Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia/Series 1/Volume 4/Investiture of the King of Cochin-China by an Envoy of the Emperor of China in 1849
INVESTITURE OF THE KING OF COCHIN-CHINA BY AN ENVOY OF THE EMPEROR OF CHINA IN 1849.
Last year I sent you an account of the funeral of the king Thien Tri. This year I shall give you some details regarding the investiture accorded to the new king Tu Duc by the Emperor of China.
According to a custom or law prevailing from time immemorial, the kings of Cochin-China must receive investiture from the Emperor of China. Although this investiture consists in a simple formality, since the Anamese kingdom is altogether independent of the Chinese Empire, yet to this day the kings would consider that something was wanting to their royalty, if they had not obtained a diploma from the Emperor of China, and the people also, would not regard as altogether king a sovereign who had not been instituted by a foreign power. Down to the present time the ceremony of investiture has taken place at Kê Cho, the old capital of the kingdom and former abode of the kings, and since Tonquin and Cochin-China have formed only one state, of which the capital is Hué in Northern Cochin-China, the kings have still repaired to Kê Cho and there met the Chinese ambassadors. This journey of the king is made with great pomp, great fatigue for the mandarins and soldiers, and great cost for the people; for in this country it is the people who pay for all. Besides the taxes which they are obliged to pay regularly, if there is anything new or unusual, duties are imposed upon them, or they are obliged to bear all the expenses. When the king Tu Duc ascended the throne, some mandarins directed his attention to the burdens which would be imposed upon the people if he went to Kê Cho as usual, and solicited him to request the Emperor of China to send his am- bassadors to Hué. This reason of the mandarins was only a pretext, for, as I shall presently shew, the people were more oppressed than if the king had gone to Kê Cho. The true motive was that they wished to save themselves the trouble of the journey. However this might be, they succeeded in persuading the king, who besought the Emperor of China that the ambassadors of the Celestial Empire should come to his Capital to give him investiture. It even appears that he was not disposed to submit to this formality, if the Emperor had refused his request. After some negotiation, China acceeded to the demand, and as soon as certain intelligence of this concession was received in Cochin-China, every thing was put in train to give the coming deputies of China a great idea of the Anamite kingdom. For this purpose the population which bordered the road by which they must pass were obliged to set to work, and had to labour during four or five months. It was decided that the ambassadors should only make a short journey each day, so that they might be a long time on the road, and be persuaded that the kingdom was immense. At each interval of 12 or 15 miles, palaces were built to receive the ambassadors and all their suite. The people were obliged to bear the cost of the wood and other materials, and to supply the workmanship for all these buildings. All the roads were newly repaired, all the streams were cleared out, and at a later period when the ambassadors passed, it was still the poor people who were obliged to furnish everything necessary for them, and in the greatest profusion. The people were thus unusually op- pressed, perhaps four times more than if the king had gone to Kê Cho. The king it is said gave some money to pay the people, but the mandarins of the provinces kept it all to themselves.
At the 6th moon the ambassadors after having heen many times announced, entered the kingdom by the most northerly part of Ton- quin, and it took them more than a month to travel from the borders of China to Hué. They loitered, but not as had been wished, for the Chinese were accompanied by sorcerers or astrologers who decided if the water or the air of the country in which they found themselves were salubrious. It therefore often happened that on the decision of the sorcerers they passed through three or four stations in the same day. When they had stopped, and wished again to proceed the astrologers determined if there was nothing in the stars which opposed the journey, and they performed charms. They also frequently offered sacrifices. The Chinese never travel with- out all these superstitions. The caravan consisted of about 140 persons. At the head was a Chinese mandarin of the 2nd order, who was the first ambassador, besides three other inferior man- darins, an interpreter and four or five sorcerers or astrologers. The rest were soldiers. On the confines of the kingdom many Chinese vagabonds seeing that it would be profitable to be in the suite of the ambassadors, joined it as if to serve as escort. The Chinese professed a great contempt for the Anamites, and during the journey frequently subjected them to all kinds of annoyances. The soldiers and the vagabonds who followed the embassy, made the Cochin- Chinese carry them, and they proved themselves exacting and cruel. The king had given orders to treat the Chinese well and not to cross them in anything. Thus the Cochin-Chinese were obliged to submit to all. The people were constrained to furnish provisions of all kinds, and the Chinese wasted them in a strange manner. What they could not use, was thrown into the fields or into the rivers. However their natural voracity was not wanting ; at each station they weighed themselves, to ascertion if they had lost any of their good condition, and if they were a little reduced in their weight, they stopped to repair by eating what they had lost. At the station near where I was, in two days they caused an expense of at least 3,000 ligatures, which with the Cochin-Chinese is the same as 3,000 dollars to other people. Wherever the embassy passed, the mandarins of the provinces came to do it honor, and when it approached the capital, the king sent mandarins, soldiers, elephants and boats to meet it.
On the 17th of the 7th moon the ambassadors arrived at the capital, and were received by many mandarins of different grades with great ceremony. They were conducted to a house built for the occasion near one of the gates of the city. The 1st ambassa- dor sat down in the centre of the house, and the Cochin-Chinese mandarins saluted him by prostrating themselves, and six cannons were at the same time fred. The ambassadors then seated themselves in palanquins carried by soldiers and entered the city with great pomp; they were accompanied by Cochin-Chinese mandarins, by three thousand men bearing arms and standards, and there were also elephants and horses. All proceeded in regn- lar order and arrived at the house which had been prepared for them with great care in the exterior city.
The capital of the Anamite kingdom, called Hué or Thua Thien or Phuxuan, is composed of two cities, the one exterior, the other interior. The city which is styled exterior is surrounded by walls and a considerable river, and is fortified in the European manner. It is entered by 10 bridges corresponding to 10 gates. This city which is very large contains what is called the interior city, which is in the middle, the different public offices, the houses of some near relations of the king, barracks, prisons, magazines and grana- ries. Some persons of the people also live there, but they are poor, and are petty traders who sell rice, betel, and other commo- dities required by the soldiers. This is perhaps the capital which offers the most dismal aspect in the whole world. All groan under the tyranny of a despot who imagines that he is the only person in all his kingdom who ought to be happy, and of mandarins who only study to deceive the king, and to oppress the people for their own profit. The city called interior, in the middle of the exterior town, is also surrounded by walls. It contains the palace or seraglio of the king into which no man is permitted to enter except some eunuchs, the palace of the mother of the king, the house in which the king receives the mandarins and a guard-room for the soldiers who mount guard at the gate. The royal kitchens are in the exterior town.
The 22nd day of the moon was the day fixed for the ceremony of investiture, and the place was the house in which the king receives his mandarins. In the morning six cannon reports announ- ced that the ambassadors had set out from their house, and imme- diately afterwards 9 other guns made known that they had reached the gate of the interior town. The king had already repaired to the place where he was to receive his diploma; he advanced beyond the gate to receive the ambassadors; when the latter perceived this, they descended from their palanquins and all entered together, the king on the right, the ambassadors to the left. The diploma was laid upon a kind of estrade or altar in the midst of perfumes. Then the Mandarin, minister of ceremonies, invited the king to approach, and the king came in front of the altar, and saluted by prostrating himself five times; while he remained on his knees the 1st ambassador took the diploma, and standing in the middle of the estrade, turned towards the king, he read it through, and then gave it to the king who holding it above his head prostrated himself once. The diploma was then delivered to one of the princes near him, and the king again saluted it by prostrating himself five times. This done the king conducted the ambassadors beyond the gate, and they returned in the same order in which they had set out.
On the next day, the 23rd of the moon, the ambassadors went to a kind of temple or pagoda, built in the exterior town in honor of Thien Tri, father and predecessor of Tu Duc, to offer a sacrifice to him and to raise him definitively to the rank of a god. Can- non again announced their departure and their arrival at the pagoda. The king had also repaired thither, and he came out to receive the ambassadors. When they had entered the pagoda, the ambassadors placed upon a kind of altar of perfumes, the rescript of the Emperor of China which elevated the defunct king to the rank of celestial spirits. The king Tu Duc then advanced and saluted the altar by prostrating himself five times. He then stepped a little aside, and left the ambassadors to offer the sacrifice. It was the Chinese only who offered this sacrifice, which consisted in making prostrations, burning incense, offering meats and other eatables, and there were amongst other things whole buffaloes and pigs. The ceremony which was performed on this day, is a sequel of that of the day before, because the old king in virtue of the investiture which he had formerly received, must necessarily become holy and god. When therefore he is replaced by another upon the earth, it is proper that he should be assigned a place in the superior regions.
Of such consists the ceremony of the investiture of the kings of Cochin-china, which has a religious rather than a political aspect; and it is probably a remnant of primitive traditions, greatly disfi- gured by the superstition and the passions of men. However in countries even the most barbarous an innate and natural sentiment seems to indicate that man cannot have power over other men, if it is not communicated to him by a superior order; and this is what the Christian doctrime expresses by these words of St. Paul —non est potestas nisi a Deo.
The ambassadors had sent presents to the king, who only accepted pencils, paper and ink. The king also offered to the 1st ambassador 10 bars of gold and fifty bars of silver, but he accepted nothing. The other ambassadors and the soldiers, however, took not only all that was given to them, but they even carried away everything that was of value in the houses which had been prepared for them both in the capital and on the road. They also required five thousand soldiers for the return, to carry their baggage and to protect them in case of attack. And they perhaps had some reason to fear; for the Anamite people, already so poor, could not view with a favorable eye those who now despoiled them of the little they had.
There has occurred this year another event in this country which has caused universal consternation; namely, the invasion of the cholera morbus. This cruel malaly has traversed all the provinces of the kingdom, and death which accompanies it has struck down numerous victims. In the month of September the plague com- menced its ravages in the royal province and it advanced rapidly towards the north. It was most terrible in the month of October ; since that time the malady has lost its intensity, but on certain days it breaks out again with a new vigour, and I cannot say when it is likely to cease. There are those who assert that the royal province alone has lost a hundred thousand inhabitants, but this number is evidently exaggerated and must be reduced to twenty thousand. Each of the other provinces has also lost perhaps ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants. All are agreed in saying that the Christians have been visibly protected. The number of deaths amongst them is, in proportion, infinitely smaller than amongst the pagans. During the epidemic every one could see, by evidence, the difference which there was between the idolaters and the Christians. For whilst the first, in spite of the respect which they outwardly profess for the dead, a respect which ap- proaches to idolatry, and has the force of religion with the greater number, abandoned the dead and the dying; the Christians, on the contrary, trusting in God, practised all the works which Christian charity prescribes. Some very horrible things have happened amongst the pagans; corpses were thrown into the rivers, and obstructed the windings; men attacked by sickness, bat still full of life, were very quickly cast out of the houses, and interred or thrown into the rivers; many are pointed out who had strength to save themselves and are still alive; infants some months old only were left near the corpse of their mothers, who had some- times been covered with a little earth, and have there perished after crying for a few hours. The Christians were able to save some of these poor creatures. It is thus that God visibly punishes this people who have contended against him in persecuting his Holy Religion, and in putting to death its ministers and faithful servants; and punishes in particular, perhaps, the edict which ap- peared last year, in which it was said that Christians took no care of their dead, and which condemned the European priests to be cast into the sea.
Disease has not been the only scourge which has afflicted this kingdom during the present year." Famine has also prevailed there. The heat and the drought have been dreadful. There was no rain for nearly six months, and the atmosphere was constantly heated from 36 to 40 degrees centigrade (96º to 104º fahr.) in the shade. The rice could not germinate; and where by dint of labour they were able to form some rice fields and the plant came up, the torrents of ran which afterwards ensued, swept all away. I am assured that in some provinces men were reduced to feed themselves on banana leaves, which they do not even give to animals except when they have nothing else. Since the commencement of the epidemic the king has remained shut up in his palace, and gives audiance to no one; the great mandarins for more than a month have attended to nothing, and are sunk under the weight of an absorbing dread. May they open their eyes and labour to repair the evil which they have done. The people know well that it is God who thus punishes; but nothing appears to indicate in the great who govern any sentiment of amendment.
Northern Cochin-China, 14th December 1849