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| Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
158. CINGHIS 363
a location of the Ch'i-lien Valley in the district of Fang-shan is out of the question, but CHANG Mu's explanation is of no great value. It is true that the sacrifices to the Mongol Emperors were offered in the department of Shun-t'ien-fu, but in its northern section, whereas Fang-shan is to the south-west. Without the original text of KUNG Chih-yo, I can say nothing more on the subject.
— Allusions have been made above to the sacrifices offered by the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties to the Emperors of the Yüan dynasty. While the sovereigns of all other dynasties were sacrificed to at their funerary mounds, there were no tumuli erected over the tombs of the Mongol Emperors, and their exact site was unknown. As a substitute, sacrifices were offered in the
department of Peking, north of the 77 Ch'ing-ho, which flows to the south-east north of the
capital. The regulations therefore in the 115 RAJ ÿ4 Li-pu tsê-li (« Regulations of the Board of
Rites ») of the Manchu dynasty were taken over from those in force under the Ming (cf. PALLADIUS, in Trudy Nenov Ross. dukh. Missiï y Peking, iv, 253; CHANG Mu, 6, 10 a). As these sacrifices have no bearing on the actual site of the tombs, I abstain from further investigation of the point.
— Some years ago, I jotted down a note to the effect that in the jrf Hsüan-hua
fu chih of 1743 there was a reference (7, 33) to a tradition according to which the Mongol
Empresses and princes were buried on the (~~ l.~a Chien-mao-shan (« Pointed-hat Mountain ») or
Chan-mao-shan (« Felt-hat Mountain »), north of i Tu-shih. The Pass (p k'ou) of
Tu-shih, north-east of Hsüan-hua-fu, is well known, and a place in the mountains north of it ought to be just beyond the outer Great Wall. There is in itself nothing impossible in the fact that there should have been there a funerary qoriq for Empresses and princes who were not carried to the Burgan-qaldun. Unfortunately, I have for the present no access to the Hsüan-hua fu chih, and can find no other reference to this tradition, which may, however, be late in date and groundless.
To sum up these somewhat desultory remarks, the only texts which are really puzzling as to the location of the Mongol Imperial tombs are those of P'êng Ta-ya and Hsü T'ing, and to some extent that of Chin Yu-tzû. But I do not think that they are of such a nature as to overrule the evidence found in Raidu-'d-Din and in the YS. I may add two further considerations. The Liao Emperors, even after they had settled in North China, had their bodies carried to eastern Mongolia for burial; it is therefore only natural that the Yüan should have followed the same practice, since, though they lived under a growing Chinese influence, they could wish to enjoy their final rest in the land of their origin. Moreover, the absence of funerary mounds does not explain everything. If the Imperial tombs of the Mongol Emperors had been in North China or just outside it, some memory of them should have survived; that they should have sunk into complete oblivion was because they lay in northern Mongolia, from which China was cut off during the three centuries of the Ming dynasty. For all these reasons, I hold that Chinghiz-khan and the line of Tolui, including Qubilai, were buried on the Burqan-qaldun, alias the Ch'i-lien Valley, the « Valley where the hearse was raised ».
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