CHINESE EXPLORATIONS--THE GATES OF THE FAR NORTH
There are many gateways into India, gateways on the north as well as
the north-west and west, and although these far northern ways are so
rugged, so difficult, and so elevated that they can hardly be regarded
as of political or strategic importance, yet they are many of them
well trodden and some were once far better known than they are now.
Opinions may perhaps differ as to their practical value as military or
commercial approaches under new conditions of road-making, but they
never have, so far, been utilized in either sense, and the interest of
them is purely historical. These are the ways of the pilgrims, and we
are almost as much indebted to Chinese records for our knowledge of
them as we are to the researches of modern explorers.
For many a century after Alexander had left the scene of his Eastern
conquests historical darkness envelopes the rugged hills and plains
which witnessed the passing of the Greeks. The faith of Buddha was
strong before their day, but the building age of Buddhism was later.
No mention is to be found in the pages of Greek history of the
magnificent monuments of the creed which are an everlasting wonder of
the plains of Upper India. Such majestic testimony to the living force
of Buddhism could hardly have passed unnoticed by observers so keen as
those early Greeks; and when next we are dimly lighted on our way to
identify the lines of movement and the trend of commerce on the Indian
frontier, we find a new race of explorers treading their way with
pious footsteps from shrine to shrine, and the sacred books and
philosophic teaching of a widespreading faith the objects of their
quest. The Chinese pilgrim Fa Hian was the first to leave a permanent
record of his travels. His date is about A.D. 400, and he was only one
of a large number of Chinese pilgrims who knew the road between India
and China far better than any one knew it twenty-five years ago.
Although the northern approaches to India from the direction of China
are rather far afield, yet recent revelations resulting from the
researches of such enterprising travellers as Sven Hedin and Stein,
confirming the older records, require some short reference to the
nature of those communications between the outside world of Asia and
India which distinguished the early centuries of our era. In those
early centuries there was to be found in that western extension of
the Gobi desert which we call Chinese Turkistan, in the low-lying
country, mostly sand-covered, which stretches to a yellow horizon
northward beneath the shimmering haze of an almost perpetual dust
veil, very different conditions of human existence to those which now
prevail. The zone of cultivation fed by the streams of the Kuen Lun
was wider, stretching farther into the desert. Rivers ran fuller of
water, carrying fertility farther afield; great lakes spread
themselves where now there are but marshes and reeds, and cities
flourished which have been covered over and buried under accumulating
shifting sand for centuries. A great central desert there always has
been within historic period, but it was a desert much modified by
bordering oases of green fertility, and a spread of irrigated
cultivation which is not to be found there now.
Amongst the most interesting relics recovered from some of these
unearthed cities are certain writings in Karosthi and Brahmi (Indian)
script, which testify to the existence of roads and posts and a
regular system of communication between these cities of the plain,
which must have been in existence in those early years of the
Christian era when Karosthi was a spoken language in Northern India.
All this now sand-buried country was Buddhist then, and a great city
overlooked the wide expanse of the Lop Lake, and the rivers of the
southern hills carried fertility far into the central plain. When the
pilgrim Fa Hian trod the weary road from Western China to Chinese
Turkistan by way of Turfan and the Buddhist city of Lop, he followed
in a groove deep furrowed by the feet of many a pilgrim before him,
and a highway for devotees for many a century after.
Strange as it may seem, the ancient people of this desert waste--the
people who now occupy the cultivated strip of land at the foot of the
Kuen Lun mountains which shut them off from Tibet--are an Indian race,
or rather a race of Indian extraction, far more allied to the
Indo-European than to any Mongol, Chinese, Tibetan, or Turk race with
which they may have been recently admixed. Did they spread northward
from India through the rugged passes of Northern Kashmir, taking with
them the faith of their ancestors? We do not know; but there can be
little doubt that the Chanto of the Lop basin and of Turfan is the
lineal successor of the people who welcomed the Chinese pilgrims in
their search after truth. Buddhist then and Mahomedan now, they seem
to have lost little of their genial spirit of hospitality to
strangers.
Khotan (Ilchi) was the central attraction of Western Turkistan, one at
least of the most blessed wayside fountains of faith, the ultimate
sources of which were only to be found in India. Those ultimate
sources have long left India. They are concentrated in Lhasa now,
which city is still the sanctuary of Buddhism to the thousands of
pilgrims who make their way from China on the east and Mongolia on the
north as full of devout aspiration and of patient searching after
spiritual knowledge as was ever a Chinese pilgrim of past ages. Not
only was Western Turkistan full of the monuments and temples of
Buddhism scattered through the length of the green strips of territory
which bordered the dry steppe of the central depression watered on the
north by the Tarim River, and on the south by the many mountain
streams which rushed through the gorges of the Kuen Lun, but there was
an evident extension of outward and visible signs of the faith to the
northward, embracing the Turfan basin, which in many of its physical
characteristics is but a minor repetition of that of Lop, and possibly
even as far west as the great Lake Issyk Kul. Thus the old pilgrim
route to India from Western China, which was chosen by the devotee so
as to include as many sacred shrines as could possibly be made to
assist in adding grace to his pilgrimage, was a very different route
to that now followed by the pious Mongolian or Western Chinaman to
Lhasa.
Avoiding the penalties of the Nan Shan system of mountains which
guards the Tibetan plateau on the north-east, these early pilgrims
held on their journey almost due west, and, skirting the Mongolian
steppe within sight of the Tibetan frontier hills, they reached
Turfan; then turning southward, they passed on to the Lop Nor lake
region by a well-ascertained route, which at that time intersected the
well-watered and fertile land of Lulan. There is water still in the
lower Tarim and in the Konche River beds, but it has proved in these
late years to be useless for agricultural development owing to the
increasing salinity of the soil. Several recent attempts at
recolonizing this area have resulted in total failure. From the Lop
Lake to Khotan _via_ Cherchen the old-world route was much the same as
now, but the width of fertility stretched farther north from the Kuen
Lun foothills, and the temples of Buddhism were rich and frequent, and
thus were pious pilgrims refreshed and elevated every step of the way
through this Turkistan region. Khotan appears to have been the local
centre of the faith. No lake spread out its blue waters to catch the
sky reflections here, but from the cold wastes of Tibet, through the
gorges of the great Kuen Lun range, the waters of a river flowed down
past the temples and stupas of Ilchi to find their way northward
across the sands to the Tarim.
The high ritual of Buddhism in its ancient form was strange and
imposing. When we read Fa Hian's account of the great car procession,
we are no longer surprised at the effect which Buddhist symbolism
exercised on its disciples. Fa Hian and his fellow-travellers were
lodged in a sanghârâma, or temple of the "Great Vehicle," where were
three thousand priests "who assemble to eat at the sound of the
_ghantâ_. On entering the dining hall their carriage is grave and
demure, and they take their seats in regular order. All of them keep
silence; there is no noise with their eating bowls; when the
attendants give more food they are not allowed to speak to one another
but only to make signs with the hand." "In this country," says Fa
Hian, "there are fourteen great sanghârâmas. From the first day of the
fourth month they sweep and water the thoroughfares within the city
and decorate the streets. Above the city gate they stretch an awning
and use every kind of adornment. This is when the King and Queen and
Court ladies take their place. The Gomâti priests first of all take
their images in the procession. About three or four li from the city
they make a four-wheeled image car about 30 feet high, in appearance
like a moving palace adorned with the seven precious substances. They
fix upon it streamers of silk and canopy curtains. The figure is
placed in the car with two Bodhisatevas as companions, while the Devas
attend on them; all kinds of polished ornaments made of gold and
silver hang suspended in the air. When the image is 100 paces from the
gate the King takes off his royal cap, and changing his clothes for
new ones proceeds barefooted, with flowers and incense in his hand,
from the city, followed by his attendants. On meeting the image he
bows down his head and worships at its feet, scattering the flowers
and burning the incense. On entering the city the Queen and Court
ladies scatter about all kinds of flowers and throw them down in wild
profusion. So splendid are the arrangements for worship!"[4] Thus
writes Fa Hian, and it is sufficient to testify to the strength of
Buddhism and the magnificence of its ritual in the third century of
our era, when India still held the chief fountains of inspiration ere
the holy of holies was transferred to Lhasa and the pilgrim route was
changed.
So far, then, we need not look for the influence exercised by the most
recent climatic pulsation of Central Asia which has dried up the
water-springs and allowed the sand-drifts to accumulate above many of
the minor townships of the Lop basin, in order to account for the
trend of Asiatic religious history towards Tibet. It was the gradual
decay of the faith, and its final departure from its birthplace in the
plains of India in later centuries, which sent pilgrims on another
track, and left many of the northern routes to be rediscovered by
European explorers in the nineteenth century. Most of the Chinese
pilgrims visited Khotan, but from Khotan onward their steps were bent
in several directions. Some of them visited Ki-pin, which has been
identified with the upper Kabul River basin. Here, indeed, were
scattered a wealth of Buddhist records to be studied, shrines to be
visited, and temples to be seen. The road from Balkh to Kabul and from
Kabul to the Punjab was pre-eminently a Buddhist route. Balkh, Haibak,
and Bamian all testify, as does the neighbourhood of Kabul itself, to
the existence of a lively Buddhist history before the Mahomedan
Conquest, and between Kabul and India there are Buddhist remains near
Jalalabad which rival in splendour those of the Swat valley and the
Upper Punjab. All these places were objects of devout attention
undoubtedly, but to reach Kabul _via_ Balkh from Khotan it would be
necessary to cross the Pamirs and Badakshan. It is not easy to follow
in detail the footsteps of these devotees, but it is obvious that
until they entered the "Tsungling" mountains they remained north of
the great trans-Himalayan ranges and of the Hindu Kush. The Tsungling
was the dreaded barrier between China and India, and the wild tales of
the horrors which attended the crossing of the mountains testify to
the fact that they were not much easier of access or transit at the
beginning of the Christian era than they are now.
The direct distance between Khotan and Balkh is not less than 700
miles, and 700 miles of such a mountain wilderness as would be
involved by the passing of the Pamirs into the valley of the Oxus and
the plains of Badakshan would represent 900 to 1000 of any ordinary
travelling. And yet there appear to be indications of a close
connection between these two centres of Buddhism. The great temple a
mile or two to the west of Khotan, called the Nava Sanghârâma, or
royal new temple, is the same as that to the south-west of Balkh,
according to a later traveller, Hiuen Tsiang, while the kings of
Khotan were said to be descended from Vaisravana, the protector of the
Balkh convent. No modern traveller has crossed Badakshan from the
Pamirs to Balkh, but the general conformation of the country is fairly
well ascertained, and there can be no doubt that the journey would
occupy any pilgrim, no matter how devout and enthusiastic, at least
two and a half months, and another month would be required to traverse
the road from Balkh _via_ Hiabak, or Baiman, over the Hindu Kush to
Kabul.
Now we are told that Fa Hian journeyed twenty-five days to the Tsen-ho
country, from whence, by marching four days southward, he entered the
Tsungling mountains. Another twenty-five days' rugged marching took
him to the Kie-sha country, a country "hilly and cold" in "the midst
of the Tsungling mountains," where he rejoined his companions who had
started for Ki-pin. It is therefore clear that he did not rejoin them
at Kabul, nor could they have gone there; and the question
arises--Where is Kie-sha? The continuation of Fa Hian's story gives
the solution to the riddle. Another month's wandering from Kie-sha
across the Tsungling mountains took him to North India. It was a
perilous journey. The terrors of it remained engraved on the memory of
the saint after his return to his home in China. Great "poison
dragons" lived in those mountains, who spat poison and gravel-stones
at passing pilgrims, and few there were who survived the encounter.
The impression conveyed of furious blasts of mountain-bred winds is
vivid, and many travellers since Fa Hian's time have suffered
therefrom. "On entering the borders" of India he came to a little
country called To-li. To-li seems to be identified beyond dispute with
Darel, and with this to guide us we begin to see where our pilgrims
must have passed. Fifteen days more of Tsungling mountain-climbing
southwards took him to Wuchung (Udyana), where he remained during the
rains. Thence he went "south" to Sin-ho-to (Swat), and finally
"descended" into Gandara, or the Upper Punjab.
From these final stages of his journey India-ward there is little
difficulty in recognizing that Kie-sha must be Kashmir. In the first
place, Kashmir lies on the most direct route between Chinese Turkistan
and India. Nor is it possible to believe that the wealth of Buddhist
remains which now appeal to the antiquarian in that delightful garden
of the Himalayas were not more or less due to the first impulse of the
devotees of the early faith to plant the seeds of Buddhism where the
passing to and fro of innumerable bands of pilgrims would of
necessity occur. Through Kashmir lay the high-road to High Asia, at
that time included in the Buddhist fold, where Indian language had
crystallized and corroborated the faith that was born in India. Thus
it was that glorious temples arose amidst the groves and on the slopes
of Kashmir hills, and even in the days of Fa Hian, when Buddhism was
already nine centuries old, there must have been much to beguile the
pilgrim to devotional study. In short, Kashmir could not be overlooked
by any devotee, and whether the direct route thither was taken from
Khotan, or whether Kashmir was visited in due course from Northern
India, we may be certain that it was one of the chief objectives of
Chinese pilgrimage.
Fa Hian says so little about the kingdom of Kie-sha which can be made
use of to assist us, that it is not easy to identify the part of
Kashmir to which he refers. Twenty-five days after entering the
Tsungling mountains would enable him to reach the valley of Kashmir by
the Karakoram Pass, Leh, and the Zoji-la at the head of the Sind
valley. It is not a matter of much consequence for our purposes which
route he took, as it is quite clear that all these northern routes
were open to Chinese pilgrim traffic from the very earliest times. The
alternative route would be to the head of the Tagdumbash Pamir, over
the Killik Pass, and by Hunza to Gilgit and Astor. The Hunza country
(Kunjut) has always had an attraction for the Chinese. It has been
conquered and held by China, and is still reckoned by its inhabitants
as part of the Chinese Empire. Hunza and Nagar pay tribute to China to
this day.
If we remember that the pains and penalties of a pilgrimage over any
of the Hindu Kush passes, or by the Karakoram (the chief trade route
through all time), to India, is as nothing to the trials which modern
Mongolian pilgrims undergo between China and Lhasa, over the terrible
altitudes of the Tibetan plateau, there will be little to surprise us
in these earlier achievements. Pioneers of exploration in the true
sense they were not, for the Himalayan byways must have been as well
known to them as were the Asiatic highways to Alexander ere he
attempted to reach India. We may assume, however, that Fa Hian entered
the central valley of Kashmir from Leh, for it gives a reasonable
pretext for his choice of a route out of it. It is not likely that he
would go twice over the same ground. He witnessed the pomp and
pageantry of Buddhist ritual in Kie-sha. The King of the country had
kept the great five-yearly assembly. He had "summoned Sramanas from
the four quarters, who came together like clouds." Silken canopies and
flags with gold and silver lotus-flowers figure amongst the
ritualistic properties, and form part of the processional arrangements
which end with the invariable offerings to the priests. "The King,
taking from the chief officer of the Embassy the horse he rides, with
its saddle and bridle, mounts it, and then, taking white taffeta,
jewels of various kinds, and things required by the Sramanas, in union
with his ministers, he vows to give them all to the priests. Having
thus given them, they are redeemed at a price from the priests." No
mention is made of the price, but as the Kashmiri of the past has been
excellently well described by another pilgrim as a true prototype of
the Kashmiri of the present, it is unlikely that the King lost much by
the deal.
The description of Kie-sha as "in the middle of the Tsungling range"
would hardly apply to any country but Kashmir, and the fact is noted
that from Kie-sha towards India the vegetation changes in character.
Having crossed Tsungling, we arrive at North India, says Fa Hian, but
to reach the "little country called To-li" (Darel) he would have to
cross by the Burzil Pass into the basin of the Indus, and then follow
the Gilgit River to a point under the shadow of the Hindu Koh range,
opposite the head-waters of the Darel. Crossing the Hindu Koh, he
would then drop straight into this "little country." Remembering
something of the nature of the road to Gilgit ere our military
engineers fashioned a sound highway out of the rocky hill-sides, one
can sympathize with the pious Fa Hian when recalling in after years
the frightful experiences of that journey.
A few miles beyond Gilgit the rough evidences of a ruined stupa, and a
still rougher outline of a Buddhist figure cut on the rocks which
guard a narrow gorge leading up the Hindu Koh slopes, points to the
take-off for Darel. No modern explorer has followed that route, except
one of the native explorers of the Indian survey who travelled under
the soubriquet of "the Mullah." The Mullah made his way through the
Darel valley to the Indus, and describes it as a difficult route.
There is little variation in the tale of troubled progress, but "the
Mullah" makes no mention of Buddhist relics, nor is it likely that
they would have appealed to him had he seen them. There can be little
doubt, however, that Darel holds some hidden secrets for future
enterprise to disclose. "Keeping along Tsungling, they journeyed
southward for fifteen days," says Fa Hian. "The road is difficult and
broken with steep crags and precipices in the way. The mountain-side
is simply a stone wall standing up 10,000 feet. Looking down, the
sight is confused and there is no sure foothold. Below is a river
called Sintu-ho (Indus). In old days men bored through the walls to
make a way, and spread out side ladders, of which there are seven
hundred in all to pass. Having passed the ladders, we proceed by a
hanging rope bridge to cross the river." All this agrees fairly well
with the Mullah's account of ladders and precipices, and locates the
route without much doubt. The Darel stream joins the Indus some 30 to
35 miles below Chilas, where the course of the latter river is
practically unsurveyed. Crossing the Indus, Fa Hian came to Wuchung,
which is identified with Udyana, or Upper Swat, and there he remained
during the rains. The Indus below the Darel junction is confined
within a narrow steep-sided gorge with hills running high on either
side, those on the east approaching 15,000 and 16,000 feet. There are
villages, groups of flat-roofed shanties, clinging like limpets to the
rocks, but there is little space for cultivation, and no record of
Buddhist remains north of Buner. No systematic search has been
possible.
Investigations such as led to the remarkable discovery by Dr. Stein of
the site of that famous Buddhist sanctuary marking the spot where
Buddha, in a former birth, offered his body to the starving tigress on
Mount Banj, south of Buner, have never been possible farther north, on
account of the dangerous character of the hill-people of those
regions. Other Chinese pilgrims, Song Yun (A.D. 520) and Huec Sheng,
have recorded that after leaving the capital of ancient Udyana (near
Manglaor, in Upper Swat) they journeyed for eight days south-east, and
reached the place where Buddha made his body offering. "There high
mountains rose with steep slopes and dizzy peaks reaching to the
clouds," etc. "There stood on the mountain the temple of the collected
bones which counted 300 priests." But there is no mention of other
Buddhist sites of importance in the valley of the Indus. Leaving
Udyana, Fa Hian and his companions went south to the country of
Su-ho-to (Lower Swat), and finally ("descending eastward") in five
days found themselves in Gandhara--or the Upper Punjab. Nine days'
journey eastward from the point where they reached Gandhara they came
to the place of Buddha's body-offering, or Mount Banj. Such, in brief
outline, is the story of one pilgrim's journey across the Himalayas to
India. Other pilgrims undoubtedly entered India _via_ the Kabul River
valley, but we need hardly follow them. There were hundreds of them,
possibly thousands, and the pains and penalties of the pilgrimage but
served to add merit to their devotion.
The point of the story lies in its revelation as regards connection
between Central Asia and India in the early centuries A.D. Clearly
there was no pass unknown or unvisited by the Chinese. Not merely the
direct routes, but all the connecting ways which linked up one
Buddhist centre with another were equally well known. What has
required from us a weary process of investigation to overcome the
difficulties of map-making, was to them, if not exactly an open book,
certainly a geographical record which could be turned to practical
use, and it is instructive to note the use that was made of it. As a
pious duty, bristling with difficulty and danger, travel over the
wandering tracks which pass through the northern gates of the
Himalayas was regarded with fervour; but it may be taken for granted
that less pious-minded adventurers than the Chinese pilgrims would
most certainly have made good use of that geographical knowledge to
exploit the riches of India had such a proceeding been possible. We
know that attempts have been made. From the earliest times the Mongol
hordes of China and Central Asia have been directed on India, and no
gateway which could offer any possible hope of admittance has been
neglected. Baktria (Badakshan), lying beyond the mountain barrier, had
been at their mercy. The successors to Alexander's legions in that
country were swamped and dispersed within a century or two of the
foundation of the Greek kingdom; and the Kabul River way to India has
let in army after army. But these northern passes have not only barred
migratory Asiatic hordes through all ages, but have proved too much
even for small organized Mongol military expeditions.
The Chinese hosts, who apparently thought little of crossing the
Tibetan frontier over a succession of Alpine passes such as no Western
general in the world's history has ever encountered, failed to
penetrate farther than Kunjut. The Mongol invasion of Tibet early in
the sixteenth century (which is so graphically described in the
Tarikh-i-Rashidi by Mirza Haidar) was tentatively pushed into Kashmir
_via_ Ladakh, and was defeated by the natural difficulties of the
country--not by the resistance of the weak-kneed Kashmiri--much,
indeed, as a similar expedition to Lhasa was defeated by cold and
starvation. No modern ingenuity has as yet contrived a method of
dealing with the passive resistance of serrated bands of mountains of
such altitude as the Himalayas. No railway could be carried over such
a series of snow-capped ramparts; no force that was not composed of
Asiatic mountaineers could attempt to pass them with any chance of
success; and these northern lines, these eternal defences of Nature's
making may well be left, a vast silent wilderness of peaks,
undisturbed by man's puny efforts to improve their strength. Certainly
the making of highways in the midst of them is not the surest means of
adding to their natural powers of passive obstruction, although such
public works may possibly be deemed necessary in the interests of
peace and order preservation amongst the "snowy mountain men."
Chinese pilgrims no longer tread those rocky mountain-paths (except in
the pages of Rudyard Kipling's entrancing work), and the tides of
devotion have set in other directions--to Mecca or to Lhasa; but the
fact that thousands of Buddhist worshippers yearly undertake a journey
which, for the hardships entailed by cold and starvation between the
western borders of China and Lhasa, should surely secure for them a
reserve of merit equal to that gathered by their forefathers from the
"Tsungling" mountains, might possibly lead to the question whether the
plateau of Eastern Tibet does not afford the open way which is not to
be found farther west. If a Chinese force of 70,000 men could advance
into the heart of Tibet, and finally administer a severe defeat on the
Gurkhas (which surely occurred in 1792) in Nepal, it is clear that
such a force could equally well reach Lhasa. It is also certain that
the stupendous mountain-chains and the elevated passes, which are the
ruling features of the eastern entrance into Tibet from China, far
exceed in natural strength and difficulty those which intervene
between the plains of India and Lhasa. We are therefore bound to admit
that it might be possible for an unopposed Chinese force to invade
India by Eastern Tibet; possibly even by the valley of Assam. There
is, however, no record that such an attempt has ever been made. The
savage and untamable disposition of the eastern Himalayan tribes, and
their intense hostility to strangers may have been, through all time,
a strong deterrent to any active exploitation of their country; and
the density of the forests which close down on the narrow ways which
intersect their hills, give them an advantage in savage tactics such
as was not possessed by the fighting Gurkha tribe in Nepal. But
whatever the reason may be, there is apparently no record of any
Chinese force descending through the Himalayas into the eastern plains
of India by any of the many ways afforded by the affluents of the
Brahmaputra. We may, I think, rest very well assured that no such
attempt could possibly be made by any force other than Chinese, and
that it is not likely that it ever will be made by them. We do not (at
present) look to the north-east (to China) for the shadows of coming
events in India. We look to the north, and looking in that direction
we are quite content to write down the approach to India by any
serious military force across Tibet or through the northern gateways
of Kashmir to be an impossibility.
The footsteps of the Buddhist pilgrim point no road for the tread of
armies. In the interests of geographical research it is well to follow
their tracks, and to learn how much wiser geographically they were in
their day than we are now. It is well to remember that as modern
explorers we are as hopelessly behind them in the spirit of
enterprise, which reaches after an ethical ideal, as we are ahead of
them in the process of attaining exact knowledge of the world's
physiography, and recording it.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] _Buddhist Records of the Western World_, vol. i. p. 27.