XXIX. OF THE PROVINCE OF BADASHAN…

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}]

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 12_l._ to 24_l._ 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!)

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.Return to passage

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}

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.)

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 [a great lake between two mountains, and out of it] a fine river running through a plain clothed with the finest pasture in the world; insomuch that a lean beast there will fatten to your heart’s content in ten days. There are great numbers of all kinds of wild beasts; among others, wild sheep of great size, whose horns are good six palms in length. From these horns the shepherds make great bowls to eat from, and they use the horns also to enclose folds for their cattle at night. [Messer Marco was told also that the wolves were numerous, and killed many of those wild sheep. Hence quantities of their horns and bones were found, and these were made into great heaps by the way-side, in order to guide travellers when snow was on the ground.]

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.]

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.]

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.

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.]

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [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.)Return to passage

[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.Return to passage

[4] Usually written Polii, which is nonsense.Return to passage

[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.]Return to passage

XXXIII. OF THE KINGDOM OF CASCAR

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}

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.

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.

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.]

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.]

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 _K_harosḥ_t_hi 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.]

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.)Return to passage

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.]

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.]

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.

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.)

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.

NOTE 4.—

“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.

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.]

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).

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.]

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.

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.

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.]