Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle/Appendix/I

by Clements Robert Markham

APPENDIX.

——————

I.

Account of Travels of Johann Grueber, Jesuit.^[1]

The Missioner set out for China, as we conjecture, in the year 1656. According to the first letter, he went from Venice to Smyrna by sea; from thence to Ormuz by land in five months; from Ormuz by sea in seven months to Makau.^[2] There landing, he passed through China partly by water, partly by land, to Peking in three months. He stayed in China three years: in one of which, viz. 1660, he says the fifty-six Jesuits who were then in that empire baptized more than fifty thousand men.

In his return he took a road never perhaps attempted by any European before. Grueber left Peking in the month of June, 1661, in company with Albert Dorville, of the same society. In thirty days he came to Singan-fu,^[3] and in thirty more to Sining-fu, crossing the Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, twice in the way.

Sining^[4] is a great and populous city, built at the vast Wall of China, through the gate of which the merchants from India enter Katay or China. Here they stay till they have licence from the Emperor to proceed forward. The Wall at this place is so broad that six horsemen may run abreast on it without embarrassing each other. Here the citizens of Sining take the air (which is very healthful, coming from the desert), and recreate themselves with the prospect as well as other diversions. There are stairs to go a-top of the Wall, and many travel on it from the gate at Sining to the next at Sochew, which is eighteen days' journey. This they do by the Governor's licence, out of curiosity, having a delightful prospect all the way from the Wall, as from a high tower, of the innumerable habitations on one side, and the various kinds of wild beasts which range the desert on the other side. Besides wild bulls, here are tigers, lions, elephants, rhinoceroses, and monoceroses, which are a kind of horned asses. Thus the merchants view the beasts free from danger, especially from that part of the Wall which, running southward, approaches the more inhabited provinces of Quang-si, Yunnan, and Tibet, for at certain times of the year they betake themselves to the Yellow River and parts near the Wall, which abound with thickets, in order to get pasture and seek their prey.

This desert is partly mountainous and partly level, all over sandy and barren, excepting that in some places you meet with little rivulets whose banks yield good pasture. It begins in the middle part of India, and extends from south to north, but nobody ever yet hath discovered its bounds, which may stretch to the Frozen Ocean. Marco Polo calls this desert Lop, and speaks of its being haunted with spirits. But Grueber says nothing of them. The Tatars formerly called it Beljan, now Samo; the Chinese Kalmuk, others Kara-kathay. The Tatars, accustomed to deserts, dwell here in tents, removing with their cattle wherever they can find a river or place fit for pasture.^[5]

The road from Sining as far as Lhasa is somewhat differently described in different letters. In the first we are told that Grueber, passing out of China, entered the sands of desert Tatary, which he crossed in three days. Afterwards he came to the banks of the Koko-nor, which signifies the Great Sea,^[6] being a great lake or sea like the Caspian, where the Yellow River has its source.

Leaving this sea behind him, he entered into the country of Toktokay,^[7] which is almost desert and so barren that it need fear no invasion. One meets with nothing but some tents of Tatars. It is watered by the Toktokay, a very fine river, whence it takes the name. It is as large as the Danube, but so shallow that it may be forded everywhere.

Thence, haying crossed the country of Tangut,^[8] he came to Retink,^[9] a very populous province belonging to the kingdom of Barantola,^[10] whose capital is Lhasa, where at length he arrived.

According to the fifth letter, or Kircher's abstract, we are told that presently, after they had passed the Great Wall, they found a river stored with fish, on which they supped in an open tent. Then, crossing the Yellow River, they immediately entered that vast and barren desert of Kalmuk, inhabited by the Kalmuk Tatars (the Eluths or Tatars of Koko-nor), who rove up and down it to rob the caravans, and at certain seasons settle with their portable cities on the banks of the rivers. The Jesuits often met with their habitations in the road, and drew their figures, viz. a Kalmuk man, clothed with a leathern garment and yellow cap; a Kalmuk woman in a habit made of a certain skin of a green or red colour, each with a charm about their necks to preserve them from dangers; a Lama, that is one of their Tatar priests or bishops. They wear a white coat or cloak cast backwards, with a red girdle, and a yellow coat, from the girdle of which hangeth down a purse; their cap or hat is painted red. Their habitations are tents made with small sticks twisted or plaited together, and covered with a coarse woollen stuff bound together with cords.

From Sining they, in three months, entered the kingdom of Lhasa, which the Tatars call Barantola. The King is styled Deva,^[11] or Teva, descended from an ancient race of the Tangut Tatars, resides at Butala, a castle built on a high mountain, after the European fashion, where he has a numerous court. The great priest of this country is called Lama Konju, and adored as a god. He resides at Barantola, and is the Pope of the Chinese and Tatars, called by them God the Father, whose religion in all essential points tallies with the Romish, although, says the author, no Christian ever was in the country before.

Here they stayed a month, and might have converted many of the natives, but for that devilish God the Father (as the author calls him), who puts to death such as refuse to adore him. However, they were kindly treated by the people and King, who was the brother of that God the Father.

In the Court of Deva, King of Tangut, they saw a woman, born in Hami,^[12] in Northern Tartary, dressed in an unusual habit. She wore hair like knotted cords, her head and girdle adorned with cockle-shells. They saw likewise some women no less strangely dressed, who came from the neighbouring kingdom of Koin.^[13] The ladies braid or curl their hair in the manner of hair laces or small bands, and twist if behind them. On their foreheads they wear a red fillet beset with pearls, and on the top of their heads a silver crown, bedecked with turquoises and pearls.

Grueber drew the pictures of the Grand Lama^[14] (taken from one hung at the palace gate) and of Han, late King of Tangut. This last, who had fourteen sons, was, for his goodness and justice, reverenced as a god. He was of a dark complexion, his beard of a chestnut colour mixed with grey, and his eyes protuberant.

From Lhasa, or Barantola, they came in four days to the foot of the mountain Langur,^[15] which being exceedingly high, travellers can hardly breathe at top, the air is so very thin; neither is it to be crossed in summer without great danger from the exhalations of certain poisonous herbs. Besides, as no waggons or beasts can pass it for the rocks and precipices, they must proceed on foot almost a mouth till they come to Kuthi,^[16] one of the two chief cities of the kingdom of Nekbal.^[17] This mountainous tract is plentifully furnished with springs both hot and cold, which issue from all parts of the mountain, affording store of fish and pasture. From Kuthi, in five days, they came to the city Nesti,^[18] still in Nekbal, where provisions are so plentiful that thirty or forty hens are sold for one crown.

From Nesti they came, in five days' journey, to Kadmendu,^[19] the metropolis of Nekbal, where reigns a potent king. From Kadmendu, in half a day's time, they came to the city Nekbal,^[20] called also Baddan by the natives, the regal city of the whole kingdom.

The first letter relates that Nekbal is a month's journey in extent, and has two capital cities, Katmandir and Patan, separated only by a river. The King, called Partasmal,^[21] resides in the first, and his brother, Nevasmal (a young handsome prince), in the latter. He had the command of all the troops in the country, and while Grueber was there had a great army in the field to oppose a petty king, named Varkam, who made frequent incursions into his dominions.

The Jesuit presented this prince with a telescope, wherewith having discovered a place where Varkam had fortified himself, he desired the prince to look that way, which he did, and seeing the enemy so near, cried, "Let us march against them!" not considering that the seeming approach was the effect of the glass. It is not easy to express how pleased he was with this present. He likewise gave the King other curious mathematical instruments, with which he was so taken, that he determined not to let them go, but that they promised him faithfully to return. In that case, he promised both to erect a house for their use, endowed with ample revenues, and grant them full power to introduce the Christian law into his kingdom.

In this country, when a man drinks to a woman, the company pour in the liquor cha or the wine three times for the parties, and while they are drinking affix three pieces of butter to the brim of the cup, which those who pledge them take off and stick on their foreheads.

They have a most cruel custom in these kingdoms; for when they judge their sick people to be past hopes of recovery, they carry them into the fields, and casting them into deep ditches full of dead corpses, there leave them to perish, and their bodies, when dead, to be devoured by birds and beasts of prey, esteeming it an honour to have living creatures for their tombs.

The women, out of a religions whim, never wash, but daub themselves with a nasty kind of oil, which not only causes them to stink intolerably, but renders them extremely ugly and deformed.

From Nekbal in a journey of five days you meet with the city Hedonda,^[22] a colony of the kingdom of Moranga,^[23] inclosed in Tibet. From the names of Dominic, Francis, and Antony, still in use with the natives, it appeared that Christianity had been planted there in times past.

In the first letter we are told that in Moranga he saw no towns, but only houses, or rather huts, made of straw, and among them a custom-house. The King pays yearly to the Great Moghul a tribute of 250,000 rix dollars and seven elephants. From Hedonda (crossing the kingdom of Maranga), in eight days they came to Mutgari,^[24] the first city of the Moghul's empire. From Mutgari is a journey of ten days to Batana,^[25] or Patan, which is a city of Bengal, on the Ganges. From Batana, in eight days they came to Benares, a populous city on the Ganges, famous for an academy of the Brahmans, where persons are instructed in their religion and sciences. From Benares, in eleven days they came to Katampur,^[26] and from thence in seven more to Agra. So that from Peking thither was a journey of 214 days, but reckoning the time which the caravans rest, if will come to about fourteen months. Here Dorville, the companion of Grueber in his travels, died. The author's travels from Moranga are related, with some variation, in the first letter. It is there said that from thence he entered India and came to Minapor,^[27] the metropolis of the country, where he crossed the Ganges, twice as broad as the Danube. Thence he travelled to the city Patna, and from Patna in twenty-five days to Agra, the chief royal seat of the Moghul's empire, eleven months after he had left China.

This first letter furnishes us also with an account of his travels from Agra to Europe, and several other particulars not to be met with in Kircher's Memoirs. From Agra he got in six days to Delhi, and from Delhi in fourteen to Lahore, on the Ravi, which is as broad as the Danube, and falls into the Indus, near Multan. At this last place he embarked on the Indus, and in forty days journeyed down to Tata, the last city of Hindustan, and residence of a Viceroy called Laskarkan. Here he found many English and Dutch merchants. From thence, sailing to Ormuz, he landed, and passing through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, came to Smyrna, where, putting again to sea, he arrived first at Messina, and then at Rome, fourteen months after he had left Agra.

He had not been long at Rome before he received orders to return to China. Accordingly he went into Germany, and from thence to Poland, with a design to cut out another new road through Russia, having, by the Emperor's means, obtained passports from the Dukes of Curland and Muscovy. But when he arrived on the borders of Russia, news came that the King of Poland, in conjunction with the Tatars, had invaded the Grand Duke's dominions. Fearing, therefore, that it would he difficult to get to Moscow, called by the Tatars Stoliza, he thought it best to return to Venice, which he did just at the time the Emperor was sending Count Lesly on an embassy to the Porte. In the train of this lord he travelled to Constantinople, designing to take his way through Natolia, Persia, and the Indies; but on his arrival he was seized with a violent flux and pains in the stomach, so that, being unable to proceed, he returned by sea to Leghorn, and thence to Florence. Here his disorder abating, he repaired to Venice, in order to pass through Friuli to Vienna, and so to Constantinople, once more to attempt getting to China by that road. But how he succeeded we do not find.

The author, in 1665, when he set out on his return to China, was about forty-five years of age, of an affable temper and extremely civil, joining to other good qualities the German sincerity, which rendered his conversation perfectly agreeable. The variations found in the letters seem to be owing to the defects of the author's memory, and mistakes of those who took the relation from his mouth. With regard to the Chinese and Tatars, he has explained some things more fully than other authors have done, as well as related others in a different manner.

Table of Latitudes observed on the Journey.[28]
	°	′	″
Sining	36	10	0
Lhasa, or Barantola	29	6	0
Khatmandu	27	5	0
Hedonda	26	36	0
Batana, on Ganges	24	44	0
Benares, on Ganges	24	50	0

1. From Astley's 'Collection of Voyages,' vol. iv.
2. Macao.
3. The capital of Shensi, once capital of China.
4. On the western frontier of Kansuh, towards Kokonor. It is difficult to account for the crossing of the Hoang-ho twice, between Singan and Sining. The maps also place the Great Wall at a distance of 15 geographical miles from Sining, and its continuation to Suchau in Kansuh appears to be broken by palisades. Besides, there is no evidence on the maps that the Wall runs southwards from Sining to Quangsi, Yunnan, and Tibet.
5. The beginning of the Desert of Lop, Gobi, or Shamo, in the middle part of India, is also unintelligible. The Chinese call this Desert Ko-pih, or Ta Ko-pih; also Sha-moh, and Han-hai, or Sea of Sand. Beljan (so called by Hayton the Armenian, see Yule's ‘Cathay,’ cxcvi.) may be a Turki name for it. Kalmuk is derived from the Mongol tribe of that name. Kata Kathay is Black Kathay, the old name for Mongolia.
6. Kokonor does not signify Great Sea, but Blue Sea, and it is not the source of, nor connected with, the Yellow River, which rises in a distinct system of lakes.
7. The Toktonaï oulan mouren is one of the superior affluents or sources of the Yang tse kiang, or Mouroui oussou ('Mag. Asiatique,' ii. 246, 282).
8. Tangut is here applied to the high plateau of Tibet, north of Lhasa. (See Yule's 'Marco Polo', i. pp. 184, 186.)
9. Retink: perhaps the district of the Jang Raiting Monastery, about 45 miles north of Lhasa. (See map of route to Tengri Nor.)
10. Barantola. Bourhan is a synonym of Buddha, according to Huc, ii. 115. Hence perhaps the name may mean "country of Buddha." Klaproth, in his notes to 'Della Penna,' asserts that Barontala in Mongolian means the right side, referring to Tibet. (See Yule's 'Marco Polo,' i. 193.) This also is in accord with the Mongolian Dictionary of Kovalensky.
11. See Klaproth, "Description du Si Dzang ou Tubet," 'Mag. Asiatique,' ii. 212: "On nomme à présent le pays du Dalaï lama, indistinctement Tubet ou Tangut; . . . le roy du pays est nommé Diba . . ." The Tepa Lama, who conducts the civil affairs for the Dalai Lama, appears to be the same as the Deva or Dibu.
12. Hami is one of the Muhammadan cities of Kansuh, beyond the Great Wall, at the eastern end of the Tian Shan mountains. The roads along both sides of the range meet at this point.
13. This may be Kam, the eastern division of Tibet.
14. The Dalai Lama in Grueber's time was the fifth since the establishment of the Yellow sect by Tsong-khapa, and bore the name of Ngawang lobdzang ghiamdzo. (See 'Mag. Asiatique,' ii. 214.)
15. This is the range crossed by the Laghulung-la (pass) and the Dango-la. (See the map of the routes in Eastern Nepal, by explorer No. 9 under Colonel Montgomery.) According to Brian Hodgson, Langur is a general name for a mountain pass, equivalent to La in Tibetan, and Shan in Chinese; Tagh in Turki, and Ula in Mongolian.
16. This place was visited by No. 9, whose route seems to have been identical with the missionary's. It is also called Nilam.
17. This form of Nepal is unaccountable. Perhaps it is a misprint for Nehpal. The Chinese name is Palpou (see D'Anville's maps). According to Brian Hodgson, the name is derived from Né, the sender to Paradise, who is Swayambhu Adi-Budha; and pála, cherished. It is Naipála in Sanskrit. The Brahmans assert that Né is the proper name of the Saint or Muni who first settled the country.
18. This is the Listi of No. 9, at the southern entrance of the remarkable gorge by which the summit of the Southern Himalaya is crossed in coming from Kuti.
19. Kathmandu.
20. Nekbal city, or Baddan, "the regal city of the whole kingdom." Although Kathmandu has become the residence of the Gorkha conquerors of Nepal, and Bhatgaon is described by Kirkpatrick as a superior place, the old capital, and the favourite residence of the Brahman priesthood, still the Baddan of the missionary is Lalita Patan, another considerable city in the same valley as Kathmandu.
21. Pratap malla, king of Kathmandu, and Yoga Narendra malla, king of Patan, 1689. (See Prinsep's Tables of the Rajas of Nepal, p. 116.) There is no account of the petty king Varkam, probably Vikrama.
22. Hitounda of Brian Hodgson, a town at the foot of the mountains, 44 kos from Kesriah, a port on the Gandak, and 191/2 kos from Kathmandu. Merchandise is conveyed by bullocks from the river to Hitounda, whence it is carried over the mountains by athletic porters ('Bengal Selections,' No. xxvii. p. 22. 1857).
23. Probably the Murung or Terai, the swampy region between the mountains and the plains. If there is no discrepancy in connection with Radok, which is said to be the capital of Moranga, the reference may be to Rohtut, a district of the Nepalese government of the Terai, the principal place of which now appears to be Kuttioul. (See 'Kirkpatrick's Nepal,' 40, 41, and the map of Nepaul, 1855.)
24. Mutgari, "the first city of the Moghul's empire" (reached by the missionaries). This is Motihari, in the district of Sarun.
25. The city of Patna, on the Ganges.
26. No place more likely than Cawnpore.
27. Dinapur.
28. These latitudes, according to the latest authorities, should be as follows:—

    °	′	″		°	′	″
    36	39	20	Jesuit surveys.	27	26	0	Pundit.
    29	39	17	Pundit.	25	35	0	Indian survey.
    27	41	28	,,	25	17	0	,,