IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
~~.
A
r
CHAP. LVII.
THE YAK OF TARTARY 2 7 7
Della Penna, 27 ; Davies's Report, App. p. ccxxix. ; Vigne, H. no, 129.) [At present Sining is called by the Tibetans Seling K'ar or Kuar, and by the Mongols, Seling K'utun, K'ar and K'utun meaning " fortified city." (Rockhill, Land of the Lainas, 49, note.)—H. C.]
[Mr. Rockhill (Diary of a Journey, 65) writes : " There must be some Scotch blood in the Hsi-ningites, for I find they are very fond of oatmeal and of cracked wheat. The first is called yen-mei ch'en, and is eaten boiled with the water in which mutton has been cooked, or with neat's-foot oil (yang-t'i yu). The cracked wheat (mei-tzű fan) is eaten prepared in the same way, and is a very good dish."—II. C.]
NOTE 3.--The Don; , or Wild Yak, has till late years only been known by vague rumour. It has always been famed in native reports for its great fierceness. The Haft 411m says that " it kills with its horns, by its kicks, by treading under foot, and by tearing with its teeth," whilst the Emperor Humáyún himself told Sidi 'Ali, the Turkish admiral, that when it had knocked a man down it skinned him from head to heels by licking him with its tongue ! Dr. Campbell states, in the Journal of the As. Soc. of Bengal, that it was said to be four times the size of the domestic Yak. The horns are alleged to be sometimes three feet long, and of immense girth ; they are handed round full of strong drink at the festivals of Tibetan grandees, as the Urus horns were in Germany, according to Caesar.
A note, with which I have been favoured by Dr. Campbell (long the respected Superintendent of British Sikkim) says : " Captain Smith, of the Bengal Army, who had travelled in Western Tibet, told me that he had shot many wild Yaks in the neighbourhood of the Mansarawar Lake, and that he measured a bull which was I8 hands high, i.e. 6 feet. All that he saw were black all over. He also spoke to the fierceness of the animal. He was once charged by a bull that he had wounded, and narrowly escaped being killed. Perhaps my statement (above referred to) in regard to the relative size of the Wild and Tame Yak, may require modification if applied to all the countries in which the Yak is found. At all events, the finest specimen of the tame Yak I ever saw, was not in Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet, or Bootan, but in the, jardin des Plantes at Paris ; and that one, a male, was brought from Shanghai. The best drawing of a Yak I know is that in Turner's Tibet."
[Lieutenant Samuel Turner gave a very good description of the Yak of Tartary, which he calls Soora-Goy, or the Bushy-tailed Bull of Tibet. (Asiat. Researches, No. XXIII,
pp. 351-353, with a plate.) He says with regard to the colour : " There is a great variety of colours amongst them, but black or white are the most prevalent. It is not uncommon to see the long hair upon the ridge of the back, the tail, tuft upon the chest, and the legs below the knee white, when all the rest of the animal is jet black." A good drawing of " an enormous " Yak is to be found on p. 183 of Captain Wellby's Unknown Tibet. (See also Captain Deasy's work on Tibet, p. 363.) Prince Henri d'Orléans brought home a fine specimen, which he shot during his journey with Bonvalot ; it is now exhibited in the galleries of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Some Yaks were brought to Paris on the Ist April, 1854, and the celebrated artist, Mme. Rosa Bonheur, made sketches after them. (See,our. Soc. Acclimatation, June,
1900, 39-4o.)—H. C.]
Captain Prjevalsky, in his recent journey (1872-1873), shot twenty wild Yaks south of the Koko Nor. He specifies one as II feet in length exclusive of the tail, which was 3 feet more ; the height 6 feet. He speaks of the Yak as less formidable than it looks, from apathy and stupidity, but very hard to kill ; one having taken eighteen
bullets before it succumbed.
[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 151, note) writes : "The average load carried by a Yak is about 250 lbs. The wild Yak bull is an enormous animal, and the people of Turkestan and North Tibet credit him with extraordinary strength. Mirza Haidar, in the Tarikhi Raslaidi, says of the wild Yak or kutás : ` This is a very wild and ferocious beast. In whatever manner it attacks one it proves fatal. Whether it strikes with its horns, or kicks, or overthrows its victim. If it has no opportunity of
1
i
•
a
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.