in which they find all the rooms furnished with fine beds and all other necessary articles in rich silk, and where they are provided with everything they can want. If even a king were to arrive at one of these, he would find himself well lodged.
At some of these stations, moreover, there shall be posted some four hundred horses standing ready for the use of the messengers; at others there shall be two hundred, according to the requirements, and to what the Emperor has established in each case. At every twenty-five miles, as I said, or anyhow at every thirty miles, you find one of these stations, on all the principal highways leading to the different provincial governments; and the same is the case throughout all the chief provinces subject to the Great Kaan.[{3}] Even when the messengers have to pass through a roadless tract where neither house nor hostel exists, still there the station-houses have been established just the same, excepting that the intervals are somewhat greater, and the day’s journey is fixed at thirty-five to forty-five miles, instead of twenty-five to thirty. But they are provided with horses and all the other necessaries just like those we have described, so that the Emperor’s messengers, come they from what region they may, find everything ready for them.
And in sooth this is a thing done on the greatest scale of magnificence that ever was seen. Never had emperor, king, or lord, such wealth as this manifests! For it is a fact that on all these posts taken together there are more than 300,000 horses kept up, specially for the use of the messengers. And the great buildings that I have mentioned are more than 10,000 in number, all richly furnished, as I told you. The thing is on a scale so wonderful and costly that it is hard to bring oneself to describe it.[{4}]
But now I will tell you another thing that I had forgotten, but which ought to be told whilst I am on this subject. You must know that by the Great Kaan’s orders there has been established between those post-houses, at every interval of three miles, a little fort with some forty houses round about it, in which dwell the people who act as the Emperor’s foot-runners. Every one of those runners wears a great wide belt, set all over with bells, so that as they run the three miles from post to post their bells are heard jingling a long way off. And thus on reaching the post the runner finds another man similarly equipt, and all ready to take his place, who instantly takes over whatsoever he has in charge, and with it receives a slip of paper from the clerk, who is always at hand for the purpose; and so the new man sets off and runs his three miles. At the next station he finds his relief ready in like manner; and so the post proceeds, with a change at every three miles. And in this way the Emperor, who has an immense number of these runners, receives despatches with news from places ten days’ journey off in one day and night; or, if need be, news from a hundred days off in ten days and nights; and that is no small matter! (In fact in the fruit season many a time fruit shall be gathered one morning in Cambaluc, and the evening of the next day it shall reach the Great Kaan at Chandu, a distance of ten days’ journey.[{5}] The clerk at each of the posts notes the time of each courier’s arrival and departure; and there are often other officers whose business it is to make monthly visitations of all the posts, and to punish those runners who have been slack in their work.[{6}]) The Emperor exempts these men from all tribute, and pays them besides.
Moreover, there are also at those stations other men equipt similarly with girdles hung with bells, who are employed for expresses when there is a call for great haste in sending despatches to any governor of a province, or to give news when any Baron has revolted, or in other such emergencies; and these men travel a good two hundred or two hundred and fifty miles in the day, and as much in the night. I’ll tell you how it stands. They take a horse from those at the station which are standing ready saddled, all fresh and in wind, and mount and go at full speed, as hard as they can ride in fact. And when those at the next post hear the bells they get ready another horse and a man equipt in the same way, and he takes over the letter or whatever it be, and is off full-speed to the third station, where again a fresh horse is found all ready, and so the despatch speeds along from post to post, always at full gallop, with regular change of horses. And the speed at which they go is marvellous. (By night, however, they cannot go so fast as by day, because they have to be accompanied by footmen with torches, who could not keep up with them at full speed.)
Those men are highly prized; and they could never do it, did they not bind hard the stomach, chest and head with strong bands. And each of them carries with him a gerfalcon tablet, in sign that he is bound on an urgent express; so that if perchance his horse break down, or he meet with other mishap, whomsoever he may fall in with on the road, he is empowered to make him dismount and give up his horse. Nobody dares refuse in such a case; so that the courier hath always a good fresh nag to carry him.[{7}]
Now all these numbers of post-horses cost the Emperor nothing at all; and I will tell you the how and the why. Every city, or village, or hamlet, that stands near one of those post-stations, has a fixed demand made on it for as many horses as it can supply, and these it must furnish to the post. And in this way are provided all the posts of the cities, as well as the towns and villages round about them; only in uninhabited tracts the horses are furnished at the expense of the Emperor himself.
(Nor do the cities maintain the full number, say of 400 horses, always at their station, but month by month 200 shall be kept at the station, and the other 200 at grass, coming in their turn to relieve the first 200. And if there chance to be some river or lake to be passed by the runners and horse-posts, the neighbouring cities are bound to keep three or four boats in constant readiness for the purpose.)
And now I will tell you of the great bounty exercised by the Emperor towards his people twice a year.
[Note 1.]—The G. Text has “et ce est mout sçue chouse”; Pauthier’s Text, “mais il est moult celé.” The latter seems absurd. I have no doubt that sçue is correct, and is an Italianism, saputo having sometimes the sense of prudent or judicious. Thus P. della Valle (II. 26), speaking of Sháh Abbás: “Ma noti V.S. i tiri di questo re, saputo insieme e bizzarro,” “acute with all his eccentricity.”
[Note 2.]—Both Neumann and Pauthier seek Chinese etymologies of this Mongol word, which the Tartars carried with them all over Asia. It survives in Persian and Turki in the senses both of a post-house and a post-horse, and in Russia, in the former sense, is a relic of the Mongol dominion. The ambassadors of Shah Rukh, on arriving at Sukchu, were lodged in the Yám-Khána, or post-house, by the city gate; and they found ninety-nine such Yams between Sukchu and Khanbaligh, at each of which they were supplied with provisions, servants, beds, night-clothes, etc. Odoric likewise speaks of the hostelries called Yam, and Rubruquis applies the same term to quarters in the imperial camp, which were assigned for the lodgment of ambassadors. (Cathay, ccii., 137; Rubr. 310.)
[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 101, note) says that these post-stations were established by Okkodai in 1234 throughout the Mongol empire. (D’Ohsson, ii. 63.) Dr. G. Schlegel (T’oung Pao, II. 1891, 265, note) observes that iam is not, as Pauthier supposed, a contraction of yi-mà, horse post-house (yi-mà means post-horse, and Pauthier makes a mistake), but represents the Chinese character 站, pronounced at present chán, which means in fact a road station, a post. In Annamite, this character 站 is pronounced trạm, and it means, according to Bonet’s Dict. Annamite-Français: “Relais de poste, station de repos.” (See Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. p. 187 note.)—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—Martini and Magaillans, in the 17th century, give nearly the same account of the government hostelries.
[Note 4.]—Here Ramusio has this digression: “Should any one find it difficult to understand how there should be such a population as all this implies, and how they can subsist, the answer is that all the Idolaters, and Saracens as well, take six, eight, or ten wives apiece when they can afford it, and beget an infinity of children. In fact, you shall find many men who have each more than thirty sons who form an armed retinue to their father, and this through the fact of his having so many wives. With us, on the other hand, a man hath but one wife; and if she be barren, still he must abide by her for life, and have no progeny; thus we have not such a population as they have.
“And as regards food, they have abundance; for they generally consume rice, panic, and millet (especially the Tartars, Cathayans, and people of Manzi); and these three crops in those countries render an hundred-fold. Those nations use no bread, but only boil those kinds of grain with milk or meat for their victual. Their wheat, indeed, does not render so much, but this they use only to make vermicelli, and pastes of that description. No spot of arable land is left untilled; and their cattle are infinitely prolific, so that when they take the field every man is followed by six, eight, or more horses for his own use. Thus you may clearly perceive how the population of those parts is so great, and how they have such an abundance of food.”
[Note 5.]—The Burmese kings used to have the odoriferous Durian transmitted by horse-posts from Tenasserim to Ava. But the most notable example of the rapid transmission of such dainties, and the nearest approach I know of to their despatch by telegraph, was that practised for the benefit of the Fatimite Khalif Aziz (latter part of 10th century), who had a great desire for a dish of cherries of Balbek. The Wazir Yakub ben-Kilis caused six hundred pigeons to be despatched from Balbek to Cairo, each of which carried attached to either leg a small silk bag containing a cherry! (Quat. Makrizi, IV. 118.)
[Note 6.]—“Note is taken at every post,” says Amyot, in speaking of the Chinese practice of last century, “of the time of the courier’s arrival, in order that it may be known at what point delays have occurred.” (Mém. VIII. 185.)
[Note 7.]—The post-system is described almost exactly as in the text by Friar Odoric and the Archbishop of Soltania, in the generation after Polo, and very much in the same way by Magaillans in the 17th century. Posts had existed in China from an old date. They are spoken of by Mas’udi and the Relations of the 9th century. They were also employed under the ancient Persian kings; and they were in use in India, at least in the generation after Polo. The Mongols, too, carried the institution wherever they went.
Polo describes the couriers as changed at short intervals, but more usually in Asiatic posts the same man rides an enormous distance. The express courier in Tibet, as described by “the Pandit,” rides from Gartokh to Lhasa, a distance of 800 miles, travelling day and night. The courier’s coat is sealed upon him, so that he dares not take off his clothes till the seal is officially broken on his arrival at the terminus. These messengers had faces cracked, eyes bloodshot and sunken, and bodies raw with vermin. (J. R. G. S. XXXVIII. p. 149.) The modern Turkish post from Constantinople to Baghdad, a distance of 1100 miles, is done in twenty days by four Tartars riding night and day. The changes are at Sivas, Diarbekir, and Mosul. M. Tchihatcheff calculates that the night riding accomplishes only one quarter of the whole. (Asie Mineure, 2de Ptie. 632–635.)—See I. p. 352, paï tze.
CHAPTER XXVII.
How the Emperor bestows Help on his People, when they are afflicted with Dearth Or Murrain.
Now you must know that the Emperor sends his Messengers over all his Lands and Kingdoms and Provinces, to ascertain from his officers if the people are afflicted by any dearth through unfavourable seasons, or storms or locusts, or other like calamity; and from those who have suffered in this way no taxes are exacted for that year; nay more, he causes them to be supplied with corn of his own for food and seed. Now this is undoubtedly a great bounty on his part. And when winter comes, he causes inquiry to be made as to those who have lost their cattle, whether by murrain or other mishap, and such persons not only go scot free, but get presents of cattle. And thus, as I tell you, the Lord every year helps and fosters the people subject to him.
[There is another trait of the Great Kaan I should tell you; and that is, that if a chance shot from his bow strike any herd or flock, whether belonging to one person or to many, and however big the flock may be, he takes no tithe thereof for three years. In like manner, if the arrow strike a boat full of goods, that boat-load pays no duty; for it is thought unlucky that an arrow strike any one’s property; and the Great Kaan says it would be an abomination before God, were such property, that has been struck by the divine wrath, to enter into his Treasury.[{1}]]
[Note 1.]—The Chinese author already quoted as to Kúblái’s character ([Note 2, ch. xxiii.] supra) says: “This Prince, at the sight of some evil prognostic, or when there was dearth, would remit taxation, and cause grain to be distributed to those who were in destitution. He would often complain that there never lacked informers if balances were due, or if corvées had been ordered, but when the necessities of the people required to be reported, not a word was said.”
Wassáf tells a long story in illustration of Kúblái’s justice and consideration for the peasantry. One of his sons, with a handful of followers, had got separated from the army, and halted at a village in the territory of Bishbaligh, where the people gave them sheep and wine. Next year two of the party came the same way and demanded a sheep and a stoup of wine. The people gave it, but went to the Kaan and told the story, saying they feared it might grow into a perpetual exaction. Kúblái sharply rebuked the Prince, and gave the people compensation and an order in their favour. (De Mailla, ix. 460; Hammer’s Wassaf, 38–39.)]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
How the Great Kaan causes Trees to be Planted by the Highways.
The Emperor moreover hath taken order that all the highways travelled by his messengers and the people generally should be planted with rows of great trees a few paces apart; and thus these trees are visible a long way off, and no one can miss the way by day or night. Even the roads through uninhabited tracts are thus planted, and it is the greatest possible solace to travellers. And this is done on all the ways, where it can be of service. [The Great Kaan plants these trees all the more readily, because his astrologers and diviners tell him that he who plants trees lives long.[{1}]
But where the ground is so sandy and desert that trees will not grow, he causes other landmarks, pillars or stones, to be set up to show the way.]
[Note 1.]—In this Kúblái imitated the great King Asoka, or Priyadarsi, who in his graven edicts (circa B.C. 250) on the Delhi Pillar, says: “Along the high roads I have caused fig-trees to be planted, that they may be for shade to animals and men. I have also planted mango-trees; and at every half-coss I have caused wells to be constructed, and resting-places for the night. And how many hostels have been erected by me at various places for the entertainment of man and beast.” (J. A. S. B. IV. 604.) There are still remains of the fine avenues of Kúblái and his successors in various parts of Northern China. (See Williamson, i. 74.)
CHAPTER XXIX.
Concerning the Rice-Wine drunk by the people of Cathay.
Most of the people of Cathay drink wine of the kind that I shall now describe. It is a liquor which they brew of rice with a quantity of excellent spice, in such fashion that it makes better drink than any other kind of wine; it is not only good, but clear and pleasing to the eye.[{1}] And being very hot stuff, it makes one drunk sooner than any other wine.
[Note 1.]—The mode of making Chinese rice-wine is described in Amyot’s Mémoires, V. 468 seqq. A kind of yeast is employed, with which is often mixed a flour prepared from fragrant herbs, almonds, pine-seeds, dried fruits, etc. Rubruquis says this liquor was not distinguishable, except by smell, from the best wine of Auxerre; a wine so famous in the Middle Ages, that the Historian Friar, Salimbene, went from Lyons to Auxerre on purpose to drink it.[1] Ysbrandt Ides compares the rice-wine to Rhenish; John Bell to Canary; a modern traveller quoted by Davis, “in colour, and a little in taste, to Madeira.” [Friar Odoric (Cathay, i. p. 117) calls this wine bigni; Dr. Schlegel (T’oung Pao, ii. p. 264) says Odoric’s wine was probably made with the date Mi-yin, pronounced Bi-im in old days. But Marco’s wine is made of rice, and is called shao hsing chiu. Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 166, note) writes: “There is another stronger liquor distilled from millet, and called shao chiu: in Anglo-Chinese, samshu; Mongols call it araka, arrak, and arreki. Ma Twan-lin (Bk. 327) says that the Moho (the early Nu-chên Tartars) drank rice wine (mi chiu), but I fancy that they, like the Mongols, got it from the Chinese.”
Dr. Emil Bretschneider (Botanicon Sinicum, ii. pp. 154–158) gives a most interesting account of the use and fabrication of intoxicating beverages by the Chinese. “The invention of wine or spirits in China,” he says, “is generally ascribed to a certain I ti, who lived in the time of the Emperor Yü. According to others, the inventor of wine was Tu K’ang.” One may refer also to Dr. Macgowan’s paper On the “Mutton Wine” of the Mongols and Analogous Preparations of the Chinese. (Jour. N. China Br. R. As. Soc., 1871–1872, pp. 237–240.)—H. C.]
[1] Kington’s Fred. II. II. 457. So, in a French play of the 13th century, a publican in his patois invites custom, with hot bread, hot herrings, and wine of Auxerre in plenty:—
“Chaiens, fait bon disner chaiens;
Chi a caut pain et caus herens,
Et vin d’Aucheurre à plain tonnel.”—
(Théat. Franç. au Moyen Age, 168.)
CHAPTER XXX.
Concerning the Black Stones that are dug in Cathay, and are Burnt for Fuel.
It is a fact that all over the country of Cathay there is a kind of black stones existing in beds in the mountains, which they dig out and burn like firewood. If you supply the fire with them at night, and see that they are well kindled, you will find them still alight in the morning; and they make such capital fuel that no other is used throughout the country. It is true that they have plenty of wood also, but they do not burn it, because those stones burn better and cost less.[{1}]
[Moreover with that vast number of people, and the number of hot baths that they maintain—for every one has such a bath at least three times a week, and in winter if possible every day, whilst every nobleman and man of wealth has a private bath for his own use—the wood would not suffice for the purpose.]
[Note 1.]—There is a great consumption of coal in Northern China, especially in the brick stoves, which are universal, even in poor houses. Coal seems to exist in every one of the eighteen provinces of China, which in this respect is justly pronounced to be one of the most favoured countries in the world. Near the capital coal is mined at Yuen-ming-yuen, and in a variety of isolated deposits among the hills in the direction of the Kalgan road, and in the district round Siuen-hwa-fu. (Sindachu of Polo, ante [ch. lix.]) But the most important coal-fields in relation to the future are those of Shan-tung Hu-nan, Ho-nan, and Shan-si. The last is eminently the coal and iron province of China, and its coal-field, as described by Baron Richthofen, combines, in an extraordinary manner, all the advantages that can enhance the value of such a field except (at present) that of facile export; whilst the quantity available is so great that from Southern Shan-si alone he estimates the whole world could be supplied, at the present rate of consumption, for several thousand years. “Adits, miles in length, could be driven within the body of the coal.... These extraordinary conditions ... will eventually give rise to some curious features in mining ... if a railroad should ever be built from the plain to this region ... branches of it will be constructed within the body of one or other of these beds of anthracite.” Baron Richthofen, in the paper which we quote from, indicates the revolution in the deposit of the world’s wealth and power, to which such facts, combined with other characteristics of China, point as probable; a revolution so vast that its contemplation seems like that of a planetary catastrophe.
In the coal-fields of Hu-nan “the mines are chiefly opened where the rivers intersect the inclined strata of the coal-measures and allow the coal-beds to be attacked by the miner immediately at their out-croppings.”
At the highest point of the Great Kiang, reached by Sarel and Blakiston, they found mines on the cliffs over the river, from which the coal was sent down by long bamboo cables, the loaded baskets drawing up the empty ones.
[Many coal-fields have been explored since; one of the most important is the coal-field of the Yun-nan province; the finest deposits are perhaps those found in the bend of the Kiang; coal is found also at Mong-Tzŭ, Lin-ngan, etc.; this rich coal region has been explored in 1898 by the French engineer A. Leclère. (See Congrès int. Géog., Paris, 1900, pp. 178–184.)—H. C.]
In various parts of China, as in Che-kiang, Sze-ch’wan, and at Peking, they form powdered coal, mixed with mud, into bricks, somewhat like our “patent fuel.” This practice is noticed by Ibn Batuta, as well as the use of coal in making porcelain, though this he seems to have misunderstood. Rashiduddin also mentions the use of coal in China. It was in use, according to citations of Pauthier’s, before the Christian era. It is a popular belief in China, that every provincial capital is bound to be established over a coal-field, so as to have a provision in case of siege. It is said that during the British siege of Canton mines were opened to the north of the city.
(The Distribution of Coal in China, by Baron Richthofen, in Ocean Highways, N.S., I. 311; Macgowan in Ch. Repos. xix. 385–387; Blakiston, 133, 265; Mid. Kingdom, I. 73, 78; Amyot, xi. 334; Cathay, 261, 478, 482; Notes by Rev. A. Williamson in J. N. Ch. Br. R. A. S., December, 1867; Hedde and Rondot, p. 63.)
Æneas Sylvius relates as a miracle that took place before his eyes in Scotland, that poor and almost naked beggars, when stones were given them as alms at the church doors, went away quite delighted; for stones of that kind were imbued either with brimstone or with some oily matter, so that they could be burnt instead of wood, of which the country was destitute. (Quoted by Jos. Robertson, Statuta Eccles. Scotic. I. xciii.)
CHAPTER XXXI.
How the Great Kaan causes Stores of Corn to be made, to help his People withal in time of Dearth.
You must know that when the Emperor sees that corn is cheap and abundant, he buys up large quantities, and has it stored in all his provinces in great granaries, where it is so well looked after that it will keep for three or four years.[{1}]
And this applies, let me tell you, to all kinds of corn, whether wheat, barley, millet, rice, panic, or what not, and when there is any scarcity of a particular kind of corn, he causes that to be issued. And if the price of the corn is at one bezant the measure, he lets them have it at a bezant for four measures, or at whatever price will produce general cheapness; and every one can have food in this way. And by this providence of the Emperor’s, his people can never suffer from dearth. He does the same over his whole Empire; causing these supplies to be stored everywhere, according to calculation of the wants and necessities of the people.
[Note 1.]—“Le fait si bien estuier que il dure bien trois ans ou quatre” (Pauthier): “si bien estudier” (G. T.). The word may be estiver (It. stivare), to stow, but I half suspect it should be estuver in the sense of “kiln-dry,” though both the Geog. Latin and the Crusca render it gubernare.[1] Lecomte says: “Rice is always stored in the public granaries for three or four years in advance. It keeps long if care be taken to air it and stir it about; and although not so good to the taste or look as new rice, it is said to be more wholesome.”
The Archbishop of Soltania (A.D. 1330) speaks of these stores. “The said Emperor is very pitiful and compassionate ... and so when there is a dearth in the land he openeth his garners, and giveth forth of his wheat and his rice for half what others are selling it at.” Kúblái Kaan’s measures of this kind are recorded in the annals of the Dynasty, as quoted by Pauthier. The same practice is ascribed to the sovereigns of the T’ang Dynasty by the old Arab Relations. In later days a missionary gives in the Lettres Edifiantes an unfavourable account of the action of these public granaries, and of the rascality that occurred in connection with them. (Lecomte, II. 101; Cathay, 240; Relat. I. 39; Let. Ed. xxiv. 76.)
[The Yuen-shi in ch. 96 contains sections on dispensaries (Hui min yao kü), granary regulations (Shi ti), and regulations for a time of dearth (Chen Sü). (Bretschneider, Med. Res. I. p. 187.)—H. C.]
[1] Marsden observes incidentally (Hist. of Sumatra, 1st edition, p. 71) that he was told in Bengal they used to dry-kiln the rice for exportation, “owing to which, or to some other process, it will continue good for several years.”
CHAPTER XXXII.
Of the Charity of the Emperor to the Poor.
I have told you how the Great Kaan provides for the distribution of necessaries to his people in time of dearth, by making store in time of cheapness. Now I will tell you of his alms and great charity to the poor of his city of Cambaluc.
You see he causes selection to be made of a number of families in the city which are in a state of indigence, and of such families some may consist of six in the house, some of eight, some of ten, more or fewer in each as it may hap, but the whole number being very great. And each family he causes annually to be supplied with wheat and other corn sufficient for the whole year. And this he never fails to do every year. Moreover, all those who choose to go to the daily dole at the Court receive a great loaf apiece, hot from the baking, and nobody is denied; for so the Lord hath ordered. And so some 30,000 people go for it every day from year’s end to year’s end. Now this is a great goodness in the Emperor to take pity of his poor people thus! And they benefit so much by it that they worship him as he were God.
[He also provides the poor with clothes. For he lays a tithe upon all wool, silk, hemp, and the like, from which clothing can be made; and he has these woven and laid up in a building set apart for the purpose; and as all artizans are bound to give a day’s labour weekly, in this way the Kaan has these stuffs made into clothing for those poor families, suitable for summer or winter, according to the time of year. He also provides the clothing for his troops, and has woollens woven for them in every city, the material for which is furnished by the tithe aforesaid. You should know that the Tartars, before they were converted to the religion of the Idolaters, never practised almsgiving. Indeed, when any poor man begged of them they would tell him, “Go with God’s curse, for if He loved you as He loves me, He would have provided for you.” But the sages of the Idolaters, and especially the Bacsis mentioned before, told the Great Kaan that it was a good work to provide for the poor, and that his idols would be greatly pleased if he did so. And since then he has taken to do for the poor so much as you have heard.[{1}]]
[Note 1.]—This is a curious testimony to an ameliorating effect of Buddhism on rude nations. The general establishment of medical aid for men and animals is alluded to in the edicts of Asoka;[1] and hospitals for the diseased and destitute were found by Fahian at Palibothra, whilst Hiuen Tsang speaks of the distribution of food and medicine at the Punyasálás or “Houses of Beneficence,” in the Panjáb. Various examples of a charitable spirit in Chinese Institutions will be found in a letter by Père d’Entrecolles in the XVth Recueil of Lettres Edifiantes; and a similar detail in Nevius’s China and the Chinese, ch. xv. (See Prinsep’s Essays, II. 15; Beal’s Fah-hian, 107; Pèl. Boudd. II. 190.) The Tartar sentiment towards the poor survives on the Arctic shores:—“The Yakuts regard the rich as favoured by the gods; the poor as rejected and cast out by them.” (Billings, Fr. Tranls. I. 233.)
[1] As rendered by J. Prinsep. But I see that Professor H. H. Wilson did not admit the passage to bear that meaning.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
[Concerning the Astrologers in the City of Cambaluc.]
[There are in the city of Cambaluc, what with Christians, Saracens, and Cathayans, some five thousand astrologers and soothsayers, whom the Great Kaan provides with annual maintenance and clothing, just as he provides the poor of whom we have spoken, and they are in the constant exercise of their art in this city.
They have a kind of astrolabe on which are inscribed the planetary signs, the hours and critical points of the whole year. And every year these Christian, Saracen, and Cathayan astrologers, each sect apart, investigate by means of this astrolabe the course and character of the whole year, according to the indications of each of its Moons, in order to discover by the natural course and disposition of the planets, and the other circumstances of the heavens, what shall be the nature of the weather, and what peculiarities shall be produced by each Moon of the year; as, for example, under which Moon there shall be thunderstorms and tempests, under which there shall be disease, murrain, wars, disorders, and treasons, and so on, according to the indications of each; but always adding that it lies with God to do less or more according to His pleasure. And they write down the results of their examination in certain little pamphlets for the year, which are called Tacuin, and these are sold for a groat to all who desire to know what is coming. Those of the astrologers, of course whose predictions are found to be most exact, are held to be the greatest adepts in their art, and get the greater fame.[{1}]
And if any one having some great matter in hand, or proposing to make a long journey for traffic or other business, desires to know what will be the upshot, he goes to one of these astrologers and says: “Turn up your books and see what is the present aspect of the heavens, for I am going away on such and such a business.” Then the astrologer will reply that the applicant must also tell the year, month, and hour of his birth; and when he has got that information he will see how the horoscope of his nativity combines with the indications of the time when the question is put, and then he predicts the result, good or bad, according to the aspect of the heavens.
You must know, too, that the Tartars reckon their years by twelves; the sign of the first year being the Lion, of the second the Ox, of the third the Dragon, of the fourth the Dog, and so forth up to the twelfth;[{2}] so that when one is asked the year of his birth he answers that it was in the year of the Lion (let us say), on such a day or night, at such an hour, and such a moment. And the father of a child always takes care to write these particulars down in a book. When the twelve yearly symbols have been gone through, then they come back to the first, and go through with them again in the same succession.]
[Note 1.]—It is odd that Marsden should have sought a Chinese explanation of the Arabic word Taḳwím even with Tavernier before him: “They sell in Persia an annual almanac called Tacuim, which is properly an ephemeris containing the longitude and latitude of the planets, their conjunctions and oppositions, and other such matter. The Tacuim is full of predictions regarding war, pestilence, and famine; it indicates the favourable time for putting on new clothes, for getting bled or purged, for making a journey, and so forth. They put entire faith in it, and whoever can afford one governs himself in all things by its rules.” (Bk. V. ch. xiv.)
The use of the term by Marco may possibly be an illustration of what I have elsewhere propounded, viz. that he was not acquainted with Chinese, but that his intercourse and conversation lay chiefly with the foreigners at the Kaan’s Court, and probably was carried on in the Persian language. But not long after the date of our Book we find the word used in Italian by Jacopo Alighieri (Dante’s son):—
“A voler giudicare
Si conviene adequare
Inprimo il Taccuino,
Per vedere il cammino
Come i Pianeti vanno
Per tutto quanto l’anno.”
—Rime Antiche Toscane, III. 10.
Marco does not allude to the fact that almanacs were published by the Government, as they were then and still are. Pauthier (515 seqq.) gives some very curious details on this subject from the Annals of the Yuen. In the accounts of the year 1328, it appears that no less than 3,123,185 copies were printed in three different sizes at different prices, besides a separate almanac for the Hwei-Hwei or Mahomedans. Had Polo not omitted to touch on the issue of almanacs by Government he could scarcely have failed to enter on the subject of printing, on which he has kept a silence so singular and unaccountable.
The Chinese Government still “considers the publication of a Calendar of the first importance and utility. It must do everything in its power, not only to point out to its numerous subjects the distribution of the seasons, ... but on account of the general superstition it must mark in the almanac the lucky and unlucky days, the best days for being married, for undertaking a journey, for making their dresses, for buying or building, for presenting petitions to the Emperor, and for many other cases of ordinary life. By this means the Government keeps the people within the limits of humble obedience; it is for this reason that the Emperors of China established the Academy of Astronomy.” (Timk. I. 358.) The acceptance of the Imperial Almanac by a foreign Prince is considered an acknowledgment of vassalage to the Emperor.
It is a penal offence to issue a pirated or counterfeit edition of the Government Almanac. No one ventures to be without one, lest he become liable to the greatest misfortunes by undertaking the important measures on black-balled days.
The price varies now, according to Williams, from 1½d. to 5d. a copy. The price in 1328 was 1 tsien or cash for the cheapest edition, and 1 liang or tael of silver for the édition de luxe; but as these prices were in paper-money it is extremely difficult to say, in the varying depreciation of that currency, what the price really amounted to.
Mongol “Compendium Instrument” Keen-e in the Observatory Garden.
Mongol Armillary Sphere in the Observatory Garden.
[“The Calendars for the use of the people, published by Imperial command, are of two kinds. The first, Wan-nien-shu, the Calendar of Ten Thousand Years, is an abridgment of the Calendar, comprising 397 years, viz. from 1624 to 2020. The second and more complete Calendar is the Annual Calendar, which, under the preceding dynasties, was named Li-je, Order of Days, and is now called Shih-hsien-shu, Book of Constant Conformity (with the Heavens). This name was given by the Emperor Shun-chih, in the first year of his reign (1644), on being presented by Father John Schall (Tang Jo-wang) with a new Calendar, calculated on the principles of European science. This Annual Calendar gives the following indications: (1°) The cyclical signs of the current year, of the months, and of all the days; (2°) the long and short months, as well as the intercalary month, as the case may be; (3°) the designation of each day by the 5 elements, the 28 constellations, and the 12 happy presages; (4°) the day and hour of the new moon, of the full moon, and of the two dichotomies, Shang-hsien and Hsia-hsien; (5°) the day and hour for the positions of the sun in the 24 zodiacal signs, calculated for the various capitals of China as well as for Manchuria, Mongolia, and the tributary Kingdoms; (6°) the hour of sunrise and sunset and the length of day and night for the principal days of the month in the several capitals; (7°) various superstitious indications purporting to point out what days and hours are auspicious or not for such or such affairs in different places. Those superstitious indications are stated to have been introduced into the Calendar under the Yüan dynasty.” (P. Hoang, Chinese Calendar, pp. 2–3.)—H. C.]
We may note that in Polo’s time one of the principal officers of the Mathematical Board was Gaisue, a native of Folin or the Byzantine Empire, who was also in charge of the medical department of the Court. Regarding the Observatory, see note at [p. 378], supra.
And I am indebted yet again to the generous zeal of Mr. Wylie of Shanghai, for the principal notes and extracts which will, I trust, satisfy others as well as myself that the instruments in the garden of the Observatory belong to the period of Marco Polo’s residence in China.[1]
The objections to the alleged age of these instruments were entirely based on an inspection of photographs. The opinion was given very strongly that no instrument of the kind, so perfect in theory and in execution, could have been even imagined in those days, and that nothing of such scientific quality could have been made except by the Jesuits. In fact it was asserted or implied that these instruments must have been made about the year 1700, and were therefore not earlier in age than those which stand on the terraced roof of the Observatory, and are well known to most of us from the representation in Duhalde and in many popular works.
The only authority that I could lay hand on was Lecomte, and what he says was not conclusive. I extract the most pertinent passages:
“It was on the terrace of the tower that the Chinese astronomers had set their instruments, and though few in number they occupied the whole area. But Father Verbiest, the Director of the Observatory, considering them useless for astronomical observation, persuaded the Emperor to let them be removed, to make way for several instruments of his own construction. The instruments set aside by the European astronomers are still in a hall adjoining the tower, buried in dust and oblivion; and we saw them only through a grated window. They appeared to us to be very large and well cast, in form approaching our astronomical circles; that is all that we could make out. There was, however, thrown into a back yard by itself, a celestial globe of bronze, of about 3 feet in diameter. Of this we were able to take a nearer view. Its form was somewhat oval; the divisions by no means exact, and the whole work coarse enough.
“Besides this in a lower hall they had established a gnomon.... This observatory, not worthy of much consideration for its ancient instruments, much less for its situation, its form, or its construction, is now enriched by several bronze instruments which Father Verbiest has placed there. These are large, well cast, adorned in every case with figures of dragons,” etc. He then proceeds to describe them:
“(1). Armillary Zodiacal Sphere of 6 feet diameter. This sphere reposes on the heads of four dragons, the bodies of which after various convolutions come to rest upon the extremities of two brazen beams forming a cross, and thus bear the entire weight of the instrument. These dragons ... are represented according to the notion the Chinese form of them, enveloped in clouds, covered above the horns with long hair, with a tufted beard on the lower jaw, flaming eyes, long sharp teeth, the gaping throat ever vomiting a torrent of fire. Four lion-cubs of the same material bear the ends of the cross beams, and the heads of these are raised or depressed by means of attached screws, according to what is required. The circles are divided on both exterior and interior surface into 360 degrees; each degree into 60 minutes by transverse lines, and the minutes into sections of 10 seconds each by the sight-edge[2] applied to them.”
Of Verbiest’s other instruments we need give only the names: (2) Equinoxial Sphere, 6 feet diameter. (3) Azimuthal Horizon, same diam. (4) Great Quadrant, of 6 feet radius. (5) Sextant of about 8 feet radius. (6) Celestial Globe of 6 feet diameter.
As Lecomte gives no details of the old instruments which he saw through a grating, and as the description of this zodiacal sphere (No. 1) corresponds in some of its main features with that represented in the photograph, I could not but recognize the possibility that this instrument of Verbiest’s had for some reason or other been removed from the Terrace, and that the photograph might therefore possibly not be a representation of one of the ancient instruments displaced by him.[3]
The question having been raised it was very desirable to settle it, and I applied to Mr. Wylie for information, as I had received the photographs from him, and knew that he had been Mr. Thomson’s companion and helper in the matter.
“Let me assure you,” he writes (21st August, 1874), “the Jesuits had nothing to do with the manufacture of the so-called Mongol instruments; and whoever made them, they were certainly on the Peking Observatory before Loyola was born. They are not made for the astronomical system introduced by the Jesuits, but are altogether conformable to the system introduced by Kúblái’s astronomer Ko Show-king.... I will mention one thing which is quite decisive as to the Jesuits. The circle is divided into 365¼ degrees, each degree into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. The Jesuits always used the sexagesimal division. Lecomte speaks of the imperfection of the division on the Jesuit-made instruments; but those on the Mongol instruments are immeasurably coarser.
“I understand it is not the ornamentation your friend objects to?[4] If it is, I would observe that there is no evidence of progress in the decorative and ornamental arts during the Ming Dynasty; and even in the Jesuit instruments that part of the work is purely Chinese, excepting in one instrument, which I am persuaded must have been made in Europe.
“I have a Chinese work called Luh-King-t’oo-Kaou, ‘Illustrations and Investigations of the Six Classics.’ This was written in A.D. 1131–1162, and revised and printed in 1165–1174. It contains a representation of an armillary sphere, which appears to me to be much the same as the sphere in question. There is a solid horizon fixed to a graduated outer circle. Inside the latter is a meridian circle, at right angles to which is a graduated colure; then the equator, apparently a double ring, and the ecliptic; also two diametric bars. The cut is rudely executed, but it certainly shows that some one imagined something more perfect. The instrument stands on a cross frame, with 4 dragon supporters and a prop in the centre.[5]
“It should be remembered that under the Mongol Dynasty the Chinese had much intercourse with Central Asia; and among others Yelewchootsae, as confidential minister and astronomer, followed Chinghiz in his Western campaign, held intercourse with the astronomers of Samarkand, and on his return laid some astronomical inventions before the Emperor.
“I append a notice of the Observatory taken from a popular description of Peking, by which it will be seen that the construction of these instruments is attributed to Ko Show-king, one of the most renowned astronomers of China. He was the chief astronomer under Kúblái Kaan” [to whom he was presented in 1262; he was born in 1231.—H. C.]
“It must be remembered that there was a special vitality among the Chinese under the Yuen with regard to the arts and sciences, and the Emperor had the choice of artizans and men of science from all countries. From the age of the Yuen till the arrival of the Jesuits, we hear nothing of any new instruments having been made; and it is well known that astronomy was never in a lower condition than under the Ming.”[6]
Mr. Wylie then draws attention to the account given by Trigault of the instruments that Matteo Ricci saw at Nanking, when he went (in the year 1599) to pay a visit to some of the literati of that city. He transcribes the account from the French Hist. de l’Expédition Chrestienne en la Chine, 1618. But as I have the Latin, which is the original and is more lucid, by me, I will translate from that.[7]
“Not only at Peking, but in this capital also (Nanking) there is a College of Chinese Mathematicians, and this one certainly is more distinguished by the vastness of its buildings than by the skill of its professors. They have little talent and less learning, and do nothing beyond the preparation of the almanacs on the rules of calculation made by the ancients; and when it chances that events do not agree with their calculation they assert that what they had calculated was the regular course of things, but that the aberrant conduct of the stars was a prognostic from heaven of something going to happen on the earth. This something they make out according to their fancy, and so spread a veil over their own blunders. These gentlemen did not much trust Father Matteo, fearing, no doubt, lest he should put them to shame; but when at last they were freed from this apprehension they came and amicably visited the Father in hope of learning something from him. And when he went to return their visit he saw something that really was new and beyond his expectation.
“There is a high hill at one side of the city, but still within the walls. On the top of the hill there is an ample terrace, capitally adapted for astronomical observation, and surrounded by magnificent buildings which form the residence of the Professors.... On this terrace are to be seen astronomical instruments of cast-metal, well worthy of inspection whether for size or for beauty; and we certainly have never seen or read of anything in Europe like them. For nearly 250 years they have stood thus exposed to the rain, the snow, and all other atmospheric inclemencies, and yet they have lost absolutely nothing of their original lustre. And lest I should be accused of raising expectations which I do not justify, I will do my best in a digression, probably not unwelcome, to bring them before the eyes of my readers.
“The larger of these instruments were four in number. First we inspected a great globe [A], graduated with meridians and parallels; we estimated that three men would hardly be able to embrace its girth.... A second instrument was a great sphere [B], not less in diameter than that measure of the outstretched arms which is commonly called a geometric pace. It had a horizon and poles; instead of circles it was provided with certain double hoops (armillæ), the void space between the pair serving the purpose of the circles of our spheres. All these were divided into 365 degrees and some odd minutes. There was no globe to represent the earth in the centre, but there was a certain tube, bored like a gun-barrel, which could readily be turned about and fixed to any azimuth or any altitude so as to observe any particular star through the tube, just as we do with our vane-sights;[8]—not at all a despicable device! The third machine was a gnomon [C], the height of which was twice the diameter of the former instrument, erected on a very large and long slab of marble, on the northern side of the terrace. The stone slab had a channel cut round the margin, to be filled with water in order to determine whether the slab was level or not, and the style was set vertical as in hour-dials.[9] We may suppose this gnomon to have been erected that by its aid the shadow at the solstices and equinoxes might be precisely noted, for in that view both the slab and the style were graduated. The fourth and last instrument, and the largest of all, was one consisting as it were of three or four huge astrolabes in juxtaposition [D]; each of them having a diameter of such a geometrical pace as I have specified. The fiducial line, or Alhidada, as it is called, was not lacking, nor yet the Dioptra.[10] Of these astrolabes, one having a tilted position in the direction of the south, represented the equator; a second, which stood crosswise on the first, in a north and south plane, the Father took for a meridian; but it could be turned round on its axis; a third stood in the meridian plane with its axis perpendicular, and seemed to stand for a vertical circle; but this also could be turned round so as to show any vertical whatever. Moreover all these were graduated, and the degrees marked by prominent studs of iron, so that in the night the graduation could be read by the touch without a light. All this compound astrolabe instrument was erected on a level marble platform with channels round it for levelling. On each of these instruments explanations of everything were given in Chinese characters; and there were also engraved the 24 zodiacal constellations which answer to our 12 signs, 2 to each.[11] There was, however, one error common to all the instruments, viz. that, in all, the elevation of the Pole was assumed to be 36°. Now there can be no question about the fact that the city of Nanking lies in lat. 32¼°; whence it would seem probable that these instruments were made for another locality, and had been erected at Nanking, without reference to its position, by some one ill versed in mathematical science.[12]
Observatory Terrace.
Observatory Instruments of the Jesuits.
“Some years afterwards Father Matteo saw similar instruments at Peking, or rather the same instruments, so exactly alike were they, insomuch that they had unquestionably been made by the same artist. And indeed it is known that they were cast at the period when the Tartars were dominant in China; and we may without rashness conjecture that they were the work of some foreigner acquainted with our studies. But it is time to have done with these instruments.”—(Lib. IV. cap. 5.)
In this interesting description it will be seen that the Armillary Sphere [B] agrees entirely with that represented in illustration facing [p. 450]. And the second of his photographs in my possession, but not, I believe, yet published, answers perfectly to the curious description of the 4th instrument [D]. Indeed, I should scarcely have been able to translate that description intelligibly but for the aid of the photograph before me. It shows the three astrolabes or graduated circles with travelling indexes arranged exactly as described, and pivoted on a complex frame of bronze; (1) circle in the plane of the equator for measuring right ascensions; (2) circle with its axis vertical to the plane of the last, for measuring declinations: (3) circle with vertical axis, for zenith distances? The Gnomon [A] was seen by Mr. Wylie in one of the lower rooms of the Observatory (see below). Of the Globe we do not now hear; and that mentioned by Lecomte among the ancient instruments was inferior to what Ricci describes at Peking.
I now transcribe Mr. Wylie’s translation of an extract from a Popular Description of Peking:
“The observatory is on an elevated stage on the city wall, in the south-east corner of the (Tartar) city, and was built in the year (A.D. 1279). In the centre was the Tze-wei[13] Palace, inside of which were a pair of scrolls, and a cross inscription, by the imperial hand. Formerly it contained the Hwan-t’ien-e [B] ‘Armillary Sphere’; the Keen-e [D?] ‘Transit Instrument’ (?); the Tung-kew [A] ‘Brass Globe’; and the Leang-t’ien-ch’ih, ‘Sector,’ which were constructed by Ko Show-king under the Yuen Dynasty.
“In (1673) the old instruments having stood the wear of long past years, had become almost useless, and six new instruments were made by imperial authority. These were the T’ien-t’ee ‘Celestial Globe’ (6); Chih-taoue ‘Equinoctial Sphere’ (2); Hwang-taoue ‘Zodiacal Sphere’ (1); Te-p’ing kinge ‘Azimuthal Horizon’ (3); Te-p’ing weie ‘Altitude Instrument’ (4); Ke-yene ‘Sextant’ (5). These were placed in the Observatory, and to the present day are respectfully used. The old instruments were at the same time removed, and deposited at the foot of the stage. In (1715) the Te-ping King-wei-e ‘Azimuth and Altitude Instrument’ was made;[14] and in 1744 the Ke-hang-foo-chin-e (literally ‘Sphere and Tube instrument for sweeping the heavens’). All these were placed on the Observatory stage.
“There is a wind-index-pole called the ‘Fair-wind-pennon,’ on which is an iron disk marked out in 28 points, corresponding in number to the 28 constellations.”[15]
✛ Mr. Wylie justly observes that the evidence is all in accord, and it leaves, I think, no reasonable room for doubt that the instruments now in the Observatory garden at Peking are those which were cast aside by Father Verbiest[16] in 1673 (or 1668); which Father Ricci saw at Peking at the beginning of the century, and of which he has described the duplicates at Nanking; and which had come down from the time of the Mongols, or, more precisely, of Kúblái Khan.
Ricci speaks of their age as nearly 250 years in 1599; Verbiest as nearly 300 years in 1668. But these estimates evidently point to the termination of the Mongol Dynasty (1368), to which the Chinese would naturally refer their oral chronology. We have seen that Kúblái’s reign was the era of flourishing astronomy, and that the instruments are referred to his astronomer Ko Shéu-king; nor does there seem any ground for questioning this. In fact, it being once established that the instruments existed when the Jesuits entered China, all the objections fall to the ground.
We may observe that the number of the ancient instruments mentioned in the popular Chinese account agrees with the number of important instruments described by Ricci, and the titles of three at least out of the four seem to indicate the same instruments. The catalogue of the new instruments of 1673 (or 1668) given in the native work also agrees exactly with that given by Lecomte.[17] And in reference to my question as to the possibility that one of Verbiest’s instruments might have been removed from the terrace to the garden, it is now hardly worth while to repeat Mr. Wylie’s assurance that there is no ground whatever for such a supposition. The instruments represented by Lecomte are all still on the terrace, only their positions have been somewhat altered to make room for the two added in last century.
Probably, says Mr. Wylie, more might have been added from Chinese works, especially the biography of Ko Shéu-king. But my kind correspondent was unable to travel beyond the books on his own shelves. Nor was it needful.
It will have been seen that, beautiful as the art and casting of these instruments is, it would be a mistake to suppose that they are entitled to equally high rank in scientific accuracy. Mr. Wylie mentioned the question that had been started to Freiherr von Gumpach, who was for some years Professor of Astronomy in the Peking College. Whilst entirely rejecting the doubts that had been raised as to the age of the Mongol instruments, he said that he had seen those of Tycho Brahe, and the former are quite unworthy to be compared with Tycho’s in scientific accuracy.
The doubts expressed have been useful in drawing attention to these remarkable reliques of the era of Kúblái’s reign, and of Marco Polo’s residence in Cathay, though I fear they are answerable for having added some pages to a work that required no enlargement!
[Mr. Wylie sent a most valuable paper on The Mongol Astronomical Instruments at Peking to the Congress of Orientalists held at St. Petersburg, which was reprinted at Shanghai in 1897 in Chinese Researches. Some of the astronomical instruments have been removed to Potsdam by the Germans since the siege of the foreign Legations at Peking in 1900.—H. C.]
On these auguries, and on diviners and fortune-tellers, see Semedo, p. 118 seqq.; Kidd, p. 313 (also for preceding references, Mid. Kingdom, II. 152; Gaubil, 136).
[Note 2.]— ✛ The real cycle of the Mongols, which was also that of the Chinese, runs: 1. Rat; 2. Ox; 3. Tiger; 4. Hare; 5. Dragon; 6. Serpent; 7. Horse; 8. Sheep; 9. Ape; 10. Cock; 11. Dog; 12. Swine. But as such a cycle [12 earthly branches, Ti-chih] is too short to avoid confusion, it is combined with a co-efficient cycle of ten epithets [celestial Stems, T’ien-kan] in such wise as to produce a 60-year cycle of compound names before the same shall recur. These co-efficient epithets are found in four different forms: (1) From the Elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, attaching to each a masculine and feminine attribute so as to make ten epithets. (2) From the Colours: Blue, Red, Yellow, White, Black, similarly treated. (3) By terms without meaning in Mongol, directly adopted or imitated from the Chinese, Ga, Yi, Bing, Ting, etc. (4) By the five Cardinal Points: East, South, Middle, West, North. Thus 1864 was the first year of a 60-year cycle:—
1864 = (Masc.) Wood-Rat Year = (Masc.) Blue-Rat Year. 1865 = (Fem.) Wood-Ox Year = (Fem.) Blue-Ox Year. 1866 = (Masc.) Fire-Tiger Year = (Masc.) Red-Tiger Year. 1867 = (Fem.) Fire-Hare Year = (Fem.) Red-Hare Year. 1923 = (Fem.) Water-Swine Year = (Fem.) Black-Swine Year. And then a new cycle commences just as before.
This Calendar was carried by the Mongols into all their dominions, and it would appear to have long survived them in Persia. Thus a document issued in favour of Sir John Chardin by the Shaikh-ul-Islám of Ispahan, bears the strange date for a Mahomedan luminary of “The year of the Swine.” The Hindus also had a 60-year cycle, but with them each year had an independent name.
The Mongols borrowed their system from the Chinese, who attribute its invention to the Emperor Hwang-ti, and its initiation to the 61st year of his reign, corresponding to B.C. 2637. [“It was Ta-nao, Minister to the Emperor Hwang-ti, who, by command of his Sovereign, devised the sexagenary cycle. Hwang-ti began to reign 2697 B.C., and the 61st year of his reign was taken for the first cyclical sign.” P. Hoang, Chinese Calendar, p. 11.—H. C.] The characters representing what we have called the ten co-efficient epithets are called by the Chinese the “Heavenly Stems”; those equivalent to the twelve animal symbols are the “Earthly Branches,” and they are applied in their combinations not to years only, but to cycles of months, days, and hours, such hours being equal to two of ours. Thus every year, month, day, and hour will have two appropriate characters, and the four pairs belonging to the time of any man’s birth constitute what the Chinese call the “Eight Characters” of his age, to which constant reference is made in some of their systems of fortune-telling, and in the selection of propitious days for the transaction of business. To this system the text alludes. A curious account of the principles of prognostication on such a basis will be found in Doolittle’s Social Life of the Chinese (p. 579 seqq.; on the Calendar, see Schmidt’s Preface to S. Setzen; Pallas, Sammlungen, II. 228 seqq.; Prinsep’s Essays, Useful Tables, 146).
[“Kubilai Khan established in Peking two astronomical boards and two observatories. One of them was a Chinese Observatory (sze t’ien t’ai), the other a Mohammedan Observatory (hui hui sze t’ien t’ai), each with its particular astronomical and chronological systems, its particular astrology and instruments. The first astronomical and calendar system was compiled for the Mongols by Ye-liu Ch’u-ts’ai, who was in Chingis Khan’s service, not only as a high counsellor, but also as an astronomer and astrologer. After having been convinced of the obsoleteness and incorrectness of the astronomical calculations in the Ta ming li (the name of the calendar system of the Kin Dynasty), he thought out at the time he was at Samarcand a new system, valid not only for China, but also for the countries conquered by the Mongols in Western Asia, and named it in memory of Chingis Khan’s expedition Si ching keng wu yüan li, i.e. ‘Astronomical Calendar beginning with the year Keng wu, compiled during the war in the west.’ Keng-wu was the year 1210 of our era. Ye-liu Ch’u-ts’ai chose this year, and the moment of the winter solstice, for the beginning of his period; because, according to his calculations, it coincided with the beginning of a new astronomical or planetary period. He took also into consideration, that since the year 1211 Chingis Khan’s glory had spread over the whole world. Ye-liu Ch’u-ts’ai’s calendar was not adopted in China, but the system of it is explained in the Yuen-shi, in the section on Astronomy and the Calendar.
“In the year 1267, the Mohammedans presented to Kubilai their astronomical calendar (wan nien li, i.e.), the calendar of ten thousand years. By taking this denomination in its literal sense, we may conclude that the Mahommedans brought to China the ancient Persian system, founded on the period of 10,000 years. The compilers of the Yuen-shi seem not to have had access to documents relating to this system, for they give no details about it. Finally by order of Kubilai the astronomers Hui-Heng and Ko Show-King composed a new calculation under the name of Shou-shi-li, which came into use from the year 1280. It is thoroughly explained in the Yuen-shi. Notwithstanding the fame this system generally enjoyed, its blemishes came soon to light. In the sixth month of 1302 an eclipse of the sun happened, and the calculation of the astronomer proved to be erroneous (it seems the calculation had anticipated the real time). The astronomers of the Ming Dynasty explained the errors in the Shou-shi-li by the circumstance, that in that calculation the period for one degree of precession of the equinox was taken too long (eighty-one years). But they were themselves hardly able to overcome these difficulties.” (Palladius, pp. 51–53.)—H. C.]
| 1864 = (Masc.) Wood-Rat Year | = (Masc.) Blue-Rat Year. |
| 1865 = (Fem.) Wood-Ox Year | = (Fem.) Blue-Ox Year. |
| 1866 = (Masc.) Fire-Tiger Year | = (Masc.) Red-Tiger Year. |
| 1867 = (Fem.) Fire-Hare Year | = (Fem.) Red-Hare Year. |
| 1923 = (Fem.) Water-Swine Year | = (Fem.) Black-Swine Year. |
[1] Besides the works quoted in the text I have only been able to consult Gaubil’s notices, as abstracted in Lalande; and the Introductory Remarks to Mr. J. Williams’s Observations of Comets ... extracted from the Chinese Annals, London, 1871.
[2] Pinnula. The French pinnule is properly a sight-vane at the end of a traversing bar. The transverse lines imply that minutes were read by the system of our diagonal scales; and these I understand to have been subdivided still further by aid of a divided edge attached to the sight-vane; qu. a Vernier?
[3] Verbiest himself speaks of the displaced instruments thus ... “ut nova instrumenta astronomica facienda mihi imponeret, quæ scilicet more Europæo affabre facta, et in specula Astroptica Pekinensi collocata, æternam Imperii Tartarici memoriam apud posteritatem servarent, prioribus instrumentis Sinicis rudioris Minervæ, quæ jam a trecentis proxime annis speculam occupabant, inde amotis. Imperator statim annuit illorum postulatis, et totius rei curam, publico diplomate mihi imposuit. Ego itaque intra quadriennis spatium sex diversi generis instrumenta confeci.” This is from an account of the Observatory written by Verbiest himself, and printed at Peking in 1668 (Liber Organicus Astronomiæ Europææ apud Sinas Restitutæ, etc.). My friend Mr. D. Hanbury made the extract from a copy of this rare book in the London Institution Library. An enlarged edition was published in Europe. (Dillingen, 1687.)
[4] On the contrary, he considered the photographs interesting, as showing to how late a period the art of fine casting had endured.
[5] This ancient instrument is probably the same that is engraved in Pauthier’s Chine Ancienne under the title of “The Sphere of the Emperor Shun” (B.C. 2255!).
[6] After the death of Kúblái astronomy fell into neglect, and when Hongwu, the first Ming sovereign, took the throne (1368) the subject was almost forgotten. Nor was there any revival till the time of Ching. The latter was a prince who in 1573 associated himself with the astronomer Hing-yun-lu to reform the state of astronomy. (Gaubil.)
What Ricci has recorded (in Trigautius) of the dense ignorance of the Chinese literati in astronomical matters is entirely consistent with the preceding statements.
[7] I had entirely forgotten to look at Trigault till Mr. Wylie sent me the extract. The copy I use (De Christianâ Expeditione apud Sinas ... Auct. Nicolao Trigautio) is of Lugdun. 1616. The first edition was published at August. Vindelicorum (Augsburg) in 1615: the French, at Lyons, in 1616.
[8] “Pinnulis.”
[9] “Et stilus eo modo quo in horologiis ad perpendiculum collocatus.”
[10] The Alidada is the traversing index bar which carries the dioptra, pinnules, or sight-vanes. The word is found in some older English Dictionaries, and in France and Italy is still applied to the traversing index of a plane table or of a sextant. Littré derives it from (Ar.) ’adád, enumeration; but it is really from a quite different word, al-iḍádat عضادة “a door-post,” which is found in this sense in an Arabic treatise on the Astrolabe. (See Dozy and Engelmann, p. 140.)
[11] This is an error of Ricci’s, as Mr. Wylie observes, or of his reporter.
The Chinese divide their year into 24 portions of 15 days each. Of these 24 divisions twelve called Kung mark the twelve places in which the sun and moon come into conjunction, and are thus in some degree analogous to our 12 signs of the Zodiac. The names of these Kung are entirely different from those of our sign, though since the 17th century the Western Zodiac, with paraphrased names, has been introduced in some of their books. But besides that, they divide the heavens into 28 stellar spaces. The correspondence of this division to the Hindu system of the 28 Lunar Mansions, called Nakshatras, has given rise to much discussion. The Chinese sieu or stellar spaces are excessively unequal, varying from 24° in equatorial extent down to 24′. (Williams, op. cit.) [See P. Hoang, supra p. 449.]
[12] Mr. Wylie is inclined to distrust the accuracy of this remark, as the only city nearly on the 36th parallel is P’ing-yang fu.
But we have noted in regard to this (Polo’s Pianfu, vol. ii. p. 17) that a college for the education of Mongol youth was instituted here, by the great minister Yeliu Chutsai, whose devotion to astronomy Mr. Wylie has noticed above. In fact, two colleges were established by him, one at Yenking, i.e. Peking, the other at P’ing-yang; and astronomy is specified as one of the studies to be pursued at these. (See D’Ohsson, II. 71–72, quoting De Mailla.) It seems highly probable that the two sets of instruments were originally intended for these two institutions, and that one set was carried to Nanking, when the Ming set their capital there in 1368.
[13] The 28 sieu or stellar spaces, above spoken of, do not extend to the Pole; they are indeed very unequal in extent on the meridian as well as on the equator. And the area in the northern sky not embraced in them is divided into three large spaces called Yuen or enclosures, of which the field of circumpolar stars (or circle of perpetual apparition) forms one which is called Tze-Wei. (Williams.)
The southern circumpolar stars form a fourth space, beyond the 28 sieu. Ibid.
[14] “This was obviously made in France. There is nothing Chinese about it, either in construction or ornament. It is very different from all the others.” (Note by Mr. Wylie.)
[15] “There follows a minute description of the brass clepsydra, and the brass gnomon, which it is unnecessary to translate. I have seen both these instruments, in two of the lower rooms.”—Id.
[16] [Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J., was born at Pitthens, near Courtrai; he arrived in China in 1659 and died at Peking on the 29th January, 1688.—H. C.]
[17] We have attached letters A, B, C, to indicate the correspondences of the ancient instruments, and cyphers 1, 2, 3, to indicate the correspondences of the modern instruments.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Concerning the Religion of the Cathayans;[{1}] their views as to the Soul; and their Customs.
As we have said before, these people are Idolaters, and as regards their gods, each has a tablet fixed high up on the wall of his chamber, on which is inscribed a name which represents the Most High and Heavenly God; and before this they pay daily worship, offering incense from a thurible, raising their hands aloft, and gnashing their teeth[{2}] three times, praying Him to grant them health of mind and body; but of Him they ask nought else. And below on the ground there is a figure which they call Natigai, which is the god of things terrestrial. To him they give a wife and children, and they worship him in the same manner, with incense, and gnashing of teeth,[{2}] and lifting up of hands; and of him they ask seasonable weather, and the fruits of the earth, children, and so forth.[{3}]
Their view of the immortality of the soul is after this fashion. They believe that as soon as a man dies, his soul enters into another body, going from a good to a better, or from a bad to a worse, according as he hath conducted himself well or ill. That is to say, a poor man, if he have passed through life good and sober, shall be born again of a gentlewoman, and shall be a gentleman; and on a second occasion shall be born of a princess and shall be a prince, and so on, always rising, till he be absorbed into the Deity. But if he have borne himself ill, he who was the son of a gentleman shall be reborn as the son of a boor, and from a boor shall become a dog, always going down lower and lower.
The people have an ornate style of speech; they salute each other with a cheerful countenance, and with great politeness; they behave like gentlemen, and eat with great propriety.[{4}] They show great respect to their parents; and should there be any son who offends his parents, or fails to minister to their necessities, there is a public office which has no other charge but that of punishing unnatural children, who are proved to have acted with ingratitude towards their parents.[{5}]
Criminals of sundry kinds who have been imprisoned, are released at a time fixed by the Great Kaan (which occurs every three years), but on leaving prison they are branded on one cheek that they may be recognized.
The Great Kaan hath prohibited all gambling and sharping, things more prevalent there than in any other part of the world. In doing this, he said: “I have conquered you by force of arms, and all that you have is mine; if, therefore, you gamble away your property, it is in fact my property that you are gambling away.” Not that he took anything from them however.
I must not omit to tell you of the orderly way in which the Kaan’s Barons and others conduct themselves in coming to his presence. In the first place, within a half mile of the place where he is, out of reverence for his exalted majesty, everybody preserves a mien of the greatest meekness and quiet, so that no noise of shrill voices or loud talk shall be heard. And every one of the chiefs and nobles carries always with him a handsome little vessel to spit in whilst he remain in the Hall of Audience—for no one dares spit on the floor of the hall,—and when he hath spitten he covers it up and puts it aside.[{6}] So also they all have certain handsome buskins of white leather, which they carry with them, and, when summoned by the sovereign, on arriving at the entrance to the hall, they put on these white buskins, and give their others in charge to the servants, in order that they may not foul the fine carpets of silk and gold and divers colours.]
[Note 1.]—Ramusio’s heading has Tartars, but it is manifestly of the Cathayans or Chinese that the author speaks throughout this chapter.
[Note 2.]—“Sbattendo i denti.” This is almost certainly, as Marsden has noticed, due to some error of transcription. Probably Battono i fronti, or something similar, was the true reading. [See following note, [p. 461].—H. C.]
[Note 3.]—The latter part of this passage has, I doubt not, been more or less interpolated, seeing that it introduces again as a Chinese divinity the rude object of primitive Tartar worship, of which we have already heard in [Bk. I. ch. liii.] And regarding the former part of the passage, one cannot but have some doubt whether what was taken for the symbol of the Most High was not the ancestral tablet, which is usually placed in one of the inner rooms of the house, and before which worship is performed at fixed times, and according to certain established forms. Something, too, may have been known of the Emperor’s worship of Heaven at the great circular temple at Peking, called T’ien-t’ân, or Altar of Heaven (see [p. 459]), where incensed offerings are made before a tablet, on which is inscribed the name Yuh-Hwang Shang-ti, which some interpret as “The Supreme Ruler of the Imperial Heavens,” and regard as the nearest approach to pure Theism of which there is any indication in Chinese worship (See Doolittle, pp. 170, 625; and Lockhart in J. R. G. S., xxxvi. 142). This worship is mentioned by the Mahomedan narrator of Shah Rukh’s embassy (1421): “Every year there are some days on which the Emperor eats no animal food.... He spends his time in an apartment which contains no idol, and says that he is worshipping the God of Heaven.”[1] (Ind. Antiquary, II. 81.)
Great Temple of Heaven, Peking.
The charge of irreligion against the Chinese is an old one, and is made by Hayton in nearly the same terms as it often is by modern missionaries: “And though these people have the acutest intelligence in all matters wherein material things are concerned, yet you shall never find among them any knowledge or perception of spiritual things.” Yet it is a mistake to suppose that this insensibility has been so universal as it is often represented. To say nothing of the considerable numbers who have adhered faithfully to the Roman Catholic Church, the large number of Mahomedans in China, of whom many must have been proselytes, indicates an interest in religion; and that Buddhism itself was in China once a spiritual power of no small energy will, I think, be plain to any one who reads the very interesting extracts in Schott’s essay on Buddhism in Upper Asia and China. (Berlin Acad. of Sciences, 1846.) These seem to be so little known that I will translate two or three of them. “In the years Yuan-yeu of the Sung (A.D. 1086–1093), a pious matron with her two servants lived entirely to the Land of Enlightenment. One of the maids said one day to her companion: ‘To-night I shall pass over to the Realm of Amita.’ The same night a balsamic odour filled the house, and the maid died without any preceding illness. On the following day the surviving maid said to the lady: ‘Yesterday my deceased companion appeared to me in a dream, and said to me: “Thanks to the persevering exhortations of our mistress, I am become a partaker of Paradise, and my blessedness is past all expression in words.”’ The matron replied: ‘If she will appear to me also then I will believe what you say.’ Next night the deceased really appeared to her, and saluted her with respect. The lady asked: ‘May I, for once, visit the Land of Enlightenment?’ ‘Yea,’ answered the Blessed Soul, ‘thou hast but to follow thy handmaiden.’ The lady followed her (in her dream), and soon perceived a lake of immeasurable expanse, overspread with innumerable red and white lotus flowers, of various sizes, some blooming, some fading. She asked what those flowers might signify? The maiden replied: ‘These are all human beings on the earth whose thoughts are turned to the Land of Enlightenment. The very first longing after the Paradise of Amita produces a flower in the Celestial Lake, and this becomes daily larger and more glorious, as the self-improvement of the person whom it represents advances; in the contrary case, it loses in glory and fades away.’[2] The matron desired to know the name of an enlightened one who reposed on one of the flowers, clad in a waving and wondrously glistening raiment. Her whilom maiden answered: ‘That is Yangkie.’ Then asked she the name of another, and was answered: ‘That is Mahu.’ The lady then said: ‘At what place shall I hereafter come into existence?’ Then the Blessed Soul led her a space further, and showed her a hill that gleamed with gold and azure. ‘Here,’ said she, ‘is your future abode. You will belong to the first order of the blessed.’ When the matron awoke she sent to enquire for Yangkie and Mahu. The first was already departed; the other still alive and well. And thus the lady learned that the soul of one who advances in holiness and never turns back, may be already a dweller in the Land of Enlightenment, even though the body still sojourn in this transitory world” (pp. 55–56).
What a singular counterpart the striking conclusion here forms to Dante’s tremendous assault on a still living villain,—or enemy!
——“che per sua opra
In anima in Cocito già si bagna,
Ed in corpo par vivo ancor di sopra.”
—Infern. xxxiii. 155.
Again: “I knew a man who during his life had killed many living beings, and was at last struck with an apoplexy. The sorrows in store for his sin-laden soul pained me to the heart; I visited him, and exhorted him to call on the Amita; but he obstinately refused, and spoke only of indifferent matters. His illness clouded his understanding; in consequence of his misdeeds he had become hardened. What was before such a man when once his eyes were closed? Wherefore let men be converted while there is yet time! In this life the night followeth the day, and the winter followeth the summer; that, all men are aware of. But that life is followed by death, no man will consider. Oh, what blindness and obduracy is this!” (p. 93).
Again: “Hoang-ta-tie, of T’ancheu (Changshu-fu in Honan), who lived under the Sung, followed the craft of a blacksmith. Whenever he was at his work he used to call without intermission on the name of Amita Buddha. One day he handed to his neighbours the following verses of his own composing to be spread about:—
‘Ding dong! The hammer-strokes fall long and fast,
Until the Iron turns to steel at last!
Now shall the long long Day of Rest begin,
The Land of Bliss Eternal calls me in.’
Thereupon he died. But his verses spread all over Honan, and many learned to call upon Buddha” (103).
Once more: “In my own town there lived a physician by name Chang-yan-ming. He was a man who never took payment for his treatment from any one in poor or indifferent circumstances; nay, he would often make presents to such persons of money or corn to lighten their lot. If a rich man would have his advice and paid him a fee, he never looked to see whether it were much or little. If a patient lay so dangerously ill that Yanming despaired of his recovery, he would still give him good medicine to comfort his heart, but never took payment for it. I knew this man for many a year, and I never heard the word Money pass his lips! One day a fire broke out in the town, and laid the whole of the houses in ashes; only that of the physician was spared. His sons and grandsons reached high dignities” (p. 110).
Of such as this physician the apostle said: “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”
[“By the ‘Most High and Heavenly God,’ worshipped by the Chinese, as Marco Polo reports, evidently the Chinese T’ien, ‘Heaven’ is meant, Lao t’ien ye in the common language. Regarding ‘the God of things terrestrial,’ whose figure the Chinese, according to M. Polo, ‘placed below on the ground,’ there can also be no doubt that he understands the T’u-ti, the local ‘Lar’ of the Chinese, to which they present sacrifices on the floor, near the wall under the table.
“M. Polo reports, that the Chinese worship their God offering incense, raising their hands aloft, and gnashing their teeth. Of course he means that they placed the hands together, or held kindled joss-stick bundles in their hands, according to the Chinese custom. The statement of M. Polo sbattendo i denti is very remarkable. It seems to me, that very few of the Chinese are aware of the fact, that this custom still exists among the Taouists. In the rituals of the Taouists the K’ow-ch’i (K’ow = ‘to knock against,’ch’i = ‘teeth’) is prescribed as a comminatory and propitiatory act. It is effected by the four upper and lower foreteeth. The Taouists are obliged before the service begins to perform a certain number of K’ow-ch’i, turning their heads alternately to the left and to the right, in order to drive away mundane thoughts and aggressions of bad spirits. The K’ow-ch’i repeated three times is called ming fa ku in Chinese, i.e. ‘to beat the spiritual drum.’ The ritual says, that it is heard by the Most High Ruler, who is moved by it to grace.
“M. Polo observed this custom among the lay heathen. Indeed, it appears from a small treatise, written in China more than a hundred years before M. Polo, that at the time the Chinese author wrote, all devout men, entering a temple, used to perform the K’ow-ch’i, and considered it an expression of veneration and devotion to the idols. Thus this custom had been preserved to the time of M. Polo, who did not fail to mention this strange peculiarity in the exterior observances of the Chinese. As regards the present time it seems to me, that this custom is not known among the people, and even with respect to the Taouists it is only performed on certain occasions, and not in all Taouist temples.” (Palladius, pp. 53–54.)—H. C.]
[Note 4.]—“True politeness cannot of course be taught by rules merely, but a great degree of urbanity and kindness is everywhere shown, whether owing to the naturally placable disposition of the people, or to the effects of their early instruction in the forms of politeness.” (Mid. Kingdom, II. 68.) As regards the “ornate style of speech,” a well-bred Chinaman never says I or You, but for the former “the little person,” “the disciple,” “the inferior,” and so on; and for the latter, “the learned man,” “the master,” or even “the emperor.” These phrases, however, are not confined to China, most of them having exact parallels in Hindustani courtesy. On this subject and the courteous disposition of the Chinese, see Fontaney, in Lett. Edif. VII. 287 seqq.; also XI. 287 seqq.; Semedo, 36; Lecomte, II. 48 seqq. There are, however, strong differences of opinion expressed on this subject; there is, apparently, much more genuine courtesy in the north than in the south.
[Note 5.]—“Filial piety is the fundamental principle of the Chinese polity.” (Amiot, V. 129.) “In cases of extreme unfilial conduct, parents sometimes accuse their children before the magistrate, and demand his official aid in controlling or punishing them; but such instances are comparatively rare.... If the parent require his son to be publicly whipped by the command of the magistrate, the latter is obliged to order the infliction of the whipping.... If after punishment the son remain undutiful and disobedient, and his parents demand it at the hands of the magistrate, the latter must, with the consent of the maternal uncles of the son, cause him to be taken out to the high wall in front of the yamun, and have him there publicly whipped to death.” (Doolittle, 102–103.)
[Note 6.]—[Mr. Rockhill writes to me that pocket-spitoons are still used in China.—H. C.]
[1] “In the worship carried on here the Emperor acts as a high priest. He only worships; and no subject, however high in rank, can join in the adoration.” (Lockhart.) The actual temple dates from 1420–1430; but the Institution is very ancient, and I think there is evidence that such a structure existed under the Mongols, probably only restored by the Ming. [It was built during the 18th year of the reign of the third Ming Emperor Yung Loh (1403–1425); it was entirely restored during the 18th year of K’ien Lung; it was struck by lightning and burnt down in 1889; it is being rebuilt.—H. C.]
[2] In 1871 I saw in Bond Street an exhibition of (so-called) “spirit” drawings, i.e. drawings alleged to be executed by a “medium” under extraneous and invisible guidance. A number of these extraordinary productions (for extraordinary they were undoubtedly) professed to represent the “Spiritual Flowers” of such and such persons; and the explanation of this as presented in the catalogue was in substance exactly that given in the text. It is highly improbable that the artist had any cognizance of Schott’s Essay, and the coincidence was assuredly very striking.
END OF VOL I.
Archway erected under the Mongol Dynasty, at Kiu Yung Kwan, N.W. of Peking.[1]
MARCO POLO’S ITINERARIES No. IV.
(Book I, Chapter 36 to end & chief part of Book II.
PLAN OF SHANGTU
From an Eye-Sketch by Dr. S. W. Bushell, 1872
Crossing of the
HWANG-HO
on road to
SINGAN-FU
[1] On the walls of this archway is engraved the inscription in six characters, of which a representation accompanies ch. xv. of Prologue, note 1.