Taoists in the empire, a post subsequently held under Kublai by the Tibetan Pagspa. Meanwhile the native ruler of Cashmere stirred up the populace to murder the military governor, this 'traitorous' friend of Mongol domination; hence the chastisement of 1253, the result of which is not stated. The son of the murdered governor served the Mongols at Peking until his death in 1309. One of the posts he held was that of night watch under the 'minister Puh-lo,' which name some suppose (I think erroneously) to mean Marco Polo.[1] Marco Polo nevertheless describes Pascia (Peshawur), and Kesimur (Cashmere), seven days to the south-east of it; and the said Cashmerian did really serve under the Saracen Achmat, who is mentioned by Marco Polo. Marco certainly never visited either place, and his description seems to have been taken in part from Chinese tradition or history.
They have passes so strong that they have little dread of an invader. . . . In this country are hermits, who observe great abstinence . . . they have abbeys and monasteries . . . from this place you may go to the sea of India, and if we went further we should enter into that country;
and again—
There are wise . . . men or sorcerers called Tebet and Kesimur, which are the names of two idolatrous nations.
Plano Carpini, nearly a generation before Polo, enumerated 'Casmir' among the Mongol conquests, probably alluding to the attempts of the two Cashmerian brothers to bring that country under Mongol influence. In fact in 1257 the 'sultan' Huli of the K'in-shih-mi tribe submitted to the Chinese general Kwoh K'an,[2] employed by the Mongols when the young Prince Hulagu, Mangu's brother, was conquering the highlands of Persia. In 1259 Mangu despatched a Chinese envoy named Ch'ang Teh[3] to his brother Hulagu, and this envoy also mentions K'ih-shih-mi as being north-west of India. He says—
They have kept here all these ages the clothes and bowl of Sakya. The monks have a patriarchal look, like the Chinese pictures of the saint Dharma. They live on vegetable diet and spend their whole time in religious contemplation.
On the ancient Mongol map given to the world by the late Dr. Bretschneider[4] Cashmere is placed outside the empire, whilst K'o-pu-li (Cabul), K'o-tsi-ning (Ghazni), and Badakshan are included in the middle empire of Jagatai, instead of in Hulagu's empire.
The Ming dynasty of native Chinese, which ejected the Mongols in 1368, had extensive relations with Tamerlane's empire, and also
- ↑ 'New Facts about Marco Polo,' Asiat. Quart. Rev. January 1904.
- ↑ Chinese Recorder, 1875; Yüan Shï, ch. 125, 149, and passim (published c. 1380).
- ↑ See 'C'hang Teh's Mission to the West,' Chinese Recorder, 1874; to which may be added the Ming Shï, covering the period 1368–1643, ch. 332 (published 1724).
- ↑ North China Branch, Roy. Asiat. Soc. Journal, vol x. Shanghai, 1876.
