"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 assemblies,
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 shells 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 bloody 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
illustrating 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. clxxxvii.; 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
passage. Remarking on the great use made by certain classes 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 asserts 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.
