Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 189

JULY, 1923 ]
A CHINESE EXPEDITION ACROSS THE PAMIRS, ETC.
Barbosa several times mentions the large size of the bells, drums and gongs of the Malay Archipelago (e.g., pp. 198, 202, 203). This is common to the whole of the Far East, where they are put to many uses, including currency.
173
In describing Siam, Barbosa gives a circumstantial account of the ceremonial eating of dead relatives and friends as part of funeral ceremonies. This he attributes to a people "in the interior towards China where there is a Heathen Kingdom subject to Anseam [Siam]." Dames identifies them with the Gueos, which argues that they were probably [Gwê] Shâns and not Wâs, as Sir George Scott has suggested. These ceremonial cannibals may be there. fore taken to have been Shâns of some kind,, in respect of whom such cannibalism has often been reported, as it has also been attributed to Wild Wâs who belong to the Mon Race and the Kachins who belong to the Tibeto-Burman Race. I have myself known of a case where the body of a Shân rebel said to have been a great sorcerer was dug up by a local chief and boiled down into a decoction, some of which it was proposed to send to the British Chief Commissioner (the late Sir Charles Crosthwaite). It was probably the same case as that reported in the Upper Burma Gazetteer, pt. I, vol. II, p. 37, as occurring in 1888. It will be seen here that the cannibalism was purely ceremonial and due to a desire to secure extraordinarily supernatural powers by a sort of sympathetic magic. The funeral ceremony told to Barbosa may have been a garbled report of similar occurrences. Ceremonial cannibalism of the same kind is said to have existed among the Nicobarese.
I must wind up this very long discursive survey of one of the most informing books among the many of the same kind produced of late years by a note showing the care with which it has been edited. In describing the kingdom of Cochin, Barbosa alludes to the Court politics there of his day, of which the Portuguese accounts that have come down to us are scarcely intelligible, were it not for Mr. Rama Varmaraja's Contributions to the History of Cochin, Trichur, 1914. The quotations from this local publication in a long footnote (p. 94) set this matter straight, and provide a strong instance of the importance of placing the editing of such works as Barbosa's in the hands of competent annotators possessing the requisite knowledge.
A pathetic interest attaches to these comments on a great book. Just as they were ready for the press, there came to me news of the death of the writer, putting an end to a friendship of forty years standing.
A CHINESE EXPEDITION ACROSS THE PAMIRS AND
HINDUKUSH, A.D. 747.*
BY SIR AUREL STEIN, K.C.I.E.
(Continued from page 145.)
Well could I understand the reluctance shown to further advance by Kao Hsien-chih's cautious "braves," as from the top of the pass I looked down on 17 May 1906, through temporary rifts in the brooding vapour into the seeming abyss of the valley. The effect was still further heightened by the wall of ice-clad mountains rising to over 20,000 feet, which showed across the head of the Yasin valley south-eastwards, and by the contrast which the depths before me presented to the broad snowy expanse of the glacier firn sloping gently away on the north. Taking into account the close agreement between the Chinese record and the topography of the Darkot, we need not hesitate to recognize in T'an-chü an endeavour to give a phonetic rendering of some earlier form of the name Darkot, as accurate as the imperfections of the Chinese transcriptional devices would permit.
* Reprinted from the Geographical Journal for February 1922.