Chapter LX

CONCERNING THE CITIES OF CACANFU AND OF CHANGLU.

Cacanfu is a noble city. The people are Idolaters and burn their dead; they have paper-money, and live by trade and handicrafts. For they have plenty of silk from which they weave stuffs of silk and gold, and sendals in large quantities. [There are also certain Christians at this place, who have a church.] And the city is at the head of an important territory containing numerous towns and villages. [A great river passes through it, on which much merchandise is carried to the city of Cambaluc, for by many channels and canals it is connected therewith.{1}]

We will now set forth again, and travel three days towards the south, and then we come to a town called CHANGLU. This is another great city belonging to the Great Kaan, and to the province of Cathay. The people have paper-money, and are Idolaters and burn their dead. And you must know they make salt in great quantities at this place; I will tell you how ’tis done.{2}

A kind of earth is found there which is exceedingly salt. This they dig up and pile in great heaps. Upon these heaps they pour water in quantities till it runs out at the bottom; and then they take up this water and boil it well in great iron cauldrons, and as it cools it deposits a fine white salt in very small grains. This salt they then carry about for sale to many neighbouring districts, and get great profit thereby.

There is nothing else worth mentioning, so let us go forward five days’ journey, and we shall come to a city called Chinangli.

NOTE 1.—In the greater part of the journey which occupies the
remainder of Book II., Pauthier is a chief authority, owing
to his industrious Chinese reading and citation. Most of his
identifications seem well founded, though sometimes we shall be
constrained to dissent from them widely. A considerable number have
been anticipated by former editors, but even in such cases he is
often able to bring forward new grounds.

CACANFU is HO-KIEN FU in Pe Chih-li, 52 miles in a direct line
south by east of Chochau. It was the head of one of the _Lu_ or
circuits into which the Mongols divided China. (_Pauthier_.)

NOTE 2.—Marsden and Murray have identified Changlu with T’SANG-CHAU
in Pe Chih-li, about 30 miles east by south of Ho-kien fu. This
seems substantially right, but Pauthier shows that there was an old
town actually called CH’ANGLU, separated from T’sang-chau only by
the great canal. [Ch’ang-lu was the name of T’sang-chau under the
T’ang and the Kin. (See _Playfair, Dict._, p. 34.)—H. C.]

The manner of obtaining salt, described in the text, is
substantially the same as one described by Duhalde, and by one of
the missionaries, as being employed near the mouth of the Yang-tzŭ
kiang. There is a town of the third order some miles south-east
of T’sang-chau, called _Yen-shan_ or “salt-hill,” and, according
to Pauthier, T’sang-chau is the mart for salt produced there.
(_Duhalde_ in _Astley_, IV. 310; _Lettres Edif._ XI. 267 _seqq._;
_Biot._ p. 283.)

Polo here introduces a remark about the practice of burning the
dead, which, with the notice of the idolatry of the people, and
their use of paper-money, constitutes a formula which he repeats
all through the Chinese provinces with wearisome iteration. It is,
in fact, his definition of the Chinese people, for whom he seems to
lack a comprehensive name.

A great change seems to have come over Chinese custom, since the
Middle Ages, in regard to the disposal of the dead. Cremation
is now entirely disused, except in two cases; one, that of the
obsequies of a Buddhist priest, and the other that in which the
coffin instead of being buried has been exposed in the fields, and
in the lapse of time has become decayed. But it is impossible to
reject the evidence that it was a common practice in Polo’s age.
He repeats the assertion that it was _the_ custom at every stage
of his journey through Eastern China; though perhaps his taking
absolutely no notice of the practice of burial is an instance of
that imperfect knowledge of strictly Chinese peculiarities which
has been elsewhere ascribed to him. It is the case, however, that
the author of the Book of the Estate of the Great Kaan (_circa_
1330) also speaks of cremation as the usual Chinese practice,
and that Ibn Batuta says positively: “The Chinese are infidels
and idolaters, and they burn their dead after the manner of the
Hindus.” This is all the more curious, because the Arab _Relations_
of the 9th century say distinctly that the Chinese bury their dead,
though they often kept the body long (as they do still) before
burial; and there is no mistaking the description which Conti (15th
century) gives of the Chinese mode of sepulture. Mendoza, in the
16th century, alludes to no disposal of the dead except by burial,
but Semedo in the early part of the 17th says that bodies were
occasionally burnt, especially in Sze-ch’wan.

I am greatly indebted to the kindness of an eminent Chinese
scholar, Mr. W. F. Mayers, of Her Majesty’s Legation at Peking,
who, in a letter, dated Peking, 18th September, 1874, sends me the
following memorandum on the subject:—

“_Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo_, II. 97 [First Edition], _Burning of
the Dead_.

“On this subject compare the article entitled _Huo Tsang_, or
‘Cremation Burials,’ in Bk. XV of the _Jih Che Luh_, or ‘Daily
Jottings,’ a great collection of miscellaneous notes on classical,
historical, and antiquarian subjects, by Ku Yen-wu, a celebrated
author of the 17th century. The article is as follows:—

“‘The practice of burning the dead flourished (or flourishes) most
extensively in Kiang-nan, and was in vogue already in the period
of the Sung Dynasty. According to the history of the Sung Dynasty,
in the 27th year of the reign Shao-hing (A.D. 1157), the practice
was animadverted upon by a public official.’ Here follows a long
extract, in which the burning of the dead is reprehended, and it is
stated that cemeteries were set apart by Government on behalf of
the poorer classes.

“In A.D. 1261, Hwang Chên, governor of the district of Wu, in a
memorial praying that the erection of cremation furnaces might
thenceforth be prohibited, dwelt upon the impropriety of burning
the remains of the deceased, for whose obsequies a multitude of
observances were prescribed by the religious rites. He further
exposed the fallacy of the excuse alleged for the practice, to wit,
that burning the dead was a fulfilment of the precepts of Buddha,
and accused the priests of a certain monastery of converting into a
source of illicit gain the practice of cremation.”

[As an illustration of the cremation of a Buddhist priest, I note
the following passage from an article published in the _North-China
Herald_, 20th May, 1887, p. 556, on Kwei Hua Ch’eng, Mongolia:
“Several Lamas are on visiting terms with me and they are very
friendly. There are seven large and eight small Lamaseries, in care
of from ten to two hundred Lamas. The principal Lamas at death
are cremated. A short time ago, a friendly Lama took me to see a
cremation. The furnace was roughly made of mud bricks, with four
fire-holes at the base, with an opening in which to place the body.
The whole was about 6 feet high, and about 5 feet in circumference.
Greased fuel was arranged within and covered with glazed foreign
calico, on which were written some Tibetan characters. A tent was
erected and mats arranged for the Lamas. About 11.30 A.M. a scarlet
covered bier appeared in sight carried by thirty-two beggars. A box
2 feet square and 2½ feet high was taken out and placed near the
furnace. The Lamas arrived and attired themselves in gorgeous robes
and sat cross-legged. During the preparations to chant, some butter
was being melted in a corner of the tent. A screen of calico was
drawn round the furnace in which the cremator placed the body, and
filled up the opening. Then a dozen Lamas began chanting the burial
litany in Tibetan in deep bass voices. Then the head priest blessed
the torches and when the fires were lit he blessed a fan to fan the
flames, and lastly some melted butter, which was poured in at the
top to make the whole blaze. This was frequently repeated. When
fairly ablaze, a few pieces of Tibetan grass were thrown in at the
top. After three days the whole cooled, and a priest with one gold
and one silver chopstick collects the bones, which are placed in a
bag for burial. If the bones are white it is a sign that his sin is
purged, if black that perfection has not been attained.”—H. C.]

And it is very worthy of note that the Chinese envoy to Chinla
(Kamboja) in 1295, an individual who may have personally known
Marco Polo, in speaking of the custom prevalent there of exposing
the dead, adds: “There are some, however, who burn their dead.
_These are all descendants of Chinese immigrants._”

[Professor J. J. M. de Groot remarks that “being of religious
origin, cremation is mostly denoted in China by clerical terms,
expressive of the metamorphosis the funeral pyre is intended to
effect, viz. ‘transformation of man’; ‘transformation of the body’;
‘metamorphosis by fire.’ Without the clerical sphere it bears no
such high-sounding names, being simply called ‘incineration of
corpses.’ A term of illogical composition, and nevertheless very
common in the books, is ‘fire burial.’” It appears that during the
Sung Dynasty cremation was especially common in the provinces of
Shan-si, Cheh-kiang, and Kiang-su. During the Mongol Dynasty, the
instances of cremation which are mentioned in Chinese books are,
relatively speaking, numerous. Professor de Groot says also that
“there exists evidence that during the Mongol domination cremation
also throve in Fuhkien.” (_Religious System of China_, vol. iii.
pp. 1391, 1409, 1410.)—H. C.]

(_Doolittle_, 190; _Deguignes_, I. 69; _Cathay_, pp. 247, 479;
_Reinaud_, I. 56; _India in the XVth Century_, p. 23; _Semedo_, p.
95; _Rém. Mél. Asiat._ I. 128.)