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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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| CHAP. XV. THE KOW-TOW | 393 | |||
| high prelate as it were, gets up and says with a loud voice : ` Bow yourselves and adore ! ' On this immediately all bend and bow the forehead to the ground. Then the prelate says again : ` God save and keep our Lord the Emperor, with length of years and with mirth and happiness.' And all answer : ` So may it be !' And then again the prelate says : ` May God increase and augment his Empire and its prosperity more and more, and keep all his subjects in peace and goodwill, and may all things go well throughout his Dominion ! ' And all again respond : ` So may it be ! ' And this adoration is repeated four times." One of Pauthier's most interesting notes is a long extract from the official Directory of Ceremonial under the Mongol Dynasty, which admirably illustrates the chapters we have last read. I borrow a passage regarding this adoration : " The Musician's Song having ceased, the Ministers shall recite with a loud voice the following Prayer : ` Great Heaven, that extenclest over all ! Earth which art under the guidance of Heaven ! We invoke You and beseech You to heap blessings upon the Emperor and the Empress ! Grant that they may live ten thousand, a hundred thousand years ! ' " Then the first Chamberlain shall respond : ` May it be as the prayer bath said !' The Ministers shall then prostrate themselves, and when they rise return to their places, and take a cup or two of wine." The K'o-tow (Khéu-théu) which appears repeatedly in this ceremonial and which in our text is indicated by the four prostrations, was, Pauthier alleges, not properly a Chinese form, but only introduced by the Mongols. Baber indeed speaks of it as the Kornish, a Moghul ceremony, in which originally " the person who performed it kneeled nine times and touched the earth with his brow each time." He describes it as performed very elaborately (nine times twice) by his younger uncle in visiting the elder. But in its essentials the ceremony must have been of old date at the Chinese Court ; for the Annals of the Thang Dynasty, in a passage cited by M. Pauthier himself,* mention that ambassadors from the famous Hárún ar Rashid in 798 had to perform the " ceremony of kneeling and striking the forehead against the ground." And M. Pauthier can scarcely be right in saying that the practice was disused by the Ming Dynasty and only reintroduced by the Manchus ; for in the story of Shah Rukh's embassy the performance of the K'o-tow occurs repeatedly. E" It is interesting to note," writes Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 22), " that in A.D. 981 the Chinese Envoy, Wang Yen-ta, sent to the Uigur Prince of Kao-Chang, refused to make genuflexions (pai) to him, as being contrary to the established usages as regards envoys. The prince and his family, however, on receiving the envoy, all faced eastward (towards Peking) and made an obeisance (pai) on receiving the imperial presents (shou-tzű)." (Ilia Twan-lin, Bk. 336, 13.)—H. C.] (Gaubil, 142 ; Van Braam, I. 20-21 ; Baber, io6 ; N. et E. XIV. Pt. I. 405, 407, 418.) The enumeration of four prostrations in the text is, I fancy, quite correct. There are several indications that this number was used instead of the three times three of later days. Thus Carpini, when introduced to the Great Kaan, " bent the left knee four times." And in the Chinese bridal ceremony of " Worshipping the Tablets," the genuflexion is made four times. At the court of Shah Abbas an obeisance evidently identical was repeated four times. (Carp. 759 ; Doolittle, p. 6o ; P. Della Valle, I. 646.) | ||||
| * Gaubil, cited in Pauthier's Hist. des Relations Politiques de la Chime, etc., p. 226 | ||||
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