[Illustration:  Monastery of Lamas.]

NOTE 14.—­There were many anomalies in the older Lamaism, and it permitted, at least in some sects of it which still subsist, the marriage of the clergy under certain limitations and conditions.  One of Giorgi’s missionaries speaks of a Lama of high hereditary rank as a spiritual prince who marries, but separates from his wife as soon as he has a son, who after certain trials is deemed worthy to be his successor. ["A good number of Lamas were married, as M. Polo correctly remarks; their wives were known amongst the Chinese, under the name of Fan-sao.” (Ch’ue keng lu, quoted by Palladius, 28.)—­H.  C.] One of the “reforms” of Tsongkhapa was the absolute prohibition of marriage to the clergy, and in this he followed the institutes of the oldest Buddhism.  Even the Red Lamas, or unreformed, cannot now marry without a dispensation.

But even the oldest orthodox Buddhism had its Lay brethren and Lay sisters (Upasaka and Upasika), and these are to be found in Tibet and Mongolia ( Voues au blanc, as it were).  They are called by the Mongols, by a corruption of the Sanskrit, Ubashi and Ubashanza.  Their vows extend to the strict keeping of the five great commandments of the Buddhist Law, and they diligently ply the rosary and the prayer-wheel, but they are not pledged to celibacy, nor do they adopt the tonsure.  As a sign of their amphibious position, they commonly wear a red or yellow girdle.  These are what some travellers speak of as the lowest order of Lamas, permitted to marry; and Polo may have regarded them in the same light.

(Koeppen, II. 82, 113, 276, 291; Timk. II. 354; Erman, II. 304; Alph.  Tibet. 449.)

NOTE 15.—­[Mr. Rockhill writes to me that “bran” is certainly Tibetan tsamba (parched barley).—­H.  C.]

NOTE 16.—­Marco’s contempt for Patarins slips out in a later passage (Bk.  III. ch. xx.).  The name originated in the eleventh century in Lombardy, where it came to be applied to the “heretics,” otherwise called “Cathari.”  Muratori has much on the origin of the name Patarini, and mentions a monument, which still exists, in the Piazza de’ Mercanti at Milan, in honour of Oldrado Podesta of that city in 1233, and which thus, with more pith than grammar, celebrates his meritorious acts:—­

  “Qui solium struxit Catharos ut debuit UXIT.”

Other cities were as piously Catholic.  A Mantuan chronicler records under 1276:  “Captum fuit Sermionum seu redditum fuit Ecclesiae, et capti fuerunt cercha CL Patarini contra fidem, inter masculos et feminas; qui omnes ducti fuerunt Veronam, et ibi incarcerati, et pro magna parte COMBUSTI.” (Murat.  Dissert. III. 238; Archiv.  Stor.  Ital. N.S.  I. 49.)