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NOVEMBER, 1883.]
CHINGHIZ KHAN AND HIS ANCESTORS.
CHINGHIZ KHAN AND HIS ANCESTORS. BY HENRY H. HOWORTH, F.S.A. (Continued from p. 288.)
XXIII.
The campaigns of Chinghiz Khân in China affected very largely the fortunes of himself and his people, and consequently the history of the world. A man of the highest vigour and genius, taken from the unsophisticated steppes of Asia and brought into immediate contact with the oldest, and at that time the most intricate, civilization in the world, he naturally had his horizon very much enlarged, and his views of policy very much altered; and this not merely in the more obvious fields of military and political life, but in more intimate and deepseated respects. I now propose to consider one or two of these, and first in regard to religion. China has virtually three religionsConfucianism, if that may be called a religion: which is really a system of philosophy; Taouism, and Buddhism. With Confucianism Chinghiz Khân could hardly be expected to have much sympathy, nor do we hear of any relations he had with the professors of the sect. It is very different with the other two religions. First, in regard to Taouism.
In the Ch'e-keng-lu, a work written at the end of the Yuan dynasty, chapter 10, we have an article entitled K'iu-chen-jen. K'iu is the family name of the famous Taouist sage, Ch'ang Ch'un; and Chen-jen means the man of the truth, i.e. the Taouist. Ch'ang Ch'un was born in 1148, in Si-Hia, a city in the Department of Teng-chau-fu in Shan-tung. Ch'ang Ch'un, as is well known, paid Chinghiz Khân a visit, and his journey is described in the Si-yu-ki which has been so admirably annotated by Palladius and Dr. Bretschneider. In the article on him above cited, we have recorded a very curious and interesting correspondence between Chinghiz Khan and Ch'ang Ch'un. This correspondence has been translated into Russian, and published by Palladius as an appendix to the Si-yu-ki in the 4th volume of the Records of the Pekin Ecclesiastical Mission, 1866. Dr. Bretschneider has re-translated two of the letters, and published them with annotations in his Notes on Chinese Medieval Travellers to the West,
pp. 120-122. As the subject is one of the highest interest, I have had the third letter translated, and now publish the correspondence. The first two letters, with the notes, are taken entirely from the text of may distinguished correspondent, Dr. Bretschneider. He says, by way of preliminary introduction, "Chinghiz, in his simplicity professes such sound principles for governing people, and his words express such deep verities, that they would be valid even in our days, and for our countries. On the other side, Ch'ang Ch'un inspires sympathy by his modesty, candour and sincerity. He seems to have been endowed with high intelligence, knowing well his time and human nature. This was the reason that Chinghiz, who was about to include northern China in 'his empire, laid such stress upon his advice. But there was yet another reason for which he was impatient to make the sage's acquaintance. According to Palladius,' Ch'ang Ch'un belonged to the northern Taonist school, to the sect of the Kin-lien, or 'golden lotus,' the professors of which called themselves Ts'üan-chen, or the 'perfect true,' and sainted men. They were all adepts in spiritual alchemy, i.e., they looked in the spiritual world for the t'an, or philosopher's stone, the secret of immortality, &c., which mystèries had been vainly searched after for centuries by material alchemists. One of the first questions Chinghiz addressed to Ch'ang Ch'un at his first audience was: 'Have you a medicine of immortality?' There is a tradition, that the conqueror, in his veneration for the sage, went so far as to propose to him his daughter in marriage, and that the latter escaped from this imperial honour only by performing a surgical operation on his body. It is a curious fact that Chinghiz Khân and Ch'ang Ch'un died in the same year and in the same month, i.e., in the 7th month of 1227. With reference to Chinghiz Khan's letter to Ch'ang Ch'un, I need not mention," says Dr. Bretschneider, "that it was not written by himself; he could not write in any language. Probably the ideas of the conqueror were taken down by a Chinese in his suite;
1 Loc. cit., p.
297
262.
