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.
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