A » B » C » D » E
F » G » H » I » J
K » L » M » N » O
P » R » S » T
U » V » W » Z

- Links

Publishers Newswire Announced Today its Latest List of Books to Bookmark, for Q4/2008
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 - Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

M >> Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa >> The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78


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 2-1/2 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-boyoen
(_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 Uighur 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
_Ghuls_, 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 Ghuls vanish. Thus also Apollonius of
Tyana and his companions, in a desert near the Indus by moonlight, see an
_Empusa_ or Ghul 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 _Ghul-i-Beaban_ 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 Nesnas or _Empusa_. Nicolo 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 Ruwan_ 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 Nakus_, or "Hill of the Bell," in the Sinai
Desert; Wadi Hamade, in the vicinity of the same Desert; the
_Jibal-ul-Thabul_, 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 Ruwan_, on a hill near the Perso-Afghan frontier, a little to
the north of Sistan. 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; _Remusat, 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
Geographie_, 15th March, 1901, p. 173.)--H. C.]




CHAPTER 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.[NOTE 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.[NOTE
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.[NOTE 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.[NOTE 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.[NOTE 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.[NOTE 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), Shen 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 Uighur 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 Okkodai, son of
the conqueror, was killed. The dominions of Tangut in the middle of the
11th century, according to the _Si Hia Chi Shih Pen 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 Uighur 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 (Yue Men 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-chueeh_. 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-kueeh_, 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 Altai', and that the word is Turkish.... The
population of Tangut was a mixture of Tibetans, Turks, Uighurs, 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-ye (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),
Khubilai 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 Szechenyi [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 Szechenyi 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.


Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78