Size, covering both the ancient and the
modern locations; then it contracted, and occupied only the site shown on
the Chinese maps; again, in the Middle Ages, it expanded; and at present
it has contracted and occupies the modern site.
"Now, as in Marco Polo's days, the traveller must equip his caravan for
the desert at Charklik, also known as Lop, two days' journey south-west of
the lake." (Ellsworth HUNTINGTON, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 240-1.)
XXXIX., pp. 197, 201.
NOISES IN THE GREAT DESERT.
As an answer to a paper by C. TOMLINSON, in Nature, Nov. 28, 1895, p.
78, we find in the same periodical, April 30, 1896, LIII., p. 605, the
following note by KUMAGUSU MINAKATA: "The following passage in a Chinese
itinerary of Central Asia - Chun Yuen's Si-yih-kien-wan-luh, 1777
(British Museum, No. 15271, b. 14), tom. VII., fol. 13 b. - appears to
describe the icy sounds similar to what Ma or Head observed in North
America (see supra, ibid., p. 78).
"Muh-sueh-urh-tah-fan (= Muzart), that is Ice Mountain [Snowy according
to Prjevalsky], is situated between Ili and Ushi.... In case that one
happens to be travelling there close to sunset, he should choose a rock of
moderate thickness and lay down on it. In solitary night then, he would
hear the sounds, now like those of gongs and bells, and now like those of
strings and pipes, which disturb ears through the night: these are
produced by multifarious noises coming from the cracking ice."
Kumagusu Minakata has another note on remarkable sounds in Japan in
Nature, LIV., May 28, 1896, p. 78.
Sir T. Douglas Forsyth, Buried Cities in the Shifting Sands of the Great
Desert of Gobi, Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc., Nov. 13, 1876, says, p. 29: "The
stories told by Marco Polo, in his 39th chapter, about shifting sands and
strange noises and demons, have been repeated by other travellers down to
the present time. Colonel Prjevalsky, in pp. 193 and 194 of his
interesting Travels, gives his testimony to the superstitions of the
Desert; and I find, on reference to my diary, that the same stories were
recounted to me in Kashghar, and I shall be able to show that there is
some truth in the report of treasures being exposed to view."
P. 201, Line 12. Read the Governor of Urumtsi founded instead of
found.
XL., p. 203. Marco Polo comes to a city called Sachiu belonging to a
province called Tangut. "The people are for the most part Idolaters....
The Idolaters have a peculiar language, and are no traders, but live by
their agriculture. They have a great many abbeys and minsters full of
idols of sundry fashions, to which they pay great honour and reverence,
worshipping them and sacrificing to them with much ado."
Sachiu, or rather Tun Hwang, is celebrated for its "Caves of Thousand
Buddhas"; Sir Aurel Stein wrote the following remarks in his Ruins of
Desert Cathay, II., p. 27: "Surely it was the sight of these colossal
images, some reaching nearly a hundred feet in height, and the vivid first
impressions retained of the cult paid to them, which had made Marco Polo
put into his chapter on 'Sachiu,' i.e. Tun-huang, a long account of the
strange idolatrous customs of the people of Tangut.... Tun-huang manifestly
had managed to retain its traditions of Buddhist piety down to Marco's
days. Yet there was plentiful antiquarian evidence showing that most of the
shrines and art remains at the Halls of the Thousand Buddhas dated back to
the period of the T'ang Dynasty, when Buddhism flourished greatly in China.
Tun-huang, as the westernmost outpost of China proper, had then for nearly
two centuries enjoyed imperial protection both against the Turks in the
north and the Tibetans southward. But during the succeeding period, until
the advent of paramount Mongol power, some two generations before Marco
Polo's visit, these marches had been exposed to barbarian inroads of all
sorts. The splendour of the temples and the number of the monks and nuns
established near them had, no doubt, sadly diminished in the interval."
XL., p. 205.
Prof. Pelliot accepts as a Mongol plural Tangut, but remarks that it is
very ancient, as Tangut is already to be found in the Orkhon
inscriptions. At the time of Chingiz, Tangut was a singular in Mongol,
and Tangu is nowhere to be found.
XL., p. 206.
The Tangutans are descendants of the Tang-tu-chueh; it must be understood
that they are descendants of T'u Kiueh of the T'ang Period. (PELLIOT.)
Lines 7 and 8 from the foot of the page: instead of T'ung hoang, read Tun
hoang; Kiu-kaan, read Tsiu tsuean.
XL., p. 207, note 2. The "peculiar language" is si-hia (PELLIOT).
XLI., pp. 210, 212, n. 3.
THE PROVINCE OF CAMUL.
See on the discreditable custom of the people of Qamul, a long note in the
second edition of Cathay, I., pp. 249-250.
XLI., p. 211.
Prof. Parker remarks (Asiatic Quart. Rev., Jan., 1904, p. 142) that:
"The Chinese (Manchu) agent at Urga has not (nor, I believe, ever had) any
control over the Little Bucharia Cities. Moreover, since the reconquest of
Little Bucharia in 1877-1878, the whole of those cities have been placed
under the Governor of the New Territory (Kan Suh Sin-kiang Sun-fu), whose
capital is at Urumtsi. The native Mohammedan Princes of Hami have still
left to them a certain amount of home rule, and so lately as 1902 a decree
appointing the rotation of their visits to Peking was issued.
