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FOUR PILGRIMS
by
WILLIAM BOULTING
Author of
_Giordano Bruno: his Life, Thought, and Martyrdom_;
_Woman in Italy, 1100–1600 A.D._, etc.
London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.,
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
ERRATA.
Page 84, Line 2. For “a little before” read “some time after.”
CONTENTS
I: HIUEN-TSIANG
_Master of the Law; and his Perilous Journey to the Sacred
Land of Buddha_, A.D. 627–643.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE ISOLATION OF CHINA 1
II. BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 5
III. AN ADVENTUROUS JOURNEY 9
IV. THROUGH INDIA IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY 27
V. INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE IN THE SEVENTH
CENTURY 47
VI. THE JOURNEY HOME BY A NEW AND
PERILOUS ROUTE 55
VII. PEACEFUL DAYS 61
II: SÆWULF, AN ENGLISH PILGRIM TO
PALESTINE
I. EARLY PILGRIMAGE TO PALESTINE 65
II. “DIEU LE VEULT” 68
III. SÆWULF’S RECORD 72
III: MOHAMMED IBN ABD ALLAH,
_Better known as Ibn Batûta, the Greatest of Moslem
Travellers_, A.D. 1304–77.
I. THE WHIRLWIND FROM ARABIA AND WHAT
FOLLOWED 89
II. A RESOLUTE PILGRIM 96
III. A ROUNDABOUT PILGRIMAGE 104
IV. GLIMPSES OF ARABIA, PERSIA AND EAST
AFRICA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 109
V. TO INDIA BY WAY OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND
THE STEPPES 117
VI. AN EASTERN DESPOT 128
VII. PERILS BY LAND AND SEA 137
VIII. OFF TO MALAYSIA AND CATHAY 147
IX. MOORS OF SPAIN AND NEGROES OF TIMBUKTU 158
IV: LUDOVICO VARTHEMA OF BOLOGNA,
_Renegade Pilgrim to Mecca, Foremost of Italian Travellers_.
I. THE GREAT AGE OF THE RENAISSANCE AND
OF DISCOVERY 163
II. FROM VENICE TO DAMASCUS 165
III. OVER THE DESERT TO MECCA 172
IV. THE ESCAPE FROM THE CARAVAN 186
V. CERTAIN ADVENTURES IN ARABIA THE HAPPY 190
VI. EASTWARD HO! 200
VII. THE PAGANS OF NARSINGA 208
VIII. FARTHER INDIA, MALAYSIA AND THE BANDA
ISLANDS 221
IX. SOME CUNNING MANOEUVRES 235
X. WAR BY LAND AND SEA 244
XI. THE NEW WAY ROUND THE CAPE 249
PREFACE
Pilgrimage has been popular in all countries and at all times. For what
could be happier than an agreeable change which should contribute at
once to welfare of soul, refreshment of spirit, and vigour of body?
Adventures on the way gave zest to the enterprise. If the more timid
or feeble were content to visit neighbouring shrines, those of hardier
mould, like the Wife of Bath, took more formidable journeys.
“Thries hadde she been at Jerusalem;
She hadde passed many a straunge strem;
At Rome she hadde been, and at Boloigne,
In Galice at Seint Jame, and at Coloigne,
She koude muchel of wandrynge by the weye.”
Some of the boldest and bravest of ancient travellers were pilgrims,
and we have their records of wide wandering. But their style is
archaic, has at best little purely literary merit, and is usually
forbidding. They are little known, except to the special student.
The footprints then are scanty, and all the worse for time, which
testify to ardent spirits that once inhabited the warm vesture of
flesh, but have long, long ago been laid to rest. I have tried to
set forth certain of these dead and half-forgotten worthies as with
“organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,” even as we. Four
have been chosen. Three of these were shrewd, fearless, observant
men, who overcame surpassing obstacles and met with adventure almost
unparalleled. The first of my bundle of four was a Chinaman, a Buddhist
monk of the early Seventh Century, who started alone on an almost
impossible quest. My second was an Englishman of the earliest years
of the Twelfth Century, who gives us some notion of what the ordinary
palmer was like who got to Jerusalem,
“e qui devoto
Il gran sepolchro adora e scioglie il voto”
(“and venerates the Holy Sepulchre and discharges his vow”). My third
was a Mohammedan, who, in the first half of the Fourteenth Century,
made several pilgrimages to Mecca and ran over the world from Tangier
to Pekin and from Turkestan to Timbuktu. My fourth was a very son of
the glowing age of Julius II, the first European Christian on record
to reach Mecca, one who outstripped the Portuguese in reaching the
aromatic islands of the Banda Sea. In each case, there is a brief
historical foreword to give the pilgrim due introduction into his
proper setting.
WILLIAM BOULTING.
I.—HIUEN-TSIANG.
MASTER OF THE LAW; AND HIS PERILOUS JOURNEY TO THE SACRED LAND OF
BUDDHA, A.D. 627–643.
CHAPTER I. THE ISOLATION OF CHINA
For thousands of years China was a world to itself, cut off from the
races of men. The main causes of this singular seclusion are simple:—
China was protected from serious invasion by her geographical position.
Northward, it was no easy business for the barbarous intruder to find a
way into China from the Manchurian plain, or for a Chinaman to find a
way out; and it was still more difficult to effect a passage by force.
To the North-West rose the forbidding walls of the Altai Mountains;
and, between them and China, a broad and demon-haunted waste of sand
blocked the way. Westward, huge interlocked ranges of Central Asia—the
Thian Shan and Pamirs—mountains which o’er top Alp or Caucasus, which
rival the loftiest Andes, and which are inferior only to Himalaya,
presented perils in abundance. These difficulties surmounted, the
vast, trackless sands of Gobi formed a second barrier; and the steep
rocks of Ala-Shan and In-Shan were a third. To the South-West rose the
plateau of Thibet, interlocking with the Pamirs—a plateau with a mean
level of more than 12,000 feet, terminating southward in Himalaya, that
highest and broadest of mountain-walls. To the South of China were the
dense forests, deep valleys, and rapid rivers of Burma and Tonquin.
Eastward the Celestial Empire was guarded by the sea: to reach China
from India was a long and perilous voyage; and the boldest navigator
might hesitate to entrust his clumsy craft to the caprice of the Indian
Ocean, to thread his way through the tortuous straits of Malaysia, and
to chance an encounter with the fierce islanders who lined them, only
in the end to reach a jealous shore. The unwieldly Chinese junk—a
town afloat—did, however, make a periodic and prolonged voyage—at
least in later days—to India; and a few bands of bold, hardy traders
were wont to cross over the formidable passes of Central Asia on
horses, mules, or asses, and to traverse vast, trackless wastes on
camels. They exchanged the products of India, Persia, and those States
which were watered by the classic streams of Oxus and Jaxartes, for the
silks and manufactures of Cathay. Chinese porcelain has been found in
Egyptian tombs.
China enjoyed a soil so productive of every kind of wealth that she was
independent of commercial intercourse with other lands. Secure from all
invaders but the scattered hordes of Mongolia, she developed a high and
distinctive civilization, which became more and more fixed and rigid,
but was superior in many respects to that of other Eastern States. By
the Seventh Century of our Era, good roads, good inns, and an admirable
system of canals rendered internal communication easy; the heavens had
been surveyed by astronomical instruments of some precision; and the
art of printing, which had not then been discovered long, was in use;
although to this day the Chinese do without the valuable economy of an
alphabet.
Moreover the Chinese People preferred to be undisturbed by stimulus
from without. Yet China transmitted her culture to her near and less
civilized neighbours—Japan and the Indo-Chinese peninsula—and claimed
a precarious overlordship of semi-barbarous Manchuria, Mongolia,
Eastern Turkestan and Thibet. During a long stretch of time, the
powerful and jealous Persian Empire was a bar to intercourse with the
far West; because it tried to preserve a monopoly of its own products.
The records of early intercourse with other countries are few; and
those few are meagre. Thirteen centuries before the age in which
Hiuen-Tsiang lived, Embassies from distant nations would seem to
have reached China. Marcus Aurelius despatched a mission (A.D. 166)
to establish direct relations; it travelled by way of India; and
failed. Carus sent another (A.D. 284). At the close of the fourth
century, Ammianus Marcellinus knew of the Chinese as a people dwelling
on fertile plains enclosed by protecting mountains: “a frugal folk,
studying to live peacefully and shunning intercourse with the rest of
mankind.” Half a century later, Moses the Armenian spoke of them as
“dwelling in wealth and civility at the end of the earth; a people
worthy to be called not merely the friends of peace but of life.”
Until the Great Age of Discovery arrived as a novel development of the
Great Age of the Renaissance to derange and remodel the earth, Cathay
was little more than a name to European ears: before the Nineteenth
Century, the Celestial Empire remained undisturbed by the Modern World.
Although the Chinese Government was always persistently obstructive to
foreign intercourse, it took an interest in foreign religions. This
seeming paradox was due to the fact that Confucianism, the official
Faith, was essentially a body of moral precepts, as was Taoism, (albeit
Taoism had stronger pretension to metaphysic), and both people and
rulers were eager to receive any moral doctrine which might strengthen
that love of peace and orderly conduct which would seem to be inborn
in the Chinese breast. There was no _odium theologicum_ in China. Now,
Buddhism was essentially an ethical system, and had much in common with
Taoism. On the whole, the Chinese were eager to adopt it; especially
as becoming a good Buddhist did not disallow of one’s remaining a good
Confucian, or of reconciling Buddhistic and Taoistic speculation. The
Chinese government naturally sanctioned a creed fitted to keep a people
quiet and submissive; and Buddhism proved to be peculiarly suited to
the Chinese mind: it touched the Chinese heart and left a profound
effect on Chinese character.
It had to compete with other religions. For with the caravan of the
trader came many religious Zealots, such as the Fire-Worshippers of
Persia. At the very beginning of Mohammedanism, Wahd-Abi-Kabha, the
maternal uncle of the Prophet, reached China, bearing presents to the
Emperor; and Mohammedans were to be found there in the third decade
of Hiuen-Tsiang’s life; while, in the following decade, Nestorian
missionaries introduced Christianity, which, after due examination, an
Imperial Decree declared to be a satisfactory and permissible faith.
Buddhist missionaries carried the teaching of Gautama to China at a
period not yet ascertained; but it must have lost much of its early
purity by whatever time that may have been.
CHAPTER II.
BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
Gautama was the son of a petty chieftain, who exercised limited
authority in a district which lay north of Faîzâbâd. He lived about 600
years before the beginning of the Christian era—about the time when
Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar and Assyria to the Medes. The evils of
disease, old age, and death weighed on the melancholy mind of the young
princelet: he sought for some way of escape from the curse of craving
flesh and the wild delirium of desire. He abandoned wife and family;
and dwelt, at first, in the solitude of a jungle. At this time, his
life was one of pure contemplation. Then a wave of love for humanity
and profound grief at human suffering swept over him. He resumed the
active life, preaching a pure religion of duty and affection along the
valley of the Ganges; for his soul, like the soul of Plato’s poet, “was
no longer within him.” He had learned and he taught that the misery of
Being is mitigated by strict obedience to the Law of human kindness and
duty. He made stirring appeals to heart and conscience, and supported
his mission by the ancient doctrine of Kharma, which Brâhmans had
taught him—the doctrine that the action of the evil will, barren as
its fruits invariably prove for the living agent, is delayed, but not
destroyed, by death, and builds up a new body and mind, which reap the
bitter harvest of former transgression and also the weal which results
from former well-doing. The heart achieves blessedness in proportion
to its purification; a good life acquires merit, by means of which
relative freedom is obtained from the mournful, malevolent turnings
of the “wheel of things.” Completely purified, Nirvâna (which is
sometimes interpreted as nescience, sometimes as the supra-conscious),
peace in the very heart of things, is obtained. All men may be touched
by love; but only rare intelligencies will seek Nirvâna. For the way
to the Blessed Life is steep and beset with thorns; but the resolute
spirit may achieve increasing and even perfect tranquillity by
uprooting every germ of ill-will and trampling down every one of those
passions of mind or body the results of which are as futile as their
origin is senseless. Gautama accepted the institution of the cloister
then, for such men of high intelligence as sought the truly spiritual.
In time Buddhistic monasticism became divided into the system of the
“Lesser Vehicle”—an ascetic scheme of discipline,—and that of the
“Greater Vehicle” for richer and more metaphysical minds. The first
aimed at restraint; the second, at contemplation. Buddha had no regard
for caste; and this brought his teaching into conflict with that of
the Brâhmans; he promised no endless personal life in heaven—only
progressive release from the evils of temporal existence; he did not
interfere with the popular worship of gods. His doctrine was an appeal
to our more spiritual nature, and closely resembles the Sermon on the
Mount. It awakened a people bound by a system of lifeless forms framed
by a priestly caste, yet who were all athirst for living waters.
But Buddhism speedily became metaphysical in the metaphysical East.
Some of the convents grew into abodes of speculation and seminaries of
learning. It was held that Gautama was the latest of those Buddhas,
those “redeemers” of the world, into whose mother’s womb Bôdhisattva,
the spirit about to become a Buddha, descended spiritually. Yet the
purest teaching of the Spirit contains within itself the seeds of its
own decay: the germ of fulfilment is also the germ of dissolution.
The history of Buddhism strikingly illustrates the truth of this, its
own tenet. Before long the new Faith, like unto Brâhmanism, became
half-throttled by formalism and encrusted by all manner of ridiculous
legend and vulgar superstition. And Asôka, who usurped a throne and
established an Empire at Magadha, near Behar (in the 3rd century before
Christ?) embodied the ethics of Buddhism in formal ordinances. The
letter and not the spirit, of the Law prevailed. But Asôka sent forth
missionaries, East and West and North and South, and they reached far
distant lands.
Probably imperfect and infrequent relations between Chinese Buddhists
and Indian priests were maintained through the medium of caravans
of trade. These have left no record; but in A.D. 65, the Chinese
Authorities sent envoys to Sind by the long, painful, and perilous
overland route. They returned with an Indian priest, sacred writings,
and sacred images of Buddha. After this, an occasional embassy from
India arrived; but such missions soon came to an end, although a
little intercourse was kept up with Ceylon by means of an arduous and
dangerous voyage. Not until the fourth century were Chinamen allowed
to become Buddhist priests. Then, at once, monasteries sprang up all
over the country. About the year 400 Fa-Hian and others with him were
sent on an embassy to secure religious writings. They made their
difficult way through Central Asia. Fa-Hian alone returned, after 14
years absence, by way of Ceylon, bearing authentic scripture with him.
A hundred years later Sung-Yun became a pilgrim to the same end and
was successful in securing a hundred and seventy volumes. Gautama,
like Jesus, had taught by word of mouth only. His manner was to utter
some pithy precept, and then to develop it in a running commentary.
But his disciples recorded these precious words; and, from time to
time, expositions and doctrinal developments and marvellous fables
were added. Of these, the earlier were written in Pali; the later
in Sanskrit, even then a dead tongue, knowledge of which was the
privilege of a small learned class. These Buddhistic writings, made on
prepared palm-leaves, were regarded by the faithful with superstitious
reverence; and Chinese Buddhists were anxious to obtain complete and
accurate copies of them, as well as sacred images and relics of Buddha,
which might serve as the objects of deep veneration.
At no period has the disordered tragedy of human history been more
cataclysmic than in the early part of the Seventh Century after Christ.
The whole world was then a theatre of wild unrest and stupendous
change, little as one fragment of the human race might know of aught
but its own disasters or triumphs. The shattered edifice of the
Roman Empire of the West was run over by Lombard, Frank and Goth and
races still more barbarous than these. From Cheviot to Illyricum,
all was confused, bloody, and unceasing riot. The exceptional vigour
of Heraclius alone saved the Roman Empire of the East from the
ever-watchful and now advancing hosts of Persia; while a new and
wholly unexpected menace arose in the Arabian desert: there a peril
burst forth as abrupt, fierce and overwhelming as a sandstorm of that
rocky waste. For Mohammed and his followers advanced thence with fiery
and resistless speed to offer the nations choice between the Koran,
tribute, and the sword. Even distant, tranquil China, the land cut off
from the rest of mankind was parturient: the Empire had broken up, and
was contended for by vulturine feudatories, who fought together for
sole possession of its bleeding carcase. A new and strong dynasty arose
amid slaughter and desolation. But, for a time, Central China was hell
let loose. The adolescence of Hiuen-Tsiang was passed amid scenes of
death and dismay.
CHAPTER III.
AN ADVENTUROUS JOURNEY.
This boldest of pilgrims, greatest of Chinese travellers came into the
world A.D. 603—nearly twelve hundred years after the founder of his
faith. He was the fourth son of a Chinese Professor in the Province
of Ho-nan, in Central China. Probably he shewed mental ability and a
devotional spirit early; for the second of his elder brethren took him
into his own monastery at Lo-Yang, the Eastern Capital, to supervise
his education. The boy is said to have evinced such brilliant parts and
such a spiritual mind that he became a novice at what would seem, at
that time, to have been the exceptionally early age of thirteen years;
although, two centuries before, Fa-Hian was a novice at three! It was
soon after this event that revolution shook the ancient Empire, and
came near to disrupt it. China became a slaughter-house, and Buddhist
priests were murdered as well as Government Officials.
As certain saints bear witness, the passion that wings its flight
towards no earthly home is occasionally combined with bold and
efficient direction of mundane life. It was so combined in
Hiuen-Tsiang. The monk of perfervid faith gave early proof that he was
a lad of mettle as well as an enthusiast for the Greater Vehicle. In
resolution and spirit, he dominated his elder brother, and insisted on
their both setting off, in the teeth of peril, for a safer place in the
Eastern province of Sz-chuen; and here he ended his novitiate and was
fully ordained at the age of twenty.
At last, chaos within the Chinese frontier and warfare along it began
to yield to the military genius and state-craft of T’ai-Tsung, the
greatest of Chinese warriors and rulers. Hiuen-Tsiang was not slow
to avail himself of the return of some measure of tranquillity to
the State. He disobeyed monastic authority, joined a band of nomadic
traders, and visited convent after convent of the wide Empire, with the
purpose of clearing his mind, in debate with their inmates, concerning
difficult problems in scriptural scholarship and the precise import
of certain tenets of his faith. There was full scope for speculative
discussion, since Chinese Buddhists did not yet possess a complete set
of the Sacred Writings or of the Buddhist Fathers and workers in that
kind of suggestive fiction which is so often taken to be veritable
history and which becomes the wardrobe of moral truth. Much was, as
yet, unsettled by authority and lay open to dispute.
Dissatisfied by the indefinite results of controversy, and fired by
the records of previous pilgrims, the young monk resolved to make for
the cradle and sanctuary of Buddhism and to seek there for the books
which his countrymen lacked. He and a few ardent monks applied to
the newly-established Emperor for permission to do this. The monarch
was Kao-T’sou, first of the T’ang dynasty—that most famous of the
many Imperial lines of China—the glory of having founded which
rests with his son, the redoubtable T’ai-Tsung, whom, later on, we
shall find seated on his father’s throne. The request was made at
an inopportune time, and was refused. For monkdom did not stand in
court-favour just then; monks were ordered to marry; possibly, because
recent internecine strife had thinned the population; possibly, also,
because the new government was jealous, in a perilous time, of the
power of growing sacerdotalism. This prohibition put an end to the
hope of Hiuen-Tsiang’s coadjutors: it only increased his own ardour
and hardened his own resolve. He was now 24 years of age; therefore in
the full vigour of early manhood; he cared nothing for obedience to
constituted authority when constituted authority stood in the way of
spiritual enlightenment. And he was not merely filled with religious
enthusiasm: the restless force and curiosity of youth were his; there
were shrewd, observant eyes in his head as well as disciplined wits.
Here was a man anxious and fitted to observe the physical features,
governments, productions, and peculiarities of unknown countries and to
record them. Westward, beyond the setting sun, lay mysterious lands,
vague as a dream, yet to be found a reality in this so wondrous world.
There was a call from afar. When the spirit of one born for action is
all a fire with enthusiasm begotten of idea, let the world keep watch!
It would appear from Tao-Sun, a Chinese author contemporary with
Hiuen-Tsiang, that there were three routes from China to India—the
one which our traveller took; the one by which he returned; and a
third from Lake Lob-nor, over the thousand miles of terrible plateau
in Thibet and the Himalayas to Nepal. Before long Hiuen Tsiang was
at Liang-chau, the capital of the province of Lan-su, far beyond the
upper reaches of the great Yellow River, and nearly at the extreme
north-western limit of China Proper. Here were gathered merchants
from Thibet and other far-distant lands; and these were so impressed
by Hiuen-Tsiang’s fervour and the grandeur of his project that they
are said to have cast themselves at his feet. They provided him with
ample means to go on. Now, Chinese administration in the province of
Lan-su had only been established recently, and remained insecure; no
inhabitant was allowed to cross the frontier; and the Governor was
a strong man who rigorously enforced his regulations. But what are
the strongest bonds of any mere narrow national group against the
conflicting obligation of Moral or Ideal impulse? How can usage and
prescription and enactment prevail against more spiritual forces?
Our would-be pilgrim secured the aid of a friendly monk, and stole
out of the city by night, accompanied by two young novices. The trio
stealthily, yet rapidly, pursued their course each night; they crept
furtively into some hiding place before each dawn. By the time this
evasive noctambulation had brought them to Kwa-chau, more than a
hundred miles north-east of Liang-chau, Hiuen-Tsiang’s horse was dead.
There was small comfort in learning that he would have to cross a river
so turbulent that no boat could live on it; that, beyond the river,
was an entrenchment which he must contrive to get over; and that, even
should he overcome this obstacle, the frontier was closed by rings of
forts; beyond the forts there was a vast stretch of herbless, waterless
waste; and beyond this desert lay the land of a Turkish people—those
Uïghurs, who appear in European folk-lore as the terrible Ogres.
His heart sank within him; the melancholy which seized him lasted a
whole month, and his taciturnity made it apparent. The Imperial Veto
arrived at Kwa-chau; the Governor of the city sent him a summons to
appear. But this new blow roused his failing courage; he pulled himself
together; personality and enthusiasm prevailed at the interview; the
Governor was won over; Authority gave the pilgrim a hint to lose no
time in making off; and closed its official eye to his departure.
Now, one of the novices was faint-hearted; the other sickly.
Hiuen-Tsiang sent them back. He was anxious to get on his solitary way
as fast as he could; so he bought a new horse; but he lacked a guide.
By a lucky accident he fell in with a “barbarian,” who expressed a
desire to become a monk, and who offered to guide him past the five
successive forts which lay ahead, and which he must somehow contrive to
dodge. The “barbarian” also took him to see an ancient trader who had
been to the land of the Uïghurs over thirty times. This old gentleman
made no attempt at reassuring him. “The routes of the West are rough
and dangerous,” he said, “now, one is stopped by shifting sands; now,
by demons and scorching winds. Even big caravans are liable to lose
their way and come to a miserable end. How, then, can you hope to
make the journey all by yourself? Be wise, I entreat you, and do not
play with your life.” But the monk answered that he held his life as
nothing when set against his holy quest. The old trader then dropped
vain arguments and proposed a deal which should be mutually profitable:
he would take the horse which Hiuen-Tsiang had bought, and would
give him his own Rosinante, which had made the journey so often, and
therefore must remember the road. The pilgrim, when he saw the beast,
recalled how one skilled in occult science had once spoken to him of an
ancient steed, reddish of colour, with a varnished saddle and an iron
framework to it; and lo! was not the very steed before him? He closed
the bargain; and he and the barbarian set forth together, each on his
“mount.”
The twain came up to the river (the Bulunghir) and found a place where
there were narrows. The guide proved himself to be resourceful: he made
a sort of bridge of boughs, covered them with sand, and belaboured the
horses until they dashed across the frail structure. A strange way of
crossing an unfordable stream! but by no means so improbable as it
sounds. It is said to be still used in Central Asia.
Night drew on. Both men were weary, and spread their mats for sleep.
But Hiuen-Tsiang placed small confidence in his guide. They lay fifty
paces apart. And, before long, our hero heard a stealthy footfall and
saw the dim outline of the half-savage stalking up to him. With drawn
sword, too! He sprang up, and breathed a prayer; whereupon the guide
returned to his own mat, stretched himself out, and straightway fell
asleep. Had he meant evil? or did he wish to make off if he found the
pilgrim asleep? or was his desire to frighten him from pursuing a
journey so perilous to them both?
Next morning, being already within the verge of the desert, they ate
sparingly, but were lucky enough to find water. No more water would
be found until they reached close up to the first fort; and they must
steal this by night; for, once espied by the garrison, they might
count themselves dead men. The guide tried to work on our pilgrim to
give up such a mad enterprise. But Hiuen-Tsiang knew no shadow of
turning; so the twain, ears and eyes wide open, wormed they way over
the rough tackless waste. Suddenly the guide tightened his bow and bade
Hiuen-Tsiang go on in front. Our pilgrim was far too wary a person to
do anything of the kind; he was by no means satisfied as to the designs
of the half-civilized stranger. However, the barbarian quietly resumed
his duty as scout; but he displayed such a desire to be out of it all,
and his fears were so obviously growing, that Hiuen-Tsiang dismissed
him with a present of the horse he rode.
Behold our traveller, then, solitary on the unending, pathless desert
of Gobi—one of the most immense of Earth’s waste places,—eagerly
on the look out for such heaps of bleached bones as might mark the
track of some caravan. After some time of slow, painful progress,
he beheld a band of men wearing glittering armour and bearing their
banners unfurled; they were making for him, but vanished as suddenly as
they appeared. It was the mirage come to perplex and delude him. One
illusion followed another in rapid succession; fleeting, dissolving
scenes which were the works of the Devil. But a voice said to him:
“Fear not.” This brought comfort, and his fear departed. He pushed on,
and in the end he sighted the watch-tower. He hid in a sand-hollow
until night closed round, and then he crept up to the wall of the fort
and found the hoped-for water. He was busy filling his leathern-bottle,
when an arrow whizzed by and very nearly hit him; and a second arrow
followed. He shouted out: “Stop your shooting. I am a monk from the
Capital.” Soldiers ran up, dragged him into the fort, and took him
before their captain. He produced papers which proved his identity,
and was treated with the respect due to a priest of Buddha; yet the
Captain urged him to return home. Finding the pilgrim to be a man of
heroic piety and inflexible will, he set out with him and guided him
some distance along the way to the next fort. He even gave Hiuen-Tsiang
a message to its captain, recommending the pilgrim to his favour and
assistance. But the message was a verbal one only. And Hiuen-Tsiang was
not sure that he might not find more rigour and less charity at the
next watch-tower; so, when he came up to it, he crept furtively towards
its base, in search of water as before. The dispatch of an arrow was
sufficient warning; he came into the open, and the scene at the first
fort was re-enacted. He repeated the message to its Captain; and this
second officer gave him hospitable entertainment and better advice. For
he urged him to avoid the third fort, which was held by rough soldiery,
who would not be nice in making delicate distinctions and might easily
become violent. And he directed him to take a route which avoided this
fort altogether, and along which, at ten leagues distance, he would
come across sweet water.
He set off across the arid plain, where was neither beast nor bird to
be seen, nor blade of grass, nor any sign of moisture—only mirage. A
pandemonium of fantastic forms encircled him; forms begotten of the
Power of Evil. But he felt secure in the midst of devils; for did he
not bear, folded in his bosom, a sure talisman—none other than a
Sacred Manuscript, the gift of grateful leper to whom he had stood as a
friend?
Illusory peril was followed by solid disaster: he dropped his
water-bottle and spilled its precious contents. Next, his horse lost
its way, and made the same long circuit again and again. For a moment,
he was tempted to assay a return to the fort: he brushed the thought
aside, turned his horse’s head to the North-West, and pushed on.
Night came on. Evil spirits seized on the opportunity to close in on
him. Every demon bore a burning torch. They were more in multitude than
the stars of heaven. Four horrid nights, filled with hallucination,
wore away. Four days he struggled on, tortured by thirst, his body one
ache. At last horse and rider fell to the ground, worn out. Death was
close at hand when a refreshing night-breeze swept over the desert,
and horse and rider renewed the struggle. Suddenly, the horse insisted
on taking his own way: he had scented water; and soon a little oasis
was reached. It was uninhabited; but a day’s rest there refreshed man
and beast; and, on the third day, the traveller saw the last of the
shifting sands of Shamo and came to the pastures of the Uïghurs.
In the capital, probably identical with the town now known as Hâmî, he
found a Buddhist monastery, wherein dwelt three Chinese monks. He had
already made fully 600 miles from Liang-chau; but that was as nothing
to the journey which lay before him; and from this he was compelled to
digress. For he was in a region tributary to the ruler of Kau-chang
(Turfan) and this monarch, having heard of his arrival, ordered that
he should be sent on to him. Six days of travel to the West, through
a desert, brought him to Turfan. The Lord-paramount of the Uïghurs
received him with all honour and much state-ceremony. He sat under
a “canopy of precious stuffs” pitched in the courtyard of a palace.
Soon after the pilgrim’s arrival, the queen, accompanied by her suite,
appeared; but Hiuen-Tsiang being fatigued, their Majesties retired to
the “palace,” and he was conducted to his chamber, where eunuchs served
and guarded him. Next day he was taken to a Buddhist convent, still in
the custody of the eunuchs. For the monarch had resolved to keep such a
holy person for the better instruction of his subjects.
Hiuen-Tsiang incurred the royal displeasure by stoutly refusing to do
as he was bid and stay on. Then ensued, in that far away time and half
barbaric land, the ancient and ever recurrent struggle which history
so copiously illustrates—the contest between regnant authority and
the claims of religion. At one time the despot tried to brow-beat; at
another time, to cajole; he even put aside his dignity and offered
to serve the monk at table. Both men were equally resolute; and the
situation seemed hopeless, when Hiuen-Tsiang bethought him of an
expedient with which we moderns became familiar at no very recent
date. He started to hunger-strike. In four days the result of this
policy alarmed the King. The queen-mother declared herself for the holy
pilgrim, and the monarch gave in. He begged that Hiuen-Tsiang would at
least stay in the country during one short month. The monk accepted the
compromise; and in that single month his unaffected piety, passionate
singleness of aim and personal attraction did the work they never
failed to accomplish everywhere and on every occasion. Moral intensity
was the secret of his success.
And so we see the poor wanderer who came to Uïghur-land alone,
famished, and half dead, leaving the land under the protection of an
armed escort, and provided, not merely with an ample supply of warm
clothing for the heights he must cross, but with 100 ounces of gold,
30,000 pieces of silver and 500 pieces of satin for the presents
which were necessary and to pay his way. He was also given letters of
recommendation to the Princes of the West. Monks and the population of
the city followed him beyond its gates; and the despot, having sent the
queen and people back, conducted him surrounded by his whole court,
some miles on his journey.
The route lay westward, over a difficult, mountainous land. Southward
lay the Tarim, a considerable river, which discharges itself into
Lob-nor, one of the numerous inland salt-seas of Asia, for ever
rising and falling and shifting its boundaries. It was well that the
pilgrim had a military escort; for a band of brigands lurked among the
mountains. They were probably quite as strong as the Uïghur soldiery;
for negotiations were entered into, and ended in their being bought
off. A little farther on there was ghastly evidence that these
ruffians had recently attacked and destroyed a caravan of traders: a
few score corpses lay stretched out on the ground.
When Kara-shahr (Karshâr) was reached, its King behaved courteously,
but refused to grant fresh horses, by reason of the frequent raiding of
his domain by the Uïghurs. He was disquieted by the presence of Uïghur
soldiery. Hiuen-Tsiang tells us, among much else that is interesting,
that the coinage here was of gold, silver and copper,—that there
were ten Buddhist monasteries of the Lesser Vehicle; that these were
properly kept, but that the country “had no annals” and that “the laws
were not settled. The people clothe themselves in cotton or wool, and
go about with their scalps shorn and uncovered.”
The separate account of each country the pilgrim visited or concerning
which he believed he had credible information—his great monumental
work—the _Si-yu-ki_—begins with Kara-shahr which he calls Akni
or Agni. One is at once struck with the exactness of the author’s
observation, the orderliness of his mind, and the minute precision of
his statement. One is equally astounded at his oriental love of the
marvellous and his eager haste to record every grotesque and absurd
legend. There is before us a man as full as any modern explorer of
ardent zeal for travel, eager curiosity, keen eye, and quick interest
in all that is novel and peculiar. There is the same intellectual grasp
of the natural features, products and government of strange countries.
But Hiuen-Tsiang’s inmost, burning passion is revealed both in this
book and in the biography compiled from his documents and discourse
by two pupils and intimate friends Hwui-Lih and Yen-Tsong[1]: it was
for all that appertained to his religion, whether sacred writing or
Buddhist monuments or the relics of saints. When he deals with mundane
matters he rarely goes astray. And, from his earliest years, he bore a
sacred flame, a consuming fire in his breast, fed by the highest and
holiest emotions and aspirations of man. But, although he breathed the
breath of life, the purest atmosphere of the East in his century was
tainted by superstition. The mental disposition for the marvellous,
implanted in him at a tender age, and sustained by precept and example,
waxed with the years. The absurdest legends became credible if they
bore the name of his faith. This close observer, this clear minded
man became passionate for prodigies, had a Gargantuan swallow for the
superstitious-grotesque. Brought up on legend, he soon found himself in
a home of fable. He records every marvellous tale which is told him,
and worships at every shrine which guards any relic of wonder. And this
although he was not wanting in passion for orderly thinking.
News from Kara-shahr that a holy pilgrim, bound for India, might be
expected reached the next Kingdom, and he found monks standing to greet
him at the gate of Kutchê, its capital. Feelings of simple grace and
beauty dwelt in those Eastern hearts; they welcomed him with a gift
of flowers. But the strict laws of his order did not permit of his
accepting these for himself. He placed them before an image of Buddha,
Teacher of the Law. Kutchê was a land of music, its people excelling
all others on the lute and pipe. They were a wholly honest folk,
with an incompetent ruler. “The King’s wisdom being small,” says our
Chinaman, “he is ruled by a private minister. The heads of children of
the humbler order are flattened by the pressure of a wooden board”;
which recalls the custom of certain North American Indians. The King
had ordered a banquet to honour his visitor; but the strictness of the
rule which Hiuen-Tsiang followed forbade him to be present. This cast
the potentate into a mighty rage; but once again the simplicity and
sincerity of the pilgrim’s character, which glowed in his countenance,
disarmed wrath. He was retained at Kutchê, an honoured guest, until
such time as the snows should melt. He spent two months there, chiefly
occupied in religious discussion with the monks. He tells us that the
monarch and his ministers met together once a month to discuss matters
of state, and consulted the priests before publishing their decrees.
When the season ripened and the ways became open once more, he was sent
forth in magnificent pomp and protection; he was accompanied by an
armed escort and a staff of servants, all mounted on camels and horses.
The escort was very necessary; for a great horde of Turkish robbers
were passed on the way, quarrelling about the booty of a caravan which
they had stopped and plundered. A march of about 120 miles brought
our party to a small desert which they crossed over, and so entered
the domain of another Khân. A single night was spent at what is now
Bai, where he found Buddhist monasteries, and the party pushed across
another small desert. The towering and forbidding ranges of Thian-shan
were before them, “very dangerous and reaching up to the sky.” Indeed
Khân Tengri, the highest mountain of the range, has an elevation of
24,000 feet. The imposing features of the mountain-masses and the
horror of the passes across them left indelible marks on Hiuen-Tsiang’s
memory. “Since the creation of the world,” he says, “the snow has
gathered there and become frozen blocks, which spring and summer cannot
melt. Shining sheets of solid ice spread before one, and there is, as
it were, no end to them; they blend with the clouds. Frozen splinters
have become detached and have fallen; some of these are an hundred
feet high; others measure some dozens of feet athwart, and they bar
the way. You attempt to climb over the former kind at your peril; you
get across the latter with pain. And all the time tempest assails
you with gusts of wind and whirling drifts of snow; so that double
soles to your foot-gear and fur garments to your body fail to keep
out the cold. Of dry shelter there is none, either to feed or sleep
in. You have to sling up your cooking-pot and lay your sleeping mat
on the frozen ground.” Mountain-staves were used, and we learn from
the _Si-yu-ki_ (the “Record of Western Countries”) that mountaineers
were accustomed to cut steps in the ice. But to climb uncharted hills,
among the highest of the world, led by guides of no great experience;
to make one’s way over rock and glacier unroped and unprovided with
specially constructed boots; to sleep in the open in rarified and
arctic air; to live on poor food, and often to lack it, was to loathe
the mountain-pass. And this Hiuen-Tsiang did, heartily.
It cost the caravan seven dolorous days to cross the higher ranges,
and, by the time the western uplands were reached, 13 or 14 strong men
had been lost through cold and hunger, and more than double that number
of beasts of burthen.
Beyond the mountains, the uplands of Western Turkestan lie at a higher
level than that reached by Ben Nevis, and they embosom a great inland
sea—the Issyk-Kul, which lies nearly 5,000 feet up. Wending their
way along its southern shore, our travellers ran into a hunting party
of the Khân of the Turks. Only half a century had then passed since
nomadic Turkish tribes possessed themselves of the “thousand sources”
of those two great rivers which lose themselves in the Aral Sea, which
are known to modern geographers as Amu Daria and Syr Daria, and which
readers of the classics know as Oxus and Jaxartes. The Turks speedily
became masters of the fertile plains of Sogdiana and Bactria, subdued
the tribes that occupied the region we call Bokhâra, and extended their
sway into the very heart of the Hindû Kûsh, reaching as far south as
the Kapiśa of the Greeks—that is to say, within a few miles of Kâbul.
We have an interesting account of how the Nomadic Ruler gave the
travellers a gracious reception within a great tent, resplendent with
cloth of gold. Two long rows of dignitaries, clad in figured silks
of many colours, squatted on mats before the Khân; behind him stood
the royal guard. He wore a cloak of green satin; his long hair was
bound over the forehead by several folds of silk, the ends whereof
fell over his back. When on horseback, two hundred captains, gay in
brocade and riding horses with plaited tails, and an army with banners,
spears and long bows accompanied him. This was not foot soldiery;
horses or camels were ridden, and the men were clad in furs and fine
wool. One could see no end to the army, it was such a multitude. Our
author tells us that the Turk of his day worshipped fire, and sat on
mats, since wooden chairs contain the quality of fire. Ten centuries
later Sir Thomas Browne, in his “Urn-Burial” refers to the Parsees
of India “which expose their bodies unto vultures and endure not so
much as _feretra_ or biers of wood, the proper fuel of fire.” A huge
arm-chair, made of iron and covered with a mat was brought in for
the use of Hiuen-Tsiang. The whole party was invited to sit, Turkish
fashion; wine was brought in, cups clinked, and everybody drank, turn
and turn about; while music, which to Chinese ears was barbaric yet
not unpleasing, came from strange instruments. After the wine, legs
and shoulders of boiled mutton and veal were brought in; but the
Buddhist was separately served with “pure food”—rice-cake, cream,
milk, crystallized sugar, honeycomb and grapes. Of course the divine
gadfly which pursued our hero stung him to testify on this occasion, as
on all other opportunities, whether in season or out of season. But his
personality stood him in good stead; moreover, to this day, a holy man
is respected throughout the pagan East, no matter what his faith may
be. The Khân was interested and attentive; even impressed. He raised
his hands towards heaven, cast himself on the ground, kept Hiuen-Tsiang
about his person for some days, and earnestly besought him to give up
his project. “You must not go,” he said. “The country is a very hot
one. You look too frail a man to give hope of your success. The natives
are black; they go about naked; they have no modesty; they are unworthy
of your presence among them.” “Whatever I may be,” replied the Master
of the Law, “I burn with longing to seek for the commands of Buddha,
to inspect the ancient monuments, and to follow lovingly the track of
our Lord’s footpath on earth.” What followed marks yet once more the
personal ascendency of our hero in every situation. This half-savage
head of wild Mongolian hordes sought straightway for some one who knew
Chinese and could also interpret the confusion of tongues in his own
subject-lands to the south. Such a man was speedily picked out of the
Khân’s army; for Chinese had been carried off by the Turkish Hiung-nu
(a people possibly, though by no means certainly, identical with the
terrible Huns whom Attila led to devastate Europe) and had settled down
in towns, deserted when Hiuen-Tsiang arrived in the district, but where
they had kept up their native tongue, although they had adopted Turkish
dress and ways. With true Eastern courtesy to a guest, the great Khân
accompanied our traveller some little way on his journey.
At first the route lay westward towards the “Land of the Thousand
Sources”—a region of lakes and pools, great trees, much vegetation,
and a sweet and wooing air. Hither the Khân was wont to repair in
summer. Still travelling westward, Talas was reached, and then, by
bending round to the South-West and South, Samarkand, the “storehouse
of precious merchandise from many foreign countries.” Our traveller
found the ruler “full of courage, and controlling neighbouring
countries” with his fierce soldiery. He received the pilgrim with an
air of lofty disdain; but Hiuen-Tsiang was not a man to be daunted,
and, next day, when he boldly set forth his faith, contempt became
respect. Buddhism was practically dead in Samarkand. The monasteries
were empty. Two young monks who were with Hiuen-Tsiang sought to pass
the night in one of these vacant buildings; but the populace threw
burning brands at them and drove them out. The King condemned the
offenders to decapitation; but Hiuen-Tsiang pleaded for mercy; so
they were merely beaten and expelled from the city. His successful
intercession increased the fervour of his missionary zeal; nor did he
toil in vain; the monasteries were re-opened; and he ordained priests
to fill them.
Leaving Samarkand, about 90 miles off, he entered a pass bordered by
mountains “of prodigious heighth, with a narrow road” to add “to the
difficulty and danger.” The pass was closed by double wooden doors,
studded with iron, and hung with bells. The pass owed its name—The
Iron Gates—to these strong defences.
The Oxus was reached and crossed, and our pilgrim now deviates
considerably from the direct route to fulfil a promise which he had
made to the Khân of the Uïghurs to visit his son-in-law, the son of
the great Khân of the Turks, who ruled over a little Khânate, called
Hwo, and probably identical with the district which lies east of the
Surkh-âb. When he arrived, he found the monarch on his death-bed; and
was obliged to wait two months until the funeral ceremonies were done
with. During this time a tragedy took place which casts a lurid light
on court-life in Central Asia during the Seventh Century, and which
reminds us of the Italian tragedies during the High Renaissance. The
wife of the Khân had died, and the Khân replaced her by marrying her
young sister. At the instigation of a son by the first marriage, the
bride murders her husband. “The serpent that did sting his father’s
life now wears his crown,” and marries his aunt-step-mother. A similar
atrocity is recorded of the Chinese Imperial family in Hiuen-Tsiang’s
time. In A.D. 655 the Emperor, Kao-Tsung, deposed the Empress and
married one of his father’s widows, who wholly ruled him, cut off
the feet of the Empress, and of another queen, and then had these
unfortunate ladies drowned “like Clarence in his Malmsey-butt,” in a
vat of wine.
Hiuen-Tsiang was fortunate in finding a monk who had dwelt in India and
had studied the Scriptures there; and the twain set forth for Balkh
in some sort of waggon. At Balkh, he found no fewer than a hundred
Buddhist monasteries, three thousand monks, and sacred memorials and
relics beyond count. He might have become very rich; for the Kinglets
around Balkh were eager to secure a visit from such a holy being, and
offered to load him with gold and jewels. But he was not the man to
depart from the straight and narrow path he had chosen. He refused them
one and all, and set forth for ways “even more difficult and dangerous
than the deserts of ice. Every moment one is at battle there with
frozen cloud or snow-whirlwind. Sometimes one is faced with worse than
this, even, namely, morasses of mud, dozens of feet wide. Ice, pile on
pile, rises into mountain masses, snow-blasts dash on for a hundred
leagues.” “The raging spirits and demons of the mountains send every
kind of calamity; and there are murderous robbers to be met with.” Thus
does Hiuen Tsiang describe the passage of the Hindû Kûsh.
At Bâmiyân, in the heart of Afghanistan, a great centre of Buddhism
after the model of the Little Vehicle, he was honourably received by
its ruler and rested five days in his palace. He visited the great
Buddhist images, hewn out of the solid rock (which our soldiers saw
in the Afghan Campaign of 1843) and other remarkable monuments. On
the second day after leaving Bâmiyân, he was caught in a blinding
snowstorm, lost his way, and was like to perish, when mountaineers
who were out hunting came across him and put him on the right track.
A mountain pass brought him to the Kapiśa of Ptolemy and Pliny. It
was situated a little to the north of the present Kâbul. Here “the
people were fierce and cruel speaking a rude tongue, their marriage a
mere intermingling of the sexes.” The monarch, shrewd, brave, firm and
sagacious, had established a little empire by bringing ten neighbouring
States under his overlordship, and had won the love of his subjects.
Hearing of the approach of the pilgrim, this potentate set out to meet
him, accompanied by a procession of monks. These pietists of various
monasteries of the Great and Little Vehicle remained sufficiently
human to quarrel as to which house should shelter so rare a guest. Now
the King was an enthusiastic supporter of the more rigid Order; and
Hiuen-Tsiang would naturally have prepared to take up his abode in a
convent of the Great Vehicle. But the appeal of the monks of a convent
following the Little Vehicle, an appeal made on historic grounds,
touched him; yet one of the monks who had accompanied him showed strong
repugnance to sleep in a house of Hiuen-Tsiang’s rival and stricter
sect. Our Chinese was neither a Courtier nor a Pharisee; he could
“suffer fools gladly,” and took up his abode with the weaker brethren.
Then the rivals had but one voice in entreating him to uncover a
treasure, which had been set aside for the repair of some religious
house, and which lay buried beneath the foot of an image of Buddha.
CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH INDIA IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY.
He passed the wet season at Kapiśa, and then, protected by the King’s
envoys, went along the North bank of the Kâbul river and through
districts memorable in the record of the Indian expedition of Alexander
the Great. Again and again do we come across the names of places
familiar to the reader of Arrian and Strabo. He visited Peshâwar and
Attock; he travelled through many a little Kingdom of what is now
North-Eastern Afghanistan and the North-West Provinces of India, by
zig-zag and perplexing routes. Here was the classic soil of ancient
Brâhmanism; here was to be found many a Buddhist record of the great
days of Aśôka. It was a land of monasteries and monuments, of countless
_stûpas_ (monuments containing relics) and sculptured stones, of
ancient tradition and extravagant myth. The recording carvings of ages
still stood thick on the ground or lay there in ruin. He saw every one
of them, traversing perilous ravines by the help of chains affixed to
the rocks; crossing frail swaying bridges made of rope. He got as far
north as Baltistân, or Little Thibet, “in the midst of the Great Snowy
Mountains.” More than six centuries later, Marco Polo refers to the
inhabitants as “an evil race of savage idolaters,” and Hiuen-Tsiang
found their forefathers “fierce, passionate folk, ill-mannered, and of
uncouth speech.” “Strictly speaking, they do not belong to India, but
are rude frontier-folk.” Sometimes the ways were deserted; for brigands
were abroad. Almost everywhere Brâhmanism was in the ascendent;
Buddhism in decay; but, as yet, the rivalry of the two creeds had
nowhere become acute; rival religionists behaved kindly and courteously
one to another; and Brâhmans received the traveller with generous
hospitality. Yet the careful student will not fail to observe that the
antagonism between Brâhman and Buddhist, which is evident in the pages
of Fa-Hien, had not decreased in the two centuries since his time. For
Exoteric Brâhmanism, with its clever adaptation of the ancient gods of
India; its appeal to the imagination of the vulgar, always concrete
in character and incapable of comprehending an abstract proposition;
its deities, embodying human passion and evoking human sympathies; its
support of human pride in the institution of caste; its intercessory
priesthood and vicarious sacrifice; and its supple manipulation of
men to obtain power, was on the high road to revival. But there is an
esoteric Brâhmanism, as Macaulay found out, always the lofty, pure
creed of the educated Hindu.
Hiuen-Tsiang went up and down and to and fro in these frontier-states,
threading many a delicious valley which nestled among the mountains
and was overlooked by the snows of Himalaya; and returning from time
to time to the more enervating atmosphere of the valley of the Indus.
The King of Kaśmîr (Cashmir) visited him at a monastery where he was
staying, preceded by a brilliant procession. The roadway was covered
with umbrellas and banners; it was carpeted with flowers, and the
air was filled with sweet scents. The monarch was full of compliment
and shows of respect, and scattered a great quantity of flowers in
Hiuen-Tsiang’s honour. Then he begged him to take his seat on a great
elephant. And he walked behind him. The pilgrim remained two years
in Kasmîr, sitting at the feet of a sage, studying Sanskrit and the
Buddhist scriptures. Indeed, throughout all his travels, he was forever
studying or collecting or transcribing manuscripts, when he was not
visiting and venerating relics.
Now near Nagarahâra, in the district of Jalâlâbâd, there was a certain
cavern, where, peradventure, the pious might behold the shadow which
Buddha had cast on its walls. It had been granted to Sung-Yun to see
it, when the Empress Dowager of a Tartar dynasty which ruled in
Northern China sent him and another on an embassy to obtain Buddhist
books (A.D. 518); and Hiuen-Tsiang was consumed by desire to see it
also. His escort from Kapiśa earnestly begged him not to make the
attempt; it was a rash and perilous project; brigands were abroad; and
few indeed were those who might see the holy vision. They could not
dissuade him; so they left him and went home, and he took an old man as
guide. When he got near the cavern five brigands pounced upon him. He
pointed to his monks’ robe and told them that, if they were brigands,
they were none the less men, and he had no fear of men, or even of wild
beasts, when sacred duty called him. He touched their hearts, and they
let him go.
Although a man visited by visions and a dreamer of significant dreams,
he spent a long time in the cave and saw nothing. Prostrations and
convictions of sin were in vain. Then, quite suddenly, came a flash
of light; thereupon he vowed that he would not quit the spot until
he should behold the veritable shade. In the end the reward of such
persistent enthusiasm was bestowed: he beheld the Buddha, attended by
his sacred court, in all their heavenly splendour. But, just then,
torch-bearers came into the cave, intending to burn perfumes in the
holy place, and the glory disappeared. Hiuen-Tsiang ordered them to
put out their lights, and lo! there was the vision as before. Five
of the six torch-bearers declared that they beheld the shadow. It is
characteristic of our pilgrim that he is careful to tell us that the
sixth man saw nothing whatever. Never a shadow of doubt arises as to
his good faith. Sung-Yun the Chinese ambassador and pilgrim, writing
an account of his journey a hundred years before Hiuen-Tsiang, tells
us how, “Entering the mountain cavern fifteen feet and looking for a
long time (or, at a long distance?) at the western side of it, opposite
the entrance, at length, the figure, with its characteristic marks,
appears; on going nearer to look at it, it gradually grows fainter,
and then disappears. On touching the place where it was with the hand,
there is nothing but the bare wall. Gradually retreating, the figure
begins to come into view again, and foremost is conspicuous that
peculiar mark between the eyebrows, which is so rare among men.” And
Hiuen-Tsiang tells us, in his “Records of Western Lands,” that in later
days the shadow has faded to a feeble likeness, although, by fervent
prayer, it may be clearly seen, “though not for long.”
Leaving the North-Western corner of India, he now proceeded through the
Punjâb. Many a city he names has perished, and not a stone thereof is
left; of others a few stones mark the seat of departed greatness; but
often the names recall the Embassy of Megasthenes and differ but little
from those by which they were known to the Greeks of a yet earlier age.
He had left certain rude tribes behind him, yet he found particular
districts by no means free from murderous gangs; and he had to traverse
many a forest inhabited by wild elephants and great beasts of prey. In
one forest, he and fellow-monks who accompanied him found themselves at
the mercy of half a hundred armed brigands, who chased them into the
bed of a pond which had run dry. Hiuen-Tsiang and some others contrived
to hide among thorny bushes and coarse growth; but some of the company
were caught and bound. Happily a hollow, scooped out by escaping
waters, was hit upon; and our pilgrim and some who were in hiding
contrived to make their way out. About half a mile off they came across
a Brâhman ploughing with oxen; and he took them to a village hard
by. He blew a conch and beat a drum, and soon 80 men of the village
snatched up their arms and gathered together to attack the robbers.
These latter, seeing so many bounding towards them, made off with all
speed; the villagers found and released their captives, who lay bound,
stripped, and quite helpless, groaning and weeping many tears. The
good people of the village covered their nakedness and took them to
their homes for food and shelter. “Master,” said one of the monks, to
Hiuen-Tsiang, “all that we had has been taken by the thieves, and we
have barely got off with our lives. How is it you can smile and look so
cheerful!” “Because life is man’s greatest boon,” was the reply. “When
that has been saved, why vex one’s self over clothes and food?”
Soon we are with Hiuen-Tsiang at a centre of Brâhmanism which was
probably Lâhôr (Lahore). Everywhere he is received with courtesy;
usually welcomed with procession and pageantry. Before very long, we
find him making a long détour to the cold upper valley of the Bujas
river, under the Himalayas, and among a rude, hard, fierce race, but
one that had a regard for justice as well as for courage.
He returns to a warmer latitude, and reaches Mathurâ, or Muttra, on the
River Jumna; a place once famous for the relics stored in its _stûpas_.
Here, different convents followed different authorities; but once a
year they gathered together, and each sect made offering before the
relics of its chosen saint. A little later, after traversing several
small States, it would seem that he visited the source of the Ganges,
although, in spite of explicit statement, this has been doubted. He
speaks of the river as being 3/4 mile wide at its source! May he not
mean that the end of its parent glacier is of that width?[2]
A little later on, we are told of the softness of Ganges water; of
how multitudes of bathers assemble on its sandy banks to cleanse them
of sin; and how a mere rinsing of the mouth with its water wall avert
every calamity and secure future blessedness. “But there is no truth in
this universal belief, which is wholly the invention of heresy,” adds
our traveller, critical of everything but the superstitions which had
encrusted his own faith. And he is of opinion that this special form of
false belief is on the wane among the Indian people!
We find him before long in Western Rohilkand, and then again in an icy
Himalayan valley, where “for ages a woman has ruled; wherefore it is
called the Kingdom of the Eastern Women.” It corresponds to what is
now British Garwal and Kumain. As then, so is it to-day: relics of the
matriarchate and polyandry are to be found among the Himalayan ranges.
He returns to the Ganges, and, passing through several small States,
arrives at Kanauj. He is for ever visiting scholars, and sits for
months at the feet of every famous sage. He does so at Kanauj, which he
tells us is a city measuring four miles in length and one in breadth.
He is now in an Empire recently established by Sîlâditya, a warrior
of the Vaiśya, or trading, class, who had forced a number of petty
Kinglets to become his tributaries. Sîlâditya would seem to have been
a devout Buddhist, favouring the Greater Vehicle, and, really devoting
himself to the prosperity of the Empire he ruled.
He now enters Ayôdhyâ—Oude—the same name that, eleven centuries
later, rang so compellingly in the ears of Clive and Warren Hastings.
Here Brâhmanism was getting the upper hand. And there was not merely
much lawlessness but a terrible perversion of religious worship
abroad in this land, which reminds one of modern Thuggee. A boat with
Hiuen-Tsiang and eighty others on board was gliding peacefully down the
Ganges, when a whole little navy of pirates, which had lain concealed
under the dense foliage of the river-bank, shot out into mid-stream,
and surrounded the pilgrim’s vessel. Some of the passengers leaped
into the river; those who remained in the vessel were towed ashore and
robbed. Now these water-thieves were devotees of the goddess Durgâ, the
wife of Siva, and were wont to offer at her altar a yearly sacrifice
of some unblemished human victim, selected from their captives. They
carefully examined Hiuen-Tsiang, and pronounced him fit for this
purpose. Some of his companions generously offered to take his place;
but the pirates would have none of them—Hiuen-Tsiang and he alone was
the goddess’ chosen prey. He, of all the company, remained calm and
undismayed. “Let me enter Nirvâna tranquil and happy,” he said, his
mind wholly occupied with some future incarnation wherein he might turn
such cruel hearts as those of the pirates. These, amazed, and even
touched, by his meek and compassionate fortitude, granted him a few
more minutes of life. Just at this moment, a squall came on, so fierce
that it terrified the pirates, even. Hiuen-Tsiang’s companions were
loud in exclaiming that it was heaven’s warning of the awful vengeance
which would ensue on the murder of a saint. The hearts of the homicides
were stricken by fear. One of them took the pilgrim’s hand. He only
felt the pressure; for his eyes were closed and he was wrapt in some
celestial vision. He asked if the fatal moment had come; and when he
learned that the mind of the robbers was changed, he began to unfold
“the Law” to them with such persuasive power that they cast their
instruments of sacrifice into the river, restored what they had stolen,
and quietly went their way.
He visited Prayâga (Allahabad), near the confluence of the Ganges and
Jumna, and then took a dangerous course, south-west, through a forest
infested with wild elephants and beasts of prey, to Kosâmbi-nagar, now
a mere village on the Jumna, only to find ten Buddhist monasteries
ruined and deserted and fifty temples of flourishing Brâhmanism,
frequented by an enormous number of “heretics.” Thence he travelled
northwards, and came to Gautama’s birth place, Kapila. It was a waste.
Almost everywhere Brâhmanism was quietly triumphing and Buddhism in
gentle decay; although it was not until the following century that this
shrivelling process became rapid, and four or five centuries had yet to
pass before new dynasties sacked monasteries and burned their inmates
or expelled them from India in such wise that Buddhism became extinct
throughout the Great Peninsula.
At Bânâras (Benares) he saw Brâhman ascetics who shaved the head, or
went about naked, or covered themselves with ashes, and “by all manner
of austerity sought to escape from any more births and deaths.” He
tells us of the blueness of the sacred river and its rolling waves; of
the sweet taste of its waters and the fineness of its sands; of how
numbers of people, in order to wash away the pollution of sin, “would
abstain from eating for seven days, and then drown themselves in the
sacred stream. Daily, towards sunset, ascetics would climb up a pillar
set in the middle of the river, cling to it by one hand and one foot in
a marvellous manner, and gaze at the sun until he went down, when they
would descend. Thereby they hoped to escape from reincarnation.” “If
the body of a dead man be cast into the stream, he cannot fall into an
evil way. Swept on by its waters and forgotten by men, he is safe on
the other side.”
It was at Bânâras that Gautama began his evangel, and the vast district
between Jumna and the mountains of Nepal was the main scene of his
labours. In the Kingdom of Magadha, which, like Kanduj, was under the
rule of Sîlâditya, he found an area of fourteen miles covered with the
ruins of a city which was flourishing when Fa-Hien visited India. The
stones of _stûpas_, monasteries, pagodas and hospitals for men and
beasts cumbered the ground.
While Hiuen-Tsiang was staying at the place where Gautama “Sâkyamûni”
as he was called during the ascetic portion of his career—that is to
say, “the sage of the family of the Sâkyas”—became “Buddha,” or “the
Enlightener of men,” a deputation of four of the most distinguished
monks of the great Sarighârâma of Nâlanda—the greatest scholastic and
monastic institution in the world—came to him bearing an invitation
to stay there. When he arrived he was welcomed with much state and
ceremony. Two hundred monks and crowds of people greeted him, singing
songs in his praise, bearing standards and umbrellas, and scattering
flowers and scent. They raised him to a seat of honour, and then the
sub-director sounded a gong and repeated the invitation. Twenty grave
and reverend seniors of the monastery presented him to the Father
Superior, who was no other than the famous scholar Sîlabhadra, a
dignitary so exalted that no one dared name him except by his title
of “Treasury of the Righteous Law.” Hiuen-Tsiang had to drag himself
towards this sage on knees and elbows, clacking his heels together,
and striking the ground with his brow. This done, seats were brought
forward, compliments were interchanged, and the pilgrim was made free
of the institution. The best rooms were given up to him; ten servants
were allotted to him, and, daily he was furnished with an ample supply
of food at the cost of the monks and the Râja. A Buddhist monk and a
Brâhman, dwelling in peace together, took him abroad from time to time
and shewed him the holy sights of the neighbourhood, seated in state on
an elephant or carried in a palanquin; but when he was in the convent
the “Treasury of the Righteous Law” devoted no small measure of his
time to his instruction in the higher learning.
In the Seventh Century there was not, in the whole world a seat of
learning which might compare with the splendid establishment at
Nâlanda. It had been magnificently endowed by a succession of monarchs
and still enjoyed the royal favour as much as ever. There were open
courts and secluded gardens; splendid trees, casting a grateful shade,
under which the monks and novices might meditate; cool fountains of
fresh water that gurgled delightfully in the hot season. Ten thousand
inmates dwelt in six blocks of buildings four stories high, which
looked out on large courts. There were a hundred rooms set apart for
lectures on religion and on all the science and literature of the time.
There were halls wherein disputations frequently took place; and in
these Hiuen-Tsiang took a distinguished part. The monks impressed him
favourably: he found them sincere, and living in the strict observance
of severe rules. He says: “from morning to night, young and old help
each other in discussions, for which they find the day too short.” The
mental power and learning of the monks were as renowned as the towers,
the pavilions, and the cool retreats of the convent-university in which
they dwelt. The study of medicine and natural history and useful and
useless branches of mundane research was by no means cast aside for
speculation. But the latter was of so subtle a character that, while
ten hundred might be found capable of expounding twenty books of the
Sâtras and Sâstras, only five hundred could deal with thirty books, and
only ten with fifty; although students were not admitted until they had
proved themselves men of parts, and well-read in books, old and new,
by hard public discussion; and of ten candidates for admission, seven
or eight were rejected. Altogether, Hiuen-Tsiang spent five years in
study here; and he became one of the ten who could expound fifty sacred
books. But Sîlabhadra, the Father Superior, who was his tutor, had left
no sacred book unstudied.
From Nâlanda, our pilgrim proceeded to Patna, and crossing the Ganges,
visited Gayâ. He saw everything worth seeing in the country about
Bhagalpur, and found there a monastery of the first order, the origin
of which was a curious history. A “heretic” from South India had
marched into the country, staff in hand, with stately step and pompous
mien, beating “the drum of discussion.” On his head, he bore a lighted
torch, and his belly was encased in plates of shining copper. When
asked the reason for such strange attire, he replied that the torch
was to enlighten the ignorant multitude, who dwelt in darkness, and
the belt was for self-preservation, since he was so filled with wisdom
that he feared his belly would burst. In spite of this mummery, he
proved himself so well instructed and persuasive that all the learned
men in the Kingdom were unable to controvert his arguments. At last, a
Buddhist from Southern India was sent for and reduced him to silence.
The Râja was so impressed by the victory that he founded the monastery.
Our traveller now came to the land of the sugar-cane. His account of
the Kingdoms he visited after leaving the chief scenes of Gautama’s
missionary zeal, and the history of his wanderings, put together from
his notes and conversations with his pupils, become less full than
before; but it is clear that he made his way to “the shore-country” of
the Bay of Bengal, which would seem to be the Sunderbans, between the
rivers Ganges and Hûgli—afterwards a name of horror, as the lair of
infamous Portuguese pirates. At all events, he crossed the great Delta
of the Ganges, intending to embark for Ceylon at Tamluk on the Selai,
just where that river joins the Hûgli. Fa-Hian had done so, and had
seen Ceylon and its monuments; but Hiuen-Tsiang was given such accounts
of the perils of the long voyage that anxiety for the safety of the
treasures he had collected induced him to travel by land to South
India, and he determined to sail thence across the narrow Palk Strait.
So he returned inland, nearly as far back as Bhagalpur again, and
proceeded thence to Orissa. Thence he travelled south-westward to the
district watered by the upper tributaries of the Mahanadi and Godavari
in Central India; penetrating many a pestiferous marsh and perilous
jungle, deep and dangerous forest and scorching desert-plain, before
he arrived at Congeveram, the Dravidian capital, a little south-west of
Madras and north-west of Pondicherri. Here he learned that Ceylon had
become the theatre of a bloody war and that it would be impossible to
reach it. So he turned his reluctant steps to the north.
He tells of the courage, honesty and love of truth of the Dravidian
race, and of the heat and fruitfulness of the land they inhabited. He
speaks of his return-journey as being partly through “a wild forest
and many deserted villages where bands of brigands attack travellers.”
Then, going north-west, he came to the country of the Mahrattas—not
the modern race which goes by that name, but a people who apparently
were Rajpoots, the old military Aryan aristocracy of India, whose
widows, following a Scythian custom, cast themselves on the funeral
pyre of their husbands to be worthy of their chivalry and to rejoin
them in the next life. Hiuen-Tsiang describes the Mahrattas as being
tall of stature, honest and simple; grateful to friends, relentless to
enemies. They avenged an insult at the risk of life; they would forget
all about themselves in their haste to give aid. They always gave
due warning to a foe before attacking him, and spared the enemy who
should yield. A commander who lost a battle was not directly punished;
but he received a present of women’s clothes, and this was enough:
it drove him to suicide. The army was of several hundred chosen men,
who went into battle drunk, and made their elephants drunk also. Then
they would rush forward in close array, bearing everything before them
and trampling on the foe. Nothing could withstand such an onset. And
one man all alone, with his lance in hand, was always quite ready to
challenge and fight ten thousand. These champions had drums beaten
before them every time they went abroad; and should one of them come
across a man and slay him no notice of the offence was taken.
Passing through Western India and States which bordered on the Arabian
Sea, we find our traveller in Southern Malwa and Rajputana and, later,
in Sind. Twice in his account of Southern and Western India and once
in the _Life and Journeyings of Hiuen-Tsiang_, we are told that he
heard of a “Land of Western Women.” While on the Coromandel Coast,
he heard of an island inhabited by women who bore female children
only to Persian demons. Of old time, they were wont to allure sailors
and traders by signals. If successful, they changed themselves into
beautiful women, holding flowers and dispersing sweet scents. They
went forth to meet voyagers to the sound of sweet music, and, having
inveigled them into their City, which was built of iron, and having
solaced them with their society, they would cast them into an iron
prison and devour them at leisure. On the Western Coast, he is told
that the island is rich in gems and lies to the south-west of the
Byzantine Empire, to which it is tributary, and where its precious
stones are exchanged. It is inhabited by women only. Once a year, the
Emperor of Byzantium sends them male partners; and, if boys are born
of the union, the laws forbid their being brought up on the island.
Marco Polo also speaks of a Kingdom of Western Women. Ferdusi, the
Persian Poet, makes Alexander the Great visit an island-city of women
where no man was allowed to dwell. In the early art and literature of
Buddhism the legend is to be found. It reached Malaya. It made its
way into Chinese literature, too, some generations before the time of
Hiuen-Tsiang. But the locality given to the island varies with the
legend.
Here, surely, are our Homeric friends, the Sirens—the daughters of
Achelous, serpent and ox, and the Muse Calliope—whose “shrill music
reached Ulysses on the middle sea” from a little island off Sicily. Can
these Western and Eastern legends have come from a common source; or,
did they travel overland with trader or missionary; or was some faint
echo of the golden harp of Hellas wafted by the breezes which bore the
trader across the Arabian Sea to Sind and Southern India? Possibly
the latter; for our author speaks of the island as lying to the west,
beyond the great sea which laves the shores of Kutch. It is perplexing
to find what would seem to be the same story told by the natives of
Martinique to Columbus during his second voyage.
From Sind beyond the Indus, Hiuen-Tsiang proceeded to Multân in the
Punjâb, and saw the majestic temple of the Sun-dêva, whose image was
cast in gold and set with rare gems. Crowds of worshippers flocked
hither from other Kingdoms; and women did honour to the god with music
and torches and offerings of blossoms and perfumes. The temple was
surrounded with water-tanks and flowery groves; and near it was a
“House of Happiness,” which was a hospital for the poor and sick.
He visited this temple on his way back to the sacred land where Gautama
had assumed his mission of teacher of mankind; for he felt that he must
return thither. So he made a thousand miles eastward and arrived at
Magadha in time to see the grand procession of the ashes of Buddha. He
thought the remains too large to be genuine; so did an Indian sage of
great reputation, and it would seem that the crowd of spectators were
also in doubt. Some time afterwards, suddenly, the relics could not be
found; the _stûpa_ in which they were kept was a sheet of light, and
flames, in five different colours shot up to the sky. This brilliant
phenomenon was witnessed by a wondering multitude; it gradually passed
away; and so did incredulity.
Hiuen-Tsiang passed his time in the monasteries of Magadha, partly in
study, partly in refuting Brâhmans and the followers of the Little
Vehicle. To refute the latter could not have been a difficult task:
simple monks, only instructed in practical ethics, would stand no
chance against an erudite monk trained in subtle speculation and
fine distinctions. As in European Universities of the Middle Ages,
the thesis to be disputed was hung up by its supporter; and whatever
wrangler chose to deny it would take it down. Then a contest ensued;
and, at Nâlanda, its learned Head, the “Treasury of the Law,” was wont
to preside at great discussions. In some of these, our Chinaman took a
triumphant part.
On one occasion, a certain Brâhman had hung up a challenge to the
Buddhists, which consisted of 40 articles, and, according to custom,
he wagered his head to maintain them; possibly perfectly well aware
that, in the unexpected event of defeat, the forfeit would not be
exacted. For some days, no one would come forward to oppose him. Then
Hiuen-Tsiang sent a monk to take up the insolent challenge in his
name: it was torn into shreds, and trampled under foot. At the solemn
discussion which ensued, he held forth at portentous length, and
dumbfounded the Brâhman. Hiuen-Tsiang then told him he had suffered
humiliation enough: he was free to go.
The defeated wrangler went to Kâmarûpa, a Kingdom which extended
from west of the Brahmaputra to Manipur, on the borders of Burmah.
The eloquence and learning of our Chinaman would appear to have
converted the Brâhman, who was generous enough to tell the Râja of his
defeat. The tale so impressed that monarch that he sent an invitation
to Hiuen-Tsiang to pay him a visit; but our pilgrim, having fully
accomplished the purpose for which he had travelled so far, was eager
to return to China. The Râja waxed wroth at his disobedience to a
royal command, and warned the “Treasury of the Law” that, little as
he cared for the religion of Buddha, he would come with a vast army
and level with the dust the famous building over which he presided if
Hiuen-Tsiang were not forwarded without delay. It was evident that the
Râja, a powerful ally or tributary of Sîlâditya, whose loyalty to that
great monarch was not too assured, might conceivably let loose the
hounds of uncertain war. Here, a gleam of enlightenment is thrown on
the attitude of Râjas tributary to Sîlâditya, who had won his empire
by the sword and who had made Kanouj and Allahabad his capital cities.
Hiuen-Tsiang was despatched by Sîlabhadra to far-off Kâmarûpa; He had
been at the Râja’s court a whole month, when Sîlâditya returned from
the chastisement of a rebellious feudatory and learned whither he had
gone. Sîlâditya had urged the pilgrim to visit him in vain; now he
finds him at the court of a rival. Here is the making of a very pretty
quarrel. Sîlâditya sends to the Râja, saying that he wants the Chinese.
“My head first!” replies that monarch. Then Sîlâditya waxed wrath; and
his wrath is terrible. “Since I have power to cut off your head, it may
be given straightway to my ambassador,” is the message he returns. The
Râja of Kâmarûpa now begins to reflect. He orders his court-barge and
sets off with Hiuen-Tsiang in it to make amends to Sîlâditya.
But he took the precaution to be accompanied by a great army. The
Ganges was crowded with boats filled with troops, and, as these were
rowed up the stream, other soldiery mounted on war-elephants marched
slowly along the banks. On their arrival at the court of Sîlâditya
he commanded that Hiuen-Tsiang should be presented to him. The Râja
of Kâmarûpa saw at once that here was an opportunity of quietly
humiliating Sîlâditya in his turn—a monarch who, from conviction or
by policy, professed the deepest reverence for the Greater Vehicle
and was the munificent patron of Buddhist institutions. He suggested
to Sîlâditya that it would be unworthy of a monarch so renowned
for cherishing sages and saints to do otherwise than pay the holy
and learned Chinese pilgrim the compliment of visiting him first.
Sîlâditya fell in with the proposal; and the Râja at once went back to
Hiuen-Tsiang and persuaded him, “for the honour of the law of Buddha,”
to consent. Thus, should his enemy, or anyone, never be sensible of
so subtle a revenge, the secret of it was sweet in the heart of the
Eastern King; a psychological peculiarity by no means confined to the
ruler of Kâmarûpa.
Next evening, shortly after sunset, the Ganges was ablaze with torches;
the air resounded with the noise of tom-toms, for Sîlâditya was about
to pay his visit with Generals and Ministers of State. It was the
distinction of the Lord-paramount that the beating of a hundred gongs
heralded his approach and gave step to his guards. The haughty despot,
who determined the fate of thousands by a gesture, cast himself on
the ground at the feet of the humble monk, and kissed them. Next day,
the Master of the Law returned the visit. Now, a sister of the great
monarch, an enthusiast for high doctrine, who was seated behind the
throne, entreated that a great assembly of all the sages of the Empire
should be convoked at Kanouj to give Hiuen-Tsiang an opportunity of
setting out the beauty of the Greater Vehicle. So, at the beginning of
the cold season, the sages assembled at Kanouj, mounted on elephants
or carried in palanquins, surrounded by banners and accompanied by an
immense multitude. An elephant bore a golden statue of Buddha on his
back, and this was solemnly erected on a daïs. To the right of the
elephant, marched Sîlâditya, dressed as Indra and carrying a white
fly-flap in his hand; to the left was Kumâra, monarch of Kâmarûpa,
in the garb of Brâhm, and carrying a parasol of precious silk. Both
monarchs wore magnificent tiaras, from which garlands of flowers and
ribbons set with jewels hung down. Following the golden image and the
two Râjas came our Master of the Law, seated on a big elephant, and
then the officials and monks of the two Kingdoms, also on elephants.
Eighteen tributary princes were drawn up on either side, also riding
elephants, and these fell into the procession as the great Râjas and
Hiuen-Tsiang passed on.
Food was provided for everybody, without distinction of rank, and
rich gifts were bestowed on all the monks. Hiuen-Tsiang ordered his
thesis to be hung up; but eighteen days passed, and no one attempted
to controvert it. But the followers of the Little Vehicle were so
mortified that some of them conspired against Hiuen-Tsiang’s life. The
plot was detected, and a severe edict was issued that even the very
smallest slander against him would be punished by loss of tongue; while
any attempt to injure him bodily would be followed by decapitation. At
the end of the eighteen days, following ancient usage, the victorious
pilgrim was mounted on a richly-caparisoned elephant and taken a tour
round the crowd, in the company of the dignitaries of the Empire and
with full state-honours. Rich presents were offered him; but these he
refused; and then Sîlâditya dissolved the assembly; and the eighteen
kings, the monks, and the crowd returned every man to his own abode.
Now, it was the custom of Sîlâditya, as it had been that of his
predecessors, to distribute all their accumulated wealth at the end of
every five years. But they were careful to keep their war-elephants,
war-horses and weapons of war; for on these their power rested. The
practice kept the people submissive and contented, while effective
force remained with the Râja. The distribution was made on a plain at
the confluence of Ganges and Jumna, three miles from Prayâga, and not
far from the existing city of Allahabad. When the time for it arrived,
Sîlâditya took the Master of the Law with him. He observed that gold
and silver, silk and cotton, and much else were stored up in temporary
buildings within an enclosure, and arrangements were made for seating
a thousand persons at a time. The eighteen tributary Kings and a vast
crowd of monks and laity were summoned to be present, and did not fail
to arrive. It is significant that each tributary prince brought his
army with him: it throws light on the character of Sîlâditya’s empire.
On the first day, the statue of Buddha was installed in a temple and
adorned with jewels. A great feast followed on this ceremony; it was
accompanied by music and the scattering of blossoms; and then rich
gifts were distributed among the more important of the guests. On the
second day, the image of the Sun-god was honoured, and presents of
magnificence were made. The third day, the god Siva received honours,
and a similar distribution was made. The fourth day, every one of about
10,000 monks was given a hundred pieces of gold and a cotton garment.
The fifth day, distribution to the Brâhmans was begun; but it is worthy
of note that the awards to them took up three weeks all but a day. On
the sixth day, and for 9 days following, alms were given to “heretics”;
on the eighth, and for the next nine days, to naked mendicants from
distant Kingdoms. Lastly, it took a whole month to give to the poor, to
orphans, and to poor men who had no family to fall back upon. Finally
Sîlâditya took off and gave up his tiara and necklace, exclaiming that
he had exchanged them for incorruptible riches. And now, the tributary
Râjas surrendered their robes and jewels to their Lord-paramount. What
with this ordinance and the retention of the sinews of war, Sîlâditya
remained no less powerful than before.
Our pilgrim now obtains permission to set forth on his return-journey.
He is offered an escort to China should he choose to return by sea;
but he has precious manuscripts to preserve, the rich harvest of his
labours, and he prefers to take the smaller risk of desert and icy
mountains to that of pirates and of frail, clumsy craft, breasting “the
feasted waters of the sea stretched out In lazy gluttony, expecting
prey.” Moreover, whether T’ai Tsung, now Emperor of China, would
welcome a foreign Embassy, may have been in his mind. He refused all
gifts from the Râja of Kâmarûpa, save a warm garment needful for the
high passes.
Now, the Master of the Law had been wont, if he had no escort to
protect him, to send an attendant monk ahead, and, should his
fore-runner meet with wayside thieves, he would announce the character
of Hiuen-Tsiang’s mission. The explanation had been made more than
once, and prevailed. But many a Râja was now eager to give him a warm
welcome and send soldiery to see him safe in the next Kingdom. And,
Sîlâditya, not merely went with him some small part of the long way,
but charged a tributary prince of the North to accompany and protect
him through the Punjâb. He also presented the pilgrim with a big
elephant, horses and chariots to convey the manuscripts and images he
had collected, and 3000 pieces of gold and 10,000 pieces of silver to
defray the expenses of the journey. He also provided him with letters
to various princes whose territories he would have to cross, ordering
or recommending them to expedite his journey. These documents were
written on rolls of cotton and sealed with red wax. Sîlâditya and his
tributary Râjas even rode out again to catch the pilgrim up and bid him
a second farewell.
Easy progress was made across North-West India; and native rulers vied
with each other in doing honour to the traveller from afar. Now, at the
best of times, to cross the Indus is perilous; and this time it was not
effected without mishap. The “Master of the Law” rode on the elephant;
but the manuscripts, images, relics, and a precious collection of
seeds, which he had made during his travels, and which he hoped might
grow in China, were placed in a boat under the care of a special
custodian. When the middle of the current was reached, a storm-gust
swept over the river, and the boat was well nigh sunk by tossing waves.
The custodian was rescued with great difficulty; but half a hundred
manuscripts and the valuable collection of seeds which might have done
so much service, were lost. Only by the very greatest exertion was
anything at all saved.
CHAPTER V.
INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY.
Once more we find Hiuen-Tsiang by the Kâbul river. Many years had
passed since he rested on its banks and entered India. Since that
time he had made himself a finished Sanskrit scholar; he had visited
three and a half score of States; he had traversed the whole breadth
and well-nigh the whole length of the great Peninsula; he had debated
the subtlest questions with the profoundest scholars and acutest
minds in India; he had been entertained by powerful princes as their
venerated guest. In every corner of a vast territory, he had met with
large hospitality at the hands of men of differing creeds; he had seen
many new things, strange and wonderful; more than once, his life had
been in jeopardy, and narrow indeed had been his escape; he had visited
every spot connected with the life of Gautama, from the scene where
Bôdhisattva “descended spiritually into the womb of his mother” to the
place where he became Buddha, and to the place of his death. He had
visited every spot sacred to Asôka-râja, the great promulgator of the
faith. It had been granted him to see the shadow of Buddha. And, above
all, he had not failed in his quest. Written on prepared palm-leaves
and carefully packed, were the so much lacking sacred scriptures; much
of them tales of the absurdest fantasy and most extravagant romance, it
is true; but the sympathetic eye can still discover in the fable the
mild and sweet moral teaching of the Buddhist faith.
In the _Si-yu-ki_ (Observations on Western Lands) there is a very full
account of India in the early Seventh Century. So long a residence in
that land, and such a wide knowledge of its various peoples as the
Master of the Law had acquired in personal intercourse with them makes
this invaluable. The work is preceded by a general description of the
Great Peninsula, which applies more particularly to that land, so
sacred to a Buddhist, which lies between the Jumna and the lower slopes
of the Himalayas. And, now that Hiuen-Tsiang is leaving India, it will
be well to know what he has to tell us concerning that vast region.
He begins by discussing the various names given to In-tu (India); for
each district is differently called. He gives its shape, extent and
climate. “The north is a continuation of mountains and hills, the
ground being dry and salt. On the east, there are valleys and plains,
which, being well-watered and cultivated, are fruitful and productive.
The southern district is wooded and herbaceous; the western parts are
stony and barren.”[3]
Indian measures of length and the Indian Calendar and seasons are next
described, and the author then goes on to treat of towns and buildings,
seats and clothing, dress and habits, ablutions, language and
literature, schools, castes, marriages, kings, troops, weapons, manners
and customs, administration of laws, ceremonial observances, revenues,
natural products, and commercial dealings—all in systematized order.
The lapse of thirteen centuries; conquest by Mohammedan and European
invaders; and Mohammedan and Brahmanistic oppression would appear to
have altered but little the ways and external appearance of Indian life
since Hiuen-Tsiang’s time. He tells us that “the walls of towns are
wide and high; the streets and lanes, tortuous; the roads, winding; the
thoroughfares, dirty; the stalls, arranged on both sides of the road
and furnished with appropriate signs. Butchers, fishermen, dancers,
executioners, scavengers and their like dwell outside the city. Coming
and going these people must keep to the left side of the road.” The
city-walls are of brick, but their towers are made of wood or bamboo;
the houses are plastered with cob, “mixed with cow-dung for purity”;
they are provided with wooden balconies, coated with mortar and shaded
by tiles. The roofs are of rushes, branches, tiles, or boards. It
is a habit to scatter flowers before the house. The _sarighârâmas_,
or monasteries, are very cleverly built in quadrangles, ornamented
with dome-shaped buildings of two or three stories at the corners of
each quadrangle, and joists and beams are adorned with carving; there
is much decoration and mural painting; the cells being plain on the
outside only.
Everybody takes his rest on a mat of one uniform size, but of various
degrees of ornamentation; but the Râja has an imposing throne, studded
with gems, and nobles use painted and enriched seats. The garb is of
pure white silk or cotton or hemp or goat’s hair, uncut to fit the
body and wound round the waist, gathered up under the armpits, and
then slung across the body to the right. There is quaint humour in our
pilgrim’s observation that “some of the men shave their moustaches and
have other odd customs”: one thinks of the strange appearance of some
of our long-shore men.
Women keep their shoulders covered, and their robes reach the ground.
Their hair is knotted up on the crown; otherwise it hangs loose. They
wear crowns and caps and flower-wreaths on the head, and necklaces of
jewels.
In North India, where the climate is colder, close-fitting garments are
worn. Some non-believers wear peacock-feathers, or necklaces made of
the bones of the skull; some cover their nakedness with leaf or bark,
or go bare. Some pull out the hair; others wear their whiskers bushy
and braid their hair.
The monks wear three different kinds of dress, either red or yellow in
colour. Merchants, for the most part, go bare-footed, stain the teeth
red or black, bind up the hair, and pierce the nose for the wearing of
ornaments there. Everybody is very cleanly, washing before eating,
never eating of a dish served twice over, never passing the dish on.
Wooden and stone vessels are destroyed after use; metal ones are
polished. The teeth are cleansed with a willow-stick after eating; the
hands and mouth are washed; and folk do not touch one another until
these duties are carried out. The body is washed after attending to
the calls of nature, and then perfumes are used. The bath is taken
before religious functions, and also at the time when the King washes
himself. Each province keeps its own record of events. Education is
begun early. Young Buddhists are put to the study of the five Vidyâs,
or treatises on grammar, progressively; first come the principles of
mechanics; then elements of medicine and drugs and the use of charms;
then the principles of right-doing and the distinction between the
true and the false; and, finally, the various “vehicles” of the faith.
Brâhmans are trained on similar lines by skilled teachers. Some “rise
above mundane rewards, and are as insensible to renown as to contempt
of the world.... Rulers value men of reputation highly; but are unable
to draw them to court.” But the thirst of others for honour leads them
on in the search for wisdom, and, if they finish their education at
thirty, they seek for occupation. Some Brâhmans are devoid of virtuous
principles, and waste their substance in riotous excess. Unhappily
the Buddhist schools are not without reproach: “they are constantly
at variance, and their contentious utterances swell like the waves of
an angry sea”; yet, “in various directions, they do aim at one end.”
Knowledge of sacred books and successful exegesis are rewarded by
successive grades of distinction, beginning with exemption from control
and leading up to the possession of “an elephant-carriage,” and even to
a “surrounding escort.” A successful disputant, like Hiuen-Tsiang, is
mounted on an elephant (as he was), the animal is completely covered
over with precious ornaments, and the rider is conducted by a numerous
suite to the gates of the convent. But woe betide the unhappy wretch
who proves himself a fool at these mental wrestling bouts; “his face
is painted red and white; he is bedaubed with dust and dirt, and then
borne off to some deserted spot, or cast into a ditch!” For slight
faults a monk is only reprimanded; for graver offences, silence is
enforced; for a great fault, he is cast out of the convent to find a
home for himself and take up some kind of work, or he may wander about
the roads.
We are told next about the four great castes, The Brâhman, or
hereditary priest takes precedence of the Kshattriya or military
descendents of the Aryan conquerors, a caste which rules, and observes
human kindliness. Next come the traders (Vaiśyas); fourth is the Sûdra,
the caste of tillers of the soil. When one marries, he takes social
position according as he preserves or impairs purity of caste. Widows
may not marry again.
“The succession of Râjas is confined to the Kshattriya caste, who have
from time to time achieved power by means of usurpation and bloodshed.”
The army of the Râja is one of the many separate hereditary castes of
India. In times of peace, it is garrisoned around the Râja’s palace.
In each Indian army are elephants, protected by strong armour, and the
tusks capped with sharp metal. A general issues his command from a car,
driven by two attendants, between whom he sits, and is drawn by four
horses abreast. The generals of the foot soldiers also ride in cars and
are protected by a guard. An attack is met by the cavalry, who also
carry orders. The infantry is very brave. It is armed with spear and
shield, bows and arrows, swords, axes, slings and many other weapons of
ancient usage.
Hiuen-Tsiang speaks of the common people in the highest terms. As
Wheeler remarks they “would almost appear to have been a different race
from the modern Hindus. They had not yet been moulded into existing
forms by ages of Brahmanical repression and Musselman tyranny; and they
bore a stronger resemblance to the unsophisticated Buddhists of modern
Burma than to the worshippers of Vishnu and Siva.”[4] Our traveller
admits that they are volatile, but “gentle and sweet, straight-forward,
honourable, keeping their word, with no fraud, treachery or deceit
about them.” Criminals are rare, and these few are not even beaten,
and are never put to death, but cast into prison and left to live or
die, “not being counted among men.” A small payment is exacted for a
small offence; but those who seriously offend the moral sense of the
community are mutilated in various ways, or expelled from it. Frank
confession is followed by punishment proportioned to the offence; but
denial, or attempt to wriggle out, is met by trial by ordeal. Of this
there are four kinds:—1, The accused person is put into one sack and a
stone into another; both sacks are tied together and thrown into deep
water: If the man sinks lowest, he is deemed guilty. 2, The accused has
to stand or sit on red hot iron, or to handle it, or have it applied to
his tongue: If no scars result, he is deemed innocent. 3, He is weighed
against a stone: If he weighs it down, he is innocent. 4, An incision
is made in the right thigh of a ram, and all manner of poisons and some
food of the accused are put into the wound. Should the ram survive, the
man is innocent. “The way of crime is blocked by these four methods.”
It is obvious to us that the issue of every one of these ordeals could
be manipulated in the interests of justice, or against them.
We are next told of etiquette, and are informed that no less than nine
ways of being polite are employed. Of these, the most respectful is to
cast one’s self on the ground, and then to kneel “and laud the virtues
of the one you address.” When one of inferior rank receives orders, he
lifts the skirt of his superior, and casts himself on the ground. The
“honourable person thus reverenced must speak gently to the inferior,
and touch his head, or pat him on the back, and give him kindly orders
or good advice, in order to show affection.”
When ill, there is no rush to the physic-bottle. “Everyone who falls
sick, fasts for seven days. Should he not get well in the course of
this period, he takes medicine.” Hiuen-Tsiang causes us no surprise
when he informs us that “doctors differ in their modes of treatment.”
At funerals there are weepings and lamentable cries, rending of
garments and beatings of head and breast. No one takes food in a house
where someone has died until after the funeral; and all who have been
at the death-bed are unclean until they have bathed outside the town.
Those who desire release from life “receive a farewell meal at the
hands of relatives or friends,” and then are put into a boat amid
strains of music; and this is shot into mid-Ganges, “where such persons
drown themselves.” Sometimes, but rarely, one of these may be seen on
the banks, not yet quite dead.
Hiuen-Tsiang speaks of the civil administration as being mild and
benevolent. Officials have “a portion of land assigned to them for
their personal support.” There is neither registration of families nor
forced labour. Râjas possess their own private domains, divided into
four portions; whereof one provides for state-matters and the cost of
sacrifices; one, for salaries; one, for rewarding men of exceptional
talent; and the fourth affords charity to religious bodies. By this
arrangement taxation is light, and the personal service required is
moderate, labour at public works being paid for. “Everyone keeps his
own belongings in tranquillity; and all till the ground for food.
Those who cultivate the royal estate pay a sixth part of the produce
as tribute.” There is a light tax payable on travel by river and at
barriers across the roadways.
Such people as smell of onion and garlic are thrust out of the
town. The usual food is simple, consisting of milk, cream, butter,
sugar-candy, corn cakes and mustard. Fish, mutton and venison are
eaten; other flesh is prohibited. Brâhmans and warriors drink
unfermented syrup of the grape; but the trading caste indulges in
strong drink. Rich and poor eat precisely the same food, but out of
very different vessels, both as to material and cost. They eat with the
fingers, and have no spoon, cup, or chopstick.
Hiuen-Tsiang tells us that he found India divided into 70 Kingdoms.
Nine centuries before his time Megasthenes the Greek Ambassador,
found twice as many. In spite of the many political settlements which
have had their day and vanished, some of the territories described by
Hiuen-Tsiang are divisions corresponding to natural features, race,
language, and religious customs, and remain distinct districts, each
of them with its idiosyncrasies to-day. Consolidation by successive
conquests has taken place, it is true, but the village persists.
The village-settlements were there before the Aryan conquest; they
have survived the long passage of time; they carry on their ancient
tradition, and have maintained provincial characteristics against the
pressure of the Mohammedan, the Mahrattan, and all other attempts at
organic Empire.
CHAPTER VI.
THE JOURNEY HOME BY A NEW AND PERILOUS ROUTE.
We left our hero on the Kâbul river, beyond the boundaries of India:
a royal reception awaited him at Kapiśa, and a hundred experienced
men were chosen to conduct and protect him in the passage across the
Hindû Kûsh. The shortest, but most difficult of the passes—probably
the Khawak, which reaches 13,000 feet, was selected. Seven days of
travel brought the party to those snow-mountains of which Hiuen-Tsiang
always speaks with mingled wonder, fear and dislike. Born and brought
up in a mild climate, and having now spent many years in a hot one, he
describes the discomforts and dangers of every high pass at length.
He tells us how wild and perilous are the precipices; how fearsome,
contorted, and difficult the path. Of the Hindû Kûsh he writes: “Now
the traveller is in a profound valley; now aloft on a high peak, with
its burthen of ice in full summertide. One gets along by cutting steps
in the ice, and, in three days one reaches the summit of the pass.
There, a furious icy blast, cold beyond measure, sweeps on; the valleys
are laden with accumulated snow. The traveller pushes on; for he dares
not pause. Soaring birds must needs alight; it is impossible for them
to fly; and they have to cross afoot. One gazes down on mountains that
look like hillocks.” The whole cavalcade had to dismount and clamber
up with the aid of mountain-staves. One wonders how the guides got
the elephant over such ridges; but they did. “Great men lived before
Agamemnon”; Hannibal solved the same problem two hundred years before
Christ.
At the end of the second week a large village of a hundred families
was reached, the inhabitants of which lived by rearing a very big
variety of sheep, which is said still to be found in this district.
Here the “Master of the Law” secured the services of a local guide, and
took a whole day’s rest. His escort now returned; and he set forth in
the middle of the night, mounted on a camel accustomed to the hills,
and attended by seven priests, twenty servants, the elephant which
Sîlâditya had given him, six asses, and four horses. Next morning the
bottom of the pass was reached; but there still lay before them what,
in the distance, looked like a snow-peak. But when they had ascended
a long zig-zag path and come up to it, it turned out to be mere white
rock. None the less, it towered far above the clouds, and the icy wind
there blew so hard and cutting that headway could hardly be made.
The descent of the range occupied five or six days. The route now
lay north westward to the Upper Oxus. Hiuen-Tsiang rested a month in
the camp of a petty Khân,—and then joined a caravan of traders who
were eastward bound. The caravan took a meandering course through
several little Khânates; and in one of them the Master of the Law
was struck by the singular head-gear of the women. They wore caps
three feet high, topped by two peaks of unequal length, if both
father-in-law and mother-in-law were living. The higher and lower
respectively represented these relatives. But, when one of them died,
the corresponding peak was removed; should both of them be dead, no
peaks were worn. This region was mountainous, and its inhabitants were
remarkable for their surpassing ugliness. They differed from all other
peoples in the peculiar blue-green of the iris. They were innocent of
all manners, and knew no law of justice; the horse was their study and
care, and they reared a breed of sturdy little ponies.
The caravan now followed the narrowing stream of Oxus, and, after a
time, ascended to the great plateau of the Pamirs, no less lofty than
the topmost Pyrenees. “There even in summer” says the Pilgrim “one
suffers from squalls and eddies of snowstorm. Just a few wretched
plants manage to root in ground that is almost always frozen. No
grain will sprout and no trace of man is to be found in all this vast
solitude.” But he came across a species of ostrich, a bird “ten feet
high,” of which he had previously been shown the eggs which were “as
big as small pitchers.”
The central valley of the Pamirs along which the caravan advanced, led
to difficult snow-passes of the Kizil Yart range, the highest peak of
which soars to 26,000 feet. Having forced a way over ice and through
snow, the long descent of the Eastern slopes was nearly at an end when
a band of brigands was observed to be on the look out for prey. The
traders fled, helter skelter, up the hill-side; and the robbers charged
furiously at their laden elephants, several of which they killed,
while others were drowned in trying to get across the torrents from
the mountains. It was probably at this time that Hiuen-Tsiang lost his
elephant. The thieves were soon fully occupied with their booty; the
traders seized the opportunity, drew together again, and proceeded,
with what goods they had been able to save, towards Kâshgar.
At Kâshgar the same custom obtained as at Kutchê: “When a child is
born the head is compressed by a wooden board.” The people are “fierce
and impetuous and most of them are deceitful and indifferent to polite
manners and learning. They paint their bodies and eyelids.” But they
show real skill in the making of hair-cloth and finely woven carpets.
More than six hundred years later, Marco Polo travelled along the
caravan route through Kâshgar and by Lob-Nor to China.
At Yârkand he was told that Arhats, (very purified and wise men),
“those who had obtained the holy fruit and were no longer bound by
worldly influences” “displaying their spiritual power, coming from afar
(that is, from India), abode here at rest.”
Arrived at Khotan, he found it a land of song and dance. Fa-Hian also
describes the inhabitants as being, in his time, “lovers of religious
music.”
It would seem that the caravan in which Hiuen-Tsiang travelled was
bound for Kau-chang, that land of the Uïghurs whose Khân-paramount had
tried to detain him “for the better instruction of his subjects.” Now
Khotan was tributary to this despot; and as the Master of the Law had
no desire to go out of his direct way home, or to be detained again,
not to speak of another hunger-strike, he wrote the Khân a politic
letter, wherein he recounted the perils he had undergone and the
successful issue of his sacred mission. Yet, an elephant which bore the
burthen of many scriptures had been drowned on the way home; but the
writings were saved. Would the Great Khân grant him a convoy?
It took six or seven months for a reply to arrive; and Hiuen-Tsiang
filled up the time in expounding sacred writings to the Khân of
Khotan and his subjects. When the answer came from Kau-chang, it was
favourable; the Khân of Khotan was permitted to furnish the Master of
the Law with transport for his treasures.
Fully a thousand miles still lay before him, and the painful desert
known to modern geographers as the Takla Makan must be crossed. The
route pursued was a very tortuous one, south of the great lake Lob-nor
(which lies between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above the sea-level), and
north of the Altyn-Tag mountains, which are the northern buttresses
of the great plateau of Thibet. He passed by ancient cities of
Eastern Khotan, once flourishing, now buried by drifting sands. Mere
mounds marked their sites.[5] Going East “we enter a great desert of
shifting sands, which are as a vast flood, driven hither and thither
by the wind. There is no track; and, without guide or indication,
travellers get bewildered and are lost. So the bones of beasts (which
have perished) are piled up to serve as beacons. Neither water nor
herb is to be found, and hot winds, which are frequent, befog the mind
and muddle the memory of man and beast, and make them ill and feeble.
Sometimes one hears plaintive notes and piteous lamentations, and men
get confused and know not whither they are going. Hence, many a life is
lost. And all is the work of demons and evil spirits.” All travellers
in deserts speak of the weird noises, which we now know to be due to
the shifting of the sand-ridges.[6]
And now, after sixteen years of pilgrim travel, after visiting a
hundred and ten different States, and journeying some twenty thousand
miles, Hiuen-Tsiang is drawing near his native land. He bears with
him five hundred grains of relics, reputed to belong to the body of
Tathâgarta (Gautama Buddha); one hundred and twenty-four works of
the Great Vehicle; five hundred and twenty other volumes, borne by
twenty-two horses; and six images of Buddha, in gold or silver or
sandal-wood. In the appeal for transport sent to Kau-chang, he had
written: “Notwithstanding differences in climate and mode of life;
and notwithstanding perils beyond count which have menaced me in my
journeying, I thank Heaven that nowhere did I come to harm. Reverence,
beyond all limit, has been done to me; my body has suffered no ill; and
I have fulfilled all that I vowed to accomplish.”
But his body _had_ suffered ill. The terrible ordeal of crossing
ice-bound ranges left its mark: it weakened his robust constitution and
shortened his life.
At the Chinese frontier, waggons and men were obtained, and the escort
from Khotan returned. T’ai Tsung, the great warrior statesman, now sat
on the throne he had won for his father, and to him “The Master of the
Law” announced his return. Emperor, Mandarins, Priests, and People
made ready to receive the great pilgrim with plaudit and parade such as
Western reserve bestows only on the victor in some scene of slaughter,
or on the inheritor of some soiled circlet and blood-stained robe.
The great day arrived. It was as if all China were present, so
crushing were the crowds. The Sacred Writings were taken in state to
the “Convent of the Great Bliss.” (Later they were transferred to a
“Convent of Beneficence,” specially constructed to contain them.)
High dignitaries led the way; marvellous wind-instruments discoursed
astounding music; priests in thousands chanted hymns; banners and
brilliantly-coloured rugs floated in the wind. A procession of the
most varied character, miles long, passed through the narrow, crowded
streets, which were lined by rows of flower-scatterers and less poetic,
but even more desirable, perfume burners. To the irreverent European
mind, the record of this Eastern parade in the Seventh Century suggests
a highly variegated travelling-circus; and the brow is involuntarily
raised when we come to the royal harem and its enthusiastic ladies
welcoming the return of the monk and the arrival of yet more ascetic
doctrine. The best of us is but human, and it is evident from the
narrative that, true saint as he was, the “Master of the Law” none the
less thoroughly enjoyed the recognition of his great merits, and made
little objection to the honours he received.
CHAPTER VII.
PEACEFUL DAYS.
At intervals an order came from T’ai-Tsung and his successor to appear
within the green enclosure which surrounded the Imperial Throne. It
was by Imperial command that the world possesses Hiuen-Tsiang’s report
of the States he had visited and of eighteen other States of which he
believed himself to have gathered authentic information. The work, as
already stated, is full of the absurd, fantastic fables of corrupted
Buddhism, related at full length and with perfervid unction; but it is
also a record of observation so close, systematic, and even scientific,
and of a will so firm-set and bold, that it is surpassed in no age
by any record of travel whatsoever. But there is little of personal
narrative in it. Now, Hiuen-Tsiang had lost full command of his native
language during so many years of residence among alien peoples, and it
was found necessary to get a Chinese stylist to redact his “Account of
Western Countries” (“_Si-yu-ki_”). This was done, in the main, from
notes which the pilgrim had brought back with him.
When the “Master of the Law” had finished this big undertaking, he
returned to work that had been interrupted by it—the collating,
translating and editing of the books he had brought with him. He was
accustomed to eat a slight breakfast at dawn, and to lecture to the
monks (_Sramans_) of his convent during the next four hours on some
canonical book or religious treatise. When this task was done, he would
go on with translation, marking out a certain portion for the day’s
task; but, if he had not finished this by night-fall, he usually sat on
until it was ended. He was scrupulous in his efforts to restore corrupt
text to its pristine purity; and one would always find him fully
occupied. Yet he always made time to discuss religious matters with
the sages who visited him. “When he had penetrated some profundity,
got light on some obscure passage, or amended some corrupt reading, it
seemed as if some divine being had come to his aid.... When expounding,
he was wont to become impassioned and his voice swelled out.” He had
the great gift of a convincing manner.
One is glad that his biographers did not neglect to describe his
personal appearance and other details of a similar kind. “His face,”
they say, “had a little colour to it; it was radiant and gracious; his
bearing, grave and stately. His voice was clear and penetrating; and
one never got weary of listening to him; for his words were noble,
elegant, and congenial. Often a distinguished guest would listen to
him for half a day with rapt attention. He liked to wear a garment of
fine cotton, of a length suited to his height, which was 7 _tchi_.[7]
He walked with even steps, and as one at ease. He looked you straight
in the face; there was never a hint of side-glance. He kept strict rule
and was always the same man. Nobody could rival him for warmth and
kindness of heart and gentle pity, ardour, and inviolate observance of
the Law. He was slow in making friends, and reserved in intercourse
with those that he made. Once within the gates of his monastery,
nothing but an Imperial decree could make him budge.”
Yet, on one occasion, he paid a visit to his native village. Only one
feeble old sister was left of all his family. He went with her to the
graves of their parents; it is said to clear them of weeds which had
overgrown them; but probably also to restore the few bones he had taken
with him on his pilgrimage. His parents perished during the time of
bloody civil strife, and their remains were hastily buried in a mean
grave; so he obtained Imperial permission to carry them to a better
resting-place. Thousands of monks and laity came to honour the father
and mother of the “Master of the Law.”
When Hiuen-Tsiang was a little more than 60, the hardships of travel
and the intense application of his latter years told on him; health
rapidly failed him. “I have come to the end of my work on this sacred
book,” said he to a disciple, “and also I have come near to the end
of my life. Bury me in a simple, quiet way. Wrap my body in a mat and
bear it to some lonely, hushful valley, far from any palace (_sic_) or
convent; for so impure a carcass as mine should not be near either.”
His disciples were disturbed at his condition and wept bitterly; they
tried to persuade him that he was mistaken as to the approach of death.
“I know myself,” he replied; “How can you enter into my intuition?” The
weakness increased, “The moment of departure is at hand,” he told them.
“Already my soul gives way and seems to leave me. Sell my clothes and
belongings without delay, and turn the money into images (of Buddha),
and tell the monks to pray.” He lay stiff and still for days, taking
no food. At last, when asked if he felt sure of reaching the goal of
his desires, he answered “Yes” in a weak voice. In a few moments he
was dead; yet his face retained its rosy colour and suggested supreme
happiness. He was 65 years of age.
He had begged for a simple funeral. He was buried in pomp; and there
was an immense giving of alms at his grave-side. His wish was so far
respected, however, that his remains were ultimately carried to a
reposeful spot in a tranquil valley.
Hwui-Lih, one of Hiuen-Tsiang’s disciples, whom he had employed in
translation, had gone far in writing a biography of the Master from his
notes and conversation, when his labours were interrupted by death.
Yen-Tsong, another devoted disciple took up the uncompleted work; he
collected and put the manuscripts of Hiuen-Tsiang and Hwui-Lih in
order, corrected the blunders and imperfections of Hwui-Lih’s five
volumes, and expanded them into ten volumes; which Monsieur Julien
translated into French many years ago. M. Julien condensed the later
and less interesting part of the biography, for the complete work was
too voluminous and too full of flowery periods to be worth the labour
of full translation; and even with this abridgement, much of the work,
like the _Si-yu-ki_, remains tedious reading. There is also a much
abbreviated translation into English by Dr. Samuel Beal.
Yet, the work is an imperishable monument to a great mind. When, here
and there, one suspects a little of that chastened self-inflation from
which few, if any, saints have been exempt; and when one has made due
allowance for the natural desire of two enthusiastic disciples to
offer innumerable flowers of Chinese rhetoric at the tomb of a beloved
Master, the fact remains that his lofty mind and gentle, yet ardent,
character, secured their deep reverence and commanded their devotion.
This affords further evidence of that personal attraction, the effects
of which we have so often observed in the record of his pilgrimage.
We may justly apply to this ancient Chinaman the happy phrase of John
Lyly, the Euphuist, and say of him that his soul was “stitched to the
starres.”
II.—SÆWULF, AN ENGLISH PILGRIM TO PALESTINE A.D. 1102
CHAPTER I.
EARLY PILGRIMAGE TO PALESTINE.
Very soon after Hiuen-Tsiang set forth on his arduous enterprise,
Jerusalem witnessed a remarkable scene (A.D. 629). Heraclius, Emperor
of New Rome, had overthrown the hosts of Chosroes II, the Persian,
and now he marched on foot through streets which that monarch had so
lately ravaged and shorn of half their population. A spirit of devout
and humble thankfulness possessed Heraclius and his chastened people.
The imperial feet were naked; the imperial shoulders bore the weight of
that True Cross which the aged Helena, mother of Constantine the Great,
had so significantly discovered, and which Chosroes had carried away
from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Long before the True Cross was miraculously found, pious Christians
were wont to visit the sacred scenes of their Faith; but, after that
event, Pilgrimage became fashionable. Not the devout only thronged
to the Holy Land, and crowded all its many sanctified spots. The
inhabitants of Palestine were not slow to provide for the satisfaction
of the pilgrim; whether he were of the eager faithful, burning to
behold the burial places of Patriarchs and the very spot associated
with some scene of the Gospels; or were one moved by a love of novelty
and excitement. Tradition was revived, or legend invented; a vast
number of sacred relics was hit upon and produced; hostelries became
scenes of piety, and, alas! often of dissipation.
Many, if not most, of the travellers were undoubtedly impelled by
a genuine spirit of reverence; but pilgrimages have always been
popular because, under the sanction of Religion, they afforded the
excitement of mild adventure and the physical and mental exhilaration
which accompanies change of scene. As is always the case when men
gather together from many lands and find themselves released from the
restraints of home and the specified conventions of country, many were
pliant to the allurements of pleasure. Indeed, Jerusalem was soon
turned into a theatre of the passions, a centre of wild dissipation,
and even of serious crime. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Jerome, and St.
Augustine, set themselves against the fashionable craze, and told
would-be pilgrims that they might do far better by remaining at home
and praising God in whatsoever station he had assigned to them.
When Jerusalem fell to the onrush of the Arabs (A.D. 637), the
Moslem conquerors regarded it as a sacred city; for they believed
Mohammed to have been transported thence to visit Paradise. Christian
subjects and Christian pilgrims added to Mohammedan wealth; and
they were allowed, under restrictions, to dwell in or to visit the
Holy Land. Haroun-Al-Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad, and Charlemagne,
Emperor of the West, were drawn together by the political antagonism
of Constantinople alike to the Saracen and to an upstart Empire.
They exchanged gifts; and the traveller may still see some of those
sent by Haroun-Al-Raschid, as well as much else that is curious or
beautiful, in the Treasury of the great Church which Charlemagne
built at Aix-la-Chapelle. Bernard, one of three Benedictine monks who
visited the Holy Land A.D. 870, says that Christians there enjoyed such
security that if, by some accident, a traveller should lose a beast
of burden on the road, he might leave his belongings where they lay,
proceed to the nearest city for assistance, and find them untouched on
his return.
When the great Empire of the Abassides crumbled and fell, the Fatimite
Caliphs of Cairo were usually tolerant of infidels, who increased
their wealth and power. Commercial relations with the Christian West
continued; and pilgrims flocked to the Holy Land. In the tenth century,
that darkest of the Dark Ages, John of Parma visited Palestine no fewer
than seven times; and even far-off Iceland sent its pilgrims.
But in the eleventh century (A.D. 1074) the Seljuk Turk swept down
from the Oxus, and, aided by Emirs in revolt, took Jerusalem. The main
body of the Turkish army retained the barbarous habits of a nomadic
people; they lusted for battle; they were drunk with blood. Palestine
became the scene of exaction, of debauchery, and of every kind of
licence and excess. Churches were ransacked for spoil; the rich pilgrim
was subject to threat and compelled to disgorge much of his wealth
before he was allowed to see Jerusalem; the poor pilgrim, already worn
down by privation and suffering in some diminutive crazy craft, met,
on landing, with insult and outrage. Neither Mohammedan Cairo nor
Christian Constantinople were strong enough to deal with the Turk:
he exhibited Moslem fanaticism at its worst. The Scimitar had indeed
displaced the Cross.
CHAPTER II. “DIEU LE VEULT.”
One of the eye-witnesses of the wretchedness of Christians in Palestine
was a certain Peter, a man from Picardy; high-strung; one to whom
a very varied experience brought no satisfaction. His restless
disposition had driven him into the profession of arms; he had sought
for peace in study; he had tried the companionship of a wife, who had
borne him the boon of children; his spirit found no tranquility among
cloistered monks; he fled to the greater seclusion of a hermitage.
There visions left his soul still unsatisfied, and he went to the Holy
Land. The sufferings of Christians at the hands of the Turk filled him
with spiritual fury. He returned to Europe, and with inextinguishable
zeal, traversed its western half to urge in impassioned eloquence,
which made every heart throb and frenzied every mind, the union of all
Christendom for the destruction of the Turk and the re-establishment of
the True Faith in its first home.
He set Europe ablaze. Fourteen generations of Christians had grieved
over the Moslem occupation of the Holy Land. John Zimiskes, the
ablest and most popular of Byzantine generals, had carried his arms
as far as Lebanon in the year 975, and had recovered what were said
to be the shoes of the Saviour and the hair of John the Baptist. But,
contrary to the vainglorious assertions of Byzantine historians, he
was unable to penetrate into Palestine. In 1073, Hildebrand, the great
Pope-Statesman, was anxious to deliver the Holy Places; but any project
that he may have formed came to naught; for the Head of the Holy Roman
Empire was bent on subordinating the Church to his Imperial Will; and
the Head of the Church was even more resolute in his resolve to make
the Papacy independent and supreme. About this time, German prelates
headed 7,000 pilgrims, of whom only 2,000 survived to see their home
once more. The conquest of Jerusalem remained a dream until Peter the
Hermit awoke the sleeper.
But now Urban II responded to his call, and summoned and presided over
the famous Council of Clermont in Auvergne. “God wills it,” shouted
the assembly; “a truce of God” was declared; private war and princely
quarrels appeared to be forgotten; and all Western Europe prepared for
a Crusade.
The barons were undoubtedly captive to a great idea, and their zeal
was sincere. But little of any human action is due to a single motive.
Remission of sin was promised to those who should assume the Cross;
and love of battle, the charm of novelty, and the desire of acquiring
large and lucrative fiefs in the Holy Land also played their part.
The imagination of the common people, so lively and virile, often
so spiritual and exalted in the Middle Ages, was no less fired than
that of the barons. The spirit which directed men to the cloister now
summoned them to the camp. A belief that God had decreed the expulsion
of the Turk, and would protect and direct them to the capture of the
Holy City, filled all men with fanatic fervour. The sound of clarion
and trumpet and the clash of arms mingled with the voice of the
preacher exhorting seigneur and serf. To men of the eleventh century,
the curtains of the Unseen were often withdrawn, and the splendour of
God shone forth, or devils appeared, comely to tempt, or distorted
to terrify. Guibert tells us that, while at Beauvais, he noticed, at
mid-day, a few clouds stretched a little obliquely athwart others, and
“All at once, thousands of voices from every quarter cried out that a
cross had appeared in the sky.”
But, as with the barons, motives other than religious also moved the
populace and favoured the Crusade. Private war had been unceasing;
famine and pestilence, the attendants on war, had desolated Europe;
the serf lay prostrate under the heel of his exacting seigneur. There
would be release from these evils in that land which the Redeemer of
Mankind had chosen to be the scene of his birth and Sacrifice.
The wave of enthusiasm struck our own shores, and passed beyond
them. William of Malmesbury says in his “Chronicles of the Kings of
England” that, “there was no nation so remote, no people so retired,
as not to contribute its portion.” This ardent love not only inspired
the continental provinces, but even all who had heard the name of
Christ, whether in the most distant islands, or savage countries. The
Welshman left his hunting; the Scot his fellowship with lice; the Dane
his drinking party; the Norwegian his raw fish. Lands were deserted
of their husbandmen; houses of their inhabitants; even whole cities
migrated. There was no regard to relationship; affection to their
country was held in little esteem; God alone was placed before their
eyes. Whatever was stored in granaries, or hoarded in chambers, to
answer the hopes of the avaricious husbandman, or the covetousness of
the miser, all, all was deserted; they hungered and thirsted after
Jerusalem alone. Joy attended such as proceeded; while grief oppressed
those who remained. But why do I say remained? You might see the
husband departing with his wife; indeed, with all his family; you
would smile to see the whole household laden on a carriage, about to
proceed on their journey. The road was too narrow for the passengers,
the path too confined for the travellers, so thickly were they thronged
with endless multitudes. A French eye-witness tells us that “thieves
and evil-doers of all kinds cast themselves at the feet of priests
to receive the cross.... The rustic shod his oxen like horses; the
children on approaching any large town or castle would ask: ‘is that
Jerusalem?’”
These undisciplined hordes became turbulent; their march was marked
by famine, pillage and murder. The few who reached Asia Minor were
exterminated.
Macaulay’s “schoolboy” knows the story of the disciplined army of the
First Crusade; how, after the Caliph of Cairo had wrested Jerusalem
from the weakened Turk and offered peace and security to Christians in
vain, the slow advance of the invaders, marked by incredible cruelty
on both sides, was so far successful that the crusading barons and
their followers hurled themselves against the Holy City and took
it (A.D. 1099). “Even civilization always bears a brute within its
bosom,” remarks Sainte-Beuve; and assuredly Mediæval Religion made
small attempt to caste out the devils that made the Cross their screen.
The loftiest passions are often unstable; the enthusiasm of the crowd
readily passes from mood to mood. The fervour of faith became the
frenzy of carnage. Raymond of Agiles, an eye-witness, declares that the
Mosque of Omar and its portals ran blood up to the knees and even so
far as to the reins of the horses. For seven days, Jerusalem was given
up to slaughter and pillage.
Yet, in spite of a campaign tarnished with shame and dyed with guilt,
the Christian ideal had not wholly disappeared. The growing spirit of
Chivalry was not wanting, nor was the Norman genius for statesmanship
absent. At the famous “Assizes of Jerusalem,” a code of laws was drawn
up better than the Middle Ages had yet known. But after Baldwin was
crowned at Bethlehem (A.D. 1100), the new Kingdom remained unsettled.
Neither Christian nor Saracen was likely to forget the atrocities of
war; the whole of Palestine was far from being subdued; a few parts
were still held by the Infidel; the paths to Jerusalem were still
perilous for the pilgrim; but once again the Holy City and other sacred
places were under Christian rule. The enthusiasm and joy of Western
Europe ran high. The tide of pilgrimage at once set in, and an obscure
Englishman was one of the first pilgrims to reach Jerusalem.
CHAPTER III. SÆWULF’S RECORD.
There is preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
a valuable collection of ancient manuscripts presented by an old pupil
of the College, who was no other than Matthew Parker, Archbishop of
Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Among these manuscripts
is a mere fragment, written in Mediæval Latin, which tells of the
pilgrimage to Jerusalem of one Sæwulf, an Englishman, who must have
started from his native shores thirty-six years after the landing of
William the Conqueror, and less than two years after the coronation of
Baldwin.[8] The record of Sæwulf is the broken voice of an obscure,
unlettered palmer, which chance has preserved from common sepulture
with things more important in the Ancient Silences. It gives us little
more than a glimpse of a single year of adventurous pilgrimage in the
life of a plain Englishman who, like the Chinaman who undertook a
sacred journey nearly five centuries before him, having beheld “a gleam
upon the mountain, needs must arise and go thither.”
The narrative begins with the statement: “I Sæwulf, an unworthy
person and an evil doer, made for Jerusalem that I might pray at the
tomb of our Lord.” Who Sæwulf was, is open to conjecture. It seems
probable that he was the man of that name of whom William, Librarian
of Malmesbury Abbey, speaks in his “Book of Bishops”; a merchant who
had recurring spasms of penitence, during which he was wont to repair
to Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, a prelate of “pious, simple truth,”
who commanded the affection of the people and the confidence of the
King. This Sæwulf was probably a native of Worcester. Wulstan, we know,
was the last of the Saxon Bishops; for the hand of the Norman was
heavy on the prostrate land, and it was the policy of the Conqueror,
as William of Malmesbury tells us, in another of his works, to replace
the native bishops on their death “by diligent men of any nation except
English”—a policy which the Church supported; for religion had been in
a decaying state in England for some years before the arrival of the
Normans. Indeed, “the clergy, contented with a very slight degree of
learning, could scarcely stammer out the words of the sacraments; and a
person who understood grammar was an object of wonder and astonishment.
The monks mocked the rule of their order by fine vestments and the
use of every kind of food.” Wulstan implored Sæwulf to give up a
livelihood which was beset with all manner of temptation, and to take
the habit; for his conviction of sin was soon over, and he invariably
resumed his former vices. Wulstan told him that the time would come
when he would become a monk, “which” says the Chronicler, “I afterwards
saw fulfilled; for he was converted in our monastery in his old age,
being driven to it by disease.” There is nothing in Sæwulf’s narrative
to indicate that he was in holy orders; more than once he speaks of
himself as one oppressed by a sense of sin; and the record of his
pilgrimage may very well have been translated into the dry, terse Latin
of the monks by another hand, or, conceivably, may have been written by
himself in his last years at Malmesbury.
Whoever he was, Sæwulf’s early manhood was spent in a disordered land
among a dejected people. During the reign of William Rufus, England
was visited by tempest and famine and even by severe earthquake;
rebellion was rife; the Welsh over-ran the county of Chester and part
of Shropshire, leaving them waste; Magnus, King of Norway, swooped down
the Irish Sea, occupied Anglesea, and threatened the mainland; the
common people were oppressed by their foreign masters and illegally
taxed; “the courtiers preyed upon the property of the country
people and consumed their substance,” says William of Malmesbury,
and Eadmer of Canterbury, our best authority on the period, confirms
his statement: “As to their cruelty towards their hosts,” he writes,
“or their unseemly conduct towards their wives and daughters, it is
shameful even to remember”; the royal progresses through England were a
travelling Sodom and Gomorrah. And we may judge of the tender mercies
of the time when we read that traitors to the King, or innocent men
deemed to be such, “were deprived of their sight and manhood.” These
inhumanities also disgraced the far more civilized Byzantine Empire.
No wonder that men’s hearts yearned for a “City of God,” or that their
hearts were set on the peace of the convent, or that they disdained the
mere perils of pilgrimage!
The existing fragment of Sæwulf’s narrative begins with his departure
from Southern Italy; but we know, from other sources, what were the
conditions and prescribed forms of pilgrimage, and how an English
pilgrim would reach Apulia.
First, he had to get the consent of near relatives, in order that the
interests of his family or dependents might be protected. To make sure
that the would-be pilgrim was moved by devotion or penitence, and
not by vain desire to see the world, he was also required to secure
the sanction of his bishop, who made investigation into his life
and character before granting it. The enquiry was a very searching
one in the case of a monk; for his real motive might be to escape
from conventual discipline. If satisfied, the Bishop or his delegate
solemnly presented him with a pilgrim’s staff and wallet, and bestowed
his benediction at Mass in the church of the parish in which the
pilgrim resided. He was furnished with a document which exhorted all
monasteries, priests, and faithful Christians to give him aid and
relief on his journey. He was now bound to set off without delay,
under penalty of being dealt with as a backslider and perjurer. When
the day of departure arrived, a procession of relatives, friends, and
pious people accompanied him some little distance, and then, having
been blessed by the clergy present, clad in white linen with the cross
marked on it, and duly sprinkled with holy water, he went on his way
alone.
The long and hazardous sea-voyage to the Mediterranean was shunned.
Despite the perturbed state of the Continent, it was safer to make
for the heel of Italy by the overland route. All men who bore arms
were under the obligation to defend him; no robber-baron might demand
a toll from him—nay the castle welcomed him, and he was seated at
table beside the house-priest. The bishop of every town and the abbot
or prior of every monastery gave him shelter and hospitality; alms
were specially devoted to the relief of the poor pilgrim and the
support of monasteries along the pilgrim’s path. If he were ill, the
doors of whatever hospital might be near were open to him, or he was
cordially received into the Infirmary of every convent. A pilgrim’s
hospice, founded in the first half of the ninth century by Louis the
Pious, stood amid the snowy wastes of Mont Cénis to shelter him from
its bitter blasts. He would pass through Italy, little affected by the
unceasing and bloody conflict of noble with bishop, bishop with city,
city with noble, and every one of a thousand petty communes and fiefs
with its neighbours; for the charitable monastery would prove a ready
asylum. Arrived at a convenient port, a greatly reduced passage-money
was required of a pilgrim to the Holy Land; and there were some ports
where ships belonging to them were compelled to carry pilgrims free of
all charge.
Mediterranean shipping was not notably different in build and badness
from that of Northern waters; but was often of larger size. Nearly all
that we know about it is derived from the uncouth paintings, coins,
and arms of maritime towns of a somewhat later period, which are
rather symbols than representations. The sailing-ship was shorter than
the galley, which was rowed as well as sailed; it was shaped somewhat
like a half-moon and was very broad in the beam. It could sail only
before the wind. There was rarely more than a single mast; the sails
were square; and the yards could be lowered to the deck like those
of a modern barge. These ships were not unlike the clumsy coasters
still to be met with off Norway. Passengers were very uncomfortably
crowded together, and must have had a terrible time. The outside
planks overlapped, and were held together by iron nails; and the seams
were stopped up with oakum. Mediæval vessels were crazy craft, and
frequently went to pieces when wind and wave ran high: he was a bold
traveller who tempted Neptune in those days, and especially bold if,
after a first experience, he braved the sea god a second time.
Brindisi was the usual place of embarquation; but for some reason,
which Sæwulf does not state, he started from Monopoli, a little port
midway between Bari and Brindisi. Now there was a general belief in
certain days being unlucky; a belief which persisted in spite of the
condemnation of the Church. A Christian Calendar of the early part
of the 4th century indicates what days are of ill omen, according to
the Astrology of Egypt. Popular belief credited the feast-day of St.
Mildred the Virgin (a saint of Kent) with this disqualification; and it
was on St. Mildred’s day, July 13th, 1102, that Sæwulf set sail in a
craft rather crazier than most. A storm came on the very same day the
port was left behind, and the ship was wrecked a short distance from
the harbour; but, “by Divine Mercy,” all aboard got safely to shore.
The passengers went on to Brindisi; their ship, having been patched
up in some fashion, sailed thither, and the pilgrims got on board
again; but alas! it was another of those unlucky Egyptian days! Corfu
was reached in two days (July 24th); but a great storm arose after
leaving port and drove the rickety craft before it. However, shelter
was gained at another of the Ionian islands—Cephalonia—on August
1st. Here, the company was still further depressed by the death of
one of their number. Cephalonia is opposite the Gulf of Lepanto, and,
sailing up the gulf, they landed at Patras, which Sæwulf speaks of as a
“notable _island_”; not improperly, the word island being often applied
to a port in those days. The ship stopped at Patras for a special
purpose—that its passengers and mariners should go on shore and pray
to St. Andrew the Apostle at the site of his martyrdom. Corinth was
reached on Aug. 9th, and Sæwulf and fellow pilgrims left their wretched
craft to avoid the long, stormy passage by Cape Matapan. He finds a
resemblance between his experiences and those of St. Paul: both had
suffered shipwreck, and Paul met with misadventure at Corinth, where
“we suffered many hardships.” When a pilgrim to the Holy Land speaks of
hardship, it was probably of an unusually severe kind. Roman Catholics
neither loved nor were loved by members of the Greek Communion; and the
behaviour of Crusading hosts in Eastern Europe was too recent to be
forgotten.
The pilgrims crossed the isthmus to Livadrostro, and, some riding
asses, the rest on foot, reached Thebes. They would find Thebes
inhabited chiefly by Jews, who were “the most skilled artificers in
silk and purple cloth of all Greece.” Sixty-four years later, a Spanish
Jew, Benjamin of Tudela on the Ebro, who visited the settlements of his
race in many lands and reported on their condition, found 300 Jews at
Corinth and no fewer than about 2,000 at Thebes, “many of them being
learned scholars, not to be equalled in the land of Greece, save in the
city of Constantinople.” Leaving Thebes the travellers arrived next day
at Negropont (Aug. 23rd). This land-journey had proved untoward; the
Greeks were so inhospitable and so suspicious of them that often they
had to pass the night in deserted huts and sheds. No wonder that they
do not go a little out of their way to visit Athens, in spite of the
fact that “in the Church of the Blessed Virgin there is a lamp which
is ever burning with miraculously replenished oil,” and that Scripture
records how St. Paul preached there and “certain men clave unto him and
believed.” Among these converts was Dionysius, the Areopagite. It may
be true that Dionysius “was born and got his learning there”: we are
indebted to Sæwulf for the information.
At Negropont, the band of pilgrims took passage in a tramp-trader,
which first touched at one of the islands of Petali, hard by Marathon;
but what Englishman of the year of grace 1102, even if he were an
educated monk, knew aught of the “glory which was Greece?” The voyagers
now made for Naxos, touching at various islands on their way; their
mediæval minds sightless to the classic lustre of the Cyclades. Sæwulf
does indeed speak of Naxos as being “near to Crete, that memorable
island”; memorable because his own lively experience of what it means
to “go down to the sea in ships” recalls the “tempestuous wind” which
caught St. Paul off Crete; for certain, he had never heard of that
Epimenides of whom the Apostle makes such vigorous use. Patmos is
reached, where the Beloved Apostle, banished by Domitian, “entered his
tomb alive.” Other islands are touched at, among them Cos, and here our
author exhibits his learning: it is the birthplace of Galen, “the most
famous physician among the Greeks.” However, Hippocrates and Galen were
both physicians, and that is near enough. On the trader goes, changing
its course, now north, now south; and the pilgrim associates every
place visited with some pious legend. Rhodes is reached, and history
is again rescued from oblivion: the Colossus was “an idol, 125 feet
high; the Persians destroyed it together with almost the whole Roman
province on their way to Spain.” Sæwulf, or tradition, has confused
the first conquering onrush of the Arabs with the Persian advance; but
the Colossus was destroyed, not by Persians but by earthquake, nine
centuries before Sæwulf’s time. Yet there is a basis for his story;
its fragments were removed for building purposes about the time of the
first Arab conquests. Sæwulf falls into a widespread blunder of his
unlettered age when he assumes that the inhabitants of Rhodes drew
their name from the Colossus, and that the Epistles to the Colossians
were directed to them.
Leaving Rhodes, a great storm drove the ship straight before it; but
the sailors got her into the harbour of Patara, “and, by next day,
the storm had abated, and we came to Long Island.” Here was a ruined
city which had been the refuge of exiles, escaped from the Turk. Myra,
on the mainland, was now reached; and Sæwulf states that it is “the
port of the Adriatic Sea; as Constantinople is of the Ægean”: either
his geography is not quite accurate, or he would imply that, in his
time, Myra received the main Eastern traffic from the Adriatic, and
Constantinople from the Ægean. At Myra, he worshipped at the empty tomb
of St. Nicholas. Favourable winds bore the ship thence to an island
called “Sixty oars,” on account of the force of the sea and the effort
required to overcome it. A discursion, out of sight of land, brought
the pilgrims to Paphos in Cyprus. We do not expect any reference to the
Cyprian Venus; but we are a trifle surprised to find that our author
now confuses two separate chapters of “Acts” in one jumbled statement.
Leaving Cyprus “we were tossed about by violent storms seven days’
space before we could reach our haven; and one night a fierce contrary
wind drove us back towards Cyprus; but Divine Mercy, Who is close at
hand to those who truly call on Him, vouchsafed no small pity for us
afflicted souls, and we resumed our proper course. Yet, during seven
nights, we were overwhelmed by such a tempest and were in such peril
that almost all hope left us. Nevertheless, at the rising of the
sun, behold! the coast of Joppa lay before our eyes; and even as the
turbulence of our peril had made our hearts to sink within us, so joy,
unexpected and unhoped for, lifted them up an hundredfold more. And so
it came to pass that, thirteen weeks after our departure from Monopoli,
the sea having been our home, or deserted hovels in the islands (the
Greeks not being hospitable), we made the harbour of Joppa, filled with
joy and thanksgiving.” Sæwulf gives no dates; but many have been fixed
by the industry of a French scholar, who compared feast days mentioned
in the narrative with the calendar, and its events with ascertained
dates. Sæwulf reached the Holy Land, Oct. 12th, 1102.
God had interposed on behalf of “the meanest of His servants and the
company of pilgrims”; and Sæwulf renders praise, with the manner of
the Psalms of David in his mind. But yet another danger from wind and
wave awaits him. He got warning from some weather-wise friends who knew
the badness of the harbour. But he shall tell his own tale: “The same
day that we anchored, someone, directed by God, as I believe, said to
me, ‘Master, go ashore this very day, for it may hap that to-night, at
dawn, a storm shall come on and stop you from landing.’ When I heard
this, the desire to land seized me. I got a boat and wrent ashore with
all my party. Even whilst I was landing the sea was vexed; the waves
became more troubled, and a tempest came on; yet by Divine Mercy, I
landed unharmed. What happened then? We entered the city to find a
lodging. Weary and overdone by our long labours, we fed ourselves and
went to rest. And then? In the morning, when we came out of church, we
heard the roaring of the sea and the populace shouting, and everybody
was running in a crowd to the shore, marvelling at such sounds as
they had never heard aforetime. And, when we got there, we beheld the
waves higher than hills, a countless number of bodies of men and women
lying in wretched-wise on the beach; and ships were crashed against
each other and broken into small bits. Could anyone hear a sound save
that of roaring breakers and splintering ships? For this drowned the
outcry of the crowd and the shouting in the ships. Our ship, however,
being a big one and strongly built, and some others, laden with corn
and other goods and with pilgrims going or returning, held to their
anchors still. Yet how were they tossed about? Into what terror were
they plunged! How their ladings were cast into the sea! What onlooker
so hard and strong as to keep a dry eye! Not long did we gaze when,
through the violence of the waves and currents, the anchors parted, the
ropes were broken asunder, and the ships abandoned to the fierceness
of the billows. All hope of safety was gone. Now they were cast high;
now flung down, and hurled by degrees upon beach or rock. There were
they dashed against one another in wretched plight, and, little by
little, torn to bits by the tempest. Neither would the savage blasts
allow of their getting back to the sea whole, nor the steepness of the
shore admit of their gaining safety there. But what gain in telling
how dismally sailors and pilgrims hung on; every hope gone, some to
ships, some to masts, some to spars, some to cross-tenders? What more
shall I tell? Some, overwhelmed with fright, are drowned. It may seem
unbelievable to many, yet I beheld with my own eyes the heads of some
separated from their bodies by the timbers of their own ship. Some,
washed from the decks, are borne away again into the deep. Some, who
can swim, leap into the sea. So, very many find their end. But just a
very few, relying on their strength, gain the land. Thus, of 30 ships
of largest size, of which some were Dromonds” (that is to say, having
two tiers of double oars), “Gulafri” (a sort of galley) “and Catts”
(vessels narrowing to the stern, with overhanging quarters and a deep
waist)—“all full of pilgrims and goods—of all these barely seven were
still unwrecked when I left the shore. That day more than a thousand
folk, of both sexes, perished. Never did eye behold greater horrors in
a single day. But the Lord, to whom be honour and glory, world without
end, delivered me from all this of His grace. Amen.”
The little company had escaped a great peril, but another lay ahead.
Two days later they set forth to Jerusalem, and found the way “hilly,
very rough, and very perilous. For the Saracens are constantly devising
traps for Christians; they lie hidden in the hollows of the hills
and in rocky holes, and by day and night remain ever sharply on the
look-out for those whom they may pounce upon, by reason of their being
few in numbers, or so jaded as to lag behind their band. Suddenly, the
Saracens are all round about; the next moment they are gone. Anyone
who does that journey, may make trial of this. How many human bodies,
torn by wild beasts, lie along the way and beside it! Perchance, some
one may marvel how the bodies of Christians should lie unburied. But
there is nothing to wonder at; for there is very little earth, and the
rocks are not easy to dig, and, even if there were soil, who would
be so unwise as to leave his band and dig his companion a grave all
by himself? He who should do so would dig his own grave rather than
one for his companion. On that wayside, not only the poor and weak,
but the rich and strong also, are in peril. If men are cut off by the
Saracens, yet more in number die from heat and thirst; many through
want of drink; more by drinking inordinately. Nonetheless we and all
our company came scatheless to the place we longed for.” Sæwulf’s
account of the dangers which beset the pilgrim is confirmed by that of
Daniel, Abbot of Kief, who made his pilgrimage four years later (1106,
A.D.) North of the pilgrim’s way lay Acre; south of it Ascalon, strong
fortresses, still held by the Saracen.
The track from Jaffa led to the gate of David, and, entering the
city, Sæwulf visited its holiest place first—the Martyrium or Holy
Sepulchre. The tomb was under cover, because the Church above was so
built as to be open to the skies. He tells us that Titus and Vespasian
destroyed the whole of Jerusalem to fulfil the prophesy of Christ, and
that the city has undergone the same fate seven times since Titus.
He has for guides native Syrians, a people whom he confuses with
the Assyrians and calls by that name. The guides told him that the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built in the time of Constantine the
Great. Now, the existing Church was only about 80 years old, and there
had been two previous buildings, of which the earlier was destroyed
by Chosroes II, early in the Seventh Century, and the second by
Mohammedans, early in the Eleventh Century.
He was then taken to see the place where Christ was imprisoned, the
spot where His Cross and the crosses of the two thieves were found,
the column to which Christ was bound (the thong with which He is said
to have been bound is still to be seen at Aix-la-Chapelle); all these
sacred objects of pilgrimage being near the Holy Sepulchre. He was
shown the “navel of the earth,” a spot which a contemporary of Sæwulf
tells us was in the outside wall of the Martyrium, beyond the altar.
Sæwulf assures us that Christ marked it out with His own hand, and
declared it to be the centre of the world. This tradition dates from
the Sixth Century. Readers of Dante will recall that the poet makes
Jerusalem and the Earthly Paradise the Antipodes of our globe; and,
indeed, the Holy City was at the middle of the circumscribed world
known to the Middle Ages. And had not David sung “God is my King of
old, working Salvation _in the midst of the earth_?”
Thence to Calvary; “Which is the very same place where Abraham built
an altar to sacrifice Isaac.” Traces of the Earthquake which rent the
rock, “for that it could not endure the death of its Maker without
breaking asunder,” were pointed out to him. The guides also took him to
Golgotha, the very place where a stream of the Saviour’s blood reached
the bones of Adam, “and he and the bodies of many saints arose.” Again
readers of Dante will think of the passage where the shade of Virgil
tells him how, some time after the Roman poet’s own death, Christ took
from Hades the souls of Adam and Moses and other Scriptural personages
of distinction, with many others “_e fecegli beati_,” “and made them
blessed.” Sæwulf has perfect trust in any information conveyed to him
by his “Assyrian” guides. Indeed, who so likely to know the truth about
this wonderful land as its natives?
Close by the Holy Sepulchre was a little monastery which merchants of
Amalfi had founded 54 years before Sæwulf saw it. It was the abode
of the Knights Hospitalers, who became so famous; but they had not
yet become that military order of which, after so singular a history,
England possesses traces in St. John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, and a
memorial in the beneficent work of which that building is the official
centre.
He saw the “Gate Beautiful,” through which Heraclius, triumphant bearer
of the Cross, entered after his defeat of the Persians; and heard how
“the stones fell down and closed the way, until an angel reproved
him; and he descended from his horse, and a passage was opened up to
him.” The guides took the pilgrim to see that stone which was the
pillow of Jacob when angels ascended and descended a celestial ladder
“and the Lord stood above it” at Bethel. It was now at Jerusalem,
and, traditionally, is the very stone which was transported to Scone,
whereon the Kings of Scotland sat to be crowned, and is to be seen at
the present day, placed below the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey.
He was taken to Bethlehem; and complains that there, as at every holy
place, the Saracen had destroyed everything. Yet the Convent of the
Virgin still stood, and within it he saw the very manger where the
infant Jesus lay; the very stone on which His head reposed in the
tomb, and which St. Jerome had brought hither from Jerusalem; the
marble table at which the Mother of our Lord sat at meat with the
Magi; a well which received their guiding star into its waters; and
the burial-place of the Innocents. The story of the Star falling into
a well is also told by that fraudulent Fleming who adopted the name of
Sir John Mandeville, in his “Voiage and travaile.”
As much of Palestine as had been conquered was still the scene of
unceasing disorder, brigandage, revolt and warfare; so pilgrims were
conducted to the holy places under military escort. Sæwulf went to
Hebron, and tells us of the tombs of the Patriarchs, ornamented by the
men of old and emitting sweet odours. The tombs were inside a strong
protecting fortress. Here, at Hebron, he found, still standing, an
ancient Ilex tree, under the shadow of which the Lord had appeared
to Abraham and promised that Sara should bear him a son. Apparently,
his friends, the “Assyrians,” during many centuries of experience,
had found what profit accrued to them in tacking on some Biblical
association to every available object.
Travelling Northward, he visited Nazareth and Cana of Galilee, whence
he beheld Mount Tabor, clad in refreshing green and sprinkled with
flowers. Still advancing to the North, he saw the glory of Lebanon
above him, and the springs which give birth to the milky waters of
Jordan.
More than seven months had passed since our simple-minded,
whole-hearted pilgrim landed at Joppa, and now he turns his steps
towards home. “Having seen every one of the Holy Places of Jerusalem
and its territory, so far as we were able; and our devotions done, we
took ship at Joppa on the day of Pentecost” (May 17th, 1903). Each
pilgrim would take on board with him a palm branch as ensign of his
success, and a few portable _souvenirs_.
Just as war with the Caliph of Cairo prevented our pilgrim from
reaching the Holy Land by way of Egypt (which was the ordinary route
from Western Lands), so its continuance compelled him to return
by an unusual journey. The ship turned from Joppa to the North.
Saracen ships were scouring the sea; and the returning pilgrims found
themselves hugging the shore, although they must pass by that one
fortified seaport which the Crusaders had not yet overcome. Four
days out from Joppa, and when a little to the south of Acre, “behold
twenty-six Saracen ships hove into sight. They were the squadron of
the Admiral of Tyre and Sidon, sailing for Babylonia with an army to
aid the Chaldeans in waging war with the King of Jerusalem” (_! sic_).
This statement is an example of how hearsay may germinate in the
uninstructed mind. It may not, however, be quite so wild as it seems.
Cairo is called Babylon in all Mediæval writings, but, as a matter of
fact, Arabs were, about this time, trying to turn Tancred out of his
fief at Edessa; and Edessa may, perhaps, be regarded as lying towards
the Babylon of Scripture. And a Saracen army was at sea, sent by the
Caliph of Cairo, the new “Babylon,” to raise the siege of Ascalon,
which Baldwin I. was conducting. Probably it was this expedition from
Cairo which Sæwulf came across. “Two vessels from Joppa, which were
with us, laden with pilgrims, left our ship to itself; for they were
lighter craft; and, by hard rowing, fled to Cæsarea. The Saracens
sailed all round our ship, and kept an arrow’s flight off, rejoicing
over so much plunder. However our men were ready to die for Christ;
they laid hold of their arms, and used up each moment in fortifying
the castle (at the stern) of our ship; for we had in our dromond 200
fighting men. After the space of about an hour, the chief of the
expedition, having held a council-of-war, ordered one of his sailors
to climb up to the mast-head, so as to find out what it was exactly
that we were at. And, when he learned from this man how strong was our
defence, he hoisted his high yards and made for the main. Thus did Our
Lord, of His Grace, rescue us from the foe that day. Afterwards our
folk from Joppa took three of these same ships and made themselves
rich men with the spoil thereof.”
Sæwulf’s dromond hugged the coast for eight days, and then crossed
the open sea to St. Andrews’, at the eastern extremity of Cyprus;
thence it made for Antiochetta on the mainland. “During this voyage
pirates often attacked us; but, under the protection of Divine Grace,
we suffered naught, whether from hostile attack or from tempestuous
tossing.” Rhodes was reached on June 23rd; and Sæwulf and some others,
who were weary of tacking east and west and of the slow progress made
by the heavy vessel, agreed to go a certain distance together, and
hired a smaller but swifter craft. Embarked in this, they returned
towards the Asian Coast. A contrary wind detained them a few days at
a place which Sæwulf calls Stromlo (Astypalæa), “once a fair city,
wholly made waste by the Turks.” At Scio, “we took leave of our (last)
ship and fellow-travellers, and began our journey to Constantinople,
in order that we might pray there.” While passing Tenedos, he heard
of the ruins of Troy, and “how many miles of ground they covered.” He
tells us of two fortresses facing one another from opposite sides of
the “Arm of St. George” (the Dardanelles), “which are so near as to
be only two or three bowshots apart, and which thus make the taking
of Constantinople an impossibility.” We have another reference to the
Trojan war: “The Greeks say that Helen was carried off (from Eregli) by
Paris Alexander.” And now the fragment ends, leaving our pilgrim landed
at Rodosto on the Sea of Marmora, Sept. 10th, 1103. It has taken him
more than four months’ voyage from Joppa to reach within fifty miles of
New Rome. Doubtless he found at St. Sophia, as Benjamin of Tudela did
towards the end of the same century, “a quantity of wealth beyond all
telling ... and the like of these riches is not to be seen in any other
Church in the world.”
A long, weary journey, full of the excitement of peril, still lay
before him, whatever route he might take. All we know is that, arrived
at his native town (Worcester?), a procession would receive and
accompany him to his parish church. There he would render thanks to God
for his safe return, and deliver his palm branch into the hands of the
priest, who would lay it on the altar.
Some chance has rescued this broken record of an obscure, unlettered
palmer from oblivion. He is as the hollow voice of a shade which has
burst its sepulture in the silences of oblivion. We catch but a glimpse
of some tenuous wraith; once warm and breathing flesh. It tells us
of a few months in the brief adventure of Life. Yet we recognize, as
in Hiuen-Tsiang, one who, having beheld “a gleam on the mountain,”
must “arise and go seek it.” Sæwulf the Englishman may be but “a poor
thing,” yet he is our own. There lies the excuse for “a poor humour of
mine, sir, to take that that no man else will.”
MOHAMMED IBN ABD ALLAH
BETTER KNOWN AS IBN BATÛTA, THE GREATEST OF MOSLEM TRAVELLERS, A.D.
1304–77.
CHAPTER I.
THE WHIRLWIND FROM ARABIA AND WHAT FOLLOWED.
Marauder as he was, the Arab, like his half-brother the Hebrew, carried
an ethical spark in his bosom which could be readily fanned into a
consuming blaze. He was accustomed, in the silence of the stony waste
and of the stars, to plunge into the depths of his own spiritual being,
or to await, in patience, some portent from the unseen. Mohammed, a
mystic, like unto the ancient prophets of Israel, hating false gods and
illuminated by the “One All Merciful, Lord of Creation and Sultan of
Life,” in trance, in ecstasy, and in paroxysms of enthusiasm, strove
to purge his fellow countrymen of their vain worship of idols and
false gods, and to lead them to the feet of the Almighty. At first he
preached to closed ears; but persistence and enthusiasm prevailed: the
religious intoxication of the Prophet was shared by the unconquered
sons of the desert; the Arab took fire from the flaming words which
fell from these inspired lips, and was eager to carry the message to
the uttermost ends of the earth or to perish in the effort. Within ten
years of Mohammed’s flight from Mecca (A.D. 622) all Arabia was won to
the Monotheist by conviction or by conquest.
The combination of spiritual fervour with a prospect of worldly
achievement is formidable. A year after the death of the Prophet,
Kalid, riding against the embattled hosts of Persia (A.D. 633),
broke into a chant which reveals a baser spring of action in the
Arabian mind. “Behold the wealth of the land,” he sang; “its paths
sweat fatness; food abounds as do stones in Arabia. It were a great
thing to fight here for worldly goods; but to battle in a holy war
is beyond praise. These fruitful fields and Paradise!!!” It was not
religious fanaticism alone, although it was religious fanaticism in the
main, which put an invincible scimitar into the hands of the tough,
tenacious, untamed Arab. He was impelled by religious fervour, without
doubt; but religious fervour had the strong support of a lusting after
possessions, all the more tempting in contrast with the stinted boons
of his desert home. And, should he fall in battle, was he not promised
an immediate admission into Paradise with those sensuous enjoyments,
which were most in contrast with the penury of the nomad tent, and
which were most alluring to the imagination of the average sensual man?
When material greed supports spiritual fanaticism, there is no need
to wonder at success. The Arab advanced against exhausted, loosely
organised Empires, sprawling and decayed; he offered righteous
government, a pure simple faith, with tolerance of the unbeliever under
penalty of a light tribute. The requital of refusal was the sword.
Damascus fell three years after Mohammed’s death (A.D. 635); Jerusalem,
within two year; Egypt, six years later (A.D. 641), and Persia when the
Prophet had only lain a decade in his tomb (A.D. 642). Not many years
passed before Okba swept across North Africa, rode his steed far into
the Atlantic tide, and waved his scimitar over the waste of waters,
lamenting that it put a limit to victory. Thrice was the Mediterranean
coast of Africa conquered, and thrice was the Arab well-nigh expelled;
and then Greek and Roman and all civilized inhabitants of the coast,
preferring the rule of the Moslem to that of the barbarous Berbers
who had replaced him, welcomed the fourth invasion, and settled down
under Arab rule. By the close of the century which in its youth saw
the hurried night-flight of Mohammed from Mecca, the Moslem held sway
from the Oxus to the Western ports of Barbary. At the beginning of the
next century the great Iberian peninsula was added to the dominion
of the Caliph; and, although Ironic Destiny turned back the triumph
of the Prophet in the decisive battle of Tours (A.D. 732), a hundred
years after his death, the great Iberian Peninsula was held by the Arab
from sea to sea and as far north as the Cantabrian Mountains and the
southern spurs of the Pyrenees; while the Koran was preached, although
it did not everywhere prevail, east and west, over a broad belt more
than seven thousand miles in length. The muezzin called the Faithful to
prayers from the Atlantic to the Yellow Sea.
When a race, endowed with natural gifts, subdues an enlightened people,
it becomes inseminated by the higher culture it encounters, and is
stimulated to evolve an art, a literature, and a polished civilization
of its own. So was it when Rome conquered Hellas; so was it when the
Northmen established themselves in France and Sicily; so was it when
the thundering steeds of the desert bore their wild riders north and
east and west, and the ancient Parthian monarchy and the fairest, the
wealthiest, and the most cultured of the Roman provinces fell before
the triumphant Arab. Like the Norman, like the Roman, he had the
natural gift of governing as well as a passionate wisdom. He steeped
himself in the lore of Hellas; it was through him that the philosophy
of Aristotle was transmitted to the Schoolmen; it was through him that
St. Thomas Aquinas was able to construct that venerable philosophical
system, based on the Peripatetic, which has received the sanction and
endorsement of the Church of Rome; it was through him, therefore,
that Dante beheld that “glorious philosopher,” that “guide of human
reason,” that “_Maestro di color che sanno_,” “Master of those who
know,” seated amid a philosophic family. The great names of Averrhoes,
Avicenna, Avempace, Algazel, and Avicebron attest the freedom of
Arab speculation in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Mohammedans were the begetters of chemical science; they eagerly
pursued the study of botany; they contributed much to geography; they
carried medicine far beyond the ancient limits of Galen and Celsus;
they became bold, brilliant and successful operators, and introduced
new methods into surgery; they cultivated letters and left a noble
literature behind them; they were poets almost to a man: Princes wrote
verses to the stars in some interval between private plot and public
slaughter; water-carriers and camel-drivers vied with professional
poets in singing the praises of love in those delicious hours when
the refreshing breezes of the night might carry songs beyond the
lattice of the harem to be received with the light laughter of girls;
even the forbidden wine-flask became a theme for song. Much of Arabic
love poetry is immortal, and few are the literatures in which it is
surpassed. In Architecture and the Decorative Arts, the Arabs achieved
inimitable elegance and grace; as workers in metal they were supreme.
After a prolonged struggle, they subdued and civilized the wild Berber.
They regarded the Jew as a brother, less well informed in sacred things
than themselves; and they treated even the “tritheistic” Christian with
forbearance. Indeed they were not too anxious to proselytize; for the
unconverted were taxable, and they did not wish the sources of public
income to dry up. But taxation was light, and, in the main, the Arab
yoke was far from heavy. Slaves were treated with humanity, and might
earn their freedom at any moment by a simple profession of faith: the
Negro, the Spaniard, the Berber, the Turk, could acquire the full right
of a man by the repetition of a short formula. During the declining
years of the Byzantine Empire, and until Liberty and Literature arose
in the Italian Communes, the Mohammedan bore the torch of learning and
kept human justice enthroned.
But Islam was another illustration of the profound truth already
recorded in this volume as one of the melancholy tenets of Buddhism:
Every human institution bears within it the seeds of its decay. Though
a sense of righteous dealing dwelt from of old in the bosom of the
Arab, in his native desert the sword which executed it was held by
his own right hand. The predatory tentsmen were divided into clans;
and between the clans there were blood-feuds. They were a democratic
people; but they had a deep reverence for men of noble blood; and their
feuds were taken up by the chief men of the cities of Arabia, and by
those leaders who, later, became the governors of new provinces. And
the conquered Berbers had precisely the same characteristics: they
also were predatory, democratic, and revered their noble families.
Moreover, both races were readily moved to the more violent of the
emotions of religion. Before long Moslem fought against Moslem, and
a thousand forms of religious dissent weakened, although they did
not destroy, the essential unity of Faith. Again, the extensive and
rapidly acquired Empire was too vast and too ill-organized to be ruled
by one, all-powerful Caliph. The centre of government was transferred,
during the revolutions of Islam at variance with itself, from Damascus
to Bagdad and from Bagdad to Cairo; but the Caliph of Cairo was
defended by, and therefore in the hands of Mamelukes—slaves, bought
in childhood and trained to arms. The Mameluke became the ruler;
and, by the middle of the Thirteenth Century, the Caliph was a mere
nominal Spiritual Head, far feebler than the Pope in Rome. For, distant
provinces were continually falling away from central authority; and it
was never long before the ally who came forward to support the Caliph
found it to his advantage to turn against him. The Mohammedan world was
divided, not merely between the Shiite and Sunnite sects, but between
many ambitious and rival States. Long before the Fourteenth Century,
Islam was past its prime. There was decay in matters political, in
literature, and in art. Yet the amity in Islam was greater than its
discord. The need of mutual protection against the Christian, and
the duty of every Mohammedan to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least
once in his lifetime, helped to preserve true brotherly feeling among
all followers of the Prophet, whatever their rank, their wealth, or
the colour of their skin. The study of the Koran implied a study of
Arabic: there was therefore a common language to serve the needs of
intercommunication. The Koran was carried into mysterious lands, known
before its arrival only in the distortion of legend and in fables
of romance. Passionate devotion to a Faith which antagonistic or
far-separated races came to hold in common swept away these obstacles
to commutual intimacy. Huge hosts of Pilgrims from many lands met at
Mecca, and different caravans and different sects united in prayer and
praise. Some had encountered peril by sea; all had baffled the craft
or repelled the attack of robber-bands; all had endured trials of the
desert; all had triumphed over those countless dangers which lurked
along difficult ways. Thus, disciplined in endurance and accustomed to
adventure, latent powers of mind and character were aroused. Strange
sights awakened the curiosity of the trader; novel wares excited his
cupidity and converted him into an explorer of the world. In spite
of the intertwining of religious zeal with commercial instinct,
Pagan princes saw their opportunity of enrichment, and welcomed the
Arab, Moorish, or Persian merchant. And, in days of peace, the whole
Mohammedan world was open to every Mohammedan traveller; rulers
received him with elaborate courtesy and sped him on his way, rejoicing
in gifts. It mattered not whether he entered the gateway of some
princely residence, or stood on the threshold of some peasant’s hut; he
was sure at least of welcome and refreshment. The trader might settle
anywhere and find amity awaiting him; an honest man was an honoured
guest in whatever land he might pursue his calling. A Christian,
Missionary to the East, who died in Ibn Batûta’s time, bears witness
to the brotherly love which obtained among Moslems of different races.
So we shall not marvel overmuch at Ibn Batûta accomplishing what even
to-day would be considered world-wide travel, or at his discovering
children of the same father, who in their childhood watched the sun
setting over Atlantic waters, prosperously dwelling in their maturity,
one, where the dawn breaks from the Yellow Sea; one, where the oasis
lies an incongruous and solitary blossom amid the sands of Sahara.
CHAPTER II. A RESOLUTE PILGRIM
Among Mohammedan pilgrims and travellers Ibn Batûta stands without
a peer. He was born in a city which was once an extreme outpost of
Roman rule in Africa, the Ancient Tingis, the modern Tangiers, in the
Sultanate of Fez, 24th February, 1304. He devoted his youth to the
study of the Koran and its exegesis; becoming thereby an expert in
theology and jurisprudence. For, throughout the Mohammedan world the
Koran is the living fountain of all law and of all piety: hence Moslem
theology and law are inextricably intertwined.
“Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us,”
is one of the quaint metaphors of Sir Thomas Browne. The old Norwich
physician is writing of the body; but his remark is profoundly true of
the soul of men. By the time that Batûta had reached the age of 21, he
tells us that he was all aflame with “inner desire and determination
to visit the Holy Places; tearing himself away from those who were
dear to him, both male and female, and taking wing from home as a
bird doth from its nest.” He started from his native city when not
quite twenty-one years and four months old (14th June, 1325), making,
first, for Tlemçen, the capital of a Moslem State 300 miles distant
from Tangier. Tlemçen remains in the present writer’s memory as a gem
set among the Algerian Mountains, remarkable for the ruins of Mansûra,
which almost run up to its walls—a rival city built by a rival prince
during a siege which dragged on longer than the ten years’ assault
on Troy—remarkable also for a master-piece of decoration in that
Thirteenth Century which was the great period of Moslem Architecture
no less than of our own. In this beautiful city rested a Tunisian
Embassy which had completed its mission and was about to return;
and this he joined. When he arrived at Bougie, he became a prey to
fever; but the patient was a man of mettle and he pushed on. Fever was
not the only foe. All North Africa was more or less unsafe, by reason
of Nomadic Berbers and brigands; and hostilities were frequent between
the States into which the great Empire of the Undivided Caliphate had
broken up. The returning Embassy was exposed to danger on its journey
“from the perfidy of Arabs.”
Arrived at Constantine, he received the first of those welcome
donatives which it was incumbent on the Rulers of Islam to bestow. It
was a scarf for head-gear; and tucked in its folds, with considerate
delicacy, were two gold coins.
At Bona, the ancient Hippo, whereof once Augustine was bishop, fever
again preyed on him, and he became so ill that he could only keep his
saddle by taking his turban off and tying himself on with it; nor
could he stand at all during the whole long journey to Tunis. When the
Embassy arrived at its destination, the inhabitants came outside the
walls to welcome the cavalcade. Weak, weary, and worn down by illness,
unfriended and solitary, among strangers who were joyfully greeted
by relatives and friends and fellow-countrymen; remote from all that
was hallowed by family affection or endeared by early association, a
terrible tempest of longing swept the bosom of our pilgrim. He saw all
the others saluted: “there was no salutation for me” he says, “I knew
no soul there. I burst into a flood of tears. A pilgrim saw this; he
came forward and did me courtesy; nor did he cease to take me off my
thoughts by his conversation until I was housed in the city.” This is
the sole occasion on which we hear a word of home-sickness during a
journey which lasted more than a score of years. The born traveller,
like the born sailor, may feel the pang and have it renewed, but he
brushes it aside. Moreover, we shall shortly find Ibn Batûta setting up
a travelling-home of his own.
The Caravan for Mecca was about to start from Tunis; and we find
our jurisconsult become its Cadi, or justiciary. A hundred bowmen
accompanied it through a district always perilous by reason of
marauding nomads, who lurk among its hills. It was the rainy season;
the weather turned so wet and cold that the caravan halted at Sfax,
and remained there some time, hoping for improvement. Ibn Batûta
seized the opportunity to marry the first wife of whom we are told.
She was a daughter of a syndic of Tunis; and probably this was his
first, but far from being his last, entrance into matrimony. For he
was a man of taste, and we shall find him, in the course of time,
become an experienced Benedict, and by no means indifferent to the
charms of his pretty slave-concubines. All delay was intolerable
to Batûta; so, accompanied by his bride, he set off at the head of
an armed band, bearing its standard. He soon entered a district
notorious for brigandage even to-day, when conquering France and Italy
hold the land and bestow sanguinary lessons on wild tribesmen and
robbers-in-blood. Fierce nomads hovered around the little company,
awaiting an opportunity to attack; but happily the caravan caught it
up at one of those tombs of saint or warrior which the Moslem holds in
such veneration. Probably Batûta’s father-in-law was in the caravan;
for we are now told of dissensions between the two men, although
there is silence as to the subject of dispute. If the Prophet granted
the doubtful privilege of a plurality of wives, he mitigated the
inconveniences of polygamy by extreme facility in divorce. Batûta
availed himself of this, and sent his bride back to her father. The
ill-luck, which so soon attended this first matrimonial venture, did
not deter him from a second experiment: he lost no time in marrying
a fellow-countrywoman, presumably also a fellow-pilgrim; she was
the daughter of a dignitary of Fez. The pilgrims halted a whole day
to indulge in wedding festivity. On the 3rd April, 1326, nearly ten
months after Batûta’s departure from Tangier, the caravan drew up at
Alexandria, and his long and not too safe journey along the southern
coast of the “mid sea, moaning with memories,” was at an end.
Alexandria was, at that time, one of the great commercial centres of
the world. Shipping from all Christendom and North Africa were to be
found in its haven. Batûta tells us that it surpassed all ports he
ever saw, excepting Colon and Calicut in India, the Italian settlement
in the Crimea, and Zaitun (Thsiuan-Cheu) at that time the great
port of China. Alexandria was almost as remarkable for Moslem piety
as for trade. Batûta made a point of visiting a learned and pious
person there, who, like all Mohammedan saints, was reputed to possess
miraculous powers. The saint’s acuteness penetrated into the character
of his visitor: he perceived a born-wayfarer in the prescriptive
pilgrim, and told him that he had a taste for travel. “‘Yes,’ was my
reply,” says Batûta, “although at that time, I had formed no project of
distant travel. ... ‘You will see my brother in Sind, another brother
who is in India, and yet a third who is in China, and will bear my
salutations to them.’ I was astounded at what he said, and made up my
mind to visit these countries; nor did I give up my resolve until I had
beheld all three men.” “Only strongly impassioned men may achieve great
results,” says Mirabeau. We shall see what Batûta’s passion was and
what he accomplished.
His keen eye noted the glories of Alexandria; the great lighthouse
of Ptolemy, in the last stage of decay, and that great column of
Diocletian, mis-called Pompey’s Pillar. Stung more than ever by a
divine gadfly, he must run all over Lower Egypt, visiting every living
saint of renown and every relic of the past, especially such relics as
were the tombs or dwellings of departed saints. The attention which
holy men paid to their dreams and the confidence with which they
interpreted them recall the Hebrew Scriptures. Batûta tells us that
he visited an unusually gifted and eminently holy seer; and from
that time “good fortune attended me throughout my travels.” But our
traveller was no mere inattentive dreamer: the minuteness and accuracy
of his observations are remarkable; and his statements are fully
confirmed in the literature of contemporary and later travel, and other
records of the age in which he lived.
Among the places he visited, we find him at Damietta, where was
preserved the cell of the Chief of the Calenders. The very name
Calender recalls one’s youth and those fantastic fables of the “Arabian
Nights” which delighted it. A Calender was a Moslem under vow to
deliver himself from the allurements of earth and to consecrate his
life to things spiritual. It was the usage of all Calenders to shave
off beard and eyebrow; and Batûta supplies us with a story to account
for their disfigurement. The founder of the sect was a personable man,
and a certain lady fell in love with him and pursued him in every
conceivable way. But all her lures and devices coming to nought, she
contrived a still more ingenious stratagem. She got an old woman,
who, of course, could not read, to stop the beloved one, who was as
good-natured as he was devout, when on his way to the mosque, and ask
him to read a letter which she said she had received from her son. He
complied, and then quoth the old woman: “My son has a wife who dwells
in yonder house. Will you be so good as to read it in the passage so
that she may hear what her husband says?” He agreed to this also; but
no sooner had he crossed the threshold than the old woman clapped the
door to, and the love-sick lady appeared, attended by her slaves, who
forced him into an inner room. She cast herself at him, and began to
take liberties with him. So he made the excuse that it was necessary
for him to retire privately. No sooner was he alone, than he whipped
out a razor which he had with him, and divested himself of beard and
eyebrow. Then he presented himself before the enamoured woman, who
was so disgusted at the disfigurement that she had him chased from
the house. “Thus,” says Batûta, “by Divine Providence, his chastity
was preserved, and his sect shaved eyebrow and beard from that time
forward.”
This is one of the many anecdotes which Batûta thrusts into his
narrative. It is much more amusing than most of them. All Orientals
(and Moors are essentially Orientals) dote on pointless fable and
wild romance. They are insatiate for marvel, and gulp down any
stretch of fancy coloured by religion. Batûta’s farrago of stories
is, for the most part, silly. Happily, these legends are short. He
wrought diligently in hagiology; he was a-gape for yarns, remembered
them all and carefully recorded them; for they suited his own taste
and that of his nation and time. They are the gatherings of a man
profoundly learned in the Koran and Mohammedan lore; one concerned,
like the Pharisees of old, with minor questions of the Law and minutiæ
of ceremonial observance; vexed, as it were, about tithes of small
herbs. His main interest was his religion, and in his religion he was
a meticulous pedant. He had a natural love of the miraculous, and
religious credulity case-hardened it. Every mosque was a magnet to
draw him from afar; he made a pilgrimage to every Mohammedan shrine
he heard of; he cannot away without its legend. He reports wonders as
dull as they are extravagant. They possess neither genius nor charm
nor authority. Sometimes Oriental taste for the tawdry is to blame:
sometimes he is flatly gulled. But, in mundane matters, restless
impulses converted the credulous pundit into a man of the world. He
records accurately what he actually saw and heard, or what he believed
he saw and heard. He was interested in all that life had to offer; but
supremely so in all that had to do with Islam.
From the mouths of the Nile, Ibn Batûta approached that ancient land
where mournful memorials stand out, clear and awful, in the flood of
light; where every winding of the mysterious valley repeats the enigma
of the tomb. He came to Cairo, and saw the Pyramids,
“Memphis, and Thebes, and whatso’er of strange
Dark Ethiopia on her desert hills conceals.”
He tells us of all in architecture that struck him as worthy of
mention, of the products of the soil, of the habits of the people,
and of their government. He praises the emulation of the provincial
Emirs of Egypt in good works and the building of mosques. He watches
the gathering of great personages at the procession of the Mahmil, or
drapery woven to cover that sanctuary at Mecca wherein lay the object
of Arabian worship ages before Mohammed was born. For the Sacred Stone
fell from Paradise with Adam; and the Archangel Gabriel carried it to
him for the house which he built to God.
Magistrates and juris consults, the great officials of the Sultan and
the Syndics of Corporations, some on horseback, some on foot, assemble
at Cairo and await the Holy Drapery. The Emir who, this year, is to
head the annual pilgrimage, arrives with attendant troops and camels
and water-carriers. A conical box encloses the sacred cloth. All the
nondescript population of the city follow it. By some trick of the
camel-drivers, their beasts are urged to strange screeching; and the
motley throng makes its slow progress round the city, a winding river
of vivid colour and odd effect; a procession not without dignity, but
which an ancient Athenian had perhaps found a tawdry show compared with
the simple grace of the procession of the _peplops_ in his City of the
Violet Crown.
From Cairo, our pilgrim makes his way to Panopolis, then “a great town,
fine and well-built,” and so to Syene, partly following the river where
each new morning mocks the ruined temples, and partly taking short cuts
across the desert.
A holy man told him that he would find it impossible to fulfil his
pilgrimage just then; but he pushed across the unpeopled sands which
lie between the Nile and the Red Sea, and, after a trying journey
of fifteen days, found himself among a “black” race, called Bodjas,
who were settled at Aidhab, at that time a port of considerable
trade. These people wore yellow garments and affected the smallest of
head-gear. They would seem to have preserved their independence by
martial spirit; and, as is so often the case among a warrior-people,
daughters were not allowed to succeed to property. At this moment, they
were at war with the Mamaluke soldiery of Egypt; and it was impossible
for pilgrims to get transport across the Red Sea.
CHAPTER III
A ROUNDABOUT PILGRIMAGE
Now, besides the shrewd reading of Batûta’s character by the holy
man of Alexandria, who saw in him the born traveller, another Sheik
had also read his man aright and foretold that he should meet the
seer’s brothers in widely separated parts of the world. Oracles are
often suggestive and start the way to their own fulfilment. These
predictions actually came about. Batûta assures us that he had at the
time no intention of running over nearly all of the known earth; but by
now an inborn tendency to keep moving had developed into a veritable
_wanderlust_. “A brief space,” sings Pindar, “a brief space hath
opportunity for men; but of him it is known surely when it cometh, and
he waiteth thereon.” Batûta’s opportunity had come to him. Stopped from
reaching Mecca during the present pilgrimage, he resolved to retrace
his steps to Cairo, push on to Palestine, visit its sacred spots and
the renowned cities of Syria, join the Syrian Caravan, and take the
long, fearsome journey from Damascus over the Arabian waste. Here was
occasion to visit holy places only less interesting to the Moslem
than to the Christian, to wander at leisure in notable lands, and to
compare the amazing ways of the tribes of men. He sold all that might
encumber him, and returned to High Egypt. The Nile was in flood; he
sailed down it, spent a night at Cairo, and pushed on, (A.D. 1326).
There was a caravan-route to Palestine, north of Sinai, with stations
in the desert. Each station had its _Khân_, or inn, an institution
which afforded bed and stabling, but not food or fodder. But there
was a shop at each station, where all that might be wanted was sold;
and there was a water-cistern, free to all comers at the door of each
inn. At the frontier of Palestine, there was a custom-house, and a
passport must be produced before one was allowed to cross the boundary
in either direction. At Khalil, a town of Hebron, remarkable for its
beauty, and also for the unusual distinction of being well lit at
night, Batûta admired a mosque said to have been reared by those genii
whom the wisdom of Solomon had made his servants, and whom he evoked
by his mystic talisman. Passing through Palestine, our pilgrim visited
those very few places the sanctity of which could be established by
indisputable record and those very many places which owed their fame
to rank imagination or crafty legend begotten of sordid avarice. He
went to the birthplace of Jesus, because the Moslem regards Jesus as
a fore-runner of Mohammed: and from Bethlehem he came to Jerusalem.
He thought the Mosque there as fine a building as any on earth. It
occupied one side of a vast courtyard, and its fretted walls and roof
shone with gilding and vivid colours. In the middle of the Mosque was a
rock, so brilliant in hue that no idea of its glory could be given. And
this was the rock whence (so says tradition) Mohammed rode up to heaven
on the sacred winged ass.
Tyre, “mother of cities fraught with pride,” Acre and Askalon
were in ruins—the result of the Crusades. Tiberias rejoiced in a
bathing-establishment. Having plenty of time to fill up before the
Syrian caravan should leave Damascus, the pilgrim wandered hither and
thither, backwards and forwards, and saw many famous cities, such as
Beyrout, Tripoli, Aleppo, Baalbec, Emessa and Antioch. He found all
the people who inhabited the district of Gabala sadly misguided; for
they believed Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet to be a god. They neither
purified themselves, nor prayed, nor fasted. They had turned mosques
into cattle-sheds; and, should any pious wanderer wish to pray in one
of the desecrated buildings, these heretics were wont to gibe at him
and shout: “Don’t pray, ass that thou art; fodder shall be given thee.”
Nomads from Central Asia had penetrated Asia Minor and reached the
Mediterranean shore. Here and there they had settled; just as Scythian
and Hun, Goth and Vandal once forced their way into the Roman Empire
and effected lodgement within it before they rose and overthrew it. But
the Emirs, whatever their nationality, would seem to have maintained
decent government. Sometimes the despotisms of Islam surprise us by
such unexpected qualities as sagacity, prudence, and self-restraint.
At Latakia, Batûta found that, when anyone was condemned to die, the
official appointed to superintend the execution was expected to go up
to wherever the condemned man might be, return without apprehending
him, and ask the Emir to repeat the sentence. Not until three such
journeys had been made and the sentence thrice delivered was it carried
out. On the other hand, secret murder was a favourite political engine.
Our pilgrim beheld, on the heights of Lebanon, strongholds of that
military sect, the Hashashin, to which we owe the word assassin. “They
will admit no stranger among them, unless he be of their own body. The
Sultan, El Malik El Nasir, uses them as his arrows; and, through them,
he strikes down those of his foes that dwell afar from him; such, for
instance, as may dwell in Persia or anywhere else. Various duties are
allotted to different men among them; and when the Sultan wishes one of
them to waylay some foe, he bargains as to the price of blood. Should
the murderer accomplish his work, and return to safety, his reward is
paid to him; and should he fail, his heirs receive it. These folk carry
poisoned knives wherewithal to strike their prey.”
Laodicea would seem to have been held by a ruler who, like the
robber-barons of Germany or the pirates of Dalmatia, was a terror to
the trader: “he is said to take by violence all the ships he can.” Like
all travellers, Batûta is enthusiastic about the glories of Lebanon.
He found it “the most fertile mountain on Earth, where are copious
springs of water and shady groves; and it is laden with many kinds of
fruit. And I beheld there very many of that host of hermits who have
left the world that they may devote themselves to God.”
Two thousand feet above the sea-level lay Damascus, most ancient of
cities, with a delightful climate and a productive soil. “The chief
Mosque is the most splendid in the world, most tastefully built,
excelling in beauty and grace.” His interest in mosques and public
worship is inextinguishable; and he recounts the dramatic methods of a
certain preacher. There dwelt at Damascus an imam whose orthodoxy was
not above suspicion; indeed he had already suffered imprisonment on
that score. It so fell out that, one Friday, I was at his preaching.
He came down the stairway of the pulpit calling out: ‘God came down
to the Earthly Paradise in the very same way as I am coming down.’ A
theologian who was there denied this; and the congregation, set on the
preacher and beat him. A complaint was made against this too literal
expositor; he was cast into prison, and there he died.
Islam has always been remarkable for charity. Damascus boasted many
benevolent institutions. “As I was passing along a street one day,”
says Batûta “I saw a slave-child who had dropped a porcelain dish, made
in China, which lay in pieces on the ground. A crowd gathered round the
little Mameluke, and one of them said, ‘Pick up the pieces and carry
them to the overseer of the Utensils Charity.’ This man took the little
slave with him to the overseer, who at once gave him what money was
necessary to buy such another dish. This is one of the best of these
endowments; for the owner of the slave would doubtless have beaten him
or scolded him severely. Moreover he would have been heart-broken. So
the endowment really relieves sorrowful bosoms.” Batûta gives more
than one little indication that children (and even his own wives
occasionally) could touch his heart. The Moslem can be very pitiful;
he usually treats his slaves kindly; and one does not wonder that our
pilgrim speaks warmly about the piety and high civilization of Damascus
in his time. He was licensed to teach in that beautiful city; but found
time to visit the cavern which is one of the places where Abraham is
said to have been born, and the grotto where Abel’s blood was still to
be seen; “for his brother dragged him thither.”
Batûta started with the Pilgrim’s Caravan to the Holy Cities on
September 1st, 1326. Many hundreds of perilous miles lay before him.
The mere solitude of the desert always inspires insupportable dread,
and to secure a sufficient supply of water is a problem not always to
be solved. Batûta was told how, during one pilgrimage, water gave out,
and “a skin of it rose to a thousand _dinars_; yet both seller and
buyer perished.” Ancient travellers always speak with awe of the weird
noises which suddenly break the silence of the desert and inspire a
new dread. Shifting sands cause these sounds. Batûta tells us of one
huge sandhill called The Mount of Drums, because the Bedouins “say that
a sound as of drums is heard there every Thursday night.” But this
particular pilgrimage, although made along a difficult and dangerous
route, was comparatively uneventful, as were all the journeys Batûta
made to Mecca. He gives small space to it, and we shall find the record
of a much livelier and more interesting pilgrimage from Damascus in
the pages of Varthema. The journey was often one of perils, grave and
manifold.
CHAPTER IV
GLIMPSES OF ARABIA, PERSIA AND EAST AFRICA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
After duly visiting the tomb of the Prophet at Medina and performing
the prescribed rites at Mecca, Batûta, still insatiate of travel,
joined the Persian caravan on its homeward journey, and soon came to
the place where, to this day, the devil is lapidated. “It is a great
collection of stones. Everyone who comes to it hurls one. They say
there was once a heretic who was stoned to death there.” From Medina,
Central Arabia was crossed, and a journey of 600 miles brought the
caravan to a town in the Nedjd which was one of the claimants to the
possession of the bones of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet. Where
Ali really was buried is unknown. But the excited mind worked a great
effect on the body here, for, on a certain night of the year devoted
to religious revival, “cripples were brought to the tomb, even from
far-away lands, and were laid on it soon after sunset. Then there was
praying and reciting of the Koran and prostrations; and, about midnight
the halt rose up, sound and hale.”
At Bussora, the port so opulent and its trades so flourishing in the
days of Haroun-al-Raschid, one dared not venture to travel abroad
without the protection of a Bedouin escort: “There is no journeying
possible in these parts except with them.” Yet traces remained of the
former wealth of the city. “Bussora is richer in palm-trees than any
place in the world. Its people are generous and friendly to strangers.
One of the finest mosques is paved with red pebbles. And therein is
kept that beautiful copy of the Koran which Othman was reading when he
was murdered; and the stain of his blood is on it yet.”
In this district he came across vestiges of the worship of Baal.
Certain of the fanatical sect called Haïderia lit a fire of wood, ate
of the burning embers, rolled in them, and then trampled them with bare
feet until all flame was put out. Later on, he saw the same strange
feat done by the same strange sect in India, when there came to a
place near Delhi, where he was encamped, men led by a very black man
and wearing collars and bracelets of iron. “They stayed all night with
us. Their chief asked me for wood to light a fire for them to dance
by, and I requested the deputy-ruler of that part to let them have it.
After the second evening prayer, the pile was lit, and, when the wood
had become burning charcoal, they struck up music and began to dance
into the fire; and they rolled themselves in it. Then their head-man
asked me for a tunic, and I gave him one of very fine make. He put it
on, rolled in the fire, and beat the embers so that the fire ceased to
flare, and it went out. He then brought the tunic to me, and I found
it to be undamaged. And thereat I marvelled greatly.” And between
these two experiences he came across Haïderia in Eastern Persia at
Turbet-Haïdarj: “They wore an iron collar, and, what is stranger still,
their _virilia_ are incarcerated to ensure their chastity.”
He now sailed down the united Tigris and Euphrates and along the coast
of Persia in a small boat, and, landing at a port, travelled across
the plains of Southern Persia, with high mountains right and left. He
found the ways in mountainous Lâristân cut through the rocks. These
parts were governed by a tributary ruler. “In every one of the stations
in this country are cells made ready for those bent on religious
undertakings and for travellers. Every newcomer is provided with bread,
flesh, and sweetmeats.” After two months of travel, Batûta came to
Ispahan, in the heart of Persia. The Sultan had already provided him
with money to cover the cost of his wanderings in Persia. Eastern
rulers regarded munificence as a duty: Eastern travellers claimed it as
a right. From Ispahan he went southward to Shiraz, which he found a
large and well-built city, but inferior to Damascus. “The inhabitants
are honest, religious, and virtuous, especially the women. I went
thither in order to visit that paragon of saints and of those that
have the power to work miracles, Majd Oddîn. I put up therefore at the
College which he founded. He was judge of the City: but, being advanced
in years, his brother’s sons took on his duties for him.... He is much
venerated by the Emirs of that land, so that, when they are before him,
they lay hold of both their ears; which is the mark of devotion due to
the Sultan.”
At El Hilla, on the banks of the Euphrates, he found a curious belief
that the last of the Imams was still alive and dwelt there; but that
he was invisible to mortal eye. “Every day, a hundred armed men come
to the portal of the mosque. They lead with them a beast saddled and
bridled; and a gathering of folk beat drums and blow trumpets. They cry
aloud: ‘Come forth, Lord of the Times; for the earth is filled with
evil doing and deeds of shame. Now is the hour for thee to appear, so
that, through thee, Allah may divide the truth from the lie.’ They wait
on until night, when needs must that they go home.”
“It is an uncontrolled truth,” says Swift, “that no man ever made an
ill figure who understood his own talents.” Ibn Batûta, theologian,
jurist, and, by this time, experienced man of the world, knew his
powers; and one of his powers was knowing how to employ the rest. We
now find him accompanying the Tartar Ruler of Persia, the “Sultan of
the Two Iraks and Khôrasân, to Tabriz, whither the monarch marched with
his army.” Tabriz is not more than a hundred miles from Armenia and the
Caspian Sea. Batûta tells us how his eyes were dazzled by the lustre of
precious jewels which well-dressed slaves purchased to decorate their
Tartar mistresses. The Sultan gave him a fine dress and other handsome
presents; and he resolved to make a second pilgrimage to Mecca;
whereupon the Sultan ordered that he should be provided with all that
was necessary to further such a worthy end. But, before starting he had
time to travel along the banks of the Tigris as far north as Diarbekir;
for he wished to visit a saint and worker of miracles, reputed “not to
break his fast during forty days at a stretch, save with a crust of
barley bread.” On getting back to Bagdad he found the caravan ready to
start, and took his departure with it.
Persia, exhausted by the long struggle with the Roman Empire, fell
an easy prey to the Arabs; and, although it enjoyed a second era of
power and prosperity under the Caliphs of Bagdad, first Seljuk Turks
conquered it, and then Mongolians, under Chinghiz Khân, which, being
interpreted, is the Great Khân, no other than the “Tartre Cambyuskan”
of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, the “Cambuscan” bold of Milton’s II
Penseroso. Mongolians had now possessed the land for little less than
a century, and they and the Sultans of Egypt held each other in dread.
Religious differences have always been convenient as a war-cry; and,
from of old, religious unity has been wont to fulfil some of the
functions of our modern patriotism. The Caliph at Cairo was the head of
the Orthodox Sunnites, Moslems who hold the Sunna, or body of tradition
which professes to preserve such teaching and laws as the Prophet gave
by word of mouth as of equal authority with the Koran; but the Tartar
Sultan of Persia was a Shiite, or one of those who reject the Sunna,
and hold that Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, was Mohammed’s legitimate
successor. Hence Batûta found the Shiite Sultan putting pressure on the
Sunnites of the great cities of Bagdad, Shiraz, and Ispahan to make
them renounce the form of faith sacred to them because it was that of
their fathers and further endeared because the Caliphate at Bagdad had
brought such lustre to the Persian name.
Our pilgrim arrived at Mecca, for the second time, without meeting with
any remarkable adventure in crossing Central Arabia. One is surprised
to find so restless a spirit content to remain three years in Mecca.
But Batûta was a theologian and jurist; one, moreover, who held the
outward observances of Islam in high respect; and he dwelt during the
whole of that time at a Mohammedan theological school. And now the old
passion for travel returns, and he is completely in its grip. He is
away to Jidda on the Red Sea, embarks on one of those Eastern ships
which were even more wretchedly built and worse navigated than those
of the Western nations, and is forced by tempest into a port between
Aidhab and Suakin. Nothing daunted, he puts to sea again and arrives in
Arabia the Happy. A Cadi welcomes the distinguished sage and traveller,
entertains him for three days, and, on the fourth, takes him to the
court of the Sultan at Zebid, one of the chief towns of Yemen. Batûta a
true Oriental delights in pomp and ceremony, and describes the audience
in full.
“The Sultan is to be saluted by touching the ground with forefinger,
raising it to the head, and saying ‘May Allah give thee enduring rule.’
This I did, copying the Cadi; who seated himself at the right hand of
the Sultan, and told me to be seated facing him. The monarch sat on a
daïs, which was covered with ornamental silk stuff; and right and left
of him stood his warriors. Around him are sword and buckler-bearers;
nearer are bowmen; and in front of these, on either side, the
chamberlain, the first men of the State, and the private scribe.
Djandar, the Emir, is also present before him and the officers of the
guard; but the latter keep their distance. When the Sultan takes his
seat, all cry aloud, ‘In the name of Allah!’ and they repeat this when
he rises; so that all who are in the Hall of Audience know precisely
when he sits down and when he rises. Directly the Monarch is seated,
all those who are wont to visit the Court and do him obeisance, come
in and salute him. This done, each takes his allotted place to right
or left, nor does he leave it or sit down unless commanded to do so.
In the latter case, the Sultan says to the Emir Djandar, who is Chief
Constable of the Palace, ‘Tell such an one to be seated.’ And the man
so commanded comes forward a little way and sits down on a carpet in
front of and between those who are grouped to right and left. Meats
are then brought forth; and these are of two kinds, one kind being for
the many, the other kind for people of importance, that is to say, the
Sultan, the Chief Justice, the principal Sheriffs, jurisconsults and
guests. The other sort of viands serves for the rest of the Sheriffs,
jurisconsults, judges, sheiks, emirs, and officers of the army.
Everyone takes the place allotted to him at the feast and everybody has
room enough. I found the same form observed at the Court of the Sultan
of India; and I know not which monarch hath copied it from the other.”
After visiting several cities of Yemen, which were flourishing centres
of trade at that time, Batûta reached Aden, “a large city, but without
water, and nothing can grow there. Rain is caught and stored up in
tanks, and that is the only water to drink. But rich traders make their
abode in Aden, and hither vessels come from India.”
Now the Arabs had sought for wealth in the products of Ethiopia; they
had advanced along the Eastern Coast of Africa, and had established
ports considerably south of Zanzibar. Batûta had a fancy to see these
tropical parts; so he sailed from Aden as far as Kiloa or Kilwa, which
is nine degrees south of the equator. The ship touched at various
ports where there were Arab settlements; some of them by no means
salubrious or agreeable. At Zeila, he experienced “an unbearable stench
from decaying fish and the blood of camels, which are slaughtered
in the streets:” At another station, Mogdishu, he was received with
much civility. “When a ship draws up, the young men of the place come
forth, and each accosts a trader, and becomes his host. Should there
be a theologian or a man of station on board, he is taken to dwell
with the Cadi. When it was known that I was there, the Cadi came to
the beach, and his students with him, and I took up my abode with him.
He led me to the Sultan who is styled the Sheik.... A servant brought
vegetables and fawfel-nut ... and rose-water to us ... and this is the
highest honour that can be done to a stranger.... The people are far
too fat, because they gorge. One of them will eat as much as a whole
congregation of worshippers ought to do.” From Mogdishu, the ship went
on to Mombasa and Kiloa for a cargo of ivory. Batûta tells us of the
productions of tropical East Africa, and how “the greatest gift to the
peoples here is ivory, which is the tooth of the elephant.”
From Kiloa, he coasted back to the straits of Bab-el-Mandel, ran along
the Gulf of Aden, and landed at Zafar, in Oman. He tells us, as does
Marco Polo, how the natives feed their cattle on fish. Zafar “is a
filthy place, plagued with flies by reason of the markets for fish and
dates. Copper and tin pieces of money are used. The heat is so great
that those who dwell there must bathe several times a day; and they
suffer greatly from elephant’s leg (elephantiasis) and from ruptures.
It is indeed beyond a marvel that they will hurt no one unless it be to
return some hurt done to them. Many Sultans have tried to subdue them,
yet naught but bale have they gotten thereby.”
Batûta travelled past the shores of Oman in a small coaster which
touched at many ports. He found the banana, the betel-tree, and the
cocoa-nut flourishing in this corner of Arabia, and describes them
and their uses. Wishing to see what the hinterland was like, he took
a seven-days’ journey from the coast, but found that it took six days
to cross a desert. The inland people would seem hardly to have emerged
from primitive promiscuity; for he tells us that “there wives are most
base and husbands shew no sign of jealousy.” Jealousy as to the harem
is an excellent masculine virtue to our good Moslem.
Crossing the Persian Gulf, the island of Hormuz was reached, whither
traders had recently migrated from old Hormuz on the Persian mainland.
Vases and lamp-stands of rock-salt were among the manufactures of
this important mart and port of call; and hard by were the renowned
fisheries for “orient pearl.” He was told, and believed, that the
divers remained two hours under water, and was astounded to see people
amusing themselves by crawling from orbit to orbit of the battered
skull of a spermaceti whale which had been washed ashore.
Crossing the narrow strait to Persia, he hired an escort of Turkoman
settlers, “a hardy and brave race, who occupy these parts and know
the roads. Without them, there is no travelling.” His object in
returning to Persia was to visit a man of saintly repute who dwelt
far away in Lâristân. It took four days to cross a waterless desert
where the Simoon blows in summer, “and kills everyone in its path;
and their limbs drop away from the trunk.” At Lar, the capital, he
found the saint in his cell, seated on the ground. He was clad in an
ancient garment made of wool. Yet he was in the habit of giving costly
presents, and had food and fresh clothing ready for all who visited
him.
CHAPTER V
TO INDIA BY WAY OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE STEPPES
Batûta joined the Persian Caravan to Mecca, and once again journeyed
across the territory of the Wahabi in Central Arabia. This, his third
pilgrimage, over, he resolved to see India. But the wretched ship in
which he put forth was storm-tossed, and finally driven into a little
port on the Egyptian coast. So he made across the desert, seeing, now
and again, the tents of a few wandering Arabs or an ostrich or gazelle.
After much hardship, he reached Syene and travelled once more along the
banks of the Nile to Cairo. And now the fancy seized him to revisit
Asia Minor, see Southern Russia and Turkestan, and get to India over
the Hindu Kûsh. He retraced his old route through Palestine and Syria
as far as Latakia. There he embarked on a Genoese vessel for Alâia, on
the south coast of Asia Minor, which he calls “Rûm, because it belonged
of yore to the Romans; and, to this day many of them dwell here under
the protection of the Moslems.” He was now farther north than he had
been before. One of the petty Sultans gave him and those who were with
him the usual gracious greeting of the East, and furnished them with
provisions. On reaching Anatolia, he found the country broken up into a
multitude of contending States, many of these being held by Turkomans.
The secular efforts of the keepers of wandering herds on the Steppes
of Asia to settle in the rich, civilized countries of Europe and Asia
had established the nomad in Persia and Asia Minor. Successive waves of
conquest had swept over the fair lands south of the Oxus and Caspian,
and, one by one, the victorious tribes settled down and received a
higher civilization than their own from the subjugated tillers of the
soil. But now the Empire of the Seljuk Turks was broken into fragments.
Among the new rulers the Ottoman Turks, a small class of the tribe of
Oghuz, were gradually and with difficulty gaining territory and power
in Asia Minor. But there was as yet no hint that they were destined
to inherit the Roman Empire of the East and to rule from the Danube
to the Euphrates. Some of these little States were ancient provinces,
with splendid and busy cities that rivalled Cairo in wealth and beauty.
Some were carved out of the mouldering Byzantine Empire; some had
been torn from Persia. There were also solitary fortresses and towns
held by Turkomans who lived by rapine and piracy; and some States
only preserved their precarious existence by the aid of a force of
slaves who had been purchased or torn from their Christian parents in
childhood and rigidly trained to military life. These Mamelukes were
sent by their overlord, the Sultan of Egypt.
Yet the tradition of good government was far from being lost. The new
rulers were vigorous and prudent. It would seem that one of the secrets
of Ottoman success lay in that close supervision of subordinates which
recent conquest requires. Consequently, on the whole, the country was
prosperous. Batûta found that the ruler of one province never remained
more than a month in one place. He moved about to inspect fortresses
and see the condition of various districts. This man had besieged a
city for twelve years. It is not without precedent in Moslem history
for a siege to last longer than that of Troy; a fact which shows how
little the husbandman was interfered with in these local wars. Even
in France at the close of the Dark Ages, the tiller of the soil was
safe from the invader of his field if he laid his hand on the plough.
Batûta wandered at large, and was received in all places with warm
hospitality. On landing, he took up his abode in the college of a
sheik; and, on the second day, a poorly-clad man came to invite him
and those who were with him to a feast. He wondered “how so poor a
man could bear the charges of feasting us, who were many.” The sheik
explained that the man was one of a society of silk-merchants who had
a “cell” of their own. The guests were received with much courtesy
and hospitality, and were liberally, supplied with money to cover
their travelling expenses. Batûta learned that, in every town of the
Turkomans, there was constituted a brotherhood of young men to supply
strangers with food and other necessaries. A president, styled The
Brother, was elected by those of the same trade, and even a foreigner
might occupy the post. Each guild built a “cell” for itself in which
food, a saddled steed, and all that might be wanted by travellers was
stored. One of the duties of a President was to call daily on the
members of his guild or brotherhood, and assist them in their diverse
needs. Every evening the brotherhood returned his call; and whatsoever
had not been needed was sold to support the “cell.” Should any
traveller have arrived during the day, he was entertained. Otherwise
“the brotherhood of youths” spent the evening in song, dance, and
feast. On one occasion, directly Batûta’s party arrived at the gate of
a city, two knots of men rushed to seize the bridles of their horses,
and there was a struggle between them. This proceeding greatly alarmed
the travellers, the more so that none of them was able to speak the
language. But a man who knew Arabic came forward to assure them that
there was no cause for fear. The rival parties were two brotherhoods
disputing as to which should entertain the travellers. The antagonists
cast lots, and the travellers went to the cell of one guild on the
first day and to that of the other guild the next day. At another time,
Batûta put up at the “cell” of one who was a member of a society of
youths and who had a great number of disciples distinguished by their
coarse ragged mantles and closely fitting hose. The petty Sultans, too,
would provide horses or provisions.
The ruler of Bigni, a man proud of the possession of “a stone which had
fallen from heaven,” gave Batûta gold, clothes, two horses and a slave.
Although a severe Sunnite, our traveller shows no great religious
hatred to Shiites, Jews, or Christians; but he liked to keep heretics
and infidels in their place. He tells a story which is instructive as
to the medical attainments of the Jew and the relations between Jew and
Moslem. At Bigni an old man came and saluted the Sultan. All rose to
do him honour. “He sat himself on the daïs, opposite the Sultan, and
the readers of the Koran were below him. I asked the sage, ‘who is this
sheik?’ He smiled and kept silent; but when I asked again, he replied:
‘he is a Jewish physician of whom we all have need. That is why we rose
when he came in.’ Whereat I fumed, and said to him: ‘thou dog, son of a
dog, how darest thou, a mere Jew, to seat thyself above the readers of
the Koran?’ I had raised my voice, and this astonished the Sultan, who
asked why I had done so. The sage told him, and the Jew was humbled,
and went away very much cast down. When we returned, the sage said to
me: ‘well have you done! Allah bestow his blessing on thee! None other
but thou had dared to speak thus to the Jew. Thou hast taught him to
know his place.’”
Language-difficulty caused some embarassment during this long journey
through Asia Minor; so an interpreter, who had done the pilgrimage to
Mecca and who spoke Arabic, was engaged by Batûta’s party. But the
Hadji cheated them abominably; so one day they asked him what he had
stolen from them that day. The thief, quite unabashed told them the
precise amount; “whereat we could but laugh and put up with it.”
Batûta embarked from Sinope, on the southern shore of the Euxine, for
Sodaia, in the Crimea. Sodaia was one of the great ports of the world.
Venice had established a factory there a century back, but had been
ejected. The Crimea was chiefly in the hands of the Genoese, who
were established at Caffa; but the Italian cities were in pressing
danger of ejection and of losing their Levantine and Euxine trade.
After suffering much distress on the voyage and “only just escaping
from being drowned,” we find Batûta at Caffa; and for the first time
suffering from the annoyance of those Christian bells which have been
a nuisance, not merely to Moslems, but to the more sensitive among
European ears from the days when they were perhaps necessary, yet when
Rabelais objurgated them in his chapter on the “Island of bells,” to
these modern times of clocks and watches. In all these cosmopolitan
towns, each nation occupied a separate fortified quarter. The trade of
Southern Russia was great; and one is surprised to find that horses
were exported to India.
Batûta made across a land where the quiet air was no longer annoyed by
the insistent clang which was an insult at once to his faith and his
ears. He found Southern Russia a plain without hill or tree. Waggons
might travel for six months through a green desert, the silence broken
only by lowing of cattle, hoarse voice of an occasional herdsman,
or languid stir of some collection of huts which passed for a town.
Cattle were protected by severe laws severely enforced. “Should a
beast be stolen, the thief must return it with nine more. If unable to
furnish these, his children are taken into slavery; and, if he have no
children, he is slaughtered like a sheep.... The only fuel is dung.”
Batûta was bent on visiting Uzbek Khân, the powerful Tartar who now
represented the dynasty founded by Chinghiz Khân, the blacksmith. Uzbek
was one of the seven mightiest monarchs of the world, the others being
the Sultan of the West; the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, the Sultan
of the two Iraks (Persia and Mesopotamia), the Khân of Turkestan,
the Sultan of India, and the Emperor of China. Our traveller hired
a waggon, and, after many monotonous days, arrived at the camp of
the Khân. He was amazed to behold “a city in motion; complete in its
streets, mosques, and cooking houses.” Nor was he less bewildered at
the consideration given to women by all men, from the Khân downwards,
and at seeing them going about unveiled, yet “religious, charitable,
and given to good works.” The wife of an Emir would ride, magnificently
attired, in a coach. “Often she is accompanied by her husband; but one
would take him for a mere attendant.” Uzbek Khân was “wont to give
audience on Friday, his four wives, unveiled, sitting enthroned to
right and left of him, a son on either side, and a daughter in front.
Princes and Emirs are gathered around. People enter into the presence
in order of rank. When a wife comes in, he takes her by the hand and
leads her to her throne. Each wife has a separate abode; and not to
visit these ladies is looked upon as a breach of good manners.” It is
evident that the ancestral habits of a nomadic people were carefully
preserved under conditions which were rapidly changing. The Sultan sent
his visitor a horse, a sheep, and koumiss in a leathern bottle.
Batûta wished to see for himself the great change in the length of day
and night which takes place as one travels northward. So Uzbek sent
him to far-distant Bulgar, on the Volga, a place in the latitude of
Newcastle. Here he was told of a “Land of Darkness,” which lay forty
days’ journey to the North. “Traders alone go there; and only in big
companies. Dogs draw them over the ice in sledges; and the travellers
must take all food and wood for fuel with them. The dogs are fed before
anyone, and experienced dogs, who have done the journey several times,
are chosen to lead the pack. On arriving at the proper place, each
trader puts down his goods and retires. Next day, he finds furs put
down as barter. Should he be content with these, he carries them off;
but should he not be satisfied, he leaves them where they are, and more
are added. But sometimes the natives will take back their own goods,
and leave those of the traders. The traders never see anyone, and know
not whether they deal with human beings or with demons.” Strange as
this practice seems, there is other evidence that exchange of goods was
made in this way in very high latitudes. Sledge-dogs were used very
much farther south than they are to-day. Batûta speaks of the Russians
as being “Christians with red hair, blue eyes, ugly, faithless, and
rich in silver shrines.”
When Batûta returned to Uzbek, he went on to Astrakhan with him. “Here
the Sultan dwells in very cold weather.... The city is on one of the
great rivers of the world (the Volga), which is crossed by laying
thousands of bundles of hay on the ice.”
Now, the third of Uzbek’s four wives was a daughter of the Christian
Emperor of Constantinople. History makes no mention of this lady; but
there is no reason to doubt the fact, however surprising; for, since
1265 A.D. the Byzantine Emperor had more than once given a natural
daughter or legitimate sister in marriage to powerful Mongolian
Sovereigns, in order to get their support against the encroaching Turks
of Asia Minor.
This particular lady was expecting her confinement and desired to
return home for the event. She had requested the Khân to allow her to
do so, and he had sanctioned the journey. Batûta saw an opportunity of
seeing the famous Christian metropolis, if the Khân would allow him
to join the escort. Such a petition from a foreign stranger naturally
aroused suspicion as to his motives; but Batûta was skilful in allaying
this; and we find him setting forth with a parting gift from the Khân
of a fine dress, several horses, and cash. Even the Khân’s ladies and
his sons and daughters gave him presents. The princess was escorted
by 500 horse and 4,500 foot. The Khân, accompanied by his head-wife
and heir-apparent rode with her the first stage; the heir-apparent and
his suite went on the next stage of a journey that took two months.
For some reason or other a very round-about route was chosen; first a
waterless, uninhabited waste was crossed; then the Caucasus approached
to within a day’s march. When a border-fortress was reached, the escort
returned; and now the real motive of the lady becomes discernable. The
unhappy woman had been the victim of state-craft, a puppet danced off
to a semi-barbarian husband in the interests of Constantinople. In
spite of the respect paid to women in her new abode, she was heartily
sick of Tartar discomfort and Moslem ways. Accustomed to the luxurious
ease and refinements of the Byzantine Court, she loathed the uncouth
manners of a half-tamed people and their rough life. She sighed for the
amenities of her father’s palace and the high civilization of his city.
She left her travelling mosque at the fortress, drank wine, and is said
to have eaten swine’s flesh. From Batûta’s point of view, she relapsed
into infidelity; yet he has no bitter word to cast at her. When a
day’s journey from her native city, a younger brother came to meet her
with 5,000 cavalry, all in shining armour. Next day the heir-apparent
arrived with 10,000 cavalry, and when quite near to Constantinople,
the greater part of the population turned out, decked in their best,
and shouting so that it was difficult to decide whether they or the
drums made most noise. The parents came forth from the gate in full
royal state, and the poor released princess threw herself on the ground
before them, kissed it, and even kissed the hooves of their horses. All
the bells of Constantinople were a-ringing, and the royal party entered
the city with glittering pomp.
Batûta was unwilling to enter “Istambûl” without the Emperor’s special
sanction; it was not too safe a place for a Moslem. Andronicus
Palæologus the Younger gave him a safe-conduct; but he was searched
for concealed arms at the fifth gate—a practice which, afterwards, he
found to obtain in India. As he passed through the gateways the guards
muttered: “Saracens! Saracens!” And Saracens they had indeed occasion
to hold in mortal horror and dread.
Our pilgrim-traveller gets sadly muddled about names and dates just
here. Evidently, he derived the information he gives us from a Jew,
who acted as interpreter, and who either spoke Arabic imperfectly
or heartily enjoyed “pulling his leg.” And as to dates, just here,
Batûta’s memory fails him a little. He was told that the Pope of
Rome paid an annual visit to Santa Sophia, and was received with
the greatest veneration and ceremonial. And he calls the Emperor
Andronicus, “George.” Andronicus plied him with eager questions as to
Jerusalem and the Holy Places of Palestine. He only saw the outside of
Santa Sophia.
Now, the Princess made open objection to return to her husband, and had
her will. She gave Batûta a money-present for his services; but the
Byzantine Empire was in decay, and, to his loss in exchange, the coins
debased. He returned Eastward with a small escort, and met Uzbek Khân
at Sara. We read in Dan Chaucer how
“At Sarray, in the land of Tartarye
Ther dwelt a king that werreyed Russye.”
Nothing will content him but to see those famous cities beyond the
Oxus, and Balk, with its great mosque of the precious pillars, before
he proceeds to India. He travels 40 days through a desert. The whole
district is one vast desolation; and he tells us how Chinghiz Khân,
the blood-stained blacksmith, a conquering hero, a strict Moslem, and
therefore “a man of liberal mind,” subdued district after district
until he was lord of China and the Middle East; how he carried off the
youth of Bokhâra and Samarkand, Khôrasân and Irak, and slaughtered and
pillaged so that he left nothing but ruin behind him. Batûta visited
the Great Khân of Turkestan and more than one camp of petty rulers.
“The purple robe makes Emperors, not priests,” said Ambrose the Bishop
of Milan to the Emperor Theodosius; and the Emperor remarked how hard
it was for a ruler to meet with an outspoken and unfearing man. Batûta
tells us of an amusing incident which indicates, not merely how an
imam could be outspoken to a king, but also that, if Mohammedanism
had admitted of a sacerdotal hierarchy, the same exercise of priestly
authority which cast Theodosius prostrate and weeping before the Altar
at Milan and kept Heinrich shivering in the snows of Canossa, while
awaiting the condescension of Hildebrand, would have obtained in the
Moslem as in the Christian world. When Tirim Siri Khân wished prayers
to be delayed until he should come to the mosque, the imam bade the
messenger return to the Khân and ask him whether prayers were ordered
of God or of him, and commanded the muezzin to summon the faithful as
usual. After the second prostration the Khân arrived, meekly remained
at the doorway, and joined in the prayers. When worship was over, he
grasped the hand of the imam, who laughed heartily, and the twain
sat together afterwards, Batûta being with them. The Khân told the
traveller to declare to his countrymen how the Ruler of the Turkomans
had sat with a poor man of the poorest Persians. This worthy imam lived
by the labour of his hands, and refused all the gifts his sovereign
offered him. No wonder that warm friendship sprang up between these two
men, and that both were respected and obeyed. But greater regard was
paid to the statutes than to this monarch even; for, after Batûta left,
Tirim Siri broke a law laid down by his grandfather and therefore was
deposed.
In one province he found “a laudable practice. A whip is hung up in
every mosque, and whoever stays away from worship is beaten by the imam
before all the congregation, and fined to boot, the fine going towards
the upkeep of the mosque.” The time came when Batûta, clothed with
authority, itched to exercise it in the same praiseworthy way.
Batûta now visits Herat, turns north-westward to Meshed, the capital
of Khôrasân and holy city of the Shiites, thence travels to Jam, the
birthplace of Jami, the Persian poet, and at Tus finds the tomb of the
Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, who died there when on a military expedition.
Now, Haroun-al-Raschid was a Sunnite; so the orthodox “place lighted
candles on his grave, but the followers of Ali (Shiites) are wont to
give it a kick.” One recalls the story of how, when the Indian Emperor
had his attention drawn to a dog defiling the grave of a heretic, he
remarked that “the beast resembles orthodoxy.” Heterodox or orthodox,
according to point of view, here were flourishing colleges filled with
students, and saintly men dwelling in secluded cells. To work miracles
has always been a distinction of the saint; but the Eastern saint was
also permitted to live on to an age incredibly ripe. Batûta is always
running across some man of the age attained by old Parr, and upwards. A
century and a half is a moderate number of years for these holy beings,
and Batûta accepts it as veridical; especially when corroborative
evidence is given. But three and a half centuries claimed by a man who
is no Struldbrug, but looks not more than fifty, staggers even him. The
impostor assures his visitor that every century he grows a fresh crop
of hair and cuts a new set of teeth, and that he had been a Râja who
was buried at Multân in the Punjâb. “I very much doubted as to what he
might really be; and I do so to this day.”
CHAPTER VI
AN EASTERN DESPOT
He waited forty days for the snows to melt on the “Hindu Kûsh—the
Slayer of the Hindus, so called because most of the slaves brought from
India die here of the bitter cold thereof.” The Afghans were at that
time subjects of the Khân of Turkestan (Transoxiana); a turbulent,
violent race, impatient of the slightest curb. Bandits attacked the
party he joined in the Kâbul pass; but bow and arrow kept them at a
distance. Fierce invaders had poured down the mountain passes from
Afghanistan from the end of the twelfth century and established a
Mohammedan Empire at Delhi.
Batûta passed into Sind. At the Indian border the usual written
description of his personal appearance and the object of his visit was
sent to the Sultan. There was a system of stations at a short distance
from each other, and couriers of the Sultan went to and fro, some on
horseback, some on foot. To secure rapid transit, each courier was
provided with bells attached to a whip, so as to announce his approach
to a station and to warn the courier there to be ready to go on with
the royal despatch.
Now, the Mohammedan Sultan of Northern India was a striking
illustration of the fact that humanity is not necessarily coupled
with generosity. Mohammed Tughlak was renowned throughout the Moslem
world for his lavish munificence; but the cold-blooded cruelty of the
despot was not less great than his bounty. Batûta not merely wished to
see India; he hoped to achieve lucrative establishment at the Moslem
Court. At Multân he found a body of adventurers, who sought to place
their talents at the service of the Sultan, and awaited his invitation
to court. Any shipwrecked sailor, even, had only to make his way to
Mohammed Tughlak to be relieved. Batûta has tales of him which we may
believe at our pleasure. The Sultan told one of his courtiers to go
to the treasury and take away as much gold as he could carry. He took
so much that he fell under its weight. The Sultan ordered the coins to
be gathered together, weighed, and sent to him. Once he had one of his
Emirs put into a balance, and gave him his weight in gold, kissing him,
and telling him to bestow alms for his soul’s welfare. He kissed the
feet of a “theologian and gatherer of traditions,” and presented him
with a golden vase filled with gold coins.
On the way, Batûta saw one of the three brothers whom the Sheik at
Alexandria had prophesied he should meet, and found him “a man very
much broken by temptations of the devil. He would not allow any one
to touch his hand or even to draw near him; and, should anyone’s garb
chance to touch his, he washed it immediately.” On the road from
Multân to Delhi, Batûta was most hospitably received by the Emirs. But
Northern India was no more reduced to order by the Mohammedan Sultan
than by the Emperor Sîlâditya in Hiuen-Tsiang’s time. Between Multân
and Delhi, while travelling with a party of twenty-two, Batûta found
two horse and twenty foot opposing their progress. Our pilgrim was
a many-sided man, quite capable of taking his share in a fight. The
robbers lost one of their horsemen and twelve of their foot, and then
fled from the field.
When Ibn Batûta arrived at the Moslem capital, which was ten miles to
the south of the Delhi of our day, he found that the Sultan was not
there. But great honour was done to the man whose fame as theologian,
jurist, traveller and three-fold hadji had preceded him. He was
received and entertained by the Sultan’s Mother and the Vizier, and
received a welcome present of money in return for the presents he had
brought with him.
A month and a half after his arrival a child of one of his numerous
marriages died. She was a little less than a year old. “The vizier
gave her funeral honours as if she had been a child of high rank in
that country, with incense, rose-water, readers of the Koran, and
panegyrists. And the vizier paid all the costs thereof, giving money to
the leaders and food to the poor. This was done by the Sultan’s orders.
And the Dowager Sultana sent for the mother of the child, and gave her
valuable dresses and ornaments; which was much to her solace.”
News now came that the Sultan was drawing near; so the vizier and
others set forth to meet him. Everybody, the adventurers in search of
employment included, bore presents to the palace, of which the sentries
at the palace-gateway took note. When the Sultan arrived, these gifts
were spread out before him, and the travellers were presented to him in
order of rank. Batûta was received with special marks of approval. The
Sultan graciously condescended to take his hand, promised to see to his
interests, and gave him cloth of gold which had adorned his own person.
Each visitor had a horse and silver-saddle sent him, and was appointed
either judge or writer. Batûta was made Judge of Delhi, with a stipend
and the rents of three villages attached to his office. When the
messengers brought news of these appointments, the new functionaries
were expected to kiss the hooves of their horses, go to the palace, and
invest themselves with their robes of office.
Batûta gives an account of the Sultan which is confirmed by Ferishta,
the Moslem historian. Mohammed was a typical Oriental sovereign of
the first order, that is to say, a man of letters and learning,
“approachable, one of the most bountiful of men, splendid in his gifts
(where he took a fancy).” But despotism breeds tyranny, and tyranny,
brutality. “Notwithstanding his humility, justice, kindness to the
poor, and marvellous open-handedness, he was swift to shed blood.
Hardly a day went by without someone being slaughtered before the gates
of his palace. Often have I seen people suffer there, and their bodies
left where they fell. Once, as I rode up, my horse plunged and quivered
with fear. I looked ahead, and saw something white lying on the ground.
I asked what it might be. One who was with me replied: ‘it is the
trunk of a man who has been dismembered.’ It made no difference whether
the offence were great or small; the punishment ordered by the Sultan
was the same. He spared none on account of his learning, his upright
character, or his position. Daily, hundreds of prisoners were brought
to the audience-chamber, arms chained to neck, and feet pinioned.
Some were killed, some tortured, some severely beaten. He sat in his
Audience Hall every day, Fridays excepted, and had everybody in prison
brought before him. But Friday was a day of respite for them; then they
kept calm and purified themselves.
“The Sultan had a brother. Never have I seen a finer man. The monarch
suspected that he had plotted against him. He questioned him concerning
this; and, for fear of being put to the torture, the brother made
avowal. But, in fact, whoever should deny any charge of this kind which
the Sultan might choose to make would most assuredly be put to the
torture; and death is usually chosen. The Sultan had his brother’s head
cut off in the middle of the courtyard, and, as is the custom, there
it remained three days. This man’s mother had been stoned to death in
the same place two years before; for she had confessed to adultery or
some debauchery.... On one occasion, when I was present, some men were
brought forward and charged with having conspired to kill the vizier.
They were sentenced to be thrown to the elephants. These beasts are
trained to put an end to culprits, their feet being shod with steel
with a sharp edge to it. They are guided by riders, take up their
victim with their trunks, hurl him up into the air, thrust him between
their fore-feet, and do to him just what the riders bid them, and
that is whatever the Sultan has ordered. If the command be to cut the
victims to pieces, the elephant shall do this with his tools, and then
shall cast the pieces to the crowd gathered around; but if it be to
leave him, he is flayed before the monarch, his skin stuffed with hay,
and his flesh given to dogs.”
This genial sovereign had craftily contrived to bring about the death
of his father and a brother by the collapse of a pavilion. But the
reign of every Sultan was polluted by parricide or fratricide in the
frantic struggle for the throne. And, even more than has been the case
throughout history, all the ostentation, luxury, and culture of the
Court, the powerful, and the wealthy, was as fine meal ground from the
ear which the humble had sown and reaped. The people were crushed,
enslaved, outraged and despoiled.
A case was brought before our judge which reveals that the trial by
ordeal, of which Hiuen-Tsiang told us, was still employed. A woman
reputed to be a _Goftar_, that is to say, a witch who could kill
anyone by a glance, was brought before Batûta on the charge of having
murdered a child. Not knowing what to do, he sent her on to the vizier,
who ordered four large water-vessels to be tied to her, and the whole
bundle to be thrown into the Jumna. Had she sunk, she would have been
deemed innocent and pulled out. Alas! she floated; so she was taken
away to be burned.
One day, two Yogis, master and disciple, arrived at the Sultan’s court.
Their heads and armpits were bare, the hair having been removed by
means of some kind of powder. They were received with much respect; and
Batûta was treated to an exhibition of that Eastern skill in jugglery
which astonished all ancient travellers. The disciple assumed the
shape of a cube, rose in the air, and floated over the heads of the
spectators. Our judge was so frightened at this uncanny trick that he
fainted. When he came to, the disciple was still up above his head. The
head-conjurer then cast a sandal to the ground. It rebounded, hit the
cube, which descended, and lo! there was the disciple again. Batûta’s
heart beat at such a rate that the Sultan ordered a powerful drug to be
given him, and told him that he should have been shewn more astounding
things, but that he feared for his wits. Probably, however the illusion
was produced, our traveller saw something very much like what he
describes. Marco Polo and other old travellers tell of the astounding
feats they saw, and Jehangir, fourth in succession of the Great Moguls,
devotes several pages of his diary to a careful record of many similar
marvels which he would seem to have observed closely.[9] We shall hear
of something stranger yet, which befel Batûta in China.
Our new-made judge was not only a restless being, but one possessed
by an immoderate desire to do things on a big scale. His qualities
were exaggerate, and a virtue tended to swell into an iniquity. One
pious pilgrimage to the Holy Places did not suffice him: he must visit
them again and again. We shall see how fully he availed himself of
the liberty in marriage, divorce, and concubinage accorded by his
creed. Egoism was a strong element in his character. He could not set
bounds to his expenditure. In a word, he borders on megalomania. In a
short time, his debts are four and a half times his total income. His
excuse is that he was ordered to attend the Sultan in an expedition
to put down an insurrection. Many servants are required in India; but
his retinue was immense. He was ingenious enough to escape from his
difficulties. Mohammed Tughlak plumed himself on his real or supposed
proficiency in Persian and Arabic and on his patronage of letters.
Batûta went to him with a panegyric in Arabic so adroitly expressed
that he charmed His Majesty. Then Batûta laid bare his distress.
The Sultan paid his debts and dismissed him with the same warning
which Mr. Micawber gave David Copperfield. The judge was excused
from accompanying his Master, and was given charge of a tomb and the
theological college attached to it.
Encouraged by the Sultan’s liberality, perhaps incited by his example
in prodigality, and untaught by his recent dilemma, he arranges
everything on a stupendous scale. “I set up 150 readers of the Koran,
80 students, 8 repeaters, a lecturer, 80 conventuals, an imam,
muezzins, reciters selected for their fine rendering, eulogists,
scribes to note down absentees, and ushers. All of these were men
of breeding. And I set up an establishment of menials; such as
footmen, cooks, messengers, water carriers, betel-servers, swordsmen,
javelin-men, umbrella-carriers, hand-washers, criers, and other
officials—460 of them, all told. The Sultan commanded me to supply
12 measures of meal and an equal quantity of meat daily at the tomb.
This seemed to me a pitifully small amount.... I made it 35 measures of
meal, and 35 of meat, and sugar, sugar-candy, butter, and fawfel-nut in
due proportion. Thereby I fed all comers.”
There was some excuse for the expenditure on food. Famine is the
recurrent curse of countries with imperfect means of transport, and
“the land suffered from famine at this time. Thus suffering was
relieved; and fame of it borne afar.” But Batûta does not conceal his
having used money which his friends lent him during his stay at Delhi.
Indeed he vilifies them for expecting him to return any part of it. He
tells his tale in the tone of a man who believes himself to have been
treated ungenerously and unjustly.
Later on in his narrative, he has occasion to refer to the fact that
at some time during the few years of his residence at Delhi he added
to the number of his wives by marrying the daughter of the Emir of
Mobar, in Southern India. “She was a religious woman, who would spend
the whole night in meditation and prayer. She could read, but not
write. She bore me a female child; but what is become of either of
them is beyond my ken.” The indelicacy of the dress of women in Delhi
shocked him: “they merely cover the face, and the body from the navel
downwards only.” He tried to get them to robe themselves completely,
and failed.
“How wretched
Is that poor man who hangs on princes’ favours!”
It seems that the capricious Sultan had placed much confidence in a
certain holy man; but suspicion of the sheik’s fidelity was aroused,
and spies were set to take note of his visitors. Among his friends and
visitors was Batûta. Everybody on the list was ordered to appear at the
fatal portal. Batûta thought his last hour had come and betook himself
to his prayers; he repeated “God is our succour and exceeding help” no
less than 33,000 times in a single day; he fasted for four days, taking
nothing but water and expecting the executioners every moment. He alone
escaped the fatal scimitar.
He had seen enough of Imperial caprice to know that respite was not
security, or innocence a lasting defence. He resigned his office and
went to a worker of miracles, “the saint and phœnix of his time,” who
was one of his friends. He gave all that he possessed to holy men; put
on the robe of an ascetic, and ate nothing but rice. But the blindfold
goddess had him on her wheel, and was to give it many a turn yet. Five
months passed, and then the Sultan sent for him and gave him a gracious
reception. But he deemed it wise to return to his rigorous life, and
was more severe in it than before. Yet forty more days passed, and then
the Sultan again commanded his presence.
There was now a much greater trade with China than in the time of
Hiuen-Tsiang. An Embassy, headed by a high mandarin, had come from
China (A.D. 1342) with presents of 100 male slaves, 50 slave-girls,
rich dresses, quivers of gold, and jewelled swords. In a certain
lower reach of the Himalaya was a plain which had been overrun by the
Moslem conquerors. Once a Buddhist temple stood there; and Chinese
pilgrims were wont to journey across Thibet to pray at the sacred spot.
Moreover the inhabitants of the district were cut off from their
wonted toil in Thibetan fields beyond the border. The place was secured
by Nature from any attack from the North; and the Great Khân of China
begged that restrictions should be removed and permission given for
the temple to be rebuilt. The Sultan was willing to grant the request
on certain pecuniary conditions, but he cast about for some one to
accompany the returning embassy and represent him at the Chinese Court.
Who so suitable as Batûta, a man of the world, experienced in travel,
highly educated, and sharp-witted? His innocence was established. Such
a degree of asceticism, so long endured, was proof of piety. The Sultan
ordered him to go. The garb of the ascetic was thrown off. He would
feel more secure in China than at Delhi.
CHAPTER VII
PERILS BY LAND AND SEA
Our ambassador sets off with the returning mission attended by two
favourites of the Sultan, and a guard of 1,000 horse. He has charge of
gifts which far surpass the Chinese presents—100 horses of the best
breed, richly caparisoned, 100 Hindu singing and dancing girls, robes
of rich brocade, jewelled arms, instruments of gold and silver, silks
and stuffs, and 1,700 rich dresses.
He has not travelled 100 miles from Delhi when he finds a district in
revolt against the Mohammedan conquerors. The Hindus are besieging a
city; the cavalry attending the embassy rushes at the investing forces,
loses many men, but leaves not an enemy alive. The news is sent to
the Sultan, and a halt is made for his instructions to arrive. Batûta
is sitting in the grateful shade of a garden when word comes that a
fresh body of Hindus is attacking a village hard by. He rides off with
an escort to see how he may help. The insurgents are already fleeing
from a hot pursuit, and he finds himself left with only five others
and a few mounted men. His horse gets its fore-feet wedged between
some stones, and he has to dismount; his companions ride off, and he
finds himself alone. Suddenly, two score of the enemy’s horse appear
and ride at him. He is stripped to the skin, bound, and threatened
with death. He is unable to talk the language of his captors, is kept
a captive during two days, and then they ride away. He shuffles off
to a neighbouring jungle, and hides there. He cautiously tries every
foot-track to find that not one of them but leads to some enemy village
or to some village in ruins. He keeps himself alive by sucking wild
fruit and chewing leaves. Seven days have passed, and he is quite
exhausted, when he sees “a black man, carrying a small water-vessel
and walking by aid of an iron-tipped staff.” The man is a Mohammedan,
and gives him water and pulse, which he has with him. Batûta tries
to walk with him; but he is too weak and faint; his feet totter,
and he falls to the ground. The “black man” throws him across his
shoulders; all consciousness is lost, and he comes to himself at the
Imperial gateway one daybreak, the East aglow with the rising sun. That
good Samaritan, the “black man,” stands out in bright relief from a
background of crime and cruelty and shadows of feet swift to shed blood.
Mohammed Tughlak received Batûta more kindly than ever, gave him
handsome compensation, and commanded him to return to the Embassy. On
his way to Cambay, we hear more of Yogi magicians and how they will
remain long time without food. “I have seen, in the city of Mangalore,
a Moslem who had learned of these folk. A sort of platform was set
up for him; and thereon he had stayed 25 days, neither eating nor
drinking. Thus did I leave him; and I know not how long he kept there
afterwards. It is said that they make up pills, and, after swallowing
one of them, can do without food or drink. They foretell hidden things.
The Sultan honours them and admits them to his society. Some among
them eat vegetable food only; and these are the greater number. There
are among them those who can slay a man by a glance at him. The common
people hold that, if the chest of the dead man be opened, no heart is
to be found within; for it has been consumed. Women do this in the
main, and such an one is called a hyæna.”
Batûta’s chief interest was in Islam; but he noted natural products
carefully and was alive to the odd. North of the Hindu Kûsh he had seen
a woefully obese man; and now, on this 1,500 mile journey to Calicut,
he came across the ruler of a small State, “a black giant,” who thought
little of devouring a whole sheep at a sitting.
He took ship near Goa, and the craft ran along the Malabar coast, “the
land of black pepper.” Twelve kinglets ruled as many states in Malabar
at that time, and each king had an army of from 5,000 to 50,000 men at
his command. Many ancient polyandric practices were retained; which
explains why each Râja was succeeded by a sisters’ son. No landing was
made until a king’s son had been handed over as a pledge of safety.
Many Arab traders had settled in the ports, and become wealthy.
Punishment, swift and severe, followed on the smallest infringement of
_meum_ and _tuum_. We are told how a Hindu noble, out riding with his
father-in-law, who was no less a personage than the Râja, picked up a
mango which had dropped from an overhanging tree. The Râja ordered that
both he and the mango should be cut into two halves, and half of the
mango and half of the culprit laid on either side of the public way
precisely where the enormity had been done. One may suspect that the
son-in-law was not wholly _persona grata_ to the despot.
The Embassy had to tide over three months at Calicut awaiting the
season for the sailing of the fleet of junks from China. There were
thirteen of them at Calicut, and they also traded to Hili and Quilon.
He tells us that the biggest junks were as floating cities. They would
carry a crew of 1,000 men, whereof 400 were soldiers. The junk was
worked by oars and sails of bamboo-matting, slung from masts varying
in number from three to twelve, according to the size of the junk. Ten
to thirty men stood to pull at each oar. Garden-herbs and ginger were
grown on deck, and on it, too, were houses built for the chief officers
and their wives. The quarters of the junk were three-fold, fastened
together by spikes. Each junk of the biggest size was accompanied by
three tenders of progressively diminishing proportions. Needless to
say, the commander of a junk was a very important functionary. Often
more than one junk would be owned by a single Chinaman. But then,
“truly the Chinese are the wealthiest people on earth.”
Our ambassador sent his servants, slave-girls and baggage on board; but
the cabin was too small to hold both concubines and luggage; so the
skipper advised him to hire a _kakam_ or junk of the third size. This
he did on a Thursday, the _kakam_ took in its cargo, and he remained on
shore the next day for public worship.
During the night, the terror of the sea fell on them all. A violent
storm came on, and the waters shook the land. Some of the junks
contrived to get away from the perilous neighbourhood of the shore
to more open water; but one of them was wrecked, and only a few
swimmers managed to escape. The _kakam_, with all his worldly goods
and slave-concubines in it, had disappeared; but it had been seen
making for the open. The body of an envoy was washed ashore, with the
skull smashed in. A guardian Eunuch was also cast up, a nail driven
right through the brain from temple to temple. Down came the Zamorin
to the scene of disaster, Comedy attendant on Tragedy, for he braved
the tempest clad with a loin-cloth, the scantiest of head-gear, and
a necklace of jewels, but the insignium of royalty, the umbrella,
was somehow held up over his sacred head. Batûta cast himself on his
prostration-carpet, which was all that was left to him, excepting ten
pieces of gold and his servant, a freed slave, who immediately made
off. Some pious people gave him small coin, which he kept as treasure,
for it would bring blessing with it.
We are told of the noble deed of a simple Moslem sailor during this
great storm. “There was a girl on board who was the favourite of a
merchant. The merchant offered ten pieces of gold to anyone who should
save her. A sailor, hailing from Hormuz, did save her; but he refused
the reward, saying, ‘I did it for the love of God.’”
The junk which held the precious gifts for China was seen to go down
outside the port; and Batûta heard that the little boat which held all
his slave-concubines and worldly goods had contrived to gain the open
sea, and might conceivably put in at Quilon. He set off at once, and
arrived there after a ten days’ journey. He found the Chinese Embassy
there. They had suffered shipwreck, but their junk had not broken up
and was being refitted.
It did not require the advice proferred him by his co-religionists to
deter him from returning to the capricious, passionate lord of Delhi.
He bethought him of Jamâl Oddîn, ruler of Honowar, a man of sense and
understanding, whom he had visited on his way to Calicut. It casts a
pleasant ray on the Mohammedan occupation of India, that there were
no fewer than 44 schools set up in the busy little capital of a small
State, and that of these no fewer than 11 were for girls. Now Jamâl
Oddîn knew the uncertain temper of the Lord of India quite as well
as Batûta, and did not give him too hearty a welcome. So to appease
offended Heaven, or to rehabilitate himself by an evidence of piety,
he repaired to a mosque and read the Koran from end to end once, and
ultimately twice, a day. Now, there were 52 ships being fitted out to
attack the island of Sindâbûr; and Jamâl evidently thought that Batûta
might prove useful, for he commanded him to accompany him on this
expedition. Batûta tried to read the future by a time-honoured method
of divination. He opened the Koran at random, and his eye fell on a
promise of Allah to aid his servant. This was satisfactory to Jamâl
Oddîn as well as to himself.
After strenuous resistance Sindâbûr was carried by assault, and Batûta,
who was something of a warrior, received a slave-girl, clothing and
other presents from his patron. He remained on the island with Jamâl
Oddîn for some months, and then got permission to go to Calicut. For
the Chinese fleet would be returning to India by this time, and he
might get news of his little junk. At Calicut, he learned that his
_kakam_ had reached China, that his property had been divided up, and
that his pretty concubine had died on the voyage. “I felt very much
grief for her.” He went back to the island to find the city besieged
by Hindus.
Now he had heard marvellous things concerning the Maldives, an
archipelago of small islands lying S.S.E. of India, near the equator.
The inhabitants, under British rule to-day, had accepted Islam. He
found that before he or anyone was allowed to land he must show himself
on deck; “for although the islands are multitudinous, each lies close
to its neighbour, and folk knew one another by sight.” He speaks of
the inhabitants as “pious, peaceable, and chaste. They never wage war.
Prayers are their only weapons. Indian pirates do not alarm them; nor
do they punish robbers; for they have learned that sudden and grievous
ill will come to evil-doers. When any of the pirate-ships of infidel
Hindus pass by these islands, whatsoever is found is taken, nor will
anyone stand out.” But, in spite of the moral reflection indulged in by
the islanders, Batûta traces their policy of non-resistance to physical
feebleness. And “there is one exception to it. Should a single lemon be
taken woe befals the offender. He is punished and forced to listen to
a homily. The natives delight in perfumes and in bathing twice a day,
which the heat forces them to do; yet trees give delicious shade. Their
trade is in ropes, which they make of hemp, and which are used for
sewing together the timbers of ships of India and Yemen; for if a ship
strike against a rock, the hemp allows of its yielding, and so saves it
from going to pieces, which is not the case when iron nails are used.
Shells are used for coin, and palm-leaves are used for all writing,
except for copying out the Koran; and the instrument used has a sharp
point.”
Batûta sailed among these islands during ten days, and took up his
abode on one, the sovereign of which was a woman. For the lady’s
husband had died, leaving no male issue; so she married her vizier who,
in reality, ruled. Batûta took the full license accorded in Islam.
He married the four legal wives permitted, and took to himself some
concubines also, “all pleasant in conversation and of great beauty.”
He must have divorced his previous wives before being able to do this.
Marriage in the Maldive Islands was facile and cheap. Only a small
dowry was demanded for a handsome woman; but it was required that
the stranger should divorce the wife on leaving the land, and by no
means take her with him. But, should he not desire to marry, there
was no difficulty in getting a woman to cook for him at a very small
wage. Wives were less companionable here than in most parts of the
world, since women and men took their meals apart; nor could Batûta
get his women-folk to break the custom of their country—a custom
which Varthema speaks of, nearly two centuries later, as obtaining in
South West India. Batûta had been appointed judge, and another thing
that troubled him was the irregular attendance of the lax Moslems
of his island at the mosque. He was very eager that such flagrant
non-observance of religious duty should be duly punished; and he urged
that the best way would be literally to whip the recalcitrants to
attend on public worship.
Now Batûta’s wives had powerful relatives. The sister of one of his
wives at Delhi was wife to the Emir of Mobar; to whom, therefore,
Batûta was doubly related. He had become a power in his island, and the
vizier grew jealous and suspicious. Might not the stranger conspire to
bring an army over from the coast of Coromandel? When Batûta saw what
was going on, he acted at once. “I divorced all my wives,” he says,
“save one, who had a young child, and I went on to other islands of
that great multitude of them.” From one of these, he shipped for Mobar;
but the wind changed, and he was driven to the coast of Ceylon and in
no small danger of drowning. The governor of the port came sailing
by, and refused a landing; for he was no friend to Moslem skippers.
Batûta won him over by telling him that he was on his way to visit
the Sovereign of Mobar, that he was related to him by marriage, and
that the whole cargo of the ship was intended as a present for that
potentate. The Ceylonese Râja of the district was on good terms with
his Moslem brother of Mobar, so Batûta was allowed to land. He found,
like Marco Polo, that Ceylon was divided among four kinglets. He of the
district soon sent for him, and gave him hospitality. He admired the
famous herds of elephants, the troups of chattering monkeys, the pool
of precious stones, and the luxuriant vegetation and glorious scenery
of Ceylon. He scaled that iron chain, which still exists, to reach the
top of Adam’s peak, and gives us the measure of the print of Adam’s
foot, on hard rock; for in Ceylon, as elsewhere, supernatural vestiges
are to be found. He visited Colombo and several other places in the
island, and then set sail for the coast of Coromandel.
But, while crossing the strait, “the wind blew strong, and the ship
was nearly swamped. Our skipper was a lubber. We were driven near
perilous rocks, and barely escaped going to pieces; and then we got
into shallow water. Our ship grated against the bottom, and we were
face to face with death. Those on board threw all that they had into
the sea, and bade farewell to one another. We cut down the mast and
cast it onto the sea, and the sailors made a raft. The beach was eight
miles off. I wanted to get down to the raft. I had two concubines and
two friends with me. These latter exclaimed: ‘would you get down and
leave us?’ I had more regard to their safety than to my own; so I
answered: ‘Get down, both of you, and the young girl whom I love with
you.’ My other young girl said: ‘I can swim. I will fix ropes to the
raft and swim alongside these people.’ My two comrades got down, one of
the young girls being with them; and the other swam. The sailors tied
ropes to the raft, and so helped her to swim. I gave them whatever of
value I had in the way of jewels, amber, and other goods. They got to
shore safe and sound, for the wind was in their favour. But I stayed
aboard the ship. The skipper got to shore on a plank. The sailors took
the building of four rafts in hand; but night came on before they had
finished, and the ship was filling. I got up on the poop, and remained
there until morning. Then several idolaters came to us in their barque.
And we got safe to land.”
His connexion, the Emir, received him warmly. This potentate was about
to attack a Hindu Power; and, while he was away on this expedition,
Batûta travelled about. He tells us that he came across a fakir with
long hair, who sat and ate in the society of seven foxes, and who
kept a “happy family”—a gazelle and a lion together. The Emir was
a ruthless tyrant, butchering women and children. Yet Batûta had no
scruple in proposing a scheme to him for the conquest of the Maldives,
where he had received so much kindness, and where he had left wives and
paramours. But pestilence came and swept away most of the inhabitants
of the district, including the Emir. The new ruler wanted to carry out
the scheme for occupying the Maldives; but Batûta got fever badly, and
very nearly died. When sufficiently recovered, he received permission
to recuperate his energies by taking the long voyage round Cape Comorin
to Honawar, where he wished to meet his old friend, Jamâl Oddîn,
again. But, from time immemorial, the sea had been a no-mans province,
infested by pirates; and the calling, continuous or accidental, of
sea-thief was then as honourable as it was ancient. His ship was
attacked by twelve Hindu craft, and taken after a severe battle. Batûta
was stripped of his jewels and all his belongings, and set on shore
with a pair of breeches on. He lost the notes of his travels with his
other belongings. Out of the way of direct business, the robbers could
be merciful, and there was no reason why they should take his life. He
made his painful way to Calicut, and put up at a mosque—always the
asylum of the indigent. Some of the lawyers and traders here had known
him at Delhi. They clothed, fed, and housed him. What was he to do? He
dared not return to Delhi. A son had been borne to him by a Maldive
wife. He had a desire to see the child. The vizier was dead; but the
queen had married again, and he wondered what sort of reception he
should get. Paternal tenderness prevailed: “I went there on account of
my little son; but when I had seen him, I left him with his mother,
out of kindness to her.” He was hospitably entertained, but stayed a
very few days. The new vizier furnished him with those provisions which
every traveller by sea must purchase for himself and carry with him in
the fourteenth century; and he set sail for Bengal, where he arrived
after 43 days at sea (A.D. 1341).
CHAPTER VIII
OFF TO MALAYSIA AND CATHAY
Batûta speaks of Bengal as the land of plenty. Everything was cheaper
there than anywhere else in the wide world. He picked up a very
beautiful slave-girl for a trifle. But the muggy climate made Bengal
“a hell full of good things.” The Sultan was in revolt against his
lord-paramount at Delhi; and as Batûta was a prudent person, held
Mohammed Tughlak in wholesome awe, and could not predict the issue of
the contest, he did not visit the Bengalese Court. He went up to the
hill-country, half-way to the Himalayan giants, instead; for he desired
to see an aged holy man who dwelt there, one who was reported to take
no food excepting a little milk, and that only every ten days, and to
sit upright all night. This old sheik was a seer, and foretold events
which should befall his guest and which he declares really happened.
Batûta was proud to be justly hailed as “the greatest traveller of all
the Arabs.” He returned from the hills to visit a city not far from
modern Dacca.
We next find him on the Indian Ocean, standing off the Nicobar
Islands, probably because his ship needed a fresh supply of water. The
inhabitants were fearful of strangers, would not allow any ship to sail
in front of their houses, had the fresh water required brought down to
the shore by elephants, and traded by signs; for nobody could speak
their language. The men went about naked, and the women wore a girdle
of leaves only. All were remarkable for the ugliness of their dog-like
faces. Batûta was told that a man might be the husband of 30 or more of
these beauties. Adultery was severely punished, the male offender being
hanged, unless he could find a friend or a slave willing to suffer
in his place; the woman being trampled to death and her body cast
into the sea. The king came down to the beach with an escort of his
relatives, all mounted on elephants. He wore a coloured silk turban and
a goat-skin tunic, with the hair turned outwards, and he bore a short
silver spear in his hand. The usual gifts were presented in dumb-show.
“These folk work magic on any ship that withholds presents; and it is
wrecked.”
Moslem traders called any part of the Malaysian Archipelago, Java; but
the port to which our traveller next came was really in Sumatra. The
Emir of the Mohammedan sovereign received the visitors with customary
Eastern munificence and gave them rich dresses. Our traveller speaks
highly of the Sultan as being a cultivated man who loved the society
of the learned and enjoyed discussion with them. A modern writer says
that the humblest man he ever knew was a duke, and Batûta might have
said the same of some rulers. The humility of the Sultan of Sumatra was
so great that he walked to prayers every Friday! Batûta took a long
journey inland, and tells us of frankincense, clove, nutmeg, mace,
and other products of Sumatra, and of how a man is sacrificed by the
natives at the foot of the camphor-tree to ensure its good bearing.
He was eager to reach China—that land of strange ways and peculiar
civilization in Farthest East. The complaisant Sultan gave him passage
in one of his own junks, provided him with stores for the voyage, and
ordered a guide-interpreter to attend on him. In three and a half
weeks, he came to a place which he calls Kakula, and which may have
been on the mainland. Here he was well received by the pagan king, and
chanced to be present at a curious proof of devotion to royalty. “One
day, a man made a long speech, not one word of which I understood. He
held a knife in his hand, which he grasped firmly, and cut off his
own head, and it fell to the ground.” This sounds incredible; but it
is a fact. The feat was done by means of apparatus. A sickleshaped
knife was attached to a stirrup. The suicide placed his foot in the
latter, gave it a sharp jerk, and the knife shore off his head. Our
traveller was told that the deed was done to make manifest the great
loyalty of the victim, and that his father and grandfather had made the
same praiseworthy exit from life in honour of the king’s father and
grandfather. Their families received compensation from the kings. A
similar case of self-execution was authentically recorded in the last
century.
The Eastern Ocean was so calm that the junk had to be towed by boats.
Marco Polo had the same experience in these seas. Batûta touched at
Kailiki, a port of Tawalisi, probably Tonquin; but no one is quite sure
where this land lay. Even the Sulu Islands have been suggested! The
king was as powerful as the Emperor of China. His people were idolaters
after the manner of the Turks, and Batûta reports a conversation with
his Amazonian daughter, introducing a few words of their language. This
princess could write, but not speak Arabic. Some discredit has been
thrown on this part of his narrative, mainly on the ground of language,
but also because what he has to say about her recalls very ancient
classical stories. But we must recollect that Batûta is relying on
his memory at a time when the events belonged to a far-distant past;
that his work was dictated; and that it was edited by the Secretary to
the Sultan of Fez. He confesses that he did not understand very well
what the princess said to him. And the language she spoke may have
struck him as like Turkish in sound, and hence is given in some sort of
imitation of that tongue. The more one studies ancient travellers and
pilgrims the more assured one becomes of their essential sincerity and
the general accuracy of their observation. We know very little indeed
about the Nomadic penetration of the Far East. That this princess
was able to write a little Arabic, would seem to show that there was
considerable Arab trade with Tawalisi.
This lady was governor of the port, a post which her father had given
her as the reward of her powers in battle. For, once, when her father’s
army was on the point of defeat, she routed the enemy, and brought back
the head of their leader. She commanded an army, whereof one regiment
was of women. Neighbouring princes had wished to marry her, but had
withdrawn their pretensions; for she insisted that first they should
overcome her in the lists; and they were afraid of the ignominy of
being vanquished by a woman. She was amazed at the wealth of India, and
said to Batûta: “I must conquer it for myself.”
Favourable winds and strenuous use of the oar brought the junk to
China. He found that he had to pass through a stringent customs-house;
and that a register was taken of all who left or arrived at a Chinese
port. The captain was held responsible for his crew and passengers,
and to this end an official list was essential. Should the traveller
elect to stay with some other trader, his host took care of his money
and goods, but was bound to return them at the close of the visit, with
a deduction for necessary expenditure. Any deficiency must be made
good. But the trader might, if he chose, put up at an inn. Batûta was
surprised to find paper-currency. He admired the big poultry; but not
the dirty cotton-clothes of the Chinese, nor their relish for the flesh
of dogs and swine. As in Hiuen-Tsiang’s time, they burned their dead.
A portrait of every traveller was taken without his knowing it, and
thus, should an evil-doer try to escape from justice from one province
to another, he was readily discovered. There were many Moslem traders
in China; most of these had settled there; and Jews had found a home in
China for eleven centuries.
Travelling in China was “safer and more agreeable than in any other
land on earth. Although it takes nine months to cross this country, one
need have no fear on the journey, even though one should have wealth in
one’s care. There is an official with troops, both horse and foot, at
each hostelry to keep matters in order. This official, accompanied by
his scribe, comes to the hostelry every evening; and the scribe writes
down the name of every guest, seals up the list, and locks the door.
They come again in the morning and go over the list and the inmates;
and a man goes with the travellers to the next hostelry and returns to
the officer with proof that they have arrived.... The traveller can buy
all he needs at these inns.”
Batûta visited the great port of Zaitun (Touen-chow), whence, among
other manufactures, “clothes of gold and _satyns_ riche of hewe”[10]
were shipped. Perhaps there was no port in the world with so big a
trade as Zaitun. Batûta thought so: “The harbour is one of the greatest
on the earth—I err—it is the greatest. There I have seen an hundred
junks of the biggest size at one time, and more smaller ones than could
be numbered.... Here, as in every Chinese city, every citizen has a
garden and a field, and his house stands in the middle of the land he
owns. For this reason, the cities of China are very much spread out.”
At Zaitun, he had the good fortune to meet, in the Moslem quarter, the
ambassador who had been sent to Delhi; and now great folk began to make
his acquaintance. Among his visitors was “one of the merchants to whom
I owed money when I ran into debt on my arrival in India, and who had
shown more breeding than the rest of my creditors.” The Head Mandarin
wrote to the Emperor to ask permission for the traveller to visit him
at his capital; and, while awaiting a reply, allowed him to travel by
water-way far inland from Canton, and provided him with an escort. At
Canton, he found temple-hospitals for widows and orphans, the blind,
crippled, and infirm.
He tells how the sailors stood up amidship to row, and the passengers
sat fore and aft. He visited one of those wonderful saints who claimed
incredible years. The holy man told him that he was one of the saints
whom he had visited in India. This man had the reputation of being able
to induce visions. Possibly he united the qualifications of skilled
hypnotist and skilled liar.
When our traveller returned to Canton he received permission to visit
the capital. He journeyed many days by land and along the Imperial
Canal. He speaks rapturously of the fertility and charm of the country
he passed through. Everywhere he was treated with the deepest respect.
But there was a drawback: everywhere Paganism was flourishing. He met
a fellow-believer, the brother of one of the seers of Egypt, a man
greatly esteemed by the Chinese, and later on one particular prophesy
was completely fulfilled, for he came across another brother, whom it
was also foretold he should meet, on the borders of Sahara.
While attending the court of the viceroy at Hang-chow, he was
eye-witness to a remarkable feat, of which he gives as circumstantial
an account as one would expect to get from a man of the fourteenth
century. “It was in the hot season, and we were in the courtyard
outside the palace. A juggler, a slave of the Khân, came in, and the
Emir commanded him to show some of his marvels. Thereupon the juggler
took a wooden bowl with several holes made in it, and through these
holes long thongs were passed. He laid hold of these thongs, and threw
the bowl up into the air. It went so high that we could no longer
see it. There was only a little of the end of the thong left in the
juggler’s hand. He ordered one of his boy helpers to lay hold of it and
mount. The boy climbed up the thong, and he also went out of sight.
The juggler called him three times; but no reply came; so he seemed
to get into a great rage, snatched up a knife, and laid hold of the
thong; and he also was no longer to be seen. After a time, down came
one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, than the other hand, then the
other foot, then the trunk, and, lastly, the head. And now, down came
the juggler, panting, and his clothes in a bloody state. He kissed the
ground in front of the Emir and said something to him in Chinese. The
Emir gave him some order, and he then took up the severed parts, laid
them together properly, gave a kick, and behold! the boy got up and was
before us again. I was so astounded that my heart beat violently, as it
did when the Sultan of India had a similar trick done before me. A drug
was given me, which set me right again. The Khazi Alfkaouddîn was next
to me. ‘By Allah!’ said he, ‘as for me I believe there has been neither
going up nor coming down, nor cutting to pieces, nor making the boy
whole again. It is nothing but trickery.’”
We must not forget that Batûta was more than inclined to superstition,
that he was very perturbed by what he saw, or thought he saw, that the
“magician” had boys with him, who probably assisted in this trick,
and that it is part of the conjurer’s art to divert the attention of
spectators while in the actual performance of his feats. And the event
was reduced to writing years after it was observed. Moreover, one of
the earlier investigations of the Society for Psychical Research shewed
that, on an occasion when a clever amateur conjurer, not known to be
such, invited highly educated and observant witnesses to a supposed
spiritualistic séance, and received their accounts of what they
believed themselves to have seen, written independently of each other
and immediately after the event, “not one of the detailed reports is
accurate throughout, and scarcely one of them is accurate in even all
the points of importance.”[11] But we have it on the authority of the
Professor of Chinese at Cambridge that P’u Sung-ling, the author of the
Liao Chai, relates having seen the complete trick, as Batûta describes
it, in the seventeenth century,[12] except that, in this case, the
boy came out of a box. These are, perhaps, the most remarkable of many
similar mystifications, some of them related by quite respectable
witnesses, from the 13th century down to our own time.[13]
He tells us of the excellent workmanship of Chinese artisans, and
how they worked in chains for a period of ten years. At the end of
that time, they were free to go about in China, but not to leave the
frontiers. At 50, they became absolutely free men, and were maintained
at the public cost, old age pensioners, in fact, in this early
fourteenth century. And the pension was not merely given to these
slave-workers, but to nearly all Chinese.
He admired the gay life on the canal, crowded with the boat-houses
of the people—a teeming happy population, dressed in bright colours,
and pelting one another in pure fun with oranges and lemons. Hang-chow
had within its great encircling wall six towns, each guarded by walls.
At Khaniku or Khanbalik (Pekin?) he was present at the obsequies of a
great dignitary, whom he believed to be the Tartar Emperor; but that
was not so, for the Emperor, who had ascended the throne 14 years
before Batûta’s arrival, reigned 21 years after his departure. But
he certainly was present at the funeral of some great Tartar; for
his account of the interment of the Tartar dignitaries of China is
confirmed by at least one other early traveller. He tells us of how the
dead man’s concubines and horses were buried with him, alive, in the
same grave. He relates, not very correctly, the ceremonies observed at
the court of the Emperor. Apparently his recollection becomes confused
with that of the court-usage at Delhi and Yemen. In any case, it is
possible that he only had an interview with some viceroy, concerning
whom he was misinformed or somehow mistook him for the supreme Khân.
A revolt against Tartar rule took place about this time, so Batûta
thought it prudent to leave China. He embarked on a junk which belonged
to the King of Sumatra, whom he had visited on his way out, and “whose
servants are Mohammedans.” On the voyage the junk laboured through
a terrific storm. The mirage of a big mountain was also seen. The
sailors took this for the fabled roc, with which the _Arabian Nights
Entertainment_ made our Childhood acquainted.
He remained in Sumatra three months, the guest of the monarch who had
before entertained him; and was fortunate in witnessing the nuptials
of the heir-apparent. First came dancers and merry minstrelsy; then
the bride, conducted from the apartments of the women by forty richly
adorned ladies, who carried her train. For this high occasion, they
had removed their veils. The bride went up on a platform; and the
bridegroom rode up, in all the pride of armour, of a stately elephant,
and of his own self-importance. One hundred youths of quality,
beardless like himself, attended him on horseback. They were clad in
white, their caps being a glitter of gold and jewels. Largess was
scattered among the crowd. The prince now went up to his father, kissed
his foot, and ascended the platform. Then the bride rose and kissed her
groom’s hand; he sat beside her, and he and she put betel and fawfel
into one another’s mouth. Then the covering of the platform was let
down, and the whole structure, with bride and bridegroom on it, was
carried into the palace. Finally, a feast was given to the crowd.
From Sumatra, Batûta voyaged in a junk to the Malabar coast of
Southern India, and thence sailed to Arabian Zafar (A.D. 1347), both
well-remembered places, coasted to Hormuz, wandered over the Two Iraks
(Persia and Mesopotamia) once again; made across Asia Minor to Tadmor
and as far north as Aleppo. At Damascus he got the first news of home
he had received during his wanderings; his father had lain fourteen
years in his quiet grave at Tangier. The Black Death was raging at
Damascus. It slew twenty-four hundred of the inhabitants in a single
day. So Batûta made his way to Egypt through Syria and Palestine, and
went on to Mecca by way of the Red Sea and Jidda. This was the fourth
of his pilgrimages. On his return to Cairo, he found the Black Death
wasting the population. Mocking, lethal, invisible, this awful plague
was rapidly sweeping westward and destroying whole families. Agnolo
da Tura of Siena tells us that he had to bury five of his sons in the
same grave with his own hands, and that his was no exceptional case.
Batûta left Cairo for Jerusalem and returned from Palestine to Egypt by
sea. He now felt a desire to see his native land again. He took ship to
Sardinia, and, wishing to see the island, let the vessel he had voyaged
in go to Tunis. He was lucky, for it was taken by Christians. He
managed to reach Tunis in another ship, and got to Fez overland on Nov.
8th, 1349; having been on his travels nearly a quarter of a century. He
presented himself before the Sultan, and was received as was befitting
so pious a pilgrim and distinguished a traveller.
CHAPTER IX
MOORS OF SPAIN AND NEGROES OF TIMBUKTU
But Batûta’s travels were by no means at an end. He made a filial
visit to the place where earth that “makes all sweet” had closed on
his father’s history. Once at Tangier, the temptation was strong to
cross the Straits and visit the shrinking Moslem dominion in Spain. He
landed where his compatriots had landed to conquer the Peninsula—at
Gibraltar (Jabal Tarik, the Hill of Victory). He saw a cousin by his
mother’s side, who had settled here; ran all over Moorish Andalusia,
visiting renowned cities that still remained in Mohammedan hands; and
came to lordly Grenada, where the Alhambra must have been nearing its
completion. He returned to Fez by way of Ceuta.
His energy was unabated; his thirst for travel unquenched; he could not
settle down. In February, 1352, he is off again; this time for Central
Africa. At Tafilelt, on the borders of Sahara, he meets another brother
of the Sheik at Alexandria; and so another prophecy is fulfilled. In
mid-Sahara, he finds an oasis with a “village on it where there is
nothing good. The mosque and the houses are built of blocks of salt and
are covered with camel hide. There is no tree, for the soil is pure
sand; but there are mines of salt.” He had dropped on those dwellings
of rock-salt of which Herodotus wrote seventeen hundred years before
him. But only the underlings of traders abode there; and dates and
camel’s flesh were their fare. Here was the salt-supply for the wild
tribes of Sahara. They cut the blocks of it into a certain shape and
used this as money. The caravan with which Batûta travelled suffered
severely here from the vileness of the water.
When Tashala was reached, the caravan rested three days to make ready
for a vast and solitary tract of desert “where there is no water, nor
is bird or tree to be seen, only sand and hills of sand, blown about by
the wind in such wise that not the smallest vestige of a track remains.
Wherefore, no one can travel without guides from among the traders;
but of these there are many. The sunlight there is blinding.... Evil
spirits have their will of that man who shall travel by himself. They
enchant him, so that he wanders wide of his path, and there he comes to
his end.”
A long journey across this great waste of sand brought the caravan to
another oasis, where pits had been dug to fill with water, and where
negroes took care of a store of goods out in the open. These negroes
did not show the deep respect due to the superior white race; but
Batûta had a fancy to learn all about them, so he stayed on, and put
up with their want of manners for two whole months. Traces, at least,
of polyandry were to be found here; for a sister’s son succeeded to
property, and everybody took the name of a maternal uncle. The women
were good looking, but, alas! they were far from shy; they did not even
wear a veil, notwithstanding their accompanying the men to the mosque.
Traders might take them for their wives; but must leave them behind on
their departure. Our zealous Moslem, experienced in matrimony as he was
and so excellent a judge of concubines—all of them sacred property
and his very own—was greatly shocked at yet another instance of the
freedom in manners of women and absence of jealousy in the husbands
among certain Mohammedan peoples. A man might have a woman visit him,
even with her husband there, and in the presence of his own wife; and
a man might go home to find one of his male friends sitting alone with
the wife of his bosom. But what would perturb an ordinary man causes
no flutter in this degenerate breast. “He quietly takes a seat apart
from them until the visitor goes away.” Batûta’s sense of delicacy was
much offended when, calling on a former host of his, who was a judge
moreover, he found that a handsome young woman had also made a call and
was still there. He upbraided his friend roundly, and the only reply he
got was that it was the custom of the country. This was too much: he
broke with the judge.
A long, difficult, but quite safe journey brought him and three
companions to Malli. Here he was seriously ill, and the sickness lasted
many weeks; “but Allah brought me back to health.” A few white people
dwelt at Malli, of whom the judge was his host. “‘Arise,’” said the
judge to him one day when the Sultan had given a feast, “‘the Sultan
hath sent thee a gift.’ I fully looked for a rich dress, some horses
and other valuable gifts; and lo! there were but three crusts of bread,
a piece of dried fish, and a dish of sour milk. I smiled at people
so simple and the value they gave to such rubbish.” Experience of
spendthrift Oriental Courts and the lavish munificence of princes in
other parts of the Mohammedan world had spoiled him for the simplicity
of Central Africa. He often saw the Sultan after this incident; but
sorely as his self-love was wounded by such a contrast to the honour
always paid to him hitherto, he held himself in until his fury reached
fever-heat and it became impossible to keep a bridle on his tongue any
longer. Then he rose to his feet: “I have travelled the world over,”
said he; “I have visited the rulers thereof; I have stayed four months
in thy dominions; but no gift, no suitable food has come to me from
thee. What shall I say about thee when men shall question me concerning
thee?” A horse and good provisions, and a supply of gold now came from
this “greedy and worthless man”; before whom the negroes presented
themselves in the worst of their beggarly garments, probably as a sign
of their humility; for they “crawled to his presence, beating the
ground with their elbows and throwing dust on their heads.” However the
“greedy and worthless” Sultan is allowed at least one small virtue: he
kept the land in order; the traveller there had no fear of robbers, and
if any one chanced to die, his property was handed over to his lawful
successors. And the people had a great virtue also; they were constant
in their attendance at the mosque; and if a son did not learn the whole
of the Koran by heart, his father kept him shut up until he had done
so. Yet, in spite of such praiseworthy piety, they let their little
daughters and slaves whether male or female, go about quite naked.
Batûta remarks that here cowries were used as coin. Travellers in the
Niger District during the third decade of the last century found that
many of the habits and customs described by Batûta still obtained there.
From Malli, our traveller journeyed on to the banks of the Niger,
and saw, with surprise, its great herds of hippopotami. He visited
Timbuktu, and believed he was journeying along the banks of the Nile;
a pardonable mistake; for the Niger takes a general direction towards
the North-East in this part of its course. He now returned to Fez by a
different and more easterly route (A.D. 1355).
He had traversed the entire Mohammedan world, and beyond it to wherever
a Mohammedan was to be found. He had visited several far-separated
places several times, and had obeyed the obligation to visit Mecca
oftener than the most zealous Moslem was wont to do. The Sultan
commanded that an account of his travels should be recorded. The
Sultan’s Secretary edited the work, and thought to embellish a plain
tale by overloading it with literary pinchbeck and by dragging in
irrevelant quotations from the poets. The last words of the work are:
“Here ends what I have put into form of the words of Sheik Ibn Abdulla
Mohammed, whom may Allah honour! There is no reader of intelligence but
must grant that this Sheik is the greatest traveller of our days; and
should any one dub him the greatest traveller of all Islam, it were no
lie.”[14]
Ibn Batûta was 51 at the end of his recorded journeyings. In spite of
the racket of thirty years, spent in unceasing travel, of shipwreck
and battle, of privation and fevers and much suffering of many kinds,
all of which he brushes lightly aside as matter of small moment, his
natural vigour remained such that he lived three years beyond the
allotted span. The “fitful fever” of his life ceased in the year 1377.
IV.—LUDOVICO VARTHEMA OF BOLOGNA,
RENEGADE PILGRIM TO MECCA. FOREMOST OF ITALIAN TRAVELLERS.
CHAPTER I. THE GREAT AGE OF THE RENAISSANCE AND OF DISCOVERY.
By the close of the Fifteenth Century, the relative stability of
society and of its convictions during the Middle Ages was undone.
The Italian, at least, had cast off the restraints of that rigid and
traditional world, and was in reaction against it. For, social bonds
were loosened, and the corporate life of guild and city was in decay.
With the revival of letters, society became imbued once again with
the Greek and Roman conception of man as a progressive creature, and
was awakened to the richness of thought and feeling to be enjoyed in
vigorous passionate life. Self-sufficiency, self-assertion, and force
of will were admired above all other qualities, and it was the ambition
of most men to achieve them. Each man strove to fulfil his own nature
in his own way. Religion rapidly degenerated into an indispensable
observance of formalities, a traditional habit, a customary cloak. The
rigorous men of the Renaissance sought to live fully, freely, and with
diversity; they thirsted for new and refreshing springs; they quaffed
delightful and refreshing draughts; they boldly winged their way to
unfamiliar spheres, or gratified sense and passion to the full. The
age was aglow with all manner of ideality. On the whole its passions
were unrestrained, save by prudence; unchecked by any moral curb, which
it had counted foolishness. The religious rapture of Savonarola was
an ephemeral phenomenon, and almost unique. Even in the gentle grace
of Perugino’s Madonnas and the sweet innocence with which he invests
the Child, we may mark the substitution of religious affectation
for religious sincerity. The age loved pomp and magnificence; and
these appear in the frescoes of Pinturicchio. It was a field for the
development of a deep-seated, incalculable, yet persuasive force of
Will: the spirit is portrayed in the subtle eye and inscrutable smile
of Monna Lisa.
It was when the Renaissance was in full flood, but before Ariosto,
“with his tongue in his cheek,” had achieved his cantoes of romantic
chivalry; before Raphael plied his brush with too perfect and serene
a finish; before Michael Angelo cast aside charm and beauty for the
expression of strength and power, that the energy of the age found a
new field for activity. The Turk swept the Ægean Sea and ruled the
Western Roman Empire. But the great drama of History unfolds tragic
irony surpassing the invention of poets. When the vast spaces of the
great Church of Justinian rang with the shout of the victors, the
knell of Moslem predominance sounded unheard. The Turk had captured
the gateways of the East only to force the European, in adventures
beyond the seas, to the domination of the world. Pioneers set out from
Portugal and Spain, and tried to cut out the Moslem middleman; they
steered to find a sea-way to the fabulous wealth of India. They coasted
along amazing lands, peopled by strange races, and entered novel and
unsuspected seas. Columbus found a new world beyond “wandering fields
of barren foam”; Vasco di Gama was forcing his way round Africa. Many
a narrow, ancient illusion was dispelled; and the minds of men were
excited to a rapture of expectation. The hearts of pious Portuguese and
Spaniards beat high at the hope of combining the salvation of heathen
souls with the profitable enslavement of heathen bodies. All men were
allured by the prospect of acquiring new markets, priceless gems, and
the gold dust of El Dorado. The modern world of aggressive commerce was
engendered in the very bosom of the High Renaissance.