The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 69

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 Nigudar pa.s.sed in making an incursion from Badakhshan towards Kashmir. 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. UDYaNA and KaSHMIR.

Udyana lay to the north of Peshawar on the Swat River, but from the extent a.s.signed to it by Hiuen Tsang, the name probably covered a large part of the whole hill-region south of the Hindu-Kush from Chitral to the Indus, as indeed it is represented in the Map of Vivien de St. Martin (_Pelerins 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 Udyana in old times, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic magic, and the Tibetans still regard that locality as the cla.s.sic 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 Udyana when approached from Badakhshan. For it would be quite practicable for a party to reach the town of Chitral in ten days from the position a.s.signed to the old capital of Badakhshan. And from Chitral the road towards Kashmir would lie over the high Lahori pa.s.s to DIR, which from its mention in chapter xviii. we must consider an obligatory point.

(_Fah-hian_, p. 26; _Koeppen_, I. 70; _Pelerins 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_ (Kashmir), and then entered the country of _U-ch'ang-na_ (Udyana)...." (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. x.x.xiii. 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 Muller's cla.s.s _Indic_, but not very close to one another.[1]

Ibn Batuta, after crossing the Hindu-Kush by one of the pa.s.ses at the head of the Panjshir Valley, reaches the Mountain BASHaI (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., x.x.xIII. 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 Zebak, and by the Dorah or the Nuksan Pa.s.s, over the watershed of Hindu-Kush into Chitral, 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- Kush.[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 Udyana, 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 Kashmir. 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 Chitral, 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 _Paresin_, the Zendavestian name for the Indian Caucasus, and which occurs in the Babylonian version of the Behistun Inscription as the equivalent of Gaddra in the Persian, i.e. _Gandhara_, 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 sum_, _Tu sis_, _siga se_; _Ima simis_, _Wi sik_, _Sige sin_.

[2] In the _Tabakat-i-Nasiri_ (_Elliot_, II. 317) we find mention of the Highlands of _Pasha-Afroz_, but nothing to define their position.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

OF THE PROVINCE OF KESHIMUR.

Keshimur also is a Province inhabited by a people who are Idolaters and have a language of their own.[NOTE 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.[NOTE 2] Indeed, this country is the very original source from which Idolatry has spread abroad.[NOTE 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 pa.s.ses, so that the people have no fear of anybody, and keep their independence, with a king of their own to rule and do justice.[NOTE 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 chast.i.ty, 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.[NOTE 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.[NOTE 6]] The coral which is carried from our parts of the world has a better sale there than in any other country.[NOTE 7]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ancient Buddhist Temple at Pandrethan in Kashmir]

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 Kashmir 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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. x.x.xv. pt. i. p. 233 (G.o.dwin-Austen); in vol. x.x.xix.

pt. i. p. 95 (Dr. Elmslie); and in _Proceedings_ for 1866, p. 62, seqq.

(Sir G. Campbell and Babu Rajendra Lal 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 Panjab 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 pa.s.sage from Bernier, already quoted by M. Pauthier. When crossing the Pir Panjal (the mountain crossed on entering Kashmir from Lah.o.r.e) with the camp of Aurangzib, he met with "an old Hermit who had dwelt upon the summit of the Pa.s.s since the days of Jehangir, and whose religion n.o.body 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 h.o.a.ry 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. Aurangzib 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 Kashmir twice in the history of Tibetan Buddhism played a most important part. It was in Kashmir 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 Kashmir 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 Kashmir that several of the translations were made. But these were not the only circ.u.mstances that made Kashmir 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 Kashmir in particular that fresh missionaries were procured to reinstruct the people in the forgotten Law. (See _Koeppen_, II. 12-13, 78; _J. As._ ser. VI. tom. vi. 540.)

"The spread of Buddhism to Kashmir 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 Kashmir was very marked, especially in the spread of Buddhism beyond India. From Kashmir it penetrated to Kandahar and Kabul,... and thence over Bactria. Tibetan Buddhism also had its essential origin from Kashmir;... so great is the importance of this region in the History of Buddhism." (_Va.s.silyev, 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 Kashmir, a far greater number than is a.s.signed 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 Kashmir as "the very original source from which their Religion had spread abroad." The feeling with which they looked to Kashmir must have been nearly the same as that with which the Buddhists of Burma look to Ceylon. But this feeling towards Kashmir does not _now_, I am informed, exist in Tibet. The reverence for the holy places has reverted to Bahar and the neighbouring "cradle-lands"

of Buddhism.

It is notable that the historian Firishta, in a pa.s.sage quoted by Tod, uses Marco's expression in reference to Kashmir, almost precisely, saying that the Hindoos derived their idolatry from Kashmir, "the foundry of magical superst.i.tion." (_Rajasthan_, I. 219.)

NOTE 4.--The people of Kashmir 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." (_Pel. 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 pa.s.s for genuine Moguls.

Unquestionably, there must be beautiful women among the higher cla.s.ses, 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 Kashmir 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." (_Rem. N. Mel. Asiat._ I. 179.) Abu'l Fazl says that on his third visit with Akbar to Kashmir 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 Kashmir, traces them to a number of Shiah Sayads, who fled to Kashmir 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; _La.s.sen_, III. 709; _Ayeen Akb._ II. 147, III. 151; _J. A. S.

B._ x.x.xIX. pt. i. 265.)

We see from the _Dabistan_ that in the 17th century Kashmir continued to be a great resort of Magian mystics and sages of various sects, professing great abstinence and credited with preternatural powers. And indeed Vambery 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; _Vamb. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.surance 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 a.s.sam and Tibet were the greatest purchasers of coral. (_Tr. in India_, Bk. II. ch. xxiii.)