CHAPTER XXXVII.

OF THE PROVINCE OF PEIN.

Pein is a province five days in length, lying between east and

north-east. The people are worshippers of Mahommet, and subjects of the

Great Kaan. There are a good number of towns and villages, but the most

noble is PEIN, the capital of the kingdom.{1} There are rivers in this

country, in which quantities of Jasper and Chalcedony are found.{2}

The people have plenty of all products, including cotton. They live by

manufactures and trade. But they have a custom that I must relate. If

the husband of any woman go away upon a journey and remain away for

more than 20 days, as soon as that term is past the woman may marry

another man, and the husband also may then marry whom he pleases.{3}

I should tell you that all the provinces that I have been speaking of,

from Cascar forward, and those I am going to mention [as far as the

city of Lop] belong to GREAT TURKEY.

NOTE 1.—“In old times,” says the _Haft Iklím._, “travellers used

to go from Khotan to Cathay in 14 (?) days, and found towns and

villages all along the road [excepting, it may be presumed,

on the terrible Gobi], so that there was no need to travel in

caravans. In later days the fear of the Kalmaks caused this line

to be abandoned, and the circuitous one occupied 100 days.” This

directer route between Khotan and China must have been followed by

Fa-hian on his way to India; by Hiuen Tsang on his way back; and

by Shah Rukh’s ambassadors on their return from China in 1421. The

circuitous route alluded to appears to have gone north from Khotan,

crossed the Tarimgol, and fallen into the road along the base of

the Thian Shan, eventually crossing the Desert southward from Komul.

Former commentators differed very widely as to the position of

Pein, and as to the direction of Polo’s route from Khotan. The

information acquired of late years leaves the latter no longer open

to doubt. It must have been nearly coincident with that of Hiuen

Tsang.

The perusal of Johnson’s Report of his journey to Khotan, and the

Itineraries attached to it, enabled me to feel tolerable certainty

as to the position of Charchan (see next chapter), and as to the

fact that Marco followed a direct route from Khotan to the vicinity

of Lake Lop. Pein, then, was identical with PIMA,[1] which was the

first city reached by Hiuen Tsang on his return to China after

quitting Khotan, and which lay 330 _li_ east of the latter city.[2]

Other notices of Pima appear in Rémusat’s history of Khotan; some

of these agree exactly as to the distance from the capital, adding

that it stood on the banks of a river flowing from the East and

entering the sandy Desert; whilst one account seems to place it

at 500 _li_ from Khotan. And in the Turkish map of Central Asia,

printed in the _Jahán Numá_, as we learn from Sir H. Rawlinson,

the town of _Pím_ is placed a little way north of Khotan. Johnson

found Khotan rife with stories of former cities overwhelmed by the

shifting sands of the Desert, and these sands appear to have been

advancing for ages; for far to the north-east of Pima, even in the

7th century, were to be found the deserted and ruined cities of the

ancient kingdoms of _Tuholo_ and _Shemathona_. “Where anciently

were the seats of flourishing cities and prosperous communities,”

says a Chinese author speaking of this region, “is nothing now to

be seen but a vast desert; all has been buried in the sands, and

the wild camel is hunted on those arid plains.”

Pima cannot have been very far from _Kiria_, visited by Johnson.

This is a town of 7000 houses, lying east of Ilchi, and about 69

miles distant from it. The road for the most part lies through

a highly cultivated and irrigated country, flanked by the sandy

desert at three or four miles to the left. After passing _eastward_

by Kiria it is said to make a great elbow, turning north; and

within this elbow lie the sands that have buried cities and fertile

country. Here Mr. Shaw supposes Pima lay (perhaps upon the river

of Kiria). At Pima itself, in A.D. 644, there was a story of the

destruction of a city lying further north, a judgment on the luxury

and impiety of the people and their king, who, shocked at the

eccentric aspect of a holy man, had caused him to be buried in sand

up to the mouth.

(_N. et E._ XIV. 477; _H. de la Ville de Khotan_, 63–66; _Klap.

Tabl. Historiques_, p. 182; _Proc. R. G. S._ XVI. 243.)

[Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard took the road from Khotan to

Charchan; they left Khotan on the 4th May, 1893, passed Kiria,

Nia, and instead of going direct to Charchan through the desert,

they passed Kara Say at the foot of the Altyn tâgh, a route three

days longer than the other, but one which was less warm, and where

water, meat, milk, and barley could be found. Having passed Kapa,

they crossed the Karamuren, and went up from Achan due north to

Charchan, where they stayed three months. Nowhere do they mention

Pein, or Pima, for it appears to be _Kiria itself_, which is the

only real town between Khotan and the Lobnor. Grenard says in

a note (p. 54, vol. ii.): “_Pi-mo_ (Keria) recalls the Tibetan

_byé-ma_, which is pronounced _Péma_, or _Tchéma_, and which means

_sand_. Such is perhaps also the origin of _Pialma_, a village

near Khotan, and of the old name of Charchan, _Tché-mo-to-na_, of

which the two last syllables would represent _grong_ (pronounce

_tong_ = town), or _kr’om_ (_t’om_ = bazaar). Now, not only would

this etymology be justified because these three places are indeed

surrounded with sand remarkably deep, but as they were the first

three important places with which the Tibetans met coming into the

desert of Gobi, either by the route of Gurgutluk and of Polor, or

by Karakoram and Sandju, or by Tsadam, and they had thus as good a

pretext to call them ‘towns of sand’ as the Chinese had to give

to T’un-hwang the name of _Shachau_, viz. City of Sand. Kiria is

called _Ou-mi_, under the Han, and the name of Pi-mo is found for

the first time in Hiuen Tsang, that is to say, before the Tibetan

invasions of the 8th century. It is not possible to admit that the

incursion of the Tu-ku-hun in the 5th century could be the cause of

this change of name. The hypothesis remains that Pi-mo was really

the ancient name forced by the first Tibetan invaders spoken of

by legend, that _Ou-mi_ was either another name of the town, or a

fancy name invented by the Chinese, like Yu-t’ien for Khotan, Su-lo

for Kashgar....” Sir T. D. Forsyth (_J. R. G. S._, XLVII., 1877, p.

3) writes: “I should say that Peim or Pima must be identical with

Kiria.”—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—The Jasper and Chalcedony of our author are probably only

varieties of the semi-precious mineral called by us popularly

_Jade_, by the Chinese _Yü_, by the Eastern Turks _Kásh_, by the

Persians _Yashm_, which last is no doubt the same word with ἴασπις,

and therefore with _Jasper_. The Greek Jaspis was in reality,

according to Mr. King, a green Chalcedony.

The Jade of Turkestan is largely derived from water-rolled boulders

fished up by divers in the rivers of Khotan, but it is also got

from mines in the valley of the Karákásh River. “Some of the

Jade,” says Timkowski, “is as white as snow, some dark green, like

the most beautiful emerald (?), others yellow, vermilion, and

jet black. The rarest and most esteemed varieties are the white

speckled with red and the green veined with gold.” (I. 395.) The

Jade of Khotan appears to be first mentioned by Chinese authors in

the time of the Han Dynasty under Wu-ti (B.C. 140–86). In A.D. 541

an image of Buddha sculptured in Jade was sent as an offering from

Khotan; and in 632 the process of fishing for the material in the

rivers of Khotan, as practised down to modern times, is mentioned.

The importation of Jade or _Yü_ from this quarter probably gave the

name of _Kia-yü Kwan_ or “Jade Gate” to the fortified Pass looking

in this direction on the extreme N.W. of China Proper, between

Shachau and Suhchau. Since the detachment from China the Jade

industry has ceased, the Musulmans having no taste for that kind of

_virtù_. (_H. de la V. de Khotan_, 2, 17, 23; also see _J. R. G.

S._ XXXVI. 165, and _Cathay_, 130, 564; _Ritter_, II. 213; _Shaw’s

High Tartary_, pp. 98, 473.)

[On the 11th January, 1895, Dr. Sven Hedin visited one of the

chief places where Jade is to be found. It is to the north-east of

Khotan, in the old bed of the Yurun Kash. The bed of the river is

divided into _claims_ like gold-fields; the workmen are Chinese for

the greater part, some few are Musulmans.

Grenard (II. pp. 186–187) says that the finest Jade comes from the

high Karákásh (black Jade) River and Yurungkásh (white Jade); the

Jade River is called Su-tásh. At Khotan, Jade is polished up by

sixty or seventy individuals belonging to twenty-five workshops.

“At 18 miles from Su-chau, Kia-yu-kwan, celebrated as one of the

gates of China, and as the fortress guarding the extreme north-west

entrance into the empire, is passed.” (_Colonel M. S. Bell, Proc.

R. G. S._ XII. 1890, p. 75.)

According to the Chinese characters, the name of Kia-yü Kwan does

not mean “Jade Gate,” and as Mr. Rockhill writes to me, it can only

mean something like “barrier of the pleasant Valley.”—H. C.]

NOTE 3.—Possibly this may refer to the custom of temporary

marriages which seems to prevail in most towns of Central Asia

which are the halting-places of caravans, and the morals of which

are much on a par with those of seaport towns, from analogous

causes. Thus at Meshid, Khanikoff speaks of the large population of

young and pretty women ready, according to the accommodating rules

of Shiah Mahomedanism, to engage in marriages which are perfectly

lawful, for a month, a week, or even twenty-four hours. Kashgar is

also noted in the East for its _chaukans_, young women with whom

the traveller may readily form an alliance for the period of his

stay, be it long or short. (_Khan. Mém._ p. 98; _Russ. in Central

Asia_, 52; _J. A. S. B._ XXVI. 262; _Burnes_, III. 195; Vigne, II.

201.)

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[1] _Pein_ may easily have been miscopied for _Pem_, which is indeed the

reading of some MSS. Ramusio has _Peym_.

[2] M. Vivien de St. Martin, in his map of Hiuen Tsang’s travels,

places Pima to the _west_ of Khotan. Though one sees how the

mistake originated, there is no real ground for this in either

of the versions of the Chinese pilgrim’s journey. (See _Vie et

Voyages_, p. 288, and _Mémoires_, vol. ii. 242–243.)