Des Missions Scient. IX., 1899, p. 81), in
1895, does not appear to know that there is a difference between Kara
Korum and Kara Balgasun, as he writes: "Forty kilometres south of Kara
Korum or Kara Balgasun, the convent of Erdin Zoun."
A plan of Kara Balgasun is given (plate 27) in Radloff's Atlas. See also
Henri Cordier et Gaubil, Situation de Holin en Tartarie, Leide, 1893.
In Rubruquis's account of Karakorum there is one passage of great
interest: "Then master William [Guillaume L'Orfevre] had made for us an
iron to make wafers ... he made also a silver box to put the body of
Christ in, with relics in little cavities made in the sides of the box."
Now M. Marcel Monnier, who is one of the last, if not the last traveller
who visited the region, tells me that he found in the large temple of
Erdeni Tso an iron (the cast bore a Latin cross; had the wafer been
Nestorian, the cross should have been Greek) and a silver box, which are
very likely the objects mentioned by Rubruquis. It is a new proof of the
identity of the sites of Erdeni Tso and Karakorum. - H. C.]
[Illustration: Entrance to the Erdeni Tso Great Temple.]
NOTE 2. - [Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 113, note) says: "The earliest date to
which I have been able to trace back the name Tartar is A.D. 732. We find
mention made in a Turkish inscription found on the river Orkhon and
bearing that date, of the Tokuz Tatar, or 'Nine (tribes of) Tatars,' and
of the Otuz Tatar, or 'Thirty (tribes of) Tatars.' It is probable that
these tribes were then living between the Oguz or Uigur Turks on the west,
and the Kitan on the east. (Thomsen, Inscriptions de l'Orkhon, 98, 126,
140.) Mr. Thos. Watters tells me that the Tartars are first mentioned by
the Chinese in the period extending from A.D. 860 to 874; the earliest
mention I have discovered, however, is under date of A.D. 880. (Wu tai
shih, Bk. 4.) We also read in the same work (Bk. 74, 2) that 'The Ta-ta
were a branch of the Mo-ho (the name the Nu-chen Tartars bore during the
Sui and T'ang periods: Ma Tuan-lin, Bk. 327, 5). They first lived to the
north of the Kitan. Later on they were conquered by this people, when they
scattered, a part becoming tributaries of the Kitan, another to the
P'o-hai (a branch of the Mo-ho), while some bands took up their abode in
the Yin Shan in Southern Mongolia, north of the provinces of Chih-li and
Shan-si, and took the name of Ta-ta.' In 981 the Chinese ambassador to
the Prince of Kao-chang (Karakhodjo, some 20 miles south-east of Turfan)
traversed the Ta-ta country. They then seem to have occupied the northern
bend of the Yellow River. He gives the names of some nine tribes of Ta-ta
living on either side of the river.
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