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. There can be little doubt, I think, that these were taken
from Chinese originals, though, it may be, not very exactly.
NOTE 2. - The history of the Tartar conquerors of China, whether Khitan,
Churche, Mongol, or Manchu, has always been the same. For one or two
generations the warlike character and manly habits were maintained; and
then the intruders, having adopted Chinese manners, ceremonies, literature,
and civilization, sank into more than Chinese effeminacy and degradation.
We see the custom of employing only female attendants ascribed in a later
chapter (lxxvii.) to the Sung Emperors at Kinsay; and the same was the
custom of the later Ming emperors, in whose time the imperial palace was
said to contain 5000 women. Indeed, the precise custom which this passage
describes was in our own day habitually reported of the T'ai-P'ing
sovereign during his reign at Nanking: "None but women are allowed in the
interior of the Palace, and he is drawn to the audience-chamber in a
gilded sacred dragon-car by the ladies" (Blakiston, p. 42; see also
Wilson's Ever-Victorious Army, p. 41.)
[1] [There is no trace of it in Harlez's French translation from the Manchu
of the History of the Kin Empire, 1887.
