After An Execution At Peking Certain Large Pith Balls Are
Steeped In The Blood, And Under The Name Of Blood-Bread Are Sold As A
Medicine For Consumption.
It is only to the blood of decapitated
criminals that any such healing power is attributed.
It has been asserted
in the annals of the Propagation de la Foi that the Chinese executioners
of M. Chapdelaine, a missionary who was martyred in Kwang-si in 1856 (28th
February), were seen to eat the heart of their victim; and M. Huot, a
missionary in the Yun-nan province, recounts a case of cannibalism which
he witnessed. Bishop Chauveau, at Ta Ts'ien-lu, told Mr. Cooper that he
had seen men in one of the cities of Yun-nan eating the heart and brains
of a celebrated robber who had been executed. Dr. Carstairs Douglas of
Amoy also tells me that the like practices have occurred at Amoy and
Swatau.
[With reference to cannibalism in China see Medical Superstitions an
Incentive to Anti-Foreign Riots in China, by D. J. Macgowan, North China
Herald, 8th July, 1892, pp. 60-62. Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review,
February-March, 1901, 136) relates that the inhabitants of a part of
Kwang-si boiled and ate a Chinese officer who had been sent to pacify
them. "The idea underlying this horrible act [cannibalism] is, that by
eating a portion of the victim, especially the heart, one acquires the
valour with which he was endowed." (Dennys' Folk-lore of China, 67.) - H.
C.]
Hayton, the Armenian, after relating the treason of a Saracen, called
Parwana (he was an Iconian Turk), against Abaka Khan, says: "He was taken
and cut in two, and orders were issued that in all the food eaten by Abaka
there should be put a portion of the traitor's flesh. Of this Abaka
himself ate, and caused all his barons to partake. And this was in
accordance with the custom of the Tartars." The same story is related
independently and differently by Friar Ricold, thus: "When the army of
Abaga ran away from the Saracens in Syria, a certain great Tartar baron
was arrested who had been guilty of treason. And when the Emperor Khan was
giving the order for his execution the Tartar ladies and women interposed,
and begged that he might be made over to them. Having got hold of the
prisoner they boiled him alive, and cutting his body up into mince-meat
gave it to eat to the whole army, as an example to others." Vincent of
Beauvais makes a like statement: "When they capture any one who is at
bitter enmity with them, they gather together and eat him in vengeance of
his revolt, and like infernal leeches suck his blood," a custom of which a
modern Mongol writer thinks that he finds a trace in a surviving proverb.
Among more remote and ignorant Franks the cannibalism of the Tartars was a
general belief. Ivo of Narbonne, in his letter written during the great
Tartar invasion of Europe (1242), declares that the Tartar chiefs, with
their dog's head followers and other Lotophagi (!), ate the bodies of
their victims like so much bread; whilst a Venetian chronicler, speaking
of the council of Lyons in 1274, says there was a discussion about making
a general move against the Tartars, "porce qu'il manjuent la char
humaine." These latter writers no doubt rehearsed mere popular beliefs,
but Hayton and Ricold were both intelligent persons well acquainted with
the Tartars, and Hayton at least not prejudiced against them.
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