Of human thigh bones for flutes and
whistles, he says that to supply them with these the bodies of executed
criminals were stored up of the disposal of the Lamas; and a Hindu
account of Tibet in the Asiatic Researches asserts that when one is
killed in a fight both parties rush forward and struggle for the liver,
which they eat (vol. xv).
[Carpini says of the people of Tibet: "They are pagans; they have a most
astonishing, or rather horrible, custom, for, when any one's father is
about to give up the ghost, all the relatives meet together, and they eat
him, as was told to me for certain." Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 152,
note) writes: "So far as I am aware, this charge [of cannibalism] is not
made by any Oriental writer against the Tibetans, though both Arab
travellers to China in the ninth century and Armenian historians of the
thirteenth century say the Chinese practised cannibalism. The Armenians
designate China by the name Nankas, which I take to be Chinese
Nan-kuo, 'southern country,' the Manzi country of Marco Polo." - H. C.]
But like charges of cannibalism are brought against both Chinese and
Tartars very positively. Thus, without going back to the Anthropophagous
Scythians of Ptolemy and Mela, we read in the Relations of the Arab
travellers of the ninth century:
