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

Asiatic exploration. He set out from Lyons in 1245 and delivered the letter from
the Pope to Kuyuk Khan, not far from the city of Karakorum. Two years later
he was back with the answer from the Mongol Khan.

Friar John is specially interesting to us as being the first European to
mention Tibet. After telling how Chingis Khan's army had been at war, the text
runs, in Hakluyt's version of Vincent of Beauvais' abridgment, as follows:

›And in traueling homewardes, the sayd armie of the Mongals came vnto the lande of
Burithabieth (the inhabitants whereof are Pagans) and conquered the people in battell. These
people haue a strange or rather a miserable kinde of custome. For when anie mans father
deceaseth, he assembleth all his kindred, and they eate him. These men haue no beards at
all, for we saw them carie a certaine iron instrument in their hands, wherewith, if any haires
groue upon their chinne, they presently plucke them out. They are also very deformed.‹ ¹

There is no doubt that this passage, which is very much in accordance with
the narratives of Rubruck and Marco Polo, really refers to Tibet. The name Buritha-
beth is used some 60 years later by an oriental writer, namely, Rashideddin, in
his Jamiu-t Tawarikh, relating of Singun, the son of Ong Khan that he took
his refuge in Bouri-Tibet. ² ROCKHILL thinks it is a hybrid word, composed of
the native appellation Bod and the word Tibet, while d'Avezac suggests it to be a
corruption of the Baron-Tala, by which name the Mongols designate Tibet. ³ Both
these explanations seem, however, to be wrong, for the name Buri-Tibet also occurs
in the Ts'in cheng lu, where it is said that Ong Khan's son fled to the people of
Bo-li t'u-fan; and t'u-fan is one of the Chinese designations for Tibet. ⁴

Rockhill does not believe in Friar John's charge of cannibalism against the
Tibetans. If 770 years ago they had the same habit as nowadays of cutting up
their dead and throwing the pieces to the dogs, the description of this procedure
may have been exaggerated before it reached Mongolia, or, perhaps misunderstood
by early European travellers. ⁵ The habit of plucking out the hairs of their beards
is still en vogue in Tibet, and nearly every Tibetan, even amongst the nomads, has
an iron pincer in his belt exclusively for this purpose.

Several other missionaries were sent out to Asia in subsequent years, and
amongst them the French Franciscan WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK is the greatest of all.
Yule calls his narrative one of the best in existence. As an explorer, this admirable
Friar could not easily be surpassed, for he indicated the sources and the course of
the Don and the Volga, he showed that the Caspian was a lake, and that Cathay
was the same as the classical country of the Seres, he made Balkash and the city