Marco Polo in Central Asia: 35: Tangut & Sacchion

When you have rode thirty days through this desert [1] you find a city named Sacchion [2], which belongs to the great Khan. The province is called Tangut [3] The people are idolators mixed with some Nestorian Christians and Saracens.  The first have the languages of their own; they subsist not by merchandise, but by the grain, which they produce from the earth.  They have many Abbeys and monasteries, all full of idols of various shapes, to which they offer frequent sacrifice and homage.  Every man who has children rears a sheep, and at particular festival at the end of the year, leads them along with the animal to the presence of God, to whom they all perform reverence.  They cook the sheep, and offer it very humbly before the idol, leaving it while they make their prayers for the safety of their children.  Then they take the meat and carry it to the house, or wherever they please, send for their relations, and eat it with great joy and respect.  They afterwards collect the bones, and preserve them with deligence.  When anyone of them dies, his body is burned.   For this he is carried to the place for this last ceremony.  They erect in the middle of the path a house of cane, covered with cloths of silk and gold. When the dead man is laid before the ornamented house, they place before him wine and victuals, believing that he will be similarly honoured in the other world.
At the place of burning too, they cut in paper,  men, horses, camels, and coins of the size of bezants, convinced that the dead will possess all these things in the other world.  All the instruments in the town are played before the corpse.  After the death the relations send for the astrologer, and he is informed of the day, month and year of his nativity, and the astrologer then divines, by his diabolical art, the day on which the burning ought to take place. If it should be a week, a month, or six months, they keep it all the time, and never burn till the appointed day.  In this interval they deposit the corpse in a large box covered with a cloth, and so preserve with crocus and other spices that no stench arises.  Throughout this period, they place daily before the box meat and drink, and leave it there for some time, till they think he has eaten it.  These sorcerers often tell the relations that the dead body must not be carried out by the main door, but by a private one or even though a breach made in the wall.  All the idolaters in the world proceed in this manner. Now I must go to another city which lies to the south, near the extreme end of the desert.

Notes:- 

1. Lop Nur was the last station of Marco Polo.

2. Sacchion: Likely Sachu or Dunhuang, a city in Gansu Province of northwestern China. It was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road.

3. Tangut: Modern day Gansu.

End of the Section 

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