- H. C.]

["The monasteries with numbers of monks, who, as M. Polo asserts, behaved decently, evidently belonged to Chinese Buddhists, ho-shang; in Kublai's time they had two monasteries in Shangtu, in the north-east and north-west parts of the town." (Palladius, 29.) Rubruck (Rockhill's ed.

P. 145) says: "All the priests (of the idolaters) shave their heads, and are dressed in saffron colour, and they observe chastity from the time they shave their heads, and they live in congregations of one or two hundred." - H. C.]

[Illustration: Monastery of Lamas.]

NOTE 14. - There were many anomalies in the older Lamaism, and it permitted, at least in some sects of it which still subsist, the marriage of the clergy under certain limitations and conditions. One of Giorgi's missionaries speaks of a Lama of high hereditary rank as a spiritual prince who marries, but separates from his wife as soon as he has a son, who after certain trials is deemed worthy to be his successor. ["A good number of Lamas were married, as M. Polo correctly remarks; their wives were known amongst the Chinese, under the name of Fan-sao." (Ch'ue keng lu, quoted by Palladius, 28.) - H. C.] One of the "reforms" of Tsongkhapa was the absolute prohibition of marriage to the clergy, and in this he followed the institutes of the oldest Buddhism. Even the Red Lamas, or unreformed, cannot now marry without a dispensation.

But even the oldest orthodox Buddhism had its Lay brethren and Lay sisters (Upasaka and Upasika), and these are to be found in Tibet and Mongolia ( Voues au blanc, as it were). They are called by the Mongols, by a corruption of the Sanskrit, Ubashi and Ubashanza. Their vows extend to the strict keeping of the five great commandments of the Buddhist Law, and they diligently ply the rosary and the prayer-wheel, but they are not pledged to celibacy, nor do they adopt the tonsure. As a sign of their amphibious position, they commonly wear a red or yellow girdle. These are what some travellers speak of as the lowest order of Lamas, permitted to marry; and Polo may have regarded them in the same light.

(Koeppen, II. 82, 113, 276, 291; Timk. II. 354; Erman, II. 304; Alph. Tibet. 449.)

NOTE 15. - [Mr. Rockhill writes to me that "bran" is certainly Tibetan tsamba (parched barley). - H. C.]

NOTE 16. - Marco's contempt for Patarins slips out in a later passage (Bk. III. ch. xx.). The name originated in the eleventh century in Lombardy, where it came to be applied to the "heretics," otherwise called "Cathari." Muratori has much on the origin of the name Patarini, and mentions a monument, which still exists, in the Piazza de' Mercanti at Milan, in honour of Oldrado Podesta of that city in 1233, and which thus, with more pith than grammar, celebrates his meritorious acts: -

"Qui solium struxit Catharos ut debuit UXIT."

Other cities were as piously Catholic. A Mantuan chronicler records under 1276: "Captum fuit Sermionum seu redditum fuit Ecclesiae, et capti fuerunt cercha CL Patarini contra fidem, inter masculos et feminas; qui omnes ducti fuerunt Veronam, et ibi incarcerati, et pro magna parte COMBUSTI." (Murat. Dissert. III. 238; Archiv. Stor. Ital. N.S. I. 49.)

NOTE 17. - Marsden, followed by Pauthier, supposes these unorthodox ascetics to be Hindu Sanyasis, and the latter editor supposes even the name Sensi or Sensin to represent that denomination. Such wanderers do occasionally find their way to Tartary; Gerbillon mentions having encountered five of them at Kuku Khotan (supra, p. 286), and I think John Bell speaks of meeting one still further north. But what is said of the great and numerous idols of the Sensin is inconsistent with such a notion, as is indeed, it seems to me, the whole scope of the passage. Evidently no occasional vagabonds from a far country, but some indigenous sectaries, are in question. Nor would bran and hot water be a Hindu regimen. The staple diet of the Tibetans is Chamba, the meal of toasted barley, mixed sometimes with warm water, but more frequently with hot tea, and I think it is probable that these were the elements of the ascetic diet rather than the mere bran which Polo speaks of. Semedo indeed says that some of the Buddhist devotees professed never to take any food but tea; knowing people said they mixed with it pellets of sun-dried beef. The determination of the sect intended in the text is, I conceive, to be sought in the history of Chinese or Tibetan Buddhism and their rivals.

Both Baldelli and Neumann have indicated a general opinion that the Taosse or some branch of that sect is meant, but they have entered into no particulars except in a reference by the former to Shien-sien, a title of perfection affected by that sect, as the origin of Polo's term Sensin. In the substance of this I think they are right. But I believe that in the text this Chinese sect are, rightly or wrongly, identified with the ancient Tibetan sect of Bon-po, and that part of the characters assigned belong to each.

First with regard to the Taosse. These were evidently the Patarini of the Buddhists in China at this time, and Polo was probably aware of the persecution which the latter had stirred up Kublai to direct against them in 1281 - persecution at least it is called, though it was but a mild proceeding in comparison with the thing contemporaneously practised in Christian Lombardy, for in heathen Cathay, books, and not human creatures, were the subjects doomed to burn, and even that doom was not carried out.

["The Tao-sze," says M. Polo, "were looked upon as heretics by the other sects; that is, of course; by the Lamas and Ho-shangs; in fact in his time a passionate struggle was going on between Buddhists and Tao-sze, or rather a persecution of the latter by the former; the Buddhists attributed to the doctrine of the Tao-sze a pernicious tendency, and accused them of deceit; and in support of these assertions they pointed to some of their sacred books.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 268 of 335
Words from 272801 to 273829 of 342071