And when they had abode with that King nearly two years, conducting
themselves like persons who thought of anything but treason, they one day
accompanied the King on a pleasure party when he had very few else along
with him: for in those gallants the King had perfect trust, and thus kept
them immediately about his person. So after they had crossed a certain
river that is about a mile from the castle, and saw that they were alone
with the King, they said one to another that now was the time to achieve
that they had come for. Then they all incontinently drew, and told the King
that he must go with them and make no resistance, or they would slay him.
The King at this was in alarm and great astonishment, and said: "How then,
good my sons, what thing is this ye say? and whither would ye have me go?"
They answered, and said: "You shall come with us, will ye: nill ye, to
Prester John our Lord."
[Illustration: The "Roi d'Or." (From a MS. in the Royal Asiatic Society's
Collection.)
"Et en ceste chastians ha un mout bians paleis en quel a une grandisme sale
la ou il sunt portrait a mont belles pointures tout les rois de celes
provences que furent ansienemant, et ce est mout belle viste a voir."]
NOTE 1. - The name of the castle is very doubtful. But of that and the
geography, which in this part is tangled, we shall speak further on.
Whilst the original French texts were unknown, the king here spoken of
figured in the old Latin versions as King Darius, and in Ramusio as Re
Dor. It was a most happy suggestion of Marsden's, in absence of all
knowledge of the fact that the original narrative was French, that this
Dor represented the Emperor of the Kin or Golden Dynasty, called by the
Mongols Altun Khan, of which Roi D'Or is a literal translation.
Of the legend itself I can find no trace. Rashiduddin relates a story of
the grandfather of Aung Khan (Polo's Prester John), Merghuz Boiruk Khan,
being treacherously made over to the King of the Churche (the Kin
sovereign), and put to death by being nailed to a wooden ass. But the same
author tells us that Aung Khan got his title of Aung (Ch. Wang) or king
from the Kin Emperor of his day, so that no hereditary feud seems
deducible.
Mr. Wylie, who is of opinion, like Baron Richthofen, that the Caichu
which Polo makes the scene of that story, is Kiai-chau (or Hiai-chau as it
seems to be pronounced), north of the Yellow River, has been good enough to
search the histories of the Liao and Kin Dynasties,[1] but without finding
any trace of such a story, or of the Kin Emperors having resided in that
neighbourhood.
On the other hand, he points out that the story has a strong resemblance to
a real event which occurred in Central Asia in the beginning of Polo's
century.
The Persian historians of the Mongols relate that when Chinghiz defeated
and slew Taiyang Khan, the king of the Naimans, Kushluk, the son of
Taiyang, fled to the Gur-Khan of Karakhitai and received both his
protection and the hand of his daughter (see i. 237); but afterwards rose
against his benefactor and usurped his throne. "In the Liao history I
read," Mr. Wylie says, "that Chih-lu-ku, the last monarch of the Karakhitai
line, ascended the throne in 1168, and in the 34th year of his reign, when
out hunting one day in autumn, Kushluk, who had 8000 troops in ambush, made
him prisoner, seized his throne and adopted the customs of the Liao, while
he conferred on Chih-lu-ku the honourable title of Tai-shang-hwang 'the
old emperor.'"[2]
It is this Kushluk, to whom Rubruquis assigns the role of King (or Prester)
John, the subject of so many wonderful stories. And Mr. Wylie points out
that not only was his father Taiyang Khan, according to the Chinese
histories, a much more important prince than Aung Khan or Wang Khan the
Kerait, but his name Tai-Yang-Khan is precisely "Great King John" as near
as John (or Yohana) can be expressed in Chinese. He thinks therefore that
Taiyang and his son Kushluk, the Naimans, and not Aung Khan and his
descendants, the Keraits, were the parties to whom the character of Prester
John properly belonged, and that it was probably this story of Kushluk's
capture of the Karakhitai monarch (Roi de Fer) which got converted into
the form in which he relates it of the Roi d'Or.
The suggestion seems to me, as regards the story, interesting and probable;
though I do not admit that the character of Prester John properly belonged
to any real person.
I may best explain my view of the matter by a geographical analogy.
Pre-Columbian maps of the Atlantic showed an Island of Brazil, an Island of
Antillia, founded - who knows on what? - whether on the real adventure of a
vessel driven in sight of the Azores or Bermudas, or on mere fancy and
fogbank. But when discovery really came to be undertaken, men looked for
such lands and found them accordingly. And there they are in our
geographies, Brazil and the Antilles!
The cut which we give is curious in connection with our traveller's notice
of the portrait-gallery of the Golden Kings. For it is taken from the
fragmentary MS. of Rashiduddin's History in the library of the Royal
Asiatic Society, a MS. believed to be one of those executed under the great
Vazir's own supervision, and is presented there as the portrait of the last
sovereign of the Dynasty in question, being one of a whole series of
similar figures.
