Tibet, Tartary and Mongolia were unknown to the ancients, except as lands of fable, occupied by wandering Scythians. Tibet was the country whence came the Indians of the Persian court, who ate their dead, as told by Herodotus, and as they themselves report to have been their ancient custom. There is, however, no record of authentic travel into any region of the East, lying above the Himalaya, and beyond the mountains in which the Oxus and Jaxartes have their sources, anterior to the journey of Father William Rubruquis to Karakurum, in the reign of Louis IX. of France, and of Mangoo Khan, the grandson of Jungeez Khan, of Tartary. This journey was undertaken in A.D. 1253, at the time when King Louis was in Syria, engaged in a holy war. It had its origin in an overture made, through a real or pretended ambassador of the Khan of the Mongols, settled between the Don and the Wolga rivers, who was said to have professed Christianity, and to have held out the hope of a diversion from the North in favour of the cause of that religion against Islam. The Khan referred to is called by Rubruquis, Sartach, but in the works of later French missionaries, he is called Gayook Khan. He was the son of Batoo, at that time great Khan of the western tribes, and conquered territories of the Mongols beyond the Caspian Sea. Crossing the Euxine to the Crimea, Rubruquis found Sartach in the pastures between the Don and Wolga, which are now occupied by the Cossacks. By Sartach he was sent on to Batoo, who was then near the Wolga; and the affair of an expedition into Syria appearing, even to him, to be beyond his competency, the monk envoy was sent on to the Court of Mangoo Khan, at Karakurum. He made the journey in winter, riding relays of horses along with a Tartar noble, and found no obstruction except from cold, fatigue, starvation and bad roads. He remained five months with Mangoo Khan, and was similarly send back in the summer. He writes in his official report of his mission, made to King Louis, "We came in two months and ten days from Karakurum to Batoo, and never saw a town nor so much as the appearance of any house but graves, except one village, wherein we did not so much as eat bread; nor did we ever rest in these two months and ten days, save one day, because we could not get horses. We went two days, and sometimes three, without taking any other food by cosmos (Kurmis)." The geographical particulars given by Rubruquis are very scanty, but great interest attaches to what he reports of the habits and character of these Khans, and of their courts, and likewise of the religious condition of the Moghuls, or Mongols, in that age. Mangoo Khan was the grandson of Jungeez Khan, who died in the year A.D. 1227, only twenty-six years before the date of this mission. The conquest of China had not yet changed the character and habits of the conquering horde, and we find both Batoo and Mangoo to be the same simple-minded illiterate barbarians that we still read of as occupying the station of Tartar Khans, but not wanting in shrewdness, high-minded feeling, and even dignity.
With respect to religion, Jungeez Khan was the apostle of the most complete toleration. The Mahommedans report that he had the subject discussed in a Mosque of Bokhara, and there laid down the principle, that he required only faith in one all-powerful God, leaving all the rest to be supplied by man's free study and judgment. As this was the early creed of Mohammed himself, the Moolaves looked upon him as more than half Mohammedan. But the creed of Jungeez was Boodhism. The very title of Jungeez Khan was given to him by a Kotooktoo, or regenerate Boodh, of great sanctity, after his wars with Tangoot or Tibet, and he was too deep a politician not to use the agency and influence of that extraordinary priesthood to assist him in binding the Tartar, Tibetan and Mongol races in the wonderful association he contrived to establish amongst them, and which subsisted for many generations after his decease.
In the Shensi province a stone table was found by the Jesuits, in the seventeenth century, recording the presence of Nestorian Christians in the country, and their success in spreading Christianity, as early as A.D. 636; and there are imperial edicts in its favour of dates between that year and A.D. 782, which are still preserved in the archives and histories of China.
We find also from the report of Father Rubruquis, that Nestorian Christians abound at the courts and in the territories, as well of Batoo Khan, as of his superior, Mangoo Khan; that they had great influence with many at court, especially of the wives and daughters of these and other chiefs; that they were allowed publicly to profess their religion, to open chapels, and parade the cross in public streets and market-places, dressed in canonical vestments; and that they were especially called on to administer medicines, and to pray for sick persons in extremity. Father Rubruquis, himself, took part in a controversy of these Christians, held with Boodhists and Mohammedans, in the presence of Mangoo Khan, on matters of faith; and one cannot read his report without wondering at the patience with which these simple-minded people, and the priests and professors of their ancient religion submitted to the ill-mannered arrogance and pretensions of the intrusive Christian zealots, who, while proclaiming the mysteries of the Trinity, and of the Host, and of holy water, too frequently insulted those who adhered to the faith of their fathers, and declared publicly their books, and those of the Mahommedans, to be lies, and the believers "vile dogs."
Rubruquis thus reports, in a general way, of the Lama priesthood he found at the courts of the Mongol Khans; and we give the extract verbatim, because it is of importance to show that their forms and habits have suffered very little change in the six hundred years since his visit to Mongolia, and had not their origin in any imitation of Romish observances, he being the first priest of that church who is known to have entered the country.
"All their priests had their heads shaven quite over, and they are clad in saffron coloured garments. Being once shaven, they lead and unmarried life from that time forward, and they live a hundred or two hundred of them together in one cloister. Upon the days when they enter into these temples, they place two long forms therein, and so sitting upon the said forms, like singing men in a choir, one half of them directly over against the other, they have certain books in their hands, which sometimes they lay down upon the forms; and their heads are bare as long as they remain in the temple; and then they read softly to themselves, not uttering any voice at all. On my coming in among them, at the time of their superstitious devotions, and finding them all sitting mute in a manner, I attempted several ways to provoke them to speech, yet could not by any means possibly. They have with them also, whithersoever they go, a certain string, with a hundred or two hundred nutshells thereupon, much like our beads, which we carry about with us, and they do always mutter these words, 'Om mani hactavi (om mani padme hom) God, thou knowest,' as one of them expounded it to me. And so often do they expect a reward at God's hands as they pronounce these words in remembrance of God."
Again: "I made a visit to their idol temple, and found certain priests sitting in the outward portico, and those which I saw seemed by their shaven beards as if they had been our countrymen. They wore certain ornaments upon their heads like mitres made of paper. The priests of the Jugures (Qy? Chakars) use those ornaments wherever they go. They wear always their saffron-coloured jackets, which are very straight-laced, or buttoned from the bosom downwards, after the French fashion, and they have a cloak upon their left shoulder, descending under their right arm, like a deacon carrying a collector's box in time of Lent."
This description corresponds exactly with what one sees at this day in any Boodhist temple of Mongolia, China, Burma, or Siam. Pythagorean silence and abstraction is there the universal rule. The ceremonies and public services on particular occasions, and especially those of the Tibetan monastic establishments, are of a different character, as will hereafter be noticed.
The only further thing to be gathered from Rubruquis is, that the reply of Mangoo Khan to the letter of King Louis, is stated to have been written in the Mongolian language, but in the character of the Jugures or Chakars, which had been introduced by Nestorian Christians, and was derived from the Syrian, but written in lines down the page, commencing from the left. Mongolian is so written at the present day. We wonder if there is any trace of this letter among the archives of France! There are records of older times than this still subsisting in England, and the letter which led to the mission of father Rubruquis is said to be extant.
The next account of these regions obtained by Europe was furnished through the relation of the travels of Marco Polo. Two noblemen of the Venetian family of Polo had relations of commerce and friendship with the Tartar chiefs of the northern shores of the Euxine, at the very period of the journey of Rubruquis, above noticed. By some vicissitudes they were led to Bokhara, at the time when Alan Khan, better known by the name of Hulakoo, sent an ambassador to Kublai Khan, whom he acknowledged as the head of the entire Tartar and Mongol races. By that ambassador the Venetians were invited to make the journey in company. It occupied an entire year, but we have no record of the line of route followed from Bokhara. Kublai Khan received them well, and having kept them some time at his court, sent them back with letters and a message to the Pope, inviting him to open communications with him. Some troubles and changes of the papacy prevented a prompt acknowledgment of this overture; but at last, in A.D. 1269, as nearly as can be ascertained, the two Polos, Nicolo and Maffei, taking with the Marco, the young son of the former, set out on their return, along with a priest, who soon left them, delivering the Pope's letters into their hands. Starting from Acre, on the coast of Syria, the Polos were three years and a half upon this journey. Upon their arrival at Peking, which they call Cambala, which is the Tartar name Khanbaliq, young Marco was taken immediately into favour, and was for twenty-six years afterwards a nobleman of the great Khan's court, employed in several missions, and other high offices of state. He came away at last, in A.D. 1295, in charge of a princess who was to be married to the Tartar sovereign of Persia.
The information obtained in this long sojourn in China and Tartary was committed to writing by Marco Polo, or from his dictation, during a captivity he suffered at Genoa, after his return. It was thus given only from memory, and is often vague. But it has been confirmed in most respects by subsequent travellers. The route followed, on the Polos' second journey into China, was up the Oxus, to its sources, through Budukhshan; whence crossing the Pamir table-land to Kotun, they went across the Hamil or Shamil desert, to Cambala (Khanbaliq), or Pekin. The return was by sea to Singapore, and round Ceylon, to the Persian gulf. Of Tibet and Mongolia, Marco Polo says little. His employments seem to have carried him chiefly into the provinces of China Proper, and other southern countries, the magnitude and population of the cities of which, he details with exaggeration. He dwells also with animation upon the magnificence of the court of Kublai Khan; showing a strange change of habit between him and his predecessor, Mangoo Khan, as described only a few years before by Rubruquis. We find, however, in Marco Polo, continued evidence of the extreme toleration allowed by this race of emperors to all religions, and of the impartiality with which honours were granted to men of every faith. The general who conquered southern China, for instance, is stated to have been Nestorian Christian, and to have built a church at Nankin for those of his own faith. Marco Polo was himself in high favour, though a Roman Catholic; and Mahommedans also were numerous, and freely employed. It is, indeed, stated to have been the custom of the emperor to send offerings on his birthday to the shrines, and presents to the priests of all religions, on the same principle, it would seem, as was recognised by the Romans when they erected their temple to the gods of lesser nations. This spirit of general toleration did not originate with the Mongol emperors. We learn from the Mahommedan travellers who visited China as early as A.D. 850, that it then prevailed; and that, when Canton was taken and sacked in A.D. 877, by a rebel army, as many as 120,000 Mahommedans, Jews, Christians, and Parsees perished in the sack. This shows that the policy of China in those days allowed the free resort and residence of men of all religions. The same travellers, in common with Rubruquis, relate conferences had with the emperor, or with men in power, on subjects of faith, affording evidence of a spirit of free inquiry into such matters quite consonant with the known principle of Boodhism, which recognises the pursuit of truth by abstraction, and by the free exercise of the powers of the human mind, as the first duty, and only road to perfection. These Mahommedans came to China by sea, and did not penetrate into Tibet or Tartary, which have ever been the head quarters of the religion of Boodh, but they knew of that religion having been derived from Indian, of its being the very ancient, and of its being based on a belief in the transmigration of souls, combined with image worship.
The earliest travels into Tibet Proper which have been transmitted to us, are those of the Jesuit fathers, Grueber and Dorville, who returned from China by that route in A.D. 1661, just four hundred years after Marco Polo's journey westward. They were the first Christians of Europe who are known to have penetrated into the populous parts of Tibet; for Marco Polo's journey was, as we have stated, to the north-west, by the sources of the Oxus. (Benedict Goez, a Portuguese monk went from Lahore by Kabool, to Kashghur, and across the sandy desert, into China, where he died in A.D. 1607, but his route also was far north of Tibet. Another Jesuit, Anthony Andrada, passed through Kumaon to the Manoosa-Rahwa lake, and thence went on to Rudak on the western confines of Tibet. His journey was made in 1624, and is discredited by commentators and geographers because of his mentioning this lake as the source of the Ganges and Indus, instead of the Sutlej. There is no doubt, however, that the voyage is genuine, though we have no details of it.) Father Grueber was much struck with the extraordinary similitude he found, as well in the doctrine, as in the rituals, of the Boodhists of Lassa to those of his own Romish faith. He noticed first, that the dress of Lamas corresponded with that handed down to us in ancient paintings, as the dress of the Apostles. 2nd. That the discipline of the monasteries, and of the different orders of Lamas or priests, bore the same resemblance to that of the Romish church. 3rd. That the notion of an incarnation was common to both, so also the belief in paradise and purgatory. 4th. He remarked that they made suffrages, alms, prayers, and sacrifices for the dead, like the Roman Catholics. 5th. That they had convents, filled with monks and friars, to the number of 30,000, near Lassa, who all made the three vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, like Roman monks, besides other vows. And 6th, that they had confessors, licensed by the superior Lamas, or bishops; and so empowered to receive confessions, and to impose penances, and give absolution. Besides all this, there was found the practice of using holy water, of singing service in alternation, of praying for the dead, and a perfect similarity in the costumes of the great and superior Lamas to those of the different orders of the Romish hierarchy. These early missionaries, further, were led to conclude, from what they saw and heard, that the ancient books of the Lamas contained traces of the Christian religion, which must, they thought, have been preached in Tibet in the time of the Apostles. We reserve the further discussion of this question, until we have given the more complete and accurate information afforded by recent travellers, who followed very nearly the same route with these missionaries. The sources of our geographical information deserve the first notice.
The map of Tibet, which is given in connection with that of China, was not framed from actual surveys made by the Jesuits employed by the Emperor Kanghi to prepare the latter. They deputed some Lamas, to whom they had imparted the rudiments of the science of surveying, and from their information, filled in that portion. In this state it was published by Du Halde, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and is to this day all we have on the subject. The map, therefore, is on no account to be depended upon. On the other hand, the few Europeans who have penetrated into Tibet, with exception to Captain Turner, Warren Hasting's envoy, tell us only of their difficulties and sufferings, and give very imperfect notices of the geography of the routes they followed. Fathers Grueber and Dorville crossed China from Pekin, by Singanfoo to Sining, and reached the Koko-noor valley, and thence passed into Tibet, round the sources of the Kwang-ho, and crossing those of the Yang-tse Kiang river. They came on from thence to India, through the valley of Nipal by Katmandu, and Hetounda to Patna, on the Ganges, where Dorville died. Another missionary, Pere Desideri, started from Goa in November, 1713, and passing through Delhi and Kashmeer into Baltistan, arrived at Leh, or Ladak, on the 25th June, 1714, and remained there for an entire year. From thence, he continued his journey, in the autumn of 1715, to Lassa, by a route of extreme elevation, of which we have no details whatsoever; Desideri, like the rest, only reporting his own sufferings from the intense cold. The journey occupied from August 1715, to March 1716; and the worst part was made in the winter, as seems to be the case with all, because of the impossibility of crossing the rivers and torrents at other seasons. Desideri found the temporal sovereignty of Lassa in the hands of a Tartar prince (a Sifan), who had recently conquered the country; the Lamas were, however, respected and reverenced, and directed all things spiritual.
After this, a mission of twelve Capuchins was sent into Tibet by Pope clement XI., at the head of which was a monk named Francis Horace della Penna. It passed through Betia in Behar, to Bhatgaon in Nipal, and thence reached Lassa. In 1732, letters were received in Rome from this mission, after an interval of years, announcing its favourable reception, and soliciting a reinforcement, which was sent in 1738. In 1742, there was published in Rome a very meagre report of the proceedings of this mission, making pretence of great success, and of having brought even the sovereign of the kingdom to acknowledge the truth of Christianity: but stating that he was restrained from proclaiming his conversion by policy, and by a respect for old customs. The mission, which had a branch at Bhatgaon in Nipal, is not further heard of, and no geographical, or other details of interest, have ever been obtained from it; but among the bishops in partibus nominated by the Pope, the title of Bishop of Tibet is still in use.
After these comes, in point of date, the authentic and highly interesting narrative of Captain Turner, who was sent in 1783 by Warren Hastings on a special political mission to the Grand Lama of Teeshoo Vor Djachi Loomboo. Full particulars of this journey were published in 1785 in London, with an accurate map of the route; and the book is too well known to need either citation, or any statement in abstract of its contents. We shall hereafter have occasion to refer to the account it gives of the state of society and of religion in Tibet. Captain Turner's route to Djachi was from Rungpoor in Bengal, to Tassisudon in Bootan, and thence by the Chumulari pass, across the Himalaya. -- He never went to Lassa. The same route nearly from Rungpoor was taken by Mr. Manning, who made the attempt to pass through Tibet into China, but was sent back from Lassa in 1811. We are not aware of any other Europeans having ever penetrated from India into this interesting region; but the government of India has received intelligence on several occasions from merchants of Patna, who trade with Lassa indirectly through Katmandoo; and its relations with Nipal, have more than once, brought the governor-general into direct communication with the Chinese officers in Tibet.
This story is adopted from Henry T. Princep's book called Tibet, Tartary and Mongolia: Their Social and Political Condition, and the Religion of Boodh, as there Existing.
Compiled from the Reports of Ancient and Modern Travellers, Especially from Huc's Reminescences of the Recent
Journey of Himself and M. Gabet, Lazariste Missionaries of Mongolia.
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