The Author Of The Diary Notes, That From A
Place One March And A Half Before Reaching The Kerulen, A Very Large
Mountain Was Visible To The North-East, And At Its Foot A Solitary High
And Pointed Hillock, Covered With Stones.
The author says, that the
sovereigns of the house of Yuan used to be buried near this hill.
It may
therefore be plausibly supposed that the tombs of the Mongol Khans were
near the Kerulen, and that the 'K'i-lien' of the Yuan shi is to be
applied to this locality; it seems to me even, that K'i-lien is an
abbreviation, customary to Chinese authors, of Kerulen. The way of burying
the Mongol Khans is described in the Yuan shi (ch. 'On the national
religious rites of the Mongols'), as well as in the Ch'ue keng lu,
'Memoirs of the time of the Yuan Dynasty.' When burying, the greatest care
was taken to conceal from outside people the knowledge of the locality of
the tomb. With this object in view, after the tomb was closed, a drove of
horses was driven over it, and by this means the ground was, for a
considerable distance, trampled down and levelled. It is added to this
(probably from hearsay) in the Ts'ao mu tze Memoirs (also of the time of
the Yuan Dynasty), that a young camel used to be killed (in the presence
of its mother) on the tomb of the deceased Khan; afterwards, when the time
of the usual offerings of the tomb approached, the mother of this
immolated camel was set at liberty, and she came crying to the place where
it was killed; the locality of the tomb was ascertained in this way."
The Archimandrite Palladius adds in a footnote:
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