Travelers from history and their famous sea voyages

tribes of Eastern Asia
[’The burying of living men with the dead was a general custom with the
tribes of Eastern Asia. Favourite servants and wives were usually buried
in this way. In China, the chief wives and those concubines who had
already borne children, were exempted from this lot. The Tunguz and other
tribes were accustomed to kill the selected victims by strangulation. In
China they used to be buried alive; but the custom of burying living men
ceased in A.D. 1464. [_Hwang ming ts”ung sin lu_.] In the time of the
present Manchu Dynasty, the burying of living men was prohibited by the
Emperor Kang-hi, at the close of the 17th century, i.e. the forced
burying; but voluntary sepulture remained in force [_Yu chi wen_].
Notwithstanding this prohibition, cases of forced burying occurred again
in remote parts of Manchuria; when a concubine refused to follow her
deceased master, she was forcibly strangled with a bow-string [_Ninguta
chi_]. I must observe, however, that there is no mention made in
historical documents of the existence of this custom with the Mongols; it
is only an hypothesis based on the analogy between the religious ideas and
customs of the Mongols and those of other tribes.’ (_Palladius_, p. 13.)