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Having followed Marcp in his adventurous journey across Asia from Tabriz to Pechili, we may afford to pause to look at the condition of the Empire
With the fall of the Tang dynasty in 905 the strong bond that had held together the realm of China was broken, and for upwards of half a century China was the sport of adven- turers, five of whom in different portions of the land succeeded in establishing governments of momentary stability sufficient to be noticed in the official line of empire. At last for China south of the Yellow River this state of confusion was terminated by the general recognition of the rule of a new dynasty calling itself Sung, in the year 96). Sung was, however, by no means master of all China. During the troubles incident on the fall of the old T'ang, a chief of Tungusic, or more correctly Ushwar, origin, had seized the provinces of Shingking | and Pechili, and with them the greater part of Chins north of the Hwangbo. The personal name of the chief as rendered in ordinary Chinese is put down as Yela Apaoki, but the phonetic elements when compared with Corean, point to Selör Alpgar. Anyway. Selör be longed to the important Ushwar tribe of the K'itens, which in northern Asia and Russia has given to China ever since the name of Khitan. To his new empire Alpgar gave his | own family title of Selör) which, as also in the case of the chief rived of the district, the Sira Muram, became converted into Chinese Liao. The dynasty lasted some two hundred years, when it was overthrown by a people of kindred race, the Nüchen, or rather Jruohon Tartars, the remote ancestors of the present Manchus, who established the dynasty called in the Chinese annals the Kin, or Golden. The real name of these Nüchen was Chorcha, or in plural Chörchen, and for some centuries they dwelt about Lake Baikal, as our author correctly informs us in his notice of Karakorum. In 1208 the last king of the Wigurs, having rebelled against the Kara Khitai ruler, and fearing punishment, threw himself into the hands of Jenghiz Khan, who had by this time become an important factor in Eastern Asiatic politics Jonghiz received him gladly; and the next year, apparently acting under his instiga tion, we find Jenghiz attacking Kaosa. This was the first attempt of the new Mongol empire to extend its dominions to the south.
A few words of explanation are here necessary. About the year 1032 a chief who bore the Chinese name of Li Yuenhan, but who claimed to be a descendant of the old imperial hause of Tobar, had succeeded in establishing a kingdom of his own in Tangut, which, as before men. tioned, he called Dongar. This from a pretence to emulate the fabled dynasty founded by the mythical Yu, he rendered in Chinese as Si Hia, or Western Hia. This kingdom extended over the modern Kansu and the adjacent lands to the north and west, and with the contempor. aneous Liso and their successors the Kin domiu- ated the entire of northern China. Polo gives a somewhat different account of the origin of the quarrel with Tangut, Jenghiz was desirous of adding to the lustre of his house by an appropriate marriage and sent to his neighbour to request his daughter for a wife, a request indignantly rejected. As precisely the same tale is told of the leader of the Tughal Turks and the king of the Uvars in the sixth century, we may remit the story to the realms of fable. The fact, however, remains that a war, apparently unprovoked, did break out between Jenghiz and the King of Si Hia,
Maroo has no hesitation in calling the prince Prester John, and states the demand to have been made in 1200, while Howorth names 1209 as the year for commencing hostilities. Probably both are in part equally right and wrong. Jenghiz, even according to Marco, must have been for some years making his preparations, and the first attack may well have taken place before the invasion of Kansuh. But this notice of Polo's opens up one of the interesting questions of history.
Who was Prester John P
While in Europe the Church was winning its way slowly but surely amongst the emigrant tribes who had followed the fall of the Roman Empire, in Asia the Nestorians were no less zealous in spreading Christianity amongst the northern peoples. We have little evidence of the amount of work done, but
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chance document preserved mentions in the 4th
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September 12, 1903.` Gondoforo; the ceilings, pillars, &c. are of rarest woods and over the gables are two golden apples, în each of which are two carbuncle, that the gold may sparkle by day, an I the carbuncles shine by night.
Twelve archbishop sit on our right daily, and on our loft twenty bishop. The Patriarch of S. Thomas. th Metropolitan of Samarkand, or the Bishop of Susa, each in his tara is ever by us."
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
century twenty-four patriarchs and fifty-six bishops belonging to the Nestoriu Church between Damascus and Eastern Tartary Marco Polo himself everywhere along his road from Kashgar to China found Christianity firmly planted, and churches and congregations in all the cities. In 1145 the Roman Catholic Bishop of Gabala (I here quote the late A. Wylie), made a journey to lay certain complaints before Pope Eugenius III. Amongst other things he told of how a certain potentate whom he called John, who was both king and priest, who lived far to the east, and with his people was Christian, had waged war against the sovereign of Persia, and being successful bad determined to start in aid of the Chris- tians before Jerusalem. There was more than a mere modicum of truth in the story. The conquest of western Asia by the Saracens had excited the patriotic feelings of the older peoples. and though the Persian state had entirely collapsed after the battle of Naharand, the spirit of resistance was by no means extinct, and the Mohammedan arms advanced but slowly in Transoxiana and Baktria. Although the Sassani:n rulers of Persia had been zealous Zoroastrians, and had steadily repressed the growth of Christianity, the number of adherents of the faith, especially outside the limits of Persia proper, was by no means insiguificant. In addition to Zoroastrianism there wore namer. ous Jews and Manichees; hut next to the religion of Zoroaster, that of Christianity was at once the most numerous in adherents and most influential. These Christians belonged to the Syrian Church, and acknowledged the teachings of Nestorius.
But Christianity had been not only widely spread in Persis, but had penetrated for into Turan, where with Buddhism we find it con tending in the 10th century for predominauce. In the 6th century, the Chinese records tell of the rise of a new Turkish power, the Tughuls, or "Helmet Turks," who became so powerfal that in 545 the Sassanian King, Anushirwan, sent to their Ilkhan, Timur, an embassy. The result of this was son evident: the two monarchs set upon the Indo Skythian king dom of the Ephthalites, which they parti- tioned, Porsia taking the lands south of the Oxus, and the Tughuls assuming Sughd and the lands north of the great river. There are some slight indications that the ruling house of these Turks was Christian; at all events when Timur died in 558 he was succeeded by a son who bore the name of Isaac; as these were pre-Islam days, we must conclude that Isaac at all events was a Christian. The names of his successors are for the most part Persian, which does not count one way or the other.
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It has been the custom to decry this strange epi-tle as a silly forgar, got up by some wonder. loving European monk, yet the document bears on the surface ovidenc) of its genuineness as having proceeded at least from Central Asia, In this connection the allusion to the court of the Indo-Skythian monarch and the Apostle Thomas is more than curious in the supposition that the docament is a rank invention. This is accentuated by the allusion to Samarkand as the seat of Preste: John, In saying so much for the genuineness of the docu ment, we are not, however, to be taken as implying that it was an authentic ecumenical letter sens to Enrope by Prester John himself, claiming the assistance of all Christian potentates in his orusade against Moham- medanism, but rather that it was an emanation from some over pious Nestorian priest, desicing in the interest of his Church to excite the sympathies of hi Europein fellow-Christians. It will be instructive to enquire how far this explanation will meet the actual circumstances of the cise.
The East is the place for romantic advan- tures, and one of the most wonderful of these, to which even the story of Babər must yield precedence, is the tale of the foundation by the prince, commonly known as Yelu Tashi, of the Karakhitai Empire, which for some forty years actually dominated Western Asia. Yelu's surname was certainly Selör, and his personal name was almost as certainly · Tasha. Tiger. Selör, then, was a near relation of the last emperor of the Khitan or Liao dynas y, who ruled in North China contemporaneously with the Sungs in the south. Having incurred the enmity of the Emperor, whom he had upbraid d for his imbecility ia not resisting the encroachments of the Kins, just thea beginning to threaten his throne, Selö, fled with 210 horsemen to Urumtsi. Here he roused the enthusiasm of the Wigur and other clans about, and having raised a considerable army, set out to attack the Arab invaders of western Asia. So far, including Selör's professed war cry of attacking the "Arabs," we learn from the Liao Shu. The result was that in the course of some years he had been everywhere victorious, and had checked Arab predominance not only in Central Asia, but had been acknow- ledged as suzerain from Persin to Afghanistan, He hell court at Samarkand, where he resided
in right royal state. In 1135 Selör died leaving the throne to his son Ilich, probably Elias. He having died in 1155, leaving his son a minor, a regency under the Empress Posuwan, or Buswan, succeded. It was during this regency, and when the short-lived empire was already exhibiting signs of decay, that the letter was written.
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The successors in these regions of the Taghul Turks were the Wigurs; as to whose Christianity we have several allusions. The Mohammedan author quoted by Bretschneider tells a curious tale of Buku Khan, the reputed founder in the 10th century of the Wigars ate. The Wigurs at the time were believers in the Kam, native sorcerers, but were not content, so they sent to the Khan of Khitai, who was an
idolater" for the Numi. These Numi had a sacred book which inculcated principles of We learn but little from Chinese sources of morality, especially the avoidance of injury to Selör Tasha but they tell us that he was a others, or even to animals. After a public dis-distinguished scholar in the Hanlin, on which cussion Buka Khan and his people accepted the account he won high promotion: it then goes religion of the
Book."
At all events, the on to say that he became a linya, which the Mohammedan goes on to add that these Wigars translators are unable to comprehend. The were of all the idolaters of the East the greatest characters are, however, capable of foes to the religion of The Prophet. This, and all about Baku Khan, is merely untrustworthy
being rendered as lama," and Gabelentz gives as the meaning of lama in Manchu simply legend, but the fact remains that after his time the Wigurs certainly borrowed from priest, without any qualification of Buddhist the Nestorians their alphabet and literature.
or otherwise. In any oss the Chinese annal inform us that ho Carpini in as many words calls the Wigurs
was popularly known 25 l'asha Lama." This in connection Christians,
even Rubruck, though
with the subsequent title of Prester in general terms he speaks of them as idolaters,
is at least a remarkable coincidence, if nothing says that in all the states are mixed Nestorians
more. We learn nothing directly of his reli- and "Saracens."
gion, except that he had a thorough hatred of with his being either Christian or Buddhist, Mohammedanism, which is, of course, compatible His grandson, the last of the family, according to the Mohammedan writers, gave his daughter King of the Naimans, who in marriage to Guchluk, son of Taiyang, had taken refuge at his court after bis father had been slain by Jenghiz, an act of generosity which he Guchluk was certainly a Christian, so the pro repaid by taking possession of the throne. bability is that his father-in-law was one also.
god
The next we hear of Prester John is a letter professing to emanate from him, which was received in Europe towards the latter part of the 12th century, and bore date in 1165. Fortunately a copy of the letter addressed to Emmanuel, the Byzantine Emperor, has been preserved. After boasting of the wide extent of his dominions and his zeal for Christianity, the letter says: "The palace in which our sublimity dwells is after the pattern of that which the Holy Thomas erected for King
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