CHAPTER VI.

THE JOURNEY HOME BY A NEW AND PERILOUS ROUTE.

We left our hero on the Kâbul river, beyond the boundaries of India: a royal reception awaited him at Kapiśa, and a hundred experienced men were chosen to conduct and protect him in the passage across the Hindû Kûsh. The shortest, but most difficult of the passes—probably the Khawak, which reaches 13,000 feet, was selected. Seven days of travel brought the party to those snow-mountains of which Hiuen-Tsiang always speaks with mingled wonder, fear and dislike. Born and brought up in a mild climate, and having now spent many years in a hot one, he describes the discomforts and dangers of every high pass at length. He tells us how wild and perilous are the precipices; how fearsome, contorted, and difficult the path. Of the Hindû Kûsh he writes: “Now the traveller is in a profound valley; now aloft on a high peak, with its burthen of ice in full summertide. One gets along by cutting steps in the ice, and, in three days one reaches the summit of the pass. There, a furious icy blast, cold beyond measure, sweeps on; the valleys are laden with accumulated snow. The traveller pushes on; for he dares not pause. Soaring birds must needs alight; it is impossible for them to fly; and they have to cross afoot. One gazes down on mountains that look like hillocks.” The whole cavalcade had to dismount and clamber up with the aid of mountain-staves. One wonders how the guides got the elephant over such ridges; but they did. “Great men lived before Agamemnon”; Hannibal solved the same problem two hundred years before Christ.

At the end of the second week a large village of a hundred families was reached, the inhabitants of which lived by rearing a very big variety of sheep, which is said still to be found in this district. Here the “Master of the Law” secured the services of a local guide, and took a whole day’s rest. His escort now returned; and he set forth in the middle of the night, mounted on a camel accustomed to the hills, and attended by seven priests, twenty servants, the elephant which Sîlâditya had given him, six asses, and four horses. Next morning the bottom of the pass was reached; but there still lay before them what, in the distance, looked like a snow-peak. But when they had ascended a long zig-zag path and come up to it, it turned out to be mere white rock. None the less, it towered far above the clouds, and the icy wind there blew so hard and cutting that headway could hardly be made.

The descent of the range occupied five or six days. The route now lay north westward to the Upper Oxus. Hiuen-Tsiang rested a month in the camp of a petty Khân,—and then joined a caravan of traders who were eastward bound. The caravan took a meandering course through several little Khânates; and in one of them the Master of the Law was struck by the singular head-gear of the women. They wore caps three feet high, topped by two peaks of unequal length, if both father-in-law and mother-in-law were living. The higher and lower respectively represented these relatives. But, when one of them died, the corresponding peak was removed; should both of them be dead, no peaks were worn. This region was mountainous, and its inhabitants were remarkable for their surpassing ugliness. They differed from all other peoples in the peculiar blue-green of the iris. They were innocent of all manners, and knew no law of justice; the horse was their study and care, and they reared a breed of sturdy little ponies.

The caravan now followed the narrowing stream of Oxus, and, after a time, ascended to the great plateau of the Pamirs, no less lofty than the topmost Pyrenees. “There even in summer” says the Pilgrim “one suffers from squalls and eddies of snowstorm. Just a few wretched plants manage to root in ground that is almost always frozen. No grain will sprout and no trace of man is to be found in all this vast solitude.” But he came across a species of ostrich, a bird “ten feet high,” of which he had previously been shown the eggs which were “as big as small pitchers.”

The central valley of the Pamirs along which the caravan advanced, led to difficult snow-passes of the Kizil Yart range, the highest peak of which soars to 26,000 feet. Having forced a way over ice and through snow, the long descent of the Eastern slopes was nearly at an end when a band of brigands was observed to be on the look out for prey. The traders fled, helter skelter, up the hill-side; and the robbers charged furiously at their laden elephants, several of which they killed, while others were drowned in trying to get across the torrents from the mountains. It was probably at this time that Hiuen-Tsiang lost his elephant. The thieves were soon fully occupied with their booty; the traders seized the opportunity, drew together again, and proceeded, with what goods they had been able to save, towards Kâshgar.

At Kâshgar the same custom obtained as at Kutchê: “When a child is born the head is compressed by a wooden board.” The people are “fierce and impetuous and most of them are deceitful and indifferent to polite manners and learning. They paint their bodies and eyelids.” But they show real skill in the making of hair-cloth and finely woven carpets. More than six hundred years later, Marco Polo travelled along the caravan route through Kâshgar and by Lob-Nor to China.

At Yârkand he was told that Arhats, (very purified and wise men), “those who had obtained the holy fruit and were no longer bound by worldly influences” “displaying their spiritual power, coming from afar (that is, from India), abode here at rest.”

Arrived at Khotan, he found it a land of song and dance. Fa-Hian also describes the inhabitants as being, in his time, “lovers of religious music.”

It would seem that the caravan in which Hiuen-Tsiang travelled was bound for Kau-chang, that land of the Uïghurs whose Khân-paramount had tried to detain him “for the better instruction of his subjects.” Now Khotan was tributary to this despot; and as the Master of the Law had no desire to go out of his direct way home, or to be detained again, not to speak of another hunger-strike, he wrote the Khân a politic letter, wherein he recounted the perils he had undergone and the successful issue of his sacred mission. Yet, an elephant which bore the burthen of many scriptures had been drowned on the way home; but the writings were saved. Would the Great Khân grant him a convoy?

It took six or seven months for a reply to arrive; and Hiuen-Tsiang filled up the time in expounding sacred writings to the Khân of Khotan and his subjects. When the answer came from Kau-chang, it was favourable; the Khân of Khotan was permitted to furnish the Master of the Law with transport for his treasures.

Fully a thousand miles still lay before him, and the painful desert known to modern geographers as the Takla Makan must be crossed. The route pursued was a very tortuous one, south of the great lake Lob-nor (which lies between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above the sea-level), and north of the Altyn-Tag mountains, which are the northern buttresses of the great plateau of Thibet. He passed by ancient cities of Eastern Khotan, once flourishing, now buried by drifting sands. Mere mounds marked their sites.[5] Going East “we enter a great desert of shifting sands, which are as a vast flood, driven hither and thither by the wind. There is no track; and, without guide or indication, travellers get bewildered and are lost. So the bones of beasts (which have perished) are piled up to serve as beacons. Neither water nor herb is to be found, and hot winds, which are frequent, befog the mind and muddle the memory of man and beast, and make them ill and feeble. Sometimes one hears plaintive notes and piteous lamentations, and men get confused and know not whither they are going. Hence, many a life is lost. And all is the work of demons and evil spirits.” All travellers in deserts speak of the weird noises, which we now know to be due to the shifting of the sand-ridges.[6]

And now, after sixteen years of pilgrim travel, after visiting a hundred and ten different States, and journeying some twenty thousand miles, Hiuen-Tsiang is drawing near his native land. He bears with him five hundred grains of relics, reputed to belong to the body of Tathâgarta (Gautama Buddha); one hundred and twenty-four works of the Great Vehicle; five hundred and twenty other volumes, borne by twenty-two horses; and six images of Buddha, in gold or silver or sandal-wood. In the appeal for transport sent to Kau-chang, he had written: “Notwithstanding differences in climate and mode of life; and notwithstanding perils beyond count which have menaced me in my journeying, I thank Heaven that nowhere did I come to harm. Reverence, beyond all limit, has been done to me; my body has suffered no ill; and I have fulfilled all that I vowed to accomplish.”

But his body _had_ suffered ill. The terrible ordeal of crossing ice-bound ranges left its mark: it weakened his robust constitution and shortened his life.

At the Chinese frontier, waggons and men were obtained, and the escort from Khotan returned. T’ai Tsung, the great warrior statesman, now sat on the throne he had won for his father, and to him “The Master of the Law” announced his return. Emperor, Mandarins, Priests, and People made ready to receive the great pilgrim with plaudit and parade such as Western reserve bestows only on the victor in some scene of slaughter, or on the inheritor of some soiled circlet and blood-stained robe.

The great day arrived. It was as if all China were present, so crushing were the crowds. The Sacred Writings were taken in state to the “Convent of the Great Bliss.” (Later they were transferred to a “Convent of Beneficence,” specially constructed to contain them.) High dignitaries led the way; marvellous wind-instruments discoursed astounding music; priests in thousands chanted hymns; banners and brilliantly-coloured rugs floated in the wind. A procession of the most varied character, miles long, passed through the narrow, crowded streets, which were lined by rows of flower-scatterers and less poetic, but even more desirable, perfume burners. To the irreverent European mind, the record of this Eastern parade in the Seventh Century suggests a highly variegated travelling-circus; and the brow is involuntarily raised when we come to the royal harem and its enthusiastic ladies welcoming the return of the monk and the arrival of yet more ascetic doctrine. The best of us is but human, and it is evident from the narrative that, true saint as he was, the “Master of the Law” none the less thoroughly enjoyed the recognition of his great merits, and made little objection to the honours he received.