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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
264
MARCO POLO BOOK I.
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And Sidonius :
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r
" Solitosque cruentum
Lac potare Getas, et pocula tingere venis."
(Para,;. ad Avitum. )
E' ` The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle." (Herodotus, Rawlinson, Bk. IV. ch. 64, p. 54.)—II. C.] " When in lack of food, they bleed a horse and suck the vein. If they need something more solid, they put a sheep's pudding full of blood under the saddle ; this in time gets coagulated and cooked by the heat, and then they devour it." (Georg. Pachymeres, V. 4.) The last is a well-known story, but is strenuously denied and ridiculed by
Bergmann. (Streifereien, etc. I. 15.) Joinville tells the same story. Hans
Schiltberger asserts it very distinctly : " Ich hon och gesehen wann sie in reiss ylten, das sie ein fleisch nemen, and es dunn schinden and legents unter den sattel, and riten doruff; and essents wann sie hungert" (ch. 35). Botero had " heard from a trustworthy source that a Tartar of Perekop, travelling on the steppes, lived for some days on the blood of his horse, and then, not daring to bleed it more, cut off and ate its ears I" (Relazione Un ivers. p. 93.) The Turkmans speak of such practices, but Conolly says he came to regard them as hyperbolical talk (I. 45).
[Abul-Ghazi Khan, in his History of Mongols, describing a raid of Russian (Ou -ous) Cossacks, who were hemmed in by the Uzbeks, says : " The Russians had in continued fighting exhausted all their water. They began to drink blood ; the fifth day they had not even blood remaining to drink." ( Transl. by Baron Des Maisons, St. Petersburg, II. 295.)]
NOTE 5.—Rubruquis thus describes this preparation, which is called h z'rzrt :
' This is Chomeni in the original, but I have ventured to correct it.
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tinguished service. One of the military titles at Bokhara is still T okhsabai, a corruption of Túgh-Sáhibi (Master of the Tugh).
We find the whole gradation except the Tuc in a rescript of Janibeg, Khan of Sarai, in favour of Venetian merchants dated February 1J47.. It begins in the Venetian version : "La parola de Zanibeck allo pzzoz'olo di ilfogoli, alli Baroni di Thomeni, * delli miera, delli centenera, delle dexiene." (Erdnnazzn, 576 ; D'Avezac, 577-578 ; R'nzusat, Langues Tartares, 303 ; Pallas, Sanznzl. I. 283 ; Schmidt, 379, 381 ;
Baber, 26o, etc. ; l árnbery, 371 ; Timozfr Inst. pp. 283 and 292-293 ; Bibl. de l'Ec.
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des Charles, tom. lv. p. 585.)
The decimal division of the army was already made by Chinghiz at an early period of his career, and was probably much older than his time. In fact we find the Myriarch and Chiliarch already in the Persian armies of Darius Hystaspes. From the Tartars the system passed into nearly all the NIusulman States of Asia, and the titles Min-baslzi or Bimbashi, Yuzbashi, Onbashi, still subsist not only in Turkestan, but also in Turkey and Persia. The term T man or Tisza was, according to Herberstein, still used in Russia in his day for io,000. (Ranzzís. II. 159.)
[The King of An-nam, Dinh Tiên-hóang (A.D. 968) had an army of i,000,000 men forming io corps of Io legions ; each legion forming Io cohorts of io centuries ; each century forming Io squads of io men.—H. C.]
NOTE 3.—RamuSio'S edition says that what with horses and mares there will be an average of eighteen beasts (?) to every man.
NOTE 4.—See the Oriental account quoted below in Note 6.
So Dionysius, combining this practice with that next described, relates of the Massaget e that they have no delicious bread nor native wine :
" But with horse's blood
And white milk mingled set their banquets forth."
(Orbis Desc. 743-744. )
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