The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 95

The synagogue at Kaifungfu has recently been demolished for the sake of its materials, by the survivors of the Jewish community themselves, who were too poor to repair it. The tablet that once adorned its entrance, bearing in gilt characters the name ESZLOYIH (Israel), has been appropriated by a mosque. The 300 or 400 survivors seem in danger of absorption into the Mahomedan or heathen population. The last Rabbi and possessor of the sacred tongue died some thirty or forty years ago, the worship has ceased, and their traditions have almost died away.

(_Cathay_, 225, 341, 497; _Ch. Rep._ XX. 436; _Dr. Martin_, in _J. N.

China Br. R. A. S._ 1866, pp. 32-33.)

CHAPTER VI.

HOW THE GREAT KAAN WENT BACK TO THE CITY OF CAMBALUC.

And after the Great Kaan had defeated Nayan in the way you have heard, he went back to his capital city of Cambaluc and abode there, taking his ease and making festivity. And the other Tartar Lord called Caydu was greatly troubled when he heard of the defeat and death of Nayan, and held himself in readiness for war; but he stood greatly in fear of being handled as Nayan had been.[NOTE 1]

I told you that the Great Kaan never went on a campaign but once, and it was on this occasion; in all other cases of need he sent his sons or his barons into the field. But this time he would have none go in command but himself, for he regarded the presumptuous rebellion of Nayan as far too serious and perilous an affair to be otherwise dealt with.

NOTE 1.--Here Ramusio has a long and curious addition. Kublai, it says, remained at Cambaluc till March, "in which our Easter occurs; and learning that this was one of our chief festivals, he summoned all the Christians, and bade them bring with them the Book of the Four Gospels. This he caused to be incensed many times with great ceremony, kissing it himself most devoutly, and desiring all the barons and lords who were present to do the same. And he always acts in this fashion at the chief Christian festivals, such as Easter and Christmas. And he does the like at the chief feasts of the Saracens, Jews, and Idolaters. On being asked why, he said: 'There are Four Prophets worshipped and revered by all the world. The Christians say their G.o.d is Jesus Christ; the Saracens, Mahommet; the Jews, Moses; the Idolaters, Sogomon Borcan [_Sakya-Muni Burkhan_ or Buddha], who was the first G.o.d among the idols; and I worship and pay respect to all four, and pray that he among them who is greatest in heaven in very truth may aid me.' But the Great Khan let it be seen well enough that he held the Christian Faith to be the truest and best--for, as he says, it commands nothing that is not perfectly good and holy. But he will not allow the Christians to carry the Cross before them, because on it was scourged and put to death a person so great and exalted as Christ.

"Some one may say: 'Since he holds the Christian faith to be best, why does he not attach himself to it, and become a Christian?' Well, this is the reason that he gave to Messer Nicolo and Messer Maffeo, when he sent them as his envoys to the Pope, and when they sometimes took occasion to speak to him about the faith of Christ. He said: 'How would you have me to become a Christian? You see that the Christians of these parts are so ignorant that they achieve nothing and can achieve nothing, whilst you see the Idolaters can do anything they please, insomuch that when I sit at table the cups from the middle of the hall come to me full of wine or other liquor without being touched by anybody, and I drink from them. They control storms, causing them to pa.s.s in whatever direction they please, and do many other marvels; whilst, as you know, their idols speak, and give them predictions on whatever subjects they choose. But if I were to turn to the faith of Christ and become a Christian, then my barons and others who are not converted would say: "What has moved you to be baptised and to take up the faith of Christ? What powers or miracles have you witnessed on His part?" (You know the Idolaters here say that their wonders are performed by the sanct.i.ty and power of their idols.) Well, I should not know what answer to make; so they would only be confirmed in their errors, and the Idolaters, who are adepts in such surprising arts, would easily compa.s.s my death. But now you shall go to your Pope, and pray him on my part to send hither an hundred men skilled in your law, who shall be capable of rebuking the practices of the Idolaters to their faces, and of telling them that they too know how to do such things but will not, because they are done by the help of the devil and other evil spirits, and shall so control the Idolaters that these shall have no power to perform such things in their presence. When we shall witness this we will denounce the Idolaters and their religion, and then I will receive baptism; and when I shall have been baptised, then all my barons and chiefs shall be baptised also, and their followers shall do the like, and thus in the end there will be more Christians here than exist in your part of the world!'

"And if the Pope, as was said in the beginning of this book, had sent men fit to preach our religion, the Grand Kaan would have turned Christian; for it is an undoubted fact that he greatly desired to do so."

In the simultaneous patronage of different religions, Kublai followed the practice of his house. Thus Rubruquis writes of his predecessor Mangku Kaan: "It is his custom, on such days as his diviners tell him to be festivals, or any of the Nestorian priests declare to be holydays, to hold a court. On these occasions the Christian priests enter first with their paraphernalia, and pray for him, and bless his cup. They retire, and then come the Saracen priests and do likewise; the priests of the Idolaters follow. He all the while believes in none of them, though they all follow his court as flies follow honey. He bestows his gifts on all of them, each party believes itself to be his favourite, and all prophesy smooth things to him." Abulfaragius calls Kublai "a just prince and a wise, who loved Christians and honoured physicians of learning, whatsoever their nation."

There is a good deal in Kublai that reminds us of the greatest prince of that other great Mongol house, Akbar. And if we trusted the first impression of the pa.s.sage just quoted from Ramusio, we might suppose that the grandson of Chinghiz too had some of that real wistful regard towards the Lord Jesus Christ, of which we seem to see traces in the grandson of Baber. But with Kublai, as with his predecessors, religion seems to have been only a political matter; and this aspect of the thing will easily be recognised in a re-perusal of his conversation with Messer Nicolas and Messer Maffeo. The Kaan must be obeyed; how man shall worship G.o.d is indifferent; this was the constant policy of his house in the days of its greatness. Kublai, as Koeppen observes, the first of his line to raise himself above the natural and systematic barbarism of the Mongols, probably saw in the promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, already spread to some extent among them, the readiest means of civilising his countrymen. But he may have been quite sincere in saying what is here ascribed to him in _this_ sense, viz.: that if the Latin Church, with its superiority of character and acquirement, had come to his aid as he had once requested, he would gladly have used _its_ missionaries as his civilising instruments instead of the Lamas and their trumpery. (_Rubr._ 313; _a.s.semani_, III.

pt. ii. 107; _Koeppen_, II. 89, 96.)

CHAPTER VII.

HOW THE KAAN REWARDED THE VALOUR OF HIS CAPTAINS.

So we will have done with this matter of Nayan, and go on with our account of the great state of the Great Kaan.

We have already told you of his lineage and of his age; but now I must tell you what he did after his return, in regard to those barons who had behaved well in the battle. Him who was before captain of 100 he made captain of 1000; and him who was captain of 1000 men he made to be captain of 10,000, advancing every man according to his deserts and to his previous rank. Besides that, he also made them presents of fine silver plate and other rich appointments; gave them Tablets of Authority of a higher degree than they held before; and bestowed upon them fine jewels of gold and silver, and pearls and precious stones; insomuch that the amount that fell to each of them was something astonishing. And yet 'twas not so much as they had deserved; for never were men seen who did such feats of arms for the love and honour of their Lord, as these had done on that day of the battle.[NOTE 1]

Now those Tablets of Authority, of which I have spoken, are ordered in this way. The officer who is a captain of 100 hath a tablet of silver; the captain of 1000 hath a tablet of gold or silver-gilt; the commander of 10,000 hath a tablet of gold, with a lion's head on it. And I will tell you the weight of the different tablets, and what they denote. The tablets of the captains of 100 and 1000 weigh each of them 120 _saggi_; and the tablet with the lion's head engraven on it, which is that of the commander of 10,000, weighs 220 _saggi_. And on each of the tablets is inscribed a device, which runs: "_By the strength of the great G.o.d, and of the great grace which He hath accorded to our Emperor, may the name of the Kaan be blessed; and let all such as will not obey him be slain and be destroyed_." And I will tell you besides that all who hold these tablets likewise receive warrants in writing, declaring all their powers and privileges.

I should mention too that an officer who holds the chief command of 100,000 men, or who is general-in-chief of a great host, is ent.i.tled to a tablet that weighs 300 _saggi_. It has an inscription thereon to the same purport that I have told you already, and below the inscription there is the figure of a lion, and below the lion the sun and moon. They have warrants also of their high rank, command, and power.[NOTE 2] Every one, moreover, who holds a tablet of this exalted degree is ent.i.tled, whenever he goes abroad, to have a little golden canopy, such as is called an umbrella, carried on a spear over his head in token of his high command.

And whenever he sits, he sits in a silver chair.[NOTE 3]

To certain very great lords also there is given a tablet with gerfalcons on it; this is only to the very greatest of the Kaan's barons, and it confers on them his own full power and authority; so that if one of those chiefs wishes to send a messenger any whither, he can seize the horses of any man, be he even a king, and any other chattels at his pleasure.

[NOTE 4]

NOTE 1.--So Sanang Setzen relates that Chinghiz, on returning from one of his great campaigns, busied himself in reorganising his forces and bestowing rank and t.i.tle, according to the deserts of each, on his nine _Orlok_, or marshals, and all who had done good service. "He named commandants over hundreds, over thousands, over ten thousands, over hundred thousands, and opened his treasury to the mult.i.tude of the people"

(p. 91).

NOTE 2.--We have several times already had mention of these tablets. (See Prologue, ch. viii. and xviii.) The earliest European allusion to them is in Rubruquis: "And Mangu gave to the Moghul (whom he was going to send to the King of France) a bull of his, that is to say, a golden plate of a palm in breadth and half a cubit in length, on which his orders were inscribed. Whosoever is the bearer of that may order what he pleases, and his order shall be executed straightway."

These golden bulls of the Mongol Kaans appear to have been originally tokens of high favour and honour, though afterwards they became more frequent and conventional. They are often spoken of by the Persian historians of the Mongols under the name of _Paizah_, and sometimes _Paizah Sir-i-Sher_, or "Lion's Head Paizah." Thus, in a firman of Ghazan Khan, naming a viceroy to his conquests in Syria, the Khan confers on the latter "the sword, the august standard, the drum, and the _Lion's Head Paizah_." Most frequently the grant of this honour is coupled with _Yarligh_; "to such an one were granted Yarligh and Paizah" the former word (which is still applied in Turkey to the Sultan's rescripts) denoting the written patent which accompanies the grant of the tablet, just as the sovereign's warrant accompanies the badge of a modern Order. Of such written patents also Marco speaks in this pa.s.sage, and as he uttered it, no doubt the familiar words _Yarligh u Paizah_ were in his mind. The Armenian history of the Orpelians, relating the visit of Prince Sempad, brother of King Hayton, to the court of Mangku Kaan, says: "They gave him also a _P'haiza_ of gold, i.e. a tablet whereon the name of G.o.d is written by the Great Kaan himself; and this const.i.tutes the greatest honour known among the Mongols. Farther, they drew up for him a sort of patent, which the Mongols call _Iarlekh_," etc. The Latin version of a grant by Uzbek Khan of Kipchak to the Venetian Andrea Zeno, in 1333,[1] ends with the words: "_Dedimus_ baisa _et_ privilegium _c.u.m bullis rubeis_," where the latter words no doubt represent the _Yarligh al-tamgha_, the warrant with the red seal or stamp,[2] as it may be seen upon the letter of Arghun Khan. (See plate at ch. xvii. of Bk. IV.). So also Janibek, the son of Uzbek, in 1344, confers privileges on the Venetians, "_eisdem dando_ baissinum _de auro_"; and again Bardibeg, son, murderer, and successor of Janibeg, in 1358, writes: "Avemo dado comandamento [i.e. Yarlig] c.u.m le bolle rosse, et lo _paysam_."

Under the Persian branch, at least, of the house the degree of honour was indicated by the _number_ of lions' heads upon the plate, which varied from 1 to 5. The Lion and Sun, a symbol which survives, or has been revived, in the modern Persian decoration so called, formed the emblem of the Sun in Leo, i.e. in highest power. It had already been used on the coins of the Seljukian sovereigns of Persia and Iconium; it appears on coins of the Mongol Ilkhans Ghazan, Oljaitu, and Abusaid, and it is also found on some of those of Mahomed Uzbek Khan of Kipchak.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Seljukian Coin with the Lion and Sun.]

Hammer gives regulations of Ghazan Khan's on the subject of the Paizah, from which it is seen that the latter were of different _kinds_ as well as degrees. Some were held by great governors and officers of state, and these were cautioned against letting the Paizah out of their own keeping; others were for officers of inferior order; and, again, "for persons travelling on state commissions with post-horses, particular paizah (which Hammer says were of bra.s.s) are appointed, on which their names are inscribed." These last would seem therefore to be merely such permissions to travel by the Government post-horses as are still required in Russia, perhaps in lineal derivation from Mongol practice. The terms of Ghazan's decree and other contemporary notices show that great abuses were practised with the Paizah, as an authority for living at free quarters and making other arbitrary exactions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TABLE D'OR DE COMMANDEMENT," THE PAIZA OF THE MONGOLS.

FROM A SPECIMEN FOUND IN E. SIBERIA.]

The word _Paizah_ is said to be Chinese, _Pai-tseu_, "a tablet." A trace of the name and the thing still survives in Mongolia. The horse-_Bai_ is the name applied to a certain ornament on the horse caparison, which gives the rider a t.i.tle to be furnished with horses and provisions on a journey.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Second Example of a MONGOL PAIZA, with Superscription in the _Uighur_ Character, found near the River Dnieper, 1845.]

Where I have used the Venetian term _saggio_, the French texts have here and elsewhere _saics_ and _saies_, and sometimes _pois_. _Saic_ points to _saiga_, which, according to Dupre de St. Maur, is in the Salic laws the equivalent of a denier or the twelfth part of a sol. _Saggio_ is possibly the same word, or rather may have been confounded with it, but the saggio was a recognised Venetian weight equal to 1/6 of an ounce. We shall see hereafter that Polo appears to use it to indicate the _miskal_, a weight which may be taken at 74 grains Troy. On that supposition the smallest tablet specified in the text would weigh 18-1/2 ozs. Troy.

I do not know if any gold Paizah has been discovered, but several of silver have been found in the Russian dominions; one near the Dnieper, and two in Eastern Siberia. The first of our plates represents one of these, which was found in the Minusinsk circle of the Government of Yenisei in 1846, and is now in the Asiatic Museum of the Academy of St. Petersburg, For the sake of better ill.u.s.tration of our text, I have taken the liberty to represent the tablet as of gold, instead of silver with only the inscription gilt. The moulded ring inserted in the orifice, to suspend the plate by, is of iron. On the reverse side the ring bears some Chinese characters engraved, which are interpreted as meaning "Publication No.

42." The inscription on the plate itself is in the Mongol language and Baspa character (supra, Prologue, note 1, ch. xv.), and its purport is a remarkable testimony to the exactness of Marco's account, and almost a proof of his knowledge of the language and character in which the inscriptions were engraved. It runs, according to Schmidt's version: "_By the strength of the eternal heaven! May the name of the Khagan be holy!

Who pays him not reverence is to be slain, and must die!_" The inscriptions on the other plates discovered were essentially similar in meaning. Our second plate shows one of them with the inscription in the Uighur character.

The superficial dimensions of the Yenisei tablet, as taken from Schmidt's full-size drawing, are 12.2 in. by 3.65 in. The weight is not given.

In the French texts nothing is said of the size of the tablets. But Ramusio's copy in the Prologue, where the tables given by Kiacatu are mentioned (supra, p. 35), says that they were a cubit in length and 5 fingers in breadth, and weighed 3 to 4 marks each, i.e. 24 to 32 ounces.

(_Dupre de St. Maur_, _Essai sur les Monnoies_, etc., 1746, p. viii.; also (on _saiga_) see _Pertz_, _Script._ XVII. 357; _Rubruq._ 312; _Golden Horde_, 219-220, 521; _Ilch._ II. 166 seqq., 355-356; _D'Ohsson_, III.

412-413; _Q. R._ 177-180; _Ham. Wa.s.saf_, 154, 176; _Makrizi_, IV. 158; _St. Martin_, _Mem. sur l'Armenie_, II. 137, 169; _M. Mas Latrie_ in _Bibl. de l'ec. des Chartes_, IV. 585 seqq.; _J. As._ ser. V. tom. xvii.

536 seqq.; _Schmidt, uber eine Mongol. Quadratinschrift_, etc., Acad. St.

P., 1847; Russian paper by _Grigorieff_ on same subject, 1846.)

["The History tells us (_Liao Shih_, Bk. LVII. f. 2) that the official silver tablets _p'ai tzu_ of the period were 600 in number, about a foot in length, and that they were engraved with an inscription like the above ['Our imperial order for post horses. Urgent.'] in national characters (_kuo tzu_), and that when there was important state business the Emperor personally handed the tablet to the envoy, which ent.i.tled him to demand horses at the post stations, and to be treated as if he were the Emperor himself travelling. When the tablet was marked 'Urgent,' he had the right to take private horses, and was required to ride, night and day, 700 _li_ in twenty-four hours. On his return he had to give back the tablet to the Emperor, who handed it to the prince who had the custody of the state tablets and seals." (_Dr. S. W. Bush.e.l.l, Actes XI. Cong. Int. Orient._, Paris, p. 17.)

"The Kin, in the thirteenth century, used badges of office made of silver.

They were rectangular, bore the imperial seal, and an inscription indicative of the duty of the bearer. (_Chavannes, Voyageurs chez les Khitans_, 102.) The Nu-chen at an earlier date used wooden _pai-tzu_ tied to each horseman and horse, to distinguish them by. (_Ma Tuan-lin_, Bk.

327, 11.)" (_Rockhill, Rubruck_, p. 181, note.)

"Tiger's tablets--_Sinice Hu fu_, and _p'ai tsze_ in the common language.

The Mongols had them of several kinds, which differed by the metal, of which they were made, as well as by the number of pearls (one, two, or three in number), which were incrusted in the upper part of the tablet.

Falcon's tablets with the figure of a falcon were round, and used to be given only to special couriers and envoys of the Khan. [_Yuen shi lui pien_ and _Yuen ch'ao tien chang_.] The use of the _Hu-fu_ was adopted by the Mongols probably from the Kin." (_Palladius_, l.c. p. 39.)

Rubruquis (Rockhill's ed. pp. 153-154) says:--"And whenever the princ.i.p.al envoy [of Longa] came to court he carried a highly-polished tablet of ivory about a cubit long and half a palm wide. Every time he spoke to the chan or some great personage, he always looked at that tablet as if he found there what he had to say, nor did he look to the right or the left, nor in the face of him with whom he was talking. Likewise, when coming into the presence of the Lord, and when leaving it, he never looked at anything but his tablet." Mr. Rockhill observes: "These tablets are called _hu_ in Chinese, and were used in China and Korea; in the latter country down to quite recent times. They were made of jade, ivory, bamboo, etc., according to the rank of the owner, and were about three feet long. The _hu_ was originally used to make memoranda on of the business to be submitted by the bearer to the Emperor or to write the answers to questions he had had submitted to them. Odoric also refers to 'the tablets of white ivory which the Emperor's barons held in their hands as they stood silent before him.'"

(Cf. the golden tablets which were of various cla.s.ses with a tiger for image and pearls for ornaments, _Deveria, Epigraphie_, p. 15 et seq.) --H.

C.]