The suggestion seems to me, as regards the story,
interesting and probable; though I do not admit that
the character of Prester John properly belonged to
any real person.
I may best explain my view of the matter by a geographical
analogy. Pre-Columbian maps of the Atlantic showed
an Island of Brazil, an Island of Antillia, founded—who
knows on what?—whether on the real adventure
of a vessel driven in sight of the Azores or Bermudas,
or on mere fancy and fogbank. But when discovery
really came to be undertaken, men looked for such
lands and found them accordingly. And there they
are in our geographies, Brazil and the Antilles!
The cut which we give is curious in connection with
our traveller’s notice of the portrait-gallery
of the Golden Kings. For it is taken from the
fragmentary MS. of Rashiduddin’s History in the
library of the Royal Asiatic Society, a MS. believed
to be one of those executed under the great Vazir’s
own supervision, and is presented there as the portrait
of the last sovereign of the Dynasty in question,
being one of a whole series of similar figures.
There can be little doubt, I think, that these were
taken from Chinese originals, though, it may be, not
very exactly.
NOTE 2.—The history of the Tartar conquerors
of China, whether Khitan, Churche, Mongol, or Manchu,
has always been the same. For one or two generations
the warlike character and manly habits were maintained;
and then the intruders, having adopted Chinese manners,
ceremonies, literature, and civilization, sank into
more than Chinese effeminacy and degradation.
We see the custom of employing only female attendants
ascribed in a later chapter (lxxvii.) to the Sung
Emperors at Kinsay; and the same was the custom of
the later Ming emperors, in whose time the imperial
palace was said to contain 5000 women. Indeed,
the precise custom which this passage describes was
in our own day habitually reported of the T’ai-P’ing
sovereign during his reign at Nanking: “None
but women are allowed in the interior of the Palace,
and he is drawn to the audience-chamber in a gilded
sacred dragon-car by the ladies” (Blakiston,
p. 42; see also Wilson’s Ever-Victorious
Army, p. 41.)
[1] [There is no trace of it in Harlez’s French
translation from the Manchu
of the History of the Kin
Empire, 1887.—H.C.]
[2] See also Oppert (p. 157), who cites this story
from Visdelou, but does
not notice its analogy to
Polo’s.
HOW PRESTER JOHN TREATED THE GOLDEN KING HIS PRISONER.
And on this the Golden King was so sorely grieved
that he was like to die. And he said to them:
“Good, my sons, for God’s sake have pity
and compassion upon me. Ye wot well what honourable
and kindly entertainment ye have had in my house;
and now ye would deliver me into the hands of mine
enemy! In sooth, if ye do what ye say, ye will
do a very naughty and disloyal deed, and a right villainous.”
But they answered only that so it must be, and away
they had him to Prester John their Lord.
