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.)