The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 90

[Grenard says (II. p. 256) the most powerful and most feared of sorcerers [in Chinese Turkestan] is the _djaduger_, who, to produce rain or fine weather, uses a jade stone, given by Noah to j.a.phet. Grenard adds (II.

406-407) there are sorcerers (Ngag-pa-snags-pa) whose specialty is to make rain fall; they are similar to the Turkish _Yadachi_ and like them use a stone called "water cristal," _chu shel_; probably jade stone.

Mr. Rockhill (_Rubruck_, p. 245, note) writes: "Rashideddin states that when the Urianghit wanted to bring a storm to an end, they said injuries to the sky, the lightning and thunder. I have seen this done myself by Mongol storm-dispellers. (See _Diary_, 201, 203.) 'The other Mongol people,' he adds, 'do the contrary. When the storm rumbles, they remain shut up in their huts, full of fear.' The subject of storm-making, and the use of stones for that purpose, is fully discussed by Quatremere, _Histoire_, 438-440." (Cf. also _Rockhill_, l.c. p. 254.)--H. C.]

An edict of the Emperor Shi-tsung, of the reigning dynasty, addressed in 1724-1725 to the Eight Banners of Mongolia, warns them against this rain-conjuring: "If I," indignantly observes the Emperor, "offering prayer in sincerity have yet room to fear that it may please Heaven to leave MY prayer unanswered, it is truly intolerable that mere common people wishing for rain should at their own caprice set up altars of earth, and bring together a rabble of Hoshang (Buddhist Bonzes) and Taosse to conjure the spirits to gratify their wishes."

["Lamas were of various extraction; at the time of the great a.s.semblies, and of the Khan's festivities in Shangtu, they erected an altar near the Khan's tent and prayed for fine weather; the whistling of sh.e.l.ls rose up to heaven." These are the words in which Marco Polo's narrative is corroborated by an eye-witness who has celebrated the remarkable objects of Shangtu (_Loan king tsa yung_). These Lamas, in spite of the prohibition by the Buddhist creed of b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices, used to sacrifice sheep's hearts to Mahakala. It happened, as it seems, that the heart of an executed criminal was also considered an agreeable offering; and as the offerings could be, after the ceremony, eaten by the sacrificing priests, Marco Polo had some reason to accuse the Lamas of cannibalism.

(_Palladius_, 28.)--H. C.]

The practice of weather-conjuring is not yet obsolete in Tartary, Tibet, and the adjoining countries.[6]

Weather-conjuring stories were also rife in Europe during the Middle Ages.

One such is conspicuously introduced in connection with a magical fountain in the romance of the _Chevalier au Lyon_:

"Et s'i pant uns bacins d'or fin A une si longue chaainne Qui dure jusqu'a la fontainne, Lez la fontainne troveras Un perron tel con tu verras * * * *

S'au bacin viaus de l'iaue prandre Et dessor le perron espandre, La verras une tel tanpeste Qu'an cest bois ne remandra beste,"

etc. etc.[7]

The effect foretold in these lines is the subject of a woodcut ill.u.s.trating a Welsh version of the same tale in the first volume of the _Mabinogion_. And the existence of such a fountain is alluded to by Alexander Neckam. (_De Naturis Rerum_, Bk. II. ch. vii.)

In the _Cento Novelle Antiche_ also certain necromancers exhibit their craft before the Emperor Frederic (Barbarossa apparently): "The weather began to be overcast, and lo of a sudden rain began to fall with continued thunders and lightnings, as if the world were come to an end, and hailstones that looked like steel-caps," etc. Various other European legends of like character will be found in _Liebrecht's Gervasius von Tilbury_, pp. 147-148.

Rain-makers there are in many parts of the world; but it is remarkable that those also of Samoa in the Pacific operate by means of a _rain-stone_.

Such weather conjurings as we have spoken of are ascribed by Ovid to Circe:

"Concipit illa preces, et verba venefica dicit; Ignotosque Deos ignoto carmine adorat, * * * *

_Tunc quoque cantato densetur carmine caelum, Et nebulas exhalat humus_."--_Metam._ XIV. 365.

And to Medea:--

--"Quum volui, ripis mirantibus, amnes In fontes rediere suos ... (another feat of the Lamas) ... _Nubila pello, Nubilaque induco; ventos abigoque, vocoque_."--Ibid. VII. 199.

And by Tibullus to the _Saga_ (_Eleg._ I. 2, 45); whilst Empedocles, in verses ascribed to him by Diogenes Laertius, claims power to communicate like secrets of potency:--

"By my spells thou may'st To timely sunshine turn the purple rains, And parching droughts to fertilising floods."

(See _Cathay_, p. clx.x.xvii.; _Erdm._ 282; _Oppert_, 182 seqq.; _Erman_, I. 153; _Pallas, Samml._ II. 348 seqq.; _Timk._ I. 402; _J. R. A. S._ VII. 305-306; _D'Ohsson_, II. 614; and for many interesting particulars, _Q. R._ p. 428 seqq., and _Hammers Golden Horde_, 207 and 435 seqq.)

NOTE 9.--It is not clear whether Marco attributes this cannibalism to the Tibetans and Kashmirians, or brings it in as a particular of Tartar custom which he had forgotten to mention before.

The accusations of cannibalism indeed against the Tibetans in old accounts are frequent, and I have elsewhere (see _Cathay_, p. 151) remarked on some singular Tibetan practices which go far to account for such charges. Della Penna, too, makes a statement which bears curiously on the present pa.s.sage. Remarking on the great use made by certain cla.s.ses of the Lamas of human skulls for magical cups, and of human thigh bones for flutes and whistles, he says that to supply them with these _the bodies of executed criminals were stored up of the disposal of the Lamas_; and a Hindu account of Tibet in the _Asiatic Researches_ a.s.serts that when one is killed in a fight both parties rush forward and struggle for the liver, which they eat (vol. xv).

[Carpini says of the people of Tibet: "They are pagans; they have a most astonishing, or rather horrible, custom, for, when any one's father is about to give up the ghost, all the relatives meet together, and they eat him, as was told to me for certain." Mr. Rockhill (_Rubruck_, p. 152, note) writes: "So far as I am aware, this charge [of cannibalism] is not made by any Oriental writer against the Tibetans, though both Arab travellers to China in the ninth century and Armenian historians of the thirteenth century say the Chinese practised cannibalism. The Armenians designate China by the name _Nankas_, which I take to be Chinese _Nan-kuo_, 'southern country,' the _Manzi_ country of Marco Polo."--H. C.]

But like charges of cannibalism are brought against both Chinese and Tartars very positively. Thus, without going back to the Anthropophagous Scythians of Ptolemy and Mela, we read in the _Relations_ of the Arab travellers of the ninth century: "In China it occurs sometimes that the governor of a province revolts from his duty to the emperor. In such a case he is slaughtered and eaten. _In fact, the Chinese eat the flesh of all men who are executed by the sword_." Dr. Rennie mentions a superst.i.tious practice, the continued existence of which in our own day he has himself witnessed, and which might perhaps have given rise to some such statement as that of the Arab travellers, if it be not indeed a relic, in a mitigated form, of the very practice they a.s.sert to have prevailed. After an execution at Peking certain large pith b.a.l.l.s are steeped in the blood, and under the name of _blood-bread_ are sold as a medicine for consumption. _It is only to the blood of decapitated criminals that any such healing power is attributed_. It has been a.s.serted in the annals of the _Propagation de la Foi_ that the Chinese executioners of M. Chapdelaine, a missionary who was martyred in Kw.a.n.g-si in 1856 (28th February), were seen to eat the heart of their victim; and M. Huot, a missionary in the Yun-nan province, recounts a case of cannibalism which he witnessed. Bishop Chauveau, at Ta Ts'ien-lu, told Mr. Cooper that he had seen men in one of the cities of Yun-nan eating the heart and brains of a celebrated robber who had been executed. Dr. Carstairs Douglas of Amoy also tells me that the like practices have occurred at Amoy and Swatau.

[With reference to cannibalism in China see _Medical Superst.i.tions an Incentive to Anti-Foreign Riots in China_, by _D. J. Macgowan, North China Herald_, 8th July, 1892, pp. 60-62. Mr. E. H. Parker (_China Review_, February-March, 1901, 136) relates that the inhabitants of a part of Kw.a.n.g-si boiled and ate a Chinese officer who had been sent to pacify them. "The idea underlying this horrible act [cannibalism] is, that by eating a portion of the victim, especially the heart, one acquires the valour with which he was endowed." (_Dennys' Folk-lore of China_, 67.)--H.

C.]

Hayton, the Armenian, after relating the treason of a Saracen, called Parwana (he was an Iconian Turk), against Abaka Khan, says: "He was taken and cut in two, and orders were issued that in all the food eaten by Abaka there should be put a portion of the traitor's flesh. Of this Abaka himself ate, and caused all his barons to partake. _And this was in accordance with the custom of the Tartars_." The same story is related independently and differently by Friar Ricold, thus: "When the army of Abaga ran away from the Saracens in Syria, a certain great Tartar baron was arrested who had been guilty of treason. And when the Emperor Khan was giving the order for his execution the Tartar ladies and women interposed, and begged that he might be made over to them. Having got hold of the prisoner they boiled him alive, and cutting his body up into mince-meat gave it to eat to the whole army, as an example to others." Vincent of Beauvais makes a like statement: "When they capture any one who is at bitter enmity with them, they gather together and eat him in vengeance of his revolt, and like infernal leeches suck his blood," a custom of which a modern Mongol writer thinks that he finds a trace in a surviving proverb.

Among more remote and ignorant Franks the cannibalism of the Tartars was a general belief. Ivo of Narbonne, in his letter written during the great Tartar invasion of Europe (1242), declares that the Tartar chiefs, with their dog's head followers and other _Lotophagi_ (!), ate the bodies of their victims like so much bread; whilst a Venetian chronicler, speaking of the council of Lyons in 1274, says there was a discussion about making a general move against the Tartars, "_porce qu'il manjuent la char humaine._" These latter writers no doubt rehea.r.s.ed mere popular beliefs, but Hayton and Ricold were both intelligent persons well acquainted with the Tartars, and Hayton at least not prejudiced against them.

The old belief was revived in Prussia during the Seven Years' War, in regard to the Kalmaks of the Russian army; and Bergmann says the old Kalmak warriors confessed to him that they had done what they could to encourage it by cutting up the bodies of the slain in presence of their prisoners, and roasting them! But Levchine relates an act on the part of the Kirghiz Kazaks which was no jest. They drank the blood of their victim if they did not eat his flesh.

There is some reason to believe that cannibalism was in the Middle Ages generally a less strange and unwonted horror than we should at first blush imagine, and especially that it was an idea tolerably familiar in China.

M. Bazin, in the second part of _Chine Moderne_, p. 461, after sketching a Chinese drama of the Mongol era ("The Devotion of Chao-li"), the plot of which turns on the acts of a body of cannibals, quotes several other pa.s.sages from Chinese authors which indicate this. Nor is this wonderful in the age that had experienced the horrors of the Mongol wars.

That was no doubt a fable which Carpini heard in the camp of the Great Kaan, that in one of the Mongol sieges in Cathay, when the army was without food, one man in ten of their own force was sacrificed to feed the remainder.[8] But we are told in sober history that the force of Tului in Honan, in 1231-1232, was reduced to such straits as to eat gra.s.s and human flesh. At the siege of the Kin capital Kaifongfu, in 1233, the besieged were reduced to the like extremity; and the same occurred the same year at the siege of Tsaichau; and in 1262, when the rebel general Litan was besieged in Tsinanfu. The Taiping wars the other day revived the same horrors in all their magnitude. And savage acts of the same kind by the Chinese and their Turk partisans in the defence of Kashgar were related to Mr. Shaw.

Probably, however, nothing of the kind in history equals what Abdallatif, a sober and scientific physician, describes as having occurred before his own eyes in the great Egyptian famine of A.H. 597 (1200). The horrid details fill a chapter of some length, and we need not quote from them.

Nor was Christendom without the rumour of such barbarities. The story of King Richard's banquet in presence of Saladin's amba.s.sadors on the head of a Saracen curried (for so it surely was),--

"soden full hastily With powder and with spysory, And with saffron of good colour"--

fable as it is, is told with a zest that makes one shudder; but the tale in the _Chanson d'Antioche_, of how the licentious bands of ragam.u.f.fins, who hung on the army of the First Crusade, and were known as the _Tafurs_,[9] ate the Turks whom they killed at the siege, looks very like an abominable truth, corroborated as it is by the prose chronicle of worse deeds at the ensuing siege of Marrha:--

"A lor cotiaus qu'il ont trenchans et afiles Escorchoient les Turs, aval parmi les pres.

Voiant Paiens, les ont par pieces decoupes.

En l'iave et el carbon les ont bien quisines, Volontiers les menjuent sans pain et dessales."[10]

(_Della Penna_, p. 76; _Reinaud, Rel._ I. 52; _Rennie's Peking_, II. 244; _Ann. de la Pr. de la F._ XXIX. 353, XXI. 298; _Hayton_ in _Ram._ ch.

xvii.; _Per. Quat._ p. 116; _M. Paris_, sub. 1243; _Mel. Asiat. Acad. St.

Petersb._ II. 659; _Ca.n.a.le_ in _Arch. Stor. Ital._ VIII.; _Bergm. Nomad.

Streifereien_, I. 14; _Carpini_, 638; _D'Ohsson_, II. 30, 43, 52; _Wilson's Ever Victorious Army_, 74; _Shaw_, p. 48; _Abdallatif_, p. 363 seqq.; _Weber_, II. 135; _Littre, H. de la Langue Franc._ I. 191; _Gesta Tancredi_ in _Thes. Nov. Anecd._ III. 172.)

NOTE 10.--_Bakhshi_ is generally believed to be a corruption of _Bhikshu_, the proper Sanscrit term for a religious mendicant, and in particular for the Buddhist devotees of that character. _Bakhshi_ was probably applied to a cla.s.s only of the Lamas, but among the Turks and Persians it became a generic name for them all. In this sense it is habitually used by Rashiduddin, and thus also in the Ain Akbari: "The learned among the Persians and Arabians call the priests of this (Buddhist) religion _Bukshee_, and in Tibbet they are styled Lamas."

According to Pallas the word among the modern Mongols is used in the sense of _Teacher_, and is applied to the oldest and most learned priest of a community, who is the local ecclesiastical chief. Among the Kirghiz Kazzaks again, who profess Mahomedanism, the word also survives, but conveys among them just the idea that Polo seems to have a.s.sociated with it, that of a mere conjuror or "medicine-man"; whilst in Western Turkestan it has come to mean a Bard.

The word Bakhshi has, however, wandered much further from its original meaning. From its a.s.sociation with persons who could read and write, and who therefore occasionally acted as clerks, it came in Persia to mean a clerk or secretary. In the Petrarchian Vocabulary, published by Klaproth, we find _scriba_ rendered in _Comanian_, i.e. Turkish of the Crimea, by _Bacsi_. The transfer of meaning is precisely parallel to that in regard to our Clerk. Under the Mahomedan sovereigns of India, _Bakhshi_ was applied to an officer performing something like the duties of a quartermaster-general; and finally, in our Indian army, it has come to mean a paymaster. In the latter sense, I imagine it has got a.s.sociated in the popular mind with the Persian _bakhshidan_, to bestow, and _bakhshish_. (See a note in _Q. R._ p. 184 seqq.; _Cathay_, p. 474; _Ayeen Akbery_, III. 150; _Pallas, Samml._ II. 126; _Levchine_, p. 355; _Klap.

Mem._ III.; _Vambery, Sketches_, p. 81.)

The sketch from the life, on p. 326, of a wandering Tibetan devotee, whom I met once at Hardwar, may give an idea of the sordid _Bacsis_ spoken of by Polo.

NOTE 11.--This feat is related more briefly by Odoric: "And jugglers cause cups of gold full of good wine to fly through the air, and to offer themselves to all who list to drink." (_Cathay_, p. 143.) In the note on that pa.s.sage I have referred to a somewhat similar story in the _Life of Apollonius_. "Such feats," says Mr. Jaeschke, "are often mentioned in ancient as well as modern legends of Buddha and other saints; and our Lamas have heard of things very similar performed by conjuring _Bonpos_."

(See p. 323.) The moving of cups and the like is one of the sorceries ascribed in old legends to Simon Magus: "He made statues to walk; leapt into the fire without being burnt; flew in the air; made bread of stones; changed his shape; a.s.sumed two faces at once; converted himself into a pillar; caused closed doors to fly open spontaneously; made the vessels in a house seem to move of themselves," etc. The Jesuit Delrio laments that credulous princes, otherwise of pious repute, should have allowed diabolic tricks to be played before them, "as, for example, things of iron, and silver goblets, or other heavy articles, to be moved by bounds from one end of a table to the other, without the use of a magnet or of any attachment." The pious prince appears to have been Charles IX., and the conjuror a certain Cesare Maltesio. Another Jesuit author describes the veritable mango-trick, speaking of persons who "within three hours' s.p.a.ce did cause a genuine shrub of a span in length to grow out of the table, besides other trees that produced both leaves and fruit."

In a letter dated 1st December, 1875, written by Mr. R. B. Shaw, after his last return from Kashgar and Lah.o.r.e, this distinguished traveller says; "I have heard stories related regarding a Buddhist high priest whose temple is said to be not far to the east of Lanchau, which reminds me of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. This high priest is said to have the magic power of attracting cups and plates to him from a distance, so that things fly through the air into his hands." (_MS. Note_.--H. Y.)

The profession and practice of exorcism and magic in general is greatly more prominent in Lamaism or Tibetan Buddhism than in any other known form of that religion. Indeed, the old form of Lamaism as it existed in our traveller's day, and till the reforms of Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), and as it is still professed by the _Red_ sect in Tibet, seems to be a kind of compromise between Indian Buddhism and the old indigenous Shamanism. Even the reformed doctrine of the Yellow sect recognises an orthodox kind of magic, which is due in great measure to the combination of Sivaism with the Buddhist doctrines, and of which the inst.i.tutes are contained in the vast collection of the _Jud_ or Tantras, recognised among the holy books.

The magic arts of this code open even a short road to the Buddhahood itself. To attain that perfection of power and wisdom, culminating in the cessation of sensible existence, requires, according to the ordinary paths, a period of three _asankhyas_ (or say Uncountable Time 3), whereas by means of the magic arts of the _Tantras_ it may be reached in the course of three _rebirths_ only, nay, of one! But from the Tantras also can be learned how to acquire miraculous powers for objects entirely selfish and secular, and how to exercise these by means of _Dharani_ or mystic Indian charms.

Still the orthodox Yellow Lamas professedly repudiate and despise the grosser exhibitions of common magic and charlatanism which the Reds still practise, such as knife-swallowing, blowing fire, cutting off their own heads, etc. But as the vulgar will not dispense with these marvels, every great orthodox monastery in Tibet _keeps a conjuror_, who is a member of the unreformed, and does not belong to the brotherhood of the convent, but lives in a particular part of it, bearing the name of _Choichong_, or protector of religion, and is allowed to marry. The magic of these Choichong is in theory and practice different from the orthodox Tantrist magic. The pract.i.tioners possess no literature, and hand down their mysteries only by tradition. Their fantastic equipments, their frantic bearing, and their cries and howls, seem to identify them with the grossest Shamanist devil dancers.

Sanang Setzen enumerates a variety of the wonderful acts which could be performed through the _Dharani_. Such were, sticking a peg into solid rock; restoring the dead to life; turning a dead body into gold; penetrating everywhere as air does; flying; catching wild beasts with the hand; reading thoughts; making water flow backwards; eating tiles; sitting in the air with the legs doubled under, etc. Some of these are precisely the powers ascribed to Medea, Empedocles, and Simon Magus, in pa.s.sages already cited. Friar Ricold says on this subject: "There are certain men whom the Tartars honour above all in the world, viz. the _Baxitae_ (i.e.

_Bakhshis_), who are a kind of idol-priests. These are men from India, persons of deep wisdom, well-conducted, and of the gravest morals. They are usually acquainted with magic arts, and depend on the counsel and aid of demons; they exhibit many illusions, and predict some future events.

For instance, one of eminence among them was said to fly; the truth, however, was (as it proved), that he did not fly, but did walk close to the surface of the ground without touching it; and _would seem to sit down without having any substance to support him_." This last performance was witnessed by Ibn Batuta at Delhi, in the presence of Sultan Mahomed Tughlak; and it was professedly exhibited by a Brahmin at Madras in the present century, a descendant doubtless of those Brahmans whom Apollonius saw walking two cubits from the ground. It is also described by the worthy Francis Valentyn as a performance known and practised in his own day in India. It is related, he says, that "a man will first go and sit on three sticks put together so as to form a tripod; after which, first one stick, then a second, then the third shall be removed from under him, and the man shall not fall but shall still remain sitting in the air! Yet I have spoken with two friends who had seen this at one and the same time; and one of them, I may add, mistrusting his own eyes, had taken the trouble to feel about with a long stick if there were nothing on which the body rested; yet, as the gentleman told me, he could neither feel nor see any such thing. Still, I could only say that I could not believe it, as a thing too manifestly contrary to reason."