Note 134 — TRANSLATION[107] “PERPETUAL PEACE”[108]

In order to call this great empire by the name which it gives itself—namely, China, not Sina or a word of similar sound—we have only to look at Georgii: Alphab. Tibet., pp. 651-654, particularly note b., below. According to the observation of Professor Fischer of St. Petersburg, there is really no particular name which it always goes by: the most usual is the word Kin, i.e. gold, which the inhabitants of Tibet call Ser. Hence the emperor is called the king of gold, i.e. the king of the most splendid country in the world. This word Kin may probably be Chin in the empire itself, but be pronounced Kin by the Italian missionaries on account of the gutturals. Thus we see that the country of the Seres, so often mentioned by the Romans, was China: the silk, however, was despatched to Europe across Greater Tibet, probably through Smaller Tibet and Bucharia, through Persia and then on. This leads to many reflections as to the antiquity of this wonderful state, as compared with Hindustan, at the time of its union with Tibet and thence with Japan. On the other hand, the name Sina or Tschina which is said to be given to this land by neighbouring peoples leads to nothing.

Perhaps we can explain the ancient intercourse of Europe with Tibet—a fact at no time widely known—by looking at what Hesychius has preserved on the matter. I refer to the shout, Κουξ Ομπαξ (Konx Ompax), the cry of the Hierophants in the Eleusinian mysteries (cf. Travels of Anacharsis the Younger, Part V., p. 447, seq.). For, according to Georgii Alph. Tibet., the word Concioa which bears a striking resemblance to Konx means God. Pak-cio (ib. p. 520) which might easily be pronounced by the Greeks like pax means promulgator legis, the divine principle permeating nature (called also, on p. 177, Cencresi). Om, however, which La Croze translates by benedictus, i.e. blessed, can when applied to the Deity mean nothing but beatified (p. 507). Now P. Franc. Horatius, when he asked the Lhamas of Tibet, as he often did, what they understood by God (Concioa) always got the answer:—“it is the assembly of all the saints,” i.e. the assembly of those blessed ones who have been born again according to the faith of the Lama and, after many wanderings in changing forms, have at last returned to God, to Burchane: that is to say, they are beings to be worshipped, souls which have undergone transmigration (p. 223). So the mysterious expression Konx Ompax ought probably to mean the holy (Konx), blessed, (Om) and wise (Pax) supreme Being pervading the universe, the personification of nature. Its use in the Greek mysteries probably signified monotheism for the Epoptes, in distinction from the polytheism of the people, although elsewhere P. Horatius scented atheism here. How that mysterious word came by way of Tibet to the Greeks may be explained as above; and, on the other hand, in this way is made probable an early intercourse of Europe with China across Tibet, earlier perhaps than the communication with Hindustan. (There is some difference of opinion as to the meaning of the words κόγξ ὄμπαξ—according to Liddell and Scott, a corruption of κόγξ, ὁμοίως πάξ. Kant’s inferences here seem to be more than far-fetched. Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus (p. 775), gives a quite different interpretation which has, he says, been approved by scholars. And Whately (Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte, 3rd. ed., Postscript) uses Konx Ompax as a pseudonym. [Tr.])