'''28 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



accordance with what we know to have obtained among the Tibetans 

 for some centuries back. Charge.s of cannibalism against a remote 

 people only known to the informants of the writer of a narrative by 

 hearsay are not uncommon. To only mention one, I find tliat the early 

 Arab travelers in China charged the Chinese of the 7th century, A. D., 

 with eating all their enemies killed in war.* Altogether, I think there 

 IS very little foundation for the charge made by Kubruk and du Plan 

 Carpin. It is probably the result of a jumbled-up account of the true 

 methods of disposing of the dead, which will be described f\irther on 

 Friar Odoric says (H. Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, i, p. 151): 

 Suppose such an oue's father to die, then the son will say, "I desire to pay resi.ect 

 to my father's memory;" and so lie calls together all. the priests and monks and 

 players in the country round, and likeNvise all the neighbors and kinsfolk, and they 

 carry the body into the country with great rejoicings. And they have a great table 

 in readiness, upon which the priests cut off the head, and then this is presented to 

 theson and the sou and all the company raise a chant and make manv prayers for 

 the dead Then the priests cut the whole of the body to pieces, and wh;n they have 

 done so they go up again to the city with the whole company, prayino- for him as 

 they go. After this the eagles and vultures come down from the mountains and 

 every one ta^kes his morsel and carries it away. Then all the company shout aloud 

 saying. Behold ! the man is a saint. For the angels of God come and carry him to 

 paradise. And m this way the son deems himself to be honored in no small de-ree 

 seeing that his lather is borne off in this creditable manner by the angels. An"^d so 

 he takes his father's head and straightway cooks it and eats it, and of the skull 

 he maketh a goblet, from which he and all the family always drink devoutly to the 

 memory of the deceased father. And they say that by eating in this way they show 

 thoir great respect for their father. 



Colonel Yule, commenting on the preceding passage, says: 



Klaproth quotes passages showing a knowledge of this mode of disposing of the 

 dead from Strabo, Cicero's Tusculan Questions, and Justin. Strabo also ascribes to 

 theCaspi. the opinion that those whose bodies the birds appropriated were blessed. 

 Herodotus and Mela ascribe such practices to the Issedonians and Scythians "Cor- 

 pora ipsa lauiata et c*sis pecorum visceribus immista epulando consumunt. Capita 

 ubi fabri expohvere auro viucta pro poculis gerunt." (Pomp. Mela, ii, p. l.)t 



I have shown in my paper "On the use of skulls in lamaist cere- 

 monies" (Proc. Amer. Orient. Soc. Oct., 1888, p. xxii) the notions pre- 

 vailing in Tibet on this subject. As further elucidating the above pass- 

 age from Odoric's travels, I may mention that the rapidity with which 

 the body of the dead is devoured by the birds or other animals to whom 

 it IS fed IS held to be a proof of the good luck (or Imrma) of the deceased, 

 and therefore the skull of one who has been so devoured is a good one 

 out of which to make a libation bowl. 



Chinese authors describe as follows Tibetan mortuary customs: 

 When a person dies in Tibet the corpse is tied up with ropes, the face being put 



the everyday clothes of the deceased and put in a rawhide bag. The men and 



*See Reiiiaud Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes, etc., i, pp. 52, QS^^ 

 ^Conf. .Strabo s remarks about the Hibernians and the Massageta. Bk. v 4 and 

 lik. XI, 8. Also Ammxanus Marcellinns, xxvii. 4, and Herodotus iv. 65 



