National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

46

MARCO POLO   BOOK II.

populous country, from Ch'êng-tu to Yachau. [Captain Gill left Ch'êng-tu on the loth July, 1877, and reached Ya-chau on the i4th, a distance of 75 miles.—H. C.] (Ritter, IV. 190 seqq. ; Cooper, pp. 164-173 ; Richtliofen in Verhandl. Ges. f. Erdk. zu Berlin,

1874, p. 35. )

Tibet was always reckoned as a part of the Empire of the Mongol Kaans in the period of their greatness, but it is not very clear how it came under subjection to them. No conquest of Tibet by their armies appears to be related by either the Mahomedan or the Chinese historians. Yet it is alluded to by Plano Carpini, who ascribes the achievement to an unnamed son of Chinghiz, and narrated by Sanang Setzen, who says that the King of Tibet submitted without fighting when Chinghiz invaded his country in the year of the Panther (1206). During the reign of Mangku Kaan, indeed, Uriangkadai, an eminent. Mongol general [son of Subudai] who had accompanied Prince Kúblái in 1253 against Yunnan, did in the following year direct his arms against the Tibetans. But this campaign, that no doubt to which the text alludes as " the wars of Mangu Kaan," appears to have occupied only a part of one season, and was certainly confined to the parts of Tibet on the frontiers of Yunnan and Sze-ch'wan. [" In the Yuen-shi, Tibet is mentioned under different names. Sometimes the Chinese history of the Mongols uses the ancient name T'u fan. In the Annals, s.a. 1251, we read : ` Mangu Khan entrusted Ho-li-clan with the command of the troops against T'u fan.' Sub anno 1254 it is stated that Kúblái (who at that time was still the heir-apparent), after subduing the tribes of Yun-nan, entered 71'u fan,

when So-ho-to, the ruler of the country, surrendered.   Again, -s.a. 1275: ` The
prince Al-lu-chi (seventh son of Kúblái) led an expedition to T'u fan.' In chap. ccii., biography of Ba-sz'-ba, the Lama priest who invented Kúblái's official alphabet, it is stated that this Lama was a native of Sa-.sz'-kia in Tu-fan." (Bretschneider, Med lies. II. p. 23.) —H. C.] Koeppen seems to consider it certain that there was no actual conquest of Tibet, and that Kúblái extended his authority over it only by diplomacy' and the politic handling of the spiritual potentates who had for several generations in Tibet been the real rulers of the country. It is certain that Chinese history attributes the organisation of civil administration in Tibet to Kúblái. Mati Dhwaja, a young and able member of the family which held the hereditary primacy of the Satya [Sakya] convent, and occupied the most influential position in Tibet, was formerly recognised by the Emperor as the head of the Lamaite Church and as the tributary Ruler of Tibet. He is the same person that we have already (vol. i. p. 28) mentioned as the Passepa or Báshpah Lama, the inventor of Kúblái's official alphabet. (Carpini, 658, 709 ; D'Avezac, 564 ; S. Setzen, 89 ; D' Olasson, II. 317 ; Koeppen, II. 96 ; A myot, XI V. 128. )

With the caution that Marco's Travels in Tibet were limited to the same mountainous country on the frontier of Sze-ch'wan, we defer further geographical comment till he brings us to Yunnan.

NOTE 2. —Marco exaggerates a little about the bamboos ; but before gunpowder became familiar, no sharp explosive sounds of this kind were known to ordinary experience, and exaggeration was natural. I have been close to a bamboo jungle on fire. There was a great deal of noise comparable to musketry ; but the bamboos were not of the large kind here spoken of. The Hon. Robert Lindsay, describing his elephant-catching in Silhet, says : " At night each man lights a fire at his post, and furnishes himself with a dozen joints of the large bamboo, one of which he occasionally throws into the fire, and the air it contains being rarefied by the heat, it explodes with a report as loud as a musket." (Lives of the Lindsays, III. 191. )

[Dr. Bretschneider (Hist of Bot. Disc. I. p. 3) says : " In corroboration of Polo's statement regarding the explosions produced when burning bamboos, I may adduce Sir Joseph Hooker's Himalayan Journals (edition of 1891, p. 100), where in speaking of the fires in the jungles, he says : ` Their triumph is in reaching a great bamboo clump, when the noise of the flames drowns that of the torrents, and as the great stem-joints burst, from the expansion of the confined air, the report is as that of a salvo from a

park of artillery.' "—H. C.