The Travels of an Alchemist

The Journey of the Taoist Ch'ang-Ch'un from China to the Hundukush at the Summons of Chingiz Khan

Li Chih-Ch'ang, The Arthur Waley Estate, Arthur Waley, The Arthur Waley Estate, Arthur Waley

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415344906
• eBook ISBN: 9781134284443
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

First published in 1931.
Mainly focussing on cultural and geographical aspects, Travels of an Alchemist are unique in their importance as a source for early Mongol history, enabling us as they do to fix with certainty the otherwise obscure and much disputed dates of Chingiz Khan's movements during his Western campaign. The author, a Taoist doctor, left some of the most faithful and vivid pictures ever drawn of nature and society between the Aral and the Yellow Sea.
Waley's introduction provides excellent background information with which to place the Travels in their appropriate historical, social and religious setting.

THE TRAVELS OF AN ALCHEMIST

CHAPTER I
TRANSLATION OF Hsi Yu Chi

MY Father and teacher, the adept Ch’ang-ch’un-tzŭ, was a member of the Ch’iu family. His name was Ch’u-chi and his literary style T’ung-mi. He was a native of Ch’i-hsia, near Tēng-chou (in the province of Shangtung). While still a young man he joined the Taoist priesthood and served the adept Chung-yang¹ at Lung-mēn, near P’an-ch’i (in the province of Shansi) for thirteen years. Here, by gradual building up of his spiritual strength and protracted study of books, he at length acquired the Way. Later² he returned to the coast.

Before the year mou-yin (1218) while the Teacher was at Tēng-chou, the Honan Government³ several times intended to send messengers with presents for him and an invitation to visit Honan. But the plan always fell through. However, next year when he was living at Lai-chou (south-west of Tēng-chou) in the Hao-t’ien temple, the Honan Moderator and the Frontier Envoy arrived there in the fourth month and invited him to return with them. He could not do so, but the Envoy was able to bring back poems and hymns written by the Master. Subsequently an envoy started out from Ta-liang¹; but on the way he heard that Shantung had been taken by the native Chinese dynasty, and returned. In the eighth month the two Chinese generals Li Ch’üan and P’ēng I-pin² tried to make him go with them, but he would not. His repeated refusals (for after this, invitations from various places kept on pouring in) surprised the prefect of Lai-chou. But the Master explained to him that his movements were controlled by Heaven. “Such people as you can know nothing of the matter”, he said. “When the time comes for me to go, I shall go, and there is no more to be said.”

Not long afterwards the Mongol Emperor Chingiz Khan sent his personal Minister Liu Wen³ with a golden tablet in the form of a tiger’s head hung about him. On it was written the message: “This man is empowered to act with the same freedom as I myself should exercise, had I come in person”. With him were twenty Mongols, who made known the Emperor’s urgent desire that the Master should return with them. While he was hesitating, Liu Wēn said: “Your name is esteemed throughout the Four Seas, and the Emperor has sent me as his special envoy across mountains and lakes, commanding me, whether it takes months, or years, on no account to return without you”. The Master replied: “Since the war started, frontiers have continually been changing. I know that in coming you have incurred great dangers, and I am sensible of your kindness in taking this trouble on my account”. “I was acting under Imperial orders”, said Liu Wēn, “and had no choice but to exert myself to the uttermost. The Command reached me in the fifth month of the present year. I was then at the Imperial Camp in the country of the Naiman tribe.¹ In the sixth month I reached Wei-ning, to the north of Po-tēng.² Here I received instructions from the Wingéd-one³ Ch’ang-chēn. In the seventh month I arrived at Tē-hsing, but as the road over the Chü-yung⁴ Pass was barred, soldiers were sent from Peking to meet me. I arrived at the capital in the eighth month. The Taoists there could not tell me whether you were alive or not. It was only when I had passed through Chung-shan and Chēn-ting¹ that I heard you were in Lai-chou. This was finally confirmed in detail by Wu Yen and Chiang Yuan, two officials in the employ of the Protector of I-tu.² I wanted to send 5,000 soldiers to fetch you. But these officials said it would be imprudent to do so just at the moment when the Mongols and Kin Tartars were negotiating. A sudden incursion of troops would alarm the inhabitants of the eastern provinces, who were just beginning to settle down, and cause them to take refuge in inaccessible places or even sail away to sea. Following this advice I sent twenty men, who volunteered for the task, to ride on ahead, and when we were nearing I-tu, I sent on Wu Yen and Chiang Yüan to inform their general, Chang Lin,³ of my arrival. Lin met me outside the walls with ten thousand men in armour. I laughed at this display, saying: ‘I am on my way to visit the Adept Ch’ang-ch’un. What is the use of all these armed men?’ Lin then dispersed his troops, and rode by my side into the town. I explained my mission thus in every town through which I passed, and nowhere encountered either nervousness or opposition. Lin even gave me post-riders, and at my next halting-place, Wei-chou, I met your disciple Yin Chih-p’ing. In the twelfth month we reached Lai-chou and I am thus at last able to execute his Imperial Majesty’s August Command.”

The Master knew that a refusal was out of the question, and he said calmly to Liu Wēn: “In these parts supplies are not easy to obtain. You and your party had better go back to I-tu and wait for me there. I will join you when the ceremonies of the Shang Yüan¹ are over. You can send fifteen horsemen to fetch me. I shall be ready to start on the 18th”. So Liu Wēn and his followers went back to I-tu, while the Master chose nineteen of his followers and with them awaited the arrival of the escort. When it came, the whole party set out along the northern side of the river Wei, as far as Ch’ing-shē (Ch’ing-chou). Here they found that Liu Wēn had already left. From General Chang Lin they learnt that on the seventh day of the first month² four hundred horsemen had appeared at Lin-tzŭ, terrifying the townsmen of Ch’ing-chou. Liu Wēn had therefore retraced his steps, in order to hold these marauders in check. Where Liu now was, the General could not say. The Master accordingly went straight on through Ch’ang-shan and Tsou-p’ing, reaching Chi-yang¹ at the beginning of the second month. The grandees and people of the place came out to meet him burning incense, and did homage to him at a point somewhat south of the town. The winged-ones (Taoists) led the procession, and conducted the Master with much chanting to supper in the Nurture Simplicity Cloister. Here his hosts began one and all to tell him that on the 18th day of the previous month some ten cranes had come from the north-west, crying as they sped through the clouds. They then disappeared towards the south-east. Next day, between the hours of the Dragon and the Snake (8–10 a.m.) several more cranes came from the south-west. These were followed by hundreds of others, who swooped up and down. One solitary crane, however, actually brushed the cloister with its wings and hovered near it for some time before flying away. “We now know”, said the Taoists, “that this happened at the very day and hour of your departure”, and they touched their foreheads with their hands.²

Here he stayed for several days. In the first decade of the second month a messenger arrived saying that Liu Wēn had quartered his troops at Chiang-ling (modern Wu-ch’iao), where a boat lay moored, awaiting the Master’s arrival. Next day he set out, and on the thirteenth day Liu Wēn sent soldiers to meet him. The Master asked why they were so late. They replied that owing to so many of the roads being blockaded,¹ Liu Wēn had been obliged to make an excursion to Peking, in order to collect more troops. These he had Stationed partly at Hsin-an, partly at Ch’ang-shan, while he himself had put his own men into Wu-i below Shēn-shou, in order to get the roads clear. He had been obliged to rebuild the bridge over the Hu-to, and what with this and fitting up the boat at Chiang-ling, he had naturally got behindhand. The Master said that no one but His Excellence Liu Wēn could have managed so well. Next day they crossed the Hu-t’o and turned northwards. On the 22nd day they reached the Lü-kou Bridge (and crossed the Sangkan). Outside the walls of the Capital he was met by a large deputation of officials, commoners, Buddhist priests and Taoists. He entered the city on the same day by the Li-ts’ē Gate, the Taoist clergy leading the way in stately procession and chanting as they went. The Provincial Governor Shih-mo² ordered the Master to be lodged in the Jade Emptiness temple. Henceforward the gates of the temple were besieged by crowds that grew daily larger, some wanting verses, others begging for a name.¹ Of the foot-soldiers and horsemen who came to offer themselves as his disciples and obtained from him a Taoist name, many at once lost all desire for the disastrous career of arms; so great was his religious power. The Commissioner Wang Chi, styled Chü-ch’uan,² sent him a poem, and the Mailer replied.³

We now heard that the Khan had shifted his headquarters further west. The Master feared that his great age would make him unequal to a journey involving so much fatigue and exposure, and would have preferred to interview Chingiz on his return from the western campaign. He was moreover distressed to discover that Liu Wēn proposed taking with them on the journey all the girls whom he had collected for the Khan’s harem. The Master reminded him that when the men of Ch’i offered female musicians as a present to the king of Lu, Confucius quitted the State of Lu. “I”, said the Master, “am a mere mountain-savage. But I do not think you ought to expect me to travel with harem-girls.” Liu Wēn was obliged to send Ho-la⁴ with an urgent message to the Emperor. The Master also sent an appeal, asking for this arrangement to be altered. One day some one brought a picture of Lao Tzŭ crossing the Frontier,¹ by Yen Li-pēn,² and asked the Mailer to write something on it.

In the first decade of the fourth month (May 4–13) the faithful expressed the hope that he would perform the ceremonies of the Full Moon in the T’ien-ch’ang temple. He refuse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Map
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Sources
• Sun Hsi’s Preface to the Hsi Yu Chi
• Translation of Hsi Yu Chi
• Appendix
• Index