Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [104]
In terms usually reserved for Kublai Khan, Marco describes the ruler as rich and powerful, and “loved by all,” and he repeats a story he had been told about him: “This king, when he approached death, commanded in his will that there should be…a monument like this, that on his tomb should be made two towers, one of gold and one of silver.” One of the towers, Marco explains, was made from “the most beautiful stone” covered with plates fashioned from gold “one finger thick.” Because of the gold exterior, “the tower did not seem to be of anything but gold alone.” The gleaming monument, says Marco, extended “ten paces high.” Atop the column sat a “round ball” containing “gilded bells that sounded every time the wind struck them.” Its mate, the silver tower, was equally impressive, and was topped with silver bells.
By implication, nothing in Europe equaled the towers’ grandeur.
MARCO CONSOLED himself with the thought that the formerly rebellious region had been conquered by Kublai Khan’s forces, and in a highly unusual fashion. It seems that the khan prepared for the incursion by summoning the “jesters and acrobats” of his realm and dispatching them to Mien along with the soldiers. He promised to provide them adequate leadership for the campaign, and they, in turn, would obey his commands.
The Mongol army, accompanied by jesters, quickly conquered the city of Pagan, where they were confronted by the two towers, one gold, the other silver, the mere sight of which diminished their arrogance. “They were all astonished at them,” Marco relates, and “told the Great Khan about the likeness of these towers and how they were beautiful and of very great value; and that if he wished they would take them down and send him the gold and the silver. The Great Khan, who knew that the king had built them for the welfare of his soul, that one might remember him after his death, said that he did not wish that they should be taken down at all, but said that he wished them to stay in such a manner as that king who had made them planned and appointed.”
This show of respect for a fallen enemy impressed Marco, who states that “to this day, the towers are adorned and well guarded,” and makes the questionable assertion that “no Tartar touches a thing of any dead man” because Mongol custom considers it “a very great sin to move anything belonging to the dead.” It was true, however, that Kublai’s deference was of a piece with his policy of encouraging local beliefs in lands conquered by his army. The Mongols realized that if they left intact the indigenous character of regions they overran, the inhabitants were far more likely to cede political control in order to preserve their spiritual identity.
As Marco resumed his travels through Asia, he experienced the once-static culture in a time of rapid transformation, making and unmaking itself as Kublai Khan incorporated one distant kingdom after another into his empire.
SOME LOCAL CUSTOMS proved too extreme for the Mongols to absorb, as Marco found in a province near Bengal. There, he says, “the people all in common, men and women, are painted or pricked with the needle all over their flesh…in a color of blood on their faces and all over their flesh of cranes and eagles, of lions and dragons and birds and of many other likenesses different and strange, so that nothing is seen not drawn upon and not scratched. They are made with the needles very cunningly and in such a way that they never come off by washing or nor by any other way. They also make them on the face and on the neck and on the belly and on the breast and on the arms and on the hands and on the feet, legs, and all over the body in this way.”
Marco must have cringed as he described the tattooing procedure in excruciating detail. It began with the tattoo artist, or “master,” drawing “patterns, so many and such as he shall please…with black over the whole body,” whereupon the subject “will be bound feet and hands, and two or more will hold him, and the master, who