CHAPTER VIII

OFF TO MALAYSIA AND CATHAY

Batûta speaks of Bengal as the land of plenty. Everything was cheaper there than anywhere else in the wide world. He picked up a very beautiful slave-girl for a trifle. But the muggy climate made Bengal “a hell full of good things.” The Sultan was in revolt against his lord-paramount at Delhi; and as Batûta was a prudent person, held Mohammed Tughlak in wholesome awe, and could not predict the issue of the contest, he did not visit the Bengalese Court. He went up to the hill-country, half-way to the Himalayan giants, instead; for he desired to see an aged holy man who dwelt there, one who was reported to take no food excepting a little milk, and that only every ten days, and to sit upright all night. This old sheik was a seer, and foretold events which should befall his guest and which he declares really happened. Batûta was proud to be justly hailed as “the greatest traveller of all the Arabs.” He returned from the hills to visit a city not far from modern Dacca.

We next find him on the Indian Ocean, standing off the Nicobar Islands, probably because his ship needed a fresh supply of water. The inhabitants were fearful of strangers, would not allow any ship to sail in front of their houses, had the fresh water required brought down to the shore by elephants, and traded by signs; for nobody could speak their language. The men went about naked, and the women wore a girdle of leaves only. All were remarkable for the ugliness of their dog-like faces. Batûta was told that a man might be the husband of 30 or more of these beauties. Adultery was severely punished, the male offender being hanged, unless he could find a friend or a slave willing to suffer in his place; the woman being trampled to death and her body cast into the sea. The king came down to the beach with an escort of his relatives, all mounted on elephants. He wore a coloured silk turban and a goat-skin tunic, with the hair turned outwards, and he bore a short silver spear in his hand. The usual gifts were presented in dumb-show. “These folk work magic on any ship that withholds presents; and it is wrecked.”

Moslem traders called any part of the Malaysian Archipelago, Java; but the port to which our traveller next came was really in Sumatra. The Emir of the Mohammedan sovereign received the visitors with customary Eastern munificence and gave them rich dresses. Our traveller speaks highly of the Sultan as being a cultivated man who loved the society of the learned and enjoyed discussion with them. A modern writer says that the humblest man he ever knew was a duke, and Batûta might have said the same of some rulers. The humility of the Sultan of Sumatra was so great that he walked to prayers every Friday! Batûta took a long journey inland, and tells us of frankincense, clove, nutmeg, mace, and other products of Sumatra, and of how a man is sacrificed by the natives at the foot of the camphor-tree to ensure its good bearing.

He was eager to reach China—that land of strange ways and peculiar civilization in Farthest East. The complaisant Sultan gave him passage in one of his own junks, provided him with stores for the voyage, and ordered a guide-interpreter to attend on him. In three and a half weeks, he came to a place which he calls Kakula, and which may have been on the mainland. Here he was well received by the pagan king, and chanced to be present at a curious proof of devotion to royalty. “One day, a man made a long speech, not one word of which I understood. He held a knife in his hand, which he grasped firmly, and cut off his own head, and it fell to the ground.” This sounds incredible; but it is a fact. The feat was done by means of apparatus. A sickleshaped knife was attached to a stirrup. The suicide placed his foot in the latter, gave it a sharp jerk, and the knife shore off his head. Our traveller was told that the deed was done to make manifest the great loyalty of the victim, and that his father and grandfather had made the same praiseworthy exit from life in honour of the king’s father and grandfather. Their families received compensation from the kings. A similar case of self-execution was authentically recorded in the last century.

The Eastern Ocean was so calm that the junk had to be towed by boats. Marco Polo had the same experience in these seas. Batûta touched at Kailiki, a port of Tawalisi, probably Tonquin; but no one is quite sure where this land lay. Even the Sulu Islands have been suggested! The king was as powerful as the Emperor of China. His people were idolaters after the manner of the Turks, and Batûta reports a conversation with his Amazonian daughter, introducing a few words of their language. This princess could write, but not speak Arabic. Some discredit has been thrown on this part of his narrative, mainly on the ground of language, but also because what he has to say about her recalls very ancient classical stories. But we must recollect that Batûta is relying on his memory at a time when the events belonged to a far-distant past; that his work was dictated; and that it was edited by the Secretary to the Sultan of Fez. He confesses that he did not understand very well what the princess said to him. And the language she spoke may have struck him as like Turkish in sound, and hence is given in some sort of imitation of that tongue. The more one studies ancient travellers and pilgrims the more assured one becomes of their essential sincerity and the general accuracy of their observation. We know very little indeed about the Nomadic penetration of the Far East. That this princess was able to write a little Arabic, would seem to show that there was considerable Arab trade with Tawalisi.

This lady was governor of the port, a post which her father had given her as the reward of her powers in battle. For, once, when her father’s army was on the point of defeat, she routed the enemy, and brought back the head of their leader. She commanded an army, whereof one regiment was of women. Neighbouring princes had wished to marry her, but had withdrawn their pretensions; for she insisted that first they should overcome her in the lists; and they were afraid of the ignominy of being vanquished by a woman. She was amazed at the wealth of India, and said to Batûta: “I must conquer it for myself.”

Favourable winds and strenuous use of the oar brought the junk to China. He found that he had to pass through a stringent customs-house; and that a register was taken of all who left or arrived at a Chinese port. The captain was held responsible for his crew and passengers, and to this end an official list was essential. Should the traveller elect to stay with some other trader, his host took care of his money and goods, but was bound to return them at the close of the visit, with a deduction for necessary expenditure. Any deficiency must be made good. But the trader might, if he chose, put up at an inn. Batûta was surprised to find paper-currency. He admired the big poultry; but not the dirty cotton-clothes of the Chinese, nor their relish for the flesh of dogs and swine. As in Hiuen-Tsiang’s time, they burned their dead. A portrait of every traveller was taken without his knowing it, and thus, should an evil-doer try to escape from justice from one province to another, he was readily discovered. There were many Moslem traders in China; most of these had settled there; and Jews had found a home in China for eleven centuries.

Travelling in China was “safer and more agreeable than in any other land on earth. Although it takes nine months to cross this country, one need have no fear on the journey, even though one should have wealth in one’s care. There is an official with troops, both horse and foot, at each hostelry to keep matters in order. This official, accompanied by his scribe, comes to the hostelry every evening; and the scribe writes down the name of every guest, seals up the list, and locks the door. They come again in the morning and go over the list and the inmates; and a man goes with the travellers to the next hostelry and returns to the officer with proof that they have arrived.... The traveller can buy all he needs at these inns.”

Batûta visited the great port of Zaitun (Touen-chow), whence, among other manufactures, “clothes of gold and _satyns_ riche of hewe”[10] were shipped. Perhaps there was no port in the world with so big a trade as Zaitun. Batûta thought so: “The harbour is one of the greatest on the earth—I err—it is the greatest. There I have seen an hundred junks of the biggest size at one time, and more smaller ones than could be numbered.... Here, as in every Chinese city, every citizen has a garden and a field, and his house stands in the middle of the land he owns. For this reason, the cities of China are very much spread out.” At Zaitun, he had the good fortune to meet, in the Moslem quarter, the ambassador who had been sent to Delhi; and now great folk began to make his acquaintance. Among his visitors was “one of the merchants to whom I owed money when I ran into debt on my arrival in India, and who had shown more breeding than the rest of my creditors.” The Head Mandarin wrote to the Emperor to ask permission for the traveller to visit him at his capital; and, while awaiting a reply, allowed him to travel by water-way far inland from Canton, and provided him with an escort. At Canton, he found temple-hospitals for widows and orphans, the blind, crippled, and infirm.

He tells how the sailors stood up amidship to row, and the passengers sat fore and aft. He visited one of those wonderful saints who claimed incredible years. The holy man told him that he was one of the saints whom he had visited in India. This man had the reputation of being able to induce visions. Possibly he united the qualifications of skilled hypnotist and skilled liar.

When our traveller returned to Canton he received permission to visit the capital. He journeyed many days by land and along the Imperial Canal. He speaks rapturously of the fertility and charm of the country he passed through. Everywhere he was treated with the deepest respect. But there was a drawback: everywhere Paganism was flourishing. He met a fellow-believer, the brother of one of the seers of Egypt, a man greatly esteemed by the Chinese, and later on one particular prophesy was completely fulfilled, for he came across another brother, whom it was also foretold he should meet, on the borders of Sahara.

While attending the court of the viceroy at Hang-chow, he was eye-witness to a remarkable feat, of which he gives as circumstantial an account as one would expect to get from a man of the fourteenth century. “It was in the hot season, and we were in the courtyard outside the palace. A juggler, a slave of the Khân, came in, and the Emir commanded him to show some of his marvels. Thereupon the juggler took a wooden bowl with several holes made in it, and through these holes long thongs were passed. He laid hold of these thongs, and threw the bowl up into the air. It went so high that we could no longer see it. There was only a little of the end of the thong left in the juggler’s hand. He ordered one of his boy helpers to lay hold of it and mount. The boy climbed up the thong, and he also went out of sight. The juggler called him three times; but no reply came; so he seemed to get into a great rage, snatched up a knife, and laid hold of the thong; and he also was no longer to be seen. After a time, down came one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, than the other hand, then the other foot, then the trunk, and, lastly, the head. And now, down came the juggler, panting, and his clothes in a bloody state. He kissed the ground in front of the Emir and said something to him in Chinese. The Emir gave him some order, and he then took up the severed parts, laid them together properly, gave a kick, and behold! the boy got up and was before us again. I was so astounded that my heart beat violently, as it did when the Sultan of India had a similar trick done before me. A drug was given me, which set me right again. The Khazi Alfkaouddîn was next to me. ‘By Allah!’ said he, ‘as for me I believe there has been neither going up nor coming down, nor cutting to pieces, nor making the boy whole again. It is nothing but trickery.’”

We must not forget that Batûta was more than inclined to superstition, that he was very perturbed by what he saw, or thought he saw, that the “magician” had boys with him, who probably assisted in this trick, and that it is part of the conjurer’s art to divert the attention of spectators while in the actual performance of his feats. And the event was reduced to writing years after it was observed. Moreover, one of the earlier investigations of the Society for Psychical Research shewed that, on an occasion when a clever amateur conjurer, not known to be such, invited highly educated and observant witnesses to a supposed spiritualistic séance, and received their accounts of what they believed themselves to have seen, written independently of each other and immediately after the event, “not one of the detailed reports is accurate throughout, and scarcely one of them is accurate in even all the points of importance.”[11] But we have it on the authority of the Professor of Chinese at Cambridge that P’u Sung-ling, the author of the Liao Chai, relates having seen the complete trick, as Batûta describes it, in the seventeenth century,[12] except that, in this case, the boy came out of a box. These are, perhaps, the most remarkable of many similar mystifications, some of them related by quite respectable witnesses, from the 13th century down to our own time.[13]

He tells us of the excellent workmanship of Chinese artisans, and how they worked in chains for a period of ten years. At the end of that time, they were free to go about in China, but not to leave the frontiers. At 50, they became absolutely free men, and were maintained at the public cost, old age pensioners, in fact, in this early fourteenth century. And the pension was not merely given to these slave-workers, but to nearly all Chinese.

He admired the gay life on the canal, crowded with the boat-houses of the people—a teeming happy population, dressed in bright colours, and pelting one another in pure fun with oranges and lemons. Hang-chow had within its great encircling wall six towns, each guarded by walls. At Khaniku or Khanbalik (Pekin?) he was present at the obsequies of a great dignitary, whom he believed to be the Tartar Emperor; but that was not so, for the Emperor, who had ascended the throne 14 years before Batûta’s arrival, reigned 21 years after his departure. But he certainly was present at the funeral of some great Tartar; for his account of the interment of the Tartar dignitaries of China is confirmed by at least one other early traveller. He tells us of how the dead man’s concubines and horses were buried with him, alive, in the same grave. He relates, not very correctly, the ceremonies observed at the court of the Emperor. Apparently his recollection becomes confused with that of the court-usage at Delhi and Yemen. In any case, it is possible that he only had an interview with some viceroy, concerning whom he was misinformed or somehow mistook him for the supreme Khân.

A revolt against Tartar rule took place about this time, so Batûta thought it prudent to leave China. He embarked on a junk which belonged to the King of Sumatra, whom he had visited on his way out, and “whose servants are Mohammedans.” On the voyage the junk laboured through a terrific storm. The mirage of a big mountain was also seen. The sailors took this for the fabled roc, with which the _Arabian Nights Entertainment_ made our Childhood acquainted.

He remained in Sumatra three months, the guest of the monarch who had before entertained him; and was fortunate in witnessing the nuptials of the heir-apparent. First came dancers and merry minstrelsy; then the bride, conducted from the apartments of the women by forty richly adorned ladies, who carried her train. For this high occasion, they had removed their veils. The bride went up on a platform; and the bridegroom rode up, in all the pride of armour, of a stately elephant, and of his own self-importance. One hundred youths of quality, beardless like himself, attended him on horseback. They were clad in white, their caps being a glitter of gold and jewels. Largess was scattered among the crowd. The prince now went up to his father, kissed his foot, and ascended the platform. Then the bride rose and kissed her groom’s hand; he sat beside her, and he and she put betel and fawfel into one another’s mouth. Then the covering of the platform was let down, and the whole structure, with bride and bridegroom on it, was carried into the palace. Finally, a feast was given to the crowd.

From Sumatra, Batûta voyaged in a junk to the Malabar coast of Southern India, and thence sailed to Arabian Zafar (A.D. 1347), both well-remembered places, coasted to Hormuz, wandered over the Two Iraks (Persia and Mesopotamia) once again; made across Asia Minor to Tadmor and as far north as Aleppo. At Damascus he got the first news of home he had received during his wanderings; his father had lain fourteen years in his quiet grave at Tangier. The Black Death was raging at Damascus. It slew twenty-four hundred of the inhabitants in a single day. So Batûta made his way to Egypt through Syria and Palestine, and went on to Mecca by way of the Red Sea and Jidda. This was the fourth of his pilgrimages. On his return to Cairo, he found the Black Death wasting the population. Mocking, lethal, invisible, this awful plague was rapidly sweeping westward and destroying whole families. Agnolo da Tura of Siena tells us that he had to bury five of his sons in the same grave with his own hands, and that his was no exceptional case. Batûta left Cairo for Jerusalem and returned from Palestine to Egypt by sea. He now felt a desire to see his native land again. He took ship to Sardinia, and, wishing to see the island, let the vessel he had voyaged in go to Tunis. He was lucky, for it was taken by Christians. He managed to reach Tunis in another ship, and got to Fez overland on Nov. 8th, 1349; having been on his travels nearly a quarter of a century. He presented himself before the Sultan, and was received as was befitting so pious a pilgrim and distinguished a traveller.