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JULY, 1882.]
CHINGHIZ KHAN AND HIS ANCESTORS.
195
of a man's wives. Two families were allowed moned people to prayer, i.e. the criers, and those to unite although they had no living children. who washed the dead were to be exempted It was sufficient that one had had a son and from the payment of all taxes. the other a daughter, although both were dead; | Hospitality was strictly enjoined. Any one the contract of marriage was drawn up and the passing when a meal was being eaten was to ceremony gone through in their names, when, be asked to join. The host was to taste the although dead, they were deemed to be married, meal before his guest, even if a prince. This and the two families allied together by mar. was doubtless to remove the suspicion that the riage. This custom, says De la Croix, is still in food was poisoned. The guest must always use among the Tartars at this day, but super- have the back bone as the tit bit. No one was stition has added more circumstances to it. permitted to sit down unless invited to do so, They throw the contract of marriage into the nor was any one to eat more than his neighbour. fire, after having drawn some figures on it to The greatest simplicity and plainness were to represent the persons pretended to be so be used in conversation. Every one, even the married, and some forms of beasts, and are per- Khân, was to be addressed merely by his name. suaded that all this is carried by the smoke to Chinghiz Khan forbade the use of pompous their children who thereupon marry in the other titles, inflated sentences and flourishes, and a world. The youngest son was deemed his secretary who, in spite of the rule, indulged in father's substitute or proxy, the herdsman of his such inflated forms when addressing the ruler of flocks, the maintainer of the family in case his Syria, paid for his rhetoric with his life. Von brothers should perish in war. The author of Hammer has very strangely described uncleanthe Jihan Kushai says the youngest of the liness as one of the Mongol virtues. Here princes was called Ulugh Noyan, i. e. the Schmidt certainly has the best of him. No great prince. The former is a Turkish, and the doubt some of the rules he enjoined did not latter a Mongol, word, which makes it appear tend to promote cleanliness, but certainly & that there has been some mistake in the title. mere love of dirt was not their raison d'etre.
Women were treated by the Mongols with The real reason for these rules was the fear of great consideration. " It is a rule of the Mongol offending the elements by polluting them,
Yasa," says Vassaf, "that in the wildest dis- especially water and fire. Thus the Mongols orders, the women are to be treated with the were ordered not to wash their clothes, but to greatest attention and consideration, and no wear them until they dropt off or wore out. It harm is to be done them." If the ruler was was forbidden to put hand or foot in water. pleased with any woman, her husband was to Von Hammer, notwithstanding his untenable surrender her, and she was to pass into his postulate, very properly compares some of the harem. The mother of the prince was to have prohibitions and injunctions of the Mongol the position of regent. The successor to the code with other similar regulations. As the throne was to be the son of the princess of Pythagorean was forbidden to micturate towards noblest descent; the wet-nurse of the prince the sun converso ad solem vultu non mingenwas not to be visited by her husband, while dum," 80 were the Mongols forbidden on pain she was giving suck to the child. Mongols of death to do the same into water or live married their daughters to those of lower rank ashes," as the Pythagoreans were forbidden to than themselves.
rake a fire, ignem gladio non fodiendum," and IV. The four cardinal virtues enjoined by to step across or over balance or steel yard, the Mongol law were-tolerance, hospitality,
staterem non transiliendum, *were the simplicity in manners and speech, and lastly, Mongols forbidden to step over a fire, a table says Von Hammer, a devotion to filth! or a platter. As the former were forbidden All religions without any preference were
to eat the heart, cor non edendum, 80 were the tolerated, and the ministers of all creeds, as latter originally forbidden to eat an animal's well as doctors, the poor, the learned, and those blood and entrails, although this prohibition of renowned piety or dervishes, those who sum- was afterwards removed. 52 "Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras XVII.
* Id.
30 Id. Von Hammer, op. cit., p. 191, notes 3-7.
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i. e. fire.
