P. 356): "The manes were
hogged and the tails cropped of a great many of the ponies these men were
riding; but there were none of the docked tails mentioned by Marco
Polo." - H.C.]
Armour of boiled leather - "armes cuiraces de cuir bouilli"; so
Pauthier's text; the material so often mentioned in mediaeval costume;
e.g. in the leggings of Sir Thopas: -
"His jambeux were of cuirbouly,
His swerdes sheth of ivory,
His helme of latoun bright."
But the reading of the G. Text which is "cuir de bufal," is probably the
right one. Some of the Miau-tzu of Kweichau are described as wearing
armour of buffalo-leather overlaid with iron plates. (Ritter, IV.
768-776.) Arblasts or crossbows are still characteristic weapons of many of
the wilder tribes of this region; e.g. of some of the Singphos, of the
Mishmis of Upper Assam, of the Lu-tzu of the valley of the Lukiang, of
tribes of the hills of Laos, of the Stiens of Cambodia, and of several of
the Miau-tzu tribes of the interior of China. We give a cut copied from a
Chinese work on the Miau-tzu of Kweichau in Dr. Lockhart's possession,
which shows three little men of the Sang-Miau tribe of Kweichau combining
to mend a crossbow, and a chief with armes cuiraces and jambeux
also. [The cut (p. 83) is well explained by this passage of Baber's
Travels among the Lolos (p. 71): "They make their own swords, three and a
half to five spans long, with square heads, and have bows which it takes
three men to draw, but no muskets." - H.C.]
NOTE 5. - I have nowhere met with a precise parallel to this remarkable
superstition, but the following piece of Folk-Lore has a considerable
analogy to it. This extraordinary custom is ascribed by Ibn Fozlan to the
Bulgarians of the Volga: "If they find a man endowed with special
intelligence then they say: 'This man should serve our Lord God;' and so
they take him, run a noose round his neck and hang him on a tree, where
they leave him till the corpse falls to pieces." This is precisely what
Sir Charles Wood did with the Indian Corps of Engineers; - doubtless on the
same principle.
Archbishop Trench, in a fine figure, alludes to a belief prevalent among
the Polynesian Islanders, "that the strength and valour of the warriors
whom they have slain in battle passes into themselves, as their rightful
inheritance." (Fraehn, Wolga-Bulgaren, p. 50; Studies in the Gospels,
p. 22; see also Lubbock, 457.)
[Illustration: The Sangmiau Tribe of Kweichau, with the Crossbow. (From a
Chinese Drawing.)
"Ont armes corases de cuir de bufal, et ont lances et scuz et ont
balestres."]
There is some analogy also to the story Polo tells, in the curious Sindhi
tradition, related by Burton, of Baha-ul-hakk, the famous saint of Multan.
When he visited his disciples at Tatta they plotted his death, in order to
secure the blessings of his perpetual presence.
