Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/244

232 232 CHKISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. terminated by drinking-parties, in which emperor, empress, and priests of all religions got intoxicated to- gether. The Tartar emperor, though he held no determinate religious faith, was given to a number of superstitious practices, and the principal soothsayer was lodged oppo- site his tent, not a stone's throw off, having under his care the cars that bore the idols. These soothsayers practised astrology, and foretold eclipses, and on the occurrence of such a phenomenon, they set to beating the great drum, clashing the cymbals, and uttering loud cries. They also pointed out the lucky and unlucky days for all kinds of affairs, and nothing was undertaken without their advice ; it was their business, too, to purify by fire all articles destined for the consumption of the court, as well as the presents offered to the emperor, on which they had a right to levy a certain toll. At the birth of a child they were summoned to cast its horoscope, and they had recourse to sorcery for the cure of diseases. If they wished to ruin any one, they had nothing to do but to accuse him of having by his malignant arts occasioned any misfortune that might have occurred. When they were interrogated, they evoked their demons by the sound of the tambourine, shaking it furiously ; then falling into an ecstasy, they feigned to receive answers from their familiar spirits, and proclaimed them as oracles. It is rather curious, too, that table-rapping and table-turning were in use in the thirteenth century among these Mongols in the wilds of Tartary. Rubruk himself witnessed an instance of the kind. On the eve of the Ascension, when the mother of Mangou, feeling very ill, the first soothsayer was summoned for consul-