A great change seems to have come over Chinese custom, since the Middle Ages, in regard to the disposal of the dead.  Cremation is now entirely disused, except in two cases; one, that of the obsequies of a Buddhist priest, and the other that in which the coffin instead of being buried has been exposed in the fields, and in the lapse of time has become decayed.  But it is impossible to reject the evidence that it was a common practice in Polo’s age.  He repeats the assertion that it was the custom at every stage of his journey through Eastern China; though perhaps his taking absolutely no notice of the practice of burial is an instance of that imperfect knowledge of strictly Chinese peculiarities which has been elsewhere ascribed to him.  It is the case, however, that the author of the Book of the Estate of the Great Kaan (circa 1330) also speaks of cremation as the usual Chinese practice, and that Ibn Batuta says positively:  “The Chinese are infidels and idolaters, and they burn their dead after the manner of the Hindus.”  This is all the more curious, because the Arab Relations of the 9th century say distinctly that the Chinese bury their dead, though they often kept the body long (as they do still) before burial; and there is no mistaking the description which Conti (15th century) gives of the Chinese mode of sepulture.  Mendoza, in the 16th century, alludes to no disposal of the dead except by burial, but Semedo in the early part of the 17th says that bodies were occasionally burnt, especially in Sze-ch’wan.

I am greatly indebted to the kindness of an eminent Chinese scholar, Mr. W.F.  Mayers, of Her Majesty’s Legation at Peking, who, in a letter, dated Peking, 18th September, 1874, sends me the following memorandum on the subject:—­

“Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo, II. 97 [First Edition], Burning of the Dead.

“On this subject compare the article entitled Huo Tsang, or ’Cremation Burials,’ in Bk.  XV of the Jih Che Luh, or ‘Daily Jottings,’ a great collection of miscellaneous notes on classical, historical, and antiquarian subjects, by Ku Yen-wu, a celebrated author of the 17th century.  The article is as follows:—­

“’The practice of burning the dead flourished (or flourishes) most extensively in Kiang-nan, and was in vogue already in the period of the Sung Dynasty.  According to the history of the Sung Dynasty, in the 27th year of the reign Shao-hing (A.D. 1157), the practice was animadverted upon by a public official.’  Here follows a long extract, in which the burning of the dead is reprehended, and it is stated that cemeteries were set apart by Government on behalf of the poorer classes.

“In A.D. 1261, Hwang Chen, governor of the district of Wu, in a memorial praying that the erection of cremation furnaces might thenceforth be prohibited, dwelt upon the impropriety of burning the remains of the deceased, for whose obsequies a multitude of observances were prescribed by the religious rites.  He further exposed the fallacy of the excuse alleged for the practice, to wit, that burning the dead was a fulfilment of the precepts of Buddha, and accused the priests of a certain monastery of converting into a source of illicit gain the practice of cremation.”