Note 12 — Chapter III · Population—Costumes—Usages—Festivals

“If I have not yet replied to your letter of the 19th November,” he writes, “it is because I desired to make special researches concerning the strange rumour which has been spread by the Syed on the subject of a tribe of Parsis established at Khoten, remaining faithful to the Zoroastrian customs, and still governed by its own kings. I can tell you that it is a legend devoid of foundation, and that Major Rawlinson, so learned in these matters, partakes of my view. I suppose that the Syed, seeing the prosperous condition of his co-religionists in Bombay, imagined that in flattering your vanity he would act on your purse. Besides, the country of Khoten is not the terra incognita which he has depicted. I have been in touch with the people who have sojourned there; it is a dependency of China, inhabited by Mussulman subjects of the Empire: the only Chinese who are there form part of the garrison. According to all that has been said to me of Khoten and the adjacent countries, the only difficulty I have had is to define who are the Christian traders who frequent those markets. I think that they are Russians or Nestorian Christians.”