Kalki, the final incarnation of Vishnu, is to appear. It is identified by some with Sambhal, a very ancient Hindú town in Rohilkhand, which occurs in Ptolemy's Tables. We learn from Ibn Batuta that the last of the Mongol emperors of China sent an embassy to Sultan Mahommed Tughlak of Dehli, to obtain permission to rebuild a temple at Samhal, near the foot of Himálya, whither his (Buddhist) subjects used to go on pilgrimage. So it is probable that Sambhal may have been associated with these Tibetan legends, though lying in a wrong direction from Tibet.
When Mr. Bogle was at Tashi-lunpo the Teshu-Lama desired him particularly to inquire from the Bengal pundits about 'the situation of a town called Shambul' (Markham, p. 168).
In reference to the apparent identification that had been made between this mystic land of Shambaling and our own Isle of the West, I am tempted to introduce here (somewhat à propos de bottes, I confess) an anecdote extracted, once more, from the valuable letters of Mr. Ney Elias, to whom I have been so much indebted in the compilation of the Introductory Remarks to these volumes. After speaking of a wide-spread belief among the Mongols, and Chinese of Mongolia, in the existence of a race of people in the Alatau range who have the bills of ducks, my correspondent goes on:—
'What would a modern Japanese traveller, for instance, say, if he were to hear from the natives of Northern Mongolia that in unknown lands far to the westward, beyond the Aros (Russians) there existed a race called Inglis, who had but one leg of flesh whilst the other was of wood? He would doubtless regard the story as of a piece with that of the duck-headed mountaineers. . . . There has lived at X——— for many years past one solitary Englishman in the person of Mr. Z———. Z———, who has had the misfortune to lose one of his legs, and who is well known to the Mongols frequenting that border as an Inglis, or a western man who is not a Russian. . . . On my late
