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The booic ofSer Marco Polo, the Venetian
Marco Polo, Henry Yule
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bvKO-SHAU-KING. Chief AslroiioinerloKUBLAI-KAAN
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THE BOOK
OF
SER MARCO POLO,
THE VENETIAN,
Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East.
NEWLY TRANSLATED AND EDITED, WITH NOTES, MAPS, AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.
By colonel HENRY YULE, C.B.,
LATE OF THE ROYAL ENGINEERS (BENGAL),
Hen. Fellow of the Geographical Society of Italy ^
Corresponding Member of the Geographical Society of Paris,
Honorary Member of the Geographical Society of Berlin, and
of the N.-China Branch of the R. Asiatic Society, ^c.
IN TWO VOLUMES.— Vol. II.
SECOND EDITION, REVISED,
WITH THE ADDITION OF NEW MATTER AND MANY NEW ILLUSTRATIONS.
LONDO-N: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1875.
7 he ri^ht of Translation is reserved.
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LONDON :
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
STAMFORD STRBRT AND CHARING CROSS.
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CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
Page
Table of Contents Hi
Explanatory List of Illustrations xvi
The Book of Marco Polo.
BOOK SECOND.
{Continued)
PART II. Jcumey to the West and South- West of Cathay,
Chap.
XXXV. — Here begins the Description of the Interior of
Cathay; and first of the River Pulisanghin 3 Note. — The Bridge Pul-i-sangin^ or Lu-kyu-kao.
XXXVI.— Account of the City of Juju 6
Notes.— I. 7%e Si/Jb caHed Sendals, 2. Chochau. 3. Bifurcation of Two Great Roads at this point.
XXXV 1 1.— The Kingdom of Taianfu 8
Notes. — \, Acbalue, 2. Vai-yuanfu, '^, Grape-wine of that place, 4. Fingyangfu,
XXXVIII.— Concerning the Castle of Caichu. The Golden
King and Prester John 12
Notes. — i. The Story and Portrait of the 'Rox A'^Ov. 2. Efieminacy reviving in every Chinese Dynasty.
XXXIX.— How Prester John treated the Golden King
HIS Prisoner 15
XL.— Concerning the Great River Caramoran and
THE City of Cachanfu 16
Notes. — l. The Karamuren. 2. Former growth of silk in Shansi and Shensi, 3. The akch^ or asper.
XLL— Concerning the City of Kenjanfu 18
Notes.— I. Geography of the Route since Chapter XXXVIIL
2. Kenjanfu or Singanfu; the Christian monument there,
3. Prince Mangala,
XLI I.— Concerning the Province of Cuncun, which is
right wearisome to travel through 24
NOTF..— The Mottntain Road to Southern Shensi.
a 2
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V CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
Chap. Pack
XLI 1 1.— Concerning the Province of Acbalec Manzi .. 26
Notes. — i. Geography ^ and doubts about Acbalec. 2. Further Journey into Szechwan.
XLIV.— Concerning the Province of Sindafu 29
Notes.— I. Chingtufu, 2. The Great River or Yiiang, 3. Th^ Ttford ComereqvLe, 4. The Bridge- To/Is, 5. Correction of Text.
XLV.— Concerning the Province of Tebet 33
Notes. — i. The Part of Tibet and events referred to, 2. Noise of burning bamboos, 3. Road retains its desolate character, 4. Persistence of eccentric manners illustrcUed, 5. Name of the Musk animal,
XLVL— Further Discourse concerning Tebet 40
Notes. — i. Explanatory, 2, " Or de PalioUe." 3. Cinnamon,
4. 5. Great Dogs^ and Bejramini oxen,
XLVI I.— Concerning the Province of Caindu 44
Notes. — i. Explanation from Ramusio, 2, Pearls of Inland Waters, 3. Lax manners, 4. Exchange of Salt for Gold.
5. Salt currency. 6. Spiced Wine, 7. Plant like the Clove, spoken of by Polo. Tribes of this Tract.
XLVI 1 1.— Concerning the Province of Carajan 52
Notes, — i. Geography of the Route between Sindafu or Chingtufu, and Carajan or Yunnan. 2, Christians atid Mahomedans in Yunnan. 3. Wheat. 4. Coufries. 5. Brine-spring,
6. ParaUel,
XLIX.-—C0NCERNING A further part of the Province of
Carajan 61
Notes. — I. City of Talifu, 2, Crocodiles, 3. Yunnan horses atid riders. Arms of the Aboriginal Tribes, 4. Strange super- stition ^ and parallels,
L.— Concerning the Province of Zardandan .... 69
Notes.— I. The Gold- Teeth, 2. Male Indolence. 3. The Couvade, 4. Abundance of Gold, Relation of Gold to Silver. 5. Wor- ship of the Ancestor, 6. Unhealthiness of the climate.
7. Tallies. 8-1 1. Medicine-men or Devil-dancers ; extra- ordinary identity of practice in various regions,
LI.— Wherein is related how the King of Mien and Bangala vowed vengeance against the Great
Kaan 80
Notes. — i. Chronology, 2, Mien or Burma. Why the King may have been called King of Bengal also, 3. Numbers alleged to have been carried on elephants,
LI I.— Of the Battle that was fought by the Great Kaan's Host and his Seneschal against the
King of Mien 84
Notes. — i. Nasruddin. 2. Chinese account of the Action, General Correspondence of the Chinese and Burmese Chronologies,
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CONTENTS OF VOL. II. v
Chac. Page
LI 1 1.— Of the Great Descent that leads towards the
Kingdom of Mien 88
Notes. — i. Market-days, 2. Geographical difficulties.
LIV.— Concerning the City of Mien, and the Two Towers that are therein, one of Gold, and the OTHER OF Silver .. 91
Notes. — I. A mien. 2. Chinese Account of the Invasion of Burma. Comparison with Burmese Annals. The City intended. The Pagodas. 3. Wild Oxen.
LV.— Concerning the Province of Bangala 97
Notes. — i. Polo^s view of Bengal; and details of his account illus- trated. 2. Great Cattle.
L VI. —Discourses of the Province of Caugigu .. .. 99
Note. — A Part of Laos. Papesifu. Chinese Geographical Etymologies.
LVI I.— Concerning the Province of Anin 101
Notes. — i. The Name. Probable identifcalion of territory. 2. Textual
LVI 1 1.— Concerning the Province of Coloman 104
Notes.— I. The Name. The Kolo-man. 2. Natural defences of Kweichau.
LI X.— Concerning the Province of Cuiju 108
Notes. — i. Kweichau, Phungan-lu, 2. Grass-cloth, 3. Tigers. 4. Great Dogs, 5. Silh. 6. Geographical Review of the Route since Chapter L V.
BOOK SECOND.
{Continued)
PART IIL
Journey Southward through Eastern Provinces of Cathay and
Manzi.
CHAP.
LX.— Concerning the Cities of Cacanfu and Changlu 115
Notes. — l. Pauthier's Identifcations. 2. Changlu, The Burning of the Dead ascribed to the Chinese. (See Appendix L, 12.)
LXL— Concerning the City of Chinangli, and that of
Tadinfu, and the Rebellion of Litan .. ,. 117
Notes. — i. T^sinanfu. 2. Silk of Shantung. 3. Title Sangon. 4. Agul and Mangkutai. 5. History of Litan^ s Revolt.
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yi CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
Chap. Pace
LXII.— Concerning the Noble City op Sinjumatu .. .. 121 Note.— r/i^ City intended. The Great Canal,
LXIII.— CONCERNING THE CiTIES OF LiNJU.AND PlJU .. .. 122 Notes.— I. Linju, 2. Piju,
LXIV. — Concerning the City of Siju, and the Great
River Caramoran 124
NoTBS. — I. Siju. 2. The Hwang' Ho and its changes. 3. Entrance to Miami ; that name/or Southern China.
LXV.— How THE Great Kaan conquered the Province
OF Manzi .. .. 127
Notes. — i. Meaning and a/fp/icationo/theTit/cFaghfuT. 2. Chinese self-devotion. 3. Bayan the Great Captain, 4. His lines of operation. 5. The Juggling Prophecy, 6. The Fall of the Sung Dynasty. 7. Exposure of Infants^ and Foundling Hospitals.
LXVI.— Concerning the City of Coiganju 135
Note. — Hwai-ngan-fu.
LXVII.— Of the Cities of Paukin and Cayu 136
Note. — Pao-yng and Kao-yu.
LXVI 1 1.— Of the Cities of Tiju, Tinju, and Yanju .. .. 137
Notes. — i. Cities between the Canal and the Sea. 2. Yangchau, 3. Marco Polo's Employment at this City.
LXIX.— Concerning the City of Nanghin 139
Note. — Nganking,
LXX.— Concerning the Very Noble City of Saianfu, and
how its Capture was effected 140
Notes. — i and 2. Various Readings, 3. Digression on the Military Engines of the Middle Ages. 4. Mangonels of Cotur de Lion. 5. Difficulties connected with Folds Account of this Siege.
LXXI.—Concerning the City of Sinju and the Great
River Kian 154
Notes. — 1. Ichin-hiett, 2. The Great Kiang. 3. Vast amount of tonnage on Chinese waters. 4. Size of River Vessels, 5, Bamboo Taiv-lines. 6. Picturesque Island Monasteries.
LXXIL— Concerning the City of Caiju '.. 159
Notes. — i. Kwa-chau. 2. The Grand Canal and Rice- Transport. 3. The Golden Island.
LXXIIL— Of the City of Chinghianfu 161
Note. — Chinkiangfu, Mar Sarghis^ the Christian Governor,
LXXIV.— Of the City of Chinginju and the Slaughter of
CERTAIN Alans there .. 162
Notes. — l. Changchau. 2. Employment of Alans in the Mongol Service. 3. The Changchau Massacre. Mongol Cruelties.
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CONTENTS OF VOL. II. vii
Chak Pace
LXXV. — Of THE Noble City of Suju 1.65
Notes.— I. Suchau, 2. Bridges of that part of China. 3. Rhubarb; its mention here seems erroneous. 4. Tlte Cities of Heaven and Earth, Ancient incised Plan of Suchau, 5. Huchau^ IVukiangt and Kyahing,
LXXVL— Description of the Great City of Kinsay, which
IS THE Capital of the whole Country op Manzi 169
Notes. — l. Kingszi^ now Hangchau, 2. The circuit ascribed to thi City; thi Bridges. 3. Hereditary Trades, 4. The Si-hu or Westent Lake, 5. Dressiness of the People. 6. Charitable Establishments, 7. Paved roads. 8. Hot and Cold Baths. 9. Kanpu^ and the Hangchau Estuary. la The Nine Pro- vinces of Manzi. 11. The Kaan^s Garrisons in Manzi. 12. Mourning costume, 13. 14. Tickets recording inmates of houses,
LXXVII.— [Further Particulars concerning the Great
City of Kinsay] ..• 183
(From Ramusio only.)
Notes. — i. Remarks on these supplementary details. 2. Tides in the Hangchau Estuary. 3. Want of a good Survey of Hangchau. The Squares, (See Appendix L, 13.) 4. Marco ignores pork, 5. GrecU Pears : Peaches. 6. Textual. 7. Chinese use of Pepper, 8. Chinese claims to a character for Good Faith, 9. Pleasure-parties on the Lake. la Chinese Carriages. II. The Sung Emperor. 12. The Sung Palace, Extracts regarding this Great City from other medieval writers^ European and Asiatic, Martinis Description,
LXXVIIL— Treating of the Yearly Revenue that the
Great Kaan hath from Kinsay 199
Notes.— I. TextuaL 2, Calculations as to the values spoken of
LXXIX.— Of the City of Tanpiju and Others .•. .. .. 203
Notes. — i. Route from Hangchau southward. 2. Bamboos, 3. Identification of places, Changshan the key to the route,
LXXX.— Concerning the Kingdom of Fuju 207
Notes. — i. ** Fruit like Saffron.'^ 2. 3. Cannibalism ascribed to Afountain Tribes on this route. 4. Kienningfu. 5. Galin- gale. 6. Fleecy Fowls. 7. Details of the Journey in Fokien and various readings, 8. Unken, Introduction of Sugar- refining into China,
LXXXI.— Concerning the Greatness of the City of Fuju 213
Notes. — i. 77ie name Chonka, applied to Fokien here, ^ayton or Zayton. 2. Objectiotis that have been made to identity ^Fuju and Fuchau, 3. The Min River.
LXXXI I.— Of the City and Great Haven of Zayton .. .. 217
Notes.— I. The Camphor Laurel, 2. The Port of Zayton or I^swafic/tau ; Recent objections to this identity. Probable origin
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viii CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
of the word Satin. 3. Chinese consumption of Pepper. 4. Artists in Tattooing, 5. Position of the Porcelain manufac- ture spoken of Notions regarding the Great River of China.
6. Fokien dialects and variety of spoken language in China.
7. FromRamusio.
BOOK THIRD.
Japan^ the Archipelago^ Southern India, and the Coasts and Islands of the Indian Sea.
Chap. Page
I. — Of the Merchant Ships of Manzi that sail upon
THE Indian Seas 231
Notes.— I. Pine Timber. 2. Rudder and Masts. 3. Watertight Compartments. 4. Chinese substitute for Pitch. 5. Oars used by Junks. 6. Descriptions of Chinese Junks from other Medieval Writers.
IL— Description of the Island of Chipangu, and the
Great Kaan's Despatch of a Host against it .. 235
Notes. — i. Chipangu or Japan. 2. Abundance of Gold. 3. The Golden Palace. 4. Japanese Pearls. Red Pearls.
III.— What further came of the Great Kaan's Expedi- tion AGAINST Chipangu 240
Notes. — i. KublaCs attempts against Japan. Japanese Narra^ve of the Expedition here spoken of. 2. Species of Torture. 3. Devices to procure Invulnerability,
IV.— Concerning THE Fashion OF THE. Idols 245
Notes. — l. Many-limbed Idols. 2. The Philippines and Moluccas. 3. The name Chin or China, 4. The Gulf of Cheinan.
v.— Of the Great Country called Chamba 248 '
Notes. — i. Champa^ and KublaCs dealings with it. 2. Chronology. 3. Eagle-wood and Ebony. Polo^s use of Persian words.
VI.— Concerning the Great Island of Java 254
Note. — Java ; its supposed vast extent. Kublc^s expedition against it and failure.
VII.— Wherein the Isles of Sondur and Condur are
SPOKEN OF; AND THE KINGDOM OF LOCAC 256
Notes. — i. Textual. 2. Pulo Condore. 3. The Kingdom of Locac^ Southern Siam.
VIII.— Of the Island called Pentam, and the City Malaiur 261
Notes. — i. Bintang. 2. The Straits of Singapore. 3. Remarks on the Malay Chronology. Malaiur probably Palembang.
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CONTENTS OF VOL. II. ix
Chap. Pack
IX. — Concerning the Island of Java the Less. The
Kingdoms of Ferlec and Basma 264
Notes. — i. The Island of Sumatra : application of the term Java. 2. Products of Sumatra, The six kingdoms, 3. Ferlec or Parldk, The Sottas, 4. Basma^ Pacem^ or Pasei, 5. The Elephant and the Rhinoceros, The Legend of Monoceros and the Virgin, 6. Black FcUcon,
X. — The Kingdoms of Samara and Dagroian .... .. 274
Notes. — i. Samara, Sumatra Proper, 2. The Tramontaifte and the Mestrc, 3. The Malay Toddy-Palm, 4. Dagroian, 5. Alleged custom of eating dead relatives,
XI. — Of the Kingdoms of Lambri and Fansur 281
Notes, — i. Lambri, 2, Hairy and Tailed Men, 3. Fansur and Camphor Fansuri, Sumatran Camphor, 4. The Sago-Palm, 5. Remarks on Folds Sumatran Kingdoms,
XII. — Concerning the Island of Necuveran 289
Note. — Ccusenispola, and the Nicobar Islands,
XI II. — Concerning the Island of Angamanain 292
Note.— 7>l/ Andaman Islands,
XIV. — Concerning the Island of Seilan 295
Notes. — i. Exaggeration of Dimensions, The Name, 2, Sovereigns then ruling Ceylon, 3. Braul Wood and Cinnamon, 4. The Great Ruby.
XV. — The same continued. The History of Sagamoni
BORCAN and the BEGINNING OF IDOLATRY .. .. 298
Notes. — i. Adam^s Peak, and the Foot thereon, 2, The Story oj Sakya-Muni Buddha, The History of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat; a Christianized version thereof, 3. High Estimate of Buddhc^s Character, 4. Curious Parallel Passages, 5. Pilgrimages to the Peak, 6. The Pdtra of Buddha, and the Tooth 'Relic. 7. Miraculous endaumtents of the Pdtra ; it is the Holy Grail of Buddhism,
XVI. — Concerning the Great Province of Maabar, which IS CALLED India the Greater, and is on the Mainland .> 313
Notes. — i. Mc^har, its definition, and notes on its Medieval History, 2, The Pearl Fifhery.
XVII. — Continues to speak of the Province of Maabar.. 322
Notes.— I. GvA/w^. 2, Hindu royal necklace, ^. Hindu use of the Rosary, 4. The Saggio, 5. Companions in Death ; the loord Amok. 6. Accumulated Wealth of Southern India at this time, 7. Horse Importation from the Persian Gulf 8. Reli- giotis Suicides. 9. Suttees, la Worship of the Ox, ' The Gouis. II. Verbal. 12. The Thomacides, i-^. Ill-success of horse-breeding in S. India. 14. Curious Mode of Arrest for
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c CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
Chap. Pagb
Debt, 15. Tlu Rainy Seasons, 16. Omens of the Hindus, 17. Strange treatment of Horses* 18. T?ie Devaddsis. 19. Textual,
XVIII.— Discoursing of the Place where lieth the body OF St. Thomas the Apostle ; and of the Miracles thereof 338
Notes. — i. Mailapiir, 2, Tlie word Avarian. 3. Miraculous Earth, 4. The Traditions of St. Thomas in India, The ancient Church at his Tomb ; the ancient Cross preserved on St. Thomas's Mount, 5. IVhite Devils. 6. The VaJf^s Tail,
XIX.— Concerning the Kingdom of Mutfili 346
Notes.— I. MotapalU, The Widow Queen of Telingana, 2. The Diamond Mines, and the Legend of t/ie Diamond Gathering*
3. Buckram.
XX.— Concerning the Province of Lar whence the
Brahmans come 350
Notes. — i. Abraiaman, The Country of Lar. Hindu character, 2. The Kingdom of Soli or Chola, 3. Lucky and Unlucky Days and Hours. The Canonical Hours of the church*
4. Omens, 5. Jogis, The Ox-emblem. 6. Verbal, 7. Recur- rence of human eccentricities,
XXL— Concerning the City of Cail 357
Notes. — i. Kdyal ; its true position, Kolkhoi identified. 2. The King Ashar or As-char, 3. Betel-chewing, 4. Duels,
XXIL— Of the Kingdom of Coilum 363
Notes. — i. Coilum, Coilon, Kaulam, Columbum, Quilon (and see Appendix L, 14). Ancient Christian churches, 2, Brazil Wood: notes on the name, 3. Columbine Ginger and other kinds, 4. Indigo, 5. Black Lions. 6. Marriage customs.
XXllL— Of the Country called Comari 371
Notes.— I. Cape Comorin (and see Appendix L, 15). 2. The word Gat-paul.
XXIV.— Concerning the Kingdom of Eli 374
Notes.— I. Mount D'Ely, and the City of Hili-Marawi, 2, Textual, 3. Produce, 4. Piratical custom. Wooden Anchors,
XXV.— Concerning the Kingdom of Melibar 378
Notes. — i. Dislocation of Polo's Indian Geography, The name of Malabar, 2. Verbal, 3. Pirates, 4. Cassia : Turbit : Cubebs,
5. Cessation of direct Chinese trade with Malabar,
XXVL— Concerning the Kingdom of Gozurat .. .. .. 382
Notes.— I. Topographical Confusion, 2, Tall Cotton Trees, 3. Embroidered Leather-7vork,
XXV I L— Concerning the Kingdom of Tana 385
Notes. — l. Tana, and the Kottkan, 2. Incense of Western India.
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CONTENTS OF VOL. II. xi
Chap, Page
XXVIII— Concerning the Kingdom of Cambaet 388
Note.— CtfwAiy.
XXIX.— Concerning the Kingdom of Semenat 389
Note. — SomnatAy and the so-called Gates of Somnath,
XXX. — Concerning the Kingdom of Kesmacoran .. .. 392
Notes. — l. Kij-Mekrdn, Limit of India. 2. Recapitulation of Folds Indian Kingdoms.
XXXI.— DiSCOURSETH OF THE TwO ISLANDS CALLED MaLE
AND Female, and why they are so called .. 395 Note. — The Legend and its diffusion.
XXXII.— Concerning the Island of Scotra 398
Notes. — i. Whales of the Indian Seas. 2, Socotra and its former Christianity, 3. Piracy at Socotra, 4. Sorcerers,
XXXI II.— Concerning the Island of Madeigascar .. .. 403
Notes. — i. Madagascar; some confusion here with Magadoxo. 2. Sandalwood, 3. iVhale-killing. The Capidoglio or Sperm- fVhale, 4. The Currents towards the South, 5. The Rukh (and see Appendix L, 16). 6. More on the dimensions ass^ned thereto, 7. Hippopotamus teeth,
XXXIV.— Concerning the Island of Zanghibar. A word
ON India in general 415
Notes.— i. Zangibar; Negroes, 2. Ethiopian Sheep, 3. Giraffes, 4. Ivory trade. 5. Error about Elephant-taming. 6. Num- ber of Islands assigned to the Indian Sea. 7. The Three Indies^ and various distributions thereof. Folds Indian Geo- graphy,
XXXV.— Treating of the Great Province of Abash, which
is Middle India, and is on the Mainland .. 421
Notes. — l. Habash or Abyssinia. Application of the name India to it. 2. Fire-Baptism ascribed to the Abyssinian Christians, 3. Folds idea of the position of Aden. 4. Taming of the African Elephant for War. 5. Marcds Story of the Abys- sinian Iftvasion of the Mahomedan Low- Country y and Review of Abyssinian Chronology in connexion therewith. 6. Textual,
XXXVI.— Concerning the Province of Aden 434
Notes. — i. The Trade to Alexandria from India vii Aden. 2, "Roncins a deux selles." 3. The Sultan of Aden, The City and its Great Tanks, 4. The Loss of Acre,
XXXVII.— Concerning the City of Esher 439
Notes.— I. Shihr, 2, Frankincense, 3. Four-horned Sheep. 4. Cattle fed on Fish. 5. Far allel passage.
XXXVI II. —Concerning the City of Dufar 441
Notes. — i. Dhofar. 2. Notes on Frankincense,
Digitized by
xii CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
Chap. Pagb
XXXIX.-— Concerning the Gulf of Calatu, and the City
so CALLED 448
Notes.— I. Kalhdt, 2. " En fra terre." 3. Maskat.
XL.— Returns to the City of Hormos whereof we
SPOKE formerly 450
Notes. — i. Polo^s distances and bearings in these latter chapters. 2. Persian Bdd-gfrs or wind-catching chimneys. 3. Island ofKish.
BOOK FOURTH.
Wars among the Tartar Princes^ and some Account of the Northern Countries,
I.— Concerning Great Turkey 455
Notes. — i. Kaidu Khan, 2. His frontier tatoards the Great Kaan.
II.— Of certain Battles that were fought by King Caidu against TriE Armies of his Uncle the Great Kaan .. .. • 457
Notes. — i. Textual, 2, ** Araines." 3. Chronology in connexion with the events described,
III.— tWHAT THE Great Kaan said to the Mischief
done by Caidu his Nephew 461
IV.— Of the Exploits of King Caidu's valiant daughter , , Note. — Her name explained. Remarks on the story.
v.— How Abaga sent his son Argon in command against
King Caidu 464
{Extract and Substance,)
Notes. — i. Government of the Khorasan frontier, 2, The His' torical Events.
VI.— How Argon after the Battle heard that his Father was dead and went to assume the Sovereignty as was his right .' 465
Notes. — i. Death of Abaka, 2, Textual, 3. Ahmad Tigudar, VII.— tHow Acomat Soldan set out with his host
AGAINST HIS NEPHEW WHO WAS COMING TO CLAIM THE THRONE THAT BELONGED TO HIM 467
+ Of chapters so marked nothing is given but the substance in brief.
Digitized by
CONTENTS OF VOL. II. xiii
CHAr. Pagb
VIII.— t How Argon took Counsel with his Followers
ABOUT ATTACKING HIS UNCLE ACOMAT SOLDAN .. 467
IX.— t How THE Barons of Argon answered his Address „
X,— tTHE Message sent by Argon to Acomat .. .. „
XI.— How Acomat replied to Argon's Message .. .. 468
XII. — Of THE Battle between Argon and Acomat, and
THE Captivity of Argon „
Notes. — i. VerbaL 2. Historkal,
XIII.— How Argon was delivered from Prison .. .. 469
XIV.— How Argon got the Sovereignty at Last .. .. 470
XV.— tHow Acomat was taken Prisoner 471
XVI. — How Acomat was slain by order of his Nephew „
XVII.— How Argon was recognized as Sovereign .. .. 472
Notes. — i. The kisiorical circumstances and persons named in these chapters, 2. ArghuiCs accession and death,
xviii.— how klacatu seized the sovereignty after
Argon's Death .. * 473
Note.— 751/ reign and character of Kdikhdtu,
XIX.— How Baidu seized the Sovereignty after the
Death of Kiacatu 474
Notes. — i. Baidu's alleged Christianity, 2. Ghamn Khan,
XX.— Concerning King Conchi who rules the Far
North 478
Notes. — i. Kaunchi Khan, 2. Siberia, 3. Dog-sledges, 4. The animal here styled Erculin. The Fair. 5. Yugria.
XXL— Concerning the Land of Darkness 483
Notes.— I. The Land of Darkness, 2, The Legend of the Mares and their Foals, 3. Dumb Trade with the People of the Darkness,
XXII.— Description of Rosia and its People. Province
OF Lac 487
Notes. — l. Old Accounts of Russia, Russian Silver and Rubles, 2, LaCy or Wallachia, 3. Oroech^ Norway (/) or the IVaraeg Country (/).
XXIII.— He begins to speak of the Straits of Constan- tinople, BtJT DECIDES TO LEAVE THAT MATTER .. 49I
i Of chapters so marked nothing is given but the substance in brief.
Digitized by
xiv CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
Chap. Pack
XXIV.— Concerning the Tartars of the Ponent and
THEIR Lords 491
Notes.— I. The Comanians -, the Alans ; Majar ; Zic ; the Gcths of the Crimea ; Gazaria. 2. The Khans ofKipchak or the Golden Horde ; errors in PolSs list. Extent of their Empire,
XXV.— Of THE War that arose between Alau and Barca,
AND THE Battles that they fought .. .. .. 495
{Extracts and Substance,)
Notes.— I. Verbal, 2, ' The Sea of Sarai, 3. The War here spoken of, Wass&fs rigmarole.
XXVI.— tHOW BARCA AND HIS ARMY ADVANCED TO MEET
Alau 496
XXVII.— tHow Alau addressed his followers 497
XXVI 1 1.— t Of the Great Battle between Alau and Barca „
xxix.— how totamangu was lord of the tartars of the
Ponent ; and after him Toctai „
Noi'ES. — I. Confusions in the Text, Historical circumstanees con- nected with the Persons spoken of, Toctai andNoghai Khan. Symbolic Messages,
XXX.— tOF THE Second Message that Toctai sent to
NoGAi 500
XXXI.— tHow Toctai marched against Nogai „
XXXII.— tHow Toctai and Nogai address their People,
AND THE NEXT DAY JOIN BATTLE 50I
XXXIIL— tTHE Valiant Feats and Victory of King Nogai „ XXXIV. AND Last. Conclusion „
APPENDICES.
A. Genealogy of the House of Chinghiz to the End of the Thirteenth
Century 505
B. The Polo FamiHes :—
(I.) Genealogy of the Family of Marco Polo the Traveller.. 506 (II.) ThePolosofSan Geremia 507
C. Calendar of Documents relating to Marco Polo and his Family .. 509
t Of chapters so marked nothing is given but the sub«itancc in brief.
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CONTENTS OF VOL. 11. xv
Page
D. Comparative Specimens of the Different Recensions of Polo's
Text 513
E. Preface to Pipino's Latin Version , .. .. 516
F. Abstract statement of MSS. of Marco Polo's Book, so far as known ;
and List of Miniatures in two of the finer MSS 517
G. Diagram showing Filiation of Chief MSS. and Editions of Marco
Polo 521
H. Bibliography : —
(L) Principal Editions of Marco Polo's Book 522
(IL) Titles of Sundry Books and Papers treating of Marco
Polo and his Book • .. .. 523
I. Titles of Books quoted by Abbreviated References in this Work .. 527
K. Values of Certain Moneys, Weights, and Measures occurring in
this Book 533
L. Supplementary Notes to the Book of Marco Polo 536
viz.; I. Nationality of the Traveller William DE RuBRUK 536
2. Sarai 537
3. The Wall of Alexander „
4. "Reobarles" 538
5. Pamir and the Okw /ViJr ,,
6. Chingintai^s „
7. The Site of Karakorum . . ^ 539
8. Prester John .... „
9. The Milk Libation of Kublai Kaan 543
la The ^f7^c;^r or Sporting Eagle -. „
11. Astronomical Instruments of the Age of Kublai Kaan . . . . 544
12. Former Practice of Cremation by the Chinese 550
13. The Squares in the City of Kinsay „
14. Derivation of the Name of KOLLAM or QuiLON 551
15. Cape CoMORiN * ,,
16. The Rue 552
Index 553
Digitized by
EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME II.
INSERTED PLATES AND MAPS.
y oface Title, Outline of a Great Armillary Sphere cast in bronze, believed to have been constructed by Ko-SHAU-KiNG Astronomer to Kublai Kaan, and now preserved in the Garden of the Peking Observatory ; taken by permission of Mr. J. Thomson, F.R.G.S., from a photograph by him, (now published in vol. iv. of his Illustrations of China and its PeopU) ; see Appendix L, at the end of this volume. Illuminated Title, by Mr. G. Frauenfelder ; with Medallion, representing Marco Polo in the Prison of Genoa, dictating his story to Master Rustician of Pisa, drawn by Signor Quinto Cenni from a rough design by the Editor. To face page 22. The celebrated Christian Inscription of Singanfu. Photo- lithographed by Mr. W. Grigg, from a Rubbing of the original monument, given to the Editor by the Baron F, von Rickthofen,
This rubbing is more complete than that used in the first edition, for which the Editor was indebted to the kindness of William Lockkart^ Esq,
„ „ 65. The Lake of Tali (Carajan of Polo) from the Northern End.
Woodcut after Lieut. Delaporte, borrowed from Lieut. Garnier*s Narrative in the Tour du Monde.
„ „ 91. The City of Mien, with the Gold and Silver Towers. From a
drawing by the Editor, based upon his sketches of the remains of the City so called by Marco Polo, viz. PagXn, the medieval capital of Burma.
,, ,, 114. itineraries of Marco Polo. No. V. The Indo-Chinese Coun-
tries. With a small sketch extracted from a Chinese Map in the possession of Baron von Richthofen^ showing the position of KiENCHANG, the Coindu of Marco Polo.
„ „ 126. Sketch Map exhibiting the Variations of the Two Great Rivers of China, within the Period of History.
„ „ 166. The City of Suchau. Reduced by the Editor from a Rubbing
of a Plan incised on Marble, and preserved in the Great Con- fucian Temple in the City.
The date of the original set of Maps, of which this was one, is uncertain, owing to the partial illegibility of the Inscription ; but it is subsequent to a.d. looo. They were engraved on the Marble a.d. 1247 Many of the names have been obliterated, and a few of those given in the copy are filled up from modem information, as the Editor learns from Mr, Wylie^ to whom he owes this valuable illustration.
„ „ 177. Map of Hangchaufu and its Lake, from Chinese Sources.
The Map as published in the former edition was based on a Chinese Map in the possession of Mr. W, Ij>ck/tart, with
Digitized by
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. IL xvn
some particulars from Maps in a copy of the Local Topo- graphy, Ifang-Chau-fu-chi, in the B. Museum Library. In •the present edition the Map has been entirely redrawn by the Editor, with 'many corrections, and with the aid of new materials, supplied by the kindness of the Rev. G, Moule of the Church Mission at Hangchau. These materials embrace a Paper read by Mr. Moule before the N. China Branch of the R. As. Soc at Shanghai ; a modem engraved Map of the City on a large scale ; and a large MS. Map of the City and Lake, compiled by John Shing^ Tailor, a Chinese Christian and Catechist
The small Side-plan is the City of Singanfu, from a plan published during the Mongol rule, in the 14th century, a tracing of which was sent by Mr. Wylie. The following references could not be introduced in lettering for want of space : —
16. Refectory.
17. Chapel of the Fang- Yuen Prince.
18. Embroidery manufactory.
19. Hwa-li Temple.
20. Old Superintendency of Investiga-
tions.
21. Superintendent of Works.
22. Ka-yuen Monastery.
23. Prefectural Confucian Temple.
1. Y«en-Tu-Kwan (Tauist Monastery).
2. Chapel of Hien-ning Prince.
3. Lcih-Ching Square {Fang).
4. Tauist Monastery.
5. Kie-lin General Court.
6. Ancestral Chapel of Yang- Wan-Kang.
7. Chapel of the Mid-year Genius.
8. Temple of the Martial Peaceful King.
9. Stone where officers are selected. la Mews. 24. Benevolent Institution.
11. Jasper- Waves Square {Fang). 25. Temple of Tu-Ke-King.
12. Court of Enquiry. 1 26. Balustrade enclosure.
13. Gate of the Fang- Yuen Circuit. ; 27. Medicine- Bazar Street
14. Bright Gate. \ 28. Tsin and Ching States Chapel.
15. Northern Tribunal. 1 29. Square of the Double Cassia Tree.
N.B. — The shaded spaces are marked in the original Min-Keu ** Dwellings of the People.*'
To face page 194. Plan of Southern Part of the City of Kingsz^ (or Hangchau), with the Palace of the Sung Emperors ; from a Chinese Plan forming part of a Reprint of the official Topography of the City during the period J/ien-Shun (1265- 1274) of the Sung Dynasty, «>. the period terminated by the Mongol conquest of the City and Empire. Mr. Moule, who possesses the Chinese plan (with others of the same set), has come to the conclusion that it is a copy at second-hand. Names that are underlined are such as are preserved in the modem Map of Hangchau. I am indebted for the use of the original plan to Air. Moule; for the photographic copy and rendering of the names to Mr. Wyiie. , „ 222 Sketch Map of the Great Ports of Fokien, to illustrate the identity of Marco Polo's Zayton. Besides the Admiralty Charts and other well-known sources the Editor has used in forming this a ** Missionary Map of Amoy and the Neigh- bouring Country,'' on a large scale, sent him by the Rev. Car stairs Douglas y LL.D., of Amoy. This contains some points not to be found in the others. ., „ 228 Itineraries of Marco Polo, No. VI. The Journey through
Kiang-Nan, Chekiang, and Fokien.
VOL. II. b
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xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II.
!i. Map to illustrate Marco Polo's Chapters on the Malay Countries. 2. Map to illustrate his Chapters on Southern India. !i. Sketch showing the Position of KXyal in Tinnevelly. 2. Map showing the Position of the Kingdom of Ely in Malabar. ,, „ 438. Aden, with the attempted Escalade under Alboquerque in
1 5 13, being the Reduced Facsimile of a large contemporary Wood Engraving in the Map Department of the British Museum. (Size of the original 42^ inches by 19I inches.) Photolithographic Reduction by Mr. G. B. Praetorius, through the assistance of /?, H. Major ^ Esq. ,, ,, 472. Facsimile of first three lines of a Mongol Letter in the
Uighur character sent by Arghun Khan to Philip the Fair in a.d. 1289, and preserved in the Archives of France (after complete facsimile published by Abel-Remusat, in Mimoires de VAcadimie des Inscriptions^ vol. vii.).
WOODCUTS PRINTED WITH THE TEXT. Book Second.— Part Second.
Page 4. The Bridge of Pulisanghin, the Lu-kyu-kiao of the Chinese, reduced from a large Chinese Engraving in the Geographical work called Ki-fu-thung-chi in the Paris Library. I owe the indication of this, and of the Portrait of Kublai Kaan in vol. i. to notes in M. Pauthier's edition.
,, 14. The Roi d'Or. Professed Portrait of the Last of the Altun Khans or Kin Emperors of Cathay, from the (fragmentary) Arabic Manuscript of Rashiduddin^ s History in the Libraiy of the Royal Asiatic Society. This Manuscript is supposed to have been transcribed under the eye of Rashiduddin, and the drawings were probably derived from Chinese . originals.
,, 20. Plan of Kichau, after Duhalde.
,, 24 The Cross incised at the head of the Great Christian Inscription of Singanfu (a.d. 781); actual size, from copy of a pencil rubbing made on the original by the Reiu J, Lees, Received from Afr, A, Wylie,
,, 31. Diagram to elucidate the cities of Chingtufu.
,, 36. Mountaineers of the Borders of Szechwan and Tibet, from one of the illustrations to Lieut. Gamier's Narrative (see p. 40). From Tour du Monde,
,, 41. Village of Eastern Tibet on Szechwan Frontier. From Mr. Cooper* s Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce,
,, 43. Example of Roads on the Tibetan Frontier of China (being actually a view of the Gorge of the Lantsang Kiang). From the same,
,, 46. The Valley of the Kinsha Kiang, near the lower end of the Caindu of Marco Polo. From Lieut. Gamier in the Tour du Monde,
,, 49. Salt Pans in Yunnan. From the satne.
,, 54. Garden House on the Lake of Yunnan-fu ; Yachi of Polo. From the same,
„ 56. Road descending from the Table Land of Yunnan into the Valley of the KiNSiL\ Kiang (the Brius of Polo). From the same,
„ 60. ** A Saracen of Carajan," being the portrait of a Mahomedan Mullah in Western Yunnan. From the same.
Digitized by
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II. xix
' 64. "Riding long like Frenchmen," exemplified from the Bayeux Tapestry.
After La Croix, Vie Militaire du Moyen Age, 68. The Sang-miau tribe of Kweichau, with the Cross-bow. From a
coloured drawing in a Chinese work on the Aboriginal Tribes, belonging
to W. Lockharty Esq, 74. Portraits of a Kakhyen man and woman. Drawn by Q. Cenni from a
photograph (anonymous). 9a Temple called Gaudapalen in the city of Mien (i,e. Pagan in Burma),
erected circa A.D. 11 60. Engraving after a sketch by present Editor,
from Fergusson's History of Architecture, 94. The Palace of the King of Mien in modem times (viz., the Palace at
Amarapura). From the same^ being partly from a sketch by present
Editor. 102. HoNHi and other tribes in the Department of Lin-ngan in S. Yunnan,
supposed to be the Anin country of Marco Polo. From Garnier in
the Tour du Monde. 106. The KoLOMAN tribe, on borders of Kweichau and Yunnan. From
coloured drawing in Mr. Lockharfs book as above (under p. 68).
113. Iron Suspension Bridge at Lowatong. From Garnier in Tour du
Monde,
114. Fortified Villages on Western Frontier of Kweichau. From the
Book Second.— Part Third.
145. Medieval Artillery Engines. Figs, i, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are Chinese. The first four are from the Encyclopaedia San-Thsai-Thou-hoei {^^.ti^ Library), the last from Amyot^ vol. viii.
Figs. 6, 7, 8 are Saracen. 6 and 7 are taken from the work of Reinaud and FavS^ Du Feu GrSgeoiSy and by them from the Arabic MS. of Hassan al Raumah {Arab Anc, Fonds, No. 1127). Fig. 8 is from Lord Munster's Arabic Catalogue of Military Works, and by him from a MS. of Rashiduddin's History,
The remainder are European. Fig. 9 is from Pertz, Scriptores^ vol. xviii., and by him from a figure of the Siege of Arbicella, 1227, in a MS. of Genoese Annals (No. 773, Supp, Lat. oi Bib, Imp.), Fig. 10 from Shffufs Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages, vol. i. No. 21, after B, Mus. MS, Reg. 16, G. vi. Fig. ii from Pertz as above, under A.D. II 82. Fig. 12 from Valturius de Re Militari, Verona, 1483. Figs. 13 and 14 from the Poliorcelicon of Justus Lipsius. Fig. 15 is after the Bodleian MS. of the Romance of Alexander (a.d. 1338), but is taken from the Gentleman^s Magazine, 3rd ser. vol. vii. p. 467. Fig. 16 from Lacroix's Art au Moyen Age, after a miniature of 13th cent, in the Paris Library. Figs. 17 and 18 from the Emperor Napoleon's £tudes de PArtillerie, and by him taken from the MS. of Paulus Santinus (Lat. MS. 7329 in Paris Library). Fig. 19 from Professor Moseley*s resto- ration of a Trebuchet, after the data in the Medieval Note-book of Villars de Honcourt, in Gentleman^ s Magazitie as above. Figs. 20 and 21 from the Emperor's Book. Fig. 22 from a German MS. in the Bern Library, the Chronicle of Justinger and Schilling,
'54' Coin from a treasure hidden during the siege of Siangyang in 1268-73, and lately discovered in that city.
'57- Island Monasteries on the Yangtsz^.-kiang ; tnz.:—
I. Uppermost, The ** Little Orphan Rock," alter a cut in Oliphant's Narrative,
Digitized by
XX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. 11.
2. Middle. The "Golden Island" near Chingkiangfu, after Fisher's
China, (This has been accidentally reversed in the drawing.)
3. Lower. The ^* Silver Island^'^ below the last, after Mr. Lindley's
book on the Taipings. Page 161. The West Gate of Chingkiangfu. From an engraving in Fisher's China after a sketch made by Admiral Stoddart, R.N., in 1842.
„ 167. South-west Gate and Water Gate of Suchau ; fecsinaile on half scale from the incised Map of 1247 (see List of Inserted Plates preceding, mider p. 166).
„ 177. The old LuH-HO-TA or Pagoda of Six Harmonies near Hangchau, and anciently marking the extreme S. W. angle of the city. Drawn by Q. Cenni from an anonymous Photograph received from the Rev. G. Moule.
,, 195. Stone Chwang or Umbrella Column, one of two which still mark the site of the ancient Buddhist Monastery called Fan-T^ien-Sze or "Brahma's Temple" at Hangchau. Reduced from a pen-and-ink sketch by Mr, Moule,
,, 210. Scene in the Bohea Mountains, on Polo's route between Kiangsi and Fokien. From Fortun/s Three Years Wanderings.
,, 216. Scene on the MiN River below Fuchau. From the same.
„ 228. The Kaan's Fleet leaving the Port of Zayton. The scenery is taken from an engraving in Fisher's China^ purporting to represent the mouth of the Chinchew River (or River of Tswanchau), after a sketch by Capt. (now Adm.) Stoddart, But the Rev. Dr. Douglas, having pointed out that this cut really supported his view of the identity of Zayton, being a view of the Chang-chau River, reference was made to Admiral Stoddart, and Dr. Douglas proves to be quite right. The View w^as really one of the Changchan River ; but the Editor has not been able to procure material for one of the Tswanchau River, and so he leaves it.
Book Third.
„ 230. The Kaan's Fleet passing through the Indian Archipelago. From a
drawing by the Editor. ,, 236. Ancient Japanese Emperor, after a Native Drawing. From the Tour
du Monde, ,, 239. Ancient Japanese Archer, after a native drawing. From the same, ,, 243. The Japanese engaged in combat with the Chinese, after an ancient
native drawing. From Charton^ Vqyageurs Anciens et Modernes, ,, 253. Java. A view in the interior. From a sketch of the slopes of the Gedch
Volcano, taken by the Editor in i860. ,, 255. Bas Relief of one of the Vessels frequenting the Ports of Java in the
Middle Ages. From one of the sculptures of the BoRO Bodor, after a
photograph. ,, 271. The three Asiatic Rhinoceroses. Adapted from a proof of a woodcut
given to the Editor for the purpose by the late eminent zoologist,
Edward Blyth, It is not known to the present Editor whether the
cut appeared in any other publication. ,, 273. MoNOCEROS and the Maiden. From a medieval drawing engraved in
Cahier et Martin^ Melanges d* Archhlogie, II. PI. 30. ,, 302. Adam's Peak from the Sea. »» 309- Sakya Muni as a Saint of the Roman Martyrology. Facsimile from an
old German version of the story of Barlaam and Josaphat (circa 1477),
printed by Zainer at Augsburg, in the British Museum. ,, 312. TooTii Rcliques of Buddha, i. At Kandy, after Emerson Tcnnent.
2. At Fuchau, after Fortune.
Digitized by
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II. xxi
Page 32a " Chinese Pagoda " (so called) at Negapatam. From a sketch taken
by Sir WalUr ElUot, K.C.S.L, in 1846. „ 337. Pagoda at Tanjore. From Fergusson^s History of Architecture, „ 339. Ancient Cross with Pehlvi Inscription, preserved in the church on
St. Thomas's Mount near Madras. From a photograph, the gift of
A. Bnmell, Esq., of the Madras Civil Service, assisted by a lithographic
drawing in his unpublished pamphlet on Pehlvi Crosses in South India.
N.B. — The lithograph has now appeared in the Indian Antiquary y
November, 1874. „ 341. The Little Mount of St. Thomas, near Madras. After Daniel, „ 345. Small Map of the St. Thomas localities at Madras. „ 366. Ancient Christian Church at Pari5r or Palur, on the Malabar Coast ;
from an engraving in Pearson's Life of Claudius Buchanan^ after a
sketch by the latter. f> 367. Syrian Church at Karanyachirra, showing the quasi- Jesuit Fa9ade
generally adopted in modem times. From the Life of Bishop Daniel
Wilson, „ 367. Interior of Syrian Church at Kottayam. From the same, *« 373* Cape Comorin. From an original sketch by Mr. Foots of the Geological
Survey of India. »» 377- Mount D'Ely. From a nautical sketch oflcut century. „ 382. Medieval Architecture in Guzerat, being a view of Gateway at
JinjawAra, given in Forbes's Rcu Mala, From Fergusson^s History of
Architecture, ., 39a The Gates of Somnath (so called), as preserved in the British Arsenal
at Agra. From a photograph by Messrs. Shepherd and Bourne,
convened into an elevation. „ 408. The Rukh, after a Persian drawing. From Lan^s Arabian Nights, „ 418. The Ethiopian Sheep. From a sketch by Miss Catharine Frere, M 437* View of Aden in 1840. From a sketch by Dr. R. Kirk in the Map-room
of the Royal Geographical Society. „ 445. The Harvest of Frankincense in Arabia. Facsimile of an engraving in
Thevefs Cosmographie Unruerselle (1575). Reproduced from CasselPs
Bible EduccUor^ by the courtesy of the publishers. „ 447. BoswELLiA Frereana, from a drawing by Mr. W. H. Fitch. The use
of this engraving is granted by the India Museum through the kindness
of Dr, George Birdtvood. » 451. A Persian Bad-gIr, or Wind Tower. From a drawing in the Atlas
to Hommaire de HelVs Persia, Engraved by Adeney.
Book Fourth.
.» 477. Tomb of Oljaitu Khan, the brother of Polo's Casan, at Sultaniah.
From Fergusson^s History of Architecture. M 481. The Siberian Dog-sledge. From the Tour du Monde. M 489. Medieval Russian Church. From Fergusson^s History of Architecture, ft 494. Figure of a Tartar under the Feet of Henry Duke of Silesia, Cracow,
and Poland, from the tomb at Breslau of that prince, killed in battle
with the Tartar Host, April 9th, 1241. After a plate in Schlesische
Fiirstenbilder des MilUlalters, Breslau, 1868. „ 502. Asiatic Warriors of Polo*s Age. From the MS. of Rashiduddin's
History, noticed under cut at p. 14. Engraved by Adeney.
Appendices.
„ 551. Diagram, from a Chinese work, of the Fang or Squares in the City of Singanfii. Communicated by Mr. A, IVvlie.
VOL. H. C
Digitized by
Digitized by
BOOK SECOND— coNT/NUEj).
Part II.— JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND SOUTH- WEST OF CATHAY.
VOL. II.
Digitized by
Digitized by
THE
BOOK OF MARCO POLO-
BOOK I \.— CONTINUED.
Part II.— JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND SOUTH-WEST OF CATHAY.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Here begins the Description of the Interior of Cathay ; and FIRST of the River Pulisanghin.
Now you must know that the Emperor sent the aforesaid Messer Marco Polo, who is the author of this whole story, on business of his into the Western Provinces. On that occasion he travelled from Cambaluc a good four months' journey towards the west* And so now I will tell you all that he saw on his travels as he went and returned.
When you leave the City of Cambaluc and have ridden ten miles, you come to a very large river which is called Pulisanghin, and flows into the ocean, so that merchants with their merchandise ascend it from the sea. Over this River there is a very fine stone bridge, so fine indeed that it has very few equds. The fashion of it is this : it is 300 paces in length, and it must have a good eight paces of width, for ten mounted men can ride across it abreast. It has 24 arches and as many water-mills, and 'tis all of very
B 2
Digitized by
4 MARCO POLO. Book II.
fine marble, well built and firmly founded. Along the top of the bridge there is on either side a parapet of marble slabs and columns, made in this way. At the beginning of the bridge there is a marble column, and under it a marble lion, so that the column stands upon the lion's loins, whilst on the top of the column there is a second marble lion, both being of great size and beautifully executed sculpture. At the distance of a pace from this column there is another precisely the same, also with its two lions, and the space between them is closed with slabs of grey marble to prevent people from* falling over into the water. And thus the columns run from space to space along either side of the bridge, so that altogether it is a beautiful object.*
The Bridge of Piilisanghin (reduced from a Chinese original).
— " ft titsuB ust flum 8 utt mout biava pont tit pints : car sadjit^ qe potd n'a en tou t le tnontue tie si hism ne son pareil."
Note 1. — Ful-uSangiriy the name which Marco gives the River ^ means in Persian simply (as Marsden noticed) " The Stone Bridge." In a very different region the same name often occurs in the history of Timur applied to a certain bridge, in the country north of Badakhshan, over the Wakhsh branch of the Oxus. And the Turkish admiral Sidi
Digitized by
Chap. XXXV. BRIDGE OF PULISANGHIN. 5
'Ali, travelling that way from India in the i6th century, applies the name, as it is applied here, to the river ; for his journal tells us that beyond Kuldb he crossed " the Rivn- Pulisan^n^
We may easily suppose, therefore, that near Cambaluc also, the Bridge, first, and then the River, came to be known to the Persian-speak- ing foreigners of the court and city by this name. This supposition is however a Uttle perplexed by the circumstance that Rashiduddin calls the River the Sangin, and that Sangkan-Yio appears from the maps or citations of Martini, Klaproth, Neumann, and Pauthier to have been one of the Chinese names of the river, and indeed, Sankang is still the name of one of the confluents forming the Hwan Ho.
The River is that which appears in the maps as the Hwan Ho, Him-ho, or Yongting Ho, flowing about 7 miles west of Peking towards the south-east and joining the Pe-Ho at Tientsin ; and the Bridge is that which has been known for ages as the Lu-kyu-Kiao or Bridge of Lukyu, adjoining the town which is called in the Russian map of Peking Feuchen^ but in the official Chinese Atlas Kung-Keih-cheng^ (see Map at ch. xi. of Bk. II. in the first Volume). It is described both by Magaillans and Lecomte, with some curious discrepancies, whilst each affords parti- culars corroborative of Polo's account of the character of the bridge. The former calls it the finest bridge in China. Lecomte's account says the bridge was the finest he had yet seen. " It is above 170 geometri- cal paces (850 feet) in length. The arches are small, but the rails or side-walls are made of a hard whitish stone resembling marble. These • stones are more than 5 feet long, 3 feet high, and 7 or 8 inches thick ; supported at each end by pilasters adorned with mouldings and bearing the figures of lions. . . . The bridge is paved with great flat stones, so well joined that it is even as a floor."
Magaillans thinks Polo's memory partially misled him, and that his description applies more correctly to another bridge on the same road, but some distance further west, over the Lieu-U Ho. For the bridge over the Hwan Ho had really but thirteen arches, whereas that on the Lieu-li had, as Polo specifies, twenty-four. The engraving which we give of the Lu-kyu Kiao from a Chinese work confirms this statement, for it shows but thirteen arches. And what Polo says of the navigation of the river is almost conclusive proof that Magaillans is right, and that our traveller's memory confounded the two bridges. For the navigation of the Hwan Ho, even when its channel is full, is said to be impracti- cable on account of rapids, whilst the Lieu-li Ho, or " Glass River," is, as its name implies, smooth, and navigable, and it is largely navigated by boats from the coal-mines of Fang-shan. The road crosses the latter about two leagues from Cho-chau (see next chapter).
The Bridge of Lu-kyu is mentioned more than once in the history of the conquest of North China by Chinghiz. It was the scene of a nota- ble mutiny of the troops of the Kin Dynasty in 12 15, which induced Chinghiz to break a treaty just concluded, and led to his capture of Peking.
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6 MARCO POLO. Book II.
This bridge was begun according to Klaproth in 1189, and was five years a-building. On the 17th August, 1688, as Magaillans tells us, a great flood carried away two arches of the bridge, and the remainder soon fell The bridge was renewed, but with only nine arches instead of thirteen, as appears from the following note of personal observation with which Dr. Lockhart has favoured me :
"At 27 // from Peking, by the western road leaving the gate of the Chinese city called Kwang-'an-m&n, after passing the old waUed town of Feuchen, you reach the bridge of La-Ku-Kiao, As it now stands it is a very long bridge of nine arches (real arches) spanning the valley of the Hwan Ho, and surrounded by beautiful scenery. The bridge is built of green sandstone, and has a good balustrade with short square pilasters crowned by small lions. It is in very good repair, and has a ceaseless traffic, being on the road to the coal-mines which supply the city. There is a pavilion at each end of the bridge with inscriptions, the one recording tiiat Kanghi (1662-17 23) Imiit the bridge, and the other that Kienlung (i 736-1 796) repaired it" These circumstances are strictly consistent with Magaillans' account of the destruction of the medieval bridge. Williamson describes the present bridge as about 700 feet long, and 12 feet wide in the middle part.
{P, de la CroiXy II. 11, &a ; Erskinis Baher^ p. xxxiiL ; Timour^s Institutes^ 70;/. As, IX, 205; Cathay^ 260; Magaillans^ 14-18, 35 ; Lecotnte in Astley, III. 529; /. As. ser. 2, tom. L 97-8; UOhsson^ I. 144.)
CHAPTER XXXVl. Account of the City of Juju.
When you leave the Bridge, and ride towards the west, finding all the way excellent hostelries for travellers, with fine vineyards, fields, and gardens, and springs of water, you come after 30 miles to a fine large city called Juju, where there are many abbeys of idolaters, and the people live by trade and manufactures. They weave cloths of silk and gold, and very fine taffetas.' Here too there are many hostelries for travellers.'
After riding a mile beyond this city you find two roads, one of which goes west and the other south-east.
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Chap. XXXVI. THE CITY OF JUJU. 7
The westerly road is that through Cathay, and the south- easterly one goes towards the province of Manzi.^
Taking the westerly one through Cathay, and travelling by it for ten days, you find a constant succession of cities and boroughs, with numeroxis thriving villages, all abound- ing with trade and manufactures, besides the fine fields and vineyards and dwellings of civilized people ; but nothing occurs worthy of special mention ; and so I will only speak of a kingdom called Taianfu.
Note 1. — The word is sendaus (Pauthier), pi. oisendal^ and in G. T. sandal. It does not seem perfectly known what this silk texture was, but as banners were made of it, and linings for richer stuffs, it appears to have been a light material, and is generally rendered taffetas. In * Richard Cceur de Lion ' we find
" Many a pencel of sykelatoon And of sendel grene and broun,"
and also pavilions of sendel ; and in the Anglo-French ballad of the death of William Earl of Salisbury in St Lewis's battle on the Nile —
" Le Meister.da Temple brace les chivaux Et le Count Long-Esp^ depli les sandaux^^
The oriflamme of France was made of cendal, Chaucer couples taffetas and sendaL His * Doctor of Physic *
" In sanguin and in perse dad was die, Lined with taffata and with sendalle/*
The origin of the word seems also somewhat doubtful. The word ScvScs occurs in Constant, Porphyrog, de Ceremoniis (Bonn, ed. I. 468), and this looks like a transfer of Ae Arabic Sdndds or Sundus^ which is applied by Bakui to the silk febrics of Yezd {Not, et Ext II. 469). Reiske thinks this is the origin of the Frank word, and connects its etymology with Sind. Others think that sendal and the other forms are modifica- tions of the ancient Sindon^ and this is Mr. Marsh's view (see also Fr,'Mi€hely Rtcherches^ 6*^., I. 212 ; Diet, des Ttssus^ II. 171 seqq,).
Note 2. — ^tjb is precisely the name given to this city by Rashid- uddin, who notices the vineyards. Juju is Cho-chau, just at the dis- tance specified from Peking, viz. 40 miles, and nearly 30 from Pulisanghin or Lu-kyu Kiao. The name of the town is printed Tsochow by Mr. Wil- liamson, and Chechow in a late Report of a journey by Consul Oxenham. He calls it " a large town of the second order, situated on the banks of a small river flowing towards the south-east, viz. the Kiu-ma-Ho, a navi-
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8 MARCO POLO. Book II.
gable stream. It had the appearance of being a place of considerable trade, and the streets were crowded with people." (Reports of Journeys in China and Jdpan^ &c Presented to Parliament, 1869, p. 9.) The place is called Juj^ also in the Persian itinerary given by 'Izzat Ullah in /. R, A, S, VII. 308 ; and in one procured by Mr. Shaw (Proc. R. G. S. XVI. p. 253).
Note 3. — " About a // from the southern suburbs of this town, the great road to Shantung and the south-east diverged, causing an imme- diate diminution in the number of carts and travellers" (Oxmham\ This bifurcation of the roads is a notable point in Polo's book. For after following the western road through Cathay, i,e, the northern provinces of China, to the borders of Tibet and the Indo-Chinese regions, our traveller will return, whimsically enough, not to the capital to take a fresh departure, but to this bifurcation outside of Chochau, and thence carry us south with him to Manzi, or China south of the Yellow River.
Of a part of the road of which Polo speaks in the latter part of the chapter Williamson says : " The drive was a very beautiful one. Not only were the many villages almost hidden by foliage, but the road itself hereabouts is lined with trees. .... The effect was to make the journey like a ramble through the avenues of some English parL" Beyond Tingchau however the country becomes more barren. (I. 268,)
CHAPTER XXXVII. The Kingdom of Taianfu.
After riding then those ten days from the city of Juju, you find yourself in a kingdom called Taianfu, and the city at which you arrive, which is the capital, is also called Taianfu, a very great and fine city. [But at the end of five days' journey out of those ten, they say there is a city unusually large and handsome called Acbaluc, where- at terminate in this direction the hunting preserves of the Emperor, within which no one dares to sport except the Emperor and his femily, and those who are on the books of the Grand Falconer. Beyond this limit any one is at liberty to sport, if he be a gentleman. The Great
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Chap. XXXVII. THE KINGDOM OF TAIANFU. 9
Kaan, however, scarcely ever went hunting in this direc- tion, and hence the game, particularly the bares, had in- creased and multiplied to such an extent that all the crops of the Province were destroyed. The Great Kaan being informed of this, proceeded thither with all his Court, and the game that was takea was past counting.] *
Taianfu ' is a place of great trade and great industry, for here they manufacture a large quantity of the most necessary equipments for the army of the Emperor. There grow here many excellent vines, supplying great plenty of wine ; and in all Cathay this is the only place where wine is produced. It is carried hence all over the country .^ There is also a great deal of silk here, for the people have great quantities of mulberry-trees and silk-worms.
From this city of Taianfu you ride westward again for seven days, through fine districts with plenty of towns and boroughs, all enjoying much trade and practising various kinds of industry. Out of these districts go forth not a few great merchants, who travel to India and other foreign regions, buying and selling and getting gain. After those seven days' journey you arrive at a city called Pianpu, a large and important place, with a number of traders living by commerce and industry. It is a place too where silk is largely produced.'*
So we will leave it and tell you of a great city called Cachanfu. But stay — first let us tell you about the noble casde called Caichu.
Note 1. — Marsden translates the commencement of this passage, which is peculiar to Ramusio, and runs " £ in capo di cinque ^ornate idle predate dieci^ by the words " At the end of five days' journey beyond the ten," but this is clearly wrong.* The place best suiting in position, as halfway between Chochau and Tai-yuanfu, would be Ching- TiNGFU, and I have Uttle doubt that this is the place intended. The title of Ak'Bdligh in Turki,i" or Chaghdn Balghdsun in Mongol, meaning
♦ And I see Ritter understood the passage as I do (IV. 515). t Bdligh is indeed properly Mongol.
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lO MARCO POLO. Book II-
" White City," was applied by the Tartars to Royal Residences ; and possibly Chingtingfu may have had such a claim, for I observe in the Annales de la Prop, de la Fbi (xxxiiL 387) that in 1862 the Chinese Government granted to the R. C. Vicar-Apostolic of Chihli the ruined Imperial Palace at Chingtingfu for his cathedral and other mission establishments. Moreover, as a matter of fact, Rashiduddin*s account of Chinghiz's campaign in northern China in 12 14, speaks of the city of " Chaghan Balghasun which the Chinese call Jintzinfu'^ This is almost exactly the way in which the name of Chingtingfu is represented in Izzat Ullah*s Persian Itinerary (Jigdzinfu^ evidently a clerical error ioT Jingdzinfu), so I think there can be little doubt that Chintingfu is the place intended. The name of Hwai-lu-hian (see Note 2), which is the first stage beyond Chingtingfu, is said to mean the "Deer-lair," pointing apparently to the old character of the tract as a game-preserve. The city of Chingting is described by Consul Oxenham as being now in a decayed and dilapidated condition, consisting only of two long streets crossing at right angles. It is noted for the manufacture of images of Buddha from Shansi iron. {Consular Reports^ P* io> Erdmann^ 33i')
Between Chingtingfu and Tai-yuanfu the traveller first crosses a high and rugged range of mountains, and then ascends by narrow defiles to the plateau of Shansi But of these features Polo's excessive condensa- tion takes no notice.
The traveller who quits the great plain of Chihli for " the kingdom of Taianfu," i,e. Northern Shansi, enters a tract in which predominates that very remarkable formation called by the Chinese Hwang-tu^ and to which the German name Loss has been attached. With this formation are bound up the distinguishing characters of Northern Interior China, not merely in scenery but in agricultural products, dwellings, and means of transport This Loss is a brownish-yellow loam, highly porous, spread- ing over low and high ground alike, smoothing over irregularities of surface, and often more than 1000 feet in thickness. It has no stratifi- cation, but tends to cleave vertically, and is traversed in every direction by sudden crevices, ahnost glacier-like, narrow, with vertical walls of great depth, and infinite ramification. Smooth as the loss basin looks in a bird's-eye view, it is thus one of the most impracticable countries con- ceivable for military movements, and secures extraordinary value to fortresses in well-chosen sites, such as that of Tung-kwan mentioned in Note 2 to chap. xli.
Agriculture may be said in N. China to be confined to the alluvial plains and the loss ; as in S. China to the alluvial plains and the terraced hill-sides. The loss has some peculiar quality which renders its produc- tive power self-renewing without manure (unless it be in the form of a surface coat of fresh loss), and unfailing in returns if there be sufficient rain. This singular formation is supposed by Baron Richthofen, who has studied it more extensively than any one, to be no subaqueous deposit, but to be the accumulated residue of countless generations of herbaceous
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Chap. XXXVII. WINE OF TAIANFU. 1 1
plants combined with a large amount of material spread over the face of the ground by the winds and surface waters.
Though we do not expect to find Polo taking note of geological features, we are surprised to find no mention of a characteristic of Shansi and the adjoining districts, which is due to the loss ; viz. the practice of forming cave dwellings in it ; these in fact form the habitations of a majority of the people in the loss country. Polo Aas noticed a similar usage in Badakhshan (I. p. i6i), and it will be curious if a better acquaintance with that r^on should disclose a surface formation analogous to the loss (Rifchthofen's Letters, VII. 13 ef passim).
Note 2. — Taianfii is, as Magaillans pointed out, T*aiyuan-fu, the capital of the Province of Shansi, and Shansi is the " Kingdom." The city was, however, the capital of the great Tang dynasty for a time in the 8th century, and is probably the TdjaA or Taiy^mah of old Arab writers. Mr. Williamson speaks of it as a very pleasant city at the north end of a most fertile and beautiful plain, between two noble ranges of moimtains. It was a residence, he says, also of the Ming princes, and is laid out in Peking fashion, even to mimicking the Coal-Hill and Lake of the Imperial Gardens. It stands about 3000 feet above the sea. There is still an Imperial factory of artillery, matchlocks, &c., as well as a powder mill ; and fine carpets like those of Turkey are also manufactured. The city is not however now, according to Baron Richthofen, very populous, and conveys no impression of wealth or commercial import- ance. The district used to be much noted for cutlery and hardware, iron as well as coal being abundantly produced in Shansi. Apparently the present Birmingham of this region is a town called Hwai-lu, or Hwo-lu-hian about 20 miles west of Chingting-fu, and just on the western verge of the great plain of Chihli. {Richthofen' s Letters^ No. VII. 20 ; Cathay^ xcvii, cxiii, cxciv; Rermie^ II. 265 j Williamsoiis Journeys in North China ; Oxenham, u. s. 1 1 ; Klaproth mj. As. ser. 2, tom. I 100 ; Izzat UUaHs Pers. IHn. in/. R. A. S. VIL 307.)
Note 3. — Martini observes that the grapes in Shansi were very abundant and the best in China. The Chinese used them only as raisins, but wine was made there for the use of the early Jesuit Missions, and their successors continue to make it Klaproth however tells us that the wine of T'aiyuan-fu was celebrated in the days of the Tang dynasty, and used to be sent in tribute to the Emperors. Under the Mongols the use of this wine spread greatly. The founder of the Ming accepted the offering of wine of the vine from Taiyuan in 1373, but prohibited its bemg presented again. The finest grapes are produced in the district of Yukau-hian, where hills shield the plain from north winds, and convert it into a garden many square miles in extent In the vintage season the best grapes sell for less than a farthing a pound. The river that flows down from Shansi by Chingting-fu is called Putu-ho, or the Grape River. (/. As. u. s. ; Richthofen^ u. s.)
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12 MARCO POLO. BOOK I L
Note 4. — In no part of China probably, says Richthofen, do the towns and villages consist of houses so substantial and costly as in this. Pianfu is undoubtedly, as Magaillans again notices, P'ingyang-fu.* It is the Bikan of Shah Rukh's ambassadors. It is said to have been the residence of the primitive and mythical Chinese Emperor Yao. A great college for the education of the Mongols was instituted at P'ing-yang, by YeHu Chutsai, the enlightened minister of Okkodai KLhan. The city, lying in a broad valley covered with the yellow loss, was destroyed by the Taeping rebels, but it is reviving. The vicinity is noted for large paper factories. {Cathay^ ccxi. ; Hitter; IV. 516; HOhsson^ IL 70; Williamson^ I. 336.)
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Concerning the Castle of Caichu.
On leaving Pianfu you ride two days westward, and come to the noble castle of Caichu, which was built in time past by a king of that country, whom they used to call the Golden King, and who had there a great and beautiful palace. There is a great hall of this palace, in which are pourtrayed all the ancient kings of the country, done in gold and other beautiful colours, and a very fine sight they make. Each king in succession as he reigned added to those pictures/
[This Golden King was a great and potent Prince, and during his stay at this place there used to be in his service none but .beautiful girls, of whom he had a great number in his Court. When he went to take the air about the fortress, these girls used to draw him about in a little carriage which they could easily move, and they would also be in attendance on the King for everything pertaining to his convenience or pleasure.*]
Now I will tell you a pretty passage that befel between
♦ It seems to be called Piyingfu (miswritten Piying>^) in Mr. ShaVs ' Itinerary' from Yarkand (/V. R. G. S. xvi. 253). We often find the Western modifications of Chinese names very persistent
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Chap. XXXVIII. THE GOLDEN KING. 13
this Golden King and Prester John, as it was related by the people of the Castle.
It came to pass, as they told the tale, that this Golden King was at war with Prester John. And the King held a position so strong that Prester John was not able to get at him or to do him any scathe ; wherefore he was in great wrath. So seventeen gallants belonging to Prester John's Court came to him in a body, and said that, an he would, they were ready to bring him the Golden King alive. His answer was, that he desired nothing better, and would be much bounden to them if they would do so.
So when they had taken leave of their Lord and Master Prester John, they set off together, this goodly company of gallants, and went to the Golden King, and presented themselves before him, saying that they had come from foreign parts to enter his service. And he answered by telling them that they were right welcome, and that he was glad to have their service, never imagining that they had any ill intent. And so these mischievous squires took service with the Golden King ; and served him so well that he grew to love them dearly.
And when they had abode with that King nearly two years, conducting themselves like persons who thought of anything but treason, they one day accompanied the King on a pleasure party when he had very few else along with him : for in those gallants the King had perfect trust, and thus kept them immediately about his person. So after they had crossed a certain river that is about a mile from the castle, and saw that they were alone with the King, they said one to another that now was the time to achieve that they had come for. Then they all incontinently drew, and told the King that he must go with them and make no resistance, or they would slay him. The King at this was in alarm and great astonishment, and said: "How then, good my sons, what thing is this ye say ? and whither would ye have me go ? " They answered, and said : ** You
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14 MARCO POLO. Book II.
shall come with usj will ye nill yc, to Prester John our Lord."
The *' Roi d'Or." (From a MS. in the Royal Asiatic Society's Collection.)
"£t m ceste cf)a8tiaus i)a un mout biaus paleus en quti a uiu graiUiisnu sale Qion tl sunt portrait k mout belles pointures tout les rots tue celes probences que furrnt ansienemant, et ct est mout belle btste a bote."
Note 1. — The name of the castle is very doubtful. But of that and the geography, which in this part is tangled, we shall speak further on.
Whilst the original French texts were unknown, the king here spoken of figured in the old Latin versions as King Darius, and in Ramusio as Re Dor, It was a most happy suggestion of Marsden's, in absence of all knowledge of the fact that the original narrative was French^ that this Dor represented the Emperor of the Kin or Golden Dynasty, called by the Mongols Altun Khdriy of which Roi D'Or is a literal translation.
Of the legend itself I can find no trace. Rashiduddin relates a story of the grandfather of Aung Khan (Polo's Prester John), Merghuz BoinSk Khan, being treacherously made over to the King of the Church^ (the Kin sovereign), and put to death by being nailed to a wooden ass. But the same author tells us that Aung Khan got his title of Aung (Ch. Wan^ or king from the Kin emperor of his day, so that no hereditary feud seems deduceable.
The cut which we give is curious in connection with our traveller's notice of the portrait-gallery of the Golden Kings. For it is taken from the fragmentary MS. of Rashiduddin's History in the library of the
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Chap. XXXIX. PRESTER JOHN AND THE GOLDEN KING. 1 5
Royal Asiatic Society, a MS. believed to be one of those executed under the great Vazir's own supervision, and is presented there as the portrait of the last sovereign of the dynasty in question, being one of a whole series of similar figures. There can be little doubt, I think, that these were taken from Chinese originals, though, it may be, not very exactly.
Note 2. — The history of the Tartar conquerors of China, whether Khitan, Church^, Mongol, or Manchu, has always been the same. For one or two generations the warlike character and manly habits were maintained ; and then the intruders, having adopted Chinese manners, ceremonies, literature, and civilization, sank into more than Chinese effeminacy and degradation. We see the custom of employing only female attendants ascribed in a later chapter (Ixxvii.) to the Sung Em- perors at Rinsay; and the same was the custom of the later Ming emperors, in whose time the imperial palace was said to contain 5000 women. Indeed, the precise custom which this passage describes was in our own day habitually reported of the Taiping sovereign during his reign at Nanking : " None but women are allowed in the interior of the Palace, and ^ ts drawn to the audimce^hamber in a gilded sacred dragon- car by the ladies^ (Blakiston^ p. 42 ; see also Wilson's Ever- Victorious Army, p. 41.)
CHAPTER XXXIX. How Prester John treated the Golden King his Prisoner.
And on this the Golden King was so sorely grieved that he was like to die. And he said to them : " Good, my sons, for God's sake have pity and compassion upon me. Ye wot well what honourable and kindly entertainment ye have had in my house ; and now ye would deliver me into the hands of mine enemy ! In sooth, if ye do what ye say, ye will do a very naughty and disloyal deed, and a right villainous.'' But they answered only that so it must be, and away they had him to Prester John their Lord.
And when Prester John beheld the King he was right glad, and greeted him with something like a malison.* The King answered not a word, as if he wist not what it
* ** Lui dist que il feust le mal venuz."
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i6 MARCO POLO. Book II.
behoved him to say. So Prester John ordered him to be taken forth straightway, and to be put to look after cattle, but to be well looked after himself also. So they took him and set him to keep cattle. This did Prester John of the grudge he bore the King, to heap contumely on him, and to show what a nothing he was, compared to himself
And when the King had thus kept cattle for two years, Prester John sent for him, and treated him with honour, and clothed him in rich robes, and said to him : " Now Sir King, art thou satisfied that thou wast in no way a man to stand against me?" "Truly, my good Lord, I know well and always did know that I was in no way a man to stand against thee.** And when he had said this Prester John replied : " I ask no more ; but henceforth thou shalt be waited on and honourably treated." So he caused horses and harness of war to be given him, with a goodly train, and sent him back to his own country. And after that he remained ever friendly to Prester John, and held fast by him.
So now I will say no more of this adventure of the Golden King, but I will proceed with our subject.
CHAPTER XL.
Concerning the Great River Caramoran and the Citv of
Cachanfu.
When you leave the castle, and travel about 20 miles westward, you come to a river called Caramoran, so big that no bridge can be thrown across it; for it is of im- mense width and depth, and reaches to the Great Ocean that encircles the Universe, — I mean the whole earth.' On this river there are many cities and walled towns, and
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Chap. XL. THE CITY OF CACHANFU. 1 7
many merchants too therein, for much traffic takes place upon the river, there being a great deal of ginger and a great deal of silk produced in the country/
Game birds here are in wonderful abundance, insomuch that you may buy at least three pheasants for a Venice groat of silver. I should say rather for an asper^ which is worth a little more.^
[On the lands adjoining this river there grow vast quantities of great canes, some of which are a foot or a foot and a half (in girth), and these the natives employ for many useful purposes.]
After passing the river and travelling two days west- ward you come to the noble city of Cachanfu, which we have already named. The inhabitants are all Idolaters. And I may as well remind you again that all the people of Cathay are Idolaters. It is a city of great trade and of work in gold-tissues of many sorts, as well as other kinds of industry.
There is nothing else worth mentioning, and so we will proceed and tell you of a noble city which is the capital of a kingdom, and is called Kenjanfu.
Note 1. — Kard-Muretiy or Black River, is one of the names applied by the Mongols to the Hwang Ho, or Yellow River, of the Chinese, and is used by all the medieval western writers, e,g,^ Odoric, John Marignolli, Rashiduddin.
The River, where it skirts Shansi, is for the most part difficult both of access and of passage, and ill adapted to navigation, owing to the violence of the stream. Whatever there is of navigation is confined to the transport of coal down-stream from Western Shansi, in large flats. Mr. Elias, who has noted the River's level by aneroid at two points 920 miles apart, calculated the fall over that distance, which includes the contour of Shansi, at 4 feet per mile. The best part for navigation is above this, firom Ninghia to Chaghan Kuren (in about 110° K long.), in which Capt Prshevalski's observations give a fall of less than 6 inches per mile. {Richthofen, Letter VII. 25 ; Williamson, I. 69 ; /. R. G. S. XLIIL, p. 115 ; Petermatm^ 1873, PP« ^9-9i-)
Note 2. — It is remarkable that the abundance of silk in Shansi and Sheosi is so distinctly mentioned in these chapters, whereas now there is VOL. II. c
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1 8 MARCO POLO. Book II.
next to no silk at all grown in these districts. Is this the result of a change of climate, or only a commercial change ? Baron Richthofen, to whom I have referred the question, believes it to be due to the former cause : " No tract in China would appear to have suffered so much by a change of climate as Shensi and southern ShansL"
Note 3. — The asper or akchk (both meaning "white") of the Mongols at Tana or Azov I have elsewhere calculated, from Pegolotti*s data (Cathay^ p. 298), to have contained about os, 2'Sd, worth of silver, which is l£ss than the grosso ; but the name may have had a loose appli- cation to small silver coins in other countries of Asia. Possibly the money intended may have been the 50 fsim note (see note 1, ch. xxiv. supra).
CHAPTER XLI.
Concerning the City of Kenjanfu.
And when you leave the city of Cachanfu of which I have spoken, and travel eight days westward, you meet with cities and boroughs abounding in trade and industry, and quantities of beautiful trees, and gardens, and fine plains planted with mulberries, which are the trees on the leaves of which the silkworms do feed. The people are all Idolaters. There is also plenty of game of all sorts, both of beasts and birds.
And when you have travelled those eight days' journey, you come to that great city which I mentioned, called Kenjanfu.* A very great and fine city it is, and the capital of the kingdom of Kenjanfu, which in old times was a noble, rich, and powerful realm, and had many great and wealthy and puissant kings.* But now the king thereof is a prince called Mangalai, the son of the Great Kaan, who hath given him this realm, and crowned him king thereof.3 It is a city of great trade and industry. They have great abundance of silk, from which they weave cloths of silk and gold of divers kinds, and they also manufacture all sorts of equipments for an army. They have every
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Chap. XLI. PALACE OF THE PRINCE MANGALAI. 19
necessary of man's life very cheap. The city lies towards the west ; the people are Idolaters ; and outside the city is the palace of the Prince Mangalai, crowned king, and son of the Great Kaan, as I told you before. > This is a fine palace and a great, as I will tell you. It stands in a great plain abounding in lakes and streams and springs of water. Round about it is a massive and lofty wall, five miles in compass, well built, and all garnished with battlements. And within this wall is the king's palace, so great and fine that no one could imagine a finer. There are in it many great and splendid halls, and many cham- bers, all painted and embellished with work in beaten gold. This Mangalai rules his realm right well with justice and equity, and is much beloved by his people. The troops are quartered round about the palace, and enjoy the sport (that the royal demesne aiFords).
So now let us quit this kingdom, and I will tell you of a very mountainous province called Cuncun, which you reach by a road right wearisome to travel.
Note 1. — Having got to sure ground again at Kenjanfu, which is, as we shall explain presently, the city of Singanfu, capital of Shensi, let us look back at the geography of the route from P'ingyanfu. Its difficulties are great
The traveller carries us two days' journey from P*ingyanfu to his castle of the Golden King. This is called in the G. Text and most other MSS. Caicui, Caytui^ or the like, but in Ramusio alone Thaigin, He then carries us 20 miles further to the Caramoran ; he crosses this river, travels two days further, and reaches the great city Cachanfu ; eight days more (or as in Ramusio seven) bring him to Singanfu.
There seems scarcely room for doubt that Cachanfu is the Ho- CHANGFu of those days, now called Fuchaufu, close to the great elbow of the Hwang Ho {Klaproth), But this city, instead of being two days west of the great river, stands near its eastern bank.
Not maintaining the infallibility of our traveller's memory, we may conceive confusion here, between the recollections of his journey west- ward and those of his return ; but this does not remove all the difficulties.
The most notable fortress of the Kin sovereigns was that of Tungkwan, on the right bank of the river, 25 miles below P'uchaufu, and closing the passage between the river and the mountains, just where
C 2
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20 MARCO POLO. Book II.
the boundaries of Honan, Shansi, and Shensi meet It was constantly the turning-point of the Mongol campaigns against that dynasty, and held a prominent place in the dying instructions of Chinghiz for the prosecution of the conquest of Cathay. This fortress must have con- tinued famous to Polo's time, — indeed it continues so still, the strategic position bemg one which nothing short of a geological catastrophe could impair, — ^but I see no way of reconciling its position with his narrative.
The nam€ in Ramusio's form might be merely that of the dynasty, viz., Tai'Kin = Great Golden. But we have seen that Thaigin is not the only reading. That of the MSS. seems to point rather to some name like Kaichau. A hypothesis which has seemed to me to call for least correction in the text is that the castle was at the Kichau of the maps, nearly due west of P'ingyangfu, and just about 20 miles from the Hwang
Ho ; that the river was crossed in that vicinity, and that the traveller then descended the valley to opposite P'uchaufu, or possibly embarked and de- scended the river itself to that point This last hypothesis would mitigate the apparent disproportion in the times as- signed to the different parts of the journey, and would, I think, clear the text of error. But it is only a hypothesis. There is near Kichau one of the easiest . crossing places of the River,
_ insomuch that since the Shensi
:J :!;•' troubles a large garrison has f,- been kept up at Kichau to
watch it* And this is the only Plan of Kichau, after Duhaide. direction in which 2 days' march,
at Polo's rate, would bring him within 20 miles of the Yellow River. Whether there is any historic castle at Kichau I know not ; the plan of that place in Duhaide, however, has the aspect of a strong position. Baron v. Richthofen is unable to accept this suggestion, and has favoured me with some valuable remarks on this difficult passage, which I slightly abridge : —
" The difficulties are, (i) that for either reading, Thaigin or Caichu^ a corresponding place can be found ; (2) in the position of CachanfUy setting both at naught.
" Thaigin, There are two passages of the Yellow River near its gicat bend. One is at T'ungkwan, where I crossed it; the other, and
♦ 1 am indebted for this information to Baron Richthofen.
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Chap. XLI. CHRISTIAN MONUMENT OF SINGANFU. 21
more convenient, is at the fortress of Taiching-kwan, locally pronounced Taigin-kwsn, This fortress, or rather fortified camp, is a very well- known place, and to be found on native maps ; it is very close to the River, on the left bank, about 6 m. S.W. of Fu-chau-fu. The road runs hence to Tungchau-fu and thence to Singan-fu. T'aiching-kwan could not possibly (at Polo's rate) be reached in 2 days from P*ingyang-fu.
" Caichu, If this reading be adopted Marsden may be right in supposing Kiai-chaUy locally K/iaidjUy to be meant This city dominates the important salt marsh, whence Shansi and Shensi are supplied with salt It is 70 or 80 m. from P'ingyang-fu, but could be reached in 2 days. It commands a large and tolerably populous plain, and is quite fit to have been an imperial residence.
" May not the striking fact that there is a place corresponding to either name suggest that one of them was passed by Polo in going, the other in returning? and that, this being the only locality between Chingtufu and Chuchau where there was any deviation between the two journeys, his geographical ideas may have become somewhat confiised, as might now happen to any one in like case and not provided with a map ? Thus the traveller himself might have put into Ramusio's text the name of TTiaigin instead of Caichu, From Kiaichau he would probably cross the River at Tungkwan, whilst in returning by way of Taiching-kwan he would pass through P'uchau-fu (or vice versd). The question as to Caichu may still be settled, as it must be possible to ascertain where the Kin resided." *
Note 2. — ^The 8 days' journey through richly cultivated plains run up the basin of the Wei River, the most important agricultiural region ot N.W. China, and the core of early Chinese History. The loss is here more than ever predominant, its yellow tinge affecting the whole land- scape, and even the atmosphere. Here, according to Baron v. Richt- hofen, originated the use of the word hwang " yellow," as the symbol of the Earth, whence the primeval emperors were styled Hwang-ti^ " Lord of the Earth," but properly " Lord of the Loss'^
Kenjanfu, or, as Ramusio gives it, Quenzanfii, is Si-ngan-fu, or as it was called in the days of its greatest fame, Changgan, probably the most celebrated city in Chinese history, and the capital of several of the most potent dynasties. It was the metropolis of Shi Hwangti of the Tsin dynasty, properly the first emperor, and whose conquests almost intersected those of his contemporary Ptolemy Euergetes. It was, perhaps, the Thinae of Claudius Ptolemy, as it was certainly the Khumdin of the early Mahomedans, and the site of flourishing Christian Churches in the 7 th century, as well as of the remarkable monument, the discovery of which a thousand years later disclosed their forgotten existence, f Kingchao-fu
♦ See the small Map attached to ** Marco Polo's Itinerary Map, No. IV.," at end ofVoLL
t In the first edition I was able to present a reduced facsimile of a rubbing in my possession from this famous inscription, which I owed to the generosity of Dr. Lockhart.
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22 MARCO POLO. Book IL
was the name which the city bore when the Mongol invasions brought China into communication with the west, and Klaproth supposes that
To the Baron von Richthofen I am no less indebted for the more complete nibbing which has afforded the plate now published. A tolerably full account of this inscrip- tion is given in Cathay ^ pp. xcii. seqq.^ and pp. clxxxi. seqq,^ but the subject is so interesting that it seems well to introduce here the most important particulars : —
The stone slab, about 7^ feet high by 3 feet wide, and some ten inches in thickness, which bears this inscription, was accidentally found in 1625 by some workmen who were digging in the Changgan suburb of the dty of Singanfu. The cross, which is engraved at page 24, is incised at the top of the slab, and beneath this are 9 large characters in 3 colunms, constituting the heading, which runs : Monument comnumorating tlie introduction and propagation of the noble Law of Ta-t*sin in the Middle Kingdom ; " Ta-fsin being the term applied in Chinese literature to Ac Roman Empire, of which the ancient Chinese had much such a shadowy conception as the Romans had, conversely, of the Chinese as Sinae and Seres, Then follows the body of the inscription, of great length and beautiful execution, consisting of 1 780 characters. Its chief contents are as follows :— '1st. An abstract of Christian doctrine, of a vague and figurative kind ; 2nd. An account of the arrival of the missionary OlopAn (pro- bably a Chinese form of ^a^^a/f = M6nk), from Tat*sin in the year equivalent to A.D. 635, bringing sacred books and images; of the translation of the said books; of the Imperial approval of the doctrine and permission to teach it publicly. There follows a decree of the Emperor (T'aitsui^, a very famous prince), issued in 638, in favour of the new doctrine, and ordering a church to be built in the Square of Peace and Justice {I-ning Fang), at the capital. The Emperor's portrait was to be placed in the church. After this comes a description of Tat'sin (here apparently implying Syria) ; and then some account of the fortunes of the Church in China. Kaotsung (650-683, the devout patron also of the Buddhist traveller and Doctor Hwen T*sang) continued to favour it In the end of the century. Buddhism gets the upper hand, but under Hwan-tsung (713-755) the Church recovers its prestige, and KiHO, a new missionary, arrives. Under Tetsung (780-783) the monument was erected, and this part ends with the eulogy of Issfe, a statesman and benefactor of the Church. 3rd. There follows a recapitulation of the purport in octosyllabic verse.
The Chinese inscription concludes with the date of erection, viz., the 2nd year Kienchung of the Great T'ang dynasty, the 7th day of the month Taifsuy the feast of the great Yaosan, This corresponds, according to Gaubil, to 4th February, 781 ; and Yaosan is supposed to stand for Hosanna (1. e, Palm-Sunday ; but this apparently does not fit). There are added the name of the chief of the law, Ningchu (presumed to be the Chinefe name of the Metropolitan), the name of the writer, and the official sanction.
The monument exhibits, in addition to the Chinese text, a series of short in- scriptions in the Syriac language, and Esti-anghelo character, containing the date of erection, viz., 1092 of the Greeks ( = A.D. 781), the name of the reigning Patriarch of the Nestorian church Mar Hanan Ishua (dead in 778, but the fact apparently had not reached China), that of Adam, Bishop and Pope of Tzinisth^n (/. e, China) ; and those of the clerical staff of the capital, which here bears the name, given it by the eariy Arab Travellers, of Kiimddn. There follow sixty-seven names of persons in Syriac chiracters, most of whom are characterized as priests (Kashlshd), and sixty- one names of persons in Chinese, all priests save one.
Kircher gives a good many more Syriac names than appear on the rubbing ; j probably because some of these are on the edge of the slab now built in. We have j no room to speak of the controversies raised by this stone. The most able defence of its genuine character, as well as a transcript with translation and commentary, a work of great interest, was published by the late M. Pauthier. The monument exists inract, and has been visited by the Rev. Mr. Williamson, Baron Richthofen, and
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Chap. XLL CITY OF SINGANFU. 23
this was modified by the Mongols into Kenjanfu. Under the latter name it is mentioned by Rashiduddin as the seat of one of the Twelve Sings or great provincial administrations, and we find it still known by this name in Sharffuddin's history of Timur. The same name is trace- able in the Kansan of Odoric, which he calls the second best province in the world, and the best populated. Whatever may have been the origin of the name Kenjanfu, Baron v. Richthofen was, on the spot, made aware of its conservation in the exact form of the Ramusian Polo. The R. C. missionaries there emphatically denied that Marco could ever have been at Singanfu, or that the city had ever been known by such a name as Kenjan-fu. On this the Baron called in one of the Chinese pupils of the Mission, and asked him directly what had been the name of the city under the Yuen dynasty. He replied at once with remark- able clearness : " Quen-zan-fu." Everybody present was struck by the exact correspondence of the Chinaman's pronunciation of the name with that which the German traveller had adopted from Ritter.
Martini speaks, apparently from personal knowledge, of the splen- dour of the city, as re^irded both its public edifices and its site, sloping gradually up from the banks of the River Wei, so as to exhibit its walls and palaces at one view like the interior of an amphitheatre. West of the city was a sort of Water Park, enclosed by a wall 30 // in circum- ference, full of lakes, tanks, and canals from the Wei, and within which were seven fine palaces and a variety of theatres and other places of public diversion. To the S.E. of the city was an artificial lake with palaces, gardens, park, &c, originally formed by the Emperor Hiaowu (b.c 100), and to the south of the city was another considerable lake called Fan, This may be the Fanchan Lake, beside which Rashid says that Ananda, the son of Mangalai, built his palace.
The adjoining districts were the seat of a large Musulman popula- tion, which in 186 1-2 rose in revolt against the Chinese authority, and for a time was successful in resisting it The capital itself held out, though invested for two years ; the rebels having no artillery. The move- ment originated at Hwachau, some 60 m. east of Singan-fu, now totally destroyed. But the chief seat of the Mahomedans is a place which they call Solar J identified with Hochau in Kansuh, about 70 m. S.W. of Lanchang-fu, the capital of that province. {Martini; Cathay y 148, 269 ;
other recent travellers. Pauthier's works on the subject are — De P Authenticity de V Inscription Nestorienne, &c. B. Duprat, 1857 ; and P Inscription Syro-Chinoise de Si-ngcm-foM, &c. Firmin Didot, 1858. See also Kircher, China Illmtrata ; and article by Mr. Wylie in J, Am, Or, Soc, V. 278.
Stone monuments of character strictly analogous are frequent in the precincts of Buddhist sanctuaries, and probably the idea of this one was taken from the Buddhists. It is reasonably supposed by Pauthier that the monument may have been buried in 845, when the Emperor Wutsung issued an edict, still extant, against the vast multi- plication of Buddhist convents, and ordering their destruction. A clause in the edict also orders the foreign bonzes of Tafsin and Mvh'.ipa (Christian and Mobed or Magian ?), to return to secular life.
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24 MARCO POLO. Book II.
Petis de la Croix ^ III. 218; Russian paper on the Dungett, see supra^ vol. i. p. 256 ; Williamson's North China, u. s. ; Richthojeris Letters, and MS. Notes.)
Note 3. — Mangalai, Kublai's third son, who governed the provinces of Shensi and Szechwan, with the title of War^ or king (supra ch. ix. note 2), died in 1280, a circumstance which limits the date of Polo's journey to the west It seems unlikely that Marco should have re- mained ten years ignorant of his death, yet he seems to speak of him as still governing.
/
Cross on the Monument at Singanfu (actual size). From a rubbing.
CHAPTER XLIL
Concerning the Province of Cuncun, which is right wearisome TO travel through.
On leaving the Palace of Mangalai, you travel westward for three days, finding a succession of cities and boroughs
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Chap. XLII. THE PROVINCE OF CUNCUN. 25
and beautiful plains, inhabited by people who live by trade and industry, and have great plenty of silk. At the end of those three days you reach the great mountains and valleys which belong to the province of Cuncun.* There are towns and villages in the land, and the people Uve by tilling the earth, and by hunting in the great woods ; for the region abounds in forests wherein are many wild beasts, such as lions, bears, lynxes, bucks and roes, and sundry other kinds, so that many are taken by the people of the country who make a great profit thereof. So this way you travel over mountains and valleys, finding a succession of towns and villages, and many great hostelries for the entertainment of travellers, interspersed among extensive forests.
Note 1. — The region intended must necessarily be some part of the southern district of the province of Shensi, called Hanchung, the axis oi which is the River Han, closed in by exceedingly mountainous and woody country to north and south, dividing it on the former quarter from the rest of Shensi, and on the latter from Szechwan. Polo's c frequently expresses an Jf, especially the guttural // of Chinese names, yet Cuficun is not satisfactory as the expression of Hanchung.
The country was so rugged that in ancient times travellers from Singanfu had to make a long circuit eastward by the frontier of Honan to reach Hanchung ; but, at an early date, a road was made across the mountams for military purposes ; so long ago indeed that various eras and constructors are assigned to it Padre Martini's authorities ascribed it to a general in the service of Liupang, the founder of the first Han dynasty (b.c 202), and this date is current in Shansi, as Baron v. Richt- hofen tells me. But in Szechwan the work is asserted to have been executed during the 3rd century, when China was divided into several states, by Liupi, of the Han family, who, about a.d. 226, established himself as Emperor of Western China at Chingtu-fu.* This work, with its difficulties and boldness, extending often for great distances on timber corbels inserted in the rock, is vividly described by Martini. Villages and rest-houses were established at convenient distances. It received from the Chmese the name of Chien-tao^ or the " Pillar Road." It commenced on the west bank of the Wei, opposite Paoki-hien, 100
* The last is also stated by Klaproth. Ritter has overlooked the discrepancy of the dates (B.C. and A.D.), and has supposed Liupi and Liupang to be the same. The resemblance of the names, and the fact that both princes were founders of I{an dynasties, give ample room for confusion.
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26 MARCO POLO. Book II.
miles west of Singanfu, and ended near the town of Paoching-hien, some 15 or 20 miles N.W. from Hanchung.
We are told that Tului, the son of Chinghiz, when directing his march against Honan in 1231 by this very line from Paoki, had to make a road with great difficulty ; but, as we shall see presently, this can only mean that the ancient road had fallen into decay, and had to be repaired. The same route was followed by Okkodai's son Kutan, in marching to attack the Sung Empire in 1235, ^^^ again by Mangku Kaan on his last campaign in 1258. These circumstances show that the road from Paoki was in that age the usual route into Hanchung and Szechwan ; indeed there is no other road in that direction that is more than a mere jungle-track, and we may be certain that this was PoIo*s route.
This remarkable road was traversed by Baron v. Richthofen in 1872. To my questions, he replies : " The entire route is a work of tremendous engineering, and all of this was done by I.iupi, who first ordered the construction. The hardest work consisted in cutting out long portions of the road from solid rock, chiefly where ledges project on the verge of a river, as is frequently the case on the Helung Kiang. ... It had been done so thoroughly from the first, that scarcely any additions had to be made in after days. Another kind of work which generally strikes tourists like Father Martini, or Chinese travellers, is the poling up of the road on
the sides of steep cliffs* Extensive cliffs are frequently rounded
in this way, and imagination is much struck with the perils of walking on the side of a precipice, with the foaming river below. When the timbers rot, such passages of course become obstructed, and thus the road is said to have been periodically in complete disuse. The repairs, which were chiefly made in the time of the Ming, concerned especially passages of this sort." Richthofen also notices the abundance of game; but inhabited places appear to be rarer than in Polo's time, (See Martini in Blaeu ; Chine Ancienne, p. 234; Ritter^ IV. 520; D'Ohsson, II. 22, 80, 328 ; Lecomte^ II. 95 ; Chin, Rep, XIX. 225 ; Richthofen^ Letter Vil. p. 42, and MS. Notes.)
CHAPTER XLIII.
Concerning the Province of Acbalec Manzi.
After you have travelled those 20 days through the mountains of Cuncun that I have mentioned, then you
♦ See cut from Mr. Cooper's book at p. 43 below. This so exactly illustrates Baron R.'s description that I may omit the latter.
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chap.xliii. the province of acbalec manzi. 27
come to a province called Acbalec Manzi, which is all level country, with plenty of towns and villages, and be- longs to the Great Kaan. The people are Idolaters, and live by trade and industry. I may tell you that in this province there grows such a great quantity of ginger, that it is carried all over the region of Cathay, and it affords a maintenance to all the people of the province, who get great gain thereby. They have also wheat and rice, and other kinds of corn in great plenty and cheapness ; in fact the country abounds in all useful products. The capital city is called Acbalec Manzi [which signifies " the White City of the Manzi Frontier "].'
This plain extends for two days' journey, throughout which it is as fine as I have told you, with towns and villages as numerous. After those two days you again come to great mountains and valleys, and extensive forests, and you continue to travel westward through this kind of country for 20 days, finding however numerous towns and villages. The people are Idolaters, and live by agriculture, by cattle-keeping, and by the chase, for there is much game. And among other kinds, there are the animals that produce the musk, in great numbers."
Note 1. — Though the termini of the route, described in these two chapters, are undoubtedly Singanfu and Chingtufu, there are serious difficulties attending the determination of the Une actually followed.
The time according to all the MSS., so far as I know, except those of one type, is as follows : —
In the plain of Kenjanfu 3 dajrs.
In the mountains of Cuncnn 20 „
In the plain of Acbalec 2 „
In mountains again 20 ,,
45 »
It seems to me almost impossible to doubt that the Plan of Acbalec represents some part of the river-valley of the Han, interposed between the two ranges of mountains called by Richthofen T sing-Ling-Shan and Tapa-Shan. But the time, as just stated, is extravagant for any- thing like a direct journey between the two termini.
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28 MARCO POLO. BOOK II.
The distance from Singanfu to Paoki is 450 //, which could be done in 3 days, but at Polo's rate would probably require 5. The distance by the mountain road from Paoki to the Plain of Hanchung could never have occupied 20 days. It is really a 6 or 7 days' march.
But Pauthier's MS. C (and its double the Bern MS.) has viii. marches instead of xx., through the mountains of Cuncun. This reduces the time between Kenjanfu and the Plain to 1 1 days, which is just about a proper allowance for the whole journey, though not accurately dis- tributed. Two days, though ample, would not be excessive for the journey across the Plain of Hanchung, especially if the traveller visited that city. And ** 20 days from Hanchung to Chingtufu would corres- pond with Marco Polo's rate of travel." — (Richthofen),
So far then, provided we admit the reading of the MS. C, there is no ground for hesitating to adopt the usual route between the two cities, vi& Hanchimg.
But the key to the exact route is evidently the position of Acbalec Manzi, and on this there is no satisfactory light
For the name of the province, Pauthier's text has Acbalec Manzi^ for the name of the city Acmalec simply. The G. T. has in the former case Acbalec Mangi, in the latter " Acmelic Mangi qe vaut dire le une dc U confine dou Mangi'' This is followed literally by the Geographic Latin, which has " Ac/talec Mangi et est dictum in lingua nostra unus ex confini- bus Mangi'' So also the Crusca; whilst Ramusio has ^^ Achbaluch Mangiy che vuol dire Cittk Bianca de' confini di Mangi." It is clear that Ramusio alone has here preserved the genuine reading.
Klaproth identified Acbalec conjecturally with the town of Pe-ma- ching or " White-Horse-Town," a place now extinct, but which stood like Mien and Hanchung on the extensive and populous Plain that here borders the Han.
It seems so likely that the latter part of the name A-Maching (" White Maching") might have been confounded by foreigners with Mdchin and Manzi (which in Persian parlance were identical), that I should be disposed to overlook the difficulty that we have no evidence produced to show that Pemaching was a place of any consequence.
It is possible, however, that the name Acbalec may have been given by the Tartars without any reference to Chinese etymologies. We have already twice met with the name or its equivalent {Acbaluc in ch. xxx\ii. of this Book, and Chaghan Balghasun'm note 2 to Book I. ch. Ix.), whilst Strahlenberg tells us that the Tartars call all great residences of princes by this name (Amst ed. 1757, I. p. 7). It may be that Hanchung itself was so named by the Tartars; though its only claim that I can find is, that it was the first residence of the Han d)masty. Hanchung-fu stands in a beautiful plain, which forms a very striking object to the traveller who is leaving the T'sing-ling mountains. Just before entering the plains, the Helung Kiang passes through one of its wildest gorges, a mere crevice between vertical walls several hundred feet high. The road
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Chap. XLIV. PROVINCE AND CITY OF SINDAFU. 29
winds to the top of one of the cliffs in zigzags cut in the solid rock. From the temple of Kitau Kwan, which stands at the top of the cliff, there is a magnificent view of the Plain, and no traveller would omit this, the most notable feature between the valley of the Wei and Chingtu- fiL It is, moreover, the only piece of level ground, of any extent, that is passed through' between those two regions, whichever road or track be \2ktn.—{Ruhth(>fm, MS. Notes).
Note 2. — Polo's journey now continues through the lofty moun- tainous region in the north of Szechwan.
The dividing range, Tapa-shan, is less in height than the Tsing-ling range, but with gorges still more abrupt and deep ; and it would be an entire barrier to communication but for the care with which the road, here also, has been formed. But this road, from Hanchung to Chingtu- fu, is still older than that to the north, having been constructed, it is said, in the 3rd century b.c. Before that time Szechwan was a closed country, the only access from the north being the circuitous route down the Han and up the Yangtszd — {Ibid).
Martini notes the musk-deer in northern Szechwan.
CHAPTER XLIV.
Concerning the Province and City of Sindafu.
When you have travelled those 20 days westward through the mountains, as I have told you, then you arrive at a plain belonging to a province called Sindafu, which still is on the confines of Manzi, and the capital city of which is (also) called Sindafu. This city was in former days a rich and noble one, and the Kings who reigned there were very great and wealthy. It is a good twenty miles in compass, but it is divided in the way that I shall tell you.
You see the King of this Province, in the days of old, when he found himself drawing near to death, leaving three sons behind him, commanded that the city should be divided into three parts, and that each of his three sons should have one. So each of these three parts is separately walled about, though all three are surrounded by the com-
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30 MARCO POLO. Book II.
men wall of the city. Each of the three sons was King, having his own part of the city, and his own share of the kingdom, and each of them in fact was a great and- wealthy King. But the Great Kaan conquered the king- dom of these three Kings, and stripped them of their inheritance.*
Through the midst of this great city runs a large river, in which they catch a great quantity of fish. It is a good half mile wide, and very deep withal, and so long that it reaches all the way to the Ocean Sea, — sl very long way, equal to 80 or 100 days' journey. And the name of the River is Kian-suy. The multitude of vessels that navigate this river is so vast, that no one who should read or hear the tale would believe it. The quantities of merchandize also which merchants carry up and down this river are past all belief. In fact, it is so big, that it seems to be a Sea rather than a River ! '
Let us now speak of a great Bridge which crosses this River within the city. This bridge is of stone ; it is seven paces in width and half a mile in length (the river being that much in width as I told you) ; and all along its length on either side there are columns of marble to bear the roof, for the bridge is roofed over from end to end with timber, and that all richly painted. And on this bridge there are houses in which a great deal of trade and industry is carried on. But these houses are all of wood merely, and they are put up in the morning and taken down in the evening. Also there stands upon the bridge the Great Kaan*s Co- mercque^ that is to say, his custom-house, where his toll and tax are levied.^ And I can tell you that the dues taken on this bridge bring to the Lord a thousand pieces of fine gold every day and more. The people are all Idolaters.*
When you leave this city you travel for five days across a country of plains and valleys, finding plenty of villages and hamlets, and the people of which live by husbandry. There are numbers of wild beasts, lions, and bears, and such like.
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Chap. XLIV.
THE CITY OF SINDAFU.
31
I should have mentioned that the people of Sindu itself live by manufactures, for they make fine sendals and other stufFs.5
After travelling those five days' march, you reach a province called Tebet, which has been sadly laid waste ; we will now say something of it.
Note 1. — ^We are on firm ground again, for Sindafu is certainly Chingtufu, the capital of Szechwan. Probably the name used by Polo was Sindu'fUy as we find Sindu in the G. T. near the end of the chapter. But Ae same city is, I observe, called Thindafu by one of the Nepalese embassies, whose itineraries Mr. Hodgson has given in the /. A, S. B. XXV. 488.
The modern French missions have a bishop in Chingtufu, and the city has been visited of late years by Mr. T. T. Cooper, by Mr. A. VVylie, and by Baron v. Richthofen. Mr. Wylie has kindly favoured me with the following note : — " My notice all goes to corroborate Marco Polo. The covered bridge with the stalls is still there, the only difference being the absence of the toll-house. I did not see any traces of a tripartite division of the city, nor did I make any inquiries on the subject during the 3 or 4 days I spent there, as it was not an object with me at the time to verify Polo's account The city is indeed
divided, but the division dates more than a thousand years back. It is something like this, I should say [see diagram].*
"The Imperial City (Hwang Ching) was tiie residence of the monarch Lew P^ (i.e. Liupi of p. 25) during the short period of the * Three Kingdoms' (3rd century), and some relics of the ancient edifice still remain. I was much interested in looking over it. It is now occupied by the Public Examination Hall and its dependencies."
I suspect Marco's story of the Three Kings arose from a misunder- standing about this historical period of the San-Kwi, or Three King- doms (A.D. i 2 2-264). And this tripartite division of the city may have been merely that which we see to exist at present
Baron Richthofen observes that Chingtu is among the largest of Chinese cities, and is of all the finest and most refined. The population is called 800,000. The walls form a square of about 3 miles to the side.
A. The Great City.
B. The Little City.
C. The Imperial City,
♦ My lamented friend Lieut F. Gamier had kindly undertaken to send me a plan of Chingtufu from the place itself, but, as is well known, he fell on a daring enterprise ckcwhere.
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32 MARCO POLO. BOOK H.
•and there are suburbs besides. The streets are broad and straight, laid out at right angles, with a pavement of square flags very perfectly laid, slightly convex and drained at each side. The numerous commemora- tive arches are sculptured with skill ; there is much display of artistic taste ; and the people are remarkably civil to foreigners. This charac- terizes the whole province ; and an air of wealth and refinement prevails even in the rural districts. The plain round Chingtufu is about 90 m. in length (S. E. to N. W.), by 40 m. in width, with a copious irrigation and great fertility, so that in wealth and population it stands almost unrivalled. — {Letter VII., pp. 48-66).
Note 2. — Ramusio is more particular : " Through the city flow many great rivers, which come down from distant mountains, and run winding about through many parts of the city. These rivers vary in width from half a mile to 200 paces, and are very deep. Across them are built many bridges of stone," &c. " And after passing the city these rivers unite and form one immense river called Kian,** &c. Here we have the Great River or Kiang, Kian (Quian) as in Ramusio, or KiANG-SHUi, "Waters of the Kiang," as in the text So Pautfiier explains. Though our Geographies give the specific names of Wen and Min to the great branch which flows by Chingtufu, and treat the Tibetan branch which flows through northern Yunan under the name of Kinsha or " Goldensand," as the main river, the Chinese seem always to have regarded the former as the true Kiang; as may be seen in Ritter (IV. 650) and Martini The latter describes the city as quite insulated by the ramifications of the river, from which chan- nels and canals pass all about it, adorned with many quays and bridges of stone.
The numerous channels in reuniting form two rivers, one the Min, and the other the To-Kiang, which also joins the Yangtsz^ at Lu-chau.
Note 8. — (G. T.) "^/ est le couiereque dou Grant Sire, ce est cilz qe recevent la rente dou Seignor^ Pauthier has couvert. Both are, I doubt not, misreadings or misunderstandings of comereque or comerc. This word, founded on the Latin commerciumy was widely spread over the East with the meaning of customs-duty or custom-house. In Low Greek it appeared as KOfifi€pKiov and KovfUpKwvy now Ko/AipKi ; in Arabic and Turkish as o^ and JEI^ (kumruk and gyumruk), still in use; in Romance dialects as comerchiOy comerho, comergio, &c.
Note 4. — ^The word in Pauthier's text which I have rendered pieces of gold xspoiSy probably equivalent to saggi or miskdis* The G. T. has
* I find the same expression applied to the mis]^41 or dindr in a MS. letter written by Giovanni delP AfTaitado, Venetian Agent at Lisbon in 1503, communicated to me by Signor Berchet. The King of Melinda was to pay to Portugal a tribute of 1500 pesi d'oroj ** che un peso val un ducato e un quarto."
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Chap. XLV. THE PROVINCE OF TEBET. 33
" is well worth 1000 bezants of gold," no doubt meaning daily ^ though not saying so. Ramusio has " 100 bezants daily." The term Bezant may be taken as synonymous with Dindr^ and the statement in the text would make the daily receipt of custom upwards of 500/., that in Ramusio upwards of 50/. only.
Note 5. — I have recast this passage which has got muddled, pro- bably in the original dictation, for it runs in the G. text : " Et de ceste cit^ se part Ten et chevauche cinq jbm^e por plain et por val^e, et treve- Ten castiaus et casaus assez. Les homes vivent dou profit qu*il traient de la terre. II hi a bestes sauvajes assez, lions et orses et autres bestes. II vivmt (Tars : car il hi se laborent des biaus sendal et autres dras, II sunt de Sindu meisme" I take it that in speaking of Chingtufu, Marco has forgotten to fill up his usual formula as to the occupation of tlie inhabitants ; he is reminded of this when he speaks of the occupation of the peasantry on the way to Tibet, and reverts to the citizens in the words which I have quoted in Italics. We see here Sindu applied to the city, suggesting Sindu-fu for the reading at the beginning of the chapter.
Silk is a large item in the produce and trade of Szechwan; and through extensive quarters of Chingtu-fii, in every house, the spinning, dying, weaving, and embroidering of silk give occupation to the people. And though a good deal is exported, much is consumed in the provmce, for the people are very much given to costly apparel. Thus silk goods are very conspicuous in the shops of the capital {Richthofen),
CHAPTER XLV. Concerning the Province of Tebet.
After those five days' march that I spoke of, you enter a province which has been sorely ravaged ; and this was done in the wars of Mongu Kaan. There are indeed towns and villages and hamlets, but all harried and destroyed.'
In this region you find quantities of canes, full three palms in girth and fifteen paces in length, with some three pabns' interval between the joints. And let me tell you that merchants and other travellers through that country are wont at nightfall to gather these canes and make fires of them ; for as they burn they make such loud reports
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that the lions and bears and other wild beasts are greatly frightened, and make off as fast as possible ; in fact nothing will induce them to come nigh a fire of that sort. So you see the travellers make those fires to protect themselves and their cattle from the wild beasts which have so greatly multiplied since the devastation of the country. And 'tis this great multiplication of the wild beasts that prevents the country from being reoccupied. In fact but for the help of these canes, which make such a noise in burning that the beasts are terrified and kept at a distance, no one would be able even to travel through the land.
I will tell you how it is that the canes make such a noise. The people cut the green canes, of which there are vast numbers, and set fire to a heap of them at once. After they have been awhile burning they burst asunder, and this makes such a loud report that you might hear it ten miles off^ In fact, any one unused to this noise, who should hear it unexpectedly, might easily go into a swound or die of fright. But those who are used to it care nothing about it. Hence those who are not used to it stuff their ears well with cotton, and wrap up their heads and faces with all the clothes they can muster ; and so they get along until they have become used to the sound. 'Tis just the same with horses. Those which are unused to these noises are so alarmed by them that they break away from their halters and heel-ropes, and many a man has lost his beasts in this way. So those who would avoid losing their horses take care to tie all four legs and peg the ropes down strongly, and to wrap the heads and eyes and ears of the animals closely, and so they save them. But horses also, when they have heard the noise several times, cease to mind it. I tell you the truth, however, when I say that the first time you hear it nothing can be more alarming. And yet, in spite of all, the lions and bears and other wild beasts will sometimes come and do much mischief; for their numbers are great in those tracts.^
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Chap. XLV. STRANGE MARRIAGE CUSTOM. 35
You ride for 20 days without finding any inhabited spt, so that travellers are obliged to carry all their pro- visions with them, and are constantly falling in with those wild beasts which are so numerous and so dangerous. After that you come at length to a tract where there are towns and villages in considerable numbers.^ The people of those towns have a strange custom in regard to marriage which 1 will now relate.
No man of that country would on any consideration take to wife a girl who was a maid ; for they say a wife is nothing worth unless she has been used to consort with men. And their custom is this, that when travellers come that way, the old women of the place get ready, and take their unmarried daughters or other girls related to them, and go to the strangers who are passing, and make over the young women to whomsoever will accept them ; and the travellers take them accordingly and do their pleasure ; after which the girls are restored to the old women who brought them, for they are not allowed to follow the strangers away from their home. In this manner people travelling that way, when they reach a village or hamlet or other inhabited place, shall find perhaps 20 or 30 girls at their disposal. And if the travellers lodge with those people they shall have as many young women as they could wish coming to court them ! You must know too that the tra- veller is expected to give the girl who has been with him a ring or some other trifle, something in fact that she can show as a lover's token when she comes to be married. And it is for this in truth and for this alone that they follow that custom ; for every girl is expected to obtain at least 20 such tokens in the way I have described before she can be married. And those who have most tokens, and so can show they have been most run after, are in the highest esteem, and most sought in marriage, because they say the charms of such an one are greatest.^ But after marriage these people hold their wives very dear, and would consider
D 2
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chap.xlv. people of tebet. 37
it a great villainy for a man to meddle with another's wife ; and thus though the wives have before marriage acted as you have heard, they are kept with great care from light conduct afterwards.
Now I have related to you this marriage custom as a good story to tell, and to show what a fine country that is for young fellows to go to !
The people are Idolaters and an evil generation, holding it no sin to rob and maltreat : in fact, they are the greatest brigands on earth. They live by the chase, as well as on their cattle and the fruits of the earth..
I should tell you also that in this country there are many of the animals that produce musk, which are called in the Tartar language Gudderi. Those rascals have great numbers of large and fine dogs, which are of great service in catching the musk-beasts, and so they procure great abundance of musk. They have none of the Great Kaan's paper money, but use salt instead of money. They are very poorly clad, for their clothes are only of the skins of beasts, and of canvas, and of buckram.^ They have a lan- guage of their own, and they are called Tebet. And this country of Tebet forms a very great province, of which I will give you a brief account.
Note 1. — The mountains that bound the splendid plain of Chingtu- fu on the west rise rapidly to a height of 12,000 feet and upwards. Just at the skirt of this mountain region, where the great road to Lhdsa enters it, lies the large and bustling city of Yachaufu, forming the key of the bill country, and the great entrepot of trade between Szechwan on the one side, and Tibet and Western Yunnan on the other. The present political boundary between China Proper and Tibet is to the west of Bathang and the Kinsha Kiang, but till the beginning of last century it lay much forther east, near Tafsianiu, or, as the Tibetans appear to call it, Tartsedo or TachindOy which a Chinese Itinerary given by Ritter makes to be 920 //, or 1 1 marches, from Chingtufu. In Marco's time we must suppose that Tibet was considered to extend several marches fiirther east stiU, or to the vicinity of Yachau.* Mr. Cooper's Journal
• Indeed Richthofen says that the boundary lay a few (German) miles west of Yachau, I see that Martini's map puts it (in the 17th century) 10 German geographical niiks, or about 46 statute miles, west of that city.
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38 MARCO POLO. Book II.
describes the country entered on the s^h march from Chingtu as very mountainous, many of the neighbouring peaks being capped with snow. And he describes the people as speaking a language mixed with Tibetan for some distance before reaching Tat'sianlu. Baron Richthofen also who, as we shall see, has thrown an entirely new light upon this part of Marco's itinerary, was exactly 5 days in travelling through a rich and populous country, from Chingtu to Yachau. {Rltter, IV. 190 seqq.; Cooper, pp. 164-173; Rkhthofeti in Verhandl. Ges.f.Erdk. zu Berlin,
1874, p. 35-)
Tibet was always reckoned as a part of the Empire of the Mongol Kaans in the period of their greatness, but it is not very clear how it came under subjection to them. No conquest of Tibet by their armies appears to be related by either the Mahomedan or the Chinese histo- rians. Yet it is alluded to by Piano Carpini, who ascribes the achieve- ment to an unnamed son of Chinghiz, and narrated by Sanang Setzen, who says that the King of Tibet submitted without fighting when Chin- ghiz invaded his country in the year of the Panther (1206). During the reign of Mangku Kaan, indeed, Uriangkadai, an eminent Mongol general, who had accompanied Prince Kublai in 1253 against Yunnan, did in the following year direct his arms against the Tibetans. But this campaign, that no doubt to which the text alludes as " the wars of Mangu Kaan," appears to have occupied only a part of one season, and was certainly confined to the parts of Tibet on the frontiers of Yunnan and Szechwan. Koeppen seems to consider it certain that there was no actual conquest of Tibet, and that Kublai extended his authority over it only by diplo- macy and the politic handling of the spiritual potentates who had for several generations in Tibet been the real rulers of the country. It is certain that Chinese history attributes the organization of civil adminis- tration in Tibet to Kublai. Mati Dhwaja, a young and able member of the family which held the hereditary primacy of the Satya convent, and occupied the most influential position in Tibet, was formally recognized by the Emperor as the head of the Lamaite Church and as the tributary Ruler of Tibet. He is the same person that we have already (voL i. p. 29) mentioned as the Passepa or Bdshpah Lama, the inventor of Kublai's official alphabet {Carpini, 658, 709 ; U Avezac, 564 ; S. Setzen, 89 ; H Ohsson, II. 317 ; Koeppen, II. 96 ; Amyot, XIV. 128.)
With the caution that Marco's Travels in Tibet were limited to the same mountainous country on the frontier of Szechwan, we defer further geographical comment till he brings us to Yunnan.
Note 2.— Marco exaggerates a litde about the bamboos ; but before gunpowder became familiar, no sharp explosive sounds of this kind were known to ordinary experience, and exaggeration was natural. I have been close to a bamboo jungle on fire. There was a great deal of noise comparable to musketry ; but the bamboos were not of the large kind here spoken of. The Hon. Robert Lindsay describing his elephant-
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Chap. XLV. PERSISTENCE OF STRANGE CUSTOMS. 39
catching in Silhet, says : " At night each man lights a fire at his post, and furnishes himself with a dozen joints of the large bamboo, one of which he occasionally throws into the fire, and the air it contains being rarefied by the heat, it explodes with a report as loud as a musket." {Lives of t/u Liftdsays, III. 191.)
Richthofen remarks that nowhere in China does the bamboo attain such a size as in this region. Bamboos of three palms in girth (28 to 30 inches) exist, but are not ordinary, I should suppose, even in Szechwan. In 1855 I took some pains to procure in Pegu a specimen of the largest attainable bamboo. It was ten inches in diameter.
Note 3. — M. Gabriel Durand, a missionary priest, thus describes his journey in 1861 to Kiangka, vid Tat'sianlu, a line of country partly coincident with that which Polo is traversing : " Every day we made a journey of nine or ten leagues, and halted for the night in a Kung-kuan. These are posts dotted at intervals of about ten leagues along the road to Hlassa, and usually guarded by three soldiers, though the more im- portant posts have twenty. With the exception of some Tibetan houses, few and far between, these are the only habitations to be seen on this silent and deserted road. . . . Lytang was the first collection of houses that we had seen in ten days' march." (Ann, de la Fropag. de la Foi, XXXV. 352 segq)
Note 4, — Such practices are ascribed to many nations. Martini quotes something similar from a Chinese author about tribes in Yunnan ; and Gamier says such loose practices are still ascribed to the Sifan near the southern elbow of the Kinsha Kiang. Even of the Mongols them- selves and kindred races, Pallas asserts that the young women regard a number of intrigues rather as a credit and recommendation than other- wise. Japanese ideas seem to be not very different. In old times ^lian gives much the same account of the Lydian women. Herodotus's Gin- danes of Lybia afford a perfect parallel, " whose women wear on their legs anklets of leather. Each lover that a woman has gives her one ; and she who can show most is the best esteemed, as she appears to have been loved by the greatest number of men." {Martini, 142 ; Gamier, I. 520; Fall, Samml. II. 235 ; j^l, Var, Hist III. i ; Rawl. Herod. Bk. IV. ch. clxxvi.)
Mr. Cooper's Journal, when on the banks of the Kinsha Kiang, west of Bathang, affords a startling illustration of the persistence of manners in this region: "At i2h. 30m. we arrived at a road-side house, near which was a grove of walnut-trees ; here we alighted, when to my sur- prise I was surrounded by a group of young girls and two elderly women,
who invited me to partake of a repast spread under the trees
I thought I had stumbled on a pic-nic party, of which the Tibetans are so fond Having finished, I lighted my pipe and threw myself on the grass in a state of castle-building. I had not lain thus many seconds when the maidens brought a young girl about 15 years old, tall and very
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40 MARCO POLO. Book IL
fair, placed her on the grass beside me, and forming a ring round us, commenced to sing and dance. The little maid beside me however was bathed in tears. All this, I must confess, a little puzzled me, when Philip (the Chinese servant) with a long face came to my aid, saying,
* will, Sir, this is a bad business they are marrying you.^ Good
Heavens ! how startled I was." For the honourable conclusion of this Anglo-Tibetan idyll I must refer to Mr. Cooper's Journal (see the now published Travels^ chap. x.).
Note 5. — All this is clearly meant to apply only to the rude people towards the Chinese frontier ; nor would the Chinese (says Richthofen) at this day think the description at all exaggerated, as applied to the Lolo who occupy the mountains to the south of Yachauiu. The members of the group at p. 36, from Lieut Gamier's book, are there termed Mants^ ; but the context shows them to be of the race of these Lolos (see below, pp. 51, 52). The passage about the musk animal, both in Pauthier and in the G. T. ascribes the word Gudderi to the language "of that people," i, e. of the Tibetans. The Geog. Latin, however, has " linguii Tdttaricd,^^ and this is the fact. Klaproth informs us that Guderi\% the Mongol word.^ And it will be found (Kuderi) in Kovalevski's Dictionary, No. 2594. Musk is still the most valuable article that goes from Tat'sianlu to China. Much is smuggled, and single travellers will come all the way from Canton or Singanfu to take back a small load of it {Richthofen),
CHAPTER XLVI.
Further Discourse concerning Tebet.
This province, called Tebet, is of very great extent. The people, as I have told you, have a language of their own, and they are Idolaters, and they border on Manzi and sundry other regions. Moreover, they are very great thieves.
The country is, in fact, so great that it embraces eight kingdoms, and a vast number of cities and villages.' It contains in several quarters rivers and lakes, in which gold- dust is found in great abundance." Cinnamon also grows there in great plenty. Coral is in great demand in this country and fetches a high price, for they delight to hang it round the necks of their women and of their idols*^
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Chap. XLVI. PEOPLE OF TEBET. 41
They have also in this country plenty of fine woollens and other stuffs, and many kinds of spices are produced there which are never seen in our country.
Among this people, too, you find the best enchanters and astrologers that exist in all that quarter of the world ; they perform such extraordinary marvels and sorceries by diabolic art, that it astounds one to see or even hear of them. So I will relate none of them in this book of ours ; people would be amazed if they heard them, but it would serve no good purpose."*
Village of Eastern Tibet on Szechwan Frontier (from Cooper).
These people of Tebet are an ill-conditioned race. They have mastiff dogs as big as donkeys, which are capital at seizing wild beasts [and in particular the wild oxen which are called Beyamini^ very great and fierce animals]. They have also sundry other kinds of sporting dogs, and excellent lanner falcons [and sakers], swift in flight and well-trained, which are got in the mountains of the country.^
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42 MARCO POLO. BOOK II.
Now I have told you in brief all that is to be said about Tebet, and so we will leave it, and tell you about another province that is called Caindu.
As regards Tebet, however, you should understand that it is subject to the Great Kaan. So, likewise, all the other kingdoms, regions, and provinces which are described in this book are subject to the Great Kaan ; nay, even those other kingdoms, regions, and provinces of which I had occasion to speak at the beginning of the book as belong- ing to the son of Argon, the Lord of the Levant, are also subject to the Emperor ; for the former holds his dominion of the Kaan, and is his liegeman and kinsman of the blood Imperial. So you must know that from this province forward all the provinces mentioned in our book are sub- ject to the Great Kaan ; and even if this be not specially mentioned, you must understand that it is so.
Now let us have done with this matter, and I will tell you about the Province of Caindu.
Note 1. — ^Here Marco at least shows that he knew Tibet to be much more extensive than the small part of it that he had seen. But beyond this his information amounts to little.
Note 2.—" Or de paliolkr " Oro di pagliuola " {pagliuola, " a spangle ") must have been the technical phrase for what we call gold- dust, and the French now call or en paillettes^ a phrase used by a French missionary in speaking of this very region {Ann, dela Foi^ XXXVII. 427). Yet the only example of this use of the word cited in the Voc, Ital. Universale is from this passage of the Crusca MS. ; and Pipino seems not to have understood it, translating" aurum quoddicitur Deplaglola ;" whilst Zurla says erroneously that pajola is an old Italian word for gold. Pegolotti uses argento in pagliuola (p. 219). A Barcelona tariff of 127 1 sets so much on every mark of Pallola. And the old Portuguese navi- gators seem always to have used the same expression for the gold-dust of Africa, ouro de pajola. (See Major's Prince Henry, pp. iii, 112, 116; Capmany Memorias, &c., II. App. p. 73 ; also ** Aurum de Pajola," in Usodimare of Genoa, see Grdberg, Annali, II. 290, quoted by Peschel, p. 178.)
Note 3. — The cinnamon must have been the coarser cassia pro- duced in the lower parts of this region (see note to next chapter). We have already (Book I. ch. xxxi.) quoted Tavernier's testimony to the
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Roads in Eastern Tibet. (Gorge of the Lan t'sang Kiang, from Cooper.)
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44 MARCO POLO. Book II.
rage for coral among the Tibetans and kindred peoples. Mr. Cooper notices the eager demand for coral at Bathang : see also Desgodins^ La Mission du Thibet^ 310.
Note 4. — See supra^ Book I. chap. Ixi. note 9.
Note o. — The big Tibetan mastiffs are now well known. Mr. Cooper, at Tat'sianlu, notes that the people of Tibetan race " keep very large dogs, as large as Newfoundlands." And he mentions a pack of dogs of another breed, tan and black, " fine animals of the size of setters." The missionary M. Durand also, in a letter from the region in question, says, speaking of a large leopard : " Our brave watch-dogs had several times beaten him off gallantly, and one of them had even in single combat with him received a blow of the paw which had laid his skull open." {^Ann. de la Foi, XXXVII. 314.) On the title-page of vol. i. we have introduced one of these big Tibetan dogs as brought home by the Polos to Venice.
The **wild oxen called Beyamini^^ are probably some such species as the Gaur. Beyamini I suspect to be no Oriental word, but to stand for Buemini^ i.e. Bohemian, a name which may have been given by the Venetians to either the bison or urus. Polo's contemporary, Brunetto Latini, seems to speak of one of these as still existing in his day in Germany : " Autre buef naissent en Alemaigne qui ont grans cors, et sont bons por sommier et por vin porter." (Paris ed., p. 228 ; see also Lubbock^ Pre-historic Times ^ 296-7.)
CHAPTER XLVII.
Concerning the Province of Caindu.
Caindu is a province lying towards the west/ and there is only one king in it. The people are Idolaters, subject to the Great Kaan, and they have plenty of towns and villages. [The chief city is also called Caindu, and stands at the upper end of the province.] There is a lake here,* in which are found pearls [which are white but not round]. But the Great Kaan will not allow them to be fished, for if people were to take as many as they could find there, the supply would be so vast that pearls would lose their
♦ Ramusio alone has '* a great salt lake."
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chap.xlvi. evil customs of CAINDU. 45
value, and come to be worth nothing. Only when it is his pleasure they take from the lake so many as he may desire ; but any one attempting to take them on his own account would be incontinently put to death.
There is also a mountain in this country wherein they find a kind of stone called turquoise, in great abundance ; and it is a very beautiful stone. These also the Emperor does not allow to be extracted without his special order.'
I must tell you of a custom that they have in this country regarding their women. No man considers him- self wronged if a foreigner, or any other man, dishonour his wife, or daughter, or sister, or any woman of his family, but on the contrary- he deems such intercourse a piece of good fortune. And they say that it brings the favour of their gods and idols, and great increase of temporal prosperity. For this reason they bestow their wives on foreigners and other people as I will tell you.
When they fall in with any stranger in want of a lodging they are all eager to take him in. And as soon as he has taken up his quarters the master of the house goes forth, telling him to consider everything at his disposal, and after saymg so he proceeds to his vineyards or his fields, and comes back no more till the stranger has de- parted. The latter abides in the caitiffs house, be it three days or be it four, enjoying himself with the fellow's wife or daughter or sister, or whatsoever woman of the family it best likes him ; and as long as he abides there he leaves his hat or some other token hanging at the door, to let the master of the house know that he is still there. As long as the wretched fellow sees that token, he must not go in. And such is the custom over all that province.^
The money matters of the people are conducted in this way. They have gold in rods which they weigh, and they reckon its value by its weight in saggi^ but they have no coined money. Their small change again is made in this way. They have salt which they boil and set in a mould
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46 MARCO POLO. Book II.
,5
c
S3
H
S
3
I
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Chap. XLVI. PRODUCTS OF CAINDU. 47
[flat below and round above]/ and every piece from the mould weighs about half a pound. Now, 80 moulds of this salt are worth one saggio of fine gold, which is a weight so called. So this salt serves them for small change.^
The musk animals are very abundant in that country, and thus of musk also they have great store. They have likewise plenty of fish which they catch in the lake in which the pearls are produced. Wild animals, such as lions, bears, wolves, stags, bucks and roes, exist in great numbers; and there are also vast quantities of fowl of every kind. Wine of the vine they have none, but they make a wine of wheat and rice and sundry good spices, and very good drink it is.^ There grows also in this country a quantity of clove. The tree that bears it is a small one, with leaves like laurel but longer and narrower, and with a small white flower like the clove.^ They have also ginger and cinnamon in great plenty, besides other spices which never reach our countries, so we need say nothing about them.
Now we may leave this province, as we have told you all about it. But let me tell you first of this same country of Caindu that you ride through it ten days, constantly meeting with towns and villages, with people of the same description that I have mentioned. After riding those ten days you come to a river called Brius, which ter- minates the province of Caindu. In this river is found much gold-dust, and there is also much cinnamon on its banks. It flows to the Ocean Sea.
There is no more to be said about this river, so I will now tell you about another province called Carajan, as you shall hear in what follows.
Note 1. — Ramusio's version here enlarges : " Don't suppose from ray saying towards the west that these countries really lie in what we call the west, but only that we have been travelling from regions in the
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48 MARCO POLO. Book II.
east-north-east towards the west, and hence we speak of the countries we come to as lying towards the west."
Note 2. — Chinese authorities quoted by Ritter mention mother-c'- pearl as a product of Lithang, and speak of turquoises as found in Djaya to the west of Bathang. {Ritter^ IV. 235-6.) Neither of these places is however within the tract which we believe to be Caindu. Amyot states that pearls are found in a certain river of Yunnan. (See Trans. R, A, Soc. II. 91.)
Note 3. — This alleged practice, like that mentioned in the last chapter but one, is ascribed to a variety of people in different parts of the world. Both, indeed, have a curious double parallel in the story of two remote districts of the Himalaya which was told to Bemier by an old Kashmiri (see Amst. ed. II. 304-5). Polo has told nearly the same story already of the people of Kamul (Book I. eh. xli.). It is related by Strabo of the Massagetae ; by Eusebius of the Geli and the Bactrians ; by Elphinstone of the Hazaras ; by Mendoza of the Ladrone Islanders ; by other authors of the Nairs of Malabar, and of some of the aborigines of the Canary Islands. {Caubul^ I. 209; Mendoza, II. 254; Miiller^s Strabo, p. 439 ; Euseb. Fraep, Evan, vi. 10 ; Major's Pr, Henry ^ p. 213.)
Note 4. — Ramusio has here : " as big as a twopenny loaf,** and adds, " on the money so made the Prince's mark is printed ; and no one is allowed to make it except the royal officers. . . . And merchants take this currency and go to those tribes that dwell among the mountains of those parts in the wildest and most unfrequented quarters ; and there they get a saggio of gold for 60, or 50, or 40 pieces of this salt money, in proportion as the natives are more barbarous and more remote from towns and civilized folk. For in such positions they cannot dispose at pleasure of their gold and other things, such as musk and the like, for want of purchasers ; and so they give them cheap. . . . And the mer- chants travel also about the mountains and districts of Tebet, disposing of this salt money in like manner to their own great gain. For those people, besides buying necessaries from the merchants, want this salt to use in their food ; whilst in the towns only broken fragments are used in food, the whole cakes being kept to use as money." This exchange of salt cakes for gold forms a curious parallel to the like exchange in the heart of Africa, narrated by Cosmas in the 6th century, and by Aloisio Cadamosto in the 15th. (See Cathay, p. clxx-clxxi.) Ritter also calls attention to an analogous account in Alvarez's description of Ethiopia. ** The salt," Alvarez says, " is current as money, not only in the kingdom of Prester John, but also in those of the Moors and the pagans, and the people here say that it passes right on to Manicongo upon the Western Sea. This salt is dug from the mountain, it is said, in squared blocks. ... At the place where they are dug, 100 or 120 such pieces pass for a drachm of gold . . . equal to f of a ducat of
Digitized by
Chap. XLVII. SALT AS CURRENCY.. 49
gold. When they arrive at a certain fair . . . one day from the salt mine, these go 5 or 6 pieces fewer to the drachm. And so, from fair to fair, fewer and fewer, so that when they arrive at the capital there will be only 6 or 7 pieces to the drachm." {Ramusio, I. 207.) Lieut Bower, in his account of Major Sladen's mission, says that at Momien the salt, which was a government monopoly, was " made up in rolls of one and two viss " (a Rangoon viss is 3 lbs. 5 oz. 5^ drs.), " and stamped " (p. 120).
M. Desgodins, a missionary in this part of Tibet, gives some curious details of the way in which the civilized traders still prey upon the simple hill-folks of that quarter ; exactly as the Hindu Banyas prey upon the simple forest-tribes of India. He states one case in which the account for a pig had with interest run up to 2127 bushels of com ! {Ann. de la Foi, XXXVI. 320.)
Salt-pans in Yunnan (from Gamier).
" II prtnnent la «l t la font cutrt, tt puig la gitent en formt.'*
Gold is said still to be very plentiful in the mountains called Gulan- Sigong, to the N.W. of Yunnan, adjoining the great eastern branch of the Irawadi, and the Chinese traders go there to barter for it. (See / A. S. B. VI. 272.)
Note 5. — Salt is still an object highly coveted by the wild Lolos already alluded to, and to steal it is a chief aim of their constant raids
VOL. II. E
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50 MARCO POLO. Book II.
on Chinese villages {Richthofen in Verhandlungen^ &c., u. s. p. 36). On the continued existence of the use of salt currency in regions of the same frontier, I have been favoured with the following note by M. Francis Garnier, the distinguished leader of the expedition of the great Kamboja River in its latter part : " Salt currency has a very wide diffusion from Muang Yong [in the Burman-Shan country, about lat 21" 4'] to Sheu-pin [in Yunan, about lat 23° 43']. In the Shan markets, especially within the limits named, all purchases are made with salt At Seumao and Pouheul \Esmok and Puer of some of our maps], silver, weighed and cut in small pieces, is in our day tending to drive out the custom ; but in former days it must have been universal in the tract of which I am speaking. The salt itself, prime necessity as it is, has there to be extracted by condensation from saline springs of great depth, a very difficult affair. The operation consumes enormous quantities of fuel, and to this is partly due the denudation of the country." Marco's somewhat rude description of the process, " // prennmt la sel e la font aiire, et puis la gltent en forme" points to the manufacture spoken of in this note. The cut which we give from M. Garnier's work illustrates the process, but the cakes are vastly greater than Marco's. Instead of a half- pound they weigh a pikul^ Le, 133^ lbs. In Szechwan the brine wells are bored to a depth of 700 to 1000 feet ; and the brine is drawn up in bamboo tubes by a gin. In Yunnan the wells are much less deep, and a succession of hand pumps is used to raise the brine.
Note 6. — ^The spiced wine of Kienchang (see note to next chapter) has even now a high repute {Richthofen).
Note 7. — M. Pauthier will have it that Marco was here the discoverer of Assam tea. Assam is, indeed, far out of our range, but his notice of this plant, with the laurel-like leaf and white flower, was brought strongly to my recollection in reading Mr. Cooper's repeated notices, ahnost in this region, of the large-leaved tea-tree, with its white flowers ; and, again, of " the hills covered with tea-oil trees, all white with flowers." Still, one does not clearly see why Polo should give tea-trees the name of cloves.
Failing explanation of this, I should suppose that the cloves of which the text speaks were cassia-buds, an article once more prominent in commerce (as indeed were all similar aromatics) than now, but still tolerably well known. I was at once supplied with them at a droghtria^ in the city where I write (Palermo), on asking for Fiori di Canella^ the name under which they are mentioned repeatedly by Pegolotti and Uzzano, in the 14th and 15 th centuries. Friar Jordanus, in speaking of the cinnamon (or cassia) of Malabar, says, " it is the bark of a large tree which has fruit z.xid flowers like cloves " (p. 28). The cassia-buds have indeed a general resemblance to cloves, but they are shorter, lighter in colour, and not angular. The cinnamon, mentioned in the next lines as abundantly produced in the same region, was no doubt one of the inferior sorts called cassia-bark.
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chap.xlvii. cassia— ethnology. 51
Williams says : " Cassia grows in all the southern provinces of China, especially Kwangsi and Yunnan, also in Annam, Japan, and the Isles of the Archipelago. The wood, bark, buds, seeds, twigs, pods, leaves, oil, are aU objects of commerce. . . . The buds (kwei-t£) are the fleshy ovaries of the seeds ; they are pressed at one end, so that they bear some resemblance to cloves in shape.** Upwards of 500 piculs (about 30 tons), valued at 30 dollars each, are annually exported to Europe and India. {Chin. Commercial Guide^ 113-114.)
The only doubt as regards this explanation will probably be whether the cassia would be found at such a height as we may suppose to be that of the country in question above the sea-level. I know that cassia bark is gathered in the Kasia Hills of Eastern Bengal up to a height of about 4000 feet above the sea, and at least the valleys of " Caindu ** are probably not too elevated for this product Indeed, that of the Kinsha or BriuSy near where I suppose Polo to cross it, is only 2600 feet Positive evidence I cannot adduce. No cassia or cinna- mon was met with by M. Gamier's party where they intersected this region.
But in this 2nd edition I am able to state on the authority of Baron Richthofen that cassia is produced in the whole length of the valley of Kienchang (which is, as we shall see in the notes on next chapter, Caindu), though in no other part of Szechwan nor in northern Yunnan.
Ethnology, — The Chinese at Chingtufu, according to Richthofen, classify the aborigines of the Szechwan frontier as Mantsi^ Lolo, Si/any and Tibetan, Of these the Sifan are furthest north, and extend far into Tibet The Mants^ (properly so called) are regarded as the remnant of the ancient occupants of Szechwan, and now dwell in the mountains about the parallel 30^, and along the Lhisa road, Tat'sianlu being about the centre of their tract The Lolo are the wildest and most independent, occupying the mountains on the left of the Kinsha-Kiang where it runs northwards (see above p. 40, and below p. 57) and also to some extent on its right The Tibetan tribes lie to the west of the Mants^, and to the west of Kienchang (see next chapter).
Towards the Lantsang Kiang is the quasi-Tibetin tribe called by the Chinese MossoSy by the Tibetans GuionSy and between the Lantsang and the Ld-Kiang or Salwen are the LissuSy wild hill-robbers and great musk hunters, like those described by Polo at p. 37. Gamier, who gives these latter particulars, mentions that near the confluence of the Yalung and Kinsha Kiang there are tribes called Fa*iy as there are in the south of Yunnan, and, like the latter, of distinctly Shan or Laotian character. He also speaks of Sifan tribes in the vicinity of Likiang-fu, and coming south of the Kinsha-Kiang even to the east of Tali. Of these are told such loose tales as Polo tells of Tebet and Caindu,
These ethnological matters have to be handled cautiously, for there is great ambiguity in the nomenclature. Thus Mantse is often used
E 2
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52 MARCO POLO. BOOK II.
generically for aborigines, and the Lolos of Richthofen are called Mants^ by Garnier and Blakiston ; whilst Lolo again has in Yunnan apparently a very comprehensive generic meaning, and is so used by Gamier {Richt, Letter VIL 67-68 and MS. notes; Gamier^ I. 519 seqq.)
CHAPTER XLVIII. Concerning the Province of Carajan.
When you have passed that River you enter on the pro- vince of Carajan, which is so large that it includes seven kingdoms. It Ues towards the west ; the people are Idolaters, and they are subject to the Great Kaan. A son of his, however, is there as King of the country, by name Essen- TiMUR ; a very great and rich and puissant Prince ; and he well and justly rules his dominion, for he is a wise man and a valiant.
After leaving the river that I spoke of, you go five days' journey towards the west, meeting with numerous towns and villages. The country is one in which excellent horses are bred, and the people live by cattle and agricul- ture. They have a language of their own which is passing hard to understand. At the end of those five days' journey you come to the capital, which is called Yacht, a ver)^ great and noble city, in which are numerous merchants and craftsmen.'
The people are of sundry kinds, for there are not only Saracens and Idolaters, but also a few Nestorian Christians.' They havp wheat and rice in plenty. Howbeit they never eat wheaten bread, because in that country it is unwhole- some.^ Rice they eat, and make of it sundry messes, be- sides a kind of drink which is very clear and good, and makes a man drunk just as wine does.
Their money is such as I will tell you. They use for the purpose certain white porcelain shells that are found
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chap.xlviii. the province of CARAJAN. 53
in the sea, such as are sometimes put on dogs' collars; and 80 of these porcelain shells pass for a single weight of silver, equivalent to two Venice groats, /. e. 24 piccoli. Also eight such weights of silver count equal to one such weight of gold/
They have brine-wells in this country from which they make salt, and all the people of those parts make a Hving by this salt. The King, too, I can assure you, gets a great revenue from this salt/
There is a lake in this country of a good hundred miles in compass, in which are found great quantities of the best fish in the world ; fish of great size, and of all sorts.
They reckon it no matter for a man to have intimacy with another's wife, provided the woman be willing.
Let me tell you also that the people of that country eat their meat raw, whether it be of mutton, beef, buffalo, poultry, or any other kind. Thus the poor people will go to the shambles, and take the raw Uver as it comes from the carcase and cut it small, and put it in a sauce of garlic and spices, and so eat it ; and other meat in like manner, raw, just as we eat meat that is dressed.^
Now I will tell you about a further part of the Province of Carajan, of which I have been speaking.
Note 1. — We have now arrived at the great province of Carajan, the Karajang of the Mongols, which we know to be Yunnan, and at its capital Yachi, which — I was about to add — ^we know to be Yunnan-fu. But I find all the commentators make it something else. Rashiduddin, however, in his detail of the twelve Sings or provincial governments of China under the Mongols, thus speaks : " loth, Karajang. This used to be an independent kingdom, and the Sing is established at the great city of Yachi. All the inhabitants are Mahomedans. The chiefs are Noyan Takin and Yakdb Beg, son of *Ali Beg, the Beldch." And turning to Pauthier's corrected account of the same distribution of the empire from authentic Chinese sources (p. 334), we find : " 8. The adminis- trative province of Yunnan. ... Its capital, chief town also of the canton of the same name, was called C/iung-khing, now Yunnan-fu." Hence Yachi was Yunnan-fu. This is still a large city, having a rect- angular rampart with 6 gates, and a circuit of about 6^ miles. The
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54 MARCO POLO. Book II.
£ :
0 ;
i I
11
t 1
I
Digitized by
CHAP. XLVIII. ROUTE FROM CHINGTU TO YUNNAN. 55
suburbs were destroyed by the Mahomedan rebels. The most im- portant trade there now is in the metallic produce of the Province.
Yachi was perhaps an ancient corruption of the name YecheUy which the territory bore (according to Martini and Biot) under the Han ; but more probably Yecheu was a Chinese transformation of the real name Ycuhi, The Shans still call the city Muang Chi, which is perhaps another modification of the same name.
We have thus got Chingtu-fu as one fixed point, and Yunnan-fu as another, and we have to track the traveller's itinerary between the two, through what Ritter called with reason a terra incognita. What little was known till recently of this region came from the Catholic missionaries. Of late the veil has begun to be lifted ; the daring excursion of Francis Gamier and his party in 1868 intersected the tract towards the south ; Mr. T. T. Cooper crossed it further north, by Tat'sianlu, Lithang and Bathang ; Baron v. Richthofen in 1872 had penetrated several marches towards the heart of the mystery, when an unfortunate mishap compelled his return, but he brought back with him much precious information.
Five days forward from Chingtu-fu brought us on Tibetan ground. Five days backward from Yunnan-fu should bring us to the River Brius, with its gold-dust and the frontier of Caindu. Wanting a local scale for a distance of five days, I find that our next point in advance, Marco's city of Carajan, undisputedly Tali-fUy is said by him to be ten days from YachL The direct distance between the cities of Yunnan and Tali I find by measurement on Keith Johnston's map to be 133 Italian miles. Taking half this as radius, the compasses, swept from Yunnan-fu as centre, intersect near its most southerly elbow the great upper branch of the Kiang, the Kin-sha Kiang of the Chinese, or " River of the Golden Sands," the Murus Ussu and Brichu of the Mongols and Tibetans, and manifestly the auriferous Brius of our traveller. Hence also the country north of this elbow is Caindu.
I leave the preceding paragraph as it stood in the first edition, because it shows how near the true position of Caindu these unaided deductions from our author's data had carried me. That paragraph was followed by an erroneous hypothesis as to the intermediate part of that journey, but, thanks to the new light shed by Baron Richthofen, we are enabled now to lay down the whole itinerary from Chingtu-fu to Yunnan-fu with confidence in its accuracy.
The Kinsha Kiang or Upper course of the Great Yangtsze, descend- ing from Tibet to Yunnan, forms the great bight or elbow to which allusion has just been made, and which has been a feature known to geographers ever since the publication of D'Anville's atlas. The tract enclosed in. this elbow is cut in two by another great Tibetan River, the Yarlung, or Yalung-Kiang, which joins the Kinsha not far from the middle of the great bight ; and this Yalung, just before the confluence, receives on the left a stream of inferior calibre, the Nganning-Ho, which
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56 MARCO POLO. Book II.
Road dc!>ccnding from the Table-Land of Vunnan, into the Valley of the Kin:>ha Kiang'(the Brims of I\>lo\
(After Gamier.)
Digitized by
Chap. XLVIII. TRUE POSITION OF CAINDU. 57
also flows in a valley parallel to the meridian, like all that singular /w^/V of great rivers between Assam and Szechwan.
This River Nganning waters a valley called Kienchang, containing near its northern end a city known by the same name, but in our modem maps marked as Ningyuen-fu ; this last being the name of a department of which it is the capital, and which embraces much more than the valley of Kienchang. The town appears, however, as Kien- chang in the Atlas Sinensis of Martini, and as Kienchang-ouei in lyAnville. This remarkable valley, imbedded as it were in a wilderness of rugged highlands and wild races, accessible only by two or three long and difficult routes, rejoices in a warm climate, a most productive soil, scenery that seems to excite enthusiasm even in Chinamen, and a population noted for amiable temper. Towns and villages are numerous. The people are said to be descended from Chinese immigrants, but their features have litde of the Chinese type, and they have probably a large infusion of aboriginal blood.
This valley is bounded on the east by the mountain country of the Lolos, which extends north nearly to Yachau {supra pp. 37, 40, 51), and which, owing to the fierce intractable character of the race, fonns throughout its whole length an impenetrable barrier between East and West Two routes run from Chingtufu to Yunnan ; these fork at Yachau and thenceforward are entirely separated by this barrier. To the east of it is the route which descends the Min River to Siuchau, and then passes by Chaotong and Tongchuan to Yunnanfu : to the west of the barrier is a route leading through Kienchang to Talifu, but throwing oflf a branch from Ningyuan southward in the direction of Yunnanfu.
This road from Chingtufu to Tali by Yachau and Ningyuan appears to be that by which the greater part of the goods for Bham6 and Ava used to travel before the recent Mahomedan rebellion ; it is almost certainly the road by which Kublai, in 1253, during the reign of his brother Mangku Kaan, advanced to the conquest of Tali, then the head of an independent kingdom in Western Yunnan. As far as Tsingki- hian, 3 marches beyond Yachau, this route coincides with the great Tibet road by Tat'sianlu and Bathang to L*hdsa, and then it diverges to the left.
We may now say without hesitation that by this road Marco travelled. His Tibet commences with the mountain region near Yachau ; his 20 days' journey through a devastated and dispeopled tract is the journey to Ningyuanfu. Even now, from Tsingki onwards for several days, not a single inhabited place is seen. The official route from Yachau to Ningyuan lays down 13 stages, but it generally takes from 15 to 18 days. Polo, whose journeys seem often to have been shorter than the modem average,* took 20. On descending from the
* Baron Richthofcn, who has travelled hundreds of miles in his footsteps, con- siders his allowance of time to be generally from J to j greater than that now usual.
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58 MARCO POLO. Book II.
highlands he comes once more into a populated region, and enters the charming Valley of Kienchang. This valley with its capital near the upper extremity, its numerous towns and villages, its cassia, its spiced wine, and its termination southward on the River of the Golden Sands, is Caindu. The traveller's road from Ningyuan to Yunnanfu probably lay through Hwei-li, and the Kinsha-Kiang would be crossed as already indicated, near its most southerly bend, and almost due north of Yunnan- fu (see Richthofen as quoted at p. 38).
As regards the nameoi Caindu or Gheindu (as in G. T.), I think we may safely recognise in the last syllable the do which is so frequent a termination of Tibetan names (Amdo, Tsiamdo, &c.) ; whilst the Gzw, as Baron Richthofen has pointed out, probably survives in the first part of the name ^/Vwchang.
Turning to minor particulars, the Lake of Caindu in which the pearls were found is doubtless one lying near Ningyuan, whose beauty Richthofen heard greatly extolled, though nothing of the pearls. A small lake is marked by D'Anville, close to Kienchang, under the name of Gechoui-tang, The large quantities of gold derived firom the Kinsha- Kiang, and the abundance of musk in that vicinity, are testified to by Martini. The Lake mentioned by Polo as existing in the territory of Yachi is no doubt the Tien-chi^ the Great Lake on the shore of which the city of Yunnan stands, and from which boats make their way by canals along the walls and streets. Its circumference according to Martini is 500 //, The cut (p. 54), from Gamier, shows this lake as seen from a villa on its banks.
Returning now to the Karijang of the Mongols, or Carajan as Polo writes it, we shall find that the latter distinguishes this great province, which formerly, he says, included seven kingdoms, into two Mongol Governments, the seat of one being at Yachi, which we have seen to be Yunnanfu, and that of the other at a city to which he gives the name of the Province, and which we shall find to be the existing Talifu. Great confusion has been created in most of the editions by a distinction in the form of the name as applied to these two governments. Thus Ramusio prints the province under Yachi as Carajan, and that under Tali as Carazan, whilst Marsden, following out his system for the con- version of Ramusio's orthography, makes the former Karaian and the latter Karazan, Pauthier prints Caraian all through, a fact so far valuable as showing that his texts make no distinction between the names of the two governments, but the form impedes the recognition of the old Mongol nomenclature. I have no doubt that the name all through should be read Carajan, and on this I have acted. In the Geog. Text we find the name given at the end of chapter xlvii. Caragian^ in ch. xlviii. as Carajan, in ch. xlix. as Caraian, thus just reversing the distinction made by Marsden. The Crusca has Charagia{n) all through.
The name then was Kard-jdng, in which the first element was the
Digitized by
Chap. XLVIII. NESTORIANS, ETC., IN YUNNAN. 59
Mongol or Turki Kdrd, " Black." For we find in another passage of Rashid the following information :* — * To the south-west of Cathay is the country called by the Chinese Dailiu or " Great Realm," and by the Mongols Kardjdng^ in the language of India and Kashmir Kandar^ and by us Kandahdr. This country, which is of vast extent, is bounded on one side by Tibet and Tangut, and on others by Mongolia, Cathay, and the country of the Gold-Teeth. The King of Karajang uses the title of Mahdrd^ i,e. Great King. The capital is called Yachi, and there the council of administration is established. Among the inhabitants of this country some are black, and others are white ; these latter are called by the Mongols Chaghdn-Jdng ("White Jang").* Jang has not been explained ; but probably it may have been a Tibetan term adopted by the Mongols, and the colours may have applied to their clothing. The dominant race at the Mongol invasion seem to have been Shans ; \ and black jackets are the characteristic dress of the Shans whom one sees in Burma in modern times. The Kara-jang and Chaghan-jang appear to correspond also to the U'tnan and Pe-man^ or Black Barbarians and White Barbarians, who are mentioned by Chinese authorities as conquered by the Mongols. It would seem from one of Pauthier's Chinese quotations (p. 388), that the Chaghan-jang were found in the vicinity of Likiangfu. {UOhsson^ II. 317 ; y. R, Geog, Soc, III. 294.)
Regarding Rashiduddin*s application of the name Kandahdr or Gandhdra to Yunnan, and curious points connected therewith, I must refer to a paper of mine in the J. R. A. Society (n. s. IV. 356). But I may mention that in the ecclesiastical translation of the classical localities of Indian Buddhism to Indo-China, which is current in Burma, Yunnan represents Gandh'ira,J and is still so styled in state documents {GanddlaAt),
What has been said of the supposed name Caraian, disposes, I trust, of the fancies which have connected the origin of the Karens of Burma with it More groundless still is M. Pauthier*s deduction of the Talains of Pegu (as the Burmese call them) from the people of Tali, who fled from Kublai's invasion.
Note 2. — The existence of Nestorians in this remote province is very notable ; and also the early prevalence of Mahomedanism, which Rashid- uddin intimates in stronger terms. " All the inhabitants of Yachi," he says, " are Mahomedans." This was no doubt an exaggeration, but the
* See Quatremhr^s Rashiduddin^ p. lxxxvi.-xcvi. My quotation is made up from tuM> citations by Quatrem^re, one from his text of Rashiduddin, and the other from the HLstory of Benaketi, which Quatremire shows to have been drawn from Rashiduddin, whibt it contains some particulars not existing in his own text of that author.
t The title Chao in Nan-Chao [infra p. 65) is said by a Chinese author (Pauthier, p. 391) to signify King in the language of those barbarians. This is evidently the Chao which forms an essential part of the title of all Siamese and Shan princes.
\ Gandhdra^ Arabice Kandahar^ is properly the country about Peshawar, Gandarilis of Strabo.
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6o MARCO POLO. Book II.
Mahomedans seem always to have continued to be an important body in Yunnan up to our own day. In 1855 began their revolt against the imperial authority, which for a time resulted in the establishment of their independence in Western Yunnan under a chief whom they called Sultan Suleiman. A proclamation in remarkably good Arabic, announcing the inauguration of his reign, appears to have been circulated to Mahomedans in foreign states, and a copy of it some years ago found its way through the Nepalese agent at Uhasa, into the hands of Colonel Ramsay, the British Resident at Katmandu.*
Note 3. — ^Wheat grows as low as Ava, but there also it is not used by natives for bread, only for confectionary and the like. The same is the case in Eastern China (see ch. xxvi. note 4, and Middle Kingdom^
n. 43)-
/
A Saracen of Carajan, being a portrait of a Mahomedan Mullah in Western Yunnan (from Gamier's Work).
'* Ees sunt ties plosors mamorts, car il f)t a jnui qe ootent fEoomrt.''
Note 4. — The word piccoli is supplied, doubtfully, in lieu of an unknown symbol. If correct, then we should read ** 24 piccoli eachl'ioi this was about the equivalent of a grosso. This is the first time Polo mentions cowries, which he calls porcellanu This might have been rendered by the corresponding vernacular name " Pig-shells,^' applied to certain shells of that genus {Cypraea) in some parts of England. It is worthy of note that as the name porcellana has been transferred from
♦ This is printed almost in full in the French Voyage d" Exploration^ I. 564.
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Chap. XLVIII. COWRY CURRENCY. 6l
these shells to China-ware, so the word pig has been in Scotland applied to crockery ; whether the process has been analogous I cannot say.
Klaproth states that Yunnan is the only country of China in which cowries had continued in use, though in ancient times they were more generally diffused. According to him 80 cowries were equivalent to 6 cash^ or a halfpenny. About 1780 in Eastern Bengal 80 cowries were worth f of a penny, and some 40 years ago, when Prinsep compiled his tables in Calcutta (where cowries were still in use a few years ago, if they are not now), 80 cowries were worth -j^ of a penny.
At the time of the Mahomedan conquest of Bengal, early in the 13th century, they found the currency exclusively composed of cowries, aided perhaps by bullion in large transactions, but with no coined money. In remote districts this continued to modern times. "When the Hon. Robert Lindsay went as Resident and Collector to Silhet about 1778, cowries constituted nearly the whole currency of the Province. The yearly revenue amounted to 250,000 rupees, and this was entirely paid in cowries at the rate of 5120 to the rupee. It required large warehouses to contain them, and when the year's collection was complete a large fleet of boats to transport them to Dacca. Before Lindsay's time it had been the custom to count the whole before embarking them ! Down to 1 80 1 the Silhet revenue was entirely collected in cowries, but by 1813 the whole was realized in specie. (Thomas^ in J, JR. A, S, n. s. II. 147 ; Lives of the Lindsays y III. 169, 170.)
Klaproth's statement has ceased to be correct Lieut Gamier found cowries nowhere in use north of Luang Prabang ; and among the Kak- hyens in western Yunnan these shells are used only for ornament
Note 6. — See chap, xlvil note 4. Martini speaks of a great brine- well to the N.E. of Yaogan (W.N.W. of the city of Yunnan), which supplied the whole country round.
Note 6. — Two particulars appearing in these latter paragraphs are alluded to by Rashiduddin in giving a brief account of the overland route from India to China, which is unfortunately very obscure : ** Thence you arrive at the borders of Tibet, where they eat ratv meat and worship images, and have no shame respecting their wives, ** (Elliot^ I. p. 73.)
CHAPTER XLIX.
Concerning a further part of the Province of Carajan.
After leaving that city of Yachi of which I have been speaking, and travelling ten days towards the west, you come to another capital city which is still in the province
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of Carajan, and is itself called Carajan. The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan ; and the King is CoGACHiN, who is a son of the Great Kaan.'
In this country gold-dust is found in great quantities; that is to say in the rivers and lakes, whilst in the moun- tains gold is also found in pieces of larger size. Gold is indeed so abundant that they give one saggio of gold for only six of the same weight in silver. And for small change they use the porcelain shells as I mentioned before. These are not found in the country, however, but are brought from India.
In this province are found snakes and great serpents of such vast size as to strike fear into those who see them, and so hideous that the very account of them must excite the wonder of those to hear it. I will tell you how long and big they are.
You may be assured that some of them are ten paces in length ; some are more and some less. And in bulk they are equal to a great cask, for the bigger ones are about ten palms in girth. They have two forelegs near the head, but for foot nothing but a claw like the claw of a hawk or that of a lion. The head is very big, and the eyes are bigger than a great loaf of bread. The mouth is large enough to swallow a man whole, and is garnished with great [pointed] teeth. And in short they are so fierce-looking and so hideously ugly, that every man and beast must stand in fear and trembling of them. There are also smaller ones, such as of eight paces long, and of five, and of one pace only.
The way in which they are caught is this. You must know that by day they live underground because of the great heat, and in the night they go out to feed, and devour every animal they can catch. They go also to drink at the rivers and lakes and springs. And their weight is so great that when they travel in search of food or drink, as they do by night, the tail makes a great furrow in the
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Chap. XLIX. SERPENT TRAPPING. 63
soil as if a full tun of liquor had been dragged along. Now the huntsmen who go after them take them by a certain gyn which they set in the track over which the serpent has past, knowing that the beast will come back the same way. They plant a stake deep in the ground and fix on the head of this a sharp blade of steel made like a razor or a lance-point, and then they cover the whole with sand so that the serpent cannot see it. Indeed the hunts- man plants several such stakes and blades on the track. On coming to the spot the beast strikes against the iron blade with such force that it enters his breast and rives him up to the navel, so that he dies on the spot [and the crows on seeing the brute dead begin to caw, and then the huntsmen know that the serpent is dead and come in search of him].
This then is the way these beasts are taken. Those who take them proceed to extract the gall from the inside, and this sells at a great price; for you must know it furnishes the material for a most precious medicine. Thus if a person is bitten by a mad dog, and they give him but a small penn3rweight of this medicine to drink, he is cured in a moment. Again if a woman is hard in labour they give her just such another dose and she is delivered at once. Yet again if one has any disease like the itch, or it may be worse, and applies a small quantity of this gall he' shall speedily be cured. So you see why it sells at such a high price.
They also sell the flesh of this serpent, for it is excellent eating, and the people are very fond of it. And when these serpents are very hungry, sometimes they will seek out the lairs of lions or bears or other large wild beasts, and devour their cubs, without the sire and dam being able to prevent it. Indeed if they catch the big ones themselves they devour them too ; they can make no resistance.'
In this province also are bred large and excellent horses which are taken to India for sale. And you must know
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64 MARCO POLO. Book II.
that the people dock two or three joints of the tail from their horses, to prevent them from flipping their riders, a thing which they consider very unseemly. They ride long like Frenchmen, and wear armour of boiled leather, and carry spears and shields and arblasts, and all their quarrels are poisoned.^ [And I was told as a fact that
many persons, especially those meditating mischief, constantly carry this poison about with them, so that if by any chance they should be taken, and be threatened with torture, to avoid this they swallow the poison and so die speedily. But princes who are aware of this keep
" Riding lung like Frenchmen." ii»i i*ii
ready dog s dung, which they **£t encore sariiuqt carte gens cFjr- i • • > • i
baucfient lone come frandjofe." ^^^^^e the cnminal mstandy
to swallow, to make him vomit the poison. And thus they manage to cure those scoundrels.]
I will tell you of a wicked thing they used to do before the Great Kaan conquered them. If it chanced that a man of fine person or noble birth, or some other quality that recommended him, came to lodge with those people, then they would murder him by poison, or otherwise. And this they did, not for the sake of plunder, but because they believed that in this way the goodly favour and wisdom and repute of the murdered man would cleave to the house where he was slain. And in this manner many were mur- dered before the country was conquered by the Great Kaan. But since his conquest, some 35 years ago, these crimes and this evil practice have prevailed no more ; and this through dread of the Great Kaan who will not permit such things.-^
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Chap. XLIX. THE CITY OF TALI-FU. 65
Note 1.— There can be no doubt that this second chief city of Carajan, is Tali-fu, which was the capital of the Shan Kingdom called by the Chinese Nan-Chao. This kingdom had subsisted in Yunnan since 738, and probably had embraced the upper part of the Irawadi Valley. For the Chinese tell us it was also called Maung, and it pro- bably was identical with the Shan Kingdom of Muang Maorong or of Pongj of which Capt Pemberton procured a Chronicle. The city of Tali was taken by Kublai in 1253-4. The circumstance that it was known to the invaders (as appears from Polo*s statement) by the name of the province is an indication of the fact that it was the capital of Carajan before the conquest. The distance from Yachi to this city of Karajang is ten days, and this corresponds well with the distance from Yunnan-fu to Tali-fu. For we find that, of the three Burmese Embassies whose itineraries are given by Bumey, one makes 7 marches between those cities, specifying 2 of them as double marches, therefore equal to 9, whilst the other two make 11 marches; Richthofen's information gives 1 2. Tali-fu is a small old city overlooking its large lake (about 24 HL long by 6 wide), and an extensive plain devoid of trees. Lofty mountains rise on the south side of the city. The Lake appears to communicate with the Mekong, and the story goes, no doubt fabulous, that boats have come up to Tali from the Ocean.
Tali-fu was recently the capital of Sultan Suleiman. It was reached by Lieut Gamier in a daring detour by the north of Yunnan, but his party were obliged to leave in haste on the second day after their arrival. The city was captured by the Imperial officers in the spring of 1873, when a horrid massacre of the Mussulmans took place. The Sultan took poison, but his head was cut off and sent to Peking. Momien fell soon after, and the Panthe kingdom is ended.
We see that Polo says the King ruling for Kublai at this city was a son of the Kaan, called Cogachin, whilst he told us in the last chapter that the King reigning at Yachi was also a son of the Kaan, called Essen- TiMUR. It is probably a mere lapsus or error of dictation calling the latter a son of the Kaan, for in chap, li infra, this prince is correctly described as the Kaan's grandson. Rashiduddin tells us that Kublai had given his son Hukaji (or perhaps Hogdchi, i,e. Cogachin) the govern- ment of Karajang, and that after the death of this Prince the government was continued to his son Isentimur. Klaproth gives the date of the latter's nomination from the Chinese Annals as 1280. It is not easy to reconcile Marco's statements perfectly with a knowledge of these facts ; but we may suppose that, in speaking of Cogachin as ruling at Karajang (or Tali-fu) and Esentimur at Yachi, he describes things as they stood when his visit occurred, whilst in the second reference to "Sentemur's" being King in the province and his father dead, he spealcs from later knowledge. This interpretation would confirm what has been already deduced from other circumstances, that his visit to Yunnan was prior to 1280. {Pcmbertotis Report on the Eastern
VOL. n. F
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66 MARCO POLO. Book II.
J^^ontUr, 1 08 seqg.; Quat. RasMd, p. Ixxxix-xc; Journ. Asiat, ser. 2, vol. i.)
Note 2. — It cannot be doubted that Marco's serpents here are croco- diles, in spite of his strange mistakes about their havmg only two feet and one claw on each, and his imperfect knowledge of their aquatic habits. He may have seen only a mutilated specimen. But there is no mistaking the hideous ferocity of the countenance, and the " eyes bigger than a fourpenny loaf," as Ramusio has it Though the actual eye of the croco- dile does not bear this comparison, the prominent orbits do, especially in the case of the Ghariydl of the Ganges, and form one of the most repulsive features of the reptile's physiognomy. In fact its presence on the surface of an Indian river is often recognizable only by three dark knobs rising above the surface, viz. the snout and the two orbits. And there is some foundation for what our author says of the animal's habits, for the crocodile does sometimes frequent holes at a distance from water, of which a striking instance is within my own recollection (in which the deep furrowed track also was a notable circumstance).
The Cochin Chinese are very fond of crocodile's flesh, and there is or was a regular export of this dainty for their use from Kamboja. I have known it eaten by certain classes in India. (/. R, G, S, XXX. 193.)
The term serpent is applied by many old writers to crocodiles and the like, e.g. by Odoric, and perhaps allusively by Shakspeare (" Wheris my Serpent of Old Nilei''). Mr. Fergusson tells me he was once much struck with the snake-like motion of a group of crocodiles hastily descend- ing to the water from a high sand-bank, without apparent use of the limbs, when surprised by the approach of a boat.*
Matthioli says the gall of the crocodile surpasses all medicines for the removal of pustules and the like from the eyes. Vincent of Beauvais mentions the same, besides many other medical uses of the reptile's car- case, including a very unsavoury cosmetic. {Matt. p. 245 ; Spec, Natur. Lib. XVII. c. 106, 108).
Note 3. — I think the great horses must be an error, though running through all the texts, and that grant quantite de chevaus was probably intended. Valuable ponies are produced in those regions, but I have never heard of large horses, and Martini's testimony is to like effect (p. 141). Nor can I hear of any race in those regions in modem times that uses what we should call long stirrups. It is true that the Tartars rode very short — " brevissimas habent strepas,'* as Carpini says (643) j
♦ Though the bellowing of certain American crocodiles is often spoken of, I have nowhere seen allusion to the roaring of the ghariydl^ nor does it seem to be com- monly known. I have once only heard it, whibt on the bank of the Ganges near Rampur Boliah, waiting for a ferry-boat It was like a loud prolonged snore ; and though it seemed to come distinctly from a crocodile on the surface of the river, I made sure by asking a boatman who stood by : '*It is the ghariyiU speaking,*' he answered.
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Chap. XLIX. STRANGE SUPERSTITION AND ANALOGIES. 67
and the Kiighiz Kazaks now do the same. Both Burmese and Shans ride what we should call short; and Major Sladen observes of the people on the western border of Yunnan : " Kachyens and Shans ride on ordinary Chinese saddles. The stirrups are of the usual average length, but the saddles are so constructed as to rise at least a foot above the pony's back." He adds ^ith reference to another point in the text : " I noticed a few Shan ponies with docked tails. But the more general practice is to loop up the tail in a knot, the object being to protect the rider, or rather his clothes, from the dirt with which they would other- wise be spattered from the flipping of the animal's tail." {MS, Notes,) Annour of boiled leather — " armes cuiracks de cuir bouilli ;^ so Pau- thiefs text ; the material so often mentioned in medieval costume ; e,g, in the leggings of Sir Thopas : —
*• His jambeux were of cuirbouly, His swerdes sheth of ivory, His helme of latoun bright'*
But the reading of the G. Text which is " cuir de bufaly is probably the right one. Some of the Miauts^ of Kweichau are described as wearing annour of buffalo-leather overlaid with iron plates (RitteVy IV. 768-776). Arblasts or crossbows are still characteristic weapons of many of the wilder tribes of this region ; e,g, of some of the Singphos, of the Mishmis of Upper Assam, of the Lutze of the valley of the Lukiang, of tribes of the hills of Laos, of the Stiens of Cambodia, and of several of the Miauts^ tribes of the interior of China. We give a cut copied from a Chinese work on the Miauts^ of Kweichau in Dr. Lockhart's possession, which shows thra little men of the Sang-Miau tribe of Kweichau combining to bend a crossbow, and a chief with cu^mes cuiracks zxA jambeux also.
Note 4. — I have nowhere met with z, precise parallel to this remark- able superstition, but the following piece of Folk-Lx)re has a considerable anal<^ to it This extraordinary custom is ascribed by Ibn Fozlan to the Bulgarians of the Volga : " If they find a man endowed with special intelligence then they say : * This man should serve our Lord God;' and so they take him, run a noose round his neck and hang him on a tree, where they leave him till the corpse falls to pieces." This is precisely what Sir Charles Wood did with the Indian Corps of Engineers ; —doubtless on the same principle.
Archbishop Trench, in a fine figure, alludes to a belief prevalent among the Polynesian Islanders, " that the strength and valour of the warriors whom they have slain in battle passes into themselves, as their rightfiil inheritance." {Fraehru, Wolga-Bulgaren, p. 50; Studies in the Gospels y p. 22 ; see also Lubbock^ 457.)
There is some analogy also, to the story Polo tells, in the curious Sindhi tradition, related by Burton, of Bahi-ul-hakk, the famous saint of Multin. ^hen he visited his disciples at Tatta they plotted his death, in order to secure the blessings of his perpetual presence. The
p 2
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68 . MARCO POLO. Book II.
The Sangmiau Tribe of Kweichau, with the Crossbow (from a Chinese Drawing).
'' <M armes corases "Hz nitr lit imfal, et ont lantes et sen} et on^ balestrrs.'
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Chap. L. THE PROVINCE OF ZARDANDAN. 69
people of Multin are said to have murdered two celebrated saints with the same view, and the Haziras to *' make a point of killing and burying in their own country any stranger indiscreet enough to commit a miracle or show any particular sign of sanctity." The like practice is ascribed to the rude Moslem of Gilghit ; and such allegations must have been current in Europe, for they are the motive of Southey's St. RomucUd:
** VBut,* quoth the Traveller, * wherefore did he leave A flock that knew his saintly worth so well f
* * • •
** * Why Sir,' the Host replied, • We thought perhaps that he might one day leave us ; And then, should strangers have The good man's grave, A loss like that would naturally grieve us ;
For he'll be made a saint of to be sure. Therefore we thought it prudent to secure His relics while we might ;
And so we meant to strangle him one night.' "
(See Sindh, pp. 86, 388 ; Ind. Antiq. I. 13 ; Southed s Ballads, &c., ed. Routledge, p. 330.)
CHAPTER L.
Concerning the Province of Zardandan.
When you have left Carajan and have travelled five days westward, you find a province called Zardandan. The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan. The capital city is called Vochan.
The people of this country all have their teeth gilt ; or rather every man covers his teeth with a sort of golden case made to fit them, both the upper teeth and the under. The men do this, but not the women.' [The men also are wont to gird their arms and legs with bands or fillets pricked in black, and it is done thus ; they take five needles joined together, and with these they prick the flesh till the blood comes, and then they rub in a certain black colouring stuff, and this is perfectly indelible. It is considered a piece of elegance and the sign of gentility to have this black band.] The men are all gentlemen in their fashion, and
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70 MARCO POLO. Book II.
do nothing but go to the wars, or go hunting and hawking. The ladies do all the business, aided by the slaves who have been taken in war.*
And when one of their wives has been delivered of a child, the infant is washed and swathed, and then the woman gets up and goes about her household affairs, whilst the husband takes to bed with the child by his side, and so keeps his bed for 40 days ; and all the kith and kin come to visit him and keep up a great festivity. They do this because, say they, the woman has had a hard bout of it, and 'tis but fair the man should have his share of sufFering.3
They eat all kinds of meat, both raw and cooked, and they eat rice with their cooked meat as their fashion is. Their drink is wine made of rice and spices, and excellent it is. Their money is gold, and for small change they use pig-shells. And I can tell you they give one weight of gold for only five of silver; for there is no silver-mine within five months' journey. And this induces merchants to go thither carrying a large supply of silver to change among that people. And as they have only five weights of silvel" to give for one of fine gold, they make immense profits by their exchange business in that country ."^
These people have neither idols nor churches, but worship the progenitor of their family, ** for 'tis he," say they, " from whom we have all sprung."^ They have no letters or writing; and 'tis no wonder, for the country is wild and hard of access, full of great woods and mountains which 'tis impossible to pass, the air in summer is so im- pure and bad ; and any foreigners attempting it would die for certain.^ When these people have any business transac- tions with one another, they take a piece of stick, round or square, and split it, each taking half. And on either half they cut two or three notches. And when the account is settled the debtor receives back the other half of the stick from the creditor.'
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Chap. L. DEVIL-CONJURORS. 71
And let me tell you that in all those three provinces that I have been speaking of, to wit Carajan, Vochan, and Yachi, there is never a leech. But when any one is ill they send for their magicians, that is to say the Devil-conjurors and those who are the keepers of the idols. When these are come the sick man tells what ails him, and then the conjurors incontinently begin playing on their instruments and singing and dancing ; and the conjurors dance to such a pitch that at last one of them shall fall to the ground lifeless, like a dead man. And then the devil entereth into his body. And when his comrades see him in this plight they begin to put questions to him about the sick man's ailment. And he will reply : " Such or such a spirit hath been meddling with the man,^ for that he hath angered the spirit and done it some despite.'* Then they say: "We pray thee to pardon him, and to take of his blood or of his goods what thou wilt in consideration of thus restoring him to health." And when they have so prayed, the malignant spirit that is in the body of the prostrate man wiU (mayhap) answer: "The sick man hath also done great despite unto such another spirit, and that one is so ill-disposed that it will not pardon him on any account;" — this at least is the answer they get, an the patient be like to die. But if he is to get better the answer will be that they are to bring two sheep, or may be three ; and to brew ten or twelve jars of drink, very costly and abundantly spiced.^ Moreover it shall be announced that the sheep must be all black-faced, or of some other particular colour as it may hap; and then all those things are to be offered in sacrifice' to such and such a spirit whose name is given." And they are to bring so many conjurors, and so many ladies, and the business is to be done with a great singing of lauds, and with many lights, and store of good perfumes. That is the sort of answer they get if the patient is to get well. And then the kinsfolk of the sick man go and procure all that has been commanded, and do as has been
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72 MARCO POLO. Book II.
bidden, and the conjuror who had uttered all that gets on his legs again.
So they fetch the sheep of the colour prescribed, and slaughter them, and sprinkle the blood over such places as have been enjoined, in honour and propitiation of the spirit. And the conjurors come, and the ladies, in the number that was ordered, and when all are assembled and everything is ready, they begin to dance and play and sing in honour of the spirit. And they take flesh-broth, and drink, and ' lign-aloes, and a great number of lights, and go about hither and thither, scattering the broth and the drink and the meat also. Ariti when they have done this for a while, again shall one of the conjurors fall flat and wallow there foaming at the mouth, and then the others will ask if he have yet pardoned the sick man ? And sometimes he shall answer yea! and sometimes he shall answer no! And if the answer be no^ they shall be told that something or other has to be done all over again, and then he will be pardoned ; so this they do. And when all that the spirit has commanded has been done with great ceremony, then it shall be announced that the man is pardoned and shaU be speedily cured. So when they at length receive such a reply, they announce that it is all made up with the spirit, and that he is propitiated, and they fall to eating and drinking with great joy and mirth, and he who had been lying lifeless on the ground gets up and takes his share. So when they have all eaten and drunken, every man departs home. And presently the sick man gets sound and well."
Now that I have told you of the customs and naughty ways of that people, we will have done talking of them and their province, and I will tell you about others, all in regular order and succession.
Note 1.— Ramusio says that both men and women use this gold case There can be no better instance of the accuracy with which Polo is generally found to have represented Oriental names, when we recover his
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Chap. L. " GOLD-TEETH " TRIBE. 73
real representation of them, than this name Zardandan, In the old Latin editions the name appeared as Ardandan, Arcladam^ &c. ; in Ramusio as Cardandan, correctiy enough, only the first letter should have been printed cj. Marsden, carrying out his systematic conversion of the Ramusian spelling, made this into Kardandan, and thus the name became irrecognizable. Klaproth, I beUeve, first showed that the word was simply the Persian Zar-dandan, ** Gold-Teeth," and produced quotations from Rashiduddin mentioning the people in question by that identical name. Indeed that historian mentions them several times. Thus : ** North-west of China is the frontier of Tibet, and of the Zar- dandan, who lie between Tibet and Kardjdng. These people cover their teeth with a gold case, which they take oflf when they eat" They are also frequentiy mentioned in the Chinese annals about this period under the same name, viz., Kin-Chi^ " Gold-Teeth," and some years after Polo's departure fi'om the East they originated a revolt against the Mongol yoke, in which a great number of the imperial troops were massacred. {Demailla^ IX. 47 8r^.)
Vochan seems undoubtedly to be, as Martini pointed out, the city called by the Chinese Yung-chang-fu. Some of the old printed editions read Unciam^ i.e. Uncham or Unchan, and it is probable that either this or Vocian, i.e. Vonchan was the true reading, coming very close to the proper name, which is Wunchen (see/. A. S. B. VI. 547). This city has been a Chinese one for several centuries, and previous to the late Mahomedan revolt its population was almost exclusively Chinese, with only a small mixture of Shans. It is now noted for the remarkable beauty and fairness of the women. But it is mentioned by Chinese authors as having been in the Middle Ages the capital of the Gold-Teeth. These people, according to Martini, dwelt chiefly to the north of the city. They used to go to worship a huge stone, 100 feet high, at Nan- ngan, and to cover it annually with gold-leaf. Some additional particu- lars about the Kinchi, in the time of the Mongols, will be found in Pauthier's notes (p. 398).
It has not been determined who are the representatives of these Gold-Teeth, who were evidendy distinct from the Shans, not Buddhist, and without literature. I should think it probable that they were Kak- hyais or SingphoSy who, excluding Shans, appear to form the greatest body in that quarter, and are closely akin to each other, indeed essenti- ally identical in race.* The Singphos have now extended widely to the
• ** SingpAOf" says Colonel Hannay, ** signifies in the Kakhyen language * a man,' and all of this race who have settled in Hookong or Assam are thus designated ; the reason of their change of name I could not ascertain, but so much importance seems to he attached to it, that the Singphos, in talking of their eastern and southern neighbours, call them Kakhyens or Kakoos, and consider it an insult to be called so themselves. — Sketch of the Singphos^ or the Kakhyens of Burma, Calcutta, 1847, pp. 3-4. If^ however, the Kakhyens, or Kachyens (as Major Sladen calls them), are represented by the Go-tchang of Pauthier's Chinese extracts, these seem to be dis- tinguished from the Kin-chi, though associated with them (see pp. 397, 411).
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74 MARCO POLO. Book 11.
west of the Upper Irawadi and northward into Assam, but their traditions bring them from the borders of Yunnan. The original and still most populous seat of the Kakhyen or Singpho race is pointed out by Col Hannay in the Gulansigung mountains and the valley of the eastern source of the Irawadi. This agrees with Martini's indication of the seat of the Kinchi as north of Yunchang. One of Hannay's notices of
Singpho customs should also be com- pared with the interpolation from Ra- musio about tattooing : " The men tattoo their limbs slightly, and all mar- ried females are tattooed on both legs from the ankle to the knee, in broad horizontal circular bands. Both sexes also wear rings below the knee of fine shreds of rattan varnished black " (p. 1 8). These rings appear on the i Kakhyen woman in our cut / The only other wild tribe spoken of by Major Sladen as attending the I markets on the frontier is that of the Lissus, already mentioned by LieuL Gamier {supra, ch. xlviL note 6), and who are said to be the most savage and indomitable of the tribes in that quarter. Gamier also mentions the Mossos, who are alleged once to have formed an independent kingdom about Likiangfu. Possibly, however, the Gold-Teeth may have become entirely absorbed in the Chinese and Shan --- population.
Kakhyens. (From a Photograph.) -fj^^ characteristic of Casiog thc
teeth in gold should identify the tribe did it still exist But I can leam nothing of the continued existence of such a custom among any tribe of the Indo-Chinese continent The in- sertion of gold studs or spots, which Biirck confounds with it, is common enough among Indo-Chinese races, but that is quite a different thing. The actual practice of the Zardandan is however followed by some of the people of Sumatra, as both Marsden and Raffles testify: "The great men sometimes set their teeth in gold, by casing with a plate of that metal the under row .... it is sometimes indented to the shape of the teeth, but more usually quite plain. They do not remove it either to eat or sleep." The like custom is mentioned by old travellers at Macassar, and with the substitution of silver for gold by a modem traveller as existing in Timor ; but in both, probably, it was a practice of Malay tribes, as in Sumatra. (Marsderis Sumatra, 3rd ed., p. 52 ; Raffled sjava^ I. 105 ; Bickmor£s Ind. Archipelago,)
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Chap. L. CUSTOM OF THE " COUVADE." 75
Note 2. — ^This is precbely the account which Lieut. Gamier gives of the people of Laos : " The Laos people are very indolent, and when they are not rich enough to possess slaves they make over to their women the. greatest part of the business of the day; and 'tis these latter who not only do all the work of the house, but who husk the rice, work in the fields, and paddle the canoes. Hunting and fishing are almost the only occupations which pertain exclusively to the stronger sex." {Notice sur It Voyage d Exploration^ &c., p. 34.)
Note 3. — This highly eccentric practice has been ably illustrated and explained by Mr. Tylor, under the name of the Couvade, or " Hatching,** by which it is known in some of the B^am districts of the Pyrenees, where it foraierly existed, as it does still or did recently, in some Basque dis- tricts of Spain. " In certain valleys of Biscay," says Francisque-Michel, " in which the popular usages carry us back to the infancy of society, the woman immediately after her delivery gets up and attends to the cares of the household, whilst the husband takes to bed with the tender fledgeling in his arms, and so receives the compliments of his neighbours."
The nearest people to the Zardandan of whom I find this custom elsewhere recorded, is one called Langszi, 3, small tribe of aborigines in the department of Weining, in Kweichau, but close to the border of Yunnan : " Their manners and customs are very extraordinary. For example, when the wife has given birth to a child, the husband remains in the house and holds it in his arms for a whole month, not once going out. of doors. The wife in the mean time does all the work in doors and out, and provides and serves up both food and drink for the husband, she only giving suck to the child." I am informed also that, among the Miris on the Upper Assam border, the husband on such occasionsconfines himself strictly to the house for forty days after the event.
The custom of the Couvade has especially and widely prevailed in South America, not only among the Carib races of Guiana, of the Spanish Main, and (where still surviving) of the West Indies, but among many tribes of Brazil and its borders from the Amazons to the Plate, and among the Abipones of Paraguay ; it also exists or has existed among the aborigines of California, in West Africa, in Bouro, one of the Moluccas, and among a wandering tribe of the Telugu-speaking districts of southern India, According to Diodorus it prevailed in ancient Cor- sica, according to Strabo among the Iberians of Northern Spain (where we have seen it has lingered to recent times), according to Apollonius Rhodius among the Tibareni of Pontus. Modified traces of a like prac- tice, not carried to the same extent of oddity, are also found in a variety of countries besides those that have been named, as in Borneo, m Kamtchatka, and in Greenland. In nearly all cases some particular diet, or abstinence from certain kinds of food and drink, and from exer- tion, is prescribed to the father; in some, more positive and trying penances are inflicted.
Butler had no doubt our Traveller's story in his head when he made
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the widow in Hudibras allude in a ribald speech to the supposed feet that
** Chineses go to bed
And lie in, in their ladies' stead."
The custom is humorously introduced, as Pauthier has noticed, in the Medieval Fabliau of Aucasin and Nicolete, Aucasin arriving at the castle of Torelore asks for the king and is told he is in child-bed. Where then is his wife ? She is gone to the wars and has taken all the people with her. Aucasin, greatly astonished, enters the palace, and wanders through it till he comes to the chamber where the king
lay : —
** En le canbre entre Aucasins Li cortois et li gentis ; II est venos dnsqu'au lit Alec 1I li Rois se gist. Pardevant lui s*arestit Si parla, O^s que dist ; Diva fan, que fais-tu ci ? Dist le Rois, Je gis d'un fil, Quant mes mois sera complis, Et ge serai bien garis, Dent irai le messe oir Si comme mes ancessor fist," &c.
Aucasin pulls all the clothes off him, and cudgels him soundly, making him promise that never a man shall lie in again in his country.
This strange custom, if it were unique, would look like a coarse practical joke, but appearing as it does among so many different races and in every quarter of the world, it must have its root somewhere deep in the psychology of the uncivilized man. I must refer to Mr. Tylor^s interesting remarks on the rationale of the custom, for they do not bear abridgment. Prof. Max Miiller humorously suggests that " the treat- ment which a husband receives among ourselves at the time of his wife's confinement, not only from mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and other female relations, but fi-om nurses, and from every consequential maid- servant in the house," is but a ' survival,' as Mr. Tylor would call it, of the couvade; or at least represents the same feeling which among those many uncivilized nations thus drove the husband to his bed, and some- times (as among the Caribs) put him when there to systematic torture.
{Tylor^ Researches^ 288-296 ; Michel^ Le Fays Basque^ p. 201 ; Sketches of the Meau-tsze^ transl. by Bridgman in J, of North China Br, of R. As, SoCy p. 277 ; Hudibras, Pt. III., canto I. 707 ; FabUms et Conies par Barbazan, ed, Meon, I. 408-9; Indian Antiq, III. 151; Mailer^ s Chips , II. 227 seqq ; many other references in Tylor, and in a capital monograph by Dr. H. H. Ploss of Leipzig, received during re- vision. of this sheet ; 'Das Mdnnerkindbett,' What a notable example of the German power of compounding is that title !)
Note 4. — " The abundance of gold in Yunnan is proverbial in
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China, so that if a man lives very extravagantly they ask if his father is governor of Yunnan." {Martini^ p. 140.)
Polo has told us that in Eastern Yunnan the exchange was 8 of silver for one of gold (chap, xlviii) ; in the Western division of the province 6 of silver for one of gold (chap, xlix.) ; and now, still nearer the borders of Ava, only 5 of silver for one of gold. Such discrepancies witjiin 15 days' journey would be inconceivable, but that in both the latter instances at least he appears to speak of the rates at which the gold was purchased from secluded, ignorant, and uncivilized tribes. It is difficult to reconcile with other facts the reason which he assigns for the high value put on silver at Vochan, viz., that there was no silver-mine within five months' journey. In later days, at least, Martini speaks of many silver-mines in Yunnan, and the " Great Silver Mine " {Bau-dwen gyi of the Burmese) or group of mines, which affords a chief supply to Burma in modem times, is not far from the territory of our Traveller's Zardandan, Gamier*s map shows several argentiferous sites in the Valley of the Lant'sang.
In another work* I have remarked at some length on the relative values of gold and silver about this time. In Western Europe these seem to have been as 12 to i, and I have shown grounds for believing that in India, and generally over civilized Asia, the ratio was 10 to i. In Pauthier*s extracts from the Yum-sse or Annals of the Mongol Dynasty, there is an incidental but precise confirmation of this, of which I was not then aware. This states (p. 321) that on the issue of the paper currency of 1287 the official instructions to the local treasuries were to issue notes of the nominal value of two strings, /.<?., 2000 wen or cash, for every ounce of flowered silver, and 20,000 cash for every ounce of gold. 10 to I must have continued to be the relation in China down to about the end of the 17 th century if we may believe Lecomte; but when Milbume states the same value in the beginning of the 19th he must have fallen into some great error. In 1781 Sonnerat tells us that formerly goW had been exported from China with a profit of 25 per cent., but at that time a profit of 18 to 20 per cent was made by importing it At present! the relative values are about the same as in Europe, viz., I to 1 5i or I to 16; but in Canton, in 1844, they were i to 17 j and Timkowski states that at Pekin in 1821 the finest gold was valued at 18 to I. And as regards the precise territory of which this chapter speaks I find in Lt Bower's Commercial Report on Sladen's Mission that the price of pure gold at Momien in 1868 was 13 times its weight in silver (p. 122) ; whilst M. Gamier mentions that the exchange at Tali in 1869 was 12 to I (I. 522).
Does not Shakspeare indicate at least a memory of 10 to i as the traditional relation of gold to silver when he makes the Prince of Morocco, balancing over Portia's caskets, argue : —
♦ Cathay &c, pp. ccl. seqq.^ and p. 441. t Written in 1870.
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'* Or shall I think in silver she's immured, Being ten times undervalued to tried gold ? O sinful thought ! "
In Japan, at the time trade was opened, we know from Sir R. Alcock's work the extraordinary fact that the proportionate value set upon gold and silver currency by authority was as 3 to i.
(Cathay^ &c., p. ccl. and p. 442 ; Lecomte^ II. 91 ; Milbumis Oriental Commerce^ II. 510; SonnercUy II. 17 ; Hedde^ Etude Pratique^ &c., p. 14 ; Williams y Chinese Commercial Guide^ p. 129; Jtmkawski^ II. 202; Alcock^ I. 281, II. 411, &C.)
Note 6. — Mr. Lay cites from a Chinese authority a notice of a tribe of " Western Miautsze," who " in the middle of autumn sacrifice to the Great Ancestor or Founder of their Race." (The Chinese as they an^ p. 321.)
Note 6. — Dr. Anderson confirms the depressing and unhealthy character of the summer climate at Momien, though standing bet^-een 5000 and 6000 feet above the sea (p. 41).
Note 7. — "Whereas before," says Jack Cade to Lord Say, "our forefathers had no books but score and tally, thou hast caused printing to be used." The use of such tallies for the record of contracts among the aboriginal tribes of Kweichau is mentioned by Chinese authorities, and the French missionaries of Bonga speak of the same as in use among the simple tribes in that vicinity. But, as Marsden notes, the use of such rude records was to be found in his day in higher places and much nearer home. They continued to be employed as records of receipts in the British Exchequer till 1834, " and it is worthy of recollection that the fire by which the Houses of Parliament were destroyed was supposed to have originated in the over-heating of the flues in which the discarded tallies were being burnt" I remember often, when a child, to have seen the tallies of the colliers in Scotland, and possibly among that class they may survive. They appear to be still used by bakers in various parts of England and France, in the Canterbury hop-gardens, and locally in some other trades. (Martini^ 135; Bridgman^ 259, 262; Eng. Cyclop, sub v. Tally ; Notes and Queries y ist ser. X. 485.)
" In illustration of this custom I have to relate what follows. In the year 1863 the Tsaubwa (or Prince) of a Shan Province adjoining Yunnan was in rebellion against the Burmese Government He wished to enter into communication with the British Government He sent a messenger to a British Officer with a letter tendering his allegiance, and accom- panying this letter was a piece of bamboo about five inches long. This had been split down the middle, so that the two pieces fitted closely together, forming a tube in the original shape of the bamboo. A notch at one end included the edges of both pieces, showing that they were a pair. The messenger said that if the reply were favourable one of the
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Chap. L. DEVIL-DANCERS. 79
pieces was to be returned and the other kept I need hardly say the messenger received no written reply, and botl) pieces of bamboo were retained." {MS, note by Sir Arthur Fhayre.)
Note 8. — Compare Mr. Hodgson's account of the sub-Himalayan Bodos and Dhimals : "All diseases are ascribed to supernatural agency. The sick man is supposed to be possessed by one of the deities, who racks him with pain as a punishment for impiety or neglect of the god in question. Hence not the mediciner, but the exorcist, is summoned to the sick man's aid." (/. A. S. B. XVHI. 728.)
Note 9. — Mr. Hodgson again : " Libations of fermented liquor always accompany sacrifice — because, to confess the whole truth, sacrifice and feast are commutable words, and feasts need to be crowned with copious potations." {Ibid.)
Note 10. — ^And again : " The god in question is asked what sacrifice he requires ? a buffalo, a hog, a fowl, or a duck, to spare the sufferer ; .... anxious as I am fully to illustrate the topic, I will not try the patience of my readers by describing all that vast variety of black victims and white, of red victims and blue, which each particular deity is alleged to prefer." {Ibid, and p. 732.)
Note 11. — The same system of devil-dancing is prevalent among the tribes on the Lu-Kiang, as described by the R. C. Missionaries. The conjurors are there called Mumos. {Ann. de la Prop, de la Foi, XXXV L 323, and XXXVIL 312-13.)
" Marco's account of the exorcism of evil spirits in cases of obstinate illness exactly resembles what is done in similar cases by the Burmese, except that I never saw animals sacrificed on such occasions." {Sir A. Fhayre)
Mouhot says of the wild people of Cambodia called Stiens : " When any one is ill they say that the Evil Spirit torments him ; and to deliver him they set up about the patient a dreadful din which does not cease night or day, until some one among the bystanders falls down as if in a syncope, crying out, * I have him, — he is in me, — he is strangling me ! ' Then they question the person who has thus become possessed. They ask him what remedies will save the patient ; what remedies does the Evil Spirit require that he may give up his prey? Sometimes it is an ox or a pig ; but too often it is a human victim." {J. R, G. S. XXXIL 147.)
See also the account of the Samoyede Tadibei or Devil-dancer in KJaproth's Magazin Asiatique (II. 83).
In fact these strange rites of Shamanism, devil-dancing, or what not, axe found with wonderful identity of character among the non-Caucasian races over parts of the earth most remote from one another, not only among the vast variety of Indo-Chinese Tribes, but among the Tamulian tribes of India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the races of Siberia, and the red
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nations of North and South America. Hinduism has assimilated these " prior superstitions of the sons of Tur " as Mr. Hodgson calls them, in the form of Tantrika mysteries, whilst, in the wild performance of the Dancing Dervishes at Constantinople, we see perhaps again the infec- tion of Turanian blood breaking out from the very heart of Mussuhnan orthodoxy.
Dr. Caldwell has given a striking account of the practice of devil- dancing among the Shanars of Tinnevelly, which forms a perfect parallel in modem language to our Traveller's description of a scene of which he also had manifestiy been an eye-witness : ** When the preparations are completed and the devil-dance is about to commence, the music is at first comparatively slow; the dancer seems impassive and sullen, and he either stands still or moves about in gloomy silence. Gradually, as the music becomes quicker and louder, his excitement begins to rise. Some- times, to help him to work himself up into a frenzy he uses medicated draughts, cuts and lacerates himself till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which flows from his own wounds, or drains the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff* of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends ; there is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. The demon has now taken bodily posses- sion of him, and though he retains the power of utterance and motion, both are under the demon's control, and his separate consciousness is in abeyance. The bystanders signalise the event by raising a long shout, attended with a peculiar vibratory noise, caused by the motion of the hand and tongue, or the tongue alone. The devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and every bystander consults him respect- ing his diseases, his wants, the welfare of his absent relatives, the oflferings to be made for the accompUshment of his wishes, and in short ever}thing for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available." {Hodgson, /. R. As, Soc XVni. 397 ; TAf Tinnevelly Shanars, by the Rev, R. Caldwell, B,A,, Madras, 1849, p. 19-20.)
CHAPTER LI. Wherein is related how the King of Mien and Bangala
VOWED vengeance AGAINST THE GREAT KAAN.
But I was forgetting to tell you of a famous battle that was fought in the kingdom of Vochan in the Province of
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Zardandan, and that ought not to be omitted from our Book. So we will relate all the particulars.
You see, in the year of Christ, 1272,' the Great Kaan sent a large force into the kingdoms of Carajan and Vochan, to protect them from the ravages of ill-disposed people ; and this was before he had sent any of his sons to rule the country, as he did afterwards when he made Sentemur king there, the son of a son of his who was deceased.
Now there was a certain king, called the king of Mien and of Bangala, who was a very puissant prince, with much territory and treasure and people ; and he was not as yet subject to the Great Kaan, though it was not long after that the latter conquered him and took from him both the kingdoms that I have named." And it came to pass that when this king of Mien and Bangala heard that the host of the Great Kaan was at Vochan, he said to himself that it behoved him to go against them with so great a force as should insure his cutting off the whole of them, insomuch that the Great Kaan would be very sorry ever to send an army again thither [to his frontier].
So this king prepared a great force and munitions of war ; and he had, let me tell you, 2000 great elephants, on each of which was set a tower of timber, well framed and strong, and carrying from twelve to sixteen well-armed fighting men.3 And besides these, he had of horsemen and of footmen good 60,000 men. In short, he equipped a fine. force, as well befitted such a puissant prince. It was indeed a host capable of doing great things.
And what shall I tell you ? When the king had com- pleted these great preparations to fight the Tartars, he tarried not, but straightway marched against them. And after advancing without meeting with anything worth mentioning, they arrived within three days of the Great Kaan's host, which was then at Vochan in the territory of Zardandan, of which I have already spoken. So there the king pitched his camp, and halted to refresh his army.
VOL. II. G
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Note 1. — This date is no doubt corrupt See note 2, chap. liL
Note 2. — Mien is the name by which the kingdom of Burma or Ava was and is known to the Chinese. M. Gamier informs me that Mim-Kwe or Mien-tisong is the name always given in Yunnan to that kingdom, whilst the Shans at Kiang Hung call the Burmese Man (pronounced like the English word).
The title given to the sovereign in question of king of Bengal, as well as of Mien, is very remarkable. We shall see reason hereafter to conceive that Polo did more or less confound Bengal with Pegu^ which was subject to the Burmese monarchy up to the time of the Mongol invasion. But apart from any such misapprehension, there is not only evidence of rather close relations between Burma and Gangetic India in the ages immediately preceding that of our author, but also some ground for believing that he may be right in his representation, and that the king of Burma may have at this time arrogated the title of " king of Bengal," which is attributed to him in the text
Anaurahta, one of the most powerful kings in Burmese history (1017- 1059) extended his conquests to the frontiers of India, and is stated to have set up images within that country. He also married an Indian princess, the daughter of the king of Wcthali (i.e. Vai^ali in Tirhiit).
There is also in the Burmese Chronicle a somewhat confused story regarding a succeeding king, Kyan-tsittha (a.d. 1064), who desired to marry his daughter to the son of the king of Fatteik-Kardy a part of Bengal.* The marriage was objected to by the Bunnese nobles, but the princess was already with child by the Bengal prince ; and their son eventually succeeded to the Burmese throne under the name of Alaung- tsi-thu. When king, he travelled all over his (dominions, and visited the ijnages which Anaurahta had set up in India. He also maintained intercourse with the king of Patteik-Kara and married his daughter. Alaungtsi-thu is stated to have lived to the age of loi years, and to have reigned 75. Even then his death was hastened by his son Narathu, who smothered him in the temple called Shw^-Ku ("Golden Cave"), at Pagdn, and also put to death his Bengali step-mother. The father of the latter sent eight brave men, disguised as Brahmans, to a\^enge his daughter's death. Having got access to the royal presence through their sacred character, they slew king Narathu and then themselves. Hence king Narathu is known in the Burmese history as the Kald-Kya Mengy or " King slain by the Hindus." He was building the great Temple at Pagdn called Dhammayangyiy at the time of his death, which occurred about the year 1171. The great grandson of this king was
* Sir A. Phayre thinks this may have been Vikramptiry for some time the capital of Eastern Bengal before the Mahomedan conquest. Vikrampur was some miles csl< of Dacca, and the dynasty in question was that called Vaidya (see Lassm^ III. 749). Pattcik-KarA is apparently an attempt to represent some Hindi name such as Patihar- ^arh, "The Stone-Fort."
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Narathihapade (presumably Narasinha-pat'i)^ the king reigning at the time of the Mongol invasion.
All these circumstances show tolerably close relations between Burma and Bengal, and also that the dynasty then reigning in Burma was descended from a Bengal stock. Sir Arthur Phayre, after noting these points re- marks : "From all these circumstances, and from the conquests attributed to Anaurahta, it is very probable that, after the conquest of Bengal by the Mahomedans in the 1 3th century, the kings of Burma would assume the title of Kings of Bengal, This is nowhere expressly stated in the Buraiese history, but the course of events renders it very probable. We know that the claim to Bengal was asserted by the kings of Burma in long after years. In the Journal of the Marquis of Hastings, under the date of Sept. 6th, 181 8, is the following passage : *The king of Burma favoured us early this year with the obliging requisition that we should cede to him Moorshedabad and the provinces to the east of it, which he deigned to say were all natural dependencies of his throne.' And at the time of the disputes on the frontier of Arakan, in 1823-24, which led to the war of the two following years, the Governor of Arakan made a similar demand. We may therefore reasonably conclude that at the close of the 13th century of the Christian era the kings of Pagdn called themselves kings of Burma and of Bengala." (MS. Note by Sir Arthur Phayre; see also his paper in^. A, S, B.y voL XXXVII. part I.)
Note 3. — It is very difficult to know what to make of the repeated assertions of old writers as to the numbers of men carried by war- elephants, or, if we could admit those numbers, to conceive how the animal could have carried the enormous structure necessary to give them space to use their weapons. The Third Book of Maccabees is the most astounding in this way, alleging that a single elephant carried 32 stout men, besides the Indian Mahaut. Bochart indeed supposes the number here to be a clerical error for 12, but even this would be extravagant Friar Jordanus is no doubt building on the Maccabees rather than on his own oriental experience when he says that the elephant " carrieth easily more than 30 men." Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius^ speaks of 10 to 15 ; Ibn Batuta of about 20; and a great elephant sent by Timur \o the Sultan of Egypt is said to have carried 20 drummers. Christopher Barri says that in Cochin China the elephant did ordinarily carry 13 or 14 persons, 6 on each side in two tiers of 3 each, and 2 behind. On the other hand, among the ancients, Strabo and Aelian speak of three soldiers only in addition to the driver, and Livy, describing the Battle of Magnesia, of four. These last are reasonable statements.
(Bocharty Hierozoicon^ ed. 3rd, p. 266 ; Jord., p. 26 ; Phi/ost. trad, par A, Chassaingy liv. 11. c. ii. ; Ibn, Bat. II. 223 ; N. and E. XIV. 510 ; Cochin China ^ &c., London, 1633, ed. 3; Armandiy Hist. Militaire des Elephants^ 259 seqq., 442.)
G 2
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CHAPTER LII.
Of the Battle that was fought by the Great Kaan's Host AND HIS Seneschal, against the King of Mien.
And when the Captain of the Tartar host had certain news that the king aforesaid was coming against him with so great a force, he waxed uneasy, seeing that he had with him but 12,000 liorsemen. Natheless he was a most vaUant and able soldier, of great experience in arms and an excel- lent Captain ; and his name was Nescradin/ His troops too were very good, and he gave them very particular orders and cautions how to act, and took every measure for his own defence and that of his army. And why should I make a long story of it ? The whole force of the Tartars, consisting of 12,000 well-mounted horsemen, advanced to receive the enemy in the Plain of Vochan, and there they waited to give them battle. And this they did through the good judgment of the excellent Captain who led them ; for hard by that plain was a great wood, thick with trees. And so there in the plain the Tartars awaited their foe. Let us then leave discoursing of them a while ; we shall come back to them presently ; but meantime let us speak of the enemy.
After the King of Mien had halted long enough to refresh his troops, he resumed his march, and came to the Plain of Vochan, where the Tartars were already in order of battle. And when the king's army had arrived in the plain, and was within a mile of the enemy, he caused all the castles that were on the elephants to be ordered for battle, and the fighting-men to take up their posts on them, and he arrayed his horse and his foot with all skill, like a wise king as he was. And when he had completed all his arrangements he began to advance to engage the enemy. The Tartars, seeing the foe advance, showed no dismay, but came on likewise with good order and discipline to meet
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them. And when they were near and nought remained but to begin the fight, the horses of the Tartars took such fright at the sight of the elephants that they could not be got to face the foe, but always swerved and turned back ; whilst all the time the king and his forces, and all his elephants, continued to advance upon them.
And when the Tartars perceived how the case stood, they were in great wrath, and wist not what to say or do ; for well enough they saw that unless they could get their horses to advance, all would be lost. But their Captain acted like a wise leader who had considered everything beforehand. He immediately gave orders that every man should dismount and tie his horse to the trees of the forest that stood hard by, and that then they should take to their bows, a weapon that they know how to handle better than any troops in the world. They did as he bade them, and plied their bows stoutly, shooting so many shafts at the advancing elephants that in a short space they had wounded or sWn the greater part of them as well as of the men they carried. The enemy also shot at the Tartars, but the Tartars had the better weapons, and were the better archers to boot.
And what shall I tell you ? Understand that when the elephants felt the smart of those arrows that pelted them like rain, they turned tail and fled, and nothing on earth would have induced them to turn and fece the Tartars. So off they sped with such a noise and uproar that you would have trowed the world was coming to an end ! And then too they plunged into the wood and rushed this way and that, dashing their castles against the trees, bursting their harness and smashing and destroying everything that was on them.
So when the Tartars saw that the elephants had turned t^ and could not be brought to face the fight again, they got to horse at once and charged the enemy. And then the battle began to rage furiously with sword and mace.
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Right fiercely did the two hosts rush together, and deadly were the blows exchanged. The king's troops were far more in number than the Tartars, but they were not of such metal, nor so inured to war ; otherwise the Tartars who were so few in number could never have stood against them. Then might you see swashing blows dealt and taken fi^om sword and mace ; then might you see knights and horses and men-at-arms go down ; then might you see arms and hands and legs and heads hewn off: and besides the dead that fell, many a wounded man, that never rose again, for the sore press there was. The din and uproar were so great from this side and fi-oiii that, that God might have thundered and no man would have heard it! Great was the medley, and dire and parlous was the fight that was fought on both sides ; but the Tartars had the best of it.'
In an ill hour indeed, for the king and his people, was that battle begun, so many of them were slain therein. iVnd when they had continued fighting till midday the king's troops could stand against the Tartars no longer; but felt that they were defeated, and turned and fled. And when the Tartars saw them routed they gave chase, and hacked and slew so mercilessly that it was a piteous sight to see. But after pursuing a while they gave up, and re- turned to the wood to catch the elephants that had run away, and to manage this they had to cut down great trees to bar their passage. Even then they would not have been able to take them without the help of the king's own men who had been taken, and who knew better how to deal with the beasts than the Tartars did. The elephant is an animal that hath more wit than any other ; but in this way at last they were caught, more than 200 of them. And it was from this time forth that the Great Kaan began to keep numbers of elephants.
So thus it was that the king aforesaid was defeated by the sagacity and superior skill of the Tartars as you have heard.
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Note 1. — Nescradin for Nesradin, as we had Bascra for Basra.
This Nasruddin was apparently an officer of whom Rashiduddin speaks, and whom he calls governor (or perhaps commander) inKardjdng. He describes him as having succeeded in that command to his father the Sayad Ajil of Bokhara, one of the best of Kublai's chief Ministers. Nasruddin retained his position in Yunnan till his death, which Rashid, writing about 1300, says occurred five or six years before. His son Bayan, who also bore the grandfather's title of Sayad Ajil, was Minister of Finance under Kublai's successor ; and another son, HiM, is also mentioned as one of the governors of the province of Fuchau (see Cathay^ p. 265, 268, and nOhsson^ II. 507-8).
Nasruddin {Nasulating) is also frequently mentioned as employed on this frontier by the Chinese authorities whom Pauthier cites.
Note 2. — ^We are indebted to Pauthier for very interesting illustrations of this narrative from the Chinese Annalists (p. 410 seqq.). These latter fix the date to the year 1277, and it is probable that the 1272 or MCCLXXii of the Texts was a clerical error for mcclxxvii. The Annalists describe the people of Mien as irritated at calls upon them to submit to the Mongols (whose power they probably did not appreciate, as their descendants did not appreciate the British power in 1824), and as crossing the frontier of Yungchang to establish fortified posts. The force of Mien, they say, amounted to 50,000 men, with 800 elephants and 10,000 horses, whilst the Mongol Chief had but seven hundred men. " When the elephants felt the arrows (of the Mongols) they turned tail and fled vrith tl;ie platforms on their backs into a place that was set thickly with sharp bamboo-stakes, and these their riders laid hold of to prick them with." This threw the Burmese army into confusion ; they fled, and were pursued with great slaughter.
The Chinese author does not mention Nasruddin in connection with this battle. He names as the chief of the Mongol force Huthukh (Kutuka ?), commandant of Tali-fu. Nasruddin is mentioned as advanc- ing, a few months later (about December, 1277), with nearly 4000 men to Kiangtheu (which appears to have been on the Irawadi somewhere near Bam6, and is perhaps the Kaungtaungof the Burmese), but effecting litde (p. 415).
These affairs of the battle in the Yungchang territory, and the advance of Nasruddin to the Irawadi are, as Polo clearly implies in the beginning of chap, li., quite distinct from the invasion and conquest of Mien some years later of which he speaks in chapter liv. They are not mentioned in the Burmese Annals at all.
Sir Arthur Pha)nre is inclined to reject altogether the story of the battle near Yungchang in consequence of this absence from the Burmese Chronicky and of its inconsistency with the purely defensive character which that record assigns to the action of the Burmese Government in regard to China at this time. With the strongest respect for my friend's otHoion I feel it impossible to assent to this. We have not only the
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concurrent testimony of Marco and of the Chinese Official Annals of the Mongol Dynasty to the facts of the Burmese provocation and of the engagement within the Yungchang or Vochan territory, but we have in the Chinese narrative a consistent chronology and tolerably full detail of the relations between the two countries.
Between 1277 and the end of the century the Chinese Annals record three campaigns or expeditions against Mien ; viz. (i) that which Marco has related in this chapter ; (2) that which he relates in chapter liv. ; and (3) one undertaken in 1300 at the request of the son of the legitimate Burmese King who had been put to death by an usurper. The Burmese Annals mention only the two latest, but, concerning both the date and the main circumstances of these two, Chinese and Burmese Annals are in almost entire agreement. Surely then it can scarcely be doubted that the Chinese authority is amply trustworthy for the first campaign also, respecting which the Burmese book is silent ; even were the former not corroborated by the independent authority of Marco.
Indeed the mutual correspondence of these Annals, especially as to chronology, is very remarkable, and is an argument for greater respect to the chronological value of the Burmese Chronicle and other Indo-Chinese records of like character than we should otherwise be apt to entertain. Compare the story of the expedition of 1300 as told after the Chinese Annals by Demailla, and after the Burmese Chronicle by Bumey and Phayre. (See Demailla^ IX. 476 scqq. ; and/. A. S, B. vol. VI. p. 121-2. and vol. XXXVII. Pt I. p. 102 and no.)
CHAPTER LIII.
Of the Great Descent that leads towards the Kingdom
OF Mien.
After leaving the Province of which I have been speaking you come to a great Descent. In fact you ride for two days and a half continually down hill. On all this descent there is nothing worthy of mention except only that there is a large place there where occasionally a great market is held ; for all the people of the country round come thither on fixed days, three times a week, and hold a market there. They exchange gold for silver; for they have gold in abundance ; and they give one weight of fine gold for five weights of fine silver ; so this induces merchants to come
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Chap. LIII. THE PROVINCE OF AMIEN. 89 ]
1 from various quarters bringing silver which they exchange i
for gold with these people ; and in this way the merchants ]
make great gain. As regards those people of the country \
who dispose of gold so cheaply, you must understand that j
nobody is acquainted with their places of abode, for they
dwell in inaccessible positions, in sites so wild and strong \
that no one can get at them to meddle with them. Nor i
will they allow anybody to accompany them so as to gain a I
knowledge of their abodes/
After you have ridden those two days and a half down ;
hill, you find yourself in a province towards the south
which is pretty near to India, and this province is called
Amien. You travel therein for fifteen days through a very
unfrequented country, and through great woods abounding
in elephants and unicorns and numbers of other wild
beasts. There are no dwellings and no people, so we need
say no more of this wild country, for in sooth there is
nothing to tell. But I have a story to relate which you
shall now hear.*
Note 1 . — In all the Shan towns visited by Major Sladen on this frontier he found markets held every ffth day. This custom he says is bon-owed from China, and is general throughout Western Yunnan. There seem to be traces of this five-day week over Indo-China, and it is found in Java; as it is in Mexico. The Kakhyens attend in great crowds. They do not now bring gold for sale to Momien, though it is found to some extent in their hills, more especially in the direction of Mogaung, whence it is exported towards Assam.
Major Sladen saw a small quantity of nuggets in the possession of a Kakhyen who had brought them from a hill two days north of Bamd. (MS. Notes by Major Sladen,)
Note 2. — I confess that the indications in this and the beginning of the following chapter are, to me, full of difficulty. According to the general style of Polo's itinerary, the 2\ days should be reckoned from Yungchang ; the distance therefore to the capital city of Mien would be 17^ days. The real capital of Mien or Burma at this time was however Pagdn, in lat 21° 13', and that city could hardly have been reached by a land traveller in any such time. We shall see that something may be said in behalf of the supposition that the point reached was Tagaung or Old I^agin on the upper Irawadi, in lat 23° 28' ; and there was perhaps some
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90 MARCO POLO. Book II.
confusion in the traveller's mind between this and the great dty. The descent might then be from Yungchang to the valley of the Shwtfli, and that valley then followed to the Irawadi. Taking as a scale Polo's 5 marches from Tali to Yungchang, I find we should by this route make just about 17 marches from Yungchang to Tagaung. We have no detailed knowledge of the route, but there is a road that way, and by no other does the plain country approach so near to Yungchang (see Anderson's Report on Expedition to Western Yunnan^ p. 1 60).
Dr. Anderson's remarks on the present question do not in my opinion remove the difficulties. He supposes the long descent to be the descent into the plains of the Irawadi near Bhamo ; and from that point the land journey to Great Pagdn could, he conceives, " easily be accomplished in 1 5 days." I greatly doubt the latter assumption. By the scale I have just referred to it would take at least 20 days. And to calculate the 2i days with which the journey commences from an indefinite point seems scarcely admissible. Polo is giving us a continuous itinerary; it would be ruptured if he left an indefinite distance between his last station and his " long descent." And if the same principle were applied to the 5 days between Carajan (or Tali) and Vochan (Yungchang), the result would be nonsense.
Temple of Gaudapal^ fin the city of Mien), erected circa a.d. 1160.
The hypothesis tliat I have suggested would suit better with the tra- veller's representation of the country traversed as wild and uninhabited. In a journey to Great Pagdn the most populous and fertile part of Burma would be passed through.
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Chap. LIV. THE CITY OF MIKN. 91
CHAPTER LIV. Concerning the City of Mien, and the Two Towers that are
THEREIN, one OF GOLD AND THE OTHER OF SILVER.
And when you have travelled those 15 days through such a difficult country as I have described, in which travellers have to carry provisions for the road because there are no inhabitants, then you arrive at the capital city of this Pro- vince of Mien, and it also is called Amien, and is a very great and noble city.' The people are Idolaters and have a peculiar language, and are subject to the Great Kaan.
And in this city there is a thing so rich and rare that I must tell you about it. You see there was in former days a rich and puissant king in this city, and when he was about to die he commanded that by his tomb they should erect two towers [one at either end], one of gold and the other of silver, in such fashion as I shall tell you. The towers are built of fine stone ; and then one of them has been covered with gold a good finger in thickness, so that the tower looks as if it were all of solid gold ; and the other is covered with silver in like manner so that it seems to be all of solid silver. Each tower is a good ten paces in height and of breadth in proportion. The upper part of these towers is round, and girt all about with bells, the top of the gold tower with gilded bells and the silver tower with silvered bells, insomuch that whenever the wind blows among these bells they tinkle. [The tomb likewise was plated partly with gold, and partly with silver.] The King caused these towers to be erected to commemorate his magnificence and for the good of his soul ; and really they do form one of the finest sights in the world ; so exqui- sitely finished are they, so splendid and costly. And when they are lighted up by the sun they shine most brilliantly and are visible from a vast distance.
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92 MARCO POLO. BOOK II.
Now you must know that the Great Kaan conquered the country in this fashion.
You see at the Court of the Great Kaan there was a great number of gleemen and jugglers ; and he said to them one day that he wanted them to go and conquer the aforesaid province of Mien, and that he would give them a good Captain to lead them and other good aid. And they replied that they would be delighted. So the Emperor caused them to be fitted out with all that an army requires, and gave them a Captain and a body of men-at-arms to help them ; and so they set out, and marched until they came to the country and province of Mien. And they did conquer the whole of it! And when they found in the city the two towers of gold and silver of which I have been telling you, they were greatly astonished, and sent word thereof to the Great Kaan, asking what he would have them do with the two towers, seeing what a great quantity of wealth there was upon them. And the Great Kaan, being well aware that the King had caused these towers to be made for the good of his soul, and to preserve his memory after his death, said that he would not have them injured, but would have them left precisely as they were. And that was no wonder either, for you must know that no Tartar in the world will ever, if he can help it, lay hand on anything appertaining to the dead.*
They have in this province numbers of elephants and wild oxen ; ^ also beautiftil stags and deer and roe, and other kinds of large game in plenty.
Now having told you about the province of Mien, 1 will tell you about another province which is called Bangala, as you shall hear presently.
Note 1. — ^The name of the city appears as Amim both in Pauthier's text here, and in the G. Text in the preceding chapter. In the Bern MS. it is Aamim. Perhaps some form like Amim was that used by the Mongols and Persians. I fancy it may be traced in the Arman or Uman of Rashiduddin, probably corrupt readings (in ElUot, I. 72).
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Chap. LIV. MONGOL INVASION OF BURMA. 93
Note 2. — M. Pauthier's extracts are here again very valuable. We gather fix>m them that the first Mongol communication with the King of Mien or Burma took place in 1271, when the Commandant of Tali-fu sent a deputation to that sovereign to demand an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Emperor. This was followed by various negotiations and acts of oflfence on both sides, which led to the campaign of 1277, already spoken of. For a few years no further events appear to be recorded, but in 1282, in consequence of a report from Ndsruddin of the ease with which Mien could be conquered, an invasion was ordered under a Prince of the Blood called Siangtaur. This was probably Singtur^ great grandson of one of the brothers of Chinghiz, who a few years later took part in the insurrection of Nayan (see UOhssoHy II. 461). The araiy started from Yunnanfu, then called Chungkhing (and the Yachi of Polo) in the autunm of 1283. We are told that the army made use of boats to descend the River * Oho to the fortified city of Kiangtheu (see suprOy note 2, chap, lil), which they took and sacked ; and as the King still refiised to submit, they then advanced to the " primitive capital,*' Taikung, which they captured. Here Pauthier's details stop (pp. 405, 416 ; see also UOhsson II. 444).
It is curious to compare these narratives with that from the Burmese Royal Annals given by Colonel Bumey, and again by Sir A. Phayre in the/. A. S. B. (IV. 401, and XXXVII. Pt I. p. loi). Those annals afford no mention of transactions with the Mongols previous to 1 281. In tiiat year the>' relate that a mission of ten nobles and 1000 horse came from the Emperor to demand gold and silver vessels as symbols of homage, on the ground of an old precedent The envoys conducted themselves disrespectfully (the tradition was that they refused to take off their boots, an old grievance at the Burmese court) and the King put them all to death. The Emperor of course was very wroth, and sent an aroiy of 6 millions of horse and 20 millions of foot (!) to invade Burma. The Burmese generals had \ht\r J>oint {Tafipui at the city oi Nga-tshaung- gyoHy apparently somewhere near the mouth of the Bam6 river, and after a protracted resistance on that river they were obliged to retire. They took up a new point of defence on the Hill of Mal^, which they had for- tified. Here a decisive battle was fought, and the Burmese were entirely routed. The King on hearing of their retreat from Bamd at first took measures for fortif3dng his capital Pagdn, and destroyed 6000 temples of various sizes to furnish material. But after all he lost heart, and embark- ing with his treasure and establishments on the Irawadi fled down that river to Bassein in the Delta. The Chinese continued the pursuit long past Pagin till they reached the place now called Tarokmau or " Chinese Point,** 30 miles below Prome. Here they were forced by want of pro- visions to return. The Burmese Annals place the abandonment of Pagin by the King in 1284, a most satisfactory synchronism with the Chinese record. It is a notable point in Burmese history, for it marked the feu of an ancient dynasty which was speedily followed by its extinc-
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94 MARCO POLO. Book II.
tion, and the abandonment of the capital. The King is known in the Burmese Annals as Tarok-pye-Mmg^ " The King who fled from the Tarokr'*
The Palace of the King of Mien in modern times.
In Dr. Mason's abstract of the Pegu Chronicle we find the notable statement with reference to this period that " the Emperor of China,
* This is the name now applied in 15urma to the Chinese. Sir A. Phayre supposes it to be Tiirky in which case its use probably began at this time.
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Chap. LIV. CHINESE NOTICES OF BURMESE AFFAIRS. 95
having subjugated Pagdn, his troops with the Burmese entered Pegu and invested several cities."
We see that the Chinese annals, as quoted, mention only the " capi- tale primitive " Taikung^ which I have little doubt Pauthier is right in identifying with Tagaung^ traditionally the most ancient royal city of Burma, and the remains of which stand side by side with those of Old Pagdn, a later but still very ancient capital, on the east bank of the Irawadi in about lat 23° 28'. The Chinese extracts give no idea of the temporary completeness of the conquest, nor do they mention Great Pag^n (lat 21° 13'), a city whose vast remains I have endeavoured partially to describe.* Sir Arthur Phayre, from a careful perusal of the Burmese Chronicle, assures me that there can be no doubt that this was at the time in question the Burmese Royal Residence, and the city alluded to in the Burmese narrative. M. Pauthier is mistaken in sup- posing that Tarok-Mau, the turning-point of the Chinese Invasion, lay north of this city; he has not unnaturally confounded it withTarok-il/y^ or " China-Town," a district not far below Ava. Moreover Malt^, the position of the decisive victory of the Chinese, is itself much to the south of Tagaung (about 22° 55').
Both Pagdn and Mal^ are mentioned in a remarkable Chinese notice extracted in Amyot*s M^moires (XIV. 292) : ** Mien-Tien .... had five chief towns, of which the first was Kiangtheu {supra, pp. 69, 74), the second Taikung, the third Malai, the fourth Ngan-cheng-kwd (? per- haps the Nga-tshaung gyan of the Burmese Annals), the fifth Pukan Mien- Wang (Pagdn of the Mien King?). The Yuen carried war into this country, particularly during the reign of Shunti, the last Mongol Emperor [i 333-1 368], who, after subjugating it, erected at Pukan- Mien-Wang a tribunal styled Hwrn-wd-she-sty the authority of which extended over Pang-ya and all its dependencies." This is evidently founded on actual documents, for Panya or Pengya, otherwise styled Vijdyapdra, was the capital of Burma during part of the 14th century, between the decay of Pag^ and the building of Ava. But none of the translated extracts from the Burmese Chronicle afford corroboration. From Sangermano's abstract, however, we learn that the King of Panya from 1323 to 1343 was the son of a daughter of the Emperor of China (p. 42). I may also refer to Pemberton's abstmct of the Chronicle of the Shan State of Pong in the Upper Irawadi valley, which relates that about the middle of the 14th century the Chinese invaded Pong and took Maung Maorong the capital t The Shan King and his son fled
• In the Narrative of Phayre's Mission, chap. ii.
t Dr. Anderson has here hastily assumed a discrepancy of 60 years between the chronology of the Shan document and that of the Chinese Annals. But this is merely because he arbitrarily identifies the Chinese invasion here recorded with that of Kublai in the preceding century. {See A uder soft's IVestern Vt^nnan, p. 8.) We see in the quotation above from Amyot that the Chinese Annals also contain an obscure indication of the later invasion.
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g6 MARCO POLO. Book II.
to the King of Burma for protection, but t^ Burmese surrendered them and they were carried to China. {Report on E, Frontier of Bengal^
p. 112.)
I see no sufficient evidence as to whether Marco himself visited the " city of Mien." I think it is quite clear that his account of the conquest, is from the merest hearsay, not to say gossip. Of the absurd story of the jugglers we find no suggestion in the Chinese extracts. We learn from them that Ndsruddin had represented the conquest of Mien as a very easy task, and Kublai may have in jest asked his gleemen if they would undertake it The haziness of Polo's account of the conquest contrasts strongly with his graphic description of the rout of the elephants at Vochan. Of the latter he heard the particulars on the spot (I con- ceive) shortly after the event ; whilst the conquest took place some years later than his mission to that frontier. His description of the gold and silver pagodas with their canopies of tinkling bells (the Burmese Ht^y certainly looks like a sketch from the life ; * and it is quite possible that some negotiations between 1277 and 1281 may have given him the opportunity of visiting Burma, though he may not have reached the capital Indeed he would in that case surely have given a distincter account of so important a city ; the aspect of which in its glory we have attempted to realize in the plate of " the city of Mien."
It is worthy of note that the unfortunate King then reigning in Pagdn, had in 1274 finished a magnificent Pagoda called Mengala-dudi {Mangaia Chatty a) respecting which ominous prophecies had been dif- fused. In this pagoda were deposited, besides holy relics, golden images of the Disciples of Buddha, golden models of the holy places, golden images of the King's 5 1 predecessors in Pagdn, and of the King and his Family. It is easy to suspect a connection of this with Marco's story. "It is possible that the King's ashes may have been intended to be buried near those relics, though such is not now the custom ; and Marco appears to have confounded the custom of depositing relics of Buddha and ancient holy men in pagodas with the supposed custom of the burial of the dead. Still, even now, monuments are occasionally erected over the dead in Burma, although the practice is considered a vain folly. I have known a miniature pagoda with a JiH complete, erected over the ashes of a favourite disciple by a P'hungyi or Buddhist monL" The latter practice is common in China. {Notes by Sir A, Phayre ; J, A. S, B, IV. u. s.y also V. 164, VI. 251 ; Mason's Burmahy 2d ed. p. 26 ; Milne's Life in China^ pp. 288, 450.)
Note 3. — The Gaur — Bos Gaurus, or B. {Bibos) Cavifrons of Hodgson — exists in certain forests of the Burmese territory ; and, in the
♦ Compare the old Chinese Pilgrims Hwui Seng and Seng Yun, in their admim- tion of a vast pagoda erected by the great King Kanishka in Gandhdra (at Pesbawur in fact) : ** At sunrise the gilded disks of the vane are lit up with dazzling glory, whilst the gentle breeze of morning causes the precious bells to tinkle with a pleasmg sound " {Bealy p. 204).
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Chap. LV. THE PROVINCE OF BANGALA. 97
south at least, a \^ld ox nearer the domestic species, Bos Sondaicus. Mr. Gouger, in his book The Prisoner in Burma^ describes the rare spectacle which he once enjoyed in the Tenasserim forests of a herd of wild cows at graze. He speaks of them as small and elegant, without hump, and of a light reddish dun colour (p. 326-7),
CHAPTER LV. Concerning the Province of Bangala.
Bangala is a Province towards the south, which up to the year 1 290, when the aforesaid Messer Marco Polo was still at die Court of the Great Kaan, had not yet been conquered; but his armies had gone thither to make the conquest. You must know that this province has a peculiar language, and that the people are wretched Idolaters. They are tolerably close to India. There are numbers of eunuchs there, insomuch that all the Barons who keep them get them from that Province.'
The people have oxen as tall as elephants, but not so big.* They live on flesh and nrilk and rice. They grow cotton, in which they drive a great trade, and also spices such as spikenard, galingale, ginger, sugar, and many other sorts. And the people of India also come thither in search of the eunuchs that I mentioned, and of slaves, male and female, of which there are great numbers, taken from other provinces with which those of the country are at war ; and these eunuchs and slaves are sold to the Indian and other merchants who carry them thence for sale about the world.
There is nothing more to mention about this country, so we will quit it, and I will tell you of another province called Caugigu.
Note 1. — I do not think it probable that Marco even touched at any port of Bengal on that mission to the Indian Seas of which we hear in the prologue ; but he certainly never reached it from the Yunnan side, and he had, ^s we shall presently see {infray chap. lix. note 6), a wrong
VOL. II. H
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98 MARCO POLO. Book II.
notion as to its position. Indeed, if he had visited it at all, he would have been aware that it was essentially a part of India, whilst in fact he evidently regarded it as an Indo-Chinese region, like Zardandan, Mien, and Caugigu.
There is no notice, I believe, in any history, Indian or Chinese, of an attempt by Kublai to conquer Bengal. The only such attempt by the Mongols that we hear of is one mentioned by Firishta, as made by way of Cathay and Tibet, during the reign of Alduddin MasaMd king of Dehli, in 1244, and stated to have been defeated by the local officers in Bengal. But Mr. Edward Thomas tells me he has most distinctly ascer- tained that this statement, which has misled every historian "from Badauni and Firishtah to Briggs and Elphinstone, is founded purely on an erroneous reading" (and see a note in Mr. Thomas's Pathan Kings of Dehliy p. 121).
The date 1290 in the text would fix the period of Polo's final departure from Peking, if the dates were not so generally corrupt.
The subject of the last part of this paragraph, recurred to in the next, has been misunderstood and corrupted in Pauthier's text, and partially in Ramusio's. These make the escuilles or escoiUiez (vide Ducange in v. Escodatus^ and Raynmiard^ Lex. Rom, VL 1 1) into scholars and what not But on comparison of the passages in those two editions with the Geographic Text one cannot doubt the correct reading. As to the fact that Bengal had an evil notoriety for this traffic, especially the province of Silhet, see ^tAyeen Akbery, II. 9-1 1, Barbosds chapter on Bengal, and De Barros {Ramusio I. 316 and 391).
On the cheapness of slaves in Bengal, see Urn Batuta^ IV. 211-12. He says people from Persia used to call Bengal DHzahh pur-i n^amat, " a hell crammed with good things," an appellation perhaps provoked by the official style often applied to it of Jannat-ul-bdldd or " Paradise of countries."
Prof. H. Blochmann, who is, in admirable essays, redeeming the long neglect of the history and archaeology of Bengal Proper by our own countrymen, says that one of the earliest passages, in which the name Bangdlah occurs, is in a poem of Hafiz, sent from Shiraz to Sultan Ghidssuddfn, who reigned in Bengal from 1367 to 1373. Its occurrence in our text however shows that the name was in use among the Maho^ medan foreigners (from whom Polo derived his nomenclature) nearly a century earlier. And in fact it occurs (though corruptly in some MSS.) in the history of JRashiduddin, our author's contemporary (see Elliot I. p. 72).
Note 2. — " Big as elephants" is only 2ifa(on deparler, but Marsden quotes modem exaggerations as to the height of the Ama or wild buffalo, more specific and extravagant. The unimpeachable authority of Mr. Hodgson tells us that the Ama in the Nepal Tarai sometimes does reach a height of 6 ft 6 in. at the shoulder, with a length of 10 ft. 6 in. (excluding tail), and horns of 6 ft. 6 in. (/. A, S. B., XVI.
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71b). Marco, however, seems to be speaking of domestic cattle. Some of the breeds of Upper India are very tall and noble animals, far sur- passing in height any European oxen known to me; but in modem times these are rarely seen in Bengal, where the cattle are poor and stunted. The Ain Akbari^ however, speaks of Sharlfdbdd in Bengal, which appears to have corresponded to modem Bardwdn, as producing very beautiful white oxen, of great size, and capable of carrying a load of 15 mans J which at Prinsep's estimate of Akbar's man would b^ about 600 lbs.
CHAPTER LVI.
Discourses of the Province of Caugigu,
Caugigu is a province towards the east, which has a king.' The people are Idolaters, and have a language of their own. They have made their submission to the Great Kaan, and send him tribute every year. And let me tell you their king is so given to luxury that he hath at the least 300 wives; for whenever he hears of any beautiful woman in the land, he takes and marries her.
They find in this country a good deal of gold, and
they also have great abundance of spices. But they are
such a long way from the sea that the products are of
little value, and thus their price is low. They have
elephants in great numbers, and other cattle of sundry
kinds, and plenty of game. They live on flesh and milk
and rice, and have wine made of rice and good spices.
The whole of the people, or nearly so, have their skin
marked with the needle in patterns representing lions,
dragons, birds, and what not, done in such a way that it
can never be obliterated. This work they cause to be
wrought over face and neck and chest, arms and hands,
and belly, and, in short, the whole body; and they look
on it as a token of elegance, so that those who have the
largest amount of this embroidery are regarded with the
greatest admiration.
H 2
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Note 1. — No province mentioned by Marco has given rise to wider and wilder conjectures than this, Cangigu as it has been generally printed.
M. Pauthier, who sees in it Laos, or rather one of the states of Laos called in the Chinese histories Papesifu^ seems to have formed the most probable opinion hitherto propounded by any editor of Polo. I have no doubt that Laos or some part of that region is meant to be described^ and that Pauthier is right regarding the general direction of the course here taken as being through the regions east of Burma, in a north-easterly direction up into Kwei-chau. But we shall be able to review the geography of this tract better, as a whole, at a point more advanced. I shall then speak of the name Caugigu, and why I prefer this reading of it
I do not believe, for reasons which will also appear further on, that Polo is now following a route which he had traced in person, unless it be in the latter part of it.
M. Pauthier, from certain indications in a Chinese work, fixes on Chiangmai or Kiang-mai, the Zimm^ of the Burmese (in about latitude 1 8° 48' and long. 99° 30') as the capital of the Papesifu and of the Caugigu of our text. It can scarcely however be the latter, unless we throw over entirely all the intervals stated in Polo's itinerary ; and M. Gamier informs me that he has evidence that the capital of the Papesifu at this time was Muang- Yong, a little to the south-east of Kiang-Tung, where he has seen its ruins.* That the people called by the Chinese Papesifu were of the great race of Laotians, Shins, or Thai^ is very certain, from the vocabulary of their language published by Klaproth.
Pauthier's Chinese authority gives a puerile interpretation of Papesifu as signifying " the kingdom of the 800 wives," and says it was called so because the Prince maintained that establishment This may be an indication that there were popular stories about the numerous wives of the King of Laos, such as Polo had heard ; but the interpretation is doubtless rubbish, like most of the so-called etymologies of proper names applied by the Chinese to foreign regions. At best these seem to be merely a kind of Memoria Tec/inica, and often probably bear no more relation to the name in its real meaning than Swift's All-eggs-under-the- grate bears to Alexander Magnus. How such " etymologies " arise is obvious from the nature of the Chinese system of writing. If we also had to express proper names by combining monosyllabic words already existing in English, we should in fact be obliged to write the name of the Macedonian hero much as Swift travestied it. As an example we may give the Chinese name of Java, Kwawa^ which signifies " gourd-sound," and was given to that Island, we are told, because the voice of its in-
• Indeed documents in Klaproth's Asia Polyglot ta show that the Papi state ^-as also called Muang- Yong (p. 364-5). I observe that the River running to the east of Pu-eul and Ssemao (Puer and Esmok) is called /\7/^«-Kiang, the name of whidii* perhaps a memorial of the Pap^.
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Chap. LVII. THE PROVINCE OF AN IN. IQI
habitants is very like that of a dry gourd rolled upon the ground ! It is usually stated that Tungking was called Kiaochi^ meaning " crossed-toes,'* because the people often exhibit that malformation (which is a fact), but we may be certain that the syllables were originally a phonetic representation of an indigenous name which has no such meaning. As another example, less ridiculous but not more true. Chin-tan^ repre- senting the Indian name of China, Chinas thdna^ is explained to mean "Eastern-Dawn" (Aurore Orientak). {Amyot, XIV. loi ; Klapr, Mem. III. 268.)
The states of Laos are shut out from the sea in the manner indicated ; they abound in domestic elephants to an extraordinary extent ; and the people do tattoo themselves in various degrees, most of all (as M. Gamier tells me) about Kiang Hung. The style of tattooing which the text describes is quite that of the Burmese, in speaking of whom Polo has omitted to mention the custom : ** Every male Burman is tattooed in his boyhood from the middle to the knees ; in fact he has a pair of breeches tattooed on him. The pattern is a fanciful medley of animals and arab- esques, but it is scarcely distinguishable, save as a general tint, except on a fkir skin," {Mission to Ava, 151.)
Concerning the Province of Anin
Anin is a Province towards the east, the people of which are subject to the Great Kaan, and are Idolaters. They Uve by cattle and tillage, and have a peculiar language. The women wear on the legs and arms bracelets of gold and silver of great value, and the men wear such as are even yet more costly. They have plenty of horses which they sell in great numbers to the Indians, making a great profit thereby. And they have also vast herds of buffaloes and oxen, having excellent pastures for these. They have like- wise all the necessaries of life in abundance.'
Now you must know that between Anin and Caugigu, which we have left behind us, there is a distance of [25] days' journey;* and from Caugigu to Bangala, the third province in our rear, is 30 days' journey. We shall now
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I02 MARCO POLO. Book 11
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Chap. LVII. PEOPLE OF ANIN. I03
leave Anin and proceed to another province which is some 8 days* journey further, always going eastward.
Note 1. — Ramusio, the printed text of the Soc. de G^graphie, and inost editions have Amu ; Pauthier reads Aniu^ and considers the name to represent Tungking or Annam, called also Nofi-yui, The latter word he supposes to be converted into Anyue, Aniu, And accordingly he ( carries the traveller to the capital of Tungking. 'm Leaving the name for the present, according to the scheme of the
^ lonte as I shall try to explain it below, I should seek for Amu or Aniu or Anim in the extreme south-east of Yunnan. A part of this region was for the first time traversed by the officers of the French expedition up the Mekong, who in 1867 visited Sheu-ping, Lin-ngan and the upper valley of the River of Tungking on their way to Yunnan-fu. To my question whether the description in the text, of Aniu or Anin and its fine pastures, applied to the tract just indicated, LieuL Gamier replied on the whole fisivourably (see further on), proceeding : " The population about Sheu- ping is excessively mixL On market days at that town one sees a gathering of wild people in great number and variety, and whose costumes are highly picturesque, as well as often very rich. There are the Fa-is, who are also found again higher up, the Ho-nhi, the KhatOy the Lopi, the Skmiseu, These tribes appear to be allied in part to the Laotians, in
part to the Kakhyens The wilder races about Sheuping are
remarkably handsome, and you see there types of women exhibiting an extraordinary regularity of feature, and at the same time a complexion iorprisingly white. The Chinese look quite an inferior race beside
Aero I may add that all these tribes, especially the Ho-nhi and
die Pai, wear large amounts of silver ornament ; great collars of silver found the neck, as well as on the legs and arms."
Though the whiteftess of the people of Anin is not noticed by Polo, Die distinctive manner in which he speaks in the next chapter of the dark complexion of the tribes described therein seems to indicate the probable omission of the opposite trait here.
The prominent position assigned in M. Gamier's remarks to a race called Honhi first suggested to me that the reading of the text might be j|. Amin instead of Aniu. And as a matter of fact this seems to my eyes * to be clearly the reading of the Paris Livre des Mervdlles (Pauthier's MS. B), while the Paris No. 5631 (Pauthier's A) has Auin, and what may be either Aniu or Anin. Anyn is also found in the Latin Brandenburg MS. of Pipino's version collated by Andrew Miiller, to which however we cannot ascribe much weight But the two words are so nearly iden- tical in medieval writing, and so little likely to be discriminated by scribes who had nothing to guide their discrimination, that one need not hesitate to adopt that which is supported by argument In reference to the suggested identity of Anin and Honhi, M. Gamier writes again :
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I04 MARCO POLO. Boot 11.
*' All that Polo has said regarding the country of Aniu, though not con- taining anything very characteristic, may apply perfectly to the different indigenous tribes, at present subject to the Chinese, which are dispersed over the country from Talan to Sheuping and Lin-ngan. These tribes bearing the names (given above) relate that they in other days formed an independent state, to which they give the name oi Muang Shung, Where this Muang was situated there is no knowing. These tribes have langage par mis as Marco Polo says, and silver ornaments are worn by them to this day in extraordinary profusion ; more however by the women than the men. They have plenty of horses, buffaloes and oxen, and of sheep as well It was the first locality in which the latter were seen. The plateau of Lin-ngan affords pasture-grounds which are exceptionally good for that part of the world.
" Beyond Lin-ngan we find the Honhi, properly so called, no longer. But ought one to lay much stress on mere names which have undergone so many changes, and of which so many have been borne in succession by all those places and peoples? .... I will content myself with reminding you that the town of Homi-cheu near Lin-ngan in the days of the Yuen bore the name of Ngo-ning"
Notwithstanding M. Gamier*s caution, I am strongly inchncd to believe that Anin represents either Honhi or Nooning, if indeed these names be not identical. For on reference to Biot I see that the first syllable of the modem name of the town which M. Gamier writes Ho/w, is expressed by the same character as the first syllable of NGoning
We give one of M. Gamier*s woodcuts representing some of the races in this vicinity. Their dress, as he notices, has, in some cases, a curious resemblance to costumes of Switzerland, or of Brittany, popular at fancy balls.* Coloured figures of some of these races will be found in the Atlas to Garnier*s work ; see especially Plate 35.
Note 2. — All the French MSS. and other texts except Ramusio's read 15. We adopt Ramusio*s reading, 25, for reasons which will appear below.
CHAPTER LVIIL
Concerning the Province of Coloman.
CoLOMAN is a province towards the east, the people ot which are Idolaters and have a peculiar language, and are
* There is a little iincertainty in the adjustment of names and figures of some of these tribes, between the illustrations and the incidental notices in Lieut. Gamier's work. But all the figures in the present cut certainly belong to the tract to whicb we point as Anin ; and the two middle figures answer best to what is said of the J/onAi-
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Chap. LVIII. THE PROVINCE OF COLOMAN. 105
subject to the Great Kaan. They are a [tall and] very handsome people, though in complexion brown rather than white, and are good soldiers.' They have a good many towns, and a vast number of villages, among great moun- tains, and in strong positions/
When any of them die, the bodies are burnt, and then they take the bones and put them in little chests. These are carried high up the mountains, and placed in great caverns, where they are hung up in such wise that neither man nor beast can come at them.
A good deal of gold is found in the country, and for petty traffic they use porcelain shells such as I have told you of before. All these provinces that I have been speaking of, to wit Bangala and Caugigu and Anin, em- ploy for currency porcelain shells and gold. There are merchants in this country who are very rich and dispose of large quantities of goods. The people live on flesh and rice and milk, and brew their wine from rice and excellent spices.
Note 1. — ^The only MSS. that aflford the reading Coioman or Choio- man instead of Toloman or Tholoman^ are the Bern MS., which has Colo- man m the initial word of the chapter, Paris MS. 5649 (Pauthier's C) which has Coioman in the Table of Chapters, but not in the text, the Bodleian, and the Brandenburg MS. quoted in the last note. These variations in themselves have little weight But the confusion between c and /in medieval MSS., when dealing with strange names, is so constant that I have ventured to make the correction, in strong conviction that it is the right reading. M. Pauthier indeed, after speaking of tribes called Lo on the south-west of China adds, " on les nommait To-lo-man (' les nombreux Barbares Lo *)." Were this latter statement founded on actual evidence we might retain that form which is the usual reading. But I apprehend from the manner in which M. Pauthier produces it, without corroborative quotation, that he is rather hazarding a conjecture than speaking with authority. Be that as it may, it is impossible that Polo's Toloman or Coioman should have been in the south of Kwangsi where Pauthier locates it
On the other hand we find tribes of both Kolo and Kihlau Barbarians {}.e. Mdn^ whence Kolo-man or Kihiau-mdn) very numerous on the frontier of Kweichau (see Bridgman's transL of Tract on Meautsze, pp. 265, 269, 270, 272, 273, 274, 275, 278, 279, 280). Among these the
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lo6 MARCO POLO. Book II.
The Koloman, after a Chinese drawing.
'' Coloman est uiu probmce bets lebant fil sunt mult bdbs jots tt m tiafi
rait btm blaiues mes bruni. fil sunt bun bonus b'arnus " • . .
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Chap. LVIII. PEOPLE OF COLOMAN. 107
Kolo^ described as No. 38 in that Tract, appear to me from various par- ticulars to be the most probable representatives of the Coloman of Polo, notwithstanding the sentence with which the description opens : " Kolo originally called Luluh; the modem designation Kolo is incorrect"* They are at present found in the prefecture of Tating (one of the departments of Kweichau towards the Yunnan side). " They are taU^ of a dark complexion^ with sunken eyes, aquiline nose, wear long whiskers, and have the beard shaved off above the mouth. They pay great deference to demons, and on that account are sometimes called * Dragons of Lo.' .... At the present time these Kolo are divided into 48 clans, the elders of which are called Chieftains (lit. ' Head-and-Eyes ') and are
of nine grades The men bind their hair into a tuft with blue
cloth and make it &st on the forehead like a horn. Their upper dresses are short, with large sleeves, and their lower garments are fine blue. When one of the chieftains dies, all that were under him are assembled together clad in armour and on horseback. Having dressed his corpse in silk and woollen robes, they bum it in the open country ; then, in- voking the departed spirit, they inter the ashes. Their attachment to hun as their sole master is such that nothing can drive or tempt them from their allegiance. Their large bows, long spears, and sharp swords, are strong and well-wrought They train excellent horses, love archery and hunting ; and so expert are they in tactics that their soldiers rank as the best among all the uncivilized tribes. There is this proverb : * The Lo Dragons of Shwui-si rap the head and strike the tail ' which is intended to indicate their celerity in defence." {Bridgman, p. 272-3.)
The character Lo, here applied in the Chinese Tract to these people, is the same as that in the name of the Kwangsi Lo of M. Pauthier.
I append a cut (opposite page) from the drawing representing these Kolo-man in the original work from which Bridgman translated, and which is in the possession of Dr. Lockhart
Note 2. — Magaillans, speaking of the semi-independent tribes of Kweichau and Kwangsi says : " Their towns are usually so girt by high mountains and scarped rocks that it seems as if nature had taken a pleasure in fortifying them " (p. 43). See cut at p. 114.
* On the other hand M. Gamier writes : "I do not know any name at all like IColo, except Loiv, the generic name given by the Chinese to the wild tribes of Yunnan." Does not this look as if JCoh were really the old name, Luluh or Lolo the later ?
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lo8 MARCO POLO. Book II.
CHAPTER LIX.
CONC J RNING THE PROVINCE OF CUIJU.
Cuiju is a province towards the East.' After leaving Coleman you travel along a river for 12 days, meeting with a good number of towns and villages, but nothing worthy of particular mention. After you have travelled those twelve days along the river you come to a great and noble city which is called Fungul.
The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan, and live by trade and handicrafts. You must know they manufacture stuffs of the bark of certain trees which form very fine summer clothing." They are good soldiers, and have paper-money. For you must understand that hence- forward we are in the countries where the Great Kaans paper-money is current.
The country swarms with lions to that degree that no man can venture to sleep outside his house at night.' Moreover when you travel on that river, and come to a halt at night, unless you keep a good way from the bank the lions will spring on the boat and snatch one of the crew and make off with him and devour him. And but for a certain help that the inhabitants enjoy, no one could venture to travel in that province, because of the multitude of those lions, and because of their strength and ferocity.
But you see they have in this province a large breed of dogs, so fierce and bold that two of them together will attack a lion.'* So every man who goes a journey takes with him a couple of those dogs, and when a lion appears they have at him with the greatest boldness, and the lion turns on them, but can't touch them for they are very deft at eschewing his blows. So they follow him, per- petually giving tongue, and watching their chance to give
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Chap. LIX. THE PROVINCE OF CUIJU. IO9
him a bite in the rump or in the thigh, or wherever they may. The lion makes no reprisal except now and then to turn fiercely on them, and then indeed were he to catch the dogs it would be all over with them, but they take good care that he shall not. So, to escape the dogs' din, the lion makes oflT, and gets into the wood, where mayhap he stands at bay against a tree to have his rear protected from their annoyance. And when the travellers see the lion in this plight they take to their bows, for they are capital archers, and shoot their arrows at him till he falls dead. And 'tis thus that travellers in those parts do deliver themselves from those lions.
They have a good deal of silk and other products which are carried up and down, by the river of which we spoke, into various quarters.^
You travel along the river for twelve days more, find- ing a good many towns all along, and the people always Idolaters, and subject to the Great Kaan,with paper-money current, and living by trade and handicrafts. There are also plenty of fighting men. And after travelling those 12 days you arrive at the city of Sindafu of which we spoke in this book some time ago.^
From Sindafu you set out again and travel some 70 days through the provinces and cities and towns which we have already visited, and all which have been already particularly spoken of in our Book. At the end of those 70 days you come to Juju where we were before.
From Juju you set out again and travel four days towards the south, finding many towns and villages. The people are great traders and craftsmen, are all Idolaters, and use the paper-money of the Great Kaan their Sovereign. At the end of those four days you come to the city of Cacanfii belonging to the province of Cathay, and of it I shall now speak.
Note 1. — In spite of difficulties which beset the subject (see note 6 felow) the view of Pauthier, suggested doubtingly by Marsden, that the
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no MARCO POLO. BOOK II.
Cuiju of the text is Kweichau, seems the most probable one. , As the latter observes, the reappearance of paper-money shows that we have got back into a province of China Proper. Such, Yunnan, recently conquered from a Shan prince, could not be considered. But, according to the best view we can form, the traveller could only have passed throu^ the extreme west of the province of Kweichau.
The name oiFungul, if that be a true reading, is suggestive o(FAungan, which under the Mongols was the head of a district called Phungan-lu. It was founded by that dynasty, and was regarded as an important posi- tion for the command of the three provinces Kwei-chau, Kwangsi, and Yunnan. (Biof^ p. i68; Martini, p. 137.) But we shall explain p^^ sentiy the serious difficulties that beset Uie interpretation of the itinerary as it stands.
Note 2. — Several Chinese plants afford a fibre from the bark, and some of these are manufactured into what we call grass-cloths. The light smooth textures so called are termed by the Chinese Hiapu or " summer cloths." Kweichau produces such. But perhaps that specially intended is a species of hemp {Urtica Nivea T) of which M. Pemy of the R. C. Missions says, in his notes on Kweichau : " It affords a texture which may be compared to batiste. This has the notable property of keeping so cool that many people cannot wear it even in the hot weather. Generally it is used only for summer clothing." (Diet, ia Tissus, VII. 404; Chin. Repos. XVIII. 217 and 529; Ann. de la Prof, de la Foi, XXXI. 137.)
Note 3. — Tigers of course are meant (see supra, vol L p. 386). M. Perny speaks of tigers in the mountainous parts of Kweichau. (Of. cit. 139.)
Note 4. — These great dogs were noticed by Lieut, (now General) Macleod, in his journey to Kiang Hung on the great River Mekong, as accompanying the caravans of Chinese traders on their way to the Siamese territory (see Macleod* s JoumeU, p. 66).
Note 5. — The trade in wild silk {i.e. from the oak-leaf silkworm) is in truth an important branch of commerce in Kweichau. But the chief seat of this is at Tsuni-fu, and I do not think that Polo's route can be sought so far to the eastward. {Ann. de la Prop. XXXI. 136; Richthofen, Letter VII. 81.)
Note 6. — ^We have now got back to Sindafu, i.e. Chingtufu in Szechwan, and are better able to review the geography of the track we have been following. I do not find it possible to solve all its difficulties.
The different provinces treated of in the chapters from Iv. to lix. are strung by Marco upon an easterly, or, as we must interpret, north-easterly line of travel, real or hjrpotheticaL Their names and intervals are as follows : (i) Bangala ; whence 30 marches to (2) Caugigu ; 25 marches
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Chap. LIX. REVIEW OF POLO'S TRACK. 1 1 1
to {3) Anin ; 8 marches to (4) Toloman or Coloman ; 12 days in Cuiju along a river to the city of (5) Fungul, Sinugul (or what not) ; 12 days further, on or along the same river, to (6) Chingtufu. Total from Ban- gala to Chingtufu 87 days..
I have said that the line of travel is real or hypothetical^ for no doubt a large part of it was only founded on hearsay. We last left our traveller at Mien, or on the frontier of Yunnan and Mien. Bangaia is reached per saltum with no indication of the interval, and its position is entirely misapprehended. Marco conceives of it, not as in India, but as being, Kke Mien, a province on the confines of India, as being under the same King as Mien, as lying to the south of that kingdom, and as being at the (south) western extremity of a great traverse line which runs (north) east into Kweichau and Szechwan. All these conditions point consistently to one locality ; that however is not Bengal but Pegu, On the other hand the circumstances of manners and products, so far as they go, do belong to Bengal. I conceive that Polo's information regarding these was derived from persons who had really visited Bengal by sea, but that he had confounded what he so heard of the Delta of the Ganges with what he heard on the Yunnan frontier of the Delta of the Irawadi. It is just the same kind of error that is made about those great Eastern Rivers by Fra Mauro in his Map. And possibly the name of Pegu (in Buraiese Bagdh) may have contributed to his error, as well as the pro^ bable fact that the Kings of Burma did at this time claim to be Kings of Bengal, whilst they actually were Kings of Pegu.
Caugigu, — ^We have seen reason to agree with M. Pauthier that the description of this region points to Laos, though we cannot with him assign it to Kiang-mai Even if it be identical with the Papesifu of the Chinese, we have seen that the centre of that state may be placed at Muang Yong not far from the Mekong j whilst I believe that the limits of Caugigu must be drawn much nearer the Chinese and Tungking territory, so as to em- brace Kiang Hung, and probably the Papien River (see note at p. 100).
As regards the name, it \% possible that it may represent some specific name of the Upper Laos territory. But I am inchned to believe that we are dealing with a case of erroneous geographical perspective like that of Bangaia ; and that whilst the circumstances belong to Upper Laos, the name^ read as I read it Caugigu (or Cavgigu), is no other than the Kafchikiie of Rashiduddin, the name applied by him to Tungking, and representing the Kiaochi-kwe of the Chinese. D'Anville's Atlas brings Kiaochi up to the Mekong in immediate contact with Cheli or Kiang Hung. I had come to the conclusion that Caugigu was probably the conrect reading before I was aware that it is an actual reading of the Geog. Text more than once, of Pauthier's A more than once, of Pau- thiefs C at least once and possibly twice, and of the Bern MS. ; all which I have ascertained from personal examination of those manuscripts.*
* A passing suggestion of the identity of Kafchi Ku^ and Caugigu is made by D'Ohsson, and I fonnerly objected (see Cathay^ p. 272).
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MARCO POLO. Book II.
Anin or Aniu. — I have already pointed out that I seek this in the territory about Lin-ngan and HomL In relation to this M. Gamier writes ; " In starting from Muang Yong, or even if you prefer it from Xieng Hung (Kiang Hung of our maps) . . . . it would be physically im- possible in 25 days to get beyond the arc which I have laid down on your map. (viz., extending a few miles N.E. of Homi). There are scarcely any roads in those mountains, and easy lines of communication begin ovAy after you have got to the Lin-ngan territory. In Marco Polo's days things were certainly not better, but the reverse. All that has been done of consequence in the way of roads, posts, and organization in the part of Yunnan between Lin-ngan and Xieng Hung, dates in some degree from the Yuen, but in a far greater degree from Kanghi.*' Hence, even with the Ramusian reading of the itinerary, we cannot place Amn much beyond the position indicated already. j
Koloman, — We have seen that the position of this region is probably near the western frontier of Kweichau. Adhering to ffomi as the repre- sentative of Anin, and to the 8 days' journey of the text, the most probable position of Koloman would be about Lo-ping^ which lies about 100 English miles in a straight Hne N.E. from Hbml The first cha- racter of the name here is again the same as the Lo of the Kolo tribes.
Beyond this point the difficulties of devising an interpretation, consistent at once with facts and with the text as it stands, become insuperable.
The narrative demands that from Koloman we should reach Fungu!, a great and noble city, by travelling 12 days along a river, and that Fungul should be within 12 days* journey of Chingtufu, along the same river, or at least along rivers connected with it
In advancing from the S.W., guided by the data aflforded by the texts, we have not been able to carry the position of Fungul {Sinugul.ox what not of G. T. and other MSS.) further north than Phungan. But it is impossible that Chingtufu should have been reached in 12 days from this point Nor is it possible that a new post in a secluded position, like Phungan, could have merited to be described as "a great and noble
city."
Baron v. Richthofen has favoured me with a note in which he shows that in reality the only place answering the more essential conditions of Fungul is Siuchau-fu at the union of the two great branches of the Yangtsze, viz. the Kinsha Kiang, and the Min Kiang from Chingtufu- (i) The distance from Siuchau to Chingtu by land travelling is just about 12 days, and the road is along a river. (2) In approaching " FunguP from the south Polo met with a good many towns and villages. This would be the case along either of the navigable rivers that join the Yangtsze below Siuchau (or along that which joins above Siuchau, mentioned further on). (3) The large trade in silk up and down the river is a characteristic that could only apply to the Yangtsze.
These reasons are very strong ; though some little doubt must sub-
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Chap. LIX.
REVIEW OF POLO'S TRACK.
113
sist until we can explain the name (Fungul, or Sinugul) as applicable to Siuchau.* And assuming Siuchau to be the city we must needs cany the position of Coloman considerably further north than Loping, and must presume the interval between Anin and Coloman to be greatly understated, through clerical or other error. With these assumptions we should place Polo's Coloman in the vicinity of Weining, one of the localities of Kolo tribes.
From a position near Weining it would be quite possible to reach Siuchau in 1 2 days, making use of the facilities afforded by one or other of the partially navigable rivers to which allusion has just been made.
" That one," says M. Gamier in a letter, " which enters the Kiang a little above Siu-chau-fu, the River of Lowatong, which was descended by our party, has a branch to the eastward which is navi- gable up to about the lati- tude of Chao- tong. Is not this probably Marco Polo's route? It is to this day a line much fre- quented, and one on which great works have been exe- cuted ; among others two iron suspen- sion bridges, works truly gigantic for the country in which we find them."
An extract from a Chinese Itinerary of this route, which M. Gamier has since communicated to me, shows that at a point 4 days from Weining the traveller may embark and continue his voyage to any point on the great Kiang.
We are obliged, indeed, to give up the attempt to keep to a line of communicating rivers throughout the whole 24 days. Nor do I see how it is possible to adhere to that condition literally without taking more material liberties with the text.
Iron Suspension Bridge at Lowatong. — (From Gamier.)
• Cuiju might be read C/«///— representing Siuchau, but the difificulty about Fangul would remain.
VOL. II. 1
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114
MARCO POLO.
Book II.
My theory of Polo's actual journey would be that he returned from Yunnanfu to Chingtufu through some part of the province of Kweichau, perhaps only its western extremity, but that he spoke of Caugigu, and probably of Anin, as he did of Bangala, from report only. And, in recapitulation, I would identify provisionally the localities spoken of in this difficult itinerary as follows : Caugigu with Kiang Hung ; Anin with Homi ; Coloman with the country about Weining in Western Kweichau; Fungul or Sinugul with Siuchau.
Note 7. — Here the traveller gets back to the road-bifurcation near Juju, />. Chochau (fmte p. 6), and thence commences to travel soutb- ward.
Fortified Villages on Western frontier of Kweichau.— (From Gamier.)
'' C^asttaus ont^l grant quanttti m granliunnes montagnos et Cortns/
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Hajanboja/
lamLm.JaluL Mumti; AlhtmarU Strtre-. Hmtw aifla^tk
EWetttr Lidio
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I 115 )
BOOK 11.— continued
Part III.— JOURNEY SOUTHWARD THROUGH EASTERN PROVINCES OF CATHAY AND MANZI.
CHAPTER LX. Concerning the Cities of Cacanfu and of Changlu.
Cacanfu is a noble city. The people are Idolaters and bum their dead ; they have paper-money, and live by trade and handicrafts. For they have plenty of silk from which they weave stuiFs of silk and gold, and sendals in large quantities. [There are also certain Christians at this place, who have a church,] And the city is at the head of an important territory containing numerous towns and villages. [A great river passes through it, on which much merchan- dize is carried to the city of Cambaluc, for by many channels and canals it is connected therewith.']
We will now set forth again, and travel three days towards the south, and then we come to a town called Changlu. This is another great city belonging to the Great Kaan, and to the province of Cathay. The people have paper-money, and are Idolaters and burn their dead. And you must know they make salt in great quantities at this place ; I will tell you how 'tis done.'
A kind of earth is found there which is exceedingly salt. This they dig up and pile in great he^ps. Upon these heaps they pour water in quantities till it runs out at the bottom ; and then they take up this water and boil it well in great iron cauldrons, and as it cools it deposits a
I 2
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Il6 MARCO POLO. Book II.
fine white salt in very small grains. This salt they then carry about for sale to many neighbouring districts, and get great profit thereby.
There is nothing else worth mentioning, so let us go forward five days' journey, and we shall come to a city called Chinangli.
Note 1. — In the greater part of the journey which occupies the remainder of Book II., Pauthier is a chief authority, owing to his industrious Chinese reading and citation. Most of his identifications seem well founded, though sometimes we shall be constrained to dissent from them widely. A considerable number have been anticipated by former editors, but even in such cases he is often able to bring forward new grounds.
Cacanfu is HoKiANFU in Pecheli, 52 m. in a direct line south by east of Chochau. It was the head of one of the Lu or circuits into which the Mongols divided China. {Pauthier,)
Note 2. — Marsden and Murray have identified Changlu with T'sANG-CHAU in Pecheli, about 30 m. east by south of Hokianfu. This seems substantially right, but Pauthier shows that there was an old town actually called Changlu, separated from T'sang-chau only by the great canal.
The manner of obtaining salt, described in the text, is substantially the same as one described by Duhalde, and by one of the missionaries, as being employed near the mouth of the Yangtse-kiang. There is a town of the third order some miles south-east of Tsang-chau, called Yen-shan or " salt-hill," and according to Pauthier T'sang-chau is the mart for salt produced theie. {Duhalde in Astley^ IV. 310; Lettra Edif. XI. 267 seqq, ; Biot p. 283.)
Polo here introduces a remark about the practice of burning the dead, which, with the notice of the idolatry of the people, and their use of paper-money, constitutes a formula which he repeats all through the Chinese provinces with wearisome iteration. It is, in fact, his definition of the Chinese people, for whom he seems to lack a comprehensive name.
A great change seems to have come over Chinese custom, since the Middle Ages, in regard to the disposal of the dead. Cremation is now entirely disused, except in two cases ; one, that of the obsequies of a Buddhist priest, and the other that in which the coffin instead of being buried has been exposed in the fields, and in the lapse of time has become decayed. But it is impossible to reject the evidence that it ^'as a common practice in Polo's age. He repeats the assertion that it was
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Chap. LXI. CREMATION OF THE DEAD. I17
the custom at every stage of his journey through Eastern China ; though perhaps his taking absolutely no notice of the practice of burial is an instance of that imperfect knowledge of strictly Chinese peculiarities which has been elsewhere ascribed to him. It is the case, however, that the author of the Book of the Estate of the Great Kaan (circa 1330) also speaks of cremation as the usual Chinese practice, and that Ibn Batula says positively : " The Chinese are infidels and idolaters, and they bum their dead after the manner of the Hindus." This is all the more curious, because the Arab Relations of the 9th century say distinctly that the Chinese bury their dead, though they often kept the body long (as they do still) before burial ; and there is no mistaking the description which Conti (15th century) gives of the Chinese mode of sepulture. Mendoza, in the i6th century, alludes to no disposal of the dead except by burial, but Semedo in the early part of the 17 th says that bodies were occasionally burnt, especially in Szechwan.
And it is very worthy of note that the Chinese envoy to Chinla (Kamboja) in 1295, an individual who may have personally known Marco Polo, in speaking of the custom prevalent there of exposing the dead, adds : " There are some, however, who burn their dead. T/iese are all descendants of Chinese immigrants, ^^
(DoolittUy 190; Deguignes, I. 69; Cathay, p. 247, 479; Reinaud, I. 56 ; India in XVth Century, P- 23 ; Semedo, p. 95 ; Rem, Mel, Asiat, L 128.)
CHAPTER LXI.
Concerning the Crrv of Chinangli, and that of Tadinfu, and THE Rebellion of Litan.
Chinangli is a city of Cathay as you go south, and it belongs to the Great Kaan ; the people are Idolaters, and have paper-money. There runs through the city a great and wide river, on which a large traffic in silk goods and spices and other costly merchandize passes up and down.
When you travel south from Chinangli for five days, you meet everywhere with fine towns and villages, the people of which are all Idolaters, and burn their dead, and arc subject to the Great Kaan, and have paper-money, and live by trade and handicrafts, and have all the necessaries of life in great abundance. But there is nothing particular to
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mention on the way till you come, at the end of those five days, to Tadinfu.'
This, you must know, is a very great city, and in old times was the seat of a great kingdom ; but the Great Kaan conquered it by force of arms. Nevertheless it is still the noblest city in all those provinces. There are very great merchants here, who trade on a great scale, and the abundance of silk is something marvellous. They have, moreover, most charming gardens abounding with fruit of large size. The city of Tadinfu hath also under its rule eleven imperial cities of great importance, all of which enjoy a large and profitable trade, owing to that immense produce of silk.^
Now, you must know, that in the year of Christ, 1273, the Great Kaan had sent a certain Baron called Liytax Sangon,3 with some 80,000 horse, to this province and city to garrison them. And after the said captain had tarried there a while, he formed a disloyal and traitorous plot, and stirred up the great men of the province to rebel against the Great Kaan. And so they did ; for they broke into revolt against their sovereign lord, and refused all obedience to him, and made this Liytan, whom their sovereign had sent thither for their protection, to be the chief of their revolt.
When the Great Kaan heard thereof he straightway despatched two of his Barons, one of whom was called Aguil and the other Mongotay;* giving them 100,000 horse and a great force of infantry. But the affair was a serious one, for the Barons were met by the rebel Liytan with all those whom he had collected from the province, mustering more than 100,000 horse and a large force of foot. Nevertheless in the battle Liytan and his party were utterly routed, and the two Barons whom the Emperor had sent won the victory. When the news came to the Great Kaan he was right well pleased, and ordered that all the chiefs who had rebelled, or excited others to rebel, should
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be put to a cruel death, but that those of lower rank should receive a pardon. And so it was done. The two Barons had all the leaders of the enterprise put to a cruel death, and all those of lower • rank were pardoned. And thence- forward they conducted themselves with loyalty towards their lord.'
Now having told you all about this affair, let us have done with it, and I will tell you of another place that you come to in going south, which is called Sinju-matu.
Note 1. — There seems to be no solution to the difficulties attaching to the account of these two cities (Chinangli and Tadinfu) except that the two have been confounded, either by a lapse of memory on the traveller's part or by a misunderstanding on that of Rusticiano.
The position and name of Chinangli point, as Pauthier has shown, to TsiNANFU, the chief city of Shantung. The second city is called in the G. Text and Pauthier's MSS. Candinfu^ Condinfu^ and Cundinfu^ names which it has not been found possible to elucidate. But adopting the reading Tadinfu of some of the old printed editions (supported by the Tudinfu of Ramusio and the Tandifu of the Riccardian MS.), Pauthier shows that the city now called Yenchau bore under the Kin the name of Taitingfu, which may fairly thus be recognized.
It was not however Yenchau, but T'sinanfu^ which was " the noblest city in all those provinces," and had been " in old times the seat of a kingdom," as well as recently the scene of the episode of Litan's rebel- lion. Tsinanfu lies in a direct line 86 miles south of Tsangchau ( Changiu)^ near the banks of the Tat*sing-ho, a large river which com- municates with the great canal near T'siningchau, and which was, no doubt, of greater importance in Polo's time than in the last six centuries. For up nearly to the origin of the Mongol power it appears to have been one of the main discharges of the Hwang-Ho. The recent changes in that river have again brought its main stream into the same channel, and the " New Yellow River " passes three or four miles to the north of the city. T'sinanfu has frequently of late been visited by European travellers, who report it as still a place of importance, with much life and bustle, numerous book shops, several fine temples, two mosques, and all the furniture of a provincial capital. It has also a Roman Catholic Cathedral of Gothic architecture. {Williamsotty I. 102.)
Note 2. — The Chinese annals, more than 2000 years b.c, speak of silk as an article of tribute from Shantung ; and evidently it was one of the provinces most noted in the Middle Ages for that article. Compare
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the quotation in note on next chapter from Friar Odoric. Yet the older . modem accounts speak only of the wild silk of Shantung. Mr. Williamson, however, points out that there is an extensive produce from the genuine mulberry silkworm, and anticipates a very important trade in Shantung silk. Silk fabrics are also largely produced, and some of extraordinary quality, {Williamson^ I. 112, 131.)
The expressions of Padre Martini, in speaking of the wild silk of Shantung, strongly remind one of the talk of the ancients about the origin of silk, and suggest the possibility that this may not have been mere groundless fancy : " Non in globum aut ovum ductum, sed in longissimum filum paulatim ex ore emissum, albi coloris, quae arbustis dumisque adhaerentia, atque a vento hue illucque agitata colliguntur," &c. Compare this with Pliny's " Seres lanitia silvarum nobiles, per- fusam aqua depectentes frondium caniciem," or Claudian's " stamine, quod molli tondent de stipite Seres, Frondea lanigerae carpentes vellera silvae ; Et longum tenues tractus producit in aunim."
Note 3. — The title Sangon is, as Pauthier points out, the Chinese Tsangkiun^ a " general of division." John Bell calls an officer bearing the same title " Merin Sanguine I suspect Tsangkiun is iht/ang-Jang of Baber.
Note 4. — Agul was the name of a distant cousin of Kublai, who was the father of Nayan {supra, ch. ii. and Genealogy of the House of Chinghiz in Appendix A.) Mangkutai, under Kublai, held the com- mand of the third Hazara (Thousand) of the right wing, in which he had succeeded his father Jedi Noyan. He was greatly distinguished in the invasion of South China under Bayan. {ErdmantCs Ttmudschin, p. 220, 455 ; Gaubil, p. 160.)
Note 5. — Litan, a Chinese of* high military position and reputation under the Mongols, in the early part of Kublai*s reign, commanded the troops in Shantung and the conquered parts of Kiangnan. In the beginning of 1262 he carried out a design that he had entertained since Kublai's accession, declared for the Sung Emperor, to whom he gave up several important places, put detached Mongol garrisons to the sword, and fortified T'sinan and T'singchau. Kublai despatched Prince Apich^ and the General Ssetiench^ against him. Litan, after some partial success, was beaten and driven into T'sinan, which the Mongols imme- diately invested. After a blockade of four months, the garrison was reduced to extremities. Litan, in despair, put his women to death and threw himself into a lake adjoining the city; but he was taken out alive and executed. T'singchau then surrendered. {Gaubily 139-140; Demaillay IX. 298 seqq. ; D Ohsson, II. 381.)
Pauthier gives greater detail from the Chinese Annals, which confinn the amnesty granted to all but the chiefs of the rebellion.
The date in the text is wrong or corrupt, as is generally the case.
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CHAPTER LXII.
Concerning the noble City of Sinjumatu.
Ox leaving Tadinfu you travel three days towards the south, always finding numbers of noble and populous towns and villages flourishing with trade and manufactures. There is also abundance of game in the country, and every- thing in profusion.
When you have travelled those three days you come to the noble city of Sinjumatu, a rich and fine place, with great trade and manufactures. The people are Idola- ters and subjects of the Great Kaan, and have paper-money, and they have a river which I can assure you brings them great gain, and I will tell you about it.
You see the river in question flows from the south to this city of Sinjumatu. And the people of the city have divided this larger river in two, making one half of it flow east and the other half flow west ; that is to say, the one branch flows towards Manzi and the other towards Cathay. And it is a fact that the number of vessels at this city is what no one would believe without seeing them. The quantity of merchandize also which these vessels transport to Manzi and Cathay is something marvellous ; and then they return loaded with other merchandize, so that the amount of goods borne to and fro on those two rivers is quite astonishing.'
Note 1. — Friar Odoric, proceeding by water northward to Cam- baluc about 1324-5, says: "As I travelled by that river towards the east, and passed many towns and cities, I came to a certain city which b called Sunzumatu, which hath a greater plenty of silk than perhaps any place on earth, for when silk is at the dearest you can still have 40 lbs. for less than eight groats. There is in the place likewise great store of merchandise," &c. When commenting on Odoric, I was inclined to identify this city with Lint'singchau, but its position with respect to the two last cities in Polo^s itinerary renders this inadmissible ; and
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Murray and Pauthier seem to be right in identifying it with Tsining- CHAU. The affix Matu {Ma-feu^ a jetty, a place of river trade) mi^t easily attach itself to the name of such a great depot of commerce on the canal as Marco here describes, though no Chinese authority has been produced for its being so styled. The only objection to the iden- tification with T'siningchau is the difficulty of makmg three days' journey of the short distance between Yenchau and that city.
Polo, according to the route supposed, comes first upon the artificial part of the Great Canal here. The rivers Wm and Sse (from near Yenchau) flowing from the side of Shantung, and striking the canal line at right angles near Tsiningchau, have been thence diverted north-west and south-east, so as to form the canal ; the point of their original con- fluence at Nanwang forming, apparently, the summit level of the canaL There is a little confusion in Polo's account, owing to his describing the river as coming firom the souths which, according to his orientation, would be the side towards Honan. In this respect his words would apply more accurately to the WH river at Lint'sing (see Biot in /, As, ser. 3, tom. xiv. 194, and J, N. C. B, H. A. S,, 1866, p. n ; also the map with ch. Ixiv.). Duhalde calls T'siningchau " one of the most consider- able cities of the empire ;" and Nieuhoflf speaks of its large trade and population.
CHAPTER LXIII.
Concerning the Cities of Linju and Piju.
On leaving the city of Sinju-matu you travel for eight days toward the south, always coming to great and rich towns and villages flourishing with trade and. manufectures. The people are all subjects of the Great Kaan, use paper- money, and burn their dead. At the end of those eight days you come to the city of Linju, in the province of the same name of which it is the capital. It is a rich and noble city, and the men are good soldiers, natheless they carry on great trade and manufactures. There is great abundance of game in both beasts and birds, and all the necessaries of Hfe are in profusion. The place stands on the river of which I told you above. And they have here great numbers of vessels, even greater than those of wliich
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Chap. LXIII. LINJU AND PIJU. 123
I spoke before, and these transport a great amount of costly merchandize/
So, quittmg this province and city of Linju, you travel three days more towards the south, constantly finding numbers of rich towns and villages. These still belong to Cathay; and the people are all Idolaters, burning their dead, and using paper-money, that I mean of their Lord the Great Kaan, whose subjects they are. This is the finest country for game, whether in beasts or birds, that is any- where to be found, and all the necessaries of life are in profusion.
At the end of those three days you find the city of Piju, a great, rich, and noble city, with large trade and manufactures, and a great production of silk. This city stands at the entrance to the great province of Manzi, and there reside at it a great number of merchants who despatch carts from this place loaded with great quantities of goods to the different towns of Manzi. The city brings in a great revenue to the Great Kaan.'
Note 1. — Murray suggests that Lingiu is a place which appears in D*Anville's Map of Shantung as Lintching-y^ and in Arrowsmith*s Map of China (also in those of Berghaus and Keith Johnston) as Lingchinghien, I cannot find it in Biot The position assigned to it, however, on the west bank of the canal, nearly under the 35th degree of latitude, would agree fairly with Polo's data.
In any case, I imagine Lingiu (of which, perhaps, Lingin may be the correct reading) to be the Lenzin of Odoric, which he reached in travelling by water from the south, before arriving at Sinjumatu (Cathay ^ P- "5).
Note 2. — ^There can be no doubt that this is Peichau on the east bank of the canal The abundance of game about here is noticed by Nieuhoff (in Astiey, III. 417).
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CHAPTER LXIV. Concerning the City of Siju, and the Great River Caramoran.
When you leave Piju you travel towards the south for two days, through beautiful districts abounding in everything, and in which you find quantities of all kinds of game. At the end of those two days you reach the city of Suu, a great, rich, and noble city, flourishing with trade and manufactures. The people are Idolaters, burn their dead, use paper-money, and are subjects of the Great Kaan. They possess extensive and fertile plains producing abundance of wheat and other grain.' But there is nothing else to mention, so let us proceed and tell you of the countries further on.
On leaving Siju you ride south for three days, con- stantly falling in with fine towns and villages and hamlets and farms, with their cultivated lands. There is plenty of wheat and other corn, and of game also ; and the people are all Idolaters and subjects of the Great Kaan.
At the end of those three days you reach the great river Caramoran, which flows hither firom Prester Johns country. It is a great river, and more than a mile in width, and so deep that great ships can navigate it. It abounds in fish, and very big ones too. You must know that in this river there are some 15,000 vessels, all belonging to the Great Kaan, and kept to transport his troops to the Indian Isles whenever there may be occasion ; for the sea is only one day distant from the place we are speaking of. And each of these vessels, taking one with another, will require 20 mariners, and will carry 15 horses with the men belonging to them, and their provisions, arms, and equipments."
Hither and thither, on either bank of the river, stands a town; the one facing the other. The one is called Coiganju and the other Caiju ; the former is a large place.
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Chap. LXIV. CHANGES IN THE RIVER CARAMORAN. 125
and the latter a little one. And when you pass this river you enter the great province of Manzi. So now I must tell you how this province of Manzi was conquered by the Great Kaan.^
Note 1. — Siju can scarcely be other than Su-t*sian {Sootsin of Keith Johnston*s map) as Murray and Pauthier have said. The latter states that one of the old names of the place was Si-chau^ which corresponds to that given by Marco. Biot does not give this name.
The town stands on the flat alluvial of the Hwang-Ho, and is approached by high embanked roads. {Astiey, III. 524-5.)
Note 2. — ^We have again arrived on the banks of the Hwang-Ho, which was crossed higher up on our traveller's route to Karijang.
No accounts, since China became known to modem Europe, attribute to the Hwang-Ho the great utility for navigation which Polo here and elsewhere ascribes to it. Indeed, we are told that its current is so rapid that its navigation is scarcely practicable, and the only traffic of the kind that we hear of is a transport of coal in Shansi for a certain distance down stream. This rapidity also, bringing down vast quantities of soil, has so raised the bed that in recent times the tide has not entered the river, as it probably did in our traveller's time, when, as it would appear from his account, seagoing craft used to ascend to the ferry north of Hwainganfu, or thereabouts. Another indication of change is his statement that the passage just mentioned was only one day's journey from the sea, whereas it is now about 50 miles in a direct line. But the river has of late years undergone changes much more material.
In the remotest times of which the Chinese have any record, the Hwang-Ho discharged its waters into the Gulf of Chihli, by two branches, the most northerly of which appears to have followed the present course of the Pei-ho below Tientsing. In the time of the Shang Dynasty (ending b.c. 1078) a branch more southerly than either of the above flowed towards T'sining, and combined with the Tsi river, which flowed by T'sinanfu, the same in fact that was till recently called the Ta-t'sing. In the time of Confucius we first hear of a branch being thrown off south-east towards the Hwai flowing north of Hwaingan, in fact towards the embouchure which our maps still display as that of the Hwang-Ho. But, about the 3rd and 4th centuries of our era, the river discharged exclusively by the T'si ; and up to the Mongol age, or nearly so, the mass of the waters of this great river continued to flow into the Gulf of Chihli They then changed their course bodily towards the Hwai, and followed that general direction to the sea ; this they had adopted before the time of our traveller, and they retained it till a very recent period. The mass of Shantung thus forms a mountainous
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126 MARCO POLO. Book II.
island rising out of the vast alluvium of the Hwang-Ho, whose discharge into the sea has alternated between the north and the south of that moun- tainous tract {see Map opposite).
During the reign of the last Mongol emperor, a project was adopted for restoring the Hwang-Ho to its former channel, discharging into the Gulf of Chihli ; and discontents connected with this scheme promoted the movement for the expulsion of the dynasty (1368).
A river whose regimen was liable to such vast changes was necessa- rily a constant source of danger, insomuch that the Emperor Kiaking in his will speaks of it as having been " from the remotest ages China's sorrow." Some idea of the enormous works maintained for the control of the river may be obtained from the following description of their character on the north bank, some distance to the west of Kaifungfu :
" In a village, apparently bounded by an earthen wall as large as that of the Tartar city of Peking, was reached the first of the outworks erected to resist the Hwang-ho, and on arriving at the top that river and the gigantic earthworks rendered necessary by its outbreaks burst on the view. On a level with the spot on which I was standing stretched a series of embankments, each one about 70 feet high, and of breadth sufficient for four railway trucks to run abreast on them. The mode of their arrangement was on this wise : one long bank ran parallel to the direction of the stream ; half a mile distant from it ran a similar one ; these two embankments were then connected by another series exactly similar in size, height, and breadth, and running at right angles to them right down to the edge of tlie water."
In 1 85 1 the Hwang-Ho burst its northern embankment nearly 30 miles east of Kaifungfu ; the floods of the two following years enlarged the breach; and in 1853 the river, after six centuries, resumed the ancient direction of its discharge into the Gulf of ChihlL Soon after leaving its late channel it at present spreads, without defined banks, over the very low lands of South-Westem Shantung, till it reaches the Great Canal, and then enters the Ta-t*sing channel, passing north of T'sinan to the sea. The old channel crossed by Polo in the present journey is quite deserted. The greater part of the bed is there culti- vated ; it is dotted with numerous villages ; and the vast trading town of Tsinkiangpu was in 1868 extending so rapidly from the southern bank that a traveller in that year says he expected that in two years it would reach the northern bank.
The same change has destroyed the Grand Canal as a navigable channel for many miles south of Linfsingchau. {J. R, G, S.y XXVIII. 294-5; Escayrac de Lauture, Mtm, sur la Chine; Cathay^ p. 125; Reports of Journeys in China, &c. [by Consuls Alabaster, Oxenham, &C., Pari Blue Book] 1869, pp. 4-5, 14 ; Mr, Elias in /. R. G. S., XL pp. I se^^.)
Note 3. — Coiganju will be noticed below. Caiju does not seem to
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iteo Marco PoLO.Bookii.ckG/i.
-^ 38°
.360
340
320
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Chap. LXV. MANZI. 127
be traceable, having probabiy been carried away by the changes in the river. But it would seem to have been at the mouth of the canal on the north side of the Hwang-Ho, and the name is the same as that given below (ch. Ixxii.) to the town {Kwachau) occupying the corresponding position on the Kiang.
" Khatai," says Rashiduddin, " is bounded on one side by the country of Michfn, which the Chinese call Manzi. ... In the Indian language Southern China is called Mahd-chfn, /.^., * Great China/ and hence we derive the word Machin, The Mongols call the same country Nangiass, It is separated from Khatai by the river called Karamoran, which comes from the mountains of Tibet and Kashmir, and which is never fordable. The capital of this kingdom is the city of Khingsai^ which is 40 days' journey from Khanbalik." {Quat, Rashid. xcL-xciii.)
Manzi (or Mangi) is a name used for Southern China, or more properly for the territory which constituted the dominion of the Sung Dynasty at the time when the Mongols conquered Cathay or Northern China from the Kin, not only by Marco, but by Odoric and John MarignoUi, as well as by the Persian writers, who, however, more com- monly call, it Mdchifu I imagine that some confusion between the two words led to the appropriation of the latter name also to Southern China. The term Mantzu or Mantze signifies " Barbarians " (" Sons of Bar- barians"), and was applied, it is said, by the Northern Chinese to their neighbours on die south, whose civilization was of later date.* The name is now specifically applied to a wild race on the banks of the Upper Kiang. But it retains its medieval application in Man- churia, where Mantszi is the name given to the Chinese immigrants, and in that use is said to date from the time of Kublai (Palladius in /. R. G. S.y vol. XLIL, p. 154). And Mr. Moule has found the word, apparently used in Marco's exact sense, in a Chinese extract of the period, contained in the topography of the famous Lake of Hangchau {infra, ch. IxxvL-lxxvii.).
Though both Polo and Rashiduddin call the Karamoran the boundary between Cathay and Manzi, it was not so for any great distance. Honan belonged essentially to Cathay.
CHAPTER LXV. How THE Great Kaan conquered the Province of Manzi.
You must know that there was a king and sovereign lord of the great territory of Manzi who was styled Facpur,
• Magaillans says the Southerns, in return, called the Northerns /V-/J/, "Fools of the North *M
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128 MARCO POLO. Book II.
SO great and puissant a prince, that for vastness of wealth and number of subjects and extent of dominion, there was hardly a greater in all the earth except the Great Kaan himself/ But the people of his land were anything rather than warriors ; all their delight was in women, and nought but women ; and so it was above all with the king himself, for he took thought of nothing else but women, unless it were of charity to the poor.
In all his dominion there were no horses ; nor were the people ever inured to battle or arms, or military service of any kind. Yet the province of Manzi is very strong by nature, and all the cities are encompassed by sheets of water of great depth, and more than an arblast-shot in width; so that the country never would have been lost, had the people but been soldiers. But that is just what they were not ; so lost it was."
Now it came to pass, in the year of Christ's incarnation, 1268, that the Great Kaan, the same that now reigneth, despatched thither a Baron of his whose name was Bayax Chincsan, which is as much as to say " Bayan Hundred- Eyes." And you must know that the King of Manzi had found in his horoscope that he never should lose his king- dom except through a man that had an hundred eyes ; so he held himself assured in his position, for he could not believe that any man in existence could have an hundred eyes. There, however, he deluded himself, in his ignorance of the name of Bayan.^
This Bayan had an immense force of horse and foot entrusted to him by the Great Kaan, and with these he entered Manzi, and he had also a great number of boats to carry both horse and foot when need should be. And when he, with all his host, entered the territory of Manzi and arrived at this city of Coiganju — ^whither we now are got, and of which we shall speak presently — he summoned the people thereof to surrender to the Great Kaan; but this they flatly refused. On this Bayan went on to another
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city, with the same result, and then still went forward; aaing thus because he was aware that the Great Kaan was despatching another great host to follow him up/
What shall I say then ? He advanced to five cities in succession, but got possession of none of them ; for he did not wish to engage in besieging them, and they would not give themselves up. But when he came to the sixth city he took that by storm, and so with a second, and a third, and a fourth, until he had taken twelve cities in succession. And when he had taken all these he advanced straight against the capital city of the kingdom, which was called KiNSAY, and which was the residence of the King and Queen.
And when the King beheld Bayan coming with all his host, he was in great dismay, as one unused to see such sights. So he and a great company of his people got on board a thousand ships and fled to the islands of the Ocean Sea, whilst the Queen who remained behind in the city took all measures in her power for its defence, like a valiant lady.
Now it came to pass that the Queen asked what was the name of the captain of the host, and they told her that it was Bayan Hundred-Eyes. So when she wist that he was styled Hundred-Eyes, she called to mind how their astrologers had foretold that a man of an hundred eyes should strip them of the kingdom.^ Wherefore she gave herself up to Bayan, and surrendered to him the whole kingdom and all the other cities and fortresses, so that no resistance was made. And in sooth this was a goodly con- quest, for there was no realm on earth half so wealthy/ The amount that the King used to expend was perfectly marvellous ; and as an example I will tell you somewhat of his liberal acts.
In those provinces they are wont to expose their new- born babes ; I speak of the poor, who have not the means of bringing them up. But the King used to have all those
VOL. II. M
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foundlings taken charge of, and had note made of the signs and planets under which each was born, and then put them out to nurse about the country. And when any rich man was childless he would go to the King and obtain from him as many of these children as he desired. Or, when the children grew up, the King would make up marriages among them, and provide for the couples from his own purse. In this manner he used to provide for some 20,000 boys and girls every year.^
I will tell you another thing this King used to do. If he was taking a ride through the city and chanced to see a house that was very small and poor standing among other houses that were fine and large, he would ask why it was so, and they would tell him it belonged to a poor man who had not the means to enlarge it. Then the King would himself supply the means. And thus it came to pass that in all the capital of the kingdom of Manzi, Kinsay by name, you should not see any but fine houses.
This King used to be waited on by more than a thou- sand young gentlemen and ladies, all clothed in the richest fashion. And he ruled his realm with such justice that no malefactors were to be found therein. The city in fact was so secure that no man closed his doors at night, not even in houses and shops that were full of all sorts of rich merchandize. No one could do justice in the telling to the great riches of that country, and to the good disposi- tion of the people. Now that I have told you about the kingdom, I will go back to the Queen.
You must know that she was conducted to the Great Kaan, who gave her an honourable reception, and caused her to be served with all state, like a great lady as she was. But as for the King her husband, he never more did quit the isles of the sea to which he had fled, but died there. So leave we him and his wife and all their concerns, and let us return to our story, and go on regularly with our account of the great province of Manzi and of the manners
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and customs of its people. And, to begin at the beginning, we must go back to the city of Coiganju, from which we digressed to tell you about the conquest of Manzi.
Note 1. — Faghfur or Baghbiur was a title applied by old Persian and Arabic writers to the Emperor of China, much in the way that we used to speak of the Great Moguls and our fathers of the Sophy, It is, as Neumann points out, an old Persian translation of the Chinese title Tim-Ue, " Son of Heaven ;" Bagh-Fur = " The Son of the Divinity," as Sapor or Shdh-Fiir = " The Son of the King." Faghfur seems to have been used as a proper name in Turkestan (see Baber, 423).
There is a word, TakfUr, applied similarly by the Mahomedans to the Greek emperors of both Byzantium and Trebizond (and also to the Kings of Cilician Armenia), which was perhaps adopted as a jingling match to the former term ; Faghfur, the great infidel king in the East ; Takfur, the great infidel king in the West Defr^m^ry says this is Annenian, Tagwvor, "a king." (/. B,, II. 393, 427.)
Note 2. — Nevertheless the history of the conquest shows instances of extraordinary courage and self-devotion on the part of Chinese officers, especially in the defence of fortresses — virtues often shown in like degree, under like circumstances, by the same class, in the modem \^\xy[y of China.
Note 3. — Bayan (signifying " great " or " noble") is a name of very old renown among the Nomad nations, for we find it as that of the Khagan of the Avars in the 6th century. The present Bayan, Kublai*s most famous lieutenant, was of princely birth, in the Mongol tribe called Barin. In his youth he served in the West of Asia under Hulaku. According to Rashiduddin, about 1265 he was sent to Cathay with certain ambassadors of the Kaan's who were returning thither. He was received with great distinction by Kublai, who was greatly taken with his prepossessing appearance and ability, and a command was assigned him. In 1273, after the capture of Siang-Yang {infra, chap. Ixx.), the Kaan named him to the chief command in the prosecution of the war against the Sung dynasty. Whilst Bayan was in the full tide of success, Kublai, alarmed by the ravages of Kaidu on the Mongolian frontier, recalled him to take the command there, but, on the general's remon- strance, he gave way, and made him a minister of state (Chingsiang). The essential part of his task was completed by the surrender of the capital King-sz^ (Linggan, now Hangchau) to his arms in the beginning of 1276. He was then recalled to court, and immediately despatched to Mongolia, where he continued in command for 17 years, his great business being to keep down the restless Kaidu.
K 2
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In 1293, enemies tried to poison the emperor's ear against Bayan, and they seemed to have succeeded ; for Kublai despatched his heir, the Prince Teimur, to supersede him in the frontier command Bayan beat Kaidu once more, and then made over his command with character- istic dignity. On his arrival at court, Kublai received him with the greatest honour, and named him chief minister of state and commandant of his guards and the troops about Cambaluc. The emperor died in the beginning of the next year (1294), and Bayan's high position enabled him to take decisive measures for preserving order, and maintaining Kublai's disposition of the succession. Bayan was raised to still higher dignities, but died at the age of 59, within less than a year of the master whom he had served so well for 30 years (about January, 1295). After his death, according to the peculiar Chinese fashion, he received yet further accessions of dignity.
The language of Chinese historians in speaking of this great man is thus rendered by Demailla ; it is a noble eulogy of a Tartar warrior:—
" He was endowed with a lofty genius, and possessed in the highest measure the art of handling great bodies of troops. When he marched against the Sung, he directed the movements of 200,000 men with as much ease and coolness as if there had been but one man under his orders. All his officers looked up to him as a prodigy ; and having absolute trust in his capacity, they obeyed him with entire submission. Nobody knew better how to deal with soldiers, or to moderate their ardour when it carried them too far. He was never seen sad except when forced to shed blood, for he was sparing even of the blood of his enemy. . . . His modesty was not inferior to his ability. ... He would attribute all the honour to the conduct of his officers, and he was ever ready to extol their smallest feats. He merited the praisfes of Chinese as well as Mongols, and both nations long regretted the loss of this great man." Demailla gives a different account from Rashidud- din and Gaubil, of the manner in which Bayan first entered the Kaan's service. {Gaubil^ 145, 159, 169, 179, 183, 221, 223-4; Erdmatm, 222-3 ; Demailla, IX. 335, 458, 461-3)
Note 4. — As regards Bayan personally, and the main body under his command, this seems to be incorrect His advance took place from Siangyang along the lines of the Han River and of the Great Kiang. Another force indeed marched direct upon Yangchau, and therefore probably by Hwainganchau (infra, p. 135) ; and it is noted that Bayan's orders to the generals of this force were to spare bloodshed. {Gaubil, 159; nOhsson, H. 398.)
Note 5. — So in our own age ran the Hindu prophecy that Bhartpdr should never fall till there came a great alligator against it ; and when it fell to the EngUsh assault, the Brahmans found that the name of the leader was Combermere = Kumhir-Mir, the Crocodile Lord !
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Chap. LXV. CONQUEST OF MANZI. 1 33
" Be those juggling fiends no more believed
That palter with us in a double sense ; That keep the word of promise to our ear And break it to our hope ! '*
It would seem from the expression, both in Pau tiller's text and in the G. T., as if Polo intended to say that Chincsan (Cinqsan) meant " One Hundred Eyes ;" and if so we could have no stronger proof of his ignorance of Chinese. It is Pe-yen^ the Chinese form of Bayan, that means, or rather may be punningly rendered, " One Hundred Eyes." Chincsan, />., Chingsiangy was the title of the superior ministers of state at Khanbaligh, as we have already seen. The title occurs pretty fre- quently in the Persian histories of the Mongols, and frequently as a Mongol title in Sanang Setzen. We find it also disguised as Chyansam in a letter from certain Christian nobles at Khanbaligh, which Wadding quotes from the Papal archives (see Cathay^ pp. 314-15).
But it is right to observe that in the Ramusian version the mistrans- lation which we have noticed is not so indubitable : " Vplendo sapere come avea nome il Capitano nemico, le fu detto, Chinsamhaian^ ciofe Cenfocchir
A kind of corroboration of Marco's story, but giving a different form to the pun, has been found by Mr. W. F. Mayers, of the Diplomatic Department in China, in a Chinese compilation dating from the latter part of the 14th century. Under the heading, " A Kiang-nan Prophecy y' this book states that prior to the fall of the Sung a prediction ran through Kiang-nan : " If Kiang-nan fall, a hundred wild geese {P^yen) will make their appearance." This, it is added, was not understood till the generalissimo Peym Chingsiang made his appearance on the scene. " Punning prophecies of this kind are so common in Chinese history, that the above is only worth noticing in connexion with Marco's Polo's story." (iV; and Q. China and Japan^ vol. ii. p. 162.)
But I should suppose that the Persian historian Wassif had also heard a bungled version of the same story, which he tells in a pointless manner of the fortress of Sindfur (evidently a clerical error for Saianfu^ see below, chap. Ixx.) : " Payan ordered this fortress to be assaulted. The garrison had heard how the capital of China had fallen, and the army of Payan was drawmg near. The commandant was an experienced veteran who had tasted all the sweets and bitters of fortune, and had borae the day's heat and the night's cold ; he had, as the saw goes, milked the world's cow dry. So he sent word to Payan : ' In my youth (here we abridge Wassif s rigmarole) I heard my father tell that this fortress should be taken by a man called Payan, and that all fencing and trenching, fighting and smiting, would be of no avail. You need not, therefore, bring an army hither ; we give in ; we surrender the fortress and all that is therein.' So they opened the gates and came down." (Wassdfy Hammer's cd., p. 41.)
Note 6. — There continues in this narrative, with a general truth as
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to the course of events, a greater amount of error as to particulars than we should have expected The Sung Emperor Tutsong, a debauched and effeminate prince, to whom Polo seems to refer, had died in 1274, leaving young children only. Chaohien, the second son, a boy of four years of age, was put on the throne, with his grandmother Siechi as regent The approach of Bayan caused the greatest alarm ; the Sung Court made humble propositions, but they were not listened to. The brothers of the young emperor were sent off by sea into the southern provinces ; the empress regent was also pressed to make her escape with the young emperor, but, after consenting, she changed her mind and would not move. The Mongols arrived before King-szd, and the empress sent the great seal of the empire to Bayan. He entered the city without resistance in the third month (say April), 1276, riding at the head of his whole staff with the standard of the general-in-chief before him. It is remarked that he went to look at the tide in the river Tsien Tang, which is noted for its bore. He declined to meet the regent and her grandson, pleading that he was ignorant of the etiquettes proper to such an interview. Before his entrance Bayan had nominated a joint com- mission of Mongol and Chinese officers to the government of the city, and appointed a committee to take charge of all the public documents, maps, drawings, records of courts, and seals of all public offices, and to plant sentinels at necessary points. The emperor, his mother^ and the rest of the Sung princes and princesses, were despatched to the Mongol capital. A desperate attempt was made, at Kwachau (infra^ chap. Ixxii.), to recapture the young emperor, but it failed. On their arrival at Tatu, Kublai's chief queen, Jamui Khatun, treated them with delicate consideration. This amiable lady, on being shown the spoils that came from Linggan, only wept, and said to her husband, " So also shall it be with the Mongol empire one day T The eldest of the two boys who had escaped was proclaimed emperor by his adherents at Fuchau, in Fokien, but they were speedily driven from that province (where the local histories, as Mr. G. Phillips informs me, preserve traces of their adventures in the Islands of Amoy Harbour), and the young emperor died on a desert island off the Canton coast in 1278. His younger brother took his place, but a battle in the begmning of 1279 finally extinguished these efforts of the expiring dynasty, and the minister jumped with his young lord into the sea. It is curious that Rashiduddin, with all his opportunities of knowledge, writing at least 20 years later, was not aware of this, for he speaks of the Prince of Manzi as still a fugitive in the forests between Zayton and Canton. (GautU ; lyOhsson; Demailla; Cathay^ p. 272.)
There is a curious account in the Ldtres t^difiantes (xxiv. 45, seqq,) by P. Parrenin of a kind of Pariah caste at Shaohing (see ch. Ixxix. note 1), who were popularly believed to be the de- scendants of the great lords of the Sung Court, condemned to that degraded condition for obstinately resisting the Mongols. Another
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Chap. LXVI. THE CITY OF COIGANJU. 135
notice, however, makes the degraded body rebels against the Sung (Milne, p. 218).
Note 7. — There is much about the exposure of children, and about Chinese foundling hospitals, in the Lettres JSdifiantes, especially in Recueil xv. 83, segq. It is there stated that frequently a person not in circumstances to pay for a wife for his son, would visit the foundling hospital to seek one. The childless rich also would sometimes get children there to pass off as their own j adopted children being excluded from certain valuable privileges.
Mr. Milne {Life in China) y and again Mr. Medhurst {Foreigner in Far Cathay), have discredited the great prevalence of infant exposure in China; but since the last work was published, I have seen the translation of a recent strong remonstrance against the practice by a Chinese writer, which certainly implied that it was very prevalent in the writer's own province. Unfortunately, I have lost the reference.
CHAPTER LXVI. Concerning the City of Coiganju.
CoiGANJu is, as I have told you already, a very large city standing at the entrance to Manzi. The people are Idolaters and burn their dead, and are subject to the Great Kaan. They have a vast amount of shipping, as I mentioned before in speaking of the River Caramoran. And an immense quantity of merchandize comes hither, for the city is the seat of government for this part of the country. Owing to its being on the river, many cities send their produce thither to be again thence distributed in every direction. A great amount of salt also is made here, furnishing some forty other cities with that article, and bringing in a large revenue to the Great Kaan.'
Note 1. — Coiganju is Hwai-ngan-chau, now -Fu, on the canal, some miles south of the channel of the Hwang-Ho ; but apparently in Polo's time the great river passed close to it. Indeed, the city takes its name from the river Hwai, into which the Hwang-Ho sent a branch
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when first seeking a discharge south of Shantung. The city extends for about three miles along the canal and much below its level
The head-quarters of the salt manufacture of Hwaingan is a place called Yenching (** Salt-Town ") some distance to the S. of the former city (Pauthier),
CHAPTER LXVII.
Of the Cities of Paukin and Cayu.
When you leave Coiganju you ride south-east for a day along a causeway laid with fine stone, which you find at this entrance to Manzi. On either hand there is a great expanse of water, so that you cannot enter the province except along this causeway. At the end of the day's journey you reach the fine city of Paukin. The people are Idolaters, burn their dead, are subject to the Great Kaan, and use paper-money. They live by trade and manufactures and have great abundance of silk, whereof they weave a great variety of fine stuflTs of silk and gold. Of all the necessaries of life there is great store.
When you leave Paukin you ride another day to the south-east, and then you arrive at the city of Cayu. The people are Idolaters (and so forth). They live by trade and manufactures and have great store of all neces- saries, including fish in great abundance. There is also much game, both beast and bird, insomuch that for a Venice groat you can have three good pheasants.'
Note 1. — Paukin is PAO-YNG-Hien ; Cayu is KAO-YU-chau, both cities on the east side of the canal. At Kao-)ru, the country east of the canal lies some 20 feet below the canal level ; so low indeed that the walls of the city are not visible from the further bank of the canal. To the west is the Kao-yu Lake, one of the expanses of water spoken of by Marco, and which threatens great danger to the low country on the east (see Alabaster' s Journey in Consular Reports above quoted, p. 5).
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There is a fine drawing of Pao-yng, by Alexander, in the Staunton collection, British Museum.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
Of the Cities of Tiju, Tinju, and Yanju.
When you leave Cayu, you ride another day to the south- cast through a constant succession of villages and fields and fine farms until you come to Tuu, which is a city of no great size but abounding in everything. The people are Idolaters (and so forth). There is a great amount of trade, and they have many vessels. And you must know that on your left hand, that is towards the east, and three days' journey distant, is the Ocean Sea. At every place between the sea and the city salt is made in great quantities. And there is a rich and noble city called Tinju, at which there is produced salt enough to supply the whole province, and I can tell you it brings the Great Kaan an incredible revenue. The people are Idolaters and subject to the Kaan. Let us quit this, however, and go back to Tiju.'
Again, leaving Tiju, you ride another day towards the south-east, and at the end of your journey you arrive at the very great and noble city of Yanju, which has seven- and-twenty other wealthy cities under its administration; so that this Yanju is, you see, a city of great importance.* It is the seat of one of the Great Kaan's Twelve Barons, for it has been chosen to be one of the Twelve Sings. The people are Idolaters and use paper-money, and are subject to the Great Kaan. And Messer Marco Polo himself, of whom this book speaks, did govern this city for three full years, by the order of the Great Kaan.^ The people live by trade and manufactures, for a great amount of harness for knights and men-at-arms is made there.
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138 MARCO POLO. Book II.
And in this city and its neighbourhood a large number of troops are stationed by the Kaan's orders.
There is no more to say about it. So now I will tell you about two great provinces of Manzi which lie towards the west. And first of that called Nanghin.
Note 1. — Though the text would lead us to look for Itju on the direct line between Kaoyu and Yangchau, and like them on the canal bank (indeed one MS., C. of Pauthier, specifies its standing on the same river as the cities already passed, />., on the canal), we seem constrained to admit the general opinion that this is Tai-chau, a town lying some five-and-twenty miles at least to the eastward of the canal, but apparently connected with it by a navigable channel
Tinju or Chinju (for both the G. T. and Ramusio read Cin^^ cannot be identified with certainty. But I should think it likely, from Polo*s " geographical style," that when he spoke of the sea as three days distant he had this city in view, and that it is probably Tung-chau near the northern shore of the estuary of the Yangtse, which might be fairly described as three days from Tai-chau. Mr. Kingsmill identifies it with Ichin-hien, the great port on the Kiang for the export of the Yangchau salt This is possible ; but Ichin lies west of the canal, and though the form Chinju would really represent Ichin as then named, such a position seems scarcely compatible with the way, vague as it is, in which Tinju or Chinju is introduced. Moreover, we shall see that Ichin is spoken of hereafter. {Kingsmill in N, and Q. Ch. and Japan^ I. 53.)
Note 2. — Happily, there is no doubt that this is Yang-chau, one of the oldest and most famous great cities of China. Some five-and-thirty years after Polo's departure from China, Friar Odoric found at this city a House of his own Order (Franciscans), and three Nestorian churches. The city also appears in the Catalan Map as langio, Yangchau suffered greatly in the Taeping rebellion, but its position is an " obligatory point " for commerce, and it appears to be rapidly recovering its pros- perity. It is the head-quarters of the salt manufacture, and it is also now noted for a great manufacture of sweetmeats (see Alabaster's Report^ as above, p. 6).
Note 3. — ^What I have rendered " Twelve Sings " is in the G. T. " douze sajes^' and in Pauthier's text " silges^ It seems to me a reason- able conclusion that the original word was Sings (see I. 418, jx^m); anyhow that was the proper term for the thing meant
In his note on this chapter, Pauthier produces evidence that Yang- chau was the seat of a Lu or circuit * fi-om 1277, and also of a Singai
* The Lu or Circuit was an administrative division under the Mongols, inter- mediate between the Sing and the Fu, or department There were 185 /tf in all China under Kublai {Pauth, 333).
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Chap. LXIX. THE CITY OF NANGHIN. 1 39
government-general, but only for the first year after the conquest, viz., 1276-77, and he seems (for his argument is obscure) to make from this the unreasonable deduction that at this period Kublai placed Marco Polo — who could not be more than 23 years of age, and had been but two years in Cathay — in charge either of the general government, or of an important district government in the most important province of the empire.
In a later note M. Pauthier speaks of 1284 as the date at which the Sing of the province of Kiang-ch^ was transferred from Yangchau to Haogchau ; this is probably to be taken as a correction of the former citations, and it better justifies Polo's statement {Pauthier^ pp. 467, 492).
I do not think that we are to regard Marco as having held at any time the important post of Governor-general of Kiang-ch^. The ex- pressions in the G. T. are : ** Meser Marc Pol meisme^ celui de cut trate ceste livrCy seingneurie ceste dtk pour trots anzP Pauthier's MS. A. appears to read : " Et ot sdgneurie Marc Poly en ceste citk^ trois ans^ These expressions probably point to the government of the Lu or circuit of Yangchau, just as we find in chapter Ixxiii. another Christian, Mar Sarghis, mentioned as Governor of Chinkiang-fu for the same term of years, Ihat city being also the head of a Lu, It is remarkable that in Pauthier's MS. C, which often contains readings of peculiar value, the passage runs (and also in the Bern MS.) : " Et si vous dy que ledit Messire Marc Pol, cellui meisme de qui nostre livreparle^ s^journa en ceste die de Jcmguy iii ans accompliz^ par le commandement du Grant Kaan" in which the nature of his employment is not indicated at all (though ujoitma may be an error for seigneura). The impression of his having been CJovemor-general is mainly due to the Ramusian version, which says distinctly indeed that " M. Marco Polo di commissiotte del Gran Can fi ebbe il govemo tre anni conHnui in luogo di un dei detti Baroni," but it is very probable that this is a gloss of the translator. I should conjecture his rule at Yangchau to have been between 1282, when we know he was at the capital (vol. L p. 408), and 1287-8, when he must bave gone on his first expedition to the Indian Seas.
CHAPTER LXIX.
Concerning the City of Nanghin.
Nanghin is a very noble Province towards the west. The people are Idolaters (and so forth) and live by trade and manufactures. They have silk in great abundance, and they weave many fine tissues of silk and gold. They have
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all sorts of corn and victuals very cheap, for the province is a most productive one. Game also is abundant, and lions too are found there. The merchants are great and opulent, and the Emperor draws a large revenue from them, in the shape of duties on the goods which they buy and sell.*
And now I will tell you of the very noble city of Saianfu, which well deserves a place in our book, for there is a matter of great moment to tell about it.
Note 1. — The name and direction from Yangchau are probably suffi- cient to indicate (as Pauthier has said) that this is Nganking on the the Kiang, capital of the modem province of Ngan-hwaL The more celebrated city of Nanking did not bear that name in our traveller's time.
Nganking, when recovered from the Taiping in 1861, was the scene of a frightful massacre by the Imperialists. They are said to have left neither man, woman, nor child alive in the unfortunate city. {Blakision^
P- 5S-)
CHAPTER LXX.
Concerning the very noble City of Saianfu, and how its Capture was effected.
Saianfu is a very great and noble city, and it rules over twelve other large and rich cities, and is itself a seat of great trade and manufacture. The people are Idolaters (and so forth). They have much silk, from which they weave fine silken stufts; they have also a quantity of game, and in short the city abounds in all that it behoves a noble city to possess.
Now you must know that this city held out against the Great Kaan for three years after the rest of Manzi had surrendered. The Great Kaan's troops made incessant attempts to take it, but they could not succeed because
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of the great and deep waters that were round about it, so that they could approach from one side only, which was the north. And I tell you they never would have taken it, but for a circumstance that I am going to relate.
You must know that when the Great Kaan's host had kin three years before the city without being able to take it, they were greatly chafed thereat. Then Messer Nicolo Polo and Messer MafFeo and Messer Marco said : " We could find you a way of forcing the city to surrender speedily ; ** whereupon those of the army replied, that they would be right glad to know how that should be. All this talk took place in the presence of the Great Kaan. For messengers had been despatched from the camp to tell him that there was no taking the city by blockade, for it continually received supplies of victual from those sides which they were unable to invest; and the Great Kaan had sent back word that take it they must, and find a way how. Then spoke up the two brothers and Messer Marco the son, and said : " Great Prince, we have with us among our followers men who are able to construct mangonels which shall cast such great stones that the garrison will never be able to stand them, but will surrender inconti- nently, as soon as the mangonels or trebuchets shall have shot into the town." '
The Kaan bade them with all his heart have such man- gonels made as speedily as possible. Now Messer Nicolo and his brother and his son immediately caused timber to be brought, as much as they desired, and fit for the work in hand. And they had two men among their followers, a German and a Nestorian Christian, who were masters of that business, and these they directed to construct two or three mangonels capable of casting stones of 300 lbs. weight. Accordingly they made three fine mangonels, each of which cast stones of 300 lbs. weight and more.'' And when they were complete and ready for use, the Emperor and the others were greatly pleased to see them,
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142 MARCO POLO. Book II.
and caused several stones to be shot in their presence; whereat they marvelled greatly and greatly praised the work. And the Kaan ordered that the engines should be carried to his army which was at the leaguer of Saianfu.3
And when the engines were got to the camp they were forthwith set up, to the great admiration of the Tartars. And what shall I tell you ? When the engines were set up and put in gear, a stone was shot from each of them into the town. These took effect among the buildings, crashing and smashing through everything with huge din and com- motion. And when the townspeople witnessed this new and strange visitation they were so astonished and dismayed that they wist not what to do or say. They took counsel together, but no counsel could be suggested how to escape from these engines, for the thing seemed to them to be done by sorcery. They declared that they were all dead men if they yielded not, so they determined to surrender on such conditions as they could get.'* Wherefore they straightway sent word to the commander of the army that they were ready to surrender on the same terms as the other cities of the province had done, and to become the subjects of the Great Kaan ; and to this the captain of the host consented.
So the men of the city surrendered, and were received to terms ; and this all came about through the exertions of Messer Nicolo, and Messer MaiFeo, and Messer Marco; and it was no small matter. For this city and province is one of the best that the Great Kaan possesses, and brings him in great revenues.^
Note 1. — Pauthier's MS. C. here says : " When the Great Kaan,
and the Barons about him, and the messengers from the camp
heard this, they all marvelled greatly ; for I tell you that in all those parts they know nothing of mangonels or trebuchets ; and they were so far from being accustomed to employ them in their wars that they had never even seen them, nor knew what they were." The MS. in question
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Chap. LXX. CAPTURE OF SAIANFU. 143
has in this narrative several statements peculiar to itself/ as indeed it has in various other passages of the book ; and these often look very like the result of revision by Polo himself. Yet I have not introduced the words just quoted into our text, because they are, as we shall see presently, notoriously contrary to fact
Note 2. — The same MS. has here a passage which I am unable to understand After the words " 300 lbs. and more," it goes on : " Et la veoit Ten voler moult loing, desquelles pierres // en y avoit plus de Ix routes qui tant mcntoit Vune comme VautreJ* The Bern has the same.
Note 3. — I propose here to enter into some detailed explanation regarding the military engines that were in use in the Middle Ages.t None of these depended for their motive force on torsion like the chief engines used in classic times. However numerous the names applied to them, with reference to minor variations in construction or differences in power, they may all be reduced to two classes, viz., great slings and great crossbows. And this is equally true of all the three great branches of medieval civilization — European, Saracenic, and Chinese. To the first class belonged the Trebuchet and Mangonel; to the second, the Winck-Arblast (Arbaiate \ Tour), Springpld, &c
Whatever the ancient Balista may have been, the word in medieval Latin seems always to mean some kind of crossbow. The heavier crossbows were wound up by various aids such as winches, ratchets, &c. They discharged stone shot, leaden bullets, and short, square-shafted anows called quarrels^ and these with such force we are told as to pierce a six-inch post (?). But they were worked so slowly in the field that they were no match for the long-bow, which shot fiwt or six times to their once. The great machines of this kind were made of wood, of steel, and very frequently of horn ;{ and the bow was sometimes more than 30 feet in length. Dufour calculates that such a machine could shoot an arrow of half a kilogram in weight to a distance of about 860 yards.
The Trebuchet consisted of a long tapering shaft or beam, pivoted at
* And to the Bern MS. which seems to be a copy of it, as is also I think (in substance) the Bodleian.
t In this note I am particularly indebted to the researches of the Emp. Napoleon IIL on this subject {Etudes sur h passi et Pavcnir de FArtillerie; 1851).
X Thus Joinville mentions the journey of Jehan li Ermin the king's artillerist, from Acre to Damascus, pour aeheter comes et glm pour /aire arbalestres — to buy horns and ghxe to make crossbows withal (p. 134).
In the final defence of Acre (1291) we hear of balistae bipedales (with a forked rest?) and others vertiginales (traversing on a pivot ?) that shot 3 quarrels at once, and *ith sttch force as to stiick the Saracens to their bucklers — cum cfypeis consutos inter- fecenmt.
The crossbow, though apparently indigenous among various tribes of Indo-China, •eems to have been a new introduction in European warfare in the 12th century. William of Brittany in a poem called the Philippis, speaking of the early days of l*hilip Augustus, says : —
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144 MARCO POLO, Book II.
a short distance from the butt end on a pair of strong pyramidal trestles. At the other end of the shaft a sling was applied, one cord of which was firmly attached by a ring, whilst the other hung in a loop over an iron hook which formed the extremity of the shaft. The power employed to discharge the sling was either the strength of a number of men, applied to ropes which were attached to the short end of the shaft or lever, or the weight of a heavy counterpoise hung from the same, and suddenly released.
Supposing the latter force to be employed, the long end of the shaft was drawn down by a windlass ; the sling was laid forward in a wooden trough provided for it, and charged with the shot The coun- terpoise was, of course, now aloft, and was so maintained by a detent provided with a trigger. On pulling this, the counterpoise falls and the shaft flies upwards drawing the sling. When a certain point is reached the loop end of the sUng releases itself from the hook, and the sling flies abroad whilst the shot is projected in its parabolic flight* To secure the most favourable result the shot should have acquired its maximum velocity, and should escape at an angle of about 45° The attainment of this required certain proportions between the different dimensions of the machine and the weight of the shot, for which, doubtless, traditional rules of thumb existed among the medieval engineers.
The ordinary shot consisted of stones carefully rounded. But for these were substituted on occasion rough stones with fuses attached,! pieces of red-hot iron, pots of fused metal, or casks full of Greek fire or of foul matter to corrupt the air of the besieged place. Thus carrion was shot into Negropont from such engines by Mahomed II. The Car- dinal Octavian besieging Modena in 1249, slings ^a dead ass into the town. Froissart several times mentions such measures, as at the siege of Thin TEveque on the Scheldt in 1340, when " the besiegers by their engines flung dead horses and other carrion into the castle to poison the garrison by their smelL" In at least one instance the same author tells how a living man, an unlucky messenger from the Castle of
** Francigenis nostris illis ignota diebus Res erat omnino quid balistarius arcus, Quid balista foret, nee habebat in agmine toto Rex quenquam sciret armis qui talibus uti."
Duchesne^ HisL Franc. Script.^ V. 1 15.
Anna Comnena calls it l^d-^pa (which looks like Persian ^:/i<zr/->4) *• a barbaric bow, totally unknown to the Greeks ; " and she gives a very lengthy description of it, ending : ** Such then are the facts about the Tzagra^ and a truly diabolical affair it is." {Alex. X.— Paris ed. p. 291.)
♦ The construction is best seen in Figs. 17 and 19. Figs, i, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the cut are from Chinese sources ; Figs. 6, 7, 8 from Arabic works ; the rest from European sources.
t Christine de Pisan says that when keeping up a discharge by night lighted brands should be attached to the stones in order to observe and correct the practice. Livre des faitSf &c., du sa^e Roy Charles^ Pt. II. ch. xxiv.)
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Chap. LXX. MEDIEVAL ARTILLERY ENGINES.
H5
Auberoche, was caught by the besiegers, thrust into the sling with the letters that he bore hung round his neck, and shot into Auberoche,
X^
where he fell dead among his horrified comrades. And Lipsius quotes
VOL. II. L
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146 MARCO POLO. Book II.
from a Spanish Chronicle the story of a virtuous youth Pelagius, who, by order of the Tyrant Abderramin, was shot across the Guadalquivir, but lighted unharmed upon the rocks beyond. Ramon de Muntaner relates how King James of Aragon, besieging Majorca in 1228, vowed vengeance against the Saracen King because he shot Christian prisoners into the besiegers' camp with his trebuchets (p. 223-4). We have mentioned one kind of corruption propagated by these engines; the historian Wassdf tells of another. When the garrison of Delhi refused to open the gates to Aliuddin Khilji after the murder of his uncle Firdz (1296), he loaded his mangonels with bags of gold and shot them into the fort, a measure which put an end to the opposition.
Ibn Batuta, 40 years later, describes Mahomed Tughlak as entering Dehli accompanied by elephants carrying small balistae {ra'dddt)^ from which gold and silver pieces were shot among the crowd. And the same king, when he had given the crazy and cruel order that the population of Dehli should evacuate the city and depart to Deogir, 900 miles distant, having found two men skulking behind, one of whom was paralytic and the other blind, caused the former to be- shot from a mangonel (/. B.
ni. 395, 315).
Some old drawings represent the shaft as discharging the shot from a kind of spoon at its extremity, without the aid of a sling {e.g. fig. 13) ; but it may be doubted if this was actually iised, for the sling was essential to the efficiency of the engine. The experiments and calculations of Dufbur show that without the sling, other things remaining the same, the range of the shot would be reduced by more than a half.
In some of these engines the counterpoise, consisting of a timber case filled with stones, sand, or the like, was permanently fixed to the butt-end of the shaft. This seems to have been the Trebuchet proper. In others the counterpoise hung free on a pivot from the yard ; whilst a third kind (as in fig. 17) combined both arrangements. The first kind shot most steadily and truly ; the second with more force.
Those machines, in which the force of men pulling cords took the place of the counterpoise, could not discharge such weighty shot, but they could be worked more rapidly, and no doubt could be made of lighter scantling. Mr. Hewitt points out a curious resemblance between this kind of Trebuchet and the apparatus used on the Thames to raise the cargo from the hold of a collier.
The Emperor Napoleon deduces from certain passages in medieval writers that the Mangonel was similar to the Trebuchet, but of lighter structure and power. But often certainly the term Mangonel seems to be used generically for all machines of this class. Marino Sanudo uses no word but Machina, which he appears to employ as the Latin equivalent of Mangonel, whilst the machine which he describes is a Trebuchet with moveable counterpoise. The history of the word appears to be the fol- lowing. The Greek word fjidyyayov, " a piece of witchcraft," came to signify a juggler's trick, an unexpected contrivance (in modern slang " ^
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chap.lxx. medieval artillery engines. 147
jim \ and so specially a military engine. It seems to have reached this specific meaning by the time of Hero the Younger, who is believed to have written in the first half of the 7th century. From the form ^uLy ftyiKQv the Orientals got Manganik and Manjdni^* whilst the Franks adopted Mangona and Mangondla, Hence the verbs manganare and amanganarCy to batter and crush with such engines, and eventually our verb " to mangle." Again, when the use of gunpowder rendered these warlike engines obsolete, perhaps their ponderous counterweights were utilized in the peaceful arts of the laundry, and hence gave us our substantive *' the Mangle " (It Mangano) !
The Emperor Napoleon, when Prince President, caused some interest- ing experiments in the matter of medieval artillery to be carried out at Vincennes, and a full-sized trebuchet was constructed there. With a shaft of 33 ft. 9 in. in length, having a permanent counterweight of 3300 lbs. and a pivoted counterweight of 6600 lbs. more, the utmost efiiect attained was the discharge of an iron 24-kilo. shot to a range of 191 yds., whilst a i2i-inch shell, filled with earth, ranged to 131 yds. The machine suffered greatly at each discharge, and it was impracti- cable to increase the counterpoise to 8000 kilos., or 17,600 lbs., as the Prince desired. It was evident that the machine was not of sufficiently massive structure. But the oflftcers in charge satisfied themselves that, with practice in such constructions and the use of very massive timber, even the exceptional feats recorded of medieval engineers might be realized.
Such a case is that cited by Quatrem^re, firom an Oriental author, of the discharge of stones weighing 400 mans^ certainly not less than 800 lbs., and possibly much more ; or that of the Men of Bern, who are reported, when besieging Nidau in 1388, to have employed trebuchets which shot daily into the town upwards of 200 blocks weighing 12 cwt apiece.t Stella relates that the Genoese armament sent against Cyprus, "^ '373i among other great machines had one called Troja {TruiaT)^ which cast stones of 12 to 18 hundredweights; and when the Venetians were besieging the revolted city of Zara in 1346, their Engineer, Master
• Professor Sprenger informs me that the first mention of the Manjanik in Ma- homcdan history is at the siege of Tdyif by Mahomed himself, a.d. 630 (and see Sprenger's Mohammed [German], III. 330). The Annales Marbacmses in Pertz^ xvii. 172, say under 1212, speaking of wars of the Emperor Otho in Germany : "Ibi tunc cepit haberi usus instrumenti belKci quod vulgo tribok appellari solet"
There is a ludicrous oriental derivation of Manjanik, from the Persian : " Man chi fuk ! •* How good am I 'M Ibn Khallikan remarks that the word must be foreign,
because the letters j and 1^ (^ and <3) never occur together in genuine Arabic words
{NoUs by Mr, E. Thomas, F.R.S.). It may be noticed that the letters in question occur together in another Arabic word of foreign origin used by Polo, viz. JdthallJ^,
t Dufour mentions that stone shot of the medieval engines exist at Zurich, of twenty and twenty-two inches diameter. The largest of these would however scarcely exceed 500 lbs. in weight.
L 2
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148 MARCO POLO. Book II.
Francesco delle Barche, shot into the city stones of 3000 lbs. weight* In this case the unlucky engineer was ** hoist with his own petard," for while he stood adjusting one of his engines, it went off, and shot him into the town.
With reference to such cases the Emperor calculates that a stone of 3000 lbs. weight might be shot 77 yds. with a counterpoise of 36,000 lbs. weight, and a shaft 65 ft long. The counterpoise, composed of stone shot of 55 lbs. each, might be contained in a cubical case of about 5 J fl to the side. The machine would be preposterous, but there is nothing impossible about it Indeed in the Album of Villard de Honnecourt, an architect of the 13th century, which was published at Paris in 1858, in the notes accompanying a plan of a trebuchet (from which Prof. Willis restored the machine as it is shown in our fig. 19), the artist remarks: " It is a great job to heave down the beam, for the counterpoise is very heavy. For it consists of a chest full of earth which is 2 great toises in length, 8 ft in breadth, and 12 ft in depth" I (p. 203).
Such calculations enable us to understand the enormous quantities of material said to have been used in some of the larger medieval machines. Thus Abulfeda speaks of one used at the final capture of Acre, which was intrusted to the troops of Hamath, and which fonned a load for 100 carts, of which one was in charge of the historian himself The romance of Richard Coeur de Lion tells how in the King's Fleet an entire ship was taken up by one such machine with its gear : —
•* Another schyp was laden yet With an engyne hyghte Robinet, (It was Richardys o mangonel) And all the takyl that thereto feL"
Twenty-four machines, captured from the Saracens by St Lewis in his first partial success on the Nile, afforded material for stockading his whole camp. A great machine which cumbered the Tower of St Paul at Orleans, and was dismantled previous to the celebrated defence against the English, furnished 26 cart-loads of timber. {Abulf. Ann. Muslem^ V. 95-97 ; Weber^ IL 56 ; Michets Joinville^ App. p. 278 ; Jollois, H. duSi^ge (C Orleans y 1833, p. 12.)
The number of such engines employed was sometimes very great We have seen that St Lewis captured 24 at once, and these had been employed in the field. Villehardouin says that the fleet which went from Venice to the attack of Constantinople carried more than 300 perriers and mangonels, besides quantities of other engines required for a siege (ch. xxxviii.). At the siege of Acre in 1291, just referred to, the Saracens, accordmg to Makrizi, set 92 engines in battery against the city, whilst Abulfaraj says 300, and a Frank account, of great and small, 666. The larger ones are said to have shot stones of " a kantar and even
Gtorg. Steliae Ann, in Muraiori, XVII. 1105 ; and Daru^ Bk. viii. § 12.
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Chap. LXX. MEDIEVAL ARTILLERY ENGINES. 149
more." {Makrizi, II L 125 ; Reinaud^ Chroniques Arabes^ &»c,^ p. 570 ; De Excidio Urhis Accents^ in Marthie and Durand^ V. 769.)
How heavy a mangonade was sometimes kept up may be understood fix)m the account of the operations on the Nile, ab-eady alluded to. The King was trying to run a dam across a branch of the river, and had protected the head of his work by " cat-castles " or towers of timber, occupied by archers, and these again supported by trebuchets, &c., in battery. " And," says Jean Pierre Sarrasin the King's Chamberlain, " when the Saracens saw what was going on, they planted a great number of engines against ours, and to destroy our towers and our causeway they shot such vast quantities of stones, great and small, that all men stood amazed. They slung stones, and discharged arrows, and shot quarrels from winch-arblasts, and pelted us with Turkish darts and Greek fire, and kept up such a harassment of every kind against our engines and our men working at the causeway, that it was horrid either to see or to hear. Stones, darts, arrows, quarrels, and Greek fire came down on them like rain."
The Emperor Napoleon observes that the direct or grazing fire of the great arblasts may be compared to that of guns in more modem war, whilst the mangonels represent mortar-fire. And this vertical fire was by no means contemptible, at least against buildings of ordinary con- struction. At the sieges of Thin TEv^que in 1340, and Auberoche in 1344, already cited, Froissart says the French cast stones in, night and day, so as in a few days to demolish all the roofs of the towers, and none within durst venture out of the vaulted basement
The Emperor's experiments showed that these machines were capable of surprisingly accurate direction. And the medieval histories present some remarkable feats of this kind. Thus, in the attack of Mortagne by the men of Hainault and Valenciennes (1340), the latter had an engine which was a great annoyance to the garrison ; there was a clever engineer in the garrison who set up another machine against it, and adjusted it so well that the first shot fell within 12 paces of the enemy's engine, the second fell near the box, and the third struck the shaft and split it in two.
Already in the first half of the 13th century, a French poet (quoted by Weber) looks forward with disgust to the supercession of the ifeats of chivalry by more mechanical methods of war : —
** Chevaliers sont esperdus, Cil ont auques leur tens perdus ; Arbalestier et mineor Et pcrrier et engigneor Seront dorenavant plus chier.'*
When Ghazan Khan was about to besiege the castle of Damascus in 1300, so much importance was attached to this art that whilst his Engineer, a man of reputation therein, was engaged in preparing the machines, the Governor of the castle offered a reward of 1000 dinars for
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150 MARCO POLO. Book II.
that personage's head And one of the garrison was daring enough to enter the Mongol camp, stab the Engineer, and carry back his head into the castle 1
Marino Sanudo, about the same time, speaks of the range of Aese engines with a prophetic sense of the importance of artillery in war :—
" On this subject (length of range) the engineers and experts of the army should employ their very sharpest wits. For if the shot of one army, whether engine-stones or pointed projectiles, have a longer range than the shot of the enemy, rest assured that the side whose artillery liath the longest range will have a vast advantage in action. Plainly, if th^ Christian shot can take effect on the Pagan forces, whilst the Pagan shot cannot reach the Christian forces, it may be safely asserted that the Christians will continually gain ground from the enemy, or, in other wonis, they will win the battle."
The importance of these machines in war, and the efforts made to render them more effective went on augmenting till the introduction of the still more " villanous saltpetre," even then however coming to no sudden halt. Several of the instances that we have cited of machines of extraordinary power belong to a time when the use of cannon had made some progress. The old engines were employed by Timur ; in the wars of the Hussites as late as 1422 ; and, as we have seen, up to the middle of that century by Mahomed II. They are also distinctly represented on the towers of Aden, in the contemporary print of the escalade in 15 14, reproduced in this volume (Bk. III. ch. xxxvi.).
(Etudes sur le Passh et PAvcnir de fArtilierie^ par Z. -A^ Bonaparte^ &c., tom. II. ; Marinus Sanutitis^ Bk. II. Pt 4, ch. xxi. and xxii. ; Kington's Fred, IL, II. 488; Froissart, I. 69, 81, 182; Elliot, III. 41, &c.; Hewitt's Ancient Armour, I. 350 ; Pertz, Scriptores, XVIII. 420, 751 ; Q, R. 135-7 ; Weber, III. 103 ; Hammer, Ilch, II. 95.)
Note 4. — ^Very like this is what the Romance of Coeur de Lion tells of the effects of Sir Fulke Doyley's mangonels on the Saracens of Ebedy:—
** Sir Fouke brought good engynes Swylke knew but fewc Sarazynes —
* * *
A prys tour stood ovyr the Gate ;
He bent his engynes and threw thereate
A great stone that harde droff,
That the Tour al to roff
* * *
And slough the folk that therinne stood ;
The other fledde and wer nygh wood.
And sayde it was the devylys dent," &c. — Weber ^ II. 172.
Note 5. — This chapter is one of the most perplexing in the whole book, owing to the chronological difficulties involved.
Saianfu is SiANGVANG-Fu, which stands on the south bank of the
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Chap. LXX. SIEGE OF SAIANFU. 151
River Han, and with the sister city of Fanchmg, on the opposite bank, commands the junction of two important approaches to the southern provinces, viz. that from Shensi down the Han, and that from Shansi and Peking down the Pe-ho. Fanching seems now to be the more unportant place of the two.
The name given to the city by Polo is precisely that which Siangyang bears in Rashiduddin, and there is no room for doubt as to its identity. The Chinese historians relate that Kublai was strongly advised to make the capture of Siangyang and Fanching a preliminary to his intended attack upon the Sung. The siege was undertaken in the latter part of 1268, and the twin cities held out till the spring of 1273. Nor did Kublai apparently prosecute any other operations against the Sung during that long interval.
Now Polo represents that the long siege of Saianfu, instead of being a prologue to the subjugation of Manzi, was the protracted epilogue of that enterprise ; and he also represents the fall of the place as caused by advice and assistance rendered by his father, his uncle, and himself, a circumstance consistent only with the siege's having really been such an epilogue to the war. For, according to the narrative as it stands in all the texts, the Polos could not have reached the Court of Kublai before the end of 1274, Le. a year and a half after the fall of Siangyang as represented in the Chinese histories.
The difficulty is not removed, nor, it appears to me, abated in any degree, by omitting the name of Marco as one of the agents in this affair, an omission which occurs both in Pauthier's MS. B and in Ramusio. Pauthier suggests that the father and uncle may have given the advice and assistance in question when on their first visit to the Kaan, and when the siege of Siangyang was first contemplated. But this would be quite inconsistent with the assertion that the place had held out three years longer than the rest of Manzi, as well as with the idea that their aid had abridged the duration of the siege, and, in fact, with the spirit of the whole story. It is certainly very difficult in this case to justify Marco's veracity, but I am very unwilling to believe that there was no justification in the facts.
It is a very curious circumstance that the historian Wassdf also appears to represent Saianfu (see note 5, chap. Ixv.) as holding out after all the rest of Manzi had been conquered. Yet the Chinese annals are systematic, minute, and consequent, and it seems impossible to attribute to them such a misplacement of an event which they represent as the key to the conquest of Southern China.
In comparing Marco's story with that of the Chinese, we find the same coincidence in prominent features, accompanying a discrepancy in details, that we have had occasion to notice in other cases where his narrative intersects history. TheChinese account runs as follows : —
In 127 1, after Siangyang and Fanching had held out already nearly three years, an Uighur General serving at the siege, whose name was
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152 MARCO POLO. Book II.
Alihaiya, urged the Emperor to send to the West for engineers expert at the construction and working of machines casting stones of 150 lbs. weight With such aid he assured Kublai the place would speedily be taken. Kublai sent to his nephew Abaka in Persia for such engineers, and two were accordingly sent post to China, Aiawating of Mufali and his pupil Ysemain of HuJi or HiuHe (probably Alduddin of MiafarcMn and Ismad of Heri or Herat). Kublai on their arrival gave them mili- tary rank. They exhibited their skill before the Emperor at Tatu, and in the latter part of 1272 they reached the camp before Siangyang, and set up their engines. The noise made by the machines, and the crash of the shot as it broke through everything in its fall, caused great alarm in the garrison. Fanching.was first taken by assault, and some weeks later Siangyang surrendered.
The shot used on this occasion weighed 125 Chinese pounds (if catties^ dien equal to about 166 lbs, avoird,)^ and penetrated 7 or 8 feet into the earth.
Rashiduddin also mentions the siege of Siangyang, as we leam from D*Ohsson. He states that as there were in China none of the Manjadks or Mangonels called Kumghd, the Kaan caused a certain engineer to be sent from Damascus or Balbek, aAd the three sons of this person, Abubakr, Ibrahim, and Mahomed, with their workmen, constructed seven great Manjanfks which were employed against Sayanfu, a frontier fortress and bulwark of Manzi,
We thus see that three different notices of the siege of Siangyang, Chinese, Persian, and Venetian, all concur as- to the employment of foreign engineers from the West, but all differ as to the individuals.
We have seen that one of the MSS. makes Polo assert that till this event the Mongols and Chinese were totally ignorant of mangonels and trebuchets. This however is quite untrue ; and it is not very easy to reconcile even the statement, impUed in all versions of the story, that mangonels of considerable power were unknown in the far East, with other circumstances related in Mongol history.
The Persian History called Tabakdt-i-Ndsiri speaks of Aikah Nowin the Manjaniki Khds or Engineer-in-Chief to Chinghiz Khan, and his corps of ten thousand Manjanikis or Mangonellers. The Chinese his- tories used by Gaubil also speak of these artillery-battahons of Chinghiz. At the siege of Kaifungfu on the Hwang-Ho, the latest capital of the Kin Emperors, in 1232, the Mongol General Subutai threw from his engines great quarters of millstones which smashed the battlements and watch- towers on the ramparts, and even the great timbers of houses in the city. In 1236 we find the Chinese garrison of Chinchau {l-chin-him on the Great Kiang near the Great Canal) repelling the Mongol attack, partly by means of their stone shot When Hulaku was about to march against Persia (1253), his brother the Great Kaan Mangku sent to Cathay io fetch thence 1000 families of mangonellers, naphtha-shooters, and arblasteers. Some of the crossbows used by these latter had a range, we are told, of
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Chap. LXX MONGOL ARTILLERY ENGINES. 1 53
2500 paces I European history bears some similar evidence. One of the Tartar characteristics reported by a fugitive Russian archbishop, in Matt Paris (p. 570 under 1244), is : ^^ Machinas hahmt multiplices^ rede et fortiter jacUntes,**
It is evident therefore that the Mongols and Chinese had engines of war, but that they were deficient in some advantage possessed by those of the Western nations. Rashiduddin's expression as to their having no Kumghd mangonels, seems to be unexplained. Is it perhaps an error for ^ardbughd, the name given by the Turks and Arabs to a kind of great mangonel ? This was known also in Europe as Carabaga, Calabra, &c. It is mentioned under the former name by Marino Sanudo, and under the latter, with other quaintly-named engines, by William of Tudela, as used by Simon de Montfort the Elder against the Albi- gcnses:—
** E dressa sos Calabres^ et foi Mai Vezina
£ sas autras pereiras, e Donoy e JReina ;
Pessia les autz murs e la sala peirina." *
("He set up his Caldbers, and likewise his III- Neighbours ^ With many a more machine, this the Lady^ that the Quern, And breached the lofty walls, and smashed the stately Halls.")
Now, in looking at the Chinese representations of their ancient man- gonek, which are evidently genuine, and of which I have given some specimens (figs, i, 2, 3), I see none worked by the counterpoise ; all (and 'there are 6 or 7 different representations in the work from which these are taken) arc shown as worked by man ropes. Hence probably the improvement brought fi-om the West was essentially the use of the counterpoised lever. And, after I had come to this conclusion, I found it to be the view of Captain Fav^ (see Du Feu Gregeois, by MM. Rei- naud and Fav^, p. 193).
In Ramusio the two Polos propose to Kublai to make " mangani al modo di Panenie;^ and it is worthy of note that in the campaigns of Alaudin Khilji and his generals in the Deccan, circa 1300, frequent mention is made of the Western Manjaniks and their great power (see Elliot, HI. 75, 78, &c.).
Of the kind worked by man-ropes must have been that huge man- gonel which Mahomed Ibn Kdsim, the conqueror of Sind, set in battery against the great Dagoba of Daibul, and which required 500 men to work it Like Simon de Montfort's it had a tender name ; it was called " The Bride " {Elliot, 1. 120).
Before quitting this subject, I will quote a curious passage from the History of the Sung Dynasty contributed to the work of Reinaud and Fave' by M. Stanislas JuHen : " In the 9th year of the period Hien-shun (a.d. "73) the frontier cities had fallen into the hands of the enemy (Tartars). The Poo (or engines for shooting) of the Hwei-Hwei (Mahomedans) were
Shaw, Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages, vol. i. No. 21.
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154 MARCO POLO. Book II.
imitated, but in imitating them very ingenious improvements were intro- duced, and poo of a different and very superior kind were constructed Moreover an extraordinary method was invented of neutralizing the effects of the enem/s pao. Ropes were made of rice-straw 4 inches thick, and 34 feet in length. Twenty such ropes were joined, applied to the tops of buildings, and covered with clay. In this manner the fire- arrows, fire-/^^, and even the pao casting stones of 100 lbs. weight, could cause no damage to the towers or houses " (/If. 196 ; also for previous parts of this note, Visddou^ 188 ; Gaubil, 34, 155 segq, and 70 ; Demailla^ 329 ; Pauthier in loco and Introduction; jyOhsson, II. 35, and 391; Notes by Mk Edward Thomas, F.R.S.; 1 Q, Rashid, pp. 132, 136). ' Siangyang has been twice visited by Mr. A. Wylie. Just before his first visit (I believe in 1866) a discovery had been made in the dty of a quantity of treasure buried at the time of Coin from a treasure hidden at the siege. Ouc of the local officcrs gavc Mr. '^:^a^^,^^Sy'k^l.t:X Wylie one of the copper coins, not indeed in itself of any great rarity, but worth engraving here on account of its connexion with the siege commemorated in the text ; and a little on the principle of Smith the Weaver's evidence :— " The bricks are alive at this day to testify of it ; therefore deny it not"
CHAPTER LXXI. Concerning the City of Sinju and the Great River Kian.
You must know that when you leave the city of Yanju, after going 15 miles south-east, you come to a city called Sinju, of no great size, but possessing a very great amount of shipping and trade. The people are Idolaters and sub- ject to the Great Kaan, and use paper-money.'
And you must know that this city stands on the greatest river in the world, the name of which is Kian. It is in some places ten miles wide, in others eight, in others six, and it is more than 100 days' journey in length from one end to the other. This it is that brings so much trade to the city we are speaking of; for on the waters of that river
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merchandize is perpetually coming and going, from and to the various parts of the world, enriching the city, and bringing a great revenue to the Great Kaan.
And I assure you this river flows so far and traverses so many countries and cities that in good sooth there pass and repass on its waters a great number of vessels, and more wealth and merchandize than on all the rivers and all the seas of Christendom put together ! It seems indeed more like a Sea than a River.' Messer Marco Polo said that he once beheld at that city 15,000 vessels at one time. And you may judge, if this city, of no great size, has such a number, how many must there be altogether, considering that on the banks of this river there are more than sixteen prorinces and more than 200 great cities, besides towns and villages, all possessing vessels ?
Messer Marco Polo aforesaid tells us that he heard from the officer employed to collect the Great Kaan's duties on this river that there passed up-stream 200,000 vessels in the year, without counting those that passed down! [Indeed as it has a course of such great length, and receives so many other navigable rivers, it is no wonder that the merchandize which is borne on it is of vast amount and value. And the article in largest quantity of all is salt, which is carried by this river and its branches to all the cities on their banks, and thence to the other cities in the mterior.3]
The vessels which ply on this river are decked. They have but one mast, but they are of great burthen, for I can assure you they carry (reckoning by our weight) from 4000 up to 12,000 cantars each.*
Now we will quit this matter and I will tell you of another city called Caiju. But first I must mention a point I had forgotten. You must know that the vessels on this river, in going up-stream have to be tracked, for the current is so strong that they could not make head in any other manner. Now the tow-line, which is some 300 paces
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in length, is made of nothing but cane. 'Tis in this way: they have those great canes of which I told you before that they are some fifteen paces in length ; these they take and split from end to end [into many slender strips"), and then they twist these strips together so as to make a rope of any length they please. And the ropes so made are stronger than if they were made of hemp.^
[There are at many places on this river hills and rocky eminences on which the idol-monasteries and other edifices are built ; and you find on its shores a constant succession of villages and inhabited places.^]
Note 1. — The traveller's diversion from his direct course— i^ or south-east, as he regards it — towards Fokien, in order to notice Nganking (as we have supposed) and Siangyang, has sadly thrown out both the old translators and transcribers and the modem commentators. Though the G. Text has here " guant Tm se part de la cite dt Angui," I cannot doubt that langui (Yanju) is the reading intended, and that Polo here comes back to the main line of his journey.
I conceive Sinju to be the city which was then called Chin-chau, but now I-CHiN-HiEN,* and which stands on the Kiang as near as may be 15 miles from Yangchau. It is indeed south-west instead of south-east, but those who have noted the style of Polo's orientation will not attach much importance to this. I-chin-hien is still the great port of the. Yangchau salt manufacture, for export by the Kiang and its branches to the interior provinces. It communicates with the Grand Canal by two branch canals. Admiral ColHnson, in 1842, remarked the great numbers of vessels lying in the creek off Ichin (see note 1 to chap. Ixviii above ; and/. R, G, S. XVII. 139).
Note 2. — The river is of course the Great Kiang or Yangtsze-Kiang (already spoken of in chapter xliv. as the Kiansui)^ which Polo was justified in calling the greatest river in the world, whilst the New World was yet hidden. The breadth seems to be a good deal exaggerated, the length not at all. His expressions about it were perhaps accompanied by a mental reference to the term Dalai^ " The Sea," which the Mongols appear to have given the river (see Fr, Odoric, p. 121). The Chinese have a popular saying " Hot vu ping, Kiang vu ti" " Boundless is tbe Ocean, bottomless the Kiang ! "
* See GauMy p. 93, note 4, and Bioty p. 275.
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Chap. LXXI. ISLAND MONASTERIES ON THE KIANG.
157
' simfl sopraqufsto fiumrin molti luogt)t, coUiiu r montueUt sasaosi, sopra i quaii s ono tniBati monasteri li'&liolt, t altrr stance "
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158 MARCO POLO. Book II.
Note 3. — " The assertion that there is a greater amount of tonnage belonging to the Chinese than to all other nations combined, does not appear overcharged to those who have seen the swarms of boats on their rivers, though it might not be found strictly true." {Mid, Kingd, II. 398.) Barrow's picture of the life, traffic, and population on the Kiang, except- ing as to specific numbers, quite bears out Marco's account This part of China suffered so long from the wars of the Taiping rebellion that to recent travellers it has presented an aspect sadly belying its old fame. Such havoc is not readily repaired in a few years, nor in a few centuries, but prosperity is reviving, and European navigation is beginning to make an important figure on the Kiang. I see from Shanghai shipping-lists of December 1873, that between the 5th and i6th (inclusive) of that month there arrived from Hankau (a port distant 600 miles from the sea) and the intermediate ports on the Kiang 10 British and American steamers, averaging 932 tons. Between the 3rd and loth (inclusive) there sailed for the same ports 11 steamers averaging 948 tons; some of them near 1300.
Note 4. — 12,000 cantars would be more than 500 tons, and I do not know if this can be justified by the burthen of Chinese vessels on the river, though we see it is more than doubled by that of some British or American steamers thereon. In the passage referred to under note 1, Admiral Collinson speaks of the salt-junks at Ichin as ** very remark- able, being built nearly in the form of a crescent, the stem rising in some of them nearly 30 feet and the prow 20, whilst the mast is 90 feet high." These dimensions imply large capacity. Oliphant speaks of the old rice-junks for the canal traffic as transporting 200 and 300 tons
(I- 197).
Note 5. — The tow-line in river-boats is usually made (as here described) of strips of bamboo twisted. Hawsers are also made of bamboo. Ramusio, in this passage, says the boats are tracked by horses, 10 or 12 to each vessel I do not find this mentioned anywhere else, nor has any traveller in China that I have consulted heard of such a thing.
Note 6. — Such eminences as are here alluded to are the Little Orphan Rock, Silver Island, and the Golden Island, which is mentioned in the following chapter. We give on the preceding page illustrations of those three picturesque islands ; the Orphan Rock at the top, Golden Island in the middle. Silver Island below.
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Chap. LXXII. CAIJU. THE GREAT CANAL. 159
CHAPTER LXXII. Concerning the City of Caiju.
Caiju is a small city towards the south-east. The people are subject to the Great Kaan and have paper-money. It stands upon the river before mentioned.' At this place are collected great quantities of corn and rice to be transported to the great city of Cambaluc for the use of the Kaan's Court ; for the grain for the Court all comes from this part of the country. You must understand that the Emperor hath caused a water-communication to be made from this city to Cambaluc, in the shape of a wide and deep channel dug between stream and stream, between lake and lake, forming as it were a great river on which large vessels can ply. And thus there is a communication all the way from this city of Caiju to Cambaluc ; so that great vessels with their loads can go the whole way. A land road also exists, for the earth dug from those channels has been thrown up so as to form an embanked road on either side.^
Just opposite to the city of Caiju, in the middle of the River, there stands a rocky island on which there is an idol-monastery containing some 200 idolatrous friars, and a vast number of idols. And this Abbey holds supremacy over a number of other idol-monasteries, just like an arch- bbhop's see among Christians.'
Now we will leave this and cross the river, and I will tell you of a city called Chinghianfu.
Note 1. — No place in Polo's travels is better identified by his local indications than this. It is on the Kiang ; it is at the extremity of the Great Canal from Cambaluc; it is opposite the Golden Island and Chinkiangfti. Hence it is Kwachau, as Murray pointed out Marsden here misunderstands his text, and puts the place on the south side of the Kiang.
Here Van Braam notices that there passed in the course of the day
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more than 50 great rice-boats, most of which could easily carry more than 300,000 lbs. of rice. And Mr. Alabaster, in 1868, speaks of the canal from Yangchau to Kwachau as " full of junks."
Note 2. — Rashiduddin gives the following accoimt of the Grand Canal spoken of in this passage. " The river of Khanbaligh had," he sa)*s, *' in the course of time, become so shallow as not to admit the entrance of shipping, so that they had to discharge their cargoes and send them up to Khanbaligh on pack-cattle. And the Chinese engineers and men of science having reported that the vessels from the provinces of Cathay, from Machin, and from the cities of Khingsai and Zaitiin, could no longer reach the court, the Kaan gave them orders to dig a great canal into which the waters of the said river, and of several others, should be introduced. This canal extends for a distance of 40 days' navigation from Khanbaligh to Khingsai and Zaitiin, the ports frequented by the ships that come from India, and from the city of Machin (Canton). The canal is provided with many sluices ; . . . and when vessels arrive at these sluices they are hoisted up by means of machiner>% whatever be their size, and let down on the otiier side into the water. The canal has a width of more than 30 ells. Kublai caused the sides of the embank- ments to be revetted with stone, in order to prevent the earth giving way. Along the side of the canal runs the high road to Machin, extending for a space of 40 days* journey, and this has been paved throughout, so that travellers and their animals may get along during
the rainy season without sinking in the mud Shops, taverns, and
villages line the road on both sides, so that dwelling succeeds dwelling without intermission throughout the whole space of 40 days* journey." (Cathay^ 259-60.)
The canal appears to have been completed in 1289, though large portions were in use earUer. Its chief object was to provide the capitol with food. Pauthier gives the statistics of the transport of rice by this canal from 1283 to the end of Kublai*s reign, and for some subsequent years up to 1329. In the latter year the quantity reached 3,522,163 sh or 1,247,633 quarters. As the supplies of rice for the capital and for the troops in the Northern Provinces always continued to be drawn from Kiangnan, the distress and derangement caused by the recent rebel occupation of that province must have been enormous. {PautMUr, p. 481-2 ; Demaillay p. 439.) Polo's account of the formation of the canal is exceedingly accurate. Compare that given by Mr. Williamson (L 62).
Note 3. — "On the Kiang, not far from the mouth, is that remark- ably beautiful little island called the * Golden Isle,* surmounted by numerous temples inhabited by the votaries of Buddha or Fo, and very correctly described so many centuries since by Marco Polo " (DarUs Chinese, I. 149). The monastery, according to Pauthier, was founded in the 3rd or 4th century, but the name Kin-Shan, or "Golden Isle,** dates only from a visit of the Emperor Kang-hi in 1684.
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Chap. LXXIII. THE CITY OF CHINGHIANFU. . l6l
The monastery contained one of the most famous Buddhist libraries in China. This was in the hands of our troops during the first China war, and, as it was intended to remove the books, there was no haste made in examining their contents. Meanwhile peace came, and the library w-zs restored. It is a pity now that the jus belli had not been exercised promptly, for the whole establishment was destroyed by the Taipings in i860, and, with the exception of the Pagoda at the top of the hill, which was left in a dilapidated state, not one stone of the buildings remained upon another. The rock had also then ceased to be an island ; and the site of what not many years before had been a channel with four fathoms of water, separating it from the southern shore, was covered by flourishing cabbage-gardens. {Gutzlaff in J, R, A, S. XII. 87 ; Mitf. Kingd, I. 84, 86 ; Oliphants Narrative, II. 301 ; iV: and Q, 67/. and Jap, No. 5, p. 58.)
CHAPTER LXXIII. Of the City of Chinghianfu.
Chinghianfu is a city of Manzi. The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan, and have paper-money, and live by handicrafts and trade. They have plenty of silk,
West Gate of Chinkiangfu in 184a. VOL. 11. M
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from which they make sundry kinds of stuffs of silk and gold. There are great and wealthy merchants in the place ; plenty of game is to be had, and of all kinds of victual.
There are in this city two churches of Nestorian Chris- tians which were established in the year of our Lord 1 278 ; and I will tell you how that happened. You see, in the year just named, the Great Kaan sent a Baron of his whose name was Mar Sarghis, a Nestorian Christian, to be governor of this city for three years. And during the three years that he abode there he caused these two Chris- tian churches to be built, and since then there they are. But before his time there was no church, neither were there any Christians.*
Note 1. — Chinkiangfu retains its name unchanged. It is one which became well known in the war of 1842. On its capture on the 2ist July in that year, the heroic Manchu commandant seated himself among his records and then set fire to the building, making it his funeral pjrre. The city was totally destroyed in the Taiping wars, but is rapidly recovering its position as a place of native conmierce.
Mar Sarghis (or Dominus Sergius) appears to have been a common name among Armenian and other Oriental Christians. As Pauthier mentions, this very name is one of the names of Nestorian priests in- scribed in Syriac on the celebrated monument of Singanfu.
From this second mention of three years as a term of government, we may probably gather that this was the usual period for the tenure of such office. {Mid, Kingd,^ I. 86 ; Cathay^ p. xciii.)
CHAPTER LXXIV.
Of the City of Chinginju and the Slaughter of certain Alans there.
Leaving the city of Chinghianfii and travelling three days south-east through a constant succession of busy and thriving towns and villages, you arrive at the great and noble city of Chinginju. The people are Idolaters, use
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Chap. LXXIV. MASSACRE OF THE ALANS. 1 63
paper-money, and are subject to the Great Kaan. They live by trade and handicrafts, and they have plenty of silk. They have also abundance of game, and of all manner of victuals, for it is a most productive territory.^
Now I must tell you of an evil deed that was done, once upon a time, by the people of this city, and how dearly they paid for it.
You see, at the time of the conquest of the great province of Manzi, when Bayan was in command, he sent a company of his troops, consisting of a people called Alans, who are Christians, to take this city.' They took it accordingly, and when they had made their way in, they lighted upon some good wine. Of this they drank until they were all drunk, and then they lay down and slept like so. many swine. So when night fell, the townspeople, seeing that they were all dead-drunk, fell upon them and slew them all ; not a man escaped.
And when Bayan heard that the townspeople had thus treacherously slain his men, he sent another Admiral of his with a great force, and stormed the city, and put the whole of the inhabitants to the sword ; not a man of them escaped death. And thus the whole population of that city was exterminated.^
Now we will go on, and I will tell you of another city called Suju.
Note 1. — Both the position and the story which follows identify this city with Changchau. The name is written in Pauthier*s MSB. Clung- inguy^ in the G. T. Cingiggui and Cinghingui^ in Ramusio Tinguigui,
The capture of Changchau by Gordon's force, nth May, 1864, was the final achievement of that " Ever Victorious Army."
Regarding the territory here spoken of, once so rich and densely peopled, Mr. Medhurst says, in reference to the effects of the Taiping insurrection : ** I can conceive of no more melancholy sight than the acres of ground that one passes through strewn with remains of once thriving cities, and the miles upon miles of rich land, once carefully parcelled out into fields and gardens, but now only growing coarse grass and brambles — the home of the pheasant, the deer, and the wild pig." {Foreigner in Far Cathay^ p. 94.)
M 2
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Note 2. — The relics of the Alans were settied on the northern skirts of the Caucasus, where they made a stout resistance to the Mongols, but eventually became subjects of the Khans of SaraL The name by which they were usually known in Asia in the Middle Ages was AaSy and this name is assigned to them by Carpini, Rubruquis, and Josafat Barbaro, as well as by Ibn Batuta. Mr. Howorth has lately denied the identity of Alans and Aas; but he treats the question as all one w^th the identity of Alans and Ossethi, which is another matter, as may be seen in Vivien de St Martin's elaborate paper on the Alans (N, Ann, des Voyages^ 1848, tom. 3, pp. 129 seqq,). The Alans are mentioned by the Byzantine historian, Pachymeres, among nations whom the Mongols had assimilated to themselves and adopted into their military service. Gaubil, without being aware of the identity of the Asu (as the name Aas appears to be expressed in the Chinese Annals), beyond the fact that they dwelt some- where near the Caspian, observes that this people, after they were con- quered, furnished many excellent officers to the Mongols ; and he men- tions also that when the Mongol army was first equipt for the conquest of Southern China, many officers took service therein from among the Uighurs, Persians, and Arabs, Kincha (people of Kipchak), the Asu and other foreign nations. We find also, at a later period of the Mongol history (1336), letters reaching Pope Benedict XII. from several Chris- tian Alans holding high office at the court of Cambaluc — one of them being a Chingsang or Minister of the First Rank, and zxio^tx z. Fanc/iang or Minister of the Second Order — in which they conveyed their urgent request for the nomination of an Archbishop in succession to the de- ceased John of Monte Corvino. John Marignolli speaks of those Alans as " the greatest and noblest nation in the world, the fairest and bravest of men," and asserts that in his day there were 30,000 of them in the Great Kaan's service, and all, at least nominally, Christians.* Rashid- uddin also speaks of the Alans as Christians ; though Ibn Batuta cer- tainly mentions the Aas as Mahomedans. We find Alans about the same time (in 1306) fighting well in the service of the Byzantine Emperors (Muntaner, p. 449). All these circumstances render Marco's story of a corps of Christian Alans in the army of Bayan perfectly con- sistent with probability. {Carpini, p. 707; jRub,, 243; RamusiOy 11. 92 ; /. B, II. 428 ; Gaubil, 40, 147 ; Cathay, 314 seqq.)
Note 3. — The Chinese histories do not mention the story of the Alans and their fate ; but they tell how Changchau was first taken by the Mongols about April 1275, and two months later recovered by the Chinese ; how Bayan, some months afterwards, attacked it in person,
♦ I must observe here that the learned Prof. Bruun has raised doubts whether these Alans of Marignolli*s could be Alans of the Caucasus, and if they were not rather OhiAns^ />., Mongol Princes and nobles. There are difficulties certainly aboal Marignolli's Alans ; but obvious difficulties also in this explanation.
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Chap. LXXV. THE CITY OF SUJU. 1 65
meeting with a desperate resistance ; finally, how the place was stormed, and how Bayan ordered the whole of the inhabitants to be put to the sword. Gaubil remarks that some grievous provocation must have been given, as Bayan was far firOm cruel. Pauthier gives original extracts on the subject, which are interesting. They picture the humane and chivalrous Bayan on this occasion as demoniacal in cruelty, sweeping together all the inhabitants of the suburbs, forcing them to construct his works of attack, and then butchering the whole of them, boiling down their carcases, and using the fat to grease his mangonels ! Perhaps there is some misunderstanding as to the use of this barbarous lubricant. For Carpini relates that the Tartars, when they cast Greek fire into a town, shot with it human fat, for this caused the fire to rage inextin- guishably.
Cruelties, like Bayan*s on this occasion, if exceptional with him, were conmion enough among the Mongols generally. Chinghiz, at an early period in his career, after a victory, ordered 70 great caldrons to be heated, and his prisoners to be boiled therein. And the " evil deed " of the citizens of Changchau fell far short of Mongol atrocities. Thus Hulaku, suspecting the Turkoman chief Nasiruddin, who had just quitted his camp with 300 men, sent a body of horse after him to cut him off The Mongol officers told the Turkoman they had been ordered to give him and his men a parting feast ; they made them all drunk and then cut their throats. {Gaubil^ 166, 167, 170 ; Carpini^ 696 ; Erdmann, 262 ; Quat. Rashid. 357.)
CHAPTER LXXV. Of the Noble City of Suju.
Suju is a very great and noble city. The people are Ido- laters, subjects of the Great Kaan, and have paper-money. They possess silk in great quantities, from which they make gold brocade and other stuffs, and they live by their manu- factures and trade.'
The city is passing great, and has a circuit of some 60 miles ; it hath merchants of great wealth and an incal- culable number of people. Indeed, if the men of this city and of the rest of Manzi had but the spirit of soldiers they would conquer the world ; but they are no soldiers at all, only accomplished traders and most skilful craftsmen.
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There are also in this city many philosophers and leeches, diligent students of nature.
And you must know that in this city there are 6,000 bridges, all of stone, and so lofty that a galley, or even two galleys at once, could pass underneath one of them.'
In the mountains belonging to this city, rhubarb and ginger grow in great abundance ; insomuch that you may get some 40 pounds of excellent fresh ginger for a Venice groat.' And the city has sixteen other great trading cities under its rule. The name of the city, Suju, signifies in our tongue, " Earth," and that of another near it, of which we shall speak presently, called Kinsay, signifies "Heaven;" and these names are given because of the great splendour of the two cities.'*
Now let us quit Suju, and go on to another which is called Vuju, one day's journey distant ; it is a great and fine city, rife with trade and manufactures. But as there is nothing more to say of it we shall go on and I will tell you of another great and noble city called Vughin. The people are Idolaters, &c., and possess much silk and other merchandize, and they are expert traders and craftsmen. Let us now quit Vughin and tell you of another city called Changan, a great and rich place. The people are Idolaters, &c., and they live by trade and manufactures. They make great quantities of sendal of different kinds, and they have much game in the neighbourhood. There is however nothing more to say about the place, so we shall now proceed.5
Note 1. — Suju is of course the celebrated city of Suchau in Kiang- nan — before the rebellion brought ruin on it, the Paris of China. " Every thing remarkable was alleged to come from it ; fine pictures, fine carved- work, fine silks, and fine ladies f {Fortune^ I. 186.) WTien the Em- peror Kang-hi visited Suchau, the citizens laid the streets with carpets and silk stuffs, but the Emperor dismounted and made his train do the like. (Davis, I. 186.)
Note 2. — I believe we must not bring Marco to book for the literal
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Chap. LXXV. THE CITY OF SUJU. 167
accuraqr of his statements as to the bridges ; but all travellers have noticed the number and elegance of the bridges of cut stone in this part of China; see, for instajicey Van jBraam, II. 107, 119-20, 124, 126; and DeguigneSj I. 47, who gives a particular account of the arches. These are said to be often 50 or 60 feet in span.
Note 3. — This statement about the abundance of rhubarb in the hills near Suchau is believed by the most competent authorities to be quite erroneous. Rhubarb is exported from Shanghai, but it is brought thither from Hankau on the Upper Kiang, and Hankau receives it from the further west. Indeed Mr. Hanbury, in a note on the subject, adds his disbelief also that ginger is produced in Kiangnan. And I see in the Shanghai trade-returns of 1865, that there is «^ ginger among the exports. Some one, I forget where, has suggested a confusion with Suhchau in Kansuh, the great rhubarb mart, which seems possible.
^^ South- West Gate and Water-Gate of Suchau ; facsiinile on half the scale from a medieval Map, incibed on Marble, a.d. 1247.
Note 4. — The meanings ascribed by Polo to the names of Suchau and Kingsz^ (Hangchau) show plainly enough that he was ignorant of Chinese. Odoric does not mention * Suchau, but he gives the same explanation of Kinsay as signifying the "City of Heaven," and Wassif also in his notice of the same city has an obscure passage about Paradise and Heaven, which is not improbably a corrupted reference to the same interpretation.* I suspect therefore that it was a " Vulgar Error " of the
* See Quatrem^re*s Ras/iid.y p. Ixxxvii., and Hammer's Wassd/^ p. 42.
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foreign residents in China, probably arising out of a misunderstanding of the Chinese adage quoted by Duhalde and Davis : —
** Shangyeu fien t^angy Hiayeu Su Hang ! "
** There's Paradise above 'tis true, But here below we've Hang and Su ! "
These two neighbouring cities, in the middle of the beautiful tea and silk districts, and with all the advantages of inland navigation and foreign trade, combined every source of wealth and prosperity, and were often thus coupled together by the Chinese. Both are, I believe, now reco- vering from the eflfects of devastation by Taiping occupation and Impe- rialist recapture ; but neither probably is one-fifth of what it was.
The plan of Suchau which we give is of high interest It is reduced (iV ^^ scale) from a rubbing of a plan of the city incised on marble measuring 6' 7" by 4' 4", and which has been preserved in the Con- fucian Temple in Suchau since a.d. 1247. Marco Polo's eyes have probably rested on this fine work, comparable to the famous Piania Capitolina, The engraving on page 167 represents one of the gates traced from the rubbing and reduced to half the scale. It is therefore an authentic representation of Chinese fortification in or before the 13th century.*
Note 6. — ^The Geographic Text only, at least of the principal Texts, has distinctly the three cities Vugui^ Vughin^ Ciangan, Pauthier iden- tifies the first and third with Huchaufu and Sungkiangfii. In favour of Vuju*s being Huchau is the fact mentioned by Wilson that the latter city is locally called WucHU.t If this be the place, the Traveller does not seem to be following a direct and consecutive route firom Suchau to Hangchau. Nor is Huchau within a day's journey of Suchau. Mr. Kingsraill observes that the only town at that distance is Wukiang-him once of some little importance but now much reduced. Wukiang, however, is suggestive of Vughin ; and, in that supposition, Huchau must be considered the object of a digression from which the Traveller returns and takes up his route to Hangchau via Wukiang. Kyahing^oxAdi then best answer to Ciangan, or Caingan^ as it is written in the following chapter of the G. T.
♦ I owe these valuable illustrations, as so much else, to the unwearied kindness of Mr. A. Wylic. There were originally four maps : (i) The Cityy (2) The Empire^ (3) The HeavenSy (4) no longer known. They were drawn originally by one Hwan-Kin- Shan, and presented by him to a high official In Szechwan. Wang-che-yuen, subse- quently holding office in the same province, got possession of the maps, and had them incised at Suchau in a.d. 1247. The inscription bearing these particulars is partially gone, and the date of the original drawings remains uncertain. (See List of Illustra- tions.)
t The Ever Victorious Army, p. 395.
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Chap. LXXVI. THE GREAT CITY OF KINSAY. 169
CHAPTER LXXVI. Description of the Great City of Kinsay, which is the Capital
OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY OF MaNZI.
When you have left the city of Changan and have tra- velled for three days through a splendid country, passing a number of towns and villages, you arrive at the most noble city of Kinsay, a name which is as much as to say in our tongue " The City of Heaven," as I told you before.'
And since we have got thither I will enter into parti- culars about its magnificence; and these are well worth the telling, for the city is beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world. In this we shall speak according to the written statement which the Queen of this Realm sent to Bayan the conqueror of the country for transmission to the Great Kaan, in order that he might be aware of the surpassing grandeur of the city and might be moved to save it from destruction or injury. I will tell you all the truth as it was set down in that document. For truth it was, as the said Messer Marco Polo at a later date was able to witness with his own eyes. And now we shall rehearse those particulars.
First and foremost, then, the document stated the city of Kinsay to be so great that it hath an hundred miles of compass. And there are in it twelve thousand bridges of stone, for the most part so lofty that a great fleet could pass beneath them. And let no man marvel that there are so many bridges, for you see the whole city stands as it were in the water and surrounded by water, so that a great many bridges are required to give free passage about it. [And though the bridges be so high the approaches are so well contrived that carts and horses do cross them.']
The document aforesaid also went on to state that there were in this city twelve guilds of the different crafts, and that each guild had 1 2,000 houses in the occupation of its
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workmen. Each of these houses contains at least 12 men, whilst some contain 20 and some 40, — not that these are all masters, but inclusive of the journeymen who work under the masters. And yet all these craftsmen had fiill occu- pation, for many other cities of the kingdom are supplied from this city with what they require.
The document aforesaid also stated that the number and wealth of the merchants, and the amount of goods that passed through their hands was so enormous that no man could form a just estimate thereof. And I should have told you with regard to those masters of the different crafts who are at the head of such houses as I have mentioned, that neither they nor their wives ever touch a piece of work with their own hands, but live as nicely and delicately as if they were kings and queens. The wives indeed are most dainty and angelical creatures ! Moreover it was an ordinance laid down by the King that every man should follow his father's business and no other, no matter if he possessed 100,000 bezants.^
Inside the city there is a Lake which has a compass of some 30 miles : and all round it are erected beautiful palaces and mansions, of the richest and most exquisite structure that you can imagine, belonging to the nobles of the city. There are also on its shores many abbeys and churches of the Idolaters. In the middle of the Lake are two Islands, on each of which stands a rich, beautiful and spacious edifice, furnished in such style as to seem fit for the palace of an Emperor. And when any one of the citizens desired to hold a marriage feast, or to give any other entertainment, it used to be done at one of these palaces. And everything would be found there ready to order, such as silver plate, trenchers, and dishes [napkins and table-cloths], and whatever else was needful. The King made this provision for the gratification of his people, and the place was open to every one who desired to give an entertainment. [Sometimes there would be at these palaces
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an hundred different parties ; some holding a banquet, odiers celebrating a wedding ; and yet all would find good accommodation in the different apartments and pavilions, and that in so well ordered a manner that one party was never in the way of another.*]
The houses of the city are provided with lofty towers of stone in which articles of value are stored for fear of fire; for most of the houses themselves are of timber, and fires are very frequent in the city.
The people are Idolaters; and since they were con- quered by the Great Kaan they use paper-money. [Both men and women are fair and comely, and for the most part clothe themselves in silk, so vast is the supply of that material, both from the whole district of Kinsay, and from die imports by traders from other provinces.^] And you must know they eat every kind of flesh, even that of dogs and other unclean beasts, which nothing would induce a Christian to eat.
Since the Great Kaan occupied the city he has ordained that each of the 1 2,000 bridges should be provided with a guard of ten men, in case of any disturbance, or of any being so rash as to plot treason or insurrection against him. [Each guard is provided with a hollow instrument of wood and with a metal basin, and with a time-keeper to enable them to know the hour of the day or night. And so when one hour of the night is past the sentry strikes one on the wooden instrument and on the basin, so that the whole quarter of the city is made aware that one hour of the night is gone. At the second hour he gives two strokes, and so on, keeping always wide awake and on the look out. In the morning again, from the sunrise, they begin to count anew, and strike one hour as they did in the night, and so on hour after hour.
Part of the watch patrols the quarter, to see if any light or fire is burning after the lawful hours ; if they find any they mark the door, and in the morning the owner is sum-
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moned before the magistrates, and unless he can plead a good excuse he is punished. Also if they find any one going about the streets at unlawful hours they arrest him, and in the morning they bring him before the magistrates. Likewise if in the daytime they find any poor cripple unable to work for his Uvelihood, they take him to one of the hospitals, of which there are many, founded by the ancient kings, and endowed with great revenues.^ Or if he be capable of work they oblige him to take up some trade. If they see that any house has caught fire they immediately beat upon that wooden instrument to give the alarm, and this brings together the watchmen from the other bridges to help to extinguish it, and to save the goods of the merchants or others, either by removing them to the towers above mentioned, or by putting them in boats and trans- porting them to the islands in the lake. For no citizen dares leave his house at night, or to come near the fire; only those who own the property, and those watchmen who flock to help, of whom there shall come one or two thousand at the least.]
Moreover, within the city there is an eminence on which stands a Tower, and at the top of the tower is hung a slab of wood. Whenever fire or any other alarm breaks out in the city a man who stands there with a mallet m his hand beats upon the slab, making a noise that is heard to a great distance. So when the blows upon this slab are heard, everybody is aware that fire has broken out, or that there i§ some other cause of alarm.
The Kaan watches this city with especial diligence because it forms the head of all Manzi ; and because he has an immense revenue fi'om the duties levied on the transactions of trade therein, the amount of which is such that no one would credit it on mere hearsay.
All the streets of the city are paved with stone or brick, as indeed are all the highways throughout Manzi, so that you ride and travel in every direction without inconve-
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nience. Were it not for this pavement you could not do so, for the country is very low and flat, and after rain 'tis deep in mire and water. [But as the Great Kaan's couriers could not gallop their horses over the pavement, the side of the road is left unpaved for their convenience. The pavement of the main street of the city also is laid out in two parallel ways of ten paces in width on either side, leaving a space in the middle laid with fine gravel, under which are vaulted drains which convey the rain water into the canals ; and thus the road is kept ever dry.] ^
You must know also that the city of Kinsay has some 3000 baths, the water of which is supplied by springs. They are hot baths, and the people take great delight in them, frequenting them several times a month, for they are very cleanly in their persons. They are the finest and largest baths in the world; large enough for 100 persons to bathe together.^
And the Ocean Sea comes within 25 miles of the city at a place called Ganfu, where there is a town and an excellent haven, with a vast amount of shipping which is engaged in the traflic to and from India and other foreign parts, exporting and importing many kinds of wares, by which the city benefits. And a great river flows from the city of Kinsay to that sea-haven, by which vessels can come up to the city itself. This river extends also to other places further inland.^
Know also that the Great Kaan hath distributed the territory of Manzi into nine parts, which he hath consti- tuted into nine kingdoms. To each of these kingdoms a king is appointed who is subordinate to the Great Kaan, and every year renders the accounts of his kingdom to the fiscal oflice at the capital.'*' This city of Kinsay is the seat of one of these kings, who rules over 140 great and wealthy cities. For in the whole of this vast country of Manzi there are more than 1 200 great and wealthy cities, without counting the towns and villages, which are in great
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numbers. And you may receive it for certain that in each of those 1 200 cities the Great Kaan has a garrison, and that the smallest of such garrisons musters 1000 men; whilst there are some of 10,000, 20,000 and 30,000; so that the total number of troops is something scarcely cal- culable. The troops forming these garrisons are not all Tartars. Many are from the province of Cathay, and good soldiers too. But you must not suppose they are by any means all of them cavalry; a very large proportion of them are foot-soldiers, according to the special require- ments of each city. And all of them belong to the army of the Great Kaan."
I repeat that everything appertaining to this city is on so vast a scale, and the Great Kaan s yearly revenues there- from are so immense, that it is not easy even to put it in writing, and it seems past belief to one who merely hears it told. But I will write it down for you.
First, however, I must mention another thing. The people of this country have a custom, that as soon as a child is born they write down the day and hour and the planet and sign under which its birth has taken place ; so that every one among them knows the day of his birth. And when any one intends a journey he goes to the astro- logers, and gives the particulars of his nativity in order to learn whether he shall have good luck or no. Sometimes they will say no^ and in that case the journey is put oflf till such day as the astrologer may recommend. These astro- logers are very skilful at their business, and often their words come to pass, so the people have great faith in them.
They burn the bodies of the dead. And when any one dies the friends and relations make a great mourning for the deceased, and clothe themselves in hempen garments," and follow the corpse playing on a variety of instruments and singing hymns to their idols. And when they come to the burning place, they take representations of things cut out of parchment, such as caparisoned horses, male
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and female slaves, camels, armour, suits of cloth of gold (and money), in great quantities, and these things they put on the fire along with the corpse, so that they are all burnt with it. And they tell you that the dead man shall have all these slaves and animals of which the effigies are burnt, alive in flesh and blood, and the money in gold, at his disposal in the next world ; and that the instruments which they have caused to be played at his funeral, and the idol hymns that have been chaunted, shall also be produced again to welcome him in the next world; and that the idols themselves will come to do him honour.'^
Furthermore there exists in this city the palace of the king who fled, him who was Emperor of Manzi, and that is the greatest palace in the world, as I shall tell you more particularly. For you must know its demesne hath a compass of ten miles, all enclosed with lofty battlemented walls ; and inside the walls are the finest and most delect- able gardens upon earth, and filled too with the finest fruits. There are numerous fountains in it also, and lakes fiill of fish. In the middle is the palace itself, a great and splendid building. It contains 20 great and handsome halls, one of which is more spacious than the rest, and affords room for a vast multitude to dine. It is all painted in gold, with many histories and representations of beasts and birds, of knights and dames, and many marvellous things. It forms a really magnificent spectacle, for over all the walls and all the ceiling you see nothing but paint- ings in gold. And besides these halls the palace contains 1000 large and handsome chambers, all painted in gold and divers colours.
Moreover, I must tell you that in this city there are 160 tomans of fires, or in other words 160 tomans of houses. Now I should tell you that the toman is 10,000, so that you can reckon the total as altogether 1,600,000 houses, among which are a great number of rich palaces. There is one church only, belonging to the Nestorian Christians.
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There is another thing I must tell you. It is the custom for every burgess of this city, and in fact for every description of person in it, to write over his door his own name, the name of his wife, and those of his children, his slaves, and all the inmates of his house, and also the number of animals that he keeps. And if any one dies in the house then the name of that person is erased, and if any child is born its name is added. So in this way the sovereign is able to know exactly the population of the city. And this is the practice also throughout all Manzi and Cathay.'**
And I must tell you that every hosteler who keeps an hostel for travellers is bound to register their names and surnames, as well as the day and month of their arrival and departure. And thus the sovereign hath the means of knowing, whenever it pleases him, who come and go throughout his dominions. And certes this is a wise order and a provident.
Note 1. — Kinsay represents closely enough the Chinese term Kingsze, " capital," which was then appUed to the great city, the proper name of which was at that time Lin-ngan and is now Hangchau, as being since 1127 the capital of the Sung dynasty. The same term Kingsze is now on Chinese maps generally used to designate Peking. It would seem, however, that the term adhered long as a quasi-proper name to Hangchau ; for in the Chinese Atlas, dating from 1595, which the traveller Carletti presented to the Magliabecchian Library, that city appears to be still marked with this name, transcribed by Carletti as Camse ; very near the form Campsay used by Marignolli in the 14th century.
Note 2. — The Ramusian version says : " Messer Marco Polo was frequently at this city, and took great pains to learn everything about it, writing down the whole in his notes." The information being origin- ally derived from a Chinese document, there might be some ground for supposing that 100 miles of circuit stood for 100 //. Yet the circuit of the modem city is stated in the official book called Hang-chau-Fu-Chi, or topographical history of Hang-chau, at only 35 //. And the earliest record of the wall, as built under the Sung (circa a.d. 600), makes its extent httle more (36 // and 90 paces.)* But the wall was reconstructed
* 111 the first edition my best authority on this matter was a lecture on the city by the late Kev. 1). D. Green, an American Missionary at Ningpo, which is printed in
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by Chaotsung, one of the last emperors of the T'ang dynasty (894), so as to embrace the Luh-ho-ta pagoda, on a high bluff over the Tsien- tang River,* 15 // distant from the present south gate, and had then a circuit of 70 //. Moreover, in 11 30, after the city became the capital of the Sung em- perors, some fur- ther extension was given to it, so that, even ex- clusive of the suburbs, the cir- cuit of the city may have been not far short of 100 IL When the city was in its glory under the Sung, the Luh-ho- ta Pagoda may be taken as marking the extreme S.W. : Another known - point marks ap- - proximately the 1 chief north gate ^ of that period, at
a mile and a half The ancient Luh-ho-ta Pagoda at Hangchau.
or two miles be- yond the present north wall. The S. K angle was apparently near the river bank. But, on the other hand, the waist of the city seems to have been a good deal narrower than it now is. Old descriptions compare its form to that of a slender-waisted drum (dice-box or hour-glass shape). Under the Mongols the walls were allowed to decay ; and in the dis- turbed years that closed that dynasty (1341-1368) they were rebuilt by an insurgent chief on a greatly reduced compass, probably that which
the Nov. and Dec numbers for 1869 of the (Fuchau) Chinese Recorder and Missionary Jcurnal, In the present (second) edition I have on this, and other points embraced in this and the following chapter, benefitted largely by the remarks of the Rev. G. E. Moule of the Ch. Mission. Soc, now residing at Hangchau. These are partly con- tained in a paper (** Notes on CoL Yule's Edition of Marco Polo's *Quinsay ' ") read before the North China Branch of the R. A. Soc. at Shanghai in December 1873, ^^ which a proof has been most kindly sent to me by Mr. Moule, and partly in a special communication, both forwarded through Mr. A. Wylie.
* The building of the present Luh-ho-ta (** Six Harmonies Tower"), after repeated destructions by hre, is recorded on a fine tablet of the Sung period, still standing {MemU).
VOL. n. N
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they still retain. Whatever may have been the facts, and whatever the origin of the estimate, I imagine that the ascription of 100 miles of cir- cuit to Kinsay had become popular among westerns. Odoric makes the same statement. Wassif calls it 24 parasangs, which will not be far short of the same amount. Ibn Batuta calls the Ungth of the city 3 days* journey. Rashiduddin says the enceinte had a diameter of 1 1 parasangs, and that there were three post stages between the two extremities of the city, which is probably what Ibn Batuta had heard. The Masdlak-al'Absdr calls it one da/s journey in length, and half a day's journey in breadth. The enthusiastic Jesuit Martini tries hard to justify Polo in this as in other points of his description. We shall quote the whole of his remarks at the end of the chapters on Kinsay.
The 12,000 bridges have been much carped at, and modem accounts of Hangchau (desperately meagre as they are) do not speak of its bridges as notable. " There is, indeed," says Mr. Kingsmill, speaking of changes in the hydrography about Hangchau, " no trace in the city of the magni- ficent canals and bridges described by Marco Polo." The number was no doubt in this case also a mere popular saw, and Friar Odoric repeats it The sober and veracious John Marignolli, alluding apparently to their statements, and perhaps to others which have not reached us, says : " When authors tell of its ten thousand noble bridges of stone, adorned with sculptures and statues of armed princes, it passes the belief of one who has not been there, and yet peradventure these authors tell us no lie." Wassif speaks of 360 bridges only, but they make up in size what they lack in number, for they cross canals as big as the Tigris! Marsden aptly quotes in reference to this point excessively oose and discrepant statements from modern authors as to the number of bridges in Venice. The great height of the arches of the canal bridges in this part of China is especially noticed by travellers. Barrow, quoted by Marsden, says : " Some have the piers of such an extraordinary height that the largest vessels of 200 tons sail under them without striking their masts."
Mr. Moule has added up the lists of bridges in the whole department (or Fu) and found them to amount to 848, and many of these even are now unknown, their approximate sites being given from ancient topographies. The number represented in a large modem map of the city, which I owe to Mr. Moule*s kindness, is 1 1 1 .
Note 3. — ^Though Rubmquis (p. 292) says much the same thing, there is little trace of such an ordinance in modem China, P^re Parrenin observes : " As to the hereditary perpetuation of trades, it has never existed in China. On the contrary, very few Chinese >vill leam the trade of their fathers ; and it is only necessity that ever constrains them to do so." (Z<f//. Edif, XXiV. 40.) Mr. Moule remarks however that P. Parrenin is a litde too absolute. Certain trades do run in families, even of the free classes of Chinese, not to mention the dis-
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franchised boatmen, barbers, chair-coolies, &c. But except in the latter cases there is no compulsion, though the Sacred Edict goes to encourage the perpetuation of the family calling.
Note 4. — This sheet of water is the celebrated Si-hu, or " Western Lake," the fame of which had reached Abulfeda, and which has raised the enthusiasm even of modem travellers, such as Barrow and Van Braam. The latter speaks oi three islands (and this the Chinese maps confirm), on each of which were several villas, and of causeways across the lake, paved and bordered with trees, and provided with numerous bridges for the passage of boats. Barrow gives a bright description of the lake, with its thousands of gay, gilt, and painted pleasure boats, its margins studded with light and fanciful buildings, its gardens of choice flowering shrubs, its monuments, and beautiful variety of scenery. None surpasses that of Martini, whom it is always pleasant to quote, but here he is too lengthy. The most recent description that I have met with is that of Mr. C. Gardner, and it is as enthusiastic as any. It concludes : " Even to us foreigners ... the spot is one of peculiar attraction, but to the Chinese it is as a paradise." The Emperor Kien Lung had erected a palace on one of the islands in the lake ; it was ruined by the Taipings. Many of the constructions about the lake date from the flourishing days of the Tang dynasty, the 7 th and 8th centuries.
Polo's ascription of a circumference of 30 miles to the lake, cor- roborates the supposition that in the compass of the city a confusion had been made between miles and //, for Semedo gives the circuit of the lake really as 30 //. Probably the document to which Marco refers at the beginning of the chapter was seen by him in a Persian translation, in which // had been rendered by mil, A Persian work of the same age, quoted by Quatremfere (the Nuzhdt al-KuMb)y gives the circuit of the lake as six parasangs, or some 24 miles, a statement which probably had a like origin.
Polo says the lake was within the city. This might be merely a loose way of speaking, but it may on the other hand be a further indica- tion of the fonner existence of an extensive outer wall. The Persian author just quoted also speaks of the lake as within the city. {Barrow's Autobiog.^ p. 104 ; V, Braam, IL 154 ; Gardner in Froc. of the R, Geog, Soc., voL xiii. p. 178; Q, ROshid, p. Ixxxviii.) Mr. Moule states that popular oral tradition does enclose the Lake within the walls, but he can find no trace of this in the Topographies.
Elsewhere Mr. Moule says : " Of the luxury of the (Sung) period, and its devotion to pleasure, evidence occurs everywhere. Hangchow went at the time by the nickname of the melting-pot for money. The use, at houses of entertainment, of linen and silver plate appears somewhat out of keeping in a Chinese picture. I cannot vouch for the linen, but here is the plate. ... * The most famous Tea-houses of the day were the J^a-seen (" 8 genii "), the " Pure Delight," the " Pearl," the " House of the
N 2
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Pwan Family," and the " Two and Two " and " Three and Three " houses (perhaps rather "Double honours" and "Treble honours"). In these places they always set out bouquets of fresh flowers, accordmg to the season. ... At the counter were sold " Precious thunder Tea," Tea of fritters and onions, or else Pickle broth ; and in hot weather wine of snow bubbles and apricot blossom, or other kinds of refrigerating liquor. Satyrs, ladles^ and bowls were all of pure silver I ' {Si-Hu-Chi,) "
Note 5. — ^This is still the case : " The people of Hang-chow dress gaily, and are remarkable among the Chinese for their dandyism. All, except the lowest labourers and coolies, strutted about in dresses com- posed of silk, satin, and crape. ... * Indeed ' (said the Chinese ser- vants) * one can never tell a rich man in Hang-chow, for it is just pos- sible that all he possesses in the world is on his back.' " {Fortune, II. 20.) " The silk manufactures of Hangchau are said to give employ- ment to 60,000 persons within the city walls, and Huchau, Kiahing, and the surrounding villages, are reputed to employ 100,000 more" {Ningpo Trade Report, Jan. 1869, comm. by Mr. N. B. Dennys). The store-towers, as a precaution in case of fire, are still conunon both in China and Japan.
Note 6. — Mr. Gardner found in this very city, in 1868, a large col- lection of cottages covering several acres, which were " erected, after the taking of the city from the rebels, by a Chinese charitable society for the refuge of the blind, sick, and infirm." This asylum sheltered 200 blind men with their families, amounting to 800 souls ; basket- making and such work was provided for them ; there w^ere also 1 200 other inmates, aged and infirm ; and doctors were maintained to look after them. "None are allowed to be absolutely idle, but all help towards their own sustenance." {Proc, JR. G, Soc, XIII. 176-7.) Mr. Moule, whilst abating somewhat from the colouring of this description, admits the establishment to be a considerable charitable effort. It existed before the rebeUion, as I see in the book of Mr. Milne, who gives interesting details on such Chinese charities {Life in China, pp. 46 seqq).
Note 7. — The paved roads of Manzi are by no means extinct yet Thus, Mr. Fortune, starting from Changshan (see below, chap. Ixxix.) in the direction of the Black-Tea mountains, says : " The road on which we were travelling was well paved with granite, about 1 2 feet in width, and perfectly free from weeds" (II. 148). Gamier, Sladen, and Richt- hofen speak of well-paved roads in Yunnan and Szechwan.
The Topography quoted by Mr. Moule says that in the year 1272 the Governor renewed the pavement of the Imperial road (or Maui Street), " after which nine cars might move abreast over a way perfectly smooth, and straight as an arrow." In the Mongol time the people were allowed to encroach on this grand street
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Note 8. — There is a curious discrepancy in the account of these baths. Pauthier's text does not say whether they are hot baths or cold. The latter sentence, beginning, "They are hot baths" {estuves)^ is from the G. Text And Ramusio's account is quite different : " There are nume- rous baths of cold water, provided with plenty of attendants, male and female, to assist the visitors of the two sexes in the bath. For the people are used from their childhood to bathe in cold water at all sea- sons, and they reckon it a very wholesome custom. But in the bath- houses they have also certain chambers furnished with hot water, for foreigners who are unaccustomed to cold bathing, and cannot bear it The people are used to bathe daily, and do not eat without having done so." This is in contradiction with the notorious Chinese horror of cold water for any purpose.
A note from Mr. C. Gardner says : " There are numerous public baths at Hangchau, as at every Chinese city I have ever been in. In my exp)erience natives always take hot baths. But only the poorer classes go to the public baths ; the tradespeople and middle classes are generally supplied by the bath-houses with hot water at a moderate charge."
Note 9. — The estuary of the Tsien Tang, or river of Hangchau, has undergone great changes since Polo's day. The sea now comes up much nearer the city ; and the upper part of the Bay of Hangchau is believed to cover what was once the site of the port and town of Kanp'u, the Ganpu of the text A modem representative of the name still sub- sists, a walled town, and one of the depots for the salt which is so extensively manufactured on this coast ; but the present port of Hang- chau, and till recently the sole seat of Chinese trade with Japan, is at Chapu, some 20 miles further seaward.
It is supposed by Klaproth that Kanp'u was the port frequented by the early Arab voyagers, and of which they speak under the name of Khdnfu^ confounding in their details Hangchau itself with the port Neumann dissents from this, maintaining that the Khanfu of the Arabs was certainly Canton. Abulfeda, however, states expressly that Khanfu was known in his day as Khansd (i. e, Kinsay), and he speaks of its lake of fresh water called Sikhu (Si-hu). There seems to be an indication in Chinese records that a southern branch of the Great Kiang once entered the sea at Kanp*u ; the closing of it is assigned to the 7th century, or a little later.
The changes of the Great Kiang do not seem to have attracted so much attention among the Chinese as those of the dangerous Hwang-Ho, nor does their history seem to have been so carefully recorded. But a paper of great interest on the subject was published by Mr. Edkins, in the Journal of the North China Branch of the R. A. S. for Sept i860, which I know only by an abstract given by the late Comte d'Escayrac de Lauture. From this it would seem that about the time of our era the
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Yangtsze Kiang had three great mouths. The most southerly of these was the Che-Kiang, which is said to have given its name to the Province still so called, of which Hangchau is the capital This branch quitted the present channel at Chi-chau, passed by Ning-Kw^ and Kwang-t^ communicating with the southern end of a great group of lakes which occupied the position of the Tai-Hu, and so by Shiming and Tangsi into the sea not far from Shaohing. The second branch quitted the main channel at Wu-hu, passed by I-hing (or I-shin) communicating with the northern end of the Tai-Hu (passed apparency by Su-chau), and then bifurcated, one arm entering the sea at Wu-sung, and the other at Kanp'u. The third, or northerly branch is that which forms the present channel of the Great Kiang. These branches are represented hypotheti- cally on the sketch-map attached to chapter Ixiv. siipra.
{Kingsmilly u. s. p. 53; Chin, Repos, III. 118; Middle Kingdom, I. 95-106 ; BUrck, p. 483 ; Cathay^ p. cxciii. ; /. N. Ch, Br. R. A. S,, Dec. 1865, p. 3 j^^. ; Escayrac de Lauture, Mhn. sur la ChitUy H. duSol, p. 114.)
Note 10. — Pauthier^s text has : Chascun Roy fait chascun an k compte de son royaume aux comptes du grant si^ge*^ where I suspect the last word is again a mistake for sing or scieng, see supra, Book IL ch. xxv., note 1. It is interesting to find Polo applying the term king to the viceroys who ruled the great provinces ; Ibn Batuta uses a corresponding expression, sultdn. It is not easy to make out the nine kingdoms or great provinces into which Polo considered Manzi to be divided. Per- haps his nine is after all merely a traditional number, for the " Nine Provinces " was an ancient synonyme for China proper, just as Nau- Khanda, with like meaning, was an ancient name of India (see Cathay, p. cxxxix, note; and Reinaiid, Inde, p. 116). But I observe that on die portage road between Changshan and Yuhshan {infra, p. 204) there are stone pillars inscribed " Highway (from Chekiang) to Eight Provinces," thus indicating Nine {Milne, p. 319).
Note 11. — ^We have in Ramusio : " The men levied in the province of Manzi are not placed in garrison in their own cities, but sent to others at least 20 days' journey from their homes ; and there they serve for four or five years, after which they are relieved. This applies both to the Cathayans and to those of ManzL
" The great bulk of the revenue of the cities, which enters the ex- chequer of the Great Kaan, is expended in maintaining these garrisons. And if perchance any city rebel (as you often find that under a kind of madness or intoxication they rise and murder their governors), as soon as it is known, the adjoining cities despatch such large forces firom their garrisons that the rebellion is entirely crushed. For it would be too long an affair if troops from Cathay had to be waited for, involving perhaps a delay of two months."
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Note 12. — ^"The sons of the dead, wearing hempen clothes as badges of mourning, kneel down," &c. {Doolittle^ p. 138).
Note 13. — These practices have been noticed, supra Book I. ch. xl.
Note 14. — This custom has come down to modem times. In Pau- thier's Chiru Modeme^ we find extracts from the statutes of the reigning dynasty and the comments thereon, of which a passage runs thus : ** To determine the exact population %f each province the governor and the lieut-govemor cause certain persons who are nominated as Pao-kia^ or Tithing-Men, in all the places under their jurisdiction, to add up the figures inscribed on the wooden tickets attached to the doors of houses, and exhibiting the number of the inmates" (p. 167).
Friar Odoric calls the number of fires 89 tomans ; but says 10 or 12 households would unite to have one fire only !
CHAPTER LXXVII.
[Further Particulars concerning the Great City of Kinsay.>]
[The position of the city is such that it has on one side a lake of fresh and exquisitely clear water (already spoken of), and on the other a very large river. The waters of the latter fill a number of canals of all sizes which run through the different quarters of the city, carry away all impurities, and then enter the Lake ; whence they issue again and flow to the Ocean, thus producing a most excellent atmosphere. By means of these channels, as well as by the streets, you can go all about the city. Both streets and canals are so wide and spacious that carts on thq one and boats on the other can readily pass to and fro, conveying necessary supplies to the inhabitants.'
At the opposite side the city is shut in by a channel, perhaps 40 miles in length, very wide, and full of water derived from the river aforesaid, which was made by the ancient kings of the country in order to relieve the river when flooding its banks. This serves also as a defence to the city, and the earth dug from it has been thrown inwards, forming a kind of mound enclosing the city,^
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In this part are the ten principal markets, though besides these there are a vast number of others in the different parts of the town. The former are all squares of half a mile to the side, and along their front passes the main street, which is 40 paces in width, and runs straight from end to end of the city, crosjing many bridges of easy and commodious approach. At every four miles of its length comes one of those great squares of 2 miles (as we have mentioned) in compass. So also parallel to this great street, but at the back of the market places, there runs a very large canal, on the bank of which towards the squares are built great houses of stone, in which the merchants from India and other foreign parts store their wares, to be handy for the markets. In each of the squares is held a market three days in the week, frequented by 40,000 or 50,000 persons, who bring thither for sale every possible necessary of life, so that there is always an ample supply of every kind of meat and game, as of roebuck, red-deer, fallow-deer, hares, rabbits, partridges, pheasants, francolins, quails, fowls, capons, and of ducks and geese an infinite quantity ; for so many are bred on the Lake that for a Venice groat of silver you can have a couple of geese and two couple of ducks. Then there are the shambles where the larger animals are slaughtered, such as calves, beeves, kids, and lambs, the flesh of which is eaten by the rich and the great dignitaries.*
Those markets make a daily display of every kind of vegetables and fruits ; and among the latter there are in particular certain pears of enormous size, weighing as much as ten pounds apiece, and the pulp of which is white and fragrant like a confection ; besides peaches in their season both yellow and white, of every delicate flavour.^
Neither grapes nor wine are produced there, but very good raisins are brought from abroad, and wine likewise. The natives, however, do not much care about wine, being used to that kind of their own^ made from rice and spices. From the Ocean Sea also come daily supplies of fish in
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great quantity, brought 25 miles up the river, and there is also great store of fish from the lake, which is the constant resort of fishermen, who have no other business. Their fish is of sundry kinds, changing with the season ; and, owing to the impurities of the city which pass into the lake, it is remarkably fet and savoury. Any one who should see the supply of fish in the market would suppose it impossible that such a quantity could ever be sold ; and yet in a few hours the whole shall be cleared away; so great is the number of inhabitants who are accustomed to delicate living. Indeed they eat fish and flesh at the same meal.
All the ten market places are encompassed by lofiiy houses, and below these are shops where all sorts of crafts are carried on, and all sorts of wares are on sale, including spices and jewels and pearls. Some of these shops are entirely devoted to the sale of wine made from rice and spices, which is constantly made fresh and fi^esh, and is sold very cheap.
Certain of the streets are occupied by the women of the town, who are in such a number that I dare not say what it is. They are found not only in the vicinity of the market places, where usually a quarter is assigned to them, but all over the city. They exhibit themselves splendidly attired and abundantly perfumed, in finely garnished houses, with trains of waiting-women. These women are extremely accomplished in all the arts of allurement, and readily adapt their conversation to all sorts of persons, insomuch that strangers who have once tasted their attractions seem to get bewitched, and are so taken with their blandishments and their fascinating ways that they never can get these out of their heads. Hence it comes to pass that when they return home they say they have been to Kinsay or the City of Heaven, and their only desire is to get back thither as soon as possible.*
Other streets are occupied by the Physicians, and by the Astrologers, who are also teachers of reading and writing ;
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and an infinity of other professions have their places round about those squares. In each of the squares there are two great palaces facing one another, in which are established the officers appointed by the King to decide differences arising between merchants, or other inhabitants of the quarter. It is the daily duty of these officers to see that the guards are at their posts on the neighbouring bridges, and to punish them at their discretion if they are absent.
All along the main street that we have spoken of, as running firom end to end of the city, both sides are lined with houses and great palaces and the gardens pertaining to them, whilst in the intervals are the houses of tradesmen engaged in their different crafts. The crowd of people that you meet here at all hours, passing this way and that on their different errands, is so vast that no one would believe it possible that victuals enough could be provided for their consumption, unless they should see how, on every market-day, all those squares are thronged and crammed with purchasers, and with the traders who have brought in stores of provisions by land or water ; and everything they bring in is disposed of.
To give you an example of the vast consumption in this city let us take the article oi pepper; and that will enable you in some measure to estimate what must be the quantity of victual, such as meat, wine, groceries, which have to be provided for the general consumption. Now Messer Marco heard it stated by one of the Great Kaan's officers of customs that the quantity of pepper introduced daily for consumption into the city of Kin say amounted to 43 loads, each load being equal to 223 Ibs.^
The houses of the citizens are well built and elaborately finished ; and the delight they take in decoration, in paint- ing and in architecture, leads them to spend in this way sums of money that would astonish you.
The natives of the city are men of peaceful character, both from education and from the example of their kings,
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whose disposition was the same. They know nothing of handling arms, and keep none in their houses. You hear of no feuds or noisy quarrels or dissensions of any kind among them. Both in their commercial dealings and in their manufactures they are thoroughly honest and truthful, and there is such a degree of good will and neighbourly at- tachment among both men and women that you would take the people who live in the same street to be all one family.*
And this familiar intimacy is free from all jealousy or suspicion of the conduct of their women. These they treat with the greatest respect, and a man who should presume to make loose proposals to a married woman would be regarded as an infamous rascal. They also treat the foreigners who visit them for the sake of trade with great cordiality, and entertain them in the most winning manner, affording them every help and advice on their business. But on the other hand they hate to see soldiers, and not least those of the Great Kaan's garrisons, regarding them as the cause of their having lost their native kings and lords.
On the Lake of which we have spoken there are num- bers of boats and barges of all sizes for parties of pleasure. These will hold 10, 15, 20, or more persons, and are from 15 to 20 paces in length, with flat bottoms and ample breadth of beam, so that they always keep their trim. Any one who desires to go a-pleasuring with the women, or with a party of his own sex, hires one of these barges, which are always to be found completely furnished with tables and chairs and all the other apparatus for a feast. The roof forms a level deck, on which the crew stand, and pole the boat along whithersoever may be desired, for the lake is not more than 2 paces in depth. The inside of this roof and the rest of the interior is covered with ornamental painting in gay colours, with windows all round that can be shut or opened, so that the party at table can enjoy all the beauty and variety of the prospects on both sides as they pass along. And truly a trip on this lake is a much more
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charming recreation than can be enjoyed on land. For on the one side lies the city in its entire length, so that the spectators in the barges, from the distance at which they stand, take in the whole prospect in its full beauty and grandeur, with its numberless palaces, temples, monasteries, and gardens, full of lofty trees, sloping to the shore. And the lake is never without a number of other such boats, laden with pleasure parties ; for it is the great delight of the citizens here, after they have disposed of the day's business, to pass the afternoon in enjoyment with the ladies of their families, or perhaps with others less reputable, either in these barges or in driving about the city in carriages.^
Of these latter we must also say something, for they afford one mode of recreation to the citizens in going about the town, as the boats afford another in going about the Lake. In the main street of the city you meet an infinite succession of these carriages passing to and fro. They are long covered vehicles, fitted with curtains and cushions, and affording room for six persons ; and they are in constant request for ladies and gentlemen going on parties of pleasure. In these they drive to certain gardens, where they are enter- tained by the owners in pavilions erected on purpose, and there they divert themselves the livelong day, with their ladies, returning home in the evening in those same carriages."
(Further Particulars of the Palace of the King Facfur.)
The whole enclosure of the Palace was divided into three parts. The middle one was entered by a very lofty gate, on each side of which there stood on the ground-level vast pavilions, the roofs of which were sustained by columns painted and wrought in gold and the finest azure. Opposite the gate stood the chief Pavilion, larger than the rest, and painted in like style, with gilded columns, and a ceiling wrought in splendid gilded sculpture, whilst the walls were artfully painted with the stories of departed kings.
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On certain days, sacred to his gods, the King Facfur * used to hold a great court and give a feast to his chief lords, dignitaries, and rich manufecturers of the city of Kinsay. On such occasions those pavilions used to give ample accommodation for 10,000 persons sitting at table. This court lasted for ten or twelve days, and exhibited an astonishing and incredible spectacle in the magnificence of the guests, all clothed in silk and gold, with a profusion of precious stones ; for they tried to outdo each other in the splendour and richness of their appointments. Behind this great Pavilion that faced the great gate, there was a wall with a passage in it shutting off the inner part of the Palace. On entering this you found another great edifice in the form of a cloister surrounded by a portico with columns, from which opened a variety of apartments for the King and the Queen, adorned like the outer walls with such elaborate work as we have mentioned. From the cloister again you passed into a covered corridor, six paces in width, of great length, and extending to the margin of the lake. On either side of this corridor were ten courts, in the form of oblong cloisters surrounded by colonnades ; and in each cloister or court were fifty chambers with gardens to each. In these chambers were quartered one thousand young ladies in the service of the King. The King would sometimes go with the Queen and some of these maidens to take his diversion on the lake, or to visit the Idol-temples, in boats all canopied with silk.
The other two parts of the enclosure were distributed in groves, and lakes, and charming gardens planted with fi"uit- trees, and preserves for all sorts of animals, such as roe, red- deer, fallow-deer, hares, and rabbits. Here the king used to take his pleasure in company with those damsels of his ; some in carriages, some on horseback, whilst no man was permitted to enter. Sometimes the King would set the
* Fanfuvy in Ramusio.
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girls a-coursing after the game with dogs, and when they were tired they would hie to the groves that overhung the lakes, and leaving their clothes there they would come forth naked and enter the water and swim about hither and thither, whilst it was the King's delight to watch them ; and then all would return home. Sometimes the King would have his dinner carried to those groves, which were dense with lofty trees, and there would be waited on by those young ladies. And thus he passed his life in this constant dalUance with women, without so much as knowing what arms meant ! And the result of all this cowardice and effeminacy was that he lost his dominion to the Great Kaan in that base and shameful way that you have heard." All this account was given me by a very rich merchant of Kinsay when I was in that city. He was a very old man, and had been in familiar intimacy with the King Facfur, and knew the whole history of his life ; and having seen the Palace in its glory was pleased to be my guide over it. As it is occupied by the King appointed by the Great Kaan, the first pavilions are still maintained as they used to be, but the apartments of the ladies are all gone to ruin and can only just be traced. So also the wall that enclosed the groves and gardens is fallen down, and neither trees nor animals are there any longer."]
Note 1. — I have, after some consideration, followed the example of Mr. H. Murray, in his edition of Marco Polo^ in collecting together in a separate chapter a number of additional particulars concerning the Great City, which are only found in Ramusio. Such of these as could be interpolated in the text of the older form of the narrative have been introduced between brackets in the last chapter. Here I bring together those particulars which could not be so interpolated without taking liberties with one or both texts.
The picture in Ramusio, taken as a whole, is so much more brilliant, interesting, and complete than in the older texts, that I thought of sub- stituting it entirely for the other. But so much doubt and difficulty hangs over some passages of the Ramusian version that I could not satisfy my- self of the propriety of this, though I feel that the dismemberment inflicted on that version is also objectionable.
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Note 2. — The tides in the Hangchau estuary are now so furious, entering in the form of a bore, and running sometimes, by Admiral Collinson's measurement, iii knots, that it has been necessary to close by weirs the communication which formerly existed between the River Tsien-tang on the one side and the Lake Sihu and internal waters of the district on the other. Thus all cargoes are passed through the small city canal in barges, and are subject to transhipment at the river-bank, and at the great canal terminus outside the north gate, respectively. Mr. Kingsmill, to whose notices I am indebted for part of this infor- mation, is however mistaken in supposing that in Polo^s time the tide stopped some 20 miles below the city. We have seen (note 6, chapter Ixv. supra) that the tide in the river before Kinsay was the object which first attracted the attention of Bayan, after his triumphant entrance into the city. The tides reach Fuyang, 20 miles higher. {N, and Q.y China and Japan^ vol. I. p. 53 ; Mid, Kingd, I. 95, 106 ; /. N. Ch, Br. R. A. S., Dec. 1865, p. 6 ; Mi/ntr, p. 295 ; Mfe by Mr, M(mle.)
Note 3. — For satisfactory elucidation as to what is or may have been authentic in these statements, we shall have to wait for a correct survey of Hangchau and its neighbourhood. We have already seen strong reason to suppose that miles have been substituted for // in the circuits assigned both to the city and to the lake, and we are yet more strongly impressed with the conviction that the same substitution has been made here in regard to the canal on the east of the city, as well as the streets and market-places spoken of in the next paragraph.
Chinese plans of Hangchau do show a large canal encircling the city on the east and north, />., on the sides away from the lake. In some of them this is represented like a ditch to the rampart, but in others it is more detached. And the position of the main street, with its parallel canal, does answer fairly to the account in the next paragraph, setting aside the extravagant dimensions.
The existence of the squares or market-places is alluded to by Wassdf in a passage that we shall quote below ; and the Masd/ak-dZ-Adsdr speaks of the main street running from end to end of the city.
On this Mr. Moule says: "I have found no certain account of market-squares, though the Fang* of which a few still exist, and a very large number are laid down in the Sung Map, mainly grouped along the
• See the mention of the I-ning Fang at Singanfu, supra p. 22. Mr. Wylie writes that in a work on the latter city, published during the Yuen time, of which he has met with a reprint, there are figures to illustrate the division of the city into Fang^ a word "which appears to indicate a certain space of ground, not an open square . . . but a block of buildings crossed by streets, and at the end of each street an open gateway." In one of the figures a first reference indicates " the market place,*' a second **the official establishment," a third "the office for regulating weights." These iikdications seem to explain Polo's squares. (See supp. note under Appendix L).
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chief street, may perhaps represent them. . . . The names of some of these {Fang) and of the Sze or markets still remain."
NoiE 4. — There is no mention oipork, the characteristic animal food of China, and the only one specified by Friar Odbric in his account of the same city. Probably Mark may have got a little Saractnized among the Mahomedans at the Kaan's Court, and doubted if 'twere good manners to mention it It is perhaps a relic of the same feeling, gen- dered by Saracen rule, that in Sicily pigs are called / neri,
" The larger game, red-deer and fallow-deer, is now never seen for sale. Hog-deer, wild swine, pheasants, water-fowl, and every descriptioo of * vermin ' and small birds, are exposed for sale, not now in maricets, but at the retail wine shops. Wild-cats, racoons, otters, badgers, kites, owls, &c., &c., festoon the shop fironts along with game." (M<mU)
Note 5. — Van Braam, in passing through Shantung Province speaks of very large pears. " The colour is a beautiful golden yellow. Before it is pared the pear is somewhat hard, but in eating it the juice flows, the pulp melts, and the taste is pleasant enough." Williams says these Shantung pears are largely exported, but he is not so complimentary to them as Polo : *' The pears are large and juicy, sometimes weighing 8 or 10 pounds, but remarkably tasteless and coarse." ( V. Braam, II. 33-4 ; Mid, Kingd,^ I. 78 and II. 44.) In the beginning of 1867 I saw pears in Covent Garden Market which I should guess to have weighed 7 or 8 lbs. each. They were priced at 18 guineas a dozen !
As regards the " yellow and white " peaches, Marsden supposes the former to be apricots. Two kinds of peach, correctly so described, are indeed common in Sicily, where I write ; — ^and both are, in their raw state, equally good food for / nerit But I see Mr. Moule also identifies the yellow peach with " the hwang-mei or clingstone apricot," as he knows no yellow peach in China.
Note 6. — ** E non veggono mat Fora che di nuovopossano ritornardr a curious Italian idiom (see Vocab, It. Univ., sub. v. ^'vedere").
Note 7. — It would seem that the habits of the Chinese in reference to the use of pepper and such spices have changed. Besides this passage, implying that their consumption of pepper was large, Marco tells us below (ch. Ixxxii.) that for one shipload of pepper carried to Alexandria for the consumption of Christendom, a hundred went to Zayton in ManzL At the present day, according to Williams, the Chinese use little spice ; pepper chiefly as a febrifuge in the shape of pepper-tea, and that even less than they did some years ago. (See p. 220, infra, and Mid. K., II. 46, 408). On this, however, Mr. Moule observes : "Pepper is not so completely relegated to the doctors. A month or two ago, passing a portable cookshop in the city, I heard a girl-purchaser cry to the coot * Be sure you put in pepper and leeks /' "
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Note 8. — Marsden, after referring to Ihe ingenious frauds commonly related of Chinese traders, observes : " In the long continued intercourse that has subsisted between the agents ^f the European companies and the more eminent of the Chinese merchants .... complaints on the ground of commercial unfairness have been extremely rare, and on the contrary their transactions have been marked with the most perfect good faith and mutual confidence." Mr. Consul Medhurst bears similar strong testimony to the upright dealings of Chinese merchants. His remark that, as a rule, he has found that the Chinese deteriorate by intimacy with foreigners is worthy of notice ;* it is a remark capable of application wherever the East and West come into habitual contact Favourable opinions among the nations on their frontiers of Chinese dealing, as expressed to Wood and Bumes in Turkestan, and to Macleod and Richardson in Laos, have been quoted by me elsewhere in reference to the old classical reputation of the Seres for integrity. Indeed, Marco's whole account of the people here might pass for an expanded paraphrase of the Latin commonplaces regarding the Seres. Mr. Milne, a mis- sionary for many years in China, stands up manfully against the whole- sale disparagement of Chinese character (p. 401).
Note 9. — Semedo and Martini, in the 17th century, give a very similar account of the Lake Sihu, the parties of pleasure frequenting it, and their gay barges. {Semedo, p. 20-21 ; Mart, p. 9.) But here is a Chinese picture of the very thing described by Marco, under the Sung Dynasty : " When Yaou Shunming was Prefect of Hangchow, there was an old woman, who said she was formerly a singing-girl, and in the service of Tung-po Seen-sheng.t She related that her master, whenever he found a leisure day in spring, would invite friends to take their pleasure on the lake. They used to take an early meal on some agree- able spot, and, the repast over, a chief was chosen for the company of each barge, who called a number of dancing-girls to follow them to any place they chose. As the day waned a gong sounded to assemble all once more at * Lake Prospect Chambers,' or at the * Bamboo Pavilion,' or some place of the kind, where they amused themselves to the top of their bent, and then, at the first or second drum, before the evening market dispersed, returned home by candle-light In the city, gentlemen and ladies assembled in crowds, lining the way to see the return of the thousand Knights. It must have been a brave spectacle of that time." {Moule, from the Si-hu-Chiy or * Topography of the West-Lake.') It is evident, from what Mr. Moule says, that this book abounds in interesting illustration of these two chapters of Polo. Barges with paddle-wheels are alluded to.
Note 10. — Public carriages are still used in the great cities of the
* Foreigner in Far Cathay, pp. 158, 176.
t A fiunous poet and scholar of the nth century.
VOL. II.
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north, such as Peking. Possibly this is a revival At one time car- riages appear to have been much more general in China than they were afterwards, or are now. Semedo says they were abandoned in China just about the time that they were adopted in Europe, viz., in the i6th century. And this disuse seems to have been either cause or effect of the neglect of the roads, of which so high an account is given in old times. {Semedo; N. and Q. Ch. and Jap. I. 94.)
Deguignes describes the public carriages of Peking, as " shaped like a palankin, but of a longer form, with a rounded top, lined outside and in with coarse blue cloth, and provided with black cushions" (I. 372). This corresponds with our author's description, and with a drawing by Alexander among his published sketches. The present Peking cab is evidently the same vehicle, but smaller.
Note 11. — ^The character of the King of Manzi here given corre- sponds to that which the Chinese histories assign to the Emperor Tut- song, in whose time Kublai commenced his enterprise against Southern China, but who died two years before the fall of the capital He is described as given up to wine and women, and indifferent to all public business, which he committed to unworthy ministers. The following words, quoted by Mr. Moule from the Hang-Chau Fu-Chi, are like an echo of Marco's : " In those days the dynasty was holdmg on to a mere comer of the realm, hardly able to defend even that ; and nevertheless all, high and low, devoted themselves to dress and ornament, to music and dancing on the lake and amongst the hills, with no idea of sym- pathy for the country." A garden called Tseu-Jdng (" of many pros- pects ") near the Tsing-po Gate, and a monastery west of the lake, near the Lingin, are mentioned as pleasure haunts of the Sung Kings.
Note 12. — The statement that the palace of Kingsz^ was occupied by the Great Kaan's lieutenant seems to be inconsistent with the notice in Demailla that Kublai made it over to the Buddhist priests. Perhaps Kublars name is a mistake ; for one of Mr. Moule's books {Jin-ho-kien- chi) says that under the last Mongol Emperor five convents were built on the area of the palace.
Mr. H. Murray argues, from this closing passage especially, that Marco never could have been the author of the Ramusian interpola- tions ; but with this I cannot agree. Did this passage stand alone we might doubt if it were Marco's ; but the interpolations must be con- sidered as a whole. Many of them bear to my mind clear evidence of being his own, and I do not see that the present one may not be his. The picture conveyed of the ruined walls and half-obliterated buildings does, it is true, give the impression of a long interval between theu: abandonment and the traveller's visit, whilst the whole interval between the capture of the city and Polo's departure from China was not more than 15 or 16 years. But this is too vague a basis for theorizing.
Mr. Moule has ascertained by maps of the Sung period, and by a
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variety of notices in the Topographies, that the palace lay to the south and south-east of the present city, and included a large part of the fine hills called Fung-hwangShan or . Phoenix Mount,* and other names, whilst its southern gate opened near the Tsien-Tang River. Its north gate is supposed to have been the Fung Shan Gate of the present city, and the chief street thus formed the avenue to the palace.
By the kindness of Messrs. Moule and Wylie, I am able to give a copy of the Sung Map of the Palace (for origin of which see list of illustrations). I should note that the orientation is different from that of the map of the city already given. This map eluci- dates Polo's account of the palace in a highly interesting manner.
Before quitting Kinsay, the description of which forais the most striking feature in Polo's account of China, it is worth while to quote other notices from authors of nearly the same age. However exaggerated some of these may be, there can be little doubt that it was the greatest city then existing in the world.
Friar Odoric (in China about 1324-27) : — ** De- parting thence I came unto the city of Cansay, a name which signifieth the * City of Heaven.' And 'tis the greatest city in the whole world, so great indeed that I should scarcely venture to tell of it, but that I have met at Venice people in plenty who have been there. It is a good hundred miles in compass, and there is not in it ^'q^x^:^^^^,^^^^ a span of ground which is not well peopled. And ma's Temple," Hangchau. many a tenement is there which shall have 10 or 12 households com- prised in it And there be also great suburbs which contain a greater population than even the city itself. .... This city is situated upon lagoons of standing water, with canals like the city of Venice. And it hath more than 12,000 bridges, on each of which are stationed
• Mr. Wylie, after ascending this hill with Mr. Moule, writes : ** It is about two miles from the south gate to the top, by a rather steep road. On the top is a remark- ably level plot of ground, with a cluster of rocks in one place. On the face of these rocks are a great many inscriptions, but so obliterated by age and weather that only a feu- characters can be decyphered. A stone road leads up from the city gate, and another one, very steep, down to the lake. This is the only vestige remaining of the old palace grounds. TTiere is no doubt about this being really a relic of the palace. . . . You will see on the map, just inside the walls of the Imperial city, the Temple of Brahma. There are still two stone columns standing with curious Buddhist inscriptions. . . . Although the temple is entirely gone, these columns retain the name and mark the place. They date from the 6th century, and there are few structures earlier in China." One is enj^ravcd above, after a sketch by Mr. Moule.
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guards, guarding the city on behalf of the Great ELaan. And at the side of this city there flows a river near which it is built, like Ferrara by the Po, for it is longer than it is broad," and so on, relating how his host took him to see a great monastery of the idolaters, where there was a garden full of grottoes, and therein many animals of divers kinds, which they believed to be inhabited by the souls of gentlemen. " But if anyone should desire to tell all the vastness and great marvels of this city, a good quire of stationery would not hold the matter, I trow. For *tis the greatest and noblest city, and the finest for merchandize that the whole world containeth." (Cathay^ 113 seqq)
The Archbishop of Soltania (circa 1330): — "And so vast is the number of people that the soldiers alone who are posted to keep ward in the city of Cambalec are 40,000 men by sure tale. And in the city of Cassay there be yet more, for its people is greater in number, seeing that it is a city of very great trade. And to this city all the traders of the country come to trade ; and greatly it aboundeth in all manner of merchandize." {lb. 244-5.)
John Marignoili (in Cliina 1342-47) : — " Now Manzi is a country which has countless cities and nations included in it^ past all belief to one who has not seen them. .... And among the rest is that most famous city of Campsay, the finest, the biggest, the richest, the most populous, and altogether the most marvellous city, the city of the greatest wealth and luxury, of the most splendid buildings (especially idol- temples, in some of which there are 1000 and 2000 monks dwelling together), that exists now upon the face of the earth, or mayhap that ever did exist" {lb. p. 354.) He also speaks, like Odoric, of the " cloister at Campsay, in that most famous monastery where they keep so many monstrous animals, which they believe to be the souls of the departed " {384). Perhaps this monastery may yet be identified. Odoric calls it Thdc
Turning now to Asiatic writers, we begin with fVassdf {kd, 1300) : —
" Khanzai is the ^eatest of the cities of Chin,
* Stretching like Paradise through the breadth of Heaven^
Its shape is oblong, and the measurement of its perimeter is about 24 parasangs. Its streets are paved with burnt brick and with stone. The public edifices and the houses are built of wood, and adorned with a profiision of jmintings of exquisite elegance. Between one end of the city and the other there are three l^^zj (post-stations) established The length of the chief streets is three parasangs, and the city con- tains 64 quadrangles corresponding to one another in structure, and with parallel ranges of columns. The salt excise brings in daily 700 balish in paper-money. The number of craftsmen is so great that 32,000 are employed at the dyer's art alone ; fi"om that fact you may estimate the rest There are in the city 70 tomans of soldiers and 70 tomans of rayats^ whose number is registered in the books of the Dewdn. There are 700 churches {Kalisid) resembling fortresses, and every one
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Chap. LXXVII. THE GREAT CITY OF KINSAY. 1 97
of them overflowing with presbyters without faith, and monks without religion, besides other officials, wardens, servants of the idols, and this, that, and the other, to tell the names of which would surpass number and space. All these are exempt from taxes of every kind. Four
tomans of the garrison constitute the night-patrol Amid the city
there are 360 bridges erected over canals ample as the Tigris, which are ramifications of the great river of Chfn ; and different kinds of vessels and ferry-boats, adapted to every class, ply upon the waters in such numbers as to pass all powers of enumeration. .... The con- course of all kinds of foreigners from the four quarters of the world, such as the calls of trade and travel bring together in a kingdom like this, may easily be conceived." {Revised on Hammer's Translation^ p. 42-3.)
The Persian work Nuzhat-al-Kuliih : — " Khinzai is the capital of the country of M^chfn. If one may believe what some travellers say, there exists no greater city on the face of the earth ; but anyhow, all agree that it is the greatest in all the countries in the East Inside the place is a lake which has a circuit of six parasangs, and all round which houses are built , . . The population is so numerous that the watchmen are some 10,000 in number." {Quat Rash, p. Ixxxviii.)
The Arabic work Masdlak-al-Absdr : — " Two routes lead from Khan- balik to Khinsa, one by land, the other by water ; and either way takes 40 days. The city of Khinsi extends a whole day's journey in length and half a day's journey in breadth. In the middle of it is a street which runs right from one end to the other. The streets and squares are all paved ; the houses are five-storied (?), and are built with planks nailed together," &c. {Ibid,)
IhnBatuta: — "We arrived at the city of Khans a. . . , This city is the greatest I have ever seen on the surface of the earth. It is three days' journey in length, so that a traveller passing through the city has to make his marches and his halts I .... It is subdivided into six towns, each of which has a separate enclosure, while one great wall surrounds the whole," &c. {Cathay^ p. 496 seqq,)
Let us conclude with a writer of a later age, the worthy Jesuit Martin Martini, the author of the admirable Atlas Sinensis, one whose honourable zeal to maintain Polo's veracity, of which he was one of the first intelligent advocates, is apt, it must be confessed, a little to colour his own spectacles : — " That the cosmographers of Europe may no longer make such ridiculous errors as to the Quinsai of Marco Polo, I will here give you the very place. [He then explains the name.] . . . And to come to the point ; this is the very city that hath those bridges so lofty and so numberless, both within the walls, and in the suburbs ; nor will they M much short of the 10,000 which the Venetian alleges, if you count also the triumphal arches among the bridges, as he might easily do because of their analogous structure, just as he calls tigers lions ; ... or if you will, he may have meant to include not merely the bridges in the city and suburbs, but in the whole of the dependent territory. In that
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198 MARCO POLO. Book II.
case indeed the number which Europeans find it so hard to believe might well be set still higher, so vast is everywhere the number of bridges and of triumphal arches. Another point in confirmation is that lake which he mentions of 40 Italian miles in circuit This exists under the name of Sihu ; it is not, indeed, as the book says, inside the walls, but lies in contact with them for a long distance on the west and south- west, and a number of canals drawn from it do enter the city. More- over, the shores of the lake on every side are so thickly studded with temples, monasteries, palaces, museums, and private houses, that you would suppose yourself to be passing through the midst of a great city rather than a country scene. Quays of cut stone are built along the banks, affording a spacious promenade ; and causeways cross the lake itself, furnished with lofty bridges to allow of the passage of boats ; and thus you can readily walk all about the lake on this side and on that Tis no wonder that Polo considered it to be part of the city. This, too, is the very city that hath within the walls, near the south side, a hill called Ching-hoang* on which stands that tower with the watchmen, on which there is a clepsydra to measure the hours, and where each hour is announced by the exhibition of a placard, with gilt letters of a foot and a half in height This is the very city the streets of which are paved with squared stones : the city which lies in a swampy situation, and is intersected by a number of navigable canals ; this, in short, is the city from which the emperor escaped to seaward by the great river Tsien-tang, the breadth of which exceeds a German mile, flowing on the south of the city, exactly corresponding to the river described by the Venetian at Quinsai, and flowing eastward to the sea which it entere precisely at the distance which he mentions. I will add that the com- pass of the city will be 100 Italian miles and more, if you include its vast suburbs, which run out on every side an enormous distance ; inso- much that you may walk for 50 Chinese // in a straight line from north to south, the whole way through crowded blocks of houses, and without encountering a spot that is not full of dwellings and full of people ; whilst from east to west you can do very nearly the same thing." {Atlas Sinensis^ p. 99.)
And so we quit what Mr. Moule appropriately calls " Marco's famous rhapsody of the Manzi capital f perhaps the most striking section of the whole book, as manifestly the subject was that which had made the strongest impression on the narrator.
See the plan of the city with last chapter.
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Chap. LXXVIII. THE REVENUE FROM KINSAY. 199
CHAPTER LXXVIII. Treating of the great Yearly Revenue that the Great Kaan
HATH FROM KiNSAY.
Now I will tell you about the great revenue which the Great Kaan draweth every year from the said city of Kinsay and its territory, forming a ninth part of the whole country of Manzi.
First there is the salt, which brings in a great revenue. For it produces every year, in round numbers, fourscore ((mans of gold ; and the toman is worth 70,000 saggi of gold, so that the total value of the fourscore tomans will be five millions and six hundred thousand saggi of gold, each saggio being worth more than a gold florin or ducat ; in sooth, a vast sum of money! [This province, you see, adjoins the ocean, on the shores of which are many lagoons or salt marshes, in which the sea-water dries up during the summer time ; and thence they extract such a quantity of salt as sufl[ices for the supply of five of the kingdoms of Manzi besides this one.]
Having told you of the revenue from salt, I will now tell you of that which accrues to the Great Kaan from the duties on merchandize and other matters.
You must know that in this city and its dependencies they make great quantities of sugar, as indeed they do in the other eight divisions of this country ; so that I believe the whole of the rest of the world together does not pro- duce such a quantity, at least, if that be true which many people have told me ; and the sugar alone again produces an enormous revenue. — However, I will not repeat the duties on every article separately, but tell you how they go in the lump. Well, all spicery pays three and a third per cent, on the value ; and all merchandize likewise pays three and a third per cent. [But sea-borne goods fi'om
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200 (^ " MARCO POLO. BOOK IL
India antf TJtKer distant countries pay ten per cent.] The rice-wine also makes a great return, and coals, of which there is a great quantity ; and so do the twelve guilds of craftsmen that I told you of, with their 12,000 stations apiece, for every article they make pays duty. And the silk which is produced in such abundance makes an immense return. But why should I make a long story of it ? The silk, you must know, pays ten per cent., and many other articles also pay ten per cent.
And you must know that Messer Marco Polo, who relates all this, was several times sent by the Great Kaan to inspect the amount of his customs and revenue from this ninth part of Manzi,' and he found it to be, exclusive of the salt revenue which we have mentioned already, 210 tomans of gold, equivalent to 14,700,000 saggi of gold; one of the most enormous revenues that ever was heard of. And if the sovereign has such a revenue from one-ninth part of the country, you may judge what he must have from the whole of it ! However, to speak the truth, this part is the greatest and most productive ; and because of the great revenue that the Great Kaan derives from it, it is his favourite province, and he takes all the more care to watch it well, and to keep the people contented.*
Now we will quit this city and speak of others.
Note 1. — Pauthier's text seems to be the only one which says that Marco was sent by the Great Kaan. The G. Text says merely : " Si qejeo March Pol qeplusor foies hoifaire le conte de la rende de tous ccstts couses^^ — " had several times heard the calculations made."
Note 2. — Toman is 10,000. And the first question that occurs in considering the statements of this chapter is as to the unit of these tomans, as intended by Polo, I believe it to have been the tad (or Chinese ounce) of gold.
We do not know that the Chinese ever made monetary calculations in gold. But the usual unit of the revenue accounts appears from Pau- thier's extracts to have been the ting^ i,e, a money of account equal to ten taels of silver, and we know (supra^ ch. 1. note 4) that this was in those days the exact equivalent of one tael of gold.
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Chap. LXXVIII. THE REVENUE FROM KINSAY. 20r
The equation in our text is xOyOoo x = 70,000 saggi of gold, giving jc, or the unit sought, = 7 sc^. But in both Ramusio on the one hand, and in the Geog. Latin and Crusca Italian texts on the other hand, the equivalent of the toman is 80,000 saggi ; though it is true that neither with one valuation nor the other are the calculations consistent in any of the texts, except Ramusio's.* This consistency does not give any greater weight to Ramusio's reading, because we know that version to have been edited^ and corrected when the editor thought it necessary : but I adopt his valuation, because we shall find other grounds for preferring it The unit of the toman then is = 8 saggi.
The Venice saggio was one-sixth of a Venice ounce. The Venice mark of 8 oimces I find stated to contain 3681 grains troy ; f hence the saggio =16 grains. But I imagine the term to be used by Polo here and in other Oriental computations, to express the Arabic miskdl^ the real weight of which, according to Mr. Maskelyne, is 74 grains troy. The miskdl of gold was, as Polo says, something more than a ducat or sequin, indeed, weight for weight, it was to a ducat nearly as 1*4 : i.
Eight saggi or missis would be 592 grains troy. The tael is 580, and the approximation is as near as we can reasonably expect from a calculation in such terms.
Taking the silver tael at 6j. 7^., the gold tael, or rather the tingy would be = 3/. 5J. io</. ; the toman = ^2ygi6L 13J. 4//.; and the whole salt revenue (80 tomans) = 2,633,333/. ; the revenue from other sources (210 tomans) = 6,912,500/,; total revenue firom Kinsay and its pro- vince (290 tomans) = 9,545,833/. A sufficiently startling statement, and quite enough to account for the sobriquet of ^f arco Milioni.
Pauthier, in reference to this chapter, brings forward a number of extracts regarding Mongol finance from the official history of that dynasty. The extracts are extremely interesting in themselves, but I cannot find in them that confirmation of Marco's accuracy which M. Pauthier sees.
First as to the salt revenue of Kiangch^, or the province of Kinsay. The facts given by Pauthier amount to these : that in 1277, the year in which the Mongol salt department was organised, the manufacture of salt amounted to 92, 148 j'///, or 22,115,520 ^//<7J. / in 1286 it had reached 450,000 ^/», or 108,000,000 kilos. ; in 1289 it fell off by 100,000 ^/«.
The price was, in 1277, 18 Hang or taels, in chao or paper-money of the years 1260-64 (see voL I. p. 412) ; in 1282 it was raised to 22 taels ; in 1284 a permanent and reduced price was fixed, the amount of which is not stated.
* Panthier's MSS. A and B are hopelessly corrupt here. His MS. C agrees with the Geog. Text in making the toman = 70,000 saggi, but 210 tomans = 15,700,000, instead of 14,700,000. The Crusca and Latin have 80,000 saggi in the first place, bat 15,700,000 in the second. Ramusio alone has 80,000 in the first place, and 16,800,000 in the second.
t Eng. Cyclop., ** Weights and Measures.''
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202 MARCO POLO. BOOK 11.
M. Pauthier assumes as a mean 400,000 yin, at 18 taels, which will give 7,200,000 taels ;ox^ at 6s, 'jd. to the tael, 2,370,000/. But this amount being in chao or paper-currency, which at its highest valuation was worth only 50 per cent of the nominal value of the notes, we must halve the sum, giving the salt revenue on Pauthier's assumptions = 1,185,000/.
Pauthier has also endeavoured to present a table of the whole revenue of Kiangch^ under the Mongols, amounting to 12,955,710 paper taeis^ or 2,132,294/., including the salt revenue. This would leave only 947,294/. for the other sources of revenue, but the fiaw:t is that several of these are left blank, and among others one so important as the sea-customs. However, even making the extravagant supposition that the sea-customs and other omitted items were equal in amount to the whole of the other sources of revenue, salt included, the total would be only 4,264,585/
Marco's amount, as he gives it, is, I think, unquestionably a huge exaggeration, though I do not suppose an intentional one. In spite of his professed rendering of the amounts in gold, I have little doubt that his tomans really represent paper-currency, and that to get a valuation in gold, his total has to be divided at the very least by two. We may then compare his total of 290 tomans of paper ting with Pauthier's 130 tomans of paper ting^ excluding sea-customs and some other items. No nearer comparison is practicable ; and besides the sources of doubt already indicated, it remains imcertain what in either calculation are the limits of the province intended. For the bounds of Kiangch^ seem to have varied greatly, sometimes including and sometimes excluding Fokien.
I may observe that Rashiduddin reports, on the authority of the Mongol minister Pulad Chingsang, that the whole of Manzi brought in a revenue of " 900 tomans." This Quatremfere renders " nine million pieces of gold," presumably meaning dinars. It is unfortunate that there should be uncertainty here again as to the unit If it were the dinar the whole revenue of Manzi would be about 5,850,000/., whereas if the unit were, as in the case of Polo's toman, the ting^ the revenue would be nearly 30 millions sterling I
It does appear that in China a toman of some denomination of money near the dinar was known in account For Friar Odoric states the revenue of Yangchau in tomans of Balishy the latter unit being, as he explains, a sum in paper-currency equivalent to a florin and a half (or something more than a dinar) ; perhaps, however, only the Hang or tael (see vol i. p. 413).
It is this calculation of the Kinsay revenue which Marco is supposed to be expounding to his fellow-prisoner on the title-page of this volume.
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Chap. LXXIX. CITIES TO THE SOUTH OF KINSAY. 203
CHAPTER LXXIX.
Of the City of Tanpiju and Others.
When you leave Kinsay and travel a day's journey to tlic south-east, through a plenteous region, passing a succession of dwellings and charming gardens, you reach the city of Tanpiju, a great, rich, and fine city, under Kinsay. The people are subject to the Kaan, and have paper-money, and are Idolaters, and burn their dead in the way described before. They live by trade and manufactures and handi- crafts, and have all necessaries in great plenty and cheapness.'
But there is no more to be said about it, so we proceed, and I will tell you of another city called Vuju at three days' distance from Tanpiju. The people are Idolaters, &c., and the city is under Kinsay. They live by trade and manufactures.
Travelling through a succession of towns and villages that look like one continuous city, two days further on to the south-east, you find the great and fine city of Ghiuju which is under Kinsay. The people are Idolaters, &c. They have plenty of silk, and live by trade and handicrafts, and have all things necessary in abundance. At this city you find the largest and longest canes that are in all Manzi; they are full four palms in girth and 15 paces in length.*
When you have left Ghiuju you travel four days S.E. through a beautiful country, in which towns and villages are very numerous. There is abundance of game both in beasts and birds ; and there are very large and fierce Uons. After those four days you come to the great and fine city of Chanshan. It is situated upon a hill which divides the River, so that the one portion flows up country and the other down.* It is still under the government of Kinsay.
* **^j/ sus UH moHt que parte le Flum^ que le une moitU ala en sus e P autre moitU en Jus'' (G. T.).
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ao4 MARCO POLO. Book H.
I should tell you that in all the country of Manzi they have no sheep, though they have beeves and kine, goats and kids and swine in abundance. The people are Idolaters here, &c.
When you leave Changshan you travel three days through a very fine country with many towns and villages, traders and craftsmen, and abounding in game of all kinds, and arrive at the city of Cuju. The people are Idolaters, &c., and live by trade and manufactures. It is a fine, noble, and rich city, and is the last of the government of Kinsay in this direction.^ The other kingdom which we now enter, called Fuju, is also one of the nine great divisions of Manzi as Kinsay is.
Note 1. — The traveller's route proceeds from Kinsay or Hang-chau southward to the mountains of Fokien, ascending the valley of the Tsien Tang, commonly called by Europeans the Green River. The general line, directed as we shall see upon Kienningfu in Fokien, is clear enough, but some of the details are very obscure, owing partly to vague indica- tions and partly to the excessive uncertainty in the reading of some of the proper names.
No name resembling Tanpiju (G. T., Tanpigui ; Pauthier, Tacpiguy, Carpiguy^ Capiguy ; Ram., Tapinzu) belongs, so far as has yet been shown, to any considerable town iu the position indicated.* Both Pauthier and Mr. Kingsmill identify the place with Shaohingfu, a large and busy town, compared by Fortune, as regards population, to Shanghai Shaohing is across the broad river, and somewhat further down than Hang-chau : it is out of the traveller's general direction ; and it seems unnatural that he should commence his journey by passing this wide river, and yet not mention it
For these reasons I formerly rejected Shaohing, and looked rather to Fuyang as the representative of Tanpiju. But my opinion is shakea when I find both Mr. Elias and Baron Richthofen decidedly opposed to Fuyang, and the latter altogether in favour of Shaohing. " The journey through a plenteous region, passing a succession of dwellings aod charming gardens ; the epithets * great, rich, and fine city ;* the * trade, manufactures, and handicrafts,' and the * necessaries in great plenty and
♦ One of the Hien^ forming the special districts of Hangchau itself, now called Tsien-tangy was formerly called Tang-wei-tang, But it embraces the eastern part of the district, and can, I think, have nothing to do with Tanpiju (sec Bi6ly p. 257, and Chin, Kepas. for Feb. 1842, p. 109).
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Chap. LXXIX. ASCENT OF THE TSIEN TANG VALLEY. 205
cheapness/ appear to apply rather to the populous plain and the large city of ancient feme, than to the small Fuyang-hien . . . shut in by a spur from the hills, which would hardly have allowed it in former days to have been a great city " {Note by Baron R,). The after route, as eluci- dated by the same authority, points with even more force to Shaohing.
Note 2. — Chekiang produces bamboos more abundantly than any province of Eastern China. Dr. Medhurst mentions meeting, on the waters near Hangchau, with numerous rafts of bamboos, one of which was one-third of a mile in length {Glance at Int. of China, p. 53).
NoTF 3. — ^Assuming Tanpiju to be Shaohing, the remaining places as far as the Fokien Frontier run thus : —
3 days to Vuju (P. Vuguif G. T. Vugui, Vuigui, Ram. Uguiu),
2 „ to Ghiuja (P. Guiguy^ G. T. Ghingui^ Ghengui^ Chtngui,, Ram. Gengui).
4 „ to Chanshan (P. Ciancian, G. T. Ciansctan, Ram. Zengian),
3 „ to Cuju or Chuju (P. Cinguy^ G. T. Cugui^ Ram. Gieza),
First as regards Chanshan, which, with the notable circumstances about the waters there, constitutes the key to the route, I extract the following remarks from a note which Mr. Fortune has kindly sent me : " When we get to Chanshan the proof as to the route is very strong. This is un- doubtedly my Changshan, The town is near the head of the Green River (the Tsien Tang) which flows in a N. E. direction and falls into the Bay of Hangchau. At Changshan the stream is no longer navigable even for small boats. Travellers going west or south-west walk or are carried in sedan-chairs across country in a westerly direction for about 30 miles to a town named Yuhshan. Here there is a river which flows westward (* the other half goes down '), taking the traveller rapidly in that direction, and passing en route the towns of Kwansinfti, Hokow or Hokeu, and onward to the Poyang Lake.** From the careful study of Mr. Fortune's published narrative I had already arrived at the conclusion that this was the correct explanation of the remarkable expressions about the division of the waters, which are closely analogous to those used by the traveller in ch. Ixii. of this book when speaking of the watershed of the Great Canal at Sinjumatu. Paraphrased the words might run : ^* At Changshan you reach high ground, which interrupts the continuity of the River ; from one side of this ridge it flows up country towards the north, from the other it flows down towards the south." The expression ** The River " will be elucidated in note 4 to ch. Ixxxii. below.
This route by the Tsientang and the Changshan portage, which turns the dangers involved in the navigation of the Yangtsze and the Poyang Lake, was formerly a thoroughfare to the south much followed ; though now almost abandoned through one of the indirect results (as Baron Richthofen points out) of steam navigation.
The portage from Changshan to Yukshan was passed by the English and Dutch embassies in the end of last century, on their journeys from
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2o6 MARCO POLO. BOOK 11.
Hangchau to Canton, and by Mr. Fortune on his way from Ningpo to the Bohea country of Fokien, It is probable that Polo on some occar sion made the ascent of the Tsien Tang by water, and that this leads him to notice the interruption of the navigation.
Kinhwafu, as Pauthier has observed, bore at this time the name of WucHAU, which Polo would certainly write Vugiu. And between Shaohing and Kinhwa there exists, as Baron Richthofen has pointed out, a line of depression which affords an easy connexion between Shaohing and Lanki-hien or Kinhwa-fu. This line is much used by travellers, and forms just 3 short stages. Hence Kinhwa, a fine city destroyed by the Taepings, is satisfactorily identified with Vugiu.
The journey from Vugui to Ghiuju is said to be through a succes- sion of towns and villages, looking like a continuous city. Fortune, whose journey occurred before the Taeping devastations, speaks of the approach to Kiuchau as a vast and beautiful garden. And Mr. Mike's map of this route shows an incomparable density of towns in the Tsien Tang valley from Yenchau up to Kiuchau. Ghiuju then will be Kiuchau. But between Kiuchau and Changshan it is impossible to make four days ; barely possible to make two. My map {Itineraries, No. VI.), based on D'Anville and Fortune, makes the direct distance 24 miles ; Milne's map barely 18 ; whilst from his book we deduce the distance travelled by water to be about 30. On the whole, it seems probable that there is a mistake in the figure here.
From the head of the great Chekiang valley I find two roads across the mountains into Fokien described.
One leads from Kiangshan (not Changshan) by a town called Ching^u, and then, nearly due south, across the mountains to Puching in Upper Fokien. This is specified by Martini (p. 113) : it seems to have been followed by the Dutch Envoy, Van Hoom, in 1665 (see Astley, IIL 463), and it was travelled by Fortune on his return /r^w the Bohea country to Ningpo (II. 247, 271).
The other route follows the portage spoken of above from Changshan to Yuhshan, and descends the river on that side to ffbkeu, whence it strikes south-east across the mountains to Tsung-ngan-hien in Fokien. This route was followed by Fortune on his way to the Bohea country.
Both from Puching on the former route, and from near Tsung-ngan on the latter, the waters are navigable down to Kienningfti and so to Fuchau.
Mr. Fortune judges the first to have been Polo's route. There does not, however, seem to be on this route any place that can be identified with his Cuju or Chuju. Chinghu seems to be insignificant and the name has no resemblance. On the other route followed by Mr. Fortune himself from that side we have Kwansinfu, Hokeu^ Yenshan, and (last town passed on that side) Chuchu, The latter, as to both name and position, is quite satisfactory, but it is described as a small poor town. Hokeu would be represented in Polo's spelling as Caghiu or Cughiu. It
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Chap. LXXX. THE KINGDOM OF FUJU. 207
is now a place of great population and importance as the entrep6t of the Black Tea Trade, but, like many important commercial cities in the interior, not being even a hieriy it has no place either in Duhalde or in Biot, and I cannot learn its age.
It is no objection to this line that Polo speaks of Cuju or Chuju as the last city of the government of Kinsay, whilst the towns just named are in KiangsL For Kiangchk^ the province of Kinsay, then included the eastern part of Kiangsi (see Cathay^ p. 270).
CHAPTER LXXX. Concerning the Kingdom of Fuju.
On leaving Cuju, which is the last city of the kingdom of Kinsay, you enter the kingdom of Fuju, and travel six days in a south-easterly direction through a country of mountains and valleys, in which are a number of towns and villages with great plenty of victuals and abundance of game. Lions, great and strong, are also very numerous. The country produces ginger and galingale in immense quantities, insomuch that for a Venice groat you may buy fourscore pounds of good fine-flavoured ginger. They have also a kind of fruit resembling saffiron, and which serves the purpose of saffron just as well.'
And you must know the people eat all manner of unclean things, even the flesh of a man, provided he has not died a natural death. So they look out for the bodies of those that have been put to death and eat their flesh, which they consider excellent.^
Those who go to war in those parts do as I am going to tell you. They shave the hair off the forehead and cause it to be painted in blue like the blade of a glaive. They all go afoot except the chief; they carry spears and swords, and are the most savage people in the world, for they go about constantly killing people, whose blood they drink, and then devour the bodies.^
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208 MARCO POLO. BOOK II.
Now I will quit this and speak of other matters. You must know then that after going three days out of the six that I told you of you come to the city of Kelinfu, a very great and noble city, belonging to the Great Kaan. This city hath three stone bridges which are among the finest and best in the world. They are a mile long and some nine paces in width, and they are all decorated with rich marble columns. Indeed they are such fine and marvellous works that to build any one of them must have cost a treasure.*
The people live by trade and manufactures, and have great store of silk [which they weave into various stuffi], and of ginger and galingale.^ [They also make much cotton cloth of dyed thread, which is sent all oyer Manzi."] Their women are particularly beautiful. And there is a strange thing there which I needs must tell you. You must know they have a kind of fowls which have no feathers, but hair only, like a cat's fur.* They are black all over; they lay eggs just like our fowls, and are very good to eat.
In the other three days of the six that I have mentioned above,^ you continue to meet with many towns and viUages, with traders, and goods for sale, and craftsmen. The people have much silk, and are Idolaters, and subject to the Great Kaan. There is plenty of game of all kinds, and there are great and fierce lions which attack travellers. In the last of those three days* journey, when you have gone 15 miles you find a city called Unken, where there is an immense quantity of sugar made. From this city the Great Kaan gets all the sugar for the use of his Court, a quantity worth a great amount of money. [And before this city came under the Great Kaan these people knew not how to make fine sugar ; they only used to boil and skim the juice, which when cold left a black paste. But after they came under the Great Kaan some men of Babylonia who happened to be at the Court proceeded to this city and taught the people to refine the sugar with the ashes of certain trees.*]
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Chap. LXXX. THE KINGDOM OF FUJU. 209
There is no more to say of the place, so now we shall speak of the splendour of Fuju. When you have gone 15 miles from the city of Unken, you come to this noble city which is the capital of the kingdom. So we will now tell you what we know of it.
Note 1. — The vague description does not suggest the root turmeric with which Marsden and Pauthier identify this " fruit like saffron." It is probably one of the species of Gardenia^ the fruits of which are used by the Chinese for their colouring properties. Their splendid yellow colour " is due to a body named crocine which appears to be identical with the polychroite of saffron." {Hanburfs Notes an Chinese Mat. Medica^ p. 21-22.) For this identification, I am indebted to Dr. Fliickiger of Bern.
Note 2. — See Vol. I. p. 303.
Note 3. — These particulars as to a race of painted or tattooed caterans accused of cannibalism apparently apply to some aboriginal tribe which still maintained its ground in the mountains between Fokien and Chekiang or Kiangsi. Davis, alluding to the Upper part of the Province of Canton, says : " The Chinese History speaks of the aborigines of this wild region under the name o( Mdn (Barbarians), who within a com- paratively recent period were subdued and incorporated into the Middle Nation. Many persons have remarked a decidedly Malay cast in the features of the natives of this province : and it is highly probable that the Canton and Fokien people were originally the same race as the tribes which still remain unreclaimed on the east side of Formosa " * (Supply, Vol., p. 260). Indeed Martini tells us that even in the 17th century this very range of mountains, farther to the south, in the Tingchau department of Fokien, contained a race of uncivilized people, who were enabled by the inaccessible character of the country to maintain their in- dependence of the Chinese Government (p. 11-4 ; see also Semedo, p. 19).
Note 4. — Padre Martini long ago pointed out that this Quelinfu is KiENNiNGFU, on the upper part of the Min River, an important city of Fokien. In the Fokien dialect he notices that / is often substituted for «, a well-known instance of which is Liampoo^ the name applied by F. M. Pinto and the old Portuguese to Ningpo,
• **It is not improbable that there is some admixture of ahonj^inal blood in the actual population (of Fuh-Kien), but if so, it cannot be much. The surnames in this
province are the same as those in Central and North China The language
also is pure Chinese ; actually much nearer the ancient form of Chinese than the modern Mandarin dialect There are indeed many words in the vemacuiar for which no corresponding character has been found in the literary style : but careful investigation is gradually diminishing the number." (Note by Rev. Dr. C. Doti^las.)
VOL. II. P
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2IO MARCO POLO. Book II.
Scene in the Bohca Mountains, on Polo's route between Kiangsl and Fokicn. — {From Foftone'.
"auonc cntre Ten m roiaume tit JFugiu, et in comancf, Ct ala si} jomif per montangnw e por balw/' . . .
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Chap. LXXX. THE KINGDOM OF FUJU. 211
In Ramusio the bridges are only " each more than loo paces long and 8 paces wide." In Pauthier's text each is a mile long, and 20 feet wide. I translate from the G. T.
Martini describes one beautiful bridge at Kienningfu : the piers of cut stone, the superstructure of timber, roofed in and lined with houses on each side (p. 112 -113). If this was over the Min it would seem not to survive. A recent journal says : " The river is crossed by a bridge of boats, the remains of a stone bridge being visible uist above water " {Chinese Recorder (Foochow), Aug. 1870, p. 65).
Note 5. — Galanga or Galangal is an aromatic root belonging to a class of drugs once much more used than now. It exists of two kinds, I. Great ox Java Galangal^ the root of the Alpinia Galanga, This is rarely imported and hardly used in Europe in modern times, but is still found in the Indian bazaars. 2. Lesser or China Galangal is imported into London from Canton, and is Btill sold by druggists in England. Its botanical origin is unknown. It is produced in Shansi, Fokien, and Kwantung, and is called by the Chinese Liang Kiang or " Mild Ginger."
Galangal was much used as a spice in the Middle Ages. In a syrup for a capon, temp. Rich. IL, we find ground-ginger, cloves, cinnamon znd galingale, "Galingale" appears also as a growth in old English gardens, but this is believed to have been Cyperus Longus^ the tubers of which were substituted for the real article under the name of English Galingale.
The name appears to be a modification of the Arabic Kulijan, Pers. Kholinjdn, and these from the Sanskrit Kulanjana. {Mr. Hanbury ; China Comm.-Guide^ 120; Eng, CycL ; Garcias, f. 63; Wright, p. 352.)
Note 6. — The cat in question is no doubt the fleecy Persian. These fowls, — ^but white, — are mentioned by Odoric at Fuchau ; and Mr. G. Phillips in a MS. note says that they are still abundant in Fokien, where he has often seen them ; all that he saw or heard of were white. The Chinese call them " velvet-hair fowls." I believe they are well known to poultry-fanciers in Europe.
Note 7. — The times assigned in this chapter as we have given them, after the G. Text, appear very short; but I have followed that text because it is perfectly consistent and clear. Starting from the last city of Kinsay government, the traveller goes 6 days south-east; three out of those 6 days bring him to Kelinfu ; he goes on the other three days and at the 15th mile of the 3rd day reaches Unken ; 15 miles further bring him to Fuju. This is interesting as showing that Polo reckoned his day at 30 miles.
In Pauthier*s text again we find : " Sachiez que quand on est ale six joum^es apAs ces trois que je vous ay dit,'' not having mentioned trots at all, "^« tretwe la citt de Quelifu.'' And on leaving Quelinfu : " Sachiez que es autres trois joum^es oultre et plus xv. milles trawe Ten
P 2
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212 MARCO POLO. Book II.
uru cite qui a nom Vugum" This seems to mean from Cugui to Kelinfu 6 days, and thence to Vuguen (or Unken) 3^ days more. But evidently there has been bungling in the transcript, for the es autre trois joumtes belongs to the same conception of the distance as that in the G. T. Pauthier's text does not say how far it is from Unken to Fuju. Ramusio makes 6 days to Kelinfu, 3 days more to Unguem, and then 15 miles more to Fuju (which he has erroneously as Cagiu here, though previously given right, Fugiu),
The latter scheme looks probable certainly, but the times in the G. T. are quite admissible, if we suppose that water conveyance was adopted where possible.
For assuming that Cugiu was Fortune's Chuchu at the western base of the Bohea mountains (see note 3, ch. Ixxix.), and that the traveller reached Tsun-ngan-hien in 2 marches, I see that from Tsin-tsun, near Tsun-ngan-hien, Fortune says he could have reached Fuchau in 4 days by boat Again Martini, speaking of the skill with which the Fokien boatmen navigate the rocky rapids of the upper waters, says that even from Puching the descent to the capital could be made in three days. So the thing is quite possible, and the G. Text may be quite correct (sec Fortune II. 171-183 and 210; Mart, no). A party which recently made the journey seem to have been 6 days from Hokeu to the Wu-e-shan and then 5^ days by water (but in stormy weather) to Fuchau {Chinese Recorder^ as above).
Note 8. — Pauthier supposes tJnken, or Vuguen as he reads it, to be Hukwan, one of the hiens under the immediate administration of Fuchau city. This cannot be, according to the lucid reading of the G. T., making Unken 15 miles from the chief city. The only place which the maps show about that position is Minfsing hien. And the Dutch mission of 1664-5 names this as ^' Binkin, by some called Min-sing."* {Astley, III. 461).
The Babylonia of the passage from Ramusio is Cairo, — Babylon of Egypt, the sugar of which was very famous in the Middle Ages. Zucchero di Bambellonia is repeatedly named in Pegolotti's Handbook (210, 311, 362, &c).
The passage as it stands represents the Chinese as not knowing even how to get sugar in the granular form : but perhaps the fact was that they did not know how to refine it Local Chinese histories acknow- ledge that the people of Fokien did not know how to make fine sugar, till, in the time of the Mongols, certain men from the west taught the art* It is a curious illustration of the passage that in India
♦ Note by Mr. G. Phillips. I omit a corroborative quotation about sugar from the Turkish Geography, copied from Klaproth in the former edition; because the author, Hajji Khalfa, used European sources ; and I have now no doubt the passage was derived indirectly from Marco Polo.
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Chap. LXXXI. THE CITY OF FUJU. 2,1^
coarse sugar is commonly called CAiniy "the produce of China," and sugar candy or fine sugar Misri, the produce of Cairo {Baby- Imia) or Egypt Nevertheless fine Misri has long been exported from Fokien to India, and down to 1862 went direct from Amoy. It is now, Mr. Phillips states, sent to India by steamers vi& Hong Kong. I see it stated, in a late Report by Mr. Consul Medhurst, that the sugar at this day commonly sold and consumed throughout China is excessively coarse and repulsive in appearance (see Academy^ Feb. 1874, p. 229).
The fierce lions are, as usual, tigers. These are numerous in this province, and tradition points to the diversion of many roads, owing to their being infested by tigers. Tiger cubs are often offered for sale in Amoy.*
CHAPTER LXXXI. Concerning the Greatness of the City of Fuju.
Now this city of Fuju is the key of the kingdom which is called Chonka, and which is one of the nine great divisions of Manzi.* The city is a seat of great trade and great manufactures. The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan. And a large garrison is maintained there by that prince to keep the kingdom in peace and subjection. For the city is one which is apt to revolt on very slight provocation.
There flows through the middle of this city a great river, which is about a mile in width, and many ships are built at the city which are launched upon this river. Enormous quantities of sugar are made there, and there is a great trafl!ic in pearls and precious stones. For many ships of India come to these parts bringing many merchants who traffic about the Isles of the Indies. For this city is, as I must tell you, in the vicinity of the Ocean Port of Zaytox,^ which is greatly frequented by the ships of India with their cargoes of various merchandize; and from
♦ Note by Mr. G. Phillips,
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214 MARCO POLO. BOOK II.
Zayton ships come this way right up to the city of Fuju by the river I have told you of; and 'tis in this way that the precious wares of India come hither.^
The city is really a very fine one and kept in good order, and all necessaries of life are there to be had in great abundance and cheapness.
Note 1. — The name here applied to Fokien by Polo is variously written as Ckoncha, Chonka^ Concha^ Chauka, It has not been satis^- torily explained. Klaproth and Neumann refer it to KiangM, of which Fokien at one time of the Mongol rule formed a part This is the more improbable as Polo expressly distinguishes this province or kingdom from that which was under Kinsay, viz. Kiangchd Pauthier supposes the word to represent Kien-Kwe, " the Kingdom of Kien," because in the 8th century this territory had formed a principality of which the seat was at Kien-chau, now Kienningfu. This is not satisfactory either, for no evidence is adduced that the name continued in use.
One might suppose that Choncha represented TswanchaUy the Chinese name of the city of Zayton, or rather of the department attached to it, written by the French Thsiuan-tchkou^ but by Medhurst Chwancheiv^ were it not that Polo's practice of writing the term ichtu or chau by giu is so nearly invariable, and that the soft ch is almost always expressed in the old texts by the Italian d (though the Venetian does use the soft cJi)*
It is again impossible not to be struck with the resemblance of Chonka to " Chung-kw6 " " the Middle Kingdom," though I can suggest no ground for the application of such a title specially to Fokien, except a possible misapprehension. Chonkwe occurs in the Persian Historia Cathaica published by Miiller, but is there specially applied to Norik China (see Quat. Rashid,^ p. Ixxxvi).
The city of course is Fuchau. It was visited also by Friar Odoric who calls it Fuzo^ and it appears in duplicate on the Catalan Map as Fugio and as Fozo,
I used the preceding words, ** the city of course is Fuchau," in the first edition. Since then Mr. G. Phillips, of the consular staflf in Fokien, has tried to prove that Polo's Fuju is not Fuchau (Foochow is his spelling), but T'swanchau. This view is bound up with another regarding the identity of Zayton, which will involve lengthy notice under next chapter; and both views have met with an able advocate in the
* Dr. Medhurst calls the proper name of the city, as distinct from the Fu^ CkmkoMg (^Dict. of the Ifok-keen dialect). Dr. Douglas has suggested Chinkang^ and T^swam-Mt^ />. ** Kingdom of T 'swan" (chau), as possible explanations of Chonka,
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Chap. LXXXI. THE CITY OF FUJU. 21$
Rev. Dr. C. Douglas, of Amoy.* I do not in the least accept these views about Fuju.
In considering the objections made to Fuchau, it must never be forgotten that, according to the spelling usual with Polo or his scribe, Fuju is not merely "a name with a great resemblance in sound to Foochow " (as Mr. Phillips has it) ; it is Mr. Phillips's word Foochow, just as absolutely as my word "Fuchau is his word Foochow. (See remarks almost at the end of the Introductory Essay). And what has to be proved against me in this matter is, that when Polo speaks of Fuchau he does not mean Fuchau. It must also be observed that the distances as given by Polo (three days from Quelinfu to Fuju, five days from Fuju to Zayton) do correspond well with my interpretations, and do nof correspond with the other. These are very strong fences of my position, and it demands strong arguments to level them. The adverse argu- ments (in brief) are these :
(i.) That Fuchau was not the capital of Fokien (" chief dou reigne").
(2.) That the River of Fuchau does not flow through the middle of the city ("/^tt le mi de cestcite'')^ nor even under the walls.
(3.) That Fuchau was not frequented by foreign trade till centuries afterwards.
The first objection will be more conveniently answered under next chapter (p. 221).
As regards the second, the fact urged is true. But even now a straggling street extends to the river, ending in a large suburb on its banks, and a famous bridge there crosses the river to the south side where now the foreign setdements are. There may have been suburbs on that side to justify the por le mi^ or these words may have been a slip ; for the Traveller begins the next chapter — " When you quit F'uju (to go south) you cross the river ^ f
Touching the question of foreign commerce, I do not see that Mr. Phillips's negative evidence would be sufficient to establish his point But, in fact, the words of the Geog. Text (i.e, the original dicta- tion), which we have followed, do not (as I now see), necessarily involve any foreign trade at Fuchau, the impression of which has been
* Mr. Phillips's views were issued first in the Chinese Recorder (published by Missionaries at Fuchau) in 1870, and afterwards sent to the R. Geo. Soc, in whose Journal for 1874 they will appear, with remarks in reply more detailed than I can introduce here. Dr. Douglas's notes were received after this sheet was in proof, and it will be seen that they modify to a certain extent my views about Zayton, though not about Fuchau. His notes, which do more justice to the question than Mr. Phillips's, should find a place with the other papers in the Geog. Society's Journal.
t There is a capital lithograph of Fuchau in Fortune's * Three Years' Wanderings,* (1847), ^ which the city shows as on the river, and Fortune always so speaks of it ; e.g. (p. 369) : ** the river runs through the suburbs." I do not know what is the worth of the old engravings in Montanus. A view of Fuchau in one of these (reproduced in Astiey^ iv. 33) shows a broad creek from the river penetrating to the heart of the city.
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2i6 MARCO POLO. Book II.
derived mainly from Ramusio's text. They appear to imply no more than that, through the vicinity of Zayton, there was a great influx of Indian wares, which were brought on from the great port by vessels (it may be local junks) ascending the river Min.*
Scene on the Min River, below Fuchau. — [From Fortune).
"IE sacf}i& cljc pot Ic mi tit ttstt rite ba't un grant flun qc him tst largt un mil, et m ccstc cite sr font maintes ncs lesquel> najmt por ccl flum."
Note 2.— The G. T. reads Caiton, presumably for (J!ai ton or Zayton. In Pauthier's text, in the following chapter, the name of Zayton is written Caiton and Qayton^ and the name of that port appears in the same form in the Letter of its Bishop, Andrew of Perugia, quoted in note 2, chap. Ixxxii. Pauthier however in this place reads Kaytai, which he developes into a port at the mouth of the River Min.f
Note 3. — The Min, the River of Fuchau, " varies much in width and depth. Near its mouth, and at some other parts, it is not less than a mile in width, elsewhere deep and rapid." It is navigable for ships of large size 20 miles from the mouth, and for good-sized junks thence to the great bridge. The scenery is very fine, and is compared to that of the Hudson. {Fortune, L 281 ; Chin, Repos, XVI. 483.)
* The words of the G. T. are these : **// hi se fatt grant mercandUs di perUs e d^autres pieres presiose^ e ce est porce que Us nis de Yndie hi vUntitt maintfs con maint mcrchaant qe usent en l^s ysles de Endie ; et encore voz di que ceste ville est prh au port de Caiton en la mer Osiane; et ilhuc vienent maintes nes de Indie con maintes mercan- dieSf e puis de cest part vienent ies nis por le grant Jlum qe je voz at dit desoure jusque a la cit^ de Ftigui, et en ceste mainere hi vienent chieres cousse de Indie .^^
t It is odd enough that Martini (though M. Pauthier apparently was not aware of it) does show a fort called Haiteu at the mouth of the Min ; but I believe this to be merely an accidental coincidence. The various readings must be looked at together; that of the G. T. which I have followed is clear in itself and accounts for the others.
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Chap. LXXXII. THE CITY AND HAVEN OF ZAYTON. 21 7
CHAPTER LXXXII.
Of the City and great Haven of Zayton.
Now when you quit Fuju and cross the River, you travel for five days south-east through a fine country, meeting with a constant succession of flourishing cities, towns, and villages, rich in every product. You travel by mountains and valleys and plains, and in some places by great forests in which are many of the trees which give Camphor.' There is plenty of game on the road, both of bird and beast. The people are all traders and craftsmen, subjects of the Great Kaan, and under the government of Fuju. When you have accomplished those five days* journey you arrive at the very great and noble city of Zayton, which is also subject to Fuju.
At this city you must know is the Haven of Zayton, frequented by all the ships of India, which bring thither spicery and all other kinds of costly wares. It is the port also that is frequented by all the merchants of Manzi, for hither is imported the most astonishing quantity of goods and of precious stones and pearls, and from this they are distributed all over Manzi.'' And I assure you that for one shipload of pepper that goes to Alexandria or elsewhere, destined for Christendom, there come a hundred such, aye and more too, to this haven of Zayton ; for it is one of the two greatest havens in the world for commerce.^
The Great Kaan derives a very large revenue from the duties paid in this city and haven ; for you must know that on all the merchandize imported, including precious stones and pearls, he levies a duty of ten per cent, or in other words takes tithe of everything. Then again the ship's charge for freight on small wares is 30 per cent., on pepper 44 per cent., and on lignaloes, sandalwood, and other bulky goods 40 per cent.; so that between freight and the Kaan's
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2i8 MARCO POLO. Book II.
duties the merchant has to pay a good half the value of his investment [though on the other half he makes such a profit that he is always glad to come back with a new supply of merchandize.] But you may well believe from what I have said that the Kaan hath a vast revenue from this city.
There is great abundance here of all provision for ever)' necessity of man*s life. [It is a charming country, and the people are very quiet, and fond of an easy life. Many come hither from Upper India to have their bodies painted with the needle in the way we have elsewhere described, there being many adepts at this craft in the city.*]
Let me tell you also that in this province there is a town called Tyunju, where they make vessels of porcelain of all sizes, the finest that can be imagined. They make it nowhere but in that city, and thence it is exported all over the world. Here it is abundant and very cheap, insomuch that for a Venice groat you can buy three dishes so fine that you could not imagine better.^
I should tell you that in this city (i.e. of Zayton) they have a peculiar language. [For you must know that throughout all Manzi they employ one speech and one kind of writing only, but yet there are local differences of dialect, as you might say of Genoese, Milanese, Floren- tines, and Neapolitans, who though they speak different dialects can understand one another.^]
And I assure you the Great Kaan has as large customs and revenues from this kingdom of Chonka as from Kinsay, aye and more too.^
We have now spoken of but three out of the nine kingdoms of Manzi, to wit Yanju and Kinsay and Fuju. We could tell you about the other six, but it would be too long a business ; so we will say no more about them.
And now you have heard all the truth about Cathay and Manzi and many other countries, as has been set down in this Book ; the customs of the people and the various objects of commerce, the beasts and birds, the gold and
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Chap. LXXXII. THE CITY AND HAVEN OF ZAYTON. 219
silver and precious stones, and many other matters have been rehearsed to you. But our Book as yet does not contain nearly all that we purpose to put therein. For we have still to tell you all about the people of India and the notable things of that country, which are well worth the describing, for they are marvellous indeed. What we shall tell is all true, and without any lies. And we shall set down all the particulars in writing just as Messer Marco Polo related them. And he well knew the facts, for he remained so long in India, and enquired so diligently into the manners and peculiarities of the nations, that I can assure you there never was a single man before who learned so much and beheld so much as he did.
Note 1. — The Laurus (or Cinnamomum) Camphora, a large timber tree, grows abundantly in Fokien. A description of the manner in which camphor is produced at a very low cost, by sublimation from the chopped twigs, &c., will be found in the Lettres Edifiantes^ XXIV. 19 seqq, ; and more briefly in Hedde by Rondot^ P* 35* Fokien alone has been known to send to Canton in one year 4000 pekuls (of 133^ lbs. each), but the average is 2500 to 3000 (/^.).
Note 2. — ^When Marco says Zayton is one of the two greatest com- mercial ports in the world, I know not if he has another haven in his eye, or is only using an idiom of the age. For in like manner Friar Odoric calls Java "the second best of all Islands that exist;** and Kansan (or Shensi) the " second best province in the world, and the best popu- lated." But apart from any such idiom, Ibn Batuta pronounces Zayton to be the greatest haven in the world.
Martini relates that when one of the Emperors wanted to make war on Japan, the Province of Fokien ofifered to bridge the interval with their vessels !
Zayton, as Martini and Deguignes conjectured, is T'swanchau-fu, or Chwanchau-fu (written by French scholars Thsiouan-tchkou-fou)^ often called in our charts, &c., Chincheiv^ a famous seaport of Fokien about 100 miles in a straight line S.W. by S. of Fuchau. Klaproth supposes that the name by which it was known to the Arabs and other Westerns was corrupted from an old Chinese name of the city, given in the Imperial Geography, viz, Tseut'ung.* ZaMn commended itself
* Dr. C. Douglas objects to this derivation of Zayton^ that the place was never called Tseufung absolutely, but Tseu-fung-ching^ **city of prickly T*ung-trees ;" and this not as a name, but as a polite literary epithet, somewhat like " City of Palaces " applied to Calcutta.
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220 MARCO POLO. BOOK II.
to Arabian ears, being the Arabic for an olive-tree (whence Jerusalem is called Zaiiuniyah) ; but the corruption (if such it be) must be of very old date, as the city appears to have received its present name in the 7 th or 8th century.
Abulfeda, whose Geography was terminated in 132 1, had heard the real name of Zayton : " Shanju " he calls it, " known in our time as Zaitiin;" and again: "Zaitdn, ue, Shanju, is a haven of China, and, according to the accounts of merchants who have travelled to those parts, is a city of mark. It is situated on a marine estuary which ships enter from the China Sea. The estuary extends fifteen miles, and there is a river at the head of it According to some who have seen the place, the tide flows. It is half a day from the sea, and the channel by which ships come up from the sea is of fresh water. It is smaller in size than Hamath, and has the remains of a wall which was destroyed by the Tartars.* The people drink water from the channel, and also from wells."
Friar Odoric (in China circa 1323-27, who travelled apparently by land from Chin-kaMn, i.e. Canton), says, " Passing through many cities and towns, I came to a certain noble city which is called Zayton, where
we Friars Minor have two Houses In this city is great plenty
of all things that are needful for human subsistence. For example, you can get three pounds and eight ounces of sugar for less than half a groat. The city is twice as great as Bologna, and in it are many monasteries of devotees, idol-worshippers every man of them. In one
of those monasteries which I visited there were 3000 monks
The place is one of the best in the world Thence I passed
eastward to a certain city called Fuzo The city is a mighty fine
one, and standeth upon the sea." Andrew of Perugia, another Fran- ciscan, was Bishop of Zayton from 1322, having resided there from 1318. In 1326 he writes a letter home, in which he speaks of the place as " a great city on the shores of the Ocean Sea, which is called in the Persian tongue Cayton (Clayton) ; and in this city a rich Armenian lady did build a large and fine enough church, which was erected into a cathedral by the Archbishop," and so on. He speaks incidentally of the Genoese merchants frequenting it John MarignoUi, who was there about 1347, calls it "a wondrous fine sea-port, and a city of incredible size, where our Minor Friars have three very fine churches ; . . . . and they have a bath also, and a fonda€0 which serves as a depot for all the merchants." Ibn Batuta about the same time says : " The first city that
I reached after crossing the sea was Zaitun It is a great city,
superb indeed ; and in it they make damasks of velvet as well as those of satin {Kimkhd and Atlds), which are called from the name of the city Zaitimiah ; they are superior to the stuffs of Khansd and Khinbdlik. The harbour of Zaitiin is one of the greatest in the world — I am wTong ; it is the greatest ! I have seen there about an hundred first-class junks together ; as for small ones, they were past counting. The harbour is
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Chap. LXXXII. THE CITY AND HAVEN OF ZAYTON. 221
formed by an estuary which runs inland from the sea until it joins the Great River."
Rashiduddin, in enumerating the Sings or great provincial govern- ments of the empire, has the following : " 7th Fuch^^ — This is a city of ManzL The Sing was formerly located at Zaitijn, but afterwards established here, where it still remams. Zaitiin is a great shipping- port, and the commandant there is Bohduddin Kanddri." Pauthier's Chinese extracts show us that the seat of the Si fig was, in 128 1, at Tswanchau, but was then transferred to Fuchau. In 1282 it was removed back to Tswanchau, and in 1283 recalled to Fuchau. That is to say, what the Persian writer tells us of Fdjii and Zayton, the Chinese AnnaHsts tell us of Fuchau and T'swanchau. Therefore Fuju and Zayton were respectively Fuchau and T'swanchau.
Further, Zayton was, as we see from this chapter, and from the 2nd and 5th of Book III., in that age the great focus and harbour of commu- nication with India and the Islands. From Zayton sailed Kublai's ill- fated expedition against Japan. From Zayton Marco Polo seems to have sailed on his return to the West, as did John Marignolli some half century later. At Zayton Ibn Batuta nrst landed in China, and from it he sailed on his return.
All that we find quoted from Chinese records regarding T'swanchau corresponds to these Western statements regarding Zayton, For cen- turies Tswanchau was the seat of the Customs Department of Fokien, nor was this finally removed till 1473. I'^ ^ ^^ historical notices of the arrival of ships and missions from India and the Indian Islands during the reign of Kublai, Tswanchau, and Tswanchau almost alone, is the port of debarkation ; in the notices of Indian regions in the annals of the same reign it is from T'swanchau that the distances are estimated ; it was from Tswanchau that the expeditions against Japan and Java were mainly fitted out (See quotations by Pauthier, pp. 559, .570, 604, 653, ^3i 643; Gauhil^ 205, 217; Deguigncs^ III. 169, 175, 180, 187; Chinese Recorder {Yoo^o\i)y 1870, p. 45 seqq,)
When the Portuguese, in the i6th century, recovered China to European knowledge, Zayton was no longer the great haven of foreign trade; but yet the old name was not extinct among the mariners of Western Asia. Giovanni d'Empoli, in 15 15, writing about China from Cochin, says : " Ships carry spices thither from these parts. Every year there go thither from Sumatra 60,000 cantars of pepper, and 15,000 or 20,000 from Cochin and Malabar, worth 15 to 20 ducats a cantar; be- sides ginger (?), mace, nutmegs, incense, aloes, velvet, European gold- wire, coral, woollens, &c. The Grand Can is the King of China, and he dwells at Zeiton." Giovanni hoped to get to Zeiton before he died.*
* Giovanni did not get to Zayton ; but two years later he got to Canton with Fernfto Perez, was sent ashore as Factor, and a few days after died of fever. (De Barros, III. II. viii.). The way in which Botero, a compiler in the latter part of
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The port of Tswanchau is generally called in our modem charts Chinchtw. Now Chincheo is the name given by the old Portuguese navigators to the coast of Fokien, as well as to the port which they frequented there, and till recently I supposed this to be Tswanchau. But Mr. Phillips, in his paper alluded to at p. 213, asserted that by Chincheo modem Spaniards and Portuguese designated (not Tswanchau but) Changchau^ a great city 60 miles VV.S.W. of Tswanchau, on a river entering Amoy Harbour. On turning, with this hint, to the old maps of the 17 th centur}% I found that their Chincheo is really Changchau. But Mr. Phillips also maintains that Changchau, or rather its port, a place formerly called Gehkong and now Haiteng, is Zayion, Mr. Phillips does not adduce any precise evidence to show that this place was known as a port in Mongol times, far less that it was known as the most famous haven in the world ; nor was I able to at- tach great weight to the arguments which he adduced. But his thesis, or a modification of it, has been taken up and maintained with more force, as already intimated, by the Rev. Dr. Douglas.
The latter makes a strong point in the magnificent character of Amoy Harbour, which really is one of the grandest havens in the world, and thus answers better to the emphatic language of Polo, and of Ibn Batuta, than the river of Tswanchau. All the rivers of Fokien, as I leara from Dr. Douglas himself, are rapidly silting up ; and it is probable that the River of Chinchew presented, in the 13th and 14th centuries, a far more impressive aspect as a commercial basin than it does now. But still it must have been far below Amoy Harbour in magni- tude, depth, and accessibility. I have before recognized this, but saw no way to reconcile the proposed deduction with the positive historical facts already stated, which absolutely (to my mind) identify the Zayton of Polo and Rashiduddin with the Chinese city and port of T'swanchau. Dr. Douglas, however, points out that the whole northem shore of Amoy Harbour, with the Islands of Amoy and Quemoy, are within the Fu or Department of T'swanchau ; and the latter name would, in Chinese parlance, apply equally to the city and to any part of the department. He cites among other analogous cases the Treaty Port Neuchwang (in Liautong). That city really lies twenty miles up the Liau River, but the name of Neuchwang is habitually applied by foreigners to Yingtse, which is the actual port Even now much of the trade of Tswanchau merchants is carried on through Amoy, either by junks touching, or by using the shorter sea-passage to 'An-hai, which was once a port of great
the 1 6th century, speaks of Zayton as between Canton and Liampo (Ningpo), and exporting immense quantities of porcelain, salt, and sugar, looks as if he had before him modem information as to the place. He likewise observes : ** All the moderns note the port of Zaiton between Canton and Liampo." Yet I know no other modem allusion except Giovarmi d'EmpoIi's ; and that was printed only a few years ago {BotcrOn Relatione Uiiiversak, pp. 97, 228).
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Chap. LXXXII. THE CITY AND HAVEN OF ZAYTON. 223
trade, and is only twenty miles from T'swanchau.* With such a haven as Amoy Harbour close by, it is improbable that Kublai's vast arma- ments would have made rendezvous in the comparatively inconvenient port of T'swanchau. Probably then the two were spoken of as one. In all this I recognize strong likelihood, and nothing inconsistent with recorded facts, or with Polo's concise statements. It is even possible that (as Dr. Douglas thinks) Polo's words intimate a distinction be- ti^een Zayton the City and Zayton the Ocean Port ; but for me Zayton the city, in Polo's chapters, remains still T'swanchau. Dr. Douglas, however, seems disposed to regard it as Changchau,
The chief arguments urged for this last identity are: (i.) Ibn Batuta's representation of his having embarked at Zayton "on the river," i.e. on the internal navigation system of China, first for Sin-kaldn (Canton), and afterwards for Kinsay. This could not, it is urged, be T'swanchau, the river of which has no communication with the internal navigation, whereas the river at Changchau has such communication, constantly made use of in both directions (interrupted only by brief portages) ; (2.) Martini's mention of the finding various Catholic remains, such as crosses and images of the Virgin, at Changchau, in the early part of the 17 th century, indicating that city as the probable site of the Franciscan establishments.
Whether the application by foreigners of the term Zayton, may, by some possible change in trade arrangements in the quarter-century after Polo's departure from China, have undergone a transfer, is a question which it would be vain to answer positively without further evidence. But as regards Polo's Zayton, I continue in the belief that this was T'swanchau and its haven, with the admission that this haven may probably have embraced that great basin called Amoy Harbour, or part of itf
Martini {circa 1650) describes T'swanchau as delightfully situated on a promontory between two branches of the estuary which forms the harbour, and these so deep that the largest ships could come up to the walls on either side. A great suburb, Loyang, lay beyond the northern water, connected with the city by the most celebrated bridge in China. Collinson's Chart in some points below the town gives only li fathom for the present depth, but Dr. Douglas tells me he has even now occa- sionally seen large junks come close to the city.
Chinchew, though now occasionally visited by missionaries and others, is not a Treaty port, and we have not a great deal of information about its modem state. It is the head-quarters of the T'i-tuhy or
• Martini says of Ganhai ('An-Hai or Nganhai), **Ingens hie mercium ac Sinen- sium naviam copia est .... ex his ('Anhai and Amoy) in totam Indiam merces avehuntur.*'
t Dr. Douglas assures me that the cut at p. 228 is an excellent view of the entrance to the S. channel of the Chang-cJmu River ^ though I derived it from a professed view of the mouth of the Chine hetv Rri^cr. I find he is quite right ; see List of Illustration r.
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general commanding the troops in Fokien. The walls have a circuit of 7 or 8 miles, but embracing much vacant ground. The chief exports now are tea and sugar, which are largely grown in the vicinit)% tobacco, china-ware, nankeens, &c. There are still to be seen (as I learn from Mr. Phillips) the ruins of a fine mosque, said to have been founded by the Arab traders who resorted thither. The English Presbyterian Church Mission has had a chapel in the city for about ten years.
Zayton, we have seen from Ibn Batuta's report, was famed for rich satins called Zaituniah, I have suggested in another work {Cathay, p. 486) that this may be the origin of our word Satin, through the Zettam of medieval Italian (or Aceytuni of medieval Spanish). And I am more strongly disposed to support this, seeing that Francisque-Michel, in con- sidering the origin of Satin hesitates between Satalin from Satalia in Asia Minor and Soudanin from the Soudan or Sultan ; neither half so probable as Zaituni, I may add that in a French list of charges of 1352 we find the intermediate form Zatony, Satin in the modem form occurs in Chaucer : —
** In Surrie whilom dwelt a compagnie Of chapmen rich, and therto sad and trewe, That wide where senten their spicerie, Clothes of gold, and satins riche of hewe."
{Afan of Law^s Tale, st. 6.)
(Recherches^ &c., II. 229 segq, ; Martini^ circa p. no; Kiaproth, Mem, II. 209-10; Cathay, cxciii. 268, 223, 355, 486; Empoli'm Ap- pend, vol. III. 87 to Archivio Storico Italiano ; JDouet d'Arcq. p. 342; Galv,, Discoveries of the World, Hak. Soc., p. 129; Marsden, ist ed p. 372 ; Appendix to Trade Report of A moy, for 1868.)
Note 3. — We have referred in a former note (ch. Ixxvii. note 7) to an apparent change in regard to the Chinese consumption of pepper, which is now said to be trifling. We shall see, in the first chapter of Book III , that Polo estimates the tonnage of Chinese junks by the number of baskets of pepper they carried, and we have seen in last note the large estimate by Giov. d*Empoli of the quantity that went to China in 15 15. Galvano also, speaking of the adventure of Femao Perez d'Andrada to China in 15 17, says that he took in at Pacem a cargo of pepper, " as being the chief article of trade that is valued in China," And it is evident from what Marsden says in his History of Sumatra, that in the last century some tangible quantity was still sent to China. The export from the Company's plantations in Sumatra averaged 1200 tons, of which the greater part came to Europe, the rest went to China.
Note 4. — These tattooing artists were probably employed mainly by mariners frequenting the port. We do not know if the Malays pracrised tattooing before their conversion to Islam. But most Indo-Chinese races tattoo, and the Japanese still " have the greater part of the body and limbs scrolled over with bright-blue dragons, and lions and tigers, and
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figures of men and women, tattooed into their skins with the most artistic and elaborate ornamentation." {Alcock^ I. 191.) Probably the Arab sailors also indulged in the same kind of decoration. It is common among the Arab women now, and Delia Valle speaks of it as in his time so much in vogue among both sexes through E^ypt, Arabia, and Baby- lonia, that he had not been able to escape. (I. 395.)
Note 5. — The divergence in Ramusio's version is here .very notable : ** The River which enters the Port of Zayton is great and wide, running with great velocity, and is a branch of that which flows by the city of Kinsay. And at the place where it quits the main channel is the city of Tingui, of which all that is to be said is that there they make porcelain basins and dishes. The manner of making porcelain was thus related to him. They excavate a certain kind of earth, as it were from a mine, and this they heap into great piles, and then leave it undisturbed and exposed to wind, rain, and sun for 30 or 40 years. In this space of time the earth becomes sufficiently refined for the manufacture of porcelain ; they then colour it at their discretion, and bake it in a furnace. Those who excavate the clay do so always therefore for their sons and grandsons. The articles are so cheap in that city that you get 8 bowls for a Venice groat"
Ibn Batuta speaks of porcelain as manufactured at Zayton ; indeed he says positively (and wrongly) : " Porcelain is made nowhere in China except in the cities of Zaitun and Sinkalan " (Canton). A good deal of China ware in modern times is made in Fokien and Canton provinces, and it is still an article of export from T'swanchau and Amoy ; but it is only of a very ordinary kind. Pakwiha, between Amoy and Changchau, is mentioned in the Chinese Commercial Guide (p. 114) as now the place where the coarse blue ware, so largely exported to India, &c., is largely manufactured ; and Phillips mentions Tungan (about half way between T'swanchau and Changchau) as a great seat of this manufacture.
Looking however to the Ramusian interpolations, which do not indi- cate a locality necessarily near Zayton, or even in Fokien, it is possible that Murray is right in supposing the place intended in these to be really King-te-ching in Kiangsi, the great seat of the manufacture of genuine porcelain, or rather its chief mart Jauchau-fu on the Poyang Lake.
The geographical indication of this city of porcelain, as at the place where a branch of the River of Kinsay flows ofi" towards Zayton, points to a notion prevalent in the Middle Ages as to the interdivergence of rivers in general, and especially of Chinese rivers. This notion will be found well embodied in the Catalan Map, and something like it in the maps of the Chinese themselves ; * it is a ruling idea with Ibn Batuta,
♦ In a modem Chinese geographical work abstracted by Mr. Laidlay, we are told that the great river of Tsim-lo, qr Siam, ** penetrates to a branch of the Hwang- Ho " (y. A. S. B., XVII. Pt. I., 157).
VOL. II. a
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who, as we have seen (in note 2), speaks of the River of Zayton as con- nected in the interior with " the Great River," and who travels by this waterway accordingly from Zayton to Kinsay, taking no notice of the mountains of Fokien. So also {supra, p. i6o) Rushiduddin had been led to suppose that the Great Canal extended to 2^yton. With ap- parently tiie same idea of one Great River of China ,with many ramifications, Abulfeda places most of the great cities of China upon "The River." The "Great River of China," with its branches to Kinsay, is alluded to in a hke spirit by Wassif {supra, p. 197). Polo has already indicated the same idea (p. 203).
Assuming this as the notion involved in the passage from Ramusio, the position of Jauchau might be fairly described as that of Tingui is therein, standing as it does on the Poyang Lake, from which there is such a ramification of internal navigation, e, g. to Kinsay or Hangchau-fu directly by Kwansin, the Changshan portage already referred to (supra, p. 204), and the Tsien Tang (and this is the Kinsay River line to which I imagine Polo here to refer), or circuitously by the Yangtsze and Great Canal ; to Canton by the portage of the Meiling pass ; and to the cities of Fokien either by the Kwansin River or by Kianchanfu, further south, with a portage in each case across the Fokien mountains. None of our maps give any idea of the extent of internal navigation in China, (See Klaproth, Mtm, vol. IIL)
The story of the life-long period during which the porcelain clay was exposed to temper long held its ground, and probably was only dispelled by the publication of the details of the King-te-ching manufacture by Pfere d'EntrecoUes in the Lettres Edifiantes,
Note 6. — The meagre statement in the French texts shows merely that Polo had heard of the Fokien dialect. The addition from Ramusio shows further that he was aware of the unity of the written character throughout China, but gives no indication of knowledge of its eculiar principles, nor of the extent of difference in the spoken dialects. Even different districts of Fokien, according to Martini, use dialects so different that they understand each other with difficulty (108).
Professor Kidd, speaking of his instructors in the Mandarin and Fokien dialects respectively, says : " The teachers in both cases read the same books, composed in the same style, and attached precisely the same ideas to the written symbols, but could not understand each other in conversation." Moreover, besides these sounds attaching to the Chinese characters when read in the dialect of Fokien, thus discrepant from the sounds used in reading the same characters in the Mandarin dialect, yet another class of sounds is used to express the same ideas in the Fokien dialect when it is used colloquially and without reference to written symbols! {KidcCs China, &c. pp. 21-23.)
The term Fokien dialect in the preceding passage is ambiguous, as will be seen from the following remarks, which have been derived from
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the Preface and Appendices to the Rev. Dr. Douglas's Dictionary of the Spoken Language of Amoy,* and which throw a distinct light on the subject of this note : —
* The vernacular or spoken language of Amoy is not a mere colloquial dialect or patois, it is a distinct language — one of the many and widely differing spoken languages which divide among them the soil of China. For these spoken languages are not dialects of one language, but cognate languages, bearing to each other a relation similar to that between Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, or between English, Dutch, German, and Danish. The so-called ** written language'' is indeed uniform throughout the whole country, but that is rather a notation than a language. And this written language, as read aloud from books, is not spoken in any place whatever, under any form of pronunciation. The most learned men never employ it as a means of ordinary oral communication even among themselves. It is, in fact, a dead language, related to the various spoken languages of China, somewhat as Latin is to the languages of Southern Europe.
* Again : Dialects, properly speaking, of the Amoy vernacular lan- guage are found {e, g.) in the neighbouring districts of Changchew, Chin- chew, and Tungan, and the language with its subordinate dialects is believed to be spoken by 8 or 10 millions of people. Of the other lan- guages of China the most nearly related to the Amoy is the vernacular of Chau-chau-fu, often called " the Swatow dialect," from the only treaty- port in that region. The ancestors of the people speaking it emigrated many years ago from Fuh-kien, and are still distinguished there by the appellation Hok-U>, i,e, people from Hok-kien (or Fuh-kien). This lan- guage differs from the Amoy, much as Dutch differs from German, or Portuguese from Spanish.
* In the Island of Hai-nan (Hdi-lim), again (setting aside the central aborigines), a language is spoken which differs from Amoy more than that of Swatow, but is more nearly related to these two than to any other of the languages of China,
* In Fuh-chau-fu we have another language which is largely spoken in the centre and north of Fuh-kien. This has many points of resem- blance to the Amoy, but is quite unintelligible to the Amoy people, with the exception of an occasional word or phrase.
*Hing-hwa-fu (Heng-hok), between Fuh-chau and Chinchew, has also a language of its own, though containing only two Hien districts It is alleged to be unintelligible both at Amoy and at Fuhchau.
* To the other languages of China that of Amoy is less closely related ;
♦ Chinese- English JyicnofiKKY of Ou Vernacular or Spoken ianguage of Amoy^ loiih the principal variations of the Chang-chew and Chin-chew Dialects ; by the Rev. Carstairs Douglas, M. A., LL.D., Glasg., Missionary of the Presb. Church in England. (Triibncr, 1873.) I ™^t note that I have not access to the book itself, but condense thc3c remarks from extracts and abstracts made by a friend at my request.
Q 2
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yet all evidently spring from one common stock. But that common stock is not the modem Mandarin dialect, but the ancient form of the Chinese language as spoken some 3000 years ago. The so-called Man- darin^ far from being the original form, is usually more changed than any. It is in the ancient form of the language (naturally) that the relation of Chinese to other languages can best be traced ; and as the Amoy vernacular, which very generally retains the final consonants in their original shape, has been one of the chief sources from which the ancient form of Chinese has been recovered, the study of that vernacular is of considerable importance.*
Note 7. — This is inconsistent with his former statements as to the supreme wealth of Kinsay. But with Marco the subject in hand is always pro magnifico,
Ramusio says that the Traveller will now " begin to speak of the territories, cities, and provinces of the Greater, Lesser, and Middle India, in which regions he was when in the service of the Great Kaan, being sent thither on divers matters of business : and then again when he returned to the same quarter with the queen of King Argon, and with his father and uncle, on his way back to his native land. So he will relate the strange things that he saw in those Indies, not omitting others which he heard related by persons of reputation and worthy of credit, and things that were pointed out to him on the maps of mariners of the Indies aforesaid."
The Kaan's Fleet leaving the Port of Zayton.
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BOOK THIRD.
JAPAN, THE ARCHIPELAGO, SOUTHERN INDIA, AND THE COASTS AND ISLANDS OF THE INDIAN SEA.
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BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
Of the Merchant Ships of Manzi that sail upon the Indian Seas.
Having finished our discourse concerning those countries wherewith our Book hath been occupied thus far, we are now about to enter on the subject of India, and to tell you of all the wonders thereof.
And first let us speak of the ships in which merchants go to and fro amongst the Isles of India.
These ships, you must know, are of fir timber.' They have but one deck, though each of them contains some 50 or 60 cabins, wherein the merchants abide greatly at their ease, every man having one to himself. The ship hath but one rudder, but it hath four masts ; and some- times they have two additional masts, which they ship and unship at pleasure/
[Moreover the larger of their vessels have some thirteen compartments or severances in the interior, made with planking strongly framed, in case mayhap the ship should spring a leak, either by running on a rock or by the blow of a hungry whale (as shall betide ofttimes, for when the ship in her course by night sends a ripple back alongside of the whale, the creature seeing the foam fancies there is something to eat afloat, and makes a rush forward, whereby it often shall stave in some part of the ship). In such case the water that enters the leak flows to the bilge, which is always kept clear; and the mariners having ascertained where the damage is, empty the cargo from that compart-
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232 MARCO POLO. Book III.
ment into those adjoining, for the planking is so well fitted that the water cannot pass from one compartment to another. They then stop the leak and replace the lading.3]
The fastenings are all of good iron nails and the sides are double, one plank laid over the other, and caulked outside and in. The planks are not pitched, for those people do not have any pitch, but they daub the sides with another matter, deemed by them far better than pitch ; it is this. You see they take some lime and some chopped hemp, and these they knead together with a certain wood- oil ; and when the three are thoroughly amalgamated, they hold like any glue. And with this mixture they do pay their ships.^
Each of their great ships requires at least 200 mariners [some of them 300]. They are indeed of great size, for one ship shall carry 5000 or 6000 baskets of pepper [and they used formerly to be larger than they are now]. And aboard these ships, you must know, when there is no wind they use sweeps, and these sweeps are so big that to pull them requires four mariners to each.^ Every great ship has certain large barks or tenders attached to it ; these are large enough to carry 1000 baskets of pepper, and carry 50 or 60 mariners apiece [some of them 80 or 100], and they are likewise moved by oars ; they assist the great ship by towing her, at such times as her sweeps are in use [or even when she is under sail, if the wind be somewhat on the beam ; not if the wind be astern, for then the sails of the big ship would take the wind out of those of the tenders, and she would run them down]. Each ship has two [or three] of these barks, but one is bigger than the others. There are also some ten [small] boats for the service of each great ship, to lay out the anchors, catch fish, bring supplies aboard, and the like. When the ship is under sail she carries these boats slung to her sides. And the large tenders have their boats in like manner.
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When the ship has been a year in work and they wish to repair her, they nail on a third plank over the first two, and caulk and pay it well; and when another repair is wanted they nail on yet another plank, and so on year by year as it is required. Howbeit, they do this only for a certain number of years, and till there are six thicknesses of planking. When a ship has come to have six planks on her sides, one over the other, they take her no more on the high seas, but make use of her for coasting as long as she will last, and then they break her up.^
Now that I have told you about the ships which sail upon the Ocean Sea and among the Isles of India, let us proceed to speak of the various wonders of India ; but first and foremost I must tell you about a number of Islands that there are in that part of the Ocean Sea where we now are, I mean the Islands lying to the eastward. So let us begin with an Island which is called Chipangu.
Note 1. — Pine is the staple timber for ship-building both at Canton and in Fokien. There is a very large export of it from Fuchau, and even the chief fuel at that city is from a kind of fir. Several varieties of pine-wood are also brought down the rivers for sale at Canton. (N. and Q. China and Japan^ I. 170 ; Fortune^ I. 286 ; Doolittle)
Note 2. — Note the one rudder again {supra, Bk. I. ch. xix, note 3). One of the shifting masts was probably a bowsprit, which, according to Lecomte, the Chinese occasionally use, very slight, and planted on the larboard bow.
Note 3. — The system of water-tight compartments, for the descrip- tion of which we have to thank Ramusio's text, in our own time introduced into European construction, is still maintained by the Chinese, not only in sea-going junks, but in the larger river craft (See Mid, Kingd. 11. 25 ; Biakiston, 88 ; Deguignes, I. 204-6.)
Note 4. — This still remains quite correct, hemp, old nets, and the fibre of a certain creeper being used for oakum. The wood-oil is derived firom a tree called Tong-shu, I do not know if identical with the wood-oil trees of Arakan and Pegu {Dipterocarpus laevis).
Note 5. — The junks that visit Singapore still use these sweeps (/. Ind. Arch, II. 607). Ibn Batuta puts a much larger number of men to
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eaxJi. It will be seen from his account below that great ropes were attached to tlie oars to pull by, the bulk of timber being too large to grasp ; as in the old French galleys wooden manettes^ or grips, were attached to the oar for the same purpose.
Note 6. — The Chinese sea-going vessels of those days were appa- rently larger than was at all common in European navigation. Marco here speaks of 200 (or in Ramusio up to 300) mariners, a large crew indeed for a merchant vessel, but not so great as is implied in Odoric's statement, that the ship in which he went from India to China had 700 souls on board. The numbers carried by Chinese junks are occasionally still enormous. " In February, 1822, Captain Pearl, of the English ship Indiana^ coming through Caspar Straits, fell in with the cargo and crew of a wrecked junk, and saved 198 persons out of 1600, with whom she had left Amoy, whom he landed at Pontianak. This humane act cost him 11,000/." (Quoted by Williams from Cfun. Rep, VI. 149.)
The following are some other njedieval accounts of the China ship- ping, all unanimous as to the main facts.
Friar Jordanus : — " The vessels which they navigate to Cathay be very big, and have upon the ship's hull more than one hundred cabins, and with a fair wind they carry ten sails, and they are very bulky, being made of three thicknesses of plank, so that the first thickness is as in our great ships, the second crosswise, the third again longwise. In sooth, 'tis a very strong affair ! " (55.)
Nicolo Conti : — " They build some ships much larger than ours, capable of containing 2000 butts {vegetes)^ with five masts and five sails. The lower part is constructed with triple planking, in order to withstand the force of the tempests to which they are exposed. And the ships are divided into compartments, so formed that if one part be shattered the rest remains in good order, and enables the vessel to complete its voyage."
Ibn Batuta : — " Chinese ships only are* used in navigating the sea of China, . . . There are three classes of these : (i) the Lai^ge, which are called yi7««i (sing. Junk) \ (2) the Middling, which are called Zoo; and (3) the Small, called Kakam. Each of the greater ships has from twelve sails down to three. These are made of bamboo laths woven into a kind of mat ; they are never lowered, and they are braced this way and that as the wind may blow. When these vessels anchor the sails are allowed to fly loose. Each ship has a crew of 1000 men, viz., 600 mariners and 400 soldiers, among whom are archers, target-men, and crossbow-men to shoot naphtha. Each large vessel is attended by three others, which are called respectively * The Half,' * The Third,* and * The Quarter.' These vessels are built only at Zayton, in China, and at Sfn- kaldn or Sfn-ul-Sfn (i.e. Canton). This is the way they are built They construct two walls of timber, which they connect by very thick slabs of wood, clenching all fast this way and that with huge spikes, each of
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Chap. II. THE ISLAND OF CHIPANGU. 235
which is three cubits in length. When the two walls have been united by these slabs they apply the bottom planking, and then launch the hull before completing the construction. The timbers projecting from the sides towards the water serve the crew for going down to wash and for other needs. And to these projecting timbers are attached the oars, which are like masts in size, and need from 10 to 15 men* to ply each of them. There are about 20 of these great oars, and the rowers at each oar stand in two ranks facing one another. The oars are provided with two strong cords or cables ; each rank pulls at one of these and then lets go, whilst the other rank pulls on the opposite cable. These rowers have a pleasant chaunt at their work, usually singing LSIal LSla 1 1 The three tenders which we have mentioned above also use oars, and tow the great ships when required.
" On each ship four decks are constructed ; and there are cabins and public rooms for the merchants. Some of these cabins are provided with closets and other conveniences, and they have keys so that their tenants can lock them, and carry with them their wives or concubines. The crew in some of the cabins have their children, and they sow kitchen herbs, ginger, &c., in wooden buckets. The captain is a very great Don ; and when he lands, the archers and negro-slaves march before him with javelins, swords, drums, horns, and trumpets." (IV. pp. 91 seqq. and 247 segq. combined.) Comparing this very interesting description with Polo's, we see that they agree in all essentials except size and the number of decks. It is not unlikely that the revival of the trade with India, which Kublai stimulated, may have in its development under his successors led to the revival also of the larger ships of former times to which Marco alludes.
CHAPTER II.
Description of the Island of Chipangu, and the Great Kaan's Despatch of a Host against it.
Chipangu is an Island towards the east in the high seas, 1500 miles distant from the Continent; and a very great Island it is.'
The people are white, civilized, and well-favoured. They are Idolaters, and are dependent on nobody. And I
• Or even 30 (p. 248).
t Corresponding to the ** Hevelow and rumbelow " of the Christian oarsmen (>ec Caur Jc Lion in IVeber^ II. 99).
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236 MARCO POLO. Book III.
can tell you the quantity of gold they have is endless ; for they find it in their own Islands, [and the King does not allow it to be exported. Moreover] few merchants visit the country because it is so far from the main land, and thus it comes to pass that their gold is abundant beyond all measure.'
I will tell you a wonderful thing about the Palace of the Lord of that Island. You must know that he hath a great Palace which is entirely roofed with fine gold, just as our churches are roofed with lead, insomuch that it would scarcely be possible to estimate its value. Moreover, all the pavement of the Palace, and the floors of its chambers,
Ancient Japanese Emperor. (After a Native Drawing ; from Humbert.)
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Chap. II. EXPEDITION AGAINST CHIPANGU. 237
are entirely of gold, in plates like slabs of stone, a good two fingers thick ; and the windows also are of gold, so that altogether the richness of this Palace is past all bounds and all belief.^
They have also pearls in abundance, which are of a rose colour, but fine, big, and round, and quite as valuable as the white ones. [In this Island some of the dead are buried, and others are burnt. When a body is burnt, they put one of these pearls in the mouth, for such is their custom.] They have also quantities of other precious stones.-* .
Cublay, the Grand Kaan who now reigneth, having heard much of the immense wealth that was in this Island, formed a plan to get possession of it. For this purpose he sent two of his Barons with a great navy, and a great force of horse and foot. These Barons were able and valiant men, one of them called Abacan and the other VoNSAiNCHiN, and they weighed with all their company from the ports of Zayton and Kinsay, and put out to sea. They sailed until they reached the Island aforesaid, and there they landed, and occupied the open country and the villages, but did not succeed in getting possession of any city or castle. And so a disaster befel them, as I shall now relate.
You must know that there was much ill-will between those two Barons, so that one would do nothing to help the other. And it came to pass that there arose a north wind which blew with great fury, and caused great damage along the coasts of that Island, for its harbours were few. It blew so hard that the Great Kaans fleet could not stand against it. And when the chiefs saw that, they came to the conclusion that if the ships remained where they were the whole navy would perish. So they all got on board and made sail to leave the country. But when they had gone about four miles they came to a small Island, on which they were driven ashore in spite of all they could
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do ; and a large part of the fleet was wrecked, and a great multitude of the force perished, so that there escaped only some 30,000 men, who took refuge on this Island.
These held themselves for dead men, for they were without food, and knew not what to do, and they were in great despair when they saw that such of the ships as had escaped the storm were making full sail for their own country without the slightest sign of turning back to help them. And this was because of the bitter hatred between the two Barons in command of the force ; for the Baron who escaped never showed the slightest desire to return to his colleague who was left upon the Island in the way you have heard ; though he might easily have done so after the storm ceased ; and it endured not long. He did no- thing of the kind, however, but made straight for home. And you must know that the Island to which the soldiers had escaped was uninhabited; there was not a creature upon it but themselves.
Now we will tell you what befel those who escaped on the fleet, and also those who were left upon the Island.
Note 1. — Chipangu represents the Chinese Zhi-pdn-kwe, the king- dom of Japan, the name Zhi-pan being, it is stated, the mandarin form, of which the term Nipon or Niphotiy used in Japan, is a dialertic variation, both meaning " the origin of the sun," or sun-rising. The name Chipangu is used also by Rashiduddin. Om Japan was probably taken from the Mzizy Japun 01 Japdng,
It is remarkable that the name Nipon occurs, in the form of Al'Ndfun^ in the IkhTt'dn-al-Safdy supposed to date from the loth century. (See/ A. S. B., XVII. Pt. I. 502.)
Note 2. — The causes briefly mentioned in the text maintained the abundance and low price of gold in Japan till the recent opening of the trade (see Bk. II. ch. 1. note 5). Edrisi had heard that gold in the isles of Sila (or Japan) was so abundant that dog-collars were made of it.
Note 3. — This was doubtless an old " yam," repeated from genen- tion to generation. We find in a Chinese work quoted by Amyot : " The palace of the king (of Japan) is remarkable for its singular constmctioD.
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Chap. II. THE ISLAND OF CHIPAN(,U. 239
It is a vast edifice, of extraordinary height ; it has nine stories, and presents on all sides an exterior shining with the purest gold." {Mem, cone, les Chinois^ XIV. 55.) See also a like story in Kaempfer {H, du Japon, I. 139).
Note 4. — Kaempfer speaks of pearls being found in considerable numbers, chiefly about Satsuma, and in the Gulf of Omura, in Kiusiu.
AncicDt Japanese Archer. (From a Native Drawing.)
From what Alcock says they do not seem now to be abundant {lb, I. 95 ; Alcock^ I. 200.) No precious stones are mentioned by Kaempfer.
Rose-tinted pearls are frequent among the Scotch pearls, and, according to Mr. King, those of this tint are of late the most highly
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240 MARCO POLO. Book III.
esteemed in Paris. Such pearls were perhaps also most highly este«ned in old India; for red pearls (Lohitamukti) form one of the seven precious objects which it was incumbent to use in the adornment of Buddhistic reliquaries, and to distribute at the building of a Ds^ba. {Nat. Hist of Free. Stones^ &c., 263; KoeppeUy I. 541.)
CHAPTER III.
What further came of the Great Kaan's Expedition against
Chipangu.
You see those who were left upon the Island, some 30,000 souls, as I have said, did hold themselves for dead men, for they saw no possible means of escape. And when the King of the Great Island got news how the one part of the expe- dition had saved themselves upon that Isle, and the other part was scattered and fled, he was right glad thereat, and he gathered together all the ships of his territory and pro- ceeded with them, the sea now being calm, to the little Isle, and landed his troops all round it. And when the Tartars saw them thus arrive, and the whole force landed, without any guard having been left on board the ships (the act of men very little acquainted with such work), they had the sagacity to feign flight. [Now the Island was \^rj high in the middle, and whilst the enemy were hastening after them by one road they fetched a compass by another and] in this way managed to reach the enemy's ships and to get aboard of them. This they did easily enough, for they encountered no opposition.
Once they were on board they got under weigh imme- diately for the great Island, and landed there, carrying with them the standards and banners of the King of the Island; and in this wise they advanced to the capital. The garri- son of the city, suspecting nothing wrong, when they saw their own banners advancing supposed that it was their
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Chap. III. EXPEDITION AGAINST CHIPANGU. 241
own host returning, and so gave them admittance. The Tartars as soon as they had got in seized all the bulwarks and drove out all who were in the place except the pretty women, and these they kept for themselves. In this way the Great Kaan's people got possession of the city.
When the King of the great Island and his army per- ceived that both fleet and city were lost, they were greatly cast down ; howbeit, they got away to the great Island on board some of the ships which had not been carried oflf. And the King then gathered all his host to the siege of the city, and invested it so straitly that no one could go in or come out. Those who were within held the place for seven months, and strove by all means to send word to the Great Kaan ; but it was all in vain, they never could get the intelUgence carried to him. So when they saw they could hold out no longer they gave themselves up, on condition that their lives should be spared, but still that they should never quit the Island. And this befel in the year of our Lord 1279.' The Great Kaan ordered the Baron who had fled so disgracefully to lose his head. And afterwards he caused the other also, who had been left on the Island, to be put to death, for he had never behaved as a good soldier ought to do.'
But I must tell you a wonderful thing that I had for- gotten, which happened on this expedition.
You see, at the beginning of the aflfair, when the Kaan's f>eople had landed on the great Island and occupied the open country as I told you, they stormed a tower belonging to some of the islanders who refused to surrender, and they cut oflf the heads of all the garrison except eight ; on these eight they found it impossible to inflict any wound ! Now this was by virtue of certain stones which they had in their arms inserted between the skin and the flesh, with such skill as not to show at all externally. And the charm and virtue of these stones was such that those who wore them could never perish by stfeel. So when the Barons learned
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this they ordered the men to be beaten to death with clubs. And after their death the stones were extracted from the bodies of all, and were greatly prized.^
Now the story of the discomfiture of the Great Kaan's folk came to pass as I have told you. But let us have done with that matter, and return to our subject.
Note 1. — Kublai had long hankered after the conquest of Japan, or had at least, after his fashion, desired to obtain an acknowledgment of supremacy from the Japanese sovereign. He had taken steps in this view as early as 1266, but entirely without success. The fullest acces- sible particulars respecting his efiforts are contained in the Japanese Annals translated by Titsing; and these are in complete accordance with the Chinese histories as given by Gaubil, Demailla, and in Pauthier's extracts, so far as these three latter enter into particulars. But it seems clear from the comparison that the Japanese chronicler had the Chinese Annals in his hands.
In 1268, 1269, 1270, and 1271, Kublai's efforts were repeated to little purpose, and, provoked at this, in 1274, he sent a fleet of 300 vessels with 15,000 men against Japan. This was defeated near the Island of Tsiusima with heavy loss.
Nevertheless Kublai seems in the following years to have renewed his attempts at negotiation. The Japanese patience was exhausted, and, in 1280, they put one of his ambassadors to death.
" As soon as the Moko (Mongols) heard of this, they assembled a considerable army to conquer Japan. When informed of their prepara- tions, the Dairi sent ambassadors to Ize and other temples to invoke the gods. Fosiono Toki Mune, who resided at Kama Kura, ordered troops to assemble at Tsukuzi {Tsikouzen of Alcock*s Map), and sent .... numerous detachments to Miyako to guard the Dairi and the Togou (Heir Apparent) against all danger. ... In the first moon (of 1281) the Mongols named Asikan (Ngo-tsa-han*), Fan-bunko (Fan-wen-hu), Kinto (Hintu), and Kosakio (Hung-cha-Khieu) Generals of their aimy, which consisted of 100,000 men, and was embarked on numerous ships of war. Asikan fell ill on the passage, and this made the second General (Fan-wen-hu) undecided as to his course.
" *]th Month, The entire fleet arrived at the Island of Firando (P'hing-hu), and passed thence to Goriosan (Ulungshan). The troops of Tsukuzi were under arms, ist of 2t^d Month, A frightful storm arose ; the Mongol ships foundered or were sorely shattered. The General (Fan-wen-hu) fled with the other Generals on the vessels that had least suffered ; nobody has ever heard what became of them. The army of
♦ These names in parentheses are the Chinese forms ; the others, the Japanese modes of reading them. *
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Chap. III. THE INVASION OF JAPAN. 243
100,000 men, which had landed below Goriosan, wandered about for three days without provisions ; and the soldiers began to plan the building of vessels in which they might escape to China.
" ^th day. The Japanese army invested and attacked them with great vigour. The Mongols were totally defeated. 30,000 of them were
Japanoe in fight with Chinese. (After Siebokl, from an ancient Japanese drawing.)
" 6r cnnnt alimt ctstr estmrt He la Hcsconfiture He les gnu Hou Srant Itaan.''
made prisoners and conducted to Fakata (the Fokouoka of Aicock's Map, but Fakatta in Kaempfer*s), and there put to death. Grace was extended to only (three men), who were sent to China with the intelligence of the £«Ue of the army. The destruction of so numerous a fleet was con- sidered the most evident proof of the protection of the gods " {Titsingh, p. 264-5). At p. 259 of the same work Klaproth gives another account from the Japanese Encyclopaedia ; the difference is not material.
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The Chinese Annals, in Demailla, state that the Japanese spared 10,000 or 12,000 of the Southern Chinese, whom they retained as slaves. Gaubil says that 30,000 Mongols were put to death, whilst 70,000 Co- reans and Chinese were made slaves.
Kublai was .loth to put up with this huge discomfiture, and in 1283 he made preparations for another expedition ; but the project excited strong discontent; so strong that some Buddhist monks whom he sent before to collect information, were thrown overboard by the Chinese sailors; and he gave it up. {Demailla, IX. 409; 418, 428; Gaubil, 195 ; Deguignes, III. 177.)
The Abacan of Polo is probably the Asikan of the Japanese, whom Gaubil calls Argan. Vonsainchin is perhaps 7^j«-Wen-hu with the Chinese title of Tsiang-Kiun or General (elsewhere represented in Polo by Sangon), — Fan-Tsiang-kiun.
We see that, as usual, whilst Marco's account in some of the main features concurs with that of the histories, he gives a good many addi- tional particulars, some of which, such as the ill-will between the Generals, are no doubt genuine. But of the story of the capture of the Japanese capital by the shipwrecked army we know not what to make : we can't accept it certainly.
Note 2. — Ram, says he was sent to a certain island called Zorza {Chorcha T) where men who have failed in duty are put to death in this manner : They wrap the arms of the victim in the hide of a newly flayed buffalo, and sew it tight As this dries it compresses him so terribly that he cannot move, and so, finding no help, his life ends in misery. The same kind of torture is reported of different countries in the East: e.g., see Makrizi, Pt III. p. 108, and Pottinger, as quoted by Marsden in loco. It also appears among the tortures of a Buddhist hell as represented in a temple at Canton {Oliphanfs Narrative, I. 168).
Note 3. — Like devices to procure invulnerability are common in the Indo-Chinese countries. The Burmese sometimes insert pellets of gold under the skin with this view. At a meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1868, gold and silver coins were shown, which had been extracted from under the skin of a Burmese convict who had been executed at the Andaman Islands. Friar Odoric speaks of the practice in one of the Indian Islands (apparently Borneo) ; and the stones pos- sessing such virtue were, according to him, found in the bamboo, pre- sumably the siliceous concretions called Tabashir. Conti also describes the practice in Java of inserting such amulets under the skin. The Malays of Sumatra, too, have great faith in the efficacy of certain " stones, which they pretend are extracted from reptiles, birds, animals, &c., in preventing them from being wounded." (See Mission to Ava, p. 208; Cathay, 94; Conti, p. 32 ; Proc. As. Soc. Beng. 1868, p. 116; Anderson's Mission to Sumatra, p. 323.)
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Chap. IV. THE SEA OF CHIN. 245
CHAPTER IV.
Concerning the Fashion of the Idols.
Now you must know that the Idols of Cathay, and of Manzi, and of this Island, are all of the same class. And in this Island as well as elsewhere, there be some of the Idols that have the head of an ox, some that have the head of a pig, some of a dog, some of a sheep, and some of divers other kinds. And some of them have four heads, whilst some have three, one growing out of either shoulder. There are also some that have four hands, some ten, some a thousand ! And they do put more faith in those Idols that have a thousand hands than in any of the othefs.' And when any Christian asks them why they make their Idols in so many different guises, and not all alike, they reply that just so their forefathers were wont to have them made, and just so they will leave them to their children, and these to the after generations. And so they will be handed down for ever. And you must understand that the deeds ascribed to these Idols are such a parcel of devilries as it is best not to tell. So let us have done with the Idols, and speak of other thmgs.
But I must tell you one thing still concerning that Island (and 'tis the same with the other Indian Islands), that if the natives take prisoner an enemy who cannot pay a ransom, he who hath the prisoner summons all his friends and relations, and they put the prisoner to death, and then they cook him and eat him, and they say there is no meat in the world so good ! — But now we will have done with that Island and speak of something else.
You must know the Sea in which lie the Islands of those parts is called the Sea of Chin, which is as much as to say "The Sea over against Manzi." For, in the
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language of those Isles, when they say Chin^ 'tis Manzi they mean. And I tell you with regard to that Eastern Sea of Chin, according to what is said by the experienced pilots and mariners of those parts, there be 7459 Islands in the waters frequented by the said mariners; and that is how they know the fact, for their whole life is spent in navigating that sea. And there is not one of those Islands but produces valuable and odorous woods like the lignaloe, aye and better too ; and they produce also a great variety of spices. For example in those Islands grows pepper as white as snow, as well as the black in great quantities. In fact the riches of those Islands is something wonderful, whether in gold or precious stones, or in all manner of spicery ; but they lie so far off from the main land that it is hard to get to them. And when the ships of Zayton and Kinsay do voyage thither they make vast profits by their venture."
It takes them a whole year for the voyage, going in winter and returning in summer. For in that Sea there are but two winds that blow, the one that carries them out- ward and the other that brings them homeward ; and the one of these winds blows all the winter, and the other all the summer. And you must know these regions are so far from India that it takes a long time also for the voyage thence.
Though that Sea is called the Sea of Chin, as I have told you, yet it is part of the Ocean Sea all the same. But just as in these parts people talk of the Sea of England and the Sea of Rochelle, so in those countries they speak of the Sea of Chin and the Sea of India, and so on, though they all are but parts of the Ocean.^
Now let us have done with that region which is very inaccessible and out of the way. Moreover, Messer Marco Polo never was there. And let me tell you the Great Kaan has nothing to do with them, nor do they render him any tribute or service.
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Chap. IV. GULF OF CHEINAN. 247
So let US go back to Zayton and take up the order of our book from that point/
Note 1. — " Several of the (Chinese) gods have homs on the forehead, or wear animals* heads ; some have three eyes. .... Some are repre- sented in the Indian manner with a multiplicity of arms. We saw at Yangcheufu a goddess with thirty arms." {Deguignes^ I. 364-6.)
The reference to any particular form of idolatry here is vague. But in Tibetan Buddhism, with which Marco was familiar, all these extrava- gances are prominent, though repugnant to the more orthodox Buddhism of the South.
When the Dalai Lama came to visit the Altun Khan, to secure the reconversion of the Mongols in 1577, he appeared as a manifest embo- diment of the Bodhisatva Avalokite9vara, with/(W/r hands ^ of which two were always folded across the breast ! The same Bodhisatva is some- times represented with eleven heads. Manjushri manifests himself in a golden body with 1000 hands and 1000 Fdtras or vessels, in each of which were 1000 figures of Sakya visible, &c. {Koeppm, II. 137 ; Vas- silyev^ 200.)
Note 2. — Polo seems in this passage to be speaking of the more easterly Islands of the Archipelago, such as the Philippines, the Mo- luccas, &c, but with vague ideas of their position.
Note 3. — In this passage alone Polo makes use of the now familiar name of China- " Chin" as he says, " in the language of those Isles means ManzV In fact, though the form Chin is more correctly Persian, we do get the exact form China from " the language of those Isles," /. ^., from the Malay, ' China is also used in Japanese.
What he says about the Ocean and the various names of its parts is nearly a version of a passage in the geographical Poem of Dionysius, ending .• —
Oihtts *CXK€cufhs w€pi94Zpofif yeuap &vcuray
Tolos ^flbv Kol ro7a fur* kvJfpdffiy oMfiaC^ HXkvu (42-3).
So also Abulfeda : " This is the sea which flows from the Ocean Sea. .... This sea takes the names of the countries it washes. Its eastern extremity is called the Sea of Chin .... the part west of this is called the Sea of India .... then comes the Sea of Fdrs, the Sea of Berbera, and lastly the Sea of Kolzum " (Red Sea).
Note 4. — The Ramusian here inserts a short chapter, shown by the awkward way in which it comes in to be a very manifest interpola- tion, though possibly still an interpolation by the Traveller's hand : —
" Leaving the Port of Zayton you sail westward and something south- westward for 1500 miles, passing a gulf called Cheinan, having a length
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of two months' sail towards the north. Along the whole of its south- east side it borders on the province of Manzi, and on the other side with Anin and Coloman, and many other provinces formerly spoken of Within this Gulf there are innumerable Islands, almost all well-peopled ; and in these is found a great quantity of gold-dust, which is collected from the sea where the rivers discharge. There is copper also, and other things ; and the people drive a trade with each other in the things that are pecuhar to their respective Islands. They have also a traffic with the people of the mainland, selUng them gold and copper and other things ; and purchasing in turn what they stand in need of In the greater part of these Islands plenty of com grows. This gulf is so great, and inhabited by so many people, that it seems like a world in itself."
This passage is translated by Marsden with much forcing, so as to describe the China Sea, embracing the Philippine Islands, &a ; but, as a matter of fact, it seems clearly to indicate the writer's conception as of a great gulf grunning up into the continent between Southern China and Tongking for alength equal to two months' journey.
The name of the gulf, Cheinan, /. ^, Heinan^ may eidier be that oi the Island so called, or, as I rather incline to supp^se, ^An-nan, /." ^, Tongking. But even by Camoens, writing at Macao in 1559-60, the Gulf of Hainan is styled an unknown sea (though this perhaps is only appro- priate to the prophetic speaker) : —
** V6s, corre a costa, que Champa se chama, Cuja mata he do pao chciroso ornada : Ves, Cauchichina estd de escura fama, E dt Aindo vi a incognita enseada " (X. 129).
And in Sir Robert Dudley's Arcano del Mare (Firenze, 1647), we find a great bottlenecked gulf, of some 5 J^ in length, running up to the north from Tongking, very much as I have represented the 'Gulf of Cheinan in the attempt to realize Polo's Own Geography (see map in Introduc- tory Essay).
CHAPTER V. Of the great Country called Chamba.
You must know that on leaving the port of Zayton you sail west-south-west for 1500 miles, and then you come to a country called Chamba,' a very rich region, having a king of its own. The people are Idolaters and pay a yearly
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Chap. V. THE COUNTRY CALLED CHAMBA. 249
tribute to the Great Kaan, which consists of elephants and nothing but elephants. And I will tell you how they came to pay this tribute.
It happened in the year of Christ 1278 that the Great Kaan sent a Baron of his called Sagatu, with a great force of horse and foot against this King of Chamba, and this Baron opened the war on a great scale against the King and his country.
Now the King [whose name was Accambale] was a very aged man, nor had he such a force as the Baron had. And when he saw what havoc the Baron was making with his kingdom he was grieved to the heart. So he bade messengers get ready and despatched them to the Great Kaan. And they said to the Kaan : " Our Lord the King of Chamba salutes you as his liege-lord, and would have you to know that he is stricken in years and long hath held his realm in peace. And now he sends you word by us that he is willing to be your liege-man, and will send you every year a tribute of as n>any elephants as you please. And he prays you in all gentleness and humility that you would send word to your Baron to desist from harrying his kingdom and to quit his territories. These shall henceforth be at your absolute disposal, and the King shall hold them of you."
When the Great Kaan had heard the King's ambassage he was moved with pity, and sent word to that Baron of his to quit that kingdom with his army, and to carry his arms to the conquest of some other country ; and as soon as this command reached them they obeyed it. Thus it was then that this King became vassal of the Great Kaan, and paid him every year a tribute of 20 of the greatest and finest elephants that were to be found in the country.
But now we will leave that matter, and tell you other particulars about the King of Chamba.
You must know that in that kingdom no woman is allowed to marry until the King shall have seen her ; if the
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woman pleases him then he takes her to wife ; if she does not, he gives her a dowry to get her a husband withal. In the year of Christ 1285, Messer Marco Polo was in that country, and at that time the King had, between sons and daughters, 326 children, of whom at least 150 were men fit to carry arms.'
There are very great numbers of elephants in this king- dom, and they have lignaloes in great abundance. They have also extensive forests of the wood called Bonus^ which is jet-black, and of which chessmen and pen-cases are made. But there is nought more to tell, so let us proceed .3
Note 1. — The name Champa is of Indian origin, like the adjoining Kamboja and many other names in Indo-China, and was probably taken from that of an ancient Hindu city and state on the Ganges, near modern BhdgalpiSr. Hwen Thsang, in the 7th century, makes mention of the Indo-Chinese state as Mahachampa {Pel, Boudd, III. 83).
The title of Champa down to the 15th century seems to have been applied by western Asiatics to a kingdom which embraced the whole coast between Tongking aijid Kamboja, including all that is now called Cochin China outside of Tongking. It was termed by the Chmese Chen-ching. Towards the end of the 15th century the King of Tong- king conquered the country, and the genuine people of Champa were reduced to a small number occupying the mountains of the province (rf Binh Thuan at the extreme south-east of the Coch. Chinese territory. To this part of the coast the name Champa is often applied in maps. (See y. A, ser. 2, tom. xi. p. 31, andy. des Savans^ 1822, p. 71.) The people of Champa in this restricted sense are said to exhibit Malay affinities, and they profess Mahomedanism. The books of their former religion they say (according to Dr. Bastian) that they received from Ceylon, but they were converted to Islamism by no less a person than 'Ali himself. The Tongking people received their Buddhism from China, and this tradition puts Champa as the extreme flood-mark of that great tide of Buddhist proselytism, which went forth from Ceylon to the Indo-Chinese r^ons in an early century of our era, and which is generally connected with the name of Buddaghosha.
The prominent position of Champa on the route to China made its ports places of call for many ages, and in the earliest record of the Arab navigation to China we find the country noticed under the identical name (allowing for the deficiencies of the Arabic Alphabet) of Sanf. Indeed it is highly probable that the Zaba or Zabaeof Ptolemy's itineraiy of the sea-route to the Sinae represents this same name.
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Chap. V. THE COUNTRY CALLED CHAMBA. 25 1
The Sagatu of Marco appears in the Chinese history as SotUy the military governor of the Canton districts, which he had been active in reduoDg.
In 1278 Sotu sent an envoy to Chenching to claim the king's sub- missioD, which was rendered, and for some years he sent his tribute to KublaL But when the Kaan proceeded to interfere in the internal affidrs of the kingdom by sending a Resident and Chinese officials, the king's son (1282) resolutely opposed these proceedings, and threw the Chbese officials into prison. The Kaan, in great wrath at this insult, (coming also so soon after his discomfiture in Japan), ordered Sotu and others to Chenching to take vengeance. The prince in the fol- lowing year made a pretence of submission, and the army (if indeed it had been sent) seems to have been withdrawn. The prince, however, renewed his attack on the Chinese establishments, and put 100 of their officials to death. Sotu then despatched a new force, but it was quite unsuccessful, and had to retire. In 1284 the king sent an embassy, including his grandson, to beg for pardon and reconciliation. Kublai however refused to receive them, and ordered his son Tughan to advance through Tongking, an enterprise which led to a still more disastrous war with that country, in which the Mongols had much the worst of it We are not told more.
Here we have the difficulties usual with Polo*s historical anecdotes. Certain names and circumstances are distinctly recognizable in the Chinese Annals ; others are difficult to reconcile with these. The em- bassy of 1284 seems the most likely to be the one spoken of by Poloj though the Chinese history does not give it the favourable result which he ascribes to it The date in the text we see to be wrong, and as usual it varies in different MSS. I suspect the original date was
MCCLXXXIII.
One of the Chinese notices gives one of the king's names as Sinhopala^ and no doubt this is Ramusio's Accambale (A^ambale) ; an indication at once of the authentic character of that interpolation, and of the identity of Champa and Chenching.
There are notices of the events in Demailla (IX. 420-22) and Gaubil (194), but Pauthier's extracts which we have made use of are much fuller.
Elephants have generally formed a chief part of the presents or tribute sent periodically by the various Indo-Chinese states to the Court of China.
Note 2. — The date of Marco's visit to Champa varies in the MSS. : Pauthier has 1280, as has also Ramusio; the G. T. has 1285 ; the Geographic Latin 1288. I incline to adopt the last For we know that about 1290, Mark returned to Court from a mission to the Indian Seas, which might have included this visit to Champa.
The large family of the king was one of the stock marvels. Odoric says : *' Zampa is a very fine country, having great store of victuals and
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all good things. The king of the country, it was said when I was there [circa 1323], had, what with sons and with daughters, a good two hundred children ; for he hath many wives and other women whom he keepeth. This king hath also 14,000 tame elephants. . . . And other folk keep elephants there just as commonly as we keep oxen here " (p. 95-6). The latter point illustrates what Polo says of elephants, and is scarcely an exaggeration in regard to all the southern Indo-Chinese States. (See note to Odoric u. s.)
Note 3. — Champa Proper and the adjoining territories have been from time immemorial the chief seat of the production of lign-aloes or eagle-wood. Both names are misleading, for the thing has nought to do either with aloes or eagles; though good Bishop Pallegoix derives the latter name from the wood being speckled like an eagle's plumage. It is in fact through Aquila^ ^gila, from Aguru, one of the Sanskrit names of the article, whilst that is possibly from the Malay Kayu (wood)- gahruy though the course of the etymology is more likely to be the other way; and XXonq is perhaps a corruption of the term which the Arabs apply to it, viz., Al-Ud, "The Wood."
The fine eagle-wood of Champa is the result of disease in a lu- minous tree, Aloexylon Agallochum ; whilst an inferior kind, though of the same aromatic properties, is derived from a tree of an entirely different order, Aquilaria Agallocha^ and is found as far north as Silhet.
The Bonus of the G. T. here is another example of Marco's use, probably unconscious, of an Oriental word. It is Persian Adnus, Ebony, which has passed almost unaltered into the Spanish Abmuz, We find Ibenus also in a French inventory {Dauef (TArcg, p. 134), but the Bonus seems to indicate that the word as used by the Traveller was strange to Rusticiano. The word which he uses for pen-cases too, Caiamanz, is more suggestive of the Persian Kalamddn than of the Italian Calamajo,
" Ebony is very common in this country (Champa), but the wood which is the most precious, and which is sufficiently abundant, is called * Eagle wood,* of which the first quality sells for its weight in gold; the native name is Kinam,'' {Bishop Louis in J, A, S. B, VI. 742 ; Dr, Birdwoody in the Bible Educator^ I. 243 ; Crawfurd*s Did.)
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Chap. V. THE GREAT ISLAND OF JAVA. 253
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254 . MARCO POLO. BOOK HI.
CHAPTER VI.
• Concerning the great Island of Java.
When you sail from Chamba, 1500 miles in a course between south and south-east, you come to a great Island called Java. And the experienced, mariners of those Islands who know the matter well, say that it is the greatest Island in the world, and has a compass of more than 3000 miles. It is subject to a great King and tributary to no one else in the world. The people are Idolaters. The Island is of surpassing wealth, producing black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galingale, cubebs, cloves, and all other kinds of spices.
This Island is also frequented by a vast amount of ship- ping, and by merchants who buy and sell costly goods from which they reap great profit. Indeed the treasure of this Island is so great as to be past telling. And I can assure you the Great Kaan never could get possession of this Island, on account of its great distance, and the great expense of an expedition thither. The merchants of Zayton and Manzi draw annually great returns from this country.'
Note 1. — Here Marco speaks of that Pearl of Islands, Java. The chapter is a digression from the course of his voyage towards India, but possibly he may have touched at the island on his previous expedition, alluded to in note 2, chap. v. Not more, for the account is vague, and where particulars are given not accurate. Java does not produu nut- megs or cloves, though doubtless it was a great mart for these and all the products of the Archipelago. And if by treasure he means gold, as indeed Ramusio reads, no gold is found in Java. Barbosa, however, has the same story of the great amount of gold drawn from Java ; and Dc Barros says that Sunda, /. e. Western Java, which the Portuguese r^;arded as a distinct island, produced inferior gold of 7 carats, but that pepper was the staple, of which the annual supply was more than 30,000 hun- dredweight (Ram, I. 318-319; De Barros^ Dec. IV. liv. L cap. 12.)
The circuit ascribed to Java in Pauthier*s Text is 5000 miles. Even
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Chap. VI. THE GREAT ISLAND OF JAVA. 255
the 3000 which we take from the Geog. Text is about double the truth ; but it is exactly the same that Odoric and Conti assign. No doubt it was a tradition among the Arab seamen. They never visited the south coast, and probably had extravagant ideas ' of its extension in that direction, as the Portuguese had for long. Even at the end of the 1 6th century Linschoten says : " Its breadth is as yet unknown ; some conceiving it to be a part of the Terra Australis extending from opposite the Cape of Good Hope. However it is commonly held to be an island'' (ch. XX.). And in the old map republished in the Lisbon De Barros of 1777, the south side of Java is marked " Parte incognita de Java," and is without a single name, whilst a narrow strait runs right across the island (the supposed division of Sunda from Java Proper).
The history of Java previous to the rise of the Empire of Majapahit, in the age immediately following our traveller's voyage, is very obscure. But there is some evidence of the existence of a powerful dynasty in the island about this time; and in an inscription of ascertained date (a.d. 1294) the King Uttungadeva claims to have subjected five kings ^ and to be sovereign of the whole Island of Java (Jawa-dvipa ; see Lassen, IV. 482). It is true that, as our traveller says, Kublai had not yet attempted the subjugation of Java, but he did make the attempt almost immediately after the departure of the Venetians. It was the result of one of his unlucky embassies to claim the homage of distant states, and turned out as badly as the attempts against Champa and Japan. His ambassador, a Chinese called Mengki, was sent back with his face branded like a thiefs. A great armament was assembled in the ports of Fokien to
Ship of the \fiddle Ages in the Java Seas. (From Bas-relief at Boro Bodor.)
' €n ctste gsU bitnmt grant quantitf tie Xii%, i tie mercan^ qe i)t acatent tie matntes mercantiifs et \s\ font grant gaagne."
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256 MARCO POLO. Book 111.
avenge this insult; it started about January 1293, but did not effect a landing till autiunn. After some temporary success the force was con- strained to re-embark with a loss of 3000 men. The death of Kublai prevented any renewal of the attempt ; and it is mentioned that his successor gave orders for the re-opening of the Indian trade which the Java war had interrupted. (See Gaubil^ p. 217 seqq,^ 224,) To this failure Odoric, who visited Java about 1323, alludes : " Now the Great Kaan of Cathay many a time engaged in war with this king ; but the king always vanquished and got the better of him." Odoric speaks in high terms of the richness and population of Java, calling it " the second best of all Islands that exist," and describing a gorgeous palace in terais similar to those in which Polo speaks of the Palace of Chipangu. {Cathay^ p. 87 seqq,)
The curious figure of a vessel which we give here is taken from the vast series of medieval sculptures which adorns the great Buddhist pyramid in the centre of Java, known as Boro Bodor, one of the most remarkable architectural monuments in the world, but the history of which is all in darkness. The ship, with its outrigger and apparently canvas sails, is not Chinese, but it undoubtedly pictures vessels which frequented the ports of Java in the early part of the 14th century,* possibly one of those from Ceylon or Southern India.
CHAPTER VII.
Wherein the Isles of Sondur and Condur are spoken of; AND THE Kingdom of Locac.
When you leave Chamba' and sail for 700 miles on a course between south and south-west, you arrive at two Islands, a greater and a less. The one is called Sondur and the other Conpur.^ As there is nothing about them worth mentioning, let us go on five hundred miles beyond Sondur, and then we find another country which is called Locac. It is a good country and a rich ; [it is on the mainland] ; and it has a king of its own. The people are Idolaters and have a peculiar language, and pay tribute to nobody, for their country is so situated that no one can
* 1344 is the date to which a Javanese traditional verse ascribes the edifice (TrwiP- furcTs Desc. Dictionary).
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Chap.. VII. THE ISLANDS OF SONDUR AND CONDUR. 257
enter it to do them ill. Indeed if it were possible to get at it, the Great Kaan would soon bring them under subjection to him.
In this country the brazil which we make use of grows in great plenty ; and they also have gold in incredible quantity. They have elephants likewise, and much game. In this kingdom too are gathered all the porcelain shells which are used for small change in all those regions, as I have told you before.
There is nothing else to mention except that this is a very wild region, visited by few people ; nor does the king desire that any strangers should frequent the country, and so find out about his treasure and other resources.^ We will now proceed, and tell you of something else.
Note 1. — All the MSB. and texts I believe without exception read " w?im you leave Java," &c. But, as Marsden has indicated, the point of departure is really Champa^ the introduction of Java being a digression ; and the retention of the latter name here would throw us irretrievably into the Southern Ocean. Certain old geographers, we may observe, did follow that indication and the results were curious enough, as we shall notice in next note but one. Marsden's observations are so just that I have followed Pauthier in substituting Champa for Java in the text
Note 2. — There is no reason to doubt that these islands are the group now known as that of Pulo Cqndore ; in old times an important landmark, and occasional point of call, oil the route to China. The group is termed Sundar Midi {Fuldt representing the Malay Fulo or Island, in the plural) in the Arab Relations of the 9th century, the last point of departure on the voyage to China, from which it was a month distant. This old record gives us the name Sondor ; in modem times we have it as Kondbr; Polo combines both names. The group consists of a larger island about 12 miles long, two of 2 or 3 miles, and some half-dozen others of insignificant dimensions. The large one is now specially called Pulo Condore. It has a fair harbour, fresh water, and wood in abund- ance. Dampier visited the group and recommended its occupation. The K I. Company did establish a post there in 1702, but it came to a speedy end in the massacre of the Europeans by their Macassar garrison. About the year 1720 some attempt to found a settlement there was also made by the French, who gave the island the name oi Isle dOrl'eans.
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The celebrated Pfere Gaubil spent 8 months on the island and wrote an interesting let-ter about it (Feb. 1722 ; see also Ldtres Edifiantes^ Rec xvL). When the group was visited by Mr. John Crawfurd oh his mission to Cochin China the inhabitants numbered about 800, of Coch. Chinese descent. The group is now held by the French under SaigoA. The chief island is known to the Chinese as the mountain of Kunlun. There is another cluster of rocks in the same sea, called the Seven Cheu, and respecting these two groups Chinese sailors have a kind of Inddit- itt'Scyllam saw : —
** Shang'pa hi Chhi, hia-pa Kun-lun^ Chen mi tuo she^jin chuen mo isun.'*^
Meaning : —
, ** With Kunlun to starboard, and larboard the Cheu, Keep conning your compass, whatever you do, Or to Davy Jones' Locker go vessel and crew."
{RitUr^ IV. 1017 ; Rdnaudy I. 18 ; A, Hamilton^ II. 402 ; Mem, cone. Us Chinois, XIV. 53).
Note 3. — Pauthier reads the name of the kingdom Soucai, but ! adhere to the readings of the G. T., Lochac and Locac^ which are sup- ported by Ramusio. Pauthier*s C and the Bern MS. have le choc and k thaty which indicate the same reading.
Distance and other particulars point, as Hugh Murray discerns, to the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, or (as I conceive) to the territory now called Siam, including the said coast, as subject or tributary from time immemorial.
The kingdom of Siam is known to the Chinese by the name of Sioi- Lo, The Supplement to Matwarilin's Encyclopaedia describes Sien-Lo as on the sea-board to the extreme south of Chenching. ** It originally consisted of two kingdoms, Sien and Lo-hoh. The Sien people are the remains of a tribe which in the year (a.d. 1341) began to come down
upon the Lo-hoh, and united with the latter into one nation
The land of the Lo-hoh consists of extended plains, but not much agriculture is done."*
In this Lo or Ix)-hoh which apparently formed the lower part of what is now Siam, previous to the middle of the fourteenth century, I believe that we have our Traveller's Locac. The latter half of the name may be either the second syllable of Lo-hoh, for Polo's c often represents h ; or it may be the Chinese Kwo or Kwty " kingdom," in the Canton and Fokien pronunciation (i.e,, the pronunciation of Polo's mariners) kok; Lo-koky " the kingdom of Lo." 5/V»-Lo-Kok is the exact form of the Chinese name of Siam which is used by Bastian.
* The extract of which this is the substance I owe to the kindness of Professor J. Summers, formerly of King's College.
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Chap. VII. THE KINGDOM OF LOCAC. 259
What was this kingdom of Lo which occupied the northern shores of the Gulf of Siam ? Chinese scholars generally say that Sien-Lo means Siam and Laos; but this- 1 cannot accept, if Laos is to bear its ordinary geographical sense, /. <?., of a country bordering Siam on the north-east and north. Still there seems a probability that the usual interpretation may be correct, when properly explained.
In 1864, Dr. Bastian communicated to the Asiatic Society of Bengal the translation of a long and interesting inscription, brought from Suk- kothai to Bankok by the late King of Siam, and dated in a year 12 14, which in the era of Salivahana (as it is almost certainly, see Garnier, cited below) will be a.d. 1292-93, almost exactly coincident with Polo*s voyage. The author of this inscription was a Prince of Thai (or Siamese) race, styled Phra Rama Kamheng (**The Valiant"), who reigned in Sukkothai, whilst his dominions extended from Vieng-chan on the Mekong River (lat. 18°), to Pechaburi and Sri-Thammarat (/. e. Tig6r, in lat 8° 18'), on the coast of the Gulf of Siam. The conquests of this prince are stated to have extended eastward to the " Royal Lake," apparently the Great Lake of Kamboja ; and we may conclude with certainty that he was the leader of the Siamese, who had invaded Kamboja shortly before it was visited (in 1296) by that envoy of Kublai's successor, whose valuable account of the country has been translated by R^musat* Now this prince Rama Kamheng of Sukko- thai was probably (as Lieut Gamier supposes) of the Thai-nyai^ Great Thai, or Laotian branch of the race. Hence the application of the name Lo-kok to his kingdom can be accounted for.
It was another branch of the Thai, known as Thai-noi, or Little Thai, which in 135 1, under another Phra Rama, founded Ayuthia and the Siamese monarchy which still exists.
The explanation now given seems more satisfactory than the sug- gestions formerly made of the connexion of the name LocaCy either with Lophaburi (or Lavb)^ a very ancient capital near Ayuthia, 01 with Lawek, i. e. Kamboja. Kamboja had at an earlier date possessed the lower valley of the Menam, but, we see, did so no longer, f
The name Lawek or Lovek is applied by writers of the i6th and 17th centuries to the capital of what is still Kamboja, the ruins of
* I am happy to express my obligation to the remaiks of my lamented friend Lieut Gamier, for light on this subject, which has led to an entire reform in the present note. See his excellent Historical Essay, forming Chap. V. of the great ** Voyage cP Exploraiion en Indo- Chines'* pp. 136-137.
t The Kakula of Ibn Batuta was probably on the coast of Locac. The J^mdrahf j^mar of the same traveller and other Arab writers, I have elsewhere suggested to be Khmer ^ or Kamlx)ja Proper. (See /. B.^ IV. 240 ; Cathay , 469, 519.) ^a^ila and ^mirah were both in ** Mul-Java ; " and the king of this undetermined country, whom Wassif states to have submitted to Kublai in 1291, was called Sri Rama, It is possible that this was Phra Rama of Sukkothai (See Cathay ^ 519 • Elliot, III. 27).
S 2
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26o MARCO POLO. BOOK HI.
which exist near Udong. Laweik is mentioned along with the other Siamese or Laotian countries of Yuthia, Tennasserim, Sukkothai,Pichalok, Lagong, Lanchang (or Luang Prabang), Ziinm^ (or Kiang-mai), and Kiang-Tung, in the vast list of states claimed by the Burmese Chronicle as tributary to Pagdn before its fall. We find in the Ain-i-Akbari a kind of aloes-wood called Lawdki^ no doubt because it came from this region.
The G. T. indeed makes the course from Sondur to Locac sceioc or S.K ; but Pauthier's text seems purposely to correct this, calling it, " V, c, milles oultre Sandur'' This would bring us to the Peninsula somewhere about what is now the Siamese province of Ligor,* and this is the only position accurately consistent with the next indication of the route, viz., a run of 500 miles south to the Straits of Singapore. Let us keep in mind also Ramusio's specific statement that Locac was on terra firtna.
As regards the products named : (1) gold is mined in the northern part of the Peninsula and is a staple export of Kalantan, Tringano, and Pahang, further down. Barbosa says gold was so abundant in Malacca that it was reckoned by Bahars of 4 cwt Though Mr. Logan has estimated the present produce of the whole Peninsula at only 20,000 ounces, Hamilton, at the beginning of last century, says Pahang alone in some years exported above 8 cwt (2) Brazil-wood, now generally known by the Malay tenn Sappan^ is abundant on the coast Ritter speaks of three small towns on it as entirely surrounded by trees of this kind And higher up, in the latitude of Tavoy, the forests of sappan-wood find a prominent place in some maps of Siam. In medieval intercourse between the courts of Siam and China we find brazil-wood to form the bulk of the Siamese present. (3) Elephants are abundant (4) Cowries, according to Marsden and Crawfurd, are found in those seas largely only on the Sulu Islands ; but Bishop Pallegoix says distinctly that they are found in abundance on the sand-banks of the Gulf of Siam. And I see Dr. Fryer, in 1673, says that cowries were brought to Surat "firom Siam and the Philippine Islands."
For some centuries after this time Siam was generally known to traders by the Persian name of Shahr-i-nao or New City. This seems to be the name generally applied to it in the Shijarat Malayu (or Malay Chronicle), and it is used also by Abdurrazzdk. It appears among the early navi- gators of the 1 6th century, as Da Gama, Varthema, Giovanni d'Empoli and Mendez Pinto, in the shape of Somau, Xamau, Whether this name was applied to the new city of Ayuthia, or was a translation of that of the older Lophaburi (which appears to be the Sansc, or Pali Navapura = New-City) I do not know.
* Mr. G. Phillips supposes the name Locac to be Ligor, or rather Lakon, as the Siamese call it. But it seems to me pretty clear from what has been said that Lo-kok, though including Ligor, is a different name from Lakon. The latter is a corruption of the Sanskrit, Nagara^ *'city."
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Chap. VIII. THE ISLAND OF PENTAM. 261
(BasHan, I. 357, III. 433, and in / A, S, B., XXXIV. Pt I. p. 27 seqq. ; Ramus., I. 318; Amyot, XIV. 266, 269; Pallegoix, I. 196 ; Bmring, I. 41, 72; Phayre in /. A. S, B., XXXVII. pt. I. p. 102 ; AinAkb,, 80; Mouhot, I. 70; Roe and Fryety Reprint, 1873, p. 271.)
Some geographers of the i6th century, following the old editions which carried the travellers S.E. or S.W. of Java to the land oi Boeach (for Locac), introduced in their maps a continent in that situation (see e,g. the map of the world by P. Plancius in Linschoten). And this has sometimes been adduced to prove an early knowledge of Australia. Mr. Major has treated this question ably in his interesting essay on the early notices of Australia.
CHAPTER VIII. Of the Island called Pentam, and the City Malaiur.
When you leave Locac and sail for 500 miles towards the south, you come to an Island called Pentam, a very wild place. All the wood that grows thereon consists of odori- ferous trees/ There is no more to say about it ; so let us sail about sixty miles further between those two Islands. Throughout this distance there is but four paces' depth of water, so that great ships in passing this channel have to lift their rudders, for they draw nearly as much water as that.'
And when you have gone these 60 miles, and again about 30 more, you come to an Island which forms a Kingdom, and is called Malaiur. The people have a King of their own, and a peculiar language. The city is a fine and noble one, and there is great trade carried on there. All kinds of spicery are to be found there, and all other necessaries of Ufe.^
Note 1. — Pentam, or as in Ram. Pentan, is no doubt the Bintang of our maps, more properly BentXn, a considerable Island at the eastern extremity of the Straits of Malacca. It appears in the list,
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published by Dulaurier from a Javanese Inscription, of the kingdoms conquered in the 15 th century by the sovereigns reigning at Majapahit in Java (/. A. ser. 4, torn, xiil 532). Bintang was for a long time after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca the chief residence of the Malay sultans who had been expelled by that conquest, and it still nominally belongs to the Sultan of Johore, the descendant of those princes, though m fact ruled by the Dutch, whose port of Rhio stands on a small island close to its western shore. It is the Bintdo of the Por- tuguese, whereof Camoens speaks as the persistent enemy of Malacca (X. 57).
Note 2. — There is a good deal of confusion in the text of this chapter. Here we have a passage spoken of between "those two Islands," when only one island seems to have been mentioned. But I imagine the other ** island " in the traveller's mind to be the continuation of the same Locac, i,e, the Malay Peninsula (included by him under that name), which he has coasted for 500 miles. This is confirmed by Ra- musio, and the old Latin editions (as MuUer's) : " between the Kingdom of Locac and the Island of Pentan." The passage in question is the Strait of Singapore, or as the old navigators called it, the Straits of Gobemador, having the mainland of the Peninsula and the Island of Singapore on the one side, and the Islands of Bintang and Batang on the other. The length of the strait is roughly 60 geographical miles, or a little more ; and I see in a route given in the Lettres Edifiantes (II. p. 118) that the length of navigation is so stated : " Le d^troit de Gobemador a vingt lieues de long, et est fort difficile quand on n'y a jamais pass^."
The Venetian /(jfjjt? was 5 feet Marco here alludes to the well- known practice with the Chinese junks of raising the rudder, for which they have a special arrangement, which is indicated in the cut at p. 230.
Note 3. — There is a difficulty here about the indications, carrying us, as they do, first 60 miles through the Strait, and then 30 miles further to the Island Kingdom and city of Malaiur. There is also a singular variation in the readings as to this city and island. The G. T. has " Une isle qe est roiame, et s'apelle Malanir e I'isle Pentam." The Crusca has the same, only reading Malavir. Pauthier: '* Une isle qw est royaume, et a nom Maliur." The Geog. Latin ; " Ibi ifwemtur una insula in qua est unus rex quem vocant Lamovich. Civitas et insula vocantur Pontavich." Ram. : ** Chiamasi la cittd Malaiur, e cosi I'isola Malaiur."
All this is very perplexed, and it is difficult to trace what may have been the true readings. The 30 miles beyond the straits, whether we give the direction south-east as in G. T. or no, will not carry us to the vicinity of any place known to have been the site of an important city. As the point of departure in the next chapter is from Peniam and not from Malaiur, the introduction of the latter is perhaps a digression from
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Chap. VIII. THE CITY MALAIUR. 263
the route, on information derived either from hearsay or from a former voyage. But there is not information enough to decide what place is meant by Malaiur. Probabilities seem to me to be divided between Palembangj and its colony Singhapura, Palembang, according to the commentaries of Alboquerque, was called by the Javanese Malavo. The List of Sumatran Kingdoms in De Barros makes Tana- Mala vu xki'tnext to Palembang. On the whole, I incline to this interpretation.
Singhapura was founded by an emigration from Palembang, itself a Javanese colony. It became the site of a flourishing kingdom, and was then, according to the tradition recorded by De Barros, the most im- portant centre of population in those regions, " whither used to gather all the navigators of the Eastern Seas, from both East and West ; to this great city of Singapura all flocked as to a general market *' (Dec. II. 6, i). This suits the description in our text well ; but as Singhapura was in sight of any ship passing through the straits, mistake could hardly occur as to its position, even if it had not been visited.
I omit Malacca entirely from consideration, because the evidence appears to me conclusive against the existence of Malacca at this time.
The Malay Chronology, as published by Valentyn, ascribes the foundation of that city to a king called Iskandar Shah, placing it in A.D. 1252, fixes the reign of Mahomed Shah, the third King of Malacca and first Mussulman King, as extendmg from 1276 to 1333 (not stating when his conversion took place), and gives 8 kings in all between the foundation of the city and its capture by the Portuguese in 151 1, a space according to those data of 259 years. As Sri Iskandar Shah, the founder, had reigned 3 years in Singhapura before founding Malacca, and Mahomed Shah, the loser, reigned 2 years in Johore after the loss of his capital, we have 264 years to divide among 8 kings, giving 33 years to each reign. This certainly indicates that the period requires considerable curtailment.
Again, both De Barros and the Commentaries of Alboquerque ascribe the foundation of Malacca to a Javanese fugitive from Palem- bang called Paramisura, and Alboquerque makes Iskandar Shah {Xaquem darxa) the son of Paramisura, and the first convert to Mahomedanism. Four other kings reign in succession after him, the last of the four being Mahomed Shah, expelled in 15 11.
The historian De Couto, whilst giving the same number of reigns from the conversion to the capture, places the former event about 1384, And the Commentaries of Alboquerque allow no more than some ninety years from the foundation of Malacca to his capture of the city.
There is another approximate check to the chronology afforded by a Chinese record in the XlVth volume of Amyot*s collection. This informs us that Malacca first acknowledged itself as tributary to the Empire in 1405, the king being Sili-ju-eul-sula (?). In 141 1 the King of Malacca himself, now called Peiiimisuia (Paramisura), came in person
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264 MARCO POLO. Book IlL
to the court of China to render homage. And in 141 4 the Queen- Mother of Malacca came to court, bringing her son's tribute.
Now this notable fact of the visit of a King of Malacca to the court of China, and his acknowledgment of the Emperor's supremacy, is also recorded in the Commentaries of. Alboquerque. This work, it is true, attributes the visit, not to Paramisura, the founder of Malacca, but to his son and successor Iskandar Shah. This may be a question of a title only, perhaps borne by both ; but we seem entitled to conclude with confidence that Malacca was founded by a prince whose son was reigning, and visited the court of China in 141 1. And the real chro- nology will be about midway between the estimates of De Couto and of Alboquerque. Hence Malacca did not exist for a century, more or less, after Polo's voyage.
Mr. Logan supposes that the form Malayu-r may indicate that the Malay language of the 13th century "had not yet replaced the strong naso-guttural terminals by pure vowels." We find the same form in a contemporary Chinese notice. This records that in the 2nd year of the Yuen, tribute was sent from Siam to the Emperor. ** The Siamese had long been at war with the McUiyi or Maliurh, but both nations laid aside their feud and submitted to China." {Valmtyn, V. p. 352 ; Craw- furds Desc, Diet, art Malacca; Lassen^ IV. 541 seqq,; Joum, Ind, Archip. V. 572, II. 608-9; De Barros, Dec. II. 1. vi. c. i ; Comentarias do grandc Afonso (T Alboquerque^ part III. cap. xvii. ; Couto^ Dec IV. liv. ii. ; Wade in Bo^vring's Kingdom and People of Siam, I. 72.)
CHAPTER IX.
Concerning the Island of Java the Less. The Kingdoms of Ferlec and Basma.
When you leave the Island of Pentam and sail about 100 miles, you reach the Island of Java the Less. For all its name 'tis none so small but that it has a compass of two thousand miles or more. Now I will tell you all about this Island.'
You see there are upon it eight kingdoms and eight crowned kings. The people are all Idolaters, and every kingdom has a language of its own. The Island hath great abundance of treasure,, with costly spices, lign-aloes
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CHAP. IX. THE KINGDOMS OF FERLEC AND BASMA. 265
and spikenard and many others that never come into our parts.'
Now I am going to tell you all about these eight king- doms, or at least the greater part of them. But let me premise one marvellous thing, and that is the fact that this Island Ues so far to the south that the North Star, little or much, is never to be seen !
Now let us resume our subject, and first I will tell you of the kingdom of Ferlec.
This kingdom, you must know, is so much frequented by the Saracen merchants that they have converted the natives to the Law of Mahommet — I mean the townspeople only, for the hill-people live for all the world like beasts, and eat human flesh, as well as all other kinds of flesh, clean or unclean. And they worship this, that, and the other thing; for in fact the first thing that they see on rising in the morning, that they do worship for the rest of the day.3
Having told you of the kingdom of Ferlec, I will now tell of another which is called Basma.
When you quit the kingdom of Ferlec you enter upon that of Basma. This also is an independent kingdom, and the people have a language of their own ; but they are just like beasts without laws or religion. They call them- selves subjects of the Great Kaan, but they pay him no tribute ; indeed they are so far away that his men could not go thither. Still all these Islanders declare themselves to be his subjects, and sometimes they send him curiosities as presents.-* There are wild elephants in the country, and numerous unicorns, which are very nearly as big. They have hair like that of a buffalo, feet like those of an elephant, and a horn in the middle of the forehead, which is black and very thick. They do no mischief, however, with the horn, but with the tongue alone; for this is covered all over with long and strong prickles [and when savage with any one they crush him under their knees and
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266 MARCO POLO. Book 111.
then rasp him with their tongue]. The head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry it ever bent towards the ground. They delight much to abide in mire and mud. 'Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon, and is not in the least like that which our stories tell of as being caught in the lap of a virgin ; in fact, 'tis altogether different from what we fancied.^ There are also monkeys here in great numbers and of sundry kinds ; and goshawks as black as crows. These are very large birds and capital for fowling,*
I may tell you moreover that when people bring home pygmies which they allege to come from India, 'tis all a lie and a cheat. For those little men, as they call them, are manufactured on this Island, and I will tell you how. You see there is on the Island a kind of monkey which is very small, and has a face just like a man's. They take tbese, and pluck out all the hair except the hair of the beard and on the breastj and then they dry them and stuff them and daub them with saffron and other things until they look like men. But you see it is all a cheat ; for nowhere in India nor anywhere else in the world were there ever men seen so small as these pretended pygmies.
Now I will say no more of the kingdom of Basma, but tell you of the others in succession.
Note 1. — ^Java the Less is the Island of Sumatra. Here there is no exaggeration in the dimension assigned to its circuit, which is about 2300 miles. The old Arabs of the 9th century give it a circuit of 800 parasangs, or say 2800 miles, and Barbosa reports the estimate of the Mahomedan seamen as 2100 miles. Compare the more reasonable accuracy of these estimates of Sumatra, which the navigators knew in its entire compass, with the wild estimates of Java Proper, of which they knew but the northern coast
Polo by no means stands alone in giving the name of Java to the island now called Sumatra. The terms /awa, /azvi, were applied by the Arabs to the islands and productions of the Archipelago generally (e.g.y Lubdn Jawi, " Java frankincense," whence by corruption Benzoin)^ but also specifically to Sumatra. Thus Sumatra is the Jdwah both of Abul- feda and of Ibn Batuta, the latter of whom spent some time on the island,
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Chap. IX. THE ISLAND OF JAVA THE LESS. 267
both in going to China and on his return. The Java also of the Catalan Map appears to be Sumatra. Javaku again is the name applied in the Singalese chronicles to the Malays in general. Jdu and Dawa are the names still applied by the Battaks and the people of Nias respectively to the Malays, showing probably that these were looked on as Javanese by those tribes who did not partake of the civilization diffused from Java, In Siamese also the Malay language is called Chawa ; and even on the Malay peninsula, the traditional slang for a half-breed bom from a Kling (or Coromandel) father and a Malay mother is Jdwi Fdkdn, " a Jawi (/. c Malay) of the market" De Barros says that all the people of Sumatra called themselves by the common name of Jauijs (Dec. IV. liv. V. cap. i).
There is some reason to believe that the application of the name Java to Sumatra is of very old date. For the oldest inscription of ascertained date in the Archipelago which has yet been read, a Sanscrit one from Pagaroyang, the capital of the ancient Malay state of Menang- kabau in the heart of Sumatra, bearing a date equivalent to a.d. 656, entitles the monarch whom it commemorates, Adityadharma by name, the king of "the First Java" (or rather Yava). This Mr. Friedrich mterprets to mean Sumatra. It is by no means impossible that the labadiu, or Ydvadvfpa, of Rolemy may be Sumatra rather than Java.
An accomphshed Dutch Orientalist suggests that the Arabs originally applied the terms Great Java and Little Java to Java and Sumatra respectively, not because of their imagined relation in size, but as indi- cating the former to be Java Proper, Thus also, he says, there is a Great Acheh (Achin) which does not imply that the place so called is greater than the well-known state of Achin (of which it is in fact a part), but because it is Acheh Proper, A like feeling may have sug- gested the Great Bulgaria, Great Hungary, Great Turkey of the medieval travellers. These were, or were supposed to be, the original seats of the Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Turks. The Great Horde of the Kirghiz Kazaks is, as regards numbers, not the greatest, but the smallest of the three. But the others look upon it as the most ancient The Burmese are alleged to call the Rakhain or people of Arakan Mranma Gyi or Great Burmese, and to consider their dialect the most ancient form of the language. And, in like manner, we may perhaps account for the term of Little Thaiy formerly applied to the Siamese in distinction from the Great Thai, their kinsmen of Laos.
In after-days, when the name of Sumatra for the Great Island had established itself, the traditional term " LitUe Java " sought other appli- cations. Barbosa seems to apply it to Sumbawa ; Pigafetta and Caven- dish apply it to Baliy and in this way Raffles says it was still used in his own day. Geographers were sometimes puzzled about it Magini says Java Minor is almost incognita.
(Tumour^ s Epitome, p. 45 ; Van tier Tuuk, Biadtoijzer tot de drie
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268 MARCO POLO. Book 111.
Stukken van het Batakscfu Leesboek^ p. 43, &c. ; Friedrich in Bat, Transactions^ XXVI ; Levchine^ Les Kirghiz Kazaks^ 300, 301.)
Note 2. — As regards the treasure^ Sumatra was long famous for its produce of gold. The export is estimated in Crawfurd's History at 35,530 ounces ; but no doubt it was much more when the native states were in a condition of greater wealth and civilization, as they undoubt- edly were some centuries ago. Valentyn says that in some years Achin had exported 80 bahars, equivalent to 32,000 or 36,000 lbs. avoirdu- pois (!). Of the other products named, lign-aloes or eagle-wood is a product of Sumatra, and is or was very abundant in Campar on the eastern coast The Ain-i-Akbari says this article was usually brought to India from Achin and Tenasserim. Both this and spikenard are men- tioned by Polo's contemporary, Kazwini, among the products of Java (probably Sumatra), viz., /ova lign-aloes (al-Ud al-Jdwt), camphor, spikenard {SumbuTjy &c. Ndrdwastu is the name of a grass with fragrant roots much used as a perfume in the Archipelago, and I see this is ren- dered spikenard in a translation from the Malay Annals in iki^ Journal oj the Archipelago,
With regard to the kingdoms of the island which Marco proceeds to describe, it is well to premise that all the six which he specifies are to be looked for towards the north end of the island, viz., in regular succession up the northern part of the east coast, along the north coast, and down the northern part of the west coast This will be made tolerably clear in the details, and Marco himself intimates at the end of the next chapter that the six kingdoms he describes were all at this side or end of the island : ^^ Or vos avon contee de cesti roiames que sunt de ceste partiede scete yslcy et des autres roiames de Tautre partie ne voz conteron-nos rienJ* Most commentators have made confusion by scattering them up and down, nearly all round the coast of Sumatra. The best remarks on the subject I have met with are by Mr. Logan in his Journal of the Ind, Arch, II. 610.
The " kingdoms " were certainly many more than eight throughout the island. At a later day De Barros enumerates 29 on the coast alone. Crawfurd reckons 15 different nations and languages on Sumatra and its dependent isles, of which 1 1 belong to the great island itself
{Hist, of Ind, Arch, III. 482 ; Valentyn, V. (Sumatra), p. 5; Desc, Diet p. 7, 417 ; Gildemeister^ p. 193 ; Crawf, Malay Diet, 119; / I^^- Arch, V. 313.)
Note 3. — The kingdom of Parlak is mentioned in the Shijarat Malayu or Malay Chronicle, and also in a Malay History of the Kings of Pasei, of which an abstract is given by Dulaurier, in connexion with the other states of which we shall speak presently. It is also mentioned (Barlak), as a city of the Archipelago, by Rashiduddin. Of its extent we have no knowledge, but the position (probably of its northern
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Chap. IX. THE KINGDOMS OF FERLEC AND BASMA. 269
extremity) is preserved in the native name, Tanjong (i. e. Cape) Parldk^ of the N.K horn of Sumatra, called by European seamen " Diamond Point," whilst the river and town oi Ferla, about 32 miles south of that point, indicate, I have little doubt, the site of the old capital.* Indeed in Malombra's Ptolemy (Venice, 1574), I find the next city of Sumatra beyond Facen marked as Pulaca.
The form Ferlec shows that Polo got it from the Arabs, who having no / often replace that letter by / It is notable that the Malay alphabet, which is that of the Arabic with necessary modifications, represents the sound / not by the Persian pe (^^), but by the Arabic fe (o), with three dots instead of one (o),
A Malay chronicle of Achin dates the accession of the first Mahom- edan king of that state, the nearest point of Sumatra to India and Arabia, in the year answering to a.d. 1205, and this is the earliest con- version among the Malays on record. It is doubtful, indeed, whether there were Kings of Achin in 1205, or for centuries after (unless indeed Ijimbri is to be regarded as Achin), but the introduction of Islam may be confidently assigned to that age.
The notice of the Hill-people, who lived like beasts and ate human flesh, presumably attaches to the Battas or Bataks, occupying high table- lands in the interior of Sumatra. They do not now extend north beyond lat 3°. The interior of northern Sumatra seems to remain a terra incognita^ and even with the coast we are far less familiar than our ancestors were 250 years ago. The Battas are remarkable among can- nibal nations as having attained or retained some degree of civilization, and as being possessed of an alphabet and documents. Their anthro- pophagy is now professedly practised according to precise laws, and only in prescribed cases. Thus : (i) A commoner seducing a Raja's wife must be eaten ; (2) Enemies taken in battle outside their village must be eaten alive; those taken in storming a village may be spared; (3) Traitors and spies have the same doom, but may ransom themselves for 60 dollars a-head. There is nothing more horrible or extraordinary in all the stories of medieval travellers than the facts of this institution. (See Junghuhn^ Die Battaldnder^ II. 158.) And it is evident that human flesh is also at times kept in the houses for food. Junghuhn, who could not abide Englishmen but was a great admirer of the Battas, tells how after a perilous and hungry flight he arrived in a friendly village, and the food that was offered by his hosts was the flesh of two prisoners who had been slaughtered the day before (I. 249). Anderson was also told of one of the most powerful Batta chiefs
• See Anderson's Mission to East Coast 0/ Sumatra, pp. 229, 233, and map. The FerUc of Polo was identified by Valentyn {Sumatra, in vol. v., p. 21). Marsden remarks that a terminal i is in Sumatra always softened or omitted in pronunciation {//. of Sum. 1st edn., p. 163). Thus wc have Perlak, and Per la, as we have Battak and Batta.
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270 MARCO POLO. Book III.
who would eat only such food, and took care to be supplied with it
, ("5).
The story of the Battas is that in old times their communities lived in peace and knew no such custom ; but a Devil, Nanalain^ came bring- ing strife, and introduced this man-eating, at a period which they spoke of (in 1840) as "three men's lives ago," or about 210 years previous to that date. Junghuhn, with some enlargement of the time, is dis- posed to accept their story of tlie practice being comparatively modem. This cannot be, for their hideous custom is alluded to by a long chain of early authorities. Ptolemy's anthropophagi may perhaps be referred to the smaller islands. But the Arab Relations of the 9th century speak of man-eaters in Al-Ramni, undoubtedly Sumatra. Then comes our traveller, followed by Odoric, and in the early part of the 15 th century by Conti, who names the Batech cannibals. Barbosa describes them without naming them; Galvano (p. 108) speaks of them by name; as does De Barros (Dec. III. Uv. viii cap. i).
The practice of worshipping the first thing seen in the morning is related of a variety of nations. Pigafetta tells it of the people of Gilolo, and Varthema in his account of Java (which I fear is fiction) ascribes it to some people of that island. Richard Eden tells it of the Lap- landers {Notes on Russia, Hak. Soc II. 224).
Note 4. — Basma, as Valentyn indicated, seems to be the Pasei of the Malays, which the Arabs probably called Basam or the like, for the Portuguese wrote it Pacem. Pasei is mentioned in the Malay Chronide as founded by Malik-al-Sdlih, the first Mussulman sovereign of Samudra, the next of Marco's kingdoms. He assigned one of these states to each of his two sons, Malik al-Dhihir and Malik al-MansiSr ; the former of whom was reigning at Samudra, and apparently over the whole coast, when Ibn Batuta was there (about 1346-47). There is also a Malay History of the Kings of Pasei to which reference has already been made.
Somewhat later Pasei was a great and famous city : Majapahit, Malacca, and Pasei being reckoned the three great cities of the Archi- pelago. The stimulus of conversion to Islam had not taken effect on those Sumatran states at the time of Polo's voyage, but it did so soon afterwards, and, low as they have now fallen, then: power at one time was no delusion. Achin, which rose to be the chief of them, in 1615 could send against Portuguese Malacca an expedition of more than 500 sail, 100 of which were galleys larger than any then constructed in Europe, and carried from 600 to 800 men each.
Note 5. — The elephant seems to abound in the forest-tracts through- out the whole length of Sumatra, and the species is now determined to be a distinct one {E. Sumairaniis) from that of continental India, and identical with that of Ceylon.* The Sumatran elephant in former days
* The elephant of India has 6 true ribs and 13 false ribs ; that of Suroatriand Ceylon has 6 true and 14 false.
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Chap. IX. ASIATIC RHINOCEROSES. 271
was caught and tamed extensively. Ibn Batuta speaks of 100 elephants in the train of Al Dhihir, the King of Sumatra Proper ; and in the lyih century Beaulieu says the King of Achin had always 900. Giov. d'Einpoli also mentions them at Pedir in the beginning of the i6th century ; and soe Pasei Chronicle quoted in /, As. sen 4, torn. ix. b. 258-9. This speaks of elephants as used in war by the people of
The three Asiatic Rhinoceroses ; (upper) Indicus, (middle) Sondaicu&, ^ower) Sumatranus.*
Pasei, and of elephant-hunts as a royal diversion. The locus of that best of elephant stories, the elephant's revenge on the tailor, was at Achin.
Als Polo's account of the rhinoceros is evidently from nature, it is notable that he should not only call it unicorn, but speak so precisely of its one bom, for the characteristic, if not the only, species on the island, IS 2l two-homed one {Rh. Sumatranus)^^ and his mention of the buffalo-
• Since this engraving was made a fourth species has been established, Rkin. laryotis, found near Chittagong.
t Marsden, however, does say that a one-horned species (A*^. sondaicus f) is also found on Sumatra (3d ed. of his //. of Sumatra^ p. 1 16).
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272 MARCO POLO. Book III.
like hair applies only to this one. This species exists also on the Indo-Chinese continent and, it is believed, in Borneo. I have seen it in the Arakan forests as high as 19° 20' ; one was taken not long since near Chittagong ; and Mr. Blyth tells me a stray one has been seen in Assam or its borders.
What the Traveller says of tiie animal's love of mire and mud is well illustrated by the manner in which the Semangs or Negritoes of the Malay Peninsula are said to destroy him : " This animal ... is found frequently in marshy places, with its whole body immersed in the mud, and part of the head only visible. . . . Upon the dry weather setting in .... the mud becomes hard and crusted, and the rhinoceros cannot effect his escape without considerable difficulty and exertion. The Semangs prepare themselves with large quantities of combustible mate- rials, with which they quietly approach the animal, who is aroused from his reverie by an immense fire over him, which being kept well supplied by the Semangs with fresh fuel, soon completes his destruction, and renders him in a fit state to make a meal of " {/. Ind, Arch, IV. 426).* There is a great difference in aspect between the one-homed species {RIl Sondaictis and Rh, Indicus) and the two-homed. The. Malay.s express what that difference is admirably, in calling the last Bddak- Karbdu, "the Buffalo-Rhinoceros," and the Sondaicus Bddak-Gdjah, *' the Elephant-Rhinoceros."
The belief in the formidable nature of the tongue of the rhinoceros is very old and wide-spread, though I can find no foundation for it but the rough appearance of the organ. The Chinese have the belief, and the Jesuit Lecomte attests it from professed observation of the animal in confinement. {Chin, Repos, VII. 137 ; Lecomte^ II. 406.)
The legend, to which Marco alludes, about the Unicom allowing itself to be ensnared by a maiden (and of which Marsden has made an odd perversion in his translation, whilst indicating the tme meaning in his note) is also an old and general one. It will be found, for example, in Brunetto Latini, in the Image du Monde^ in the Mirabilia of Jordanus,t and in the verses of Tzetzes. The latter represents Monoccros as attracted not by the maiden*s charms but by her perfumery. So he is inveigled and blindfolded by a stout young knave, disguised as a maiden and drenched with scent : —
" 'Tis then the huntsmen hasten up, abandoning their ambush ; Clean from his head they chop his horn, prized antidote to poison ! And let the docked and luckless beast escape into the jungles."
—V. 399, s^q.
In the cut which we give of this from a medieval source the horn of
* An American writer professes to have discovered in Missouri the fossil remains of a bogge<l mastodon, which had been killed precisely in this way by human con- temporaries (see Lubbocky Preh. Times^ 2d ed. 279).
t Trcsor, p. 253 ; N. and E.y V. 263 ; Jordamts, p. 43.
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Chap. IX. THE UNICORN. 273
the unicorn is evidently the tusk of a naruthaL This confusion arose very early, as may be seen from its occurrence in Aelian, who says that the hom of the unicorn or Kartazonon (the Arab Karkaddan or Rhino- ceros) was not straight but twisted {l\iyiuov% expv rtvas, Hist. An. xvi. 20). The mistake may also be traced in the illustrations to Cosmas Indicopleustes from his own drawings, and it long endured, as may be seen in Jerome Cardan's description of an unicorn's hom which he saw suspended in the church of SL Denis ; as well as in a circumstance related by P. della Valle (II. 491 ; and Cardan de Varietafe, c. xcNdi.). Indeed the supporter of the Royal arms retains the narwhal horn. To this popular error is no doubt due the reading in Pauthier's text, which makes the hom white instead of black.
Monoceros and the Maiden.*
We may quote the following quaint version of the fable from l^he Bestiary of Philip de Thaun, published by Mr. Wright {Popular Treatises on Science, &c. p. 81) : —
'* Monosceros est Beste, un come ad en la teste, Purceo ad si a nun, de buc ad fa9un ; Par Pucele est prise ; or vez en quel guise-
Quant hom Ic volt cacer et prendre et enginner, Si vent hom al forest u sis riparis est ; Lit met une Pucele hors de sein sa mamele, Et par odurement Monosceros la sent ; Dune vent 4 la Pucele, et si baiset la mamele, £n sein devant se dort, issi vent k sa mort ; Li hom suivent atant ki Tocit en dormant U trestout vif le prent, si fais puis sun talent. Grant chose signifie."
And so goes on to moralize the fable.
Note 6. — In the J, Indian Archip, V. 285 there is mention of the Falco MaiaiensiSy black, with a double white-and-brown spotted tail, said to belong to the ospreys, " but does not disdain to take birds and other game."
• Another medieval illustration of the subject is given in Lfs Arts au Moycn ./;v, P* 499* ^rom the binding of a book. It iS allegorical, and the Maiden is thcie the Virgin Mary.
VOL. II. T
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274 MARCO POLO. Book III.
CHAPTER X.
The Kingdoms of Samara and Dagroian.
So you must know that when you leave the kingdom of Basma you come to another kingdom called Samara, on the same Island.' And in that kingdom Messer Marco Polo was detained five months by the weather, which would not allow of his going on. And I tell you that here again neither the Pole-star nor the stars of the Maestro " were to be seen, much or little. The people here are wild Idolaters; they have a king who is great and rich; but they also call themselves subjects of the Great Kaan. When Messer Mark was detained on this Island five months by contrary winds, [he landed with about 2000 men in his company ; they dug large ditches on the landward side to encompass the party, resting at either end on the sea-haven, and within these ditches they made bulwarks or stockades of timber] for fear of those brutes of man-eaters ; [for there is great store of wood there ; and the islanders having confidence in the party supplied them with victuals and other things needful]. There is abundance of fish to be had, the best in the world. The people have no wheat, but live on rice. Nor have they any wine except such as I shall now describe.
You must know that they derive it from a certain kind of tree that they have. When they want wine they cut a branch of this, and attach a great pot to the stem of the tree at the place where the branch was cut ; in a day and a night they will find the pot filled. This wine is excellent drink, and is got both white and red. [It is of such sur- passing virtue that it cures dropsy and tisick and spleen.] The trees resemble small date-palms ; . . . and when cut- ting a branch no longer gives a flow of wine, they water the root of the tree, and before long the branches again
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Chap. X. SAMARA AND DAGROIAN. 275
begin ro give out wine as before.^ They have also great quantities of Indian nuts [as big as a man's head], which are good to eat when fresh ; [being sweet and savoury, and white as milk. The inside of the meat of the nut is filled with a liquor Uke clear fresh water, but better to the taste, and more delicate than wine or any other drink that ever existed].
Now we have done telling you about this kingdom, let us quit it, and we will tell you of Dagroian.
When you leave the kingdom of Samara you come to another which is called Dagroian. It is an independent kingdom, and has a language of its own. The people are very wild, but they call themselves the subjects of the Great Kaan. I will tell you a wicked custom of theirs.*
When one of them is ill they send for their sorcerers, and put the question to them, whether the sick man shall recover of his sickness or no. If they say that he will recover, then they let him alone till he gets better. But if the sorcerers foretell that the sick man is to die, the friends send for certain judges of theirs to put to death him who has thus been condemned by the sorcerers to die. These men come, and lay so many clothes upon the sick man's mouth that they suffocate him. And when he is dead they have him cooked, and gather together all the dead man's kin, and eat him. And I assure you they do suck the very bones till not a particle of marrow remains in them; for they say that if any nourishment remained in the bones this would breed worms, and then the worms would die for want of food, and the death of those worms would be laid to the charge of the deceased man's soul. And so they eat him up stump and rump. And when they have thus eaten him they collect his bones and put them in fine chests, and carry them away, and place them in caverns among the mountains where no beast nor other creature can get at them. And you must know also that if they take prisoner a man of another country, and he
T 2
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276 MARCO POLO. Book III.
cannot pay a ransom in coin, they kill him and eat him straightway. It is a very evil custom and a parlous.^
Now that I have told you about this kingdom let us leave it, and I will tell you of Lambri.
Note 1. — I have little doubt that in Marco's dictation the name was really Samatra, and it is possible that we have a trace of this in the Samarcha (for Samartha) of the Crusca MS.
The Shijarat Malayu has a legend, with a fictitious et)rmology, of the foundation of the city and kingdom of Samudra or Sumatra, by Marah Silu, a fisherman near Pasangan, who had acquired great wealth, as wealth is got in fairy tales. The name is probably the Sanskrit Samudra, " the sea." Possibly it may have been iniitated from Dwdra Samudra, at that time a great state and city of Southern India. Mara Silu having become King of Samudra was converted to Islam, and took the name of Malik-al-Sdlih. He married the daughter of the King of Parldk, by whom he had two sons ; and to have a principality for each he founded the city and kingdom of Pasd. Thus we have Marco's three first kingdoms, Ferlec, Basma, and Samara, connected together in a satisfactory manner in the Malayan story. It goes on to relate the history of the two sons Al-Dhdhir and Al-Mansdr. Another version is given in the histon' of Pasei already alluded to, with such differences as might be expected when the oral traditions of several centuries came to be written down,
Ibn Batuta, about 1346, on his way to China, spent fifteen days at the court of Samudra, which he calls Sdmdthrah or Sdmuthrah, The king whom he found there reigning was the Sultan Al-Malik Al-Dhdhir, a most zealous Mussulman, surrounded by doctors of theology, and greatly addicted to religious discussions, as well as a great warrior and a powerful prince. The city was four miles from its port, which the traveller calls Sdrha ; he describes the capital as a large and fine tonni, surrounded with an enceinte and bastions of timber. The court dis- played all the state of Mahomedan royalty, and the Sultan's dominions extended for many days along the coast. In accordance with Ibn Batuta's picture, the Malay Chronicle represents the court of Pasei (which we have seen to be intimately connected with Samudra) as a great focus of theological studies about this time.
There can be little doubt that Ibn Batuta*s Malik Al-Dhihir is the prince of the Malay Chronicle, the son of the first Mahomedan king. We find in 1292 that Marco says nothing of Mahomedanism ; the people are still wild idolaters ; but the king is already a rich and power- ful prince. This may have been Malik Al-Salih before his conversion ; but it may be doubted if the Malay story be correct in representing him as iht founder of the city. Nor is this apparently so represented in the Book of the Kings of Pasei.
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Chap. X. SAMARA AND DAGROIAN. 277
Before Ibn Batuta's time, Sumatra or Samudra appears in the travels of Fr. Odoric. After speaking of Lamori (to which we shall come pre- sently), he says: "In the same island, towards the south, is another kingdom, by name Sumoltra, in which is a singular generation of people, for they brand themselves on the face with a hot iron in some twelve places," &c. This looks as if the conversion to Islam was still (circa 1323) very incomplete. Rashiduddin also speaks of Siim^tra as lying beyond Lamuri {Elliot^ I. p. 70).
The power attained by the dynasty of Malik Al-Salih, and the number of Mahomedans attracted to his court, probably led in the course of the 14th century to the extension of the name of Sumatra to the whole island. For when visited early in the next century by Nicolo Conti, we are told that he " went to a fine city of the island of Tapro- bana, which island is called by the natives Shamuthera,^' Strange to say, he speaks of the natives as all idolaters. Fra Mauro, who got much from Conti, gives us " Isola Siamotra over Taprobana; " and it shows at once his own judgment and want of confidence in it, when he notes else- where that " Ptolemy, professing to describe Taprobana, has really only described Saylan."
We have no means of settling the exact position of the city of Sumatra, though possibly an enquiry among the natives of that coast might still determine the point Marsden and Logan indicate Samar- langa, but I should look for it nearer Pasei. As pointed out by Mr. Braddell in they. Ind, Arch,^ Malay tradition represents the site of Pasei as selected on a hunting expedition from Samudra, which seems to imply tolerable proximity. And at the marriage of the Princess of Parlak to Malik Al- Salih, we are told that the latter went to receive her on landing at Jambu Ayer (near Diamond Point), and thence conducted her to the city of Samudra. I should seek Samudra near the head of the estuary-like Gulf of Pasei, called in the charts Teh (or Talak) Samawe; a place very likely to have been sought as a shelter to the Great Kaan's fleet during the south-west monsoon. Fine timber, of great size, grows close to the shore of this bay,* and would furnish material for Marco's stockades.
When the Portuguese first reached those regions Pedir was the leading state upon the coast, and certainly no state called Sumatra con- tinued to exist. Whether the city continued to exist even in decay is not easy to discern. The Ain-i-Akbari says that the best civet is that which is brought from the seaport town of Sumatra, in the territory of Achin, and is called Sumatra Zabdd ; but this may have been based on old information. Valentyn seems to recognize the existence of a place of note called Samadra or Samotdara, though it is not entered on his map. A famous mystic theologian who flourished under the great King of Achin, Iskandar Muda, and died in 1630, bore the name of Sham-
Marstie/i, 1st ed. p. 291.
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278 MARCO POLO. Book III.
suddfn Shamatrdni^ which seems to point to the city of Sumatra as his birthplace.* The most distinct mention that I know of the city so called, in the Portuguese period, occurs in the soi-disant " Voyage which Juan Serano made when he fled from Malacca," in 15 12, published by Lord Stanley of Alderley, at the end of his translation of Barbosa. This man speaks of the " island of Samatra " as named from " a city of this northern part'' And on leaving Pedir, having gone down the nordiem coast, he says, " I drew towards the south and south-east direction, and reached to another country and city which is called Samatra," and so on. Now this describes the position in which the city of Sumatra should have been if it existed. But all the rest of the tract is mere plunder from Varthenuut
There is, however, a hke intimation in a curious letter respecting the Portuguese discoveries, written from Lisbon in 15 15, by a German, Valen- tine Moravia, who was probably the same Valentyn Fernandez the German who published the Portuguese edition of Marco Polo at Lisbon in 1502, and who shows an extremely accurate conception of Indian geography, He says : ** La maxima insula la quale fe chiamata da Marcho Polo Veneto lava Minor, et al presente si chiama Sumotra, da un emporio di dicta insula'' (printed by De GubcrnatiSy Viagg. Ita. &a p. 170).
Several considerations point to the probability that the states of Pasei and Sumatra had become united, and that the town of Sumatra may have been represented by the Pacem of the Portuguese. J I have to thank Mr. G. PhiUips for the copy of a small Chinese chart showing the northern coast of the island, which he states to be from " one of about the 13th century." I much doubt the date, but the map is valuable as showing the town of Sumatra {Sumantaia), This seems to be placed in the Gulf of Pasei, and very near where Pasei itself still exists. An extract of a " Chinese account of about a.d. 1413 " accompanied the map. This states that the town was situated some distance up a river, so as to be reached in two tides. There was a village at the mouth of the river called Talumangkin,%
Among the Indian states which were prevailed on to send tribute (or presents) to Kublai in 1286, we find Sumutala, The chief of this state is called in the Chinese record Tu-^han-pa-tiy which seems to be just the Malay words Tuan Pati, " Lord Ruler." No doubt this was the rising
♦ Veth's Atchitty 1873, P- 37-
t It might be supposed that Varthema had stolen from Serano ; but the book of the former ^?& publisfud in 1 5 10.
% Castanheda speaks of Pacem as the best port of the Island : *• standing on the bank of a river on marshy ground about a league inland ; and at the mouth of the river there are some houses of timber where a customs collector was stationed to exact duties at the anchorage from the ships which touched there " (Bk. II. ch. iii). This agrees with Ibn Batuta's account of Sumatra, four miles from its port.
§ If Mf. Phillips had given particulars about his map and quotations, as todalCr author, &:c., it would have given them more value. He leaves this vague.
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Chap. X. SAMARA AND DAGROIAN. 279
state of Sumatra, of which we have been speaking ; for it will be observed that Marco says the people of that state called themselves the Kaan*s subjects. Rashiduddin makes the same statement regarding the people of Java (i>. the island of Sumatra), and even of Nicobar : " they are all subject to the Kaan." It is curious to find just the same kind of state- ments about the princes of the Malay Islands acknowledging themselves subjects of Charles V., in the report of the surviving commander of Magellan's ship to that emperor (printed by Baldelli-Boni, I. Ixvii). Pauthier has curious Chinese extracts containing a notable passage respecting the disappearance of Sumatra Proper from history : " In the years IVen-chi (15 7 3-1 6 15), the kingdom of Sumatra divided in two, and the new state took the name of AM (Achin). After that Sumatra was no more heard of." {Gaubily 205; Demaillay IX. 429; Elliot^ I. 71 ; Pauthier^ p. 605, and 567.)
Note 2. — ^** Vos di que la Tramontaine ne part. Et encore vos di que Festoilles dou Meistre ne aparentnepou ne grant'* (G. T.). The Tramon- taine is the Pole star : —
** De nostre P^re TApostoiUe Volsisse qu*il semblast Pestoile
Qui ne se muet
Par celc estoile vont et viennent Et lor sen et lor voie tiennent 11 Fapelent la tres montaigne"
— La Bible Guiot de Provins in Barbazatit by Mhttj II. 377.
The Meistre is explained by Pauthier to be Arcturus ; but this makes Polo's error greater than it is. Brunetto Latini says : " Devers la tra- montane en a il i. autre (vent) plus debonaire, qui a non Chorus, Cestui apelent li marinier MAisxRE/t^r vij\ estoiles qui sont en celui meisme leu^' &C. (Li TresorSy p. 122). Magister or Magistra in medieval Latin, La Maistre in old French, signifies " the beam of a plough." Possibly this accounts for the application oi Maistre to the Great Bear, or Plough, But on the other hand the pilot's art is called in old French maistrance. Hence this constellation may have had the name as the pilot's guide, — like our Lode-sXzx, The name was probably given to the N.W. point under a latitude in which the Great Bear sets in that quarter. In this way many of the points of the old Arabian Pose des Vents were named frona the rising or setting of certain constellations (see Peinauds Adulfeda, Introd. p. cxcix-cci).
Note 3. — The tree here intended, and which gives the chief supply of toddy and sugar in the Malay Islands, is the Areng Saccharifera (firom the Javanese name), called by the Malays Gomutiy and by the Portu- guese Saguer, It has some resemblance to the date-palm, to which Polo compares it, but it is a much coarser and wilder-looking tree, with a general raggedness, " incompta et adspectu tristis,"* as Rumphius describes it. It is notable for the number of plants that find a footing in the joints
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28o MARCO POLO. Book III.
of its stem. On one tree in Java I have counted 13 species of such parasites, nearly all ferns. The tree appears in the foreground of the cut at p. 253.
Crawfurd thus describes its treatment in obtaining toddy : " One of the spathae^ or shoots of fructification, is, on the first appearance of the fruit, beaten for three successive days with a small stick, with the view of determining the sap to the wounded part. The shoot is then cut ofl^ a litde way from the root, and the liquor which pours out is received in pots. . . . The Gomuti palm is fit to yield toddy at 9 or 10 years old, and continues to yield it for 2 years at the average rate of 3 quarts a day." (Hist of Ind. Arch. I. 398.)
The words omitted in translation are unintelligible to me : " ^/ staU quatre rcumes trois eel en'* (G. T.)
Note 4. — No one has been able to identify this state. Its position, however, must have been near Pedir, and perhaps it was practically the same. Pedir was the most flourishing of those Sumatran states at the appearance of the Portuguese.
Rashiduddin names among the towns of the Archipelago Dalmian, which may perhaps be a corrupt transcript of Dagroian.
Mr. Phillips's Chinese extracts, already cited (p. 278), state that west of Sumatra (proper) were two small kingdoms, the first Naku-urh^ the second Liti. NakU-urh, which seems to the Ting-ho-^rh of Pauthier's extracts, which sent tribute to the Kaan, and may probably be Dagroian as Mr. Phillips supposes, was also called the Kingdom of Tattooed Folk, Tattooing is ascribed by Friar Odoric to the people of Sumoltra (Cathay^ p. 86). Liti is evidently the Lide of de Barros, which by his Ust lay immediately east of Pedir. This would place Nakd-urh about Samar- langka. Beyond Liti was Lanmoli (/. <r. Lambri).
There is, or was 50 years ago, a small port between Ayer Labu and Samarlangka called Daridn-QdAi (Great Darian ?). This is the nearest approach to Dagroian that I have met with. (N, Ann, des K, Tom. XVIII. p. 16.)
Note 5. — Gasparo Balbi (1579-87) heard the like story of the Battas under Achin. True or false, the charge against them has come down to our times. The like is told by Herodotus of the Paddaei in India, of the Massagetae, and of the Issedonians ; by Strabo of the Caspians and of the Derbices; by the Chinese of one of the wild tribes of Kweichau; and was told to Wallace of some of the Aru Island tribes near New Ciuinea, and to Bickmore of a tribe on the south coast of Floris, called Rakka (probably a form of Hindu Rdkshasa^ or ogre-goblin). Similar charges are made against sundry tribes of the New World, from Brazil to Vancouver Island. Odoric tells precisely Marco*s story of a certain island called Dondin. And in " King Alisaunder," the custom is related of a people of India, called most inappropriately Orphan i : —
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Chap. XI. LAMBRI AND FANSUR. 28 1
** Another Folk woneth there beside ; Orphani he hatteth wide. When her eldrynges beth elde, And ne mowen hemselven welde Hy hem sleeth, and bidelve And," &c., &c. —Weber, I. p. 206.
Benedetto Bordone, in \i\%Isolario (1521 and 1547), makes the same charge against the Irish^ but I am glad to say that this seems only copied from Strabo. Such stories are still rife in the East, like those of men with tails. I have myself heard the tale told, neariy as Raffles tells it of the Battas, of some of the wild tribes adjoining Arakan {Balbi^ f. 130 ; Raffles^ Mem. p. 427 ; Waiiac^y Malay Archip. 281 ; Bickmor^s Travels, p. Ill ; Cathay, p. 25, 100).
The latest and most authentic statement of the kind refers to a small tribe called -5/r>4^^, existing in the wildest parts of Chota Nagpiir and Jash- pur, west of Bengal, and is given by an accomplished Indian ethnologist, Colonel Dalton. " They were wretched-looking objects .... assuring me that they had themselves given up the practice, they admitted that their fathers were in the habit of disposing of their dead in the manner indicated, viz. by feasting on the bodies ; but they declared that they never shortened life to provide such feast, and shrunk with horror at the idea of any bodies but those of their own blood relations being served up at them I" (/. A. S, B. XXXIV. Pt. II. 18). The same practice has been attributed recently, but only on hearsay, to a tribe of N. Guinea called Tarungares,
The Battas now bury their dead, after keeping the body a consider- able time. But the people of Nias and the Batu Islands, whom Jung- huhn considers to be of common origin with the Battas, do not bury, but expose the bodies in coffins upon rocks by the sea. And the small and very peculiar people of the Paggi Islands expose their dead on bamboo platforms in the forest. It is quite probable that such customs existed in the north of Sumatra also ; indeed they may still exist, for the interior seems unknown. We do hear of pagan hill-people inland from Pedir who make descents upon the coast {/unghuhn II. 140 ; Tydschrift voor Indisc/ie Tool, &c., 2nd year, No. 4 ; Nouv, Ann, des V,, XVIII.)
CHAPTER XL Of the Kingdoms of Lambri and Fansur.
When you leave that kingdom you come to another which is called Lambri.' The people are Idolaters, and call them-
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a82 MARCO POLO. BOOK III.
selves the subjects of the Great Kaan. They have plenty of Camphor and of all sorts of other spices. They also have brazil in great quantities. This they sow, and when it is grown to the size of a small shoot they take it up and transplant it ; then they let it grow for three years, after which they tear it up by the root. You must know that Messer Marco Polo aforesaid brought some seed of the brazil, such as they sow, to Venice with him, and had it sown there ; but never a thiiig came up. And I fency it was because the climate was too cold.
Now you must know that in this kingdom of Lambri there are men with tails; these tails are of a palm in length, and have no hair on them. These people live in the mountains and are a kind of wild men. Their tails are about the thickness of a dog's.' There are also plenty of unicorns in that country, and abundance of game in birds and beasts.
Now then I have told you about the kingdom of Lambri.
You then come to another kingdom which is called Fansur. The people are Idolaters, and also call them- selves subjects of the Great Kaan ; and understand, they are still on the same Island that I have been telling you of In this kingdom of Fansur grows the best Camphor in the world called Canfora Fansuru It is so fine that it sells for its weight in fine gold.^
The people have no wheat, but have rice which they eat with milk and flesh. They also have wine from trees such as I told you of. And I will tell you another great marvel. They have a kind of trees that produce flour, and excellent flour it is for food. These trees are very tall and thick, but have a very thin bark, and inside the bark they are crammed with flour. And I tell you that Messer Marco Polo, who witnessed all this, related how he and his party did sundry times partake of this flour made into bread, and found it excellent.'*
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Chap. XI. LAMBRI AND FANSUR. 283
There is now no more to relate. For out of those eight kingdoms we have told you about six that lie at this side of the Island. I shall tell you nothing about the other two kingdoms that are at the other side of the Island, for the said Messer Marco Polo never was there. Howbeit we have told you about the greater part of this Island of the Lesser Java ; so now we will quit it, and I will tell you of a very small Island that is called Gauenispola.^
Note 1. — The name of Lambri is not now traceable on our maps, nor on any list of the ports of Sumatra that I have met with ; but in old times the name occurs frequently under one form or another, and its position can be assigned generally to the north part of the west coast, commencing from the neighbourhood of Achin Head.
De Barros, detaihng the 29 kingdoms which divided the coast of Sumatra at the beginning of the Portuguese conquests, begins with Daya^ and then passes round by the north. He names as next in order Lambrij, and then Achem, This would make Lambri lie between Daya and Achin, for which there is but little room. And there is an apparent inconsistency; for in coming round again from the south, his 28th kingdom is Quinchel (Singkel of our modem maps), the 29th Mancopa^ " which /<z//f upon Lambrij ^ which adjoins Daya the first that we named." Most of the data about Lambri render it very difficult to distinguish it from Achin.
The name of Lambri occurs in the Malay Chronicle, in the account of the first Mahomedan mission to convert the Island. We shall quote the passage in a following note.
The position of Lambri would render it one of the first points of Sumatra made by navigators from Arabia and India ; and this seems at one time to have caused the name to be applied to the whole Island. Thus Rashiduddin speaks of the very large Island LXmuri lying beyond Ceylon, and adjoining the country oi Sumatra; Odoric also goes from India across the Ocean to a certain country called Lamori, where he b^an to lose sight of the North Star. He also speaks of the camphor, gold, and lign-aloes which it produced, and proceeds thence to Sumoitra in the same Island.* It is probable that the verzino or brazil-wood of Ameri (UAmeri, /. e, Lambri ?) which appears in the mercantile details
• I formerly supposed Al-Ramni, the oldest Arabic name of Sumatra, to be a corruption of Lambri ; but this is more probably of Hindu origin. One of the Dvlpas of the ocean mentioned in the Puranas is called RAnianiyakay **delightfulness*' ( Williams's Skt. Did. \
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284 MARCO POLO. Book III.
of Pegolotti was from this part of Sumatra. It is probable also that the country called Nanwuli^ which the Chinese Annals report, with Sumun- tula and others, to have sent tribute to the Great Kaan in 1286, was this same Lambri which Polo tells us called itself subject to the Kaan.
In the time of the Sung dynasty ships from T'swanchau (or Zayton) bound for Tashi^ or Arabia, used to sail in 40 days to a place called Lanli-pdi (probably this is also Lambri, Lambri-purif), There they passed the winter, /. e, the S.W. monsoon, just as Marco Polo's party did at Sumatra, and sailing again when the wind became fair they reached Arabia in 60 days (Breischndder^ p. 16).
' {De Barros^ Dec. III. Bk. V. ch. i. ; Elliot^ I. 70; Caihay^Zi^ seqq, ; PegoL p. 361 ; FauthieTy p. 605.)
Note 2. — Stories of tailed or hairy men are common in the Archi- pelago, as in many other regions. Kazwini tells of the hairy little men, that are found in Rdmni (Sumatra) with a language like birds* chirping. Marsden was told of hairy people called Orang Gugu in the interior of the Island, who differed little, except in the use of speech, from the Orang utang. Since his time a French writer, giving the same name and same description, declares that he saw " a group " of these hairy people on the coast of Andragiri, and was told by them that they inhabited the interior of Menangkabau and formed a small tribe. It is rather remark- able that this writer makes no allusion to Marsden though his account is so nearly identical {L OctanU in LUnivers Pittoresque, I. 24). Mr. Anderson says there are " a few wild people in the Siak country, very little removed in point of civilization above their companions the monkeys," but he says nothing of hairiness nor tails. For the earliest version of the tail story we must go back to Ptolemy and the Isles of the Satyrs in this quarter ; or rather to Ctesias who tells of tailed men on an Island in the Indian Sea. Jordanus also has the story of the hairy men. Galvano heard that there were on the Island certain people called Daraque Dara (/), which had tails like unto sheep. And the King of Tidore told him of another such tribe on the Isle of Batochina. Mr. St John in Borneo met with a trader who had seen and/?// the tails of such a race inhabiting the north-east coast of that Island. The appendage was 4 inches long and very stiff: so the people all used perforated scats. This Borneo story has lately been brought forward in Calcutta, and stoutly maintained, on native evidence, by an English merchant The Chinese also have their tailed men in the mountains above Canton. In Africa there have been many such stories, of some of which an account will be found in the Bulletin de la Soc, de Gtog. ser. 4, tom. iii. p. 31. Il was a story among medieval Mahomedans that the members of the Imperial House of Trebizond were endowed with short tails, whilst medieval Continentals had like stories about Englishmen, as Matthew Paris relates. Thus we find in the Romance of Coeur de Lion, Richards messengers addressed by the ** Emperor of Cyprus :" —
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Chap. XI. FANSURI CAMPHOR. 285
** Out, Taylardsy of my palys ! Now go, aiid say your toy led King That I owe him nothing."
Weber, II. 83.
The Princes of Purbandar, in the Peninsula of Guzerat, claim descent from the monkey-god Hanumin, and allege in justification a spinal elongation which gets them the name oi Punchdriah, "Taylards."
{Eth?s Kazwini, p. 221 ; Anderson^ p. 210 ; St John, Forests of the Far East^ I. 40; Galvano^ Hak. Soc. 108, 120; Gildemeister, 194; AlMs Indian Mail, July 2^, 1869 ; Mid. Kingd, I. ig^] N. et Ext XIII. I 380; Mat Paris under a.d. 1250; Tod's Rajasthan, I. 114.)
Note 3. — The Camphor called Fansuri is celebrated by Arab writers at least as old as the 9th century, e.g.^ by the author of the first part of the Relations^ by Mas'udi in the next century, also by Avicenna, by Abulfeda, by Kazwini, and by Abul Fazl, &c. In the second and third the name is miswritten KansUr, and by the last Kaisiiri^ but there can be no doubt of the correction required. Reinaud, I. 7 ; Mas, I. 338 ; Liber Canonis, Ven. 1544, 1. 116 ; Biisching, IV. 277 ; Gildem. p. 209 ; Ain-i-Akb. p. 78.) In Serapion we find the same camphor described as that oi Pansor ; and when, leaving Arab authorities and the earlier Middle Ages we come to Garcias, he speaks of the same article under the name of Camphor of Barros, And this is the name — Kdpur- Bdnis, — derived from the port which has been the chief shipping-place of Sumatran camphor for at least three centuries, by which the native camphor is still known in eastern trade, as distinguished from the Kdpur- CAind or Rdp^tr-JapHuy as the Malays term the article derived in those countries by distillation from the Laurus Camphora. The earliest western mention of camphor is in the same prescription by the physician Aetius (drca A.D. 540) that contains one of the earliest mentions of musk {supra, I. p. 245.) The prescHption ends : " and if you have a supply of camphor add two ounces of that" {Aetii Medici Graeci Tetrabiblos, &c., Froben,
>549. p. 910.)
It is highly probable that Fansur and Barus may be not only the same locality but mere variations of the same name.* The place is called in the Shijarat Maiayu, Pasuri, a name which the Arabs certainly made into FansUri in one direction, and which might easily in another, by a very common kind of Oriental metathesis, pass into JBariusi, The legend in the Shijarat Malayu relates to the first Mahomedan mission for the conversion of Sumatra, sent by the Sherif of Mecca via India. After sailing from Malabar the first place the party arrived at was Pasuri, the people of which embraced Islam. They then proceeded to Lambri, which also accepted the Faith. Then they sailed on till they
• Van der Tuuk says positively, I find : ** Fantsiir was the ancient name of Bdrus " yJ.R. A.S., n.s. II. 232).
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286 MARCO POLO. Book III.
reached Haru (see on my map Aru on the East Coast), which did like- wise. At this last place they enquired for Samudra, which seems to have been the special object of their mission, and found that they had passed it Accordingly they retraced their course to Perlak, and after converting that place went on to Samudra where they converted Mara Silu the King (see note 1, chap. x. above). This passage is of extreme interest as naming four out of Marco's six kingdoms, and in positions quite accordant with his indications. As noticed by Mr. Braddell, from whose abstract I take the passage, the circumstance of the party having passed Samudra unwittingly is especially consistent with the site we have assigned to it near the head of the Bay of Pasei, as a glance at the map will show.
Valentyn observes : " Fansur can be nought else than the famous Fantsur, no longer known indeed by that name, but a kingdom which we become acquainted with through Hamza Fantsuri, a celebrated Poet, and native of this Pantsur. It lay in the north angle of the Island, and a little west of Achin ; it formerly was rife with trade and population, but would have been utterly lost in oblivion had not Hamza Pantsuri made us again acquainted with it" Nothing indeed could well be " a little west of Achin ;" this is doubtless a slip for " a little down the west coast from Achin." Hamza Fantsuri, as he is termed by Prof. Veth, who also identifies Fantsur with Birds, was a poet of the first half of the 17 th century, who in his verses popularized the mystical theology of Shamsuddin Shamatrani (supra^ p. 273), strongly tinged with pantheism. The works of both were solemnly burnt before the great mosque of Achin about 1640. (y. Ind, Arch, V. 312 seqq,; Valentyn^ Sumatra, in Vol. v., p. 2\ \ Vethy Atchin^ Leiden, 1873, p. 38.)
Mas*udi says that the Fansur Camphor was found most plentifiilly in years rife with storms and earthquakes. Ibn Batuta gives a jumbled and highly incorrect account of the product, but one circumstance that he mentions is possibly founded on a real superstition, viz., that no camphor was formed unless some animal had been sacrificed at the root of the tree, and the best quality only then when a human victim had been oflfered. Nicolo Conti has a similar statement : " The Camphor is found inside the tree and if they do not sacrifice to the gods before they cut the bark, it disappears and is no more seen." Beccari, in our day, mentions special ceremonies used by the Kayans of Borneo, before they commence the search. These superstitions hinge on the great uncertainty of finding camphor in any given tree, after the laborious process of cutting it down and splitting it, an uncertainty which also largely accounts for the high price. By far the best of the old accounts of the product is that quoted by Kazwini from Mahomed Ben Zakaria Al-R^i : " Among the number of marvellous things in this Island " (Zdnlj for Zdbaj^ L ^., Java or Sumatra) " is the Camphor Tree, which is of vast size, insomuch that its shade will cover 100 persons and more. They bore into the highest part of the tree and thence flows out the
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Chap. XI. FANSURI CAMPHOR, AND SAGO. 287
camphor-water, enough to fill many pitchers. Then they open the tree lower down about the middle, and extract the camphor in lumps." Compare this passage, which we may notice has been borrowed bodily by Sindbad of the Sea, with what is probably the best modem account, Junghuhn's : " Among the forest trees (of Tapanuli adjoining Bams) the Camphor Tree (Dryabaianops Camphord) attracts beyond all the traveller's observation, by its straight columnar and colossal grey tmnk, and its mighty crown of foliage, rising high above the canopy of the forest It exceeds in dimensions the Rasamala^^ the loftiest tree of Java, and is probably the greatest tree of the Archipelago, if not of the world,t reaching a height of 200 feet One of the middling size which I had cut down measured at the base, where the camphor leaks out, yi Paris feet in diameter (about 8 feet English) ; its tmnk rose to 100 feet, with an upper diameter of 5 feet, before dividing, and the height of the whole tree to the crown was 150 feet The precious consolidated camphor is found in small quantities, i lb. to i lb. in a single tree, in fissure-like hollows in the stem. Yet many are cut down in vain, or split up the side without finding camphor. The camphor oil is prepared by the natives by bmising and boiling the twigs." The oil however appears also to be found in the tree, as Crawfurd and Collingwood mention, corroborating the ancient Arab.
It is well known that the Chinese attach an extravagantly superior value to the Malay camphor, and probably its value in Marco's day was higher than it is now, but still its estimate as worth its weight in gold looks like h)rperbole. Forrest, a century ago, says Bams Camphor was in the Chinese market worth nearly its weight in silver^ and this is tme still. The price is commonly estimated at 100 times that of the Chinese camphor. The whole quantity exported from the Bams territory goes to China. De Vriese reckons the average annual export from Sumatra between 1839 and 1844 at less than 400 kilogrammes. The following table shows the wholesale rates in the Chinese market as given by Rondot in 1848 : —
|
Qualities of Campkor. |
Per pikul of \ii\ lbs. |
|
Ordinary China, 1st quality |
20 dollars. |
|
»» »» 2nd ,, |
14 »» |
|
Formosa |
.. 25 „ |
|
Japan |
.. 30 M |
|
China «^fl/ (ext from an Artemisia) |
.. 250 „ |
|
Bams, 1st quality |
.. 2000 „ |
|
,» 2nd „ |
.. 1000 „ |
The Chinese call the Sumatran (or Borneo) Camphor Fing-pien " Icicle flakes," and Lung-nau " Dragon's Brains." It is just to remark however that in the Ain Akbari we find the price of the Sumatran
♦ Liquidambar AUingiana.
t The Californian and Australian giants of 400 feet were not then known.
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288 MARCO POLO. BOOK III.
Camphor, known to the Hindus as Bhim Seni^ varying from 3 rupees as high as 2 mohurs (or 20 rupees) for a rupee's weight, which latter price would be twice the weight in gold. Abul Fazl says the worst camphor went by the name of Bdliis, I should suspect some mistake, as we know from Garcias that the fine camphor was already known as Bants {Aifi'i'Akb, 75-79)-
(Ma^udi^ I. 338 ; /. ^., IV. 241 ; /. A, ser. 4, tom. viiL 216 ; Lanis Arab, Nights (1859), III. 21 ; Battaldnder^ I. 107 ; Crawf, Hist III. 218, and Desc, Diet. 81 ; Hedde et Rondot^ Com. de la Chiru^ 36-37 ; Chin, Comm. Guide ; Dr, F. A, Flikkiger^ Zur Geschkhte des Campha-s^ in Schweiz, Wochenschr, fiir Fharmacie, Sept, Oct, 1867.)
Note 4. — An interesting notice of the Sago-tree, of which Odoric also gives an account Ramusio is however here fuller and more accurate : " Removing the first bark, which is but thin, you come on the wood of the tree which forms a thickness all round of some three fingers, but all inside this is a pith of flour, like that of the Carvolo (?). The trees are so big that it will take two men to span them. They put this flour into tubs of water, and beat it up with a stick, and then the bran and other impurities come to the top, whilst the pure flour sinks to the bottom. The water is then thrown away, and the cleaned flour that remains is taken and made into pasta in strips and other forms. These Messer Marco often partook of, and brought some with him to Venice. It resembles barley bread and tastes much the same. The wood of this tree is like iron, for if thrown into the water it goes straight to the bottom. It can be split straight from end to end like a cane. AVhen the flour has been removed the wood remains as has been said, three inches thick. Of this the people make short lances, not long ones, because they are so heavy that no one could carry or handle them if long. One end is sharpened and charred in the fire, and when thus prepared they will pierce any armour, and much better than iron would do." Marsden points out that this heavy lance-wood is not that of the true Sago-palm, but of the Nibong or Caryota urens ; which does indeed give some amount of sago.
Note 5. — In quitting the subject of these Sumatran Kingdoms it may appear to some readers that our explanations compress them too much, especially as Polo seems to allow only two kingdoms for the rest of the Island. In this he was doubtless wrong, and we may the less scruple to say so as he had not visited that other portion of the Island. We may note that in the space to which we assign the six kingdoms which Polo visited, De Barros assigns twelve^ viz. : Bara (corresponding generally to Feriec), Pacem {Basma), Pirada, Lide, Pedir, Biar, Achin, Lambri, Daya, Mancopa, Quinchel, Barros (Fansur). (Dec. III. v. i.)
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Chap. XII. THE ISLAND OF NECUVERAN. 289
CHAPTER XII. Concerning the Island of Necuveran.
Whrn you leave the Island of Java (the less) and the king- dom of Lambri, you sail north about 150 miles, and then you come to two Islands, one of which is called Necu- veran. In this Island they have no king nor chief, but live like beasts. And I tell you they go all naked, both men and women, and do not use the slightest covering of any kind. They are Idolaters. Their woods are all of noble and valuable kinds of trees; such as Red Sanders and Indian-nut and Cloves and Brazil and sundry other good spices.'
There is nothing else worth relating ; so we will go on, and I will tell you of an Island called Angamanain.
Note 1. — The end of the last chapter and the commencement of this I have taken from the G. Text There has been some confusion in the notes of the original dictation which that represents, and connections have made it worse. Thus Pauthier's text runs : " I will tell you of two small Islands, one called Gauenispola and the other Necouran," and then : " You sail north about 150 miles and find two Islands, one called Necouran and the other Gauenispola," Ramusio does not mention Gauenispola, but says in the former passage : " I will tell you of a small Island called Nocueran " — and then : ** You find two islands, one called Nocueran and the other Angaman."
Knowing the position of Gauenispola there is no difficulty in seeing how the passage should be explained. Something has interrupted the dictation after the last chapter. Pola asks Rusticiano, "Where were we ? " " Leaving the Great Island." Polo forgets the " very small Island called Gauenispola," and passes to the north where he has to tell us of two islands, " one called Necuveran and the other Angamanain." So, I do not doubt, the passage should run.
Let us observe that his point of departure in saihng north to the Nicobar Islands was the Kingdom of Lambri, This seems to indicate that Lambri included Achin Head or came very near it, an indication which we shall presently see confirmed.
As regards Gauenispola, of which he promised to tell us and forgot his promise, its name has disappeared from our modem maps, but it is
VOL. II. u
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ago MARCO POLO. Book III.
easily traced in the maps of the i6th and 17th centuries, and in the books of navigators of that time. The latest in which I have observed it is the Neptune Oriental^ Paris 1775, which calls iiPuIo Gommes. The name is there applied to a small island off Achin Head, outside of which lie the somewhat larger Islands of Pulo Nankai (or Ndsi) and Pulo Brds, whilst Pulo Wai lies further east*. I imagine, however, that the name was by the older navigators appUed to the larger Island of Pulo Bras, or to tJie whole group. Thus Alexander Hamilton, who calls it Gomus and Pulo Gomuis^ says that " from the Island of Gomus and Pulo
Wey the southernmost of the Nicobars may be seen." Dampier
most precisely applies the name of Pulo Gomez to the larger island which modem charts call Pulo Bras. So also Beaulieu couples the islands of " Gomispoda and Pulo Way" in front of the roadstead of Achin. De Barros mentions that Gaspar d'Acosta was lost on the Island of Gomispola, Linschoten, describing the course from Cochin to Malacca, says : " You take your course towards the small Isles of Gomespol\, which are in 6®, near the comer of Achin in the Island of Sunutra." And the Turkish author of the Mohit^ in speaking of the same naviga- tion, says : " If you wish to reach Malacca, guard against seeing Jamis- FULAH ( jLi^j*,^L^), because the mountains of Lamri advance into the sea, and the flood is there very strong." The editor has misunderstood the geography of this passage, which evidently means " Don't go near enough to Achin Head to see ev^n the islands in front of it" And here we see again that Lambri is made to extend to Achin Head The passage is illustrated by the report of the first English Voyage to the Indies. Their coiu^e was for the Nicobars, but " by the Master's fault in not duly observing the South Star, they fell to the southward of them, within sight of the Islands of Gomes FoloJ* {Nept, Orient, Charts 38 and 39, and pp. 126-7 i Hamilton, II. 66 and Map ; Dampier^ ed. 1699, II. 122 ; H, Ghi, des FoyageSyXll. 310; Zinsehoten, Routier, p. 30; Df Barros, Dec. III. liv. iil cap. z\ J, A, S. B. VI. 807; Astky, I. 238.)
The two islands (or rather groups of islands) Necuveran and AngEL- manain are the Nicobar and Ajidaman groups. A nearer trace of tiie form Necuveran, or Necouran as it stands in some MSS., is perhaps pre- served in Nancouri the existing name of one of the islands. They are perhaps the Nalo-kilo-chtu {Narikela^vipa) or Coco-nut Islands of which Hwen Tsang speaks as existing some thousand li to the south of Ceylon. The men, he had heard, were but 3 feet high, and had the beaks of birds. They had no cultivation and lived on coco-nuts. The islands are also believed to be the Lanja bdlus or Lanklia bdlus of the
• It was a mistake to suppose the name had disappeared, for it is applied, in the form Pulo Gamir, to the small island above indicated, in CoL Verstceg*s map to Veth's Atchin (1873). In a map chiefly borrowed from that, in Ocean I^kwttjrSy August 1873, I ^^^^ ventured to restore the name as Pulo Gomus, The name is per- haps (MaL) Gaffuist *'hard, rough."
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Chap. XII. THE ISLAND OF NECUVERAN.
291
old Arab navigators : " These Islands support a numerous population. Both men and women go naked, only the women wear a girdle of the leaves of trees. When a ship passes near, the men come out in boats of various sizes and barter ambergris and coco-nuts for iron," a description which has applied accurately for many centuries. Rashiduddin writes of them nearly in the same terms under the name of Ldkvdram (but read Nakavaram) opposite Lamuri. Odoric also has a chapter on the island of Nicaveran^ but it is one fiill of fable. (H, Thsang^ III. 144 and 517 ; Relations^ p. 8 ; Elliot^ I. p. 71 ; Cathay^ p. 97.)
Mr. Phillips, from his anonymous Chinese author, gives a quaint legend as to the nakedness of these islanders. Sakya Muni, having arrived from Ceylon, stopped at the Islands to bathe. AVhilst he was in the water the natives stole his clothes, upon which the Buddha cursed them ; and they have never since been able to wear any clothing without suffering for it
The chief part of the population is believed to be of race akin to the Malays, but they seem to be of more than one race, and there is great variety in dialect There have long been reports of a black tribe with woolly hair in the unknown interior of the Great Nicobar, and my friend CoL H. Man, when Superintendent of our Andaman Settlements, re- ceived spontaneous corroboration of this from natives of the former island, who were on a visit to Port Blair. Since this has been in type I have seen in the F. of India (July 28, 1874) notice of a valuable work by F. A. de Roepstorff on the dialects and manners of the Nicobarians. This notice speaks of an aboriginal race called Shob'aengSy " purely Mongolian," but does not mention negritoes. The natives do not now go quite naked ; the men wear a narrow cloth ; and the women a grass girdle. They are very skilful in management of their canoes. Some years since there were frightful disclosures regarding the massacre of the crews of vessels touching at these islands, and this has led eventually to their occupation by the Indian Government Trinkat and Nancouri are the islands which were guilty. A woman of Trinkat who could speak Malay was examined by Col. Man, and she acknowledged having seen 19 vessels scuttled, after their cargoes had been plundered and their crews massacred. "The natives who were captured at Trinkat," says Col. Man in another letter, " were a most savage-looking set, with remarkably long arms, and very projecting eye-teeth."
The islands have always been famous for the quality and abundance of their " Indian Nuts," />., cocos. The tree of next importance to the natives is a kind of Pandanus, from the cooked fruit of which they express an edible substance called Melori, of which you may read in Dampier ; they have the betel and areca ; and they grow yams, but only for barter. As regards the other vegetation, mentioned by Polo, I will quote what CoL Man writes to me from the Andamans, which probably is in great measure applicable to the Nicobars also : " Our woods are very fine, and doubtless resemble those of the Nicobars. Sapan wood (i.e. Polo's
u 2
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292 MARCO POLO. Book III.
Brazil) is in abundance ; coco-nuts, so numerous in the Nicobars, and to the north in the Cocos, are not found naturally with us, though they grow admirably when cultivated. There is said to be sandal-wood in our forests, and camphof, but I have not yet come across them. I do not believe in cloves, but we have lots of the wild nutmeg."* The last, and cardamoms, are mentioned in the Voyage of the Novara, voL II., in which will be found a detail of the various European attempts to colo- nize the Nicobar Islands, with other particulars (see also J, A, S. B, XV. 344 seqq)
CHAPTER XIII.
Concerning the Island of Andaman ain.
Angamanain is a very large Island. The people are with- out a king and are Idolaters, and no better than wild beasts. And I assure you all the men of this Island of Angamanain have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise ; in fact, in the face they are all just like big mastiff dogs ! They have a quantity of spices; but they are a most cruel generation, and eat everybody that they can catch, if not of their own race.' They live on flesh and rice and milk, and have fruits different from any of ours.
Now that I have told you about this race of people, as indeed it was highly proper to do in this our book, I will go on to tell you about an Island called Seilan, as you shall hear.
Note 1. — Here Marco speaks of the remarkable population of the Andaman Islands, — Oriental negroes in the lowest state of barbarism,— who have remained in their isolated and degraded condition, so near the shores of great civilized countries, for so many ages, " Rice and milk ' they have not, and their fruits are only wild ones.
I imagine oiu* traveller's form Angamanain to be an Arabic (oblique) dual — "The Two Andamans," viz., The Great and The Little, the former being in truth a chain of three islands, but so close and nearij continuous as to form apparently one, and to be named as such.
• Kurz's Vegetation of the Andaman Islands gives four myristicae{D:o!cai't^\ bnt no sandal-wood nor camphor-laureL Nor do I find sappan-wood, though there is another Caesalpinia (C Nugd),
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Chap. XIII. THE ISLAND OF ANGAMANAIN. 293
The origin of the name seems to be unknown. The only person to my knowledge who has given a meaning to it is Nicolo Conti, who says it means " Island of Gold ;** probably a mere sailor's yam. The name however is very old, and may perhaps be traced in Ptolemy; for he names an island of cannibals called that of Good Fortune, 'Aya^oO &ufiovo& It seems probable enough that this was 'AySat/tovos N^os, or the like, " The Angdaman Island," misunderstood. His next group of Islands is the Barussae, which seems again to be the Lankha Bdliis of the oldest Arab navigators, since these are certainly the Nicobars.
The description of the natives of the Andaman Islands in the early Arab Relations has been often quoted, but it is too like our traveller's account to be omitted : " The inhabitants of these islands eat men alive. They are black with woolly hair, and in their eyes and countenance
there is something quite frightful They go naked, and have
no boats. If they had they would devour all who passed near them. Sometimes ships that are wind-bound, and have exhausted their pro- vision of water, touch here and apply to the natives for it; in such cases the crew sometimes fall into the hands of the latter, and most of them are massacred " (p. 9).
The traditional charge of cannibalism against these people used to be veiy persistent, though it is generally rejected since our settlement upon the groiip in 1858. Mr. Logan supposes the report was cherished by those who frequented the islands for edible birds' nests, in order to keep the monopoly. Of their murdering the crews of wrecked vessels, like their Nicobar neighbours, I believe there is no doubt ; and it has happened in our own day. Cesare Federici, in Ramusio, speaks of the terrible fete of crews wrecked on the Andamans ; all such were killed and eaten by the natives, who refused all intercourse with strangers. A Hamilton mentions a friend of his who was wrecked on the islands ; nothing more was ever heard of the ship's company, " which gave ground to conjecture that they were all devoured by those savage cannibals."
They do not, in modem times, I believe, in their canoes, quit their own immediate coast, but Hamilton says they used, in his time, to come on forays to the Nicobar Islands ; and a paper in the Asiatic Researches mentions a tradition to the same effect as existing on the Car Nicobar. They have retained all the aversion to intercourse anciently ascribed to them, and they still go naked as of old, the utmost exception being a leaf-apron worn by the women near the British Settlement
The Dog-head feature is at least as old as Ctesias. The story originated, I imagine, in the disgust with which " allophylian " types of countenance are regarded, kindred to the feeling which makes the Hindus and other eastern nations represent the aborigines whom they superseded as demons. The Cubans described the Caribs to Columbus as man-eaters with dogs' muzzles ; and the old Danes had tales of Cyno- cephali in Finland. A curious passage from the Arab geographer Ibn Said pays an ambiguous compliment to the forefathers of Moltke and
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294 MARCO POLO. Book III.
Von Roon : " The Bonis (Prussians) are a miserable people, and still
more savage than the Russians One reads in some books that
the Bonis have dogs' faces ; it is a way of saying that they are very braved Ibn Batuta describes an Indo-Chinese tribe on the coast of Arakan or Pegu as having dogs' mouths, but sa)rs the women were beautiftil Friar Jordanus had heard the same of the dog-headed islanders. And one odd form of the story, found, strange to say, both in China and diffused over Ethiopia, represents the males as actual dogs whilst the females are women. Oddly too, Pfere Barbe tells us that a tradition of the Nicobar people themselves represent them as of canine descent, but on the female side ! The like tale in early Portuguese days was told of the Peguans, viz., that they sprang from a dog and a Chinese woman. It is mentioned by Camoens (X. 122). Note however that in Col Man's notice of the wilder part of the Nicobar people the projecting canine teeth are spoken of
Abraham Roger tells us that the Coromandel Brahmans used to say that the Rdkshasas or Demons had their abode "on the Island of Andaman lying on the route from Pulicat to Pegu," and also that they were man-eaters. This would be very curious if it were a genuine old Brahmanical Saga ; but I fear it may have been gathered from the Arab seamen. Still it is remarkable that a strange weird-looking island, a steep and regular volcanic cone, which rises covered with forest to a height of 2150 feet, straight out of the deep sea to the eastward of the Andaman group, bears the name of Narkandam^ in which one cannot
but recognize 9|4[qi, Narak^ "Hell;" perhapsi\^ra>tfl->b/»(i4!j«f, "a pit
of hell." Can it be that in old times, but still contemporary with Hindu navigation, this volcano was active, and that some Brahman St Brandon recognized in it the mouth of Hell, congenial to the Rakshasas of the adjacent group ?
** Li est de Saint Brandon le mature fumie, Qui fut si pr^ d'enfer, ^ nef et ^ galie. Que diable d'enfer issirent, par maistrie, Getans brandons de feu, pour lui faire hasquic *' . . .
Bauduin de Sebourg, I. 123.
{Ramusio, III. 391 ; Ham,, II. 65 ; Navarreti (Fr. Ed.), II. loi ; Cathay, 467 ; Bullet, de la Soc. de Geog, ser. 4, torn. iii. 36-7 ; / A. S. B., u. s. ; Reinauds Abulfeda, I. 315;/. Ind, Arch., N. s., III. I. 105 ; La Porte Ouverte, p. 188.)
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0
0 r4
'I
i
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o
fit
<
2.
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Chap. XIV. THE ISLAND OF SEILAN. 295
CHAPTER XIV. Concerning the Island of Seilan.
When you leave the Island of Angamanain and sail about a thousand miles in a direction a little south of west, you come to the Island of Seilan, which is in good sooth the best Island of its size in the world. You must know that it has a compass of 2400 miles, but in old times it was greater still, for it then had a circuit of ^bout 3600 miles, as you find in the charts of the mariners of those seas. But the north wind there blows with such strength that it has caused the sea to submerge a large part of the Island ; and that is the reason why it is not so big now as it used to be. For you must know that, on the side where the north wind strikes, the Island is very low and flat, insomuch that in approaching on board ship from the high seas you do not see the land till you are right upon it.' Now I will tell you all about this Island.
They have a king there whom they call Sendemain, and are tributary to nobody.* The people are Idolaters, and go quite naked except that they cover the middle. They have no wheat, but have rice, and sesamum of which they make their oil. They live on flesh and milk, and have tree-wine such as I have told you of. And they have brazil-wood, much the best in the world.^
Now I will quit these particulars, and tell you of the most precious article that exists in the world. You must know that rubies are found in this Island and in no other country in the world but this. They find there also sapphires and topazes and amethysts, and many other stones of price. And the King of this Island possesses a ruby which is the finest and biggest in the world ; I will tell you what it is like. It is about a palm in length, and as thick as a man's arm ; to look at, it is the most resplendent object
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296 MARCO POLO. BOOK 111.
upon earth ; it is quite free from flaw and as red as fire. Its value is so great that a price for it in money could hardly be named at all. You must know that the Great Kaan sent an embassy and begged the King as a favour greatly desired by him to sell him this ruby, offering to give for it the ransom of a city, or in fact what the King would. But the King replied that on no account what- ever would he sell it, for it had come to him from his ancestors.^
The people of Seilan are no soldiers, but poor cowardly creatures. And when they have need of soldiers they get Saracen troops from foreign parts.
Note 1. — ^Valentyn appears to be repeating a native tradition when he says : ** In old times the island had, as they loosely say, a good 400 miles (/. <r., Dutch, say 1600 miles) of compass, but at the north end the sea has from time to time carried away a large part of it " {Ceylon, in vol. v., p. 18). Curious particulars touching the exaggerated id^s of the ancients, inherited by the Arabs, as to the dimensions of Ceylon, will be found in Tmnenfs Ceylon^ chap. i. The Chmese pilgrim Hwen Tsang has the same tale. According to him, the circuit was 7000 //, or 1400 miles. We see from Marco's curious notice of the old charts (G. T. *•*• selonc qe se treuve m la mapemondi des mariner de eel mer ) that travellers had begun to find that the dimensions were exaggerated. The real circuit is under 700 miles !
On the ground that all the derivations of the name Sailan or Ceylon firom the old Sinhalay Serendib, and what not, seem forced. Van der Tuuk has suggested that the name may have been originally Javanese, being formed (he says) according to the rules of that language from Sela, " a precious stone," so that Pulo Selan would be the " Island of Gems." The Island was really called anciently Ratnadvlpa^ " the Island of Gems" {Mtm, de H, 7!, II. 125, and Harivansa, I. 403); and it is termed by an Arab Historian of the 9th century /aziral ul VdJbU, "The Isle of Rubies." As a matter of feet we derive originally from the Malays nearly all the forms we have adopted for names of countries reached by sea to the easl of the Bay of Bengal, e,g,, AwOj Barma^ Paigu, Siyam, China^ Japuriy Kochi (Cochin China), Champa^ Kambafa^ Maluka (properly a place in the Island of Ceram), Suluk^ Bumdy Tanasari^ MartavaUy &c. That accidents in the history of marine afiairs in those seas should have led to the adoption of the Malay and Ta\^anese names in the case of Ceylon also is at least conceivable. But Dr.
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Chap. XIV. THE ISLAND OF SEILAN. 297
Caldwell has pointed out to me that the P^i fomi of Sinhala was Sihalaniy and that this must have been colloquially shortened to Silam^ for it appears in old Tamul inscriptions as flam* Hence there is no- thing really strained in the derivation of Saiidn from Sinhala. Tennent {Ceylon, I. 549) and Crawfurd {Malay Diet. p. 171) ascribe the name Selan, Zeilan, to the Portuguese, but this is quite unfounded, as our author sufficiently testifies. The name Saiidn also occurs in Rashid- uddin, in Hayton, and in Jordanus (see next note). (See Van der Tuuk, work quoted above (p. 267), p. 118; J, As,, ser. 4, tom. viiL 145 ; /. ^nd. Arch, iV. 187 ; Elliot, I. 70.)
Note 2. — The native king at this time was Pandita Prakrama Bahu III., who reigned from 1267 to 1301 at Dambadenia, about 40 m. N.N.E. of Columbo. But the Tamuls of the continent had recently been in possession of the whole northern half of the island. The Singhalese Chronicle represents Prakrama to have recovered it from them, but they are so soon again found in full force that the completeness of this recovery may be doubted. There were also two invasions of Malays (Javakii) during this reign, under the lead of a chief called Chandra Banu, On the second occasion this invader was joined by a large Tamul reinforce- ment Sir E. Tennent suggests that this Chandra Banu may be Polo's Sende-mcUn or Sendemaz as Ramusio has it Or he may have been the Tamul chief in the north ; the first part of the name may have been either Chandra or Sundara,
Note 3. — Kazwini names the brazil, or sapan-wood of Ceylon. Ibn Batuta speaks of its abundance (IV. 166) ; and Ribeyro does the like (ed. of Columbo, 1847, p. 16) ; see also Ritter, VI. 39, 122 ; and Trans. R. A, S, 1, 539.
Sir E. Tennent has observed that Ibn Batuta is the first to speak of the Ceylon cinnamon. It is, however, mentioned by Kazwini (circa a.d. 1275), ^^^ ^^ 3. letter written firom Mabar by John of Montecorvino about the very time that Marco was in these seas. (See Eth/s Kazwini, 229, and Cathay, 213.)
Note 4. — There seems to have been always afloat among Indian tra- vellers, at least firom the time of Cosmas (6th century), some wonderful story about the ruby or rubies of the King of Ceylon. With Cosmas, and with the Chinese Hwen Tsang, in the following century, this precious object is fixed on the top of a pagoda, " a hyacinth, they say, of great size and brilliant ruddy colour, as big as a great pine-cone ; and when *tis seen firom a distance flashing, especially if the sun's rays strike upon it, 'tis a glorious and incomparable spectacle." Our author's contemporary, Hajrton, had heard of the great ruby : "The king of that Island of Celan hath the largest and finest ruby in existence. When his coronation
The old Tamul alphabet has no sibilant.
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298 MARCO POLO. Book III.
takes place this ruby is placed in his hand, and he goes round the city on horseback holding it in his hand, and thenceforth all recognize and obey him as their king." Odoric too speaks of the great ruby and the Kaan*s endeavours to get it, though by some error the circumstance is referred to Nicoveran instead of Ceylon. Ibn Batuta saw in the pos- session of Arya Chakravarti, a Tamul chief ruling at Patlam, a ruby bowl as big as the palm of one's hand. Friar Jordanus speaks of two great rubies belonging to the king of Sylen, each so large that when grasped in the hand it projected a finger's breadth at either side. The fame, at least, of these survived to the i6th century, for Andrea Corsali (15 1 5) says : " They tell that the king of this island possesses two rubies of colour so brilliant and vivid that they look like a flame of fire."
Sir E. Tennent, on this subject, quotes from a Chinese work a state- ment that early in the 14th century the Emperor sent an ofiicer to Ceylon to purchase a carbuncle of unusual lustre. This was fitted as a ball to the Emperor's cap ; it was upwards of an ounce in weight and cost 100,000 strings of cash. Every time a grand levee was held at night the red lustre filled the palace, and hence it was designated **The Red Palace-Illuminator." (/. B. IV. 174-5 ; Catkay, p. clxxvii; HaytoHy ch. vL ; Jord, p. 30 ; Ramus, I. 180 ; Ceylon^ I. 568.)
CHAPTER XV.
The Same continued. The History of Sagamoni Borcan and the beginning of idolatry.
Furthermore you must know that in the Island of Seilan there is an exceeding high mountain ; it rises right up so steep and precipitous that no one could ascend it, were it not that they have taken and fixed to it several great and massive iron chains, so disposed that by help of these men are able to mount to the top. And I tell you they say that on this mountain is the sepulchre of Adam our first parent; at least that is what the Saracens say. But the Idolaters say that it is the sepulchre of Sagamoni Borcan, before whose time there were no idols. They hold him to have been the best of men, a great saint in fact, according to their fashion, and the first in whose name idols were made.'
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He was the son, as their story goes, of a great and wealthy king. And he was of such an holy temper that he would never listen to any worldly talk, nor would he con- sent to be king. And when the father saw that his son would not be king, nor yet take any part in affairs, he took it sorely to heart. And first he tried to tempt him with great promises, offering to crown him king, and to sur- render all authority into his hands. The son, however, would none of his offers ; so the father was in great trouble, and all the more that he had no other son but him, to whom he might bequeath the kingdom at his own death. So, after taking thought on the matter, the King caused a great palace to be built, and placed his son therein, and caused him to be waited on there by a number of maidens, the most beautiful that could anywhere be found. And he ordered them to divert themselves with the prince, night and day, and to sing and dance before him, so as to draw his heart towards worldly enjoyments. But 'twas all of no avail, for none of those maidens could ever tempt the king's son to any wantonness, and he only abode the firmer in liis chastity, leading a most holy life, after their manner thereof. And I assure you he was so staid a youth that he had never gone out of the palace, and thus he had never seen a dead man, nor any one who was not hale and sound ; for the father never allowed any man that was aged or infirm to come into his presence. It came to pass however one day that the young gentleman took a ride, and by the roadside he beheld a dead man. The sight dismayed him greatly, as he never had seen such a sight before. Incon- tinently he demanded of those who were with him what thing that was ? and then they told him it was a dead man. " How, then," quoth the king's son, " do all men die ? " " Yea, forsooth," said they. Whereupon the young gentle- man said never a word, but rode on right pensively. And after he had ridden a good way he fell in with a very aged man who could no longer walk, and had not a tooth in his
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head, having lost all because of his great age. And when the king's son beheld this old man he asked what that might mean, and wherefore the man could not walk ? Those who were with him replied that it was through old age the man could walk no longer, and had lost all his teeth. And so when the king's son had thus learned about the dead man and about the aged man, he turned back to his palace and said to himself that he would abide no longer in this evil world, but would go in search of Him Who dieth not, and Who had created him.'
So what did he one night but take his departure from the palace privily, and betake himself to certain lofty and pathless mountains. And there he did abide, leading a life of great hardship and sanctity, and keeping great absti- nence, just as if he had been a Christian. Indeed, an he had but been so, he would have been a great saint of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led.^ And when he died they found his body and brought it to his father. And when the father saw dead before him that son whom he loved better than himself, he was near going distraught with sorrow. And he caused an image in the similitude of his son to be wrought in gold and precious stones, and caused all his people to adore it. And they all declared him to be a god ; and so they still say.*
They tell moreover that he hath died fourscore and four times. The first time he died as a man, and came to life again as an ox ; and then he died as an ox and came to life again as a horse, and so on until he had died four- score and four times ; and every time he became some kind of animal. But when he died the eighty-fourth time they say he became a god. And they do hold him for the greatest of all their gods. And they tell that the aforesaid image of him was the first idol that the Idolaters ever had ; and from that have originated all the other idols. And this befel in the Island of Seilan in India.
The Idolaters come thither on pilgrimage from very
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long distances and with great devotion, just as Christians go to the shrine of Messer Saint James in Gallicia. And they maintain that the monument on the mountain is that of the king's son, according to the story I have been telling you ; and that the teeth, and the hair, and the dish that are there were those of the same king's son, whose name was Sagamoni Borcan, or Sagamoni the Saint. But the Saracens also come thither on pilgrimage in great numbers, and they say that it is the sepulchre of Adam our first father, and that the teeth, and the hair, and the dish were those of Adam,^
Whose they were in truth, God knoweth ; howbeit, according to the Holy Scripture of our Church, the sepulchre of Adam is not in that part of the world.
Now it befel that the Great Kaan heard how on that mountain there was the sepulchre of our first father Adam, and that some of his hair and of his teeth, and the dish from which he used to eat, were still preserved there. So he thought he would get hold of them somehow or another, and despatched a great embassy for the purpose, in the year of Christ, 1284. The ambassadors, with a great company, travelled on by sea and by land until they arrived at the i.sland of Seilan, and presented themselves before the king. And they were so urgent with him that they succeeded in getting two of the grinder teeth, which were passing great and thick ; and they also got some of the hair, and the dish from which that personage used to eat, which is of a very beautiful green porphyry. And when the Great Kaan's ambassadors had attained the object for which they had come they were greatly rejoiced, and returned to their lord. And when they drew near to the great city of Cambaluc, where the Great Kaan was staying, they sent him word that they had brought back that for which he had sent them. On learning this the Great Kaan was passing glad, and ordered all the ecclesiastics and others to go forth to meet these reliques, which he was led to beUeve were those of Adam.
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And why should I make a long story of it ? In sooth, the whole population of Cambaluc went forth to meet those rehques, and the ecclesiastics took them over and carried them to the Great Kaan, who received them with great joy and reverence/ And they find it written in their Scriptures that the virtue of that dish is such that if food for one man be put therein it shall become enough for five men : and the Great Kaan averred that he had proved the thing and found that it was really true.^
So now you have heard how the Great Kaan came by those reliques ; and a mighty great treasure it did cost him ! The reliques being, according to the Idolaters, those of that king's son.
Adam's Peak.
' €)r est beic qr en ttsXz gslc a uiu immtaffiu mottt f^aut rt %\ tirgrot lie Us rocd^cs qt mtl i)i ptient nunttrr sus se nt m ceste matntn qe je bo} Ijtrat "
Note 1. — Sagamoni Borcan is, as Marsden points out, Sakya- MuNi, or Gautama-Buddha, with the affix Burkhan, or " Divinity,'* which is used by the Mongols as the synonym of Buddha,
" The Dewa of Samantakdta (Adam*s Peak), Samana, having heard of the arrival of Budha (in Lanka or Ceylon) . . . presented a request that he would leave an impression of his foot upon the mountain of which he was guardian. ... In the midst of the assembled Dewas, Budha, looking towards the East, made the impression of his foot, in length three inches less than the cubit of the carpenter ; and the impres- sion remained as a seal to show that Lanka is the inheritance of Budha, and that his religion will here flourish." {Hardy's Manual, p. 212.)
" The veneration with which this majestic mountain has been regarded for ages, took its rise in all probabilityamongst the aborigines of Ceylon.
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.... In a later age, .... the hollow in the lofty rock that crowns the summit was said by the Brahmans to be the footstep of Siva, by the Buddhists of Buddha, ... by the Gnostics of leu, by the Mahometans of Adam, whilst the Portuguese authorities were divided between the conflicting claims of St Thomas and the eunuch of Candace, Queen of Ethiopia." (Tmnent, II. 133.)
Polo, however, says nothing of the foot ; he speaks only of the sepulchre of Adam, or of Sakya-muni. I have been unable to find any modem indication of the monument that was shown by the Mahomedans as the tomb, and sometimes as the house, of Adam ; but such a structure there certainly was, perhaps an ancient Kist-vam^ or the like. John Marignolli, who was there about 1349, has an interesting passage on the subject : " That exceeding high mountain hath a pinnacle of surpassing height, which on account of the clouds can rarely be seen. But God, pitying our tears, lighted it up one morning just before the sun rose, so that we beheld it glowing with the brightest flame. In the way down from this mountain there is a fine level spot, still at a great height, and there you find in order : first, the mark of Adam's foot ; secondly, a certain statue of a sitting figure, with the left hand resting on the knee, and the right hand raised and extended towards the west ; lastly, there is the house (of Adam) which he made with his own hands. It is of an oblong quadrangular shape like a sepulchre, with a door in the middle, and is formed of great tabular slabs of marble, not cemented, but merely laid one upon another {Cathay^ 358). A Chinese account, translated in Amyot's Mkmoires^ says that at the foot of the mountain is a Monas- tery of Bonzes, in which is seen the veritable body of Fo, in the attitude of a man lying on his side " (XIV. 25). Osorio, also, in his history of Emanuel of Portugal, says : " Not far from it (the Peak) people go to see a small temple in which are two sepulchres, which are the objects of an extraordinary degree of superstitious devotion. For they believe that in these were buried the bodies of the first man and his wife " (£ 129 z'.). A German traveller (2?<z«/>/ Parthey, Niirnberg, 1698) also speaks of the tomb of Adam and his sons on the mountain (see Fabricius, Cod.Pseudep, Vet. Test, II. 31 ; also OuseUys Travels, I. 59).
It is a perplexing circumstance that there is a double set of indica- tions about the footmark. The Ceylon traditions, quoted above firom Hardy, call its length 3 inches less than a carpenter's cubit Modem observers estimate it at 5 feet or 5^ feet Hardy accounts for this by supposing that the original footmark was destroyed in the end of the 1 6th century. But Ibn Batuta, in the 14th, states it at 1 1 spans, or more than the modem report Marignolli, on the other hand, says that he measured it and found it to be 2^ palms, or about half a Prague ell, which corresponds in a general way with Hardy*s tradition. Valentyn calls it li ell in length ; Knox says 2 feet ; Herman Bree (De Bry ?), quoted by Fabridus, 8i spans ; a Chinese account, quoted below, 8 feet. These discrepancies remind one of the ancient Buddhist belief regarding
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such footmarks, that they seemed greater or smaller in proportion to the faith of the visitor ! (See Koeppm^ I. 529, and BeoTs Fah-hian^ p. 27.) The chains, of which Ibn Batuta gives a particular account, exist stilL The highest was called (he says) the chain of the Shahddai, or Credo, because the fearful abyss below made pilgrims recite the profes- sion of belief. Ashraf, a Persian poet of the 15 th century, author of an Alexandriad, ascribes these chains to the great conqueror, who devised them, with the assistance of the philosopher Bolinas* in order to scale the mountain, and reach the sepulchre of Adam, (See Ouseley, L 54 seqg.) There are inscriptions on some of the chains, but I find no account of them (Sheen's Adam's Peak^ Ceylon 1870, p. 226).
Note 2. — The general correctness with which Marco has here relatai the legendary history of Sakya's devotion to an ascetic life, as the pre- liminary to his becoming the Buddha or Divinely Perfect Being, shows what a strong impression the tale had made upon him. He is, of course, wrong in placing the scene of the history in Ceylon, though probably it was so told him, as the vulgar in all Buddhist countries do seem to localize the legends in regions known to them.
Sakya Sinha, Sakya Muni, or Gautama, originally called Siddhirta, was the son of Suddhodhana, the Kshatriya prince of ELapilavastu, a small state north of the Ganges, near the borders of Oudli. His high destiny had been foretold, as well as the objects that would move him to adopt the ascetic life. To keep these from his knowledge, his fether caused three palaces to be built, within the limits of which the prince should pass the three seasons of the year, whilst guards were posted to bar the approach of the dreaded objects. But these precautions were defeated by inevitable destiny and the power of the Devas.
When the prince was 16 he was married to the beautiful Yasodhara, daughter of the King of Koli, and 40,000 other princesses also became the inmates of his harem.
" Whilst living in the midst of the full enjoyment of every kind of pleasure, Siddhirta one day conmianded his principal charioteer to pre- pare his festive chariot ; and in obedience to his conmiands four lily- white horses were yoked. The prince leaped into the chariot, and pro- ceeded towards a garden at a little distance from the palace, attended by a great retinue. On his way he saw a decrepit old man, with broken teeth, grey locks, and a form bending towards the ground, his trembling steps supported by a staff (a Deva had taken this form). . . . The prince enquired what strange figure it was that he saw ; and he was informed that it was an old man. He then asked if the man was bom so, and the charioteer answered that he was not, as he was once young like them- selves. * Are there,' said the prince, * many such beings in the world f * Your highness,' said the charioteer, * there are many.* The prince
• Apollonia (of Macedonia) is made Bolina ; so Boiinas=. KipoVLomv& (Tyanacus).
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s^in enquired, * Shall I become thus old and decrepit ?* and he was told that it was a state at which all beings must arrive."
The prince returns home and informs his father of his intention to become an ascetic, seeing how undesiriable is life tending to such decay. His father conjures him to put away such thoughts, and to enjoy himself with his princesses, and he strengthens the guards about the palaces. Four months later like circumstances recur, and the prince sees a leper, and after the same interval a dead body in corruption. Lastly, he sees a religious recluse, radiant with peace and tranquillity, and resolves to delay no longer. He leaves his palace at night, after a look at his wife Yasodhara and the boy just bom to him, and betakes himself to the forests of Magadha, where he passes seven years in extreme asceticism. At the end of that time he attains the Buddhahood (see Hardy's Manual^ p. 151 seqq.). The latter part of the story told by Marco, about the body of the prince being brought to his father, &c., is erroneous. Sakya was 80 years of age when he died under the sdl trees in Kusi- ndra.
The strange parallel between Buddhistic ritual, discipline, and cos- tume, and those which especially claim the name of Catholic in the Christian Church, has been often noticed ; and though the parallel has never been elaborated as it might be, some of the more salient facts are familiar to most readers. Still many may be unaware that Buddha him- self, Siddhirta the son of Sdddodhana, has found his way into the Roman martyrology as a Saint of the Church.
In the first edition a mere allusion was made to this singular story, for it had recently been treated by Professor Max MUller with charac- teristic learning and grace (see Contemporary Review for July, 1870, p. 588). But the matter is so curious and still so little familiar that I now venture to give it at some length.
The religious romance called the History of Barlaam and Josaphat was for several centuries one of the most popular works in Christendom. It was translated into all the chief European languages, including Scan- dinavian and Sclavonic tongues. An Islandic version dates from about the year 1200 ; one in the Tagal language of the Philippines was printed at Manilla in 17 12.* The episodes and apologues with which the story abounds have furnished materials to poets and story-tellers in various ages and of very diverse characters; e,g, to Giovanni Boccaccio, John Gower, and to the compiler of the Gesta Romanorum, to Shakspere, and to the late W. Adams, author of the King's Messengers. The basis of this romance is the story of Siddhdrta.
The story of Barlaam and Josaphat first appears among the works (in Greek) of St. John of Damascus, a theologian of the early part of
* In 1870 I saw in the Library at Monte Cassino a long French poem on the story, in a MS. of our traveller's age. This is perhaps one referred to by Migne, as cited in Hist. Litt, de la France, XV. 484.
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the 8th century, who before he devoted himself to divinity had held high office at the Court of the Khalif Abu J^ar Almansiir. The outline of the story is as follows : —
St Thomas had converted the people of India to the truth ; and after the eremitic life originated in Egypt many in India adopted it But a potent pagan King arose, by name Abenner, who persecuted the Christians and especially the ascetics. After this King had long been childless, a son, greatly desired, is bom to him, a boy of match- less beauty. The King greatly rejoices, gives the child the name of JosAPHAT, and summons the astrologers to predict his destiny. They foretell for the prince glory and prosperity beyond all his pre- decessors in the kingdom. One sage, most learned of all, assents to this, but declares that the scene of these glories will not be the paternal realm, and that the child will adopt the faith that his fether persecutes.
This prediction greatly troubled King Abenner. In a secluded city he caused a splendid palace to be erected, within which his son was to abide, attended only by tutors and servants in the flower of youth and health. No one from without was to have access to the prince ; and he was to witness none of the afflictions of humanity, poverty, disease, old age, or death, but only what was pleasant, so that he should have no in- ducement to think of the ftiture life ; nor was he ever to hear a word of Christ or his rehgion. And, hearing that some monks still survived in India, the King in his wrath ordered that any such, who should be found after three days, should be bumt alive.
The Prince grows up in seclusion, acquires all manner of learning, and exhibits singular endowments of wisdom and acuteness. At last he urges his father to allow him to pass the limits of the palace, and this the King reluctantly permits, after taking all precautions to arrange divert- ing spectacles, and to keep all painftd objects at a distance. Or let us proceed in the Old English of the Golden Legend.* " Whan his feder herde this he was full of sorowe, and anone he let do make redy horses' and joyflill felawshyp to accompany him, in suche wyse that nothynge dyshonest sholde happen to hym. And on a tyme thus as the Kynges sone wente he mette a mesell and a blynde man, and wha he sawe them he was abasshed, and enquyred what them eyled. And his servantes sayd : These ben passions that comen to men. And he demaunded yf the passyons came to all men. And they sayd nay. Tha sayd he, ben they knowen whiche men shall suffre. . . . And Uiey answered, WTio is he that may knowe ye adventures of men. And he began to be moche anguysshous for the incustomable thynge hereof. And another tyme he found a man moche aged, which had his chere frouced, his tcthe fallen, and he was all croked for age. . . . And tha he demaiided what sholde
* Imprynted at London in Flete Strete, at the sygne of the Sonne, by Wynkyn de Worde (1527).
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be ye ende. And they sayd deth. • • • And this yonge man remembred ofte in bis herte these thynges, and was in grete dyscoforte, but he shewed by moche glad tofore his fader, and he desyred moche to be enformed and taught in these thyges."
At this time Barlaam, a monk of great sanctity and knowledge in divine things, who dwelt in the Wilderness of Sennaritis, having received a divine warning, travels to India in the disguise of a merchant, and gains access to Prince Josaphat to whom he unfolds the Christian doc- trine and the blessedness of the monastic life. Suspicion is raised against Barlaam, and he departs. But all efforts to shake the Prince's convictions are vain. As a last resource the King sends for a magician called Theudas, who removes the Prince's attendants and substitutes seductive girls, but all their blandishments are resisted through prayer» The King abandons these attempts and associates his son with himself in the government The Prince uses his power to promote religion, and everything prospers in his hand. Finally King Abenner is dmwn to the truth, and after some years of penitence dies. Josaphat then surrenders the kingdom to a friend called Barachias, and proceeds into the wilderness, where he wanders for two years seeking Bar- laam, and much buffetted by the demons. ''And when Barlaam had accoplysshed his dayes he rested in peas about the yere of Our Lorde cccc & Ixxx. Josaphat lefte his realme the xxv yere of his age, & ledde the lyfe of an hermyte xxxv yere, and then rested in peas foil of vertues, and was buryed by the body of Barlaam." The King Barachias afterwards arrives and transfers the bodies solemnly to India.
This is but the skeleton of the story, but the episodes and apologues which round its dimensions, and gave it its medieval popularity, do not concern our subject In this skeleton the story of Siddhirta, mutatis mutandis, is obvious.
The story was first popular in the Greek Church, and was embodied in the lives of the saints, as recooked by Simeon the Metaphrast, an author whose period is disputed, but was in any case not later than 1 150. A Cretan monk called Agapios made selections from the work of Simeon which were published in Romaic at Venice in 154 1 under the name of the ParadisCy and in which the first section consists of the story of Bar- laam and Josaphat This has been frequently reprinted as a popular book of devotion. A copy before me is printed at Venice in 1865.*
From the Greek Church the history of the two saints passed to the Latin, and they found a place in the Roman martyrology under the 27th November. When this first happened I have not been able to
* The first Life is thus entitled : Bfor xol floXircfa tov *0<rlov Tlarphs iifimf ical *Ir«r«rr^Xov *lmdffnp rod fiaffikims r^r *Ii^(as. Professor Miiller says all the Greek copies have loasapk. I have access to no copy in the ancient Greek.
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ascertain. Their history occupies jsl large space in the Speculum His- toriale of Vincent of Beauvais, written in the 13th century, and is set forth, as we have seen, in the Golden Legend of nearly the same age. They are recognized by Baronius, and are to be found at p. 348 of " The Roman Martyrology set forth by command of Pope Gregory XIIL, and revised by the authority of Pope Urban VIIL, translated out of Latin into English by G. K. of the Society of Jesus .... and now re-edited ... by W. N. Skelly, Esq. London, T. Richardson & Son." (Printed at Derby, 1847). Here in Palermo is a church bearing the dedication Divo losapkat
Professor Miiller attributes the first recognition of the identity of the two stories to M. Laboulaye in 1859. But in fact I find that the liistorian de Couto had made the discovery long before.* He says, speaking of Budao (Buddha), and after relating his history : —
" To this name the Gentiles throughout all India have dedicated great and superb pagodas. With reference to this story we have been diligent in enquiring if the ancient Gentiles of those parts had in their writings any knowledge of St Josaphat who was converted by Barlam, who in his Legend is represented as the son of a great King of India, and who had just the same up-bringing, with all the same particulars that we
have recounted of the life of the Budflo And as a thing seems
much to the purpose, which was told us by a very old man of the Salsette territory in Ba^aira, about Josaphat, I think it well to cite it : As I was travelling in the Isle of Salsette and went to see that rare and admirable Pagoda (which we call the Canard Pagoda) f made in a mountain, with many halls cut out of one solid rock .... and enquiring from this old man about the work, and what he thought as to who had made it, he told us that without doubt the work was made by order of the father of St. Josaphat to bring him up therein in seclusion, as the story tells. And as it informs us that he was the son of a great King in India, it may well be, as we have just said, that he was the Budao, of whom they relate such marvels " (Dec. V. liv. vi cap. 2).
Dominie Valentyn, not being well read in the Golden Legend, remarks on the subject of Buddha: "There be some who hold diis Budhum for a fugitive Syrian Jew, or for an Israelite, others who hold him for a Disciple of the Apostle Thomas ; but how in that case he could have been born 622 years before Christ I leave them to explain, Diego de Couto stands by the belief that he was certainly /<7ji4«^, which is still more absurd !" (V. deel, p. 374.)
• Also Migne's Diet, des Ugmdes, quoting a letter of C. L. Stnive, Director of Konigsberg Gymnasium, to the Journal Ghthal dt Plnst. PubL, says that "an earlier story is entirely reproduced in the Barlaam," but without saying what ston'. I have omitted to note the date of this dictionary ; one of a well-known modem series.
t The well-known Kdnhari Caves (see Handbook for India, p. 306).
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Note 3. — Marco is not the only eminent person who has expressed this view of Sakyamuni's life in such words. Prof Max Miiller^ {u. s.) says : " And whatever we may think of the sanctity of saints, let those who doubt the right of Buddha to a place among them, read the story of his life as it is told in the Buddhistic canon. If he lived the life which is there described, few saints have a better claim to the title than Buddha ;
Sakya Muni as a Saint of the Roman Martyrology.
** WBk Hcs Itontgs Sbmxi tn titnt aufsc^iedjm am rtBtm saijr in lirm Witg rgnm bltn])m uxCSi vga aufsmordttgm unli VQm altm krummtn fHan.''*
and no one either in the Greek or the Roman Church need be ashamed of having paid to his memory the honour that was intended for St. Josaphat, the prince, the hermit, and the saint"
Note 4. — This is curiously like a passage in the Wisdom of Solomon : ** Neque enim erant (idola) ab initio, neque erunt in perpetuum .... acerbo enim luctu dolens pater cito sibi rapti filii fecit imaginem : et ilium qui tunc quasi homo mortuus fuerat nunc tamquam deum colere ccepit, et constituit inter servos suos sacra et sacrificia" (xiv. 13-15). Gower alludes to the same story ; I know not whence taken : —
** Of Cirophanes seeth the booke That he for sorow which he toke Of that he sigh his sonne dede Of comfort knewe none other rede
• The quotation and the cut are from an old German version of Barlaam and Josaphat printed by Zainer at Augsburg, circa 1477 (B. M., Grenv. Lib., No. 11,766).
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But lete do make in remembrance
A faire image of his semblance,
And set it in the market place,
Whiche openly tofore his face
Stood every day to done him ease ;
And thei that than wolden please
The Fader, shuld it obeye.
When that thei comen thilke weye.*' — Confusio Amantis*
Note 5. — ^Adam's Peak has for ages been a place of pilgrimage to Buddhists, Hindus, and Mahomedans, and appears still to be so. Ibn Batuta says the Mussulman pilgrimage was instituted in the loth centuiy. The book on the history of the Mussulmans in Malabar, called Tohfai- ul'Majdhidin (p. 48), ascribes their first settlement in that country to a party of pilgrims returning from Adam's Peak. Marignolli, on his visit to the mountain, mentions " another pilgrim, a Saracen of Spain ; for many go on pilgrimage to Adam."
The identification of Adam with objects of Indian worship occurs in various forms. Tod tells how an old Rajput Chief, as they stood before a famous temple of Mahddeo near Udipdr, invited him to enter and worship ** Father Adam." Another traveller relates how Brahmans of Bagesar on the Sarjd identified Mahadeo and Parvati with Adam and Eve. A Malay MS., treating of the origines of Java, represents Brahma, Mahadeo, and Vishnu to be descendants of Adam through Seth. And in a Malay paraphrase of the Ramdyana, Nabi Adam takes the place of Vishnu. {Tod, I. 96 ; /. A. S. B. XVI. 233 ;/. R. A. S. n. s. II. 102 ; /. Asiat. IV. s. VII. 438.)
Note 6. — The P&tra^ or alms-pot, was the most valued legacy of Buddha. It had served the three previous Buddhas of this world-period, and was destined to serve the future one, Maitreya. The Great Asoka sent it to Ceylon. Thence it was carried oflf by a Tamul chief in the ist century, A.D., but brought back we know not how, and is still shown in the Malagawa Vihara at Kandy. As usual in such cases, there were rival reliques, for Fahian found the alms-pot preserved at Peshawar. Hwen T*sang says in his time it was no longer there, but in Persia. And indeed the PiLtra from Peshawar, according to a remarkable note by Sir Henry Rawlinson, is still preserved at Kandahdr, under the name of Kashkul (or the Begging-pot), and retains among the Mussulman Der- vishes the sanctity and miraculous repute which it bore among the Buddhist Bhikshus, Sir Henry conjectures that the deportation of this vessel, the palladium of the true Gandhdra (Peshawar), was accompanied by a popular emigration, and thus accounts for the transfer of that name
• Ed. 1544, foL xci. V, So also I find in A, Tostativ, Hisp. CommenL in priMom ptem. Exodi^ Ven. 1695, p. 295-96 : " Idola autem sculpta in Aegypto piimo invcnla sunt per Syrophenem primum idolotrarum ; ante hoc enim pura elementa ul dii cole- bantur." I cannot trace the tale.
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Chap. XV. BUDDHA'S TOOTH. 31 1
also to the chief city of Arachosia. {Koeppen^ L 526; Fah-hian^ p. 36 H. Tsang, II. 106; /. R. A. S. XL 127.
Sir J. Tennent, through Mr. Wylie (to whom this book owes so much), obtained the following curious Chinese extract referring to Ceylon, (written 1350) : " In front of the image of Buddha there is a sacred bowl, which is neither made of jade nor copper, nor iron; it is of a purple colour, and glossy, and when struck it sounds like glass. At the commence- ment of the Yuen dynasty (/. e, under Kublai) three separate envoys were sent to obtain it" Sanang Setzen also corroborates Marco's statement : " Thus did the Khaghan (Kublai) cause the sun of religion to rise over the dark land of the Mongols ; he also procured from India images and reliques of Buddha ; among others the Fdfra of Buddha, which was pre- sented to him by the four kings (of the cardinal points), and also the chandana chu"* (a muraculous sandal-wood image). {Tennent^ I, 622; Schmidt^ p. 119.)
The text also says that several teeth of Buddha were preserved in Ceylon, and that the Kaan's embassy obtained two molars. Doubtless the envoys were imposed on ; no solitary case in the amazing history of that relique, for the Dalada, or tooth-rehque, seems in all historic times to have been unique. This, " the left canine tooth " of the Buddha, is related to have been preserved for 800 years at Dantapura (" Odonio- polis^')y in Kalinga, generally supposed to be the modem Pdri or Jaganndth. Here the Brahmans once captured it and carried it off to Palibothra, where they tried in vain to destroy it Its miraculous resistance converted the king, who sent it back to Kalinga. About a.d. 311 the daughter of King Guhasiva fled with it to Ceylon. In the beginning of the 14th century it was captured by the Tamuls and carried to the Pandya country on the continent, but recovered some years later by King Parakrama III., who went in person to treat for it In 1560 the Portuguese got possession of it and took it to Goa. The King of Pegu who then reigned, probably the most powerful and wealthy monarch who has ever ruled in Further India, made unlimited offers in exchange for the tooth ; but the archbishop prevented the viceroy from yielding to these temptations, and it was solemnly pounded to atoms by the prelate, then cast into a charcoal fire, and finally its ashes thrown into the river of Goa,
The King of Pegu was, however, informed by a crafty minister of the King of Ceylon that only a sham tooth had been destroyed by the Por- tuguese, and that the real relique was still safe. This he obtained by extraordinary presents, and the account of its reception at Pegu, as quoted by Tennent from De Couto, is a curious parallel to Marco's nar- rative of the Great Kaan's reception of the Ceylon reliques at Cambaluc. The extraordinary object still so solemnly preserved at Kandy is another forgery, set up about the same time. So the immediate result of the vice- roy's virtue was that two reliques were worshipped instead of one !
The possession of the tooth has always been a great object of desire
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312
MARCO POLO.
Book 111.
to Buddhist sovereigns. In the i ith century King Anarauhta, of Burmah, sent a mission to Ceylon to endeavour to procure it, but he could obtain only a " miraculous emanation " of the relique. A tower to contain
the sacred tooth was (1855), however, one of the* build- ings in the palace court of Amarapura. A few years ago the present King of Burma repeated the mission of his remote predecessor, but ob- tained only a nwdd^ and this has been deposited within the walls of the palace at Mandalt^, the new capital {Tumour in/. A, S. B, VI. 856 seqq, ; Koefipen^ I. 521 ; Tmnent, I. 388, II. 198 seqq, ; MS, Note by Sir A. Phayre ; Mission to Ava^
136.)
Of the four eye-teeth of Sakya, one it is related, passed to the heaven of Indra ; ihe second to the capital of Gan-
_ __ dhira; the third to Ka-
^""-^ — - linga; the fourth to ihe
^ ^ ,„ ^^.^ ^ snake-gods. The Gandhira
Teeth of Buddha. . * , ,., i
I. At Candy, after Tennent. 3. At Fuchau, from Fortune. tOOth WaS perhaps, like mC
alms-bowl, carried off by a Sassanid. invasion, and may be identical with that tooth of Fo, whidi the Chinese annals state to have been brought to China in a.d. 530 by a Persian embassy. A tooth of Buddha is now shown in a monastery at Fuchau ; but whether this be either the Sassanian present, or that got from Ceylon by Kublai, is unknown. Other teeth of Buddha were shown in Hwen T'sang*s time at Balkh, at Nagarahdra (or JaliMbdd), in Kashmir, and at Kanauj. {Koefipen, u. s.; Fortune^ 11. 108; H. Tsang, II. 31, 80, 263.)
Note 7. — Fahian writes of the alms-pot at Peshiwar, that poor people could fill it with a few flowers, whilst a rich man should not be able to do so with 100, nay, with 1000 or 10,000 bushels of rice; a parable doubtless originally carrying a lesson, like Our Lord's remark on the widow's mite, but which hardened eventually into some foolish story like that in the text
The modern Mussulman story at Kandahar is that the alms-pot will contain any quantity of liquor without overflowing.
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Chap. XVI. THE PEARL-FISHERY OF MAABAR. 313
This P&tra is the Holy Grail of Buddhism. Mystical powers of nourishment are ascribed also to the Grail in the European legends. German scholars have traced in the romances of the Grail remarkable indications of Oriental origin. It is not impossible that the alms-pot of Buddha was the prime source of them. Read the prophetic history of the P&tra as Fahian heard it in India (p. 161) ; its mysterious wanderings over Asia till it is takeu up into the heaven Tushita^ where Maitreya the Future Buddha dwells. When it has disappeared from earth the Law gradually perishes, and violence and wickedness more and more prevail :
"What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes ? ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ • If a man Could touch or see it, he was healed at once By faith of all his ills. But then the times Grew to such evil, that the holy cup Was caught away to heaven and disappeared."
Tmnyxon^s Holy GraiL
CHAPTER XVI.
Concerning the great Province of Maabar, which is called India the Greater, and is on the Mainland.
When you leave the Island of Seilan and sail westward about 60 miles, you come to the great province of Maabar which is styled India the Greater ; it is the best of all the Indies and is on the mainland.
You must know that in this province there are five kings, who are own brothers. I will tell you about each in turn. The Province is the finest and noblest in the world.
At this end of the Province reigns one of those five Royal Brothers, who is a crowned King, and his name is Sonder Bandi Davar. In his kingdom they find very fine and great pearls; and I will tell you how they are got/
You must know that the sea here forms a gulf between the Island of Seilan and the mainland. And all round this
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314 MARCO POLO. Book III.
gulf the water has a depth of no more than 10 or 12 fathoms, and in some places no more than two fethoms. The pearl-fishers take their vessels, great and small, and proceed into this gulf, where they stop from the beginning of April till the middle of May. They go first to a place called Bettelar, and (then) go 60 miles into the gulf. Here they cast anchor and shift from their large vessels into small boats. You must know that the many merchants who go divide into various companies, and each of these must engage a number of men on wages, hiring them for April and half of May. Of all the produce they have first to pay the King, as his royalty, the tenth part. And they must also pay those men who charm the great fishes, to pre- vent them from injuring the divers whilst engaged in seeking pearls under water, one twentieth part of all that they take. These fish-charmers are termed Abraiaman; and their charm holds good for that day only, for at night they dissolve the charm so that the fishes can work mischief at their will. These Abraiaman know also how to charm beasts and birds and every living thing. When the men have got into the small boats they jump into the water and dive to the bottom, which may be at a depth of from 4 to 1 2 fathoms, and there they remain as long as they are able. And there they find the shells that contain the pearls [and these they put into a net bag tied round the waist, and mount up to the surface with them, and then dive anew. When they can't hold their breath any longer they come up again, and after a little down they go once more, and so they go on all day].' The shells are in fashion like oysters or sea-hoods. And in these shells are found pearls, great and small, of every kind, sticking in the flesh of the shell-fish. In this manner pearls are fished in great quantities, for thence in fact come the pearls which are spread all over the world. And I can tell you the King of that State hath a very great receipt and treasure from his dues upon those pearls.
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Chap.XVL sundar bandi devar. 315
As soon as the middle of May is past, no more of those pearl-sheUs are found there. It is true, however, that a long way from that spot, some 300 miles distant, they are also found ; but that is in September and the first half of October.
Note 1. — Maabar {Mdhdr) was the name given by the Mahomedans at this time (13th and 14th centuries) to a tract correspondmg in a general way to what we call the Coromandel Coast The word in Arabic signifies the Passage or Ferry, and may have referred either to the communication with Ceylon, or, as is more probable, to its being in that age the coast most firequented by travellers from Arabia and the Gul£* The name does not appear in Edrisi, nor I believe in any of the older geographers, and the earliest use of it that I am aware of is in Abdallatifs account of Egypt, a work written about 1203-4 {De Sacy^ ReL de r Egypt, p. 31). Abulfeda distinctly names Cape Comorin as the point where Malabar ended and Ma*bar began, and other authority to be quoted presently informs us that it extended to Niidwar, /. ^., Nellore.
There are difficulties as to the particular locality of the port or city which Polo visited in the territory of the Prince whom he calls Sondar Bandi Davar ; and there are like doubts as to the identification, from the dark and scanty Tamul records, of the Prince himself, and the family to which he belonged ; though he is mentioned by more than one foreign writer besides Polo.
Thus Wassdf : " Ma'bar extends in length from Kaulam to NiUwar, nearly 300 parasangs along the sea-coast ; and in the language of that country the king is called Devar, which signifies, " the Lord of Empire." The curiosities of Chfn and Mdchln, and the beautiful products of Hind and Sind, laden on large ships which they odUl Junks, sailing like moun- tains with the wings of the wind on the surface of the water, are always arriving there. The wealth of the Isles of the Persian Gulf in particular, and in part the beauty and adornment of other countries, from Trak and Khnrisdn as far as Rdm and Europe, are derived from Ma'bar, which is so situated as to be the key of Hind.
** A few years since the Devar was Sundar Pandi, who had three brothers, each of whom established himself in independence in some difierent country. The emment prince, the Margrave {Marzbdn) of Hind, Taki-uddiin Abdu-r Rahmin, son of Muhammad-ut-Tfbf, whose virtues and accomplishments have for a long time been the theme of praise and admiration among the chief inhabitants of that beautiful
* So the Barbaiy coast from Tunis westward was called by the Arabs Bdr-ui- 'AdwoA^ ** Terra Transitib,*' because thence they used to pass into Spain {J. As, for Jan. 1846, p. 228).
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3l6 MARCO POLO. Book 111.
country, was the Devar's deputy, minister, and adviser, and was a man of sound judgment Fattan, Malifattan, and Kdil * were made over to his
possession In the months of the year 692 H. (a.d. 1293) the
above-mentioned Devar, the ruler of Ma'bar, died and left behind him much wealth and treasure. It is related by Malik-ul-lsldm Jamdluddin, that out of that treasure 7000 oxen laden with precious stones and pure gold and silver fell to the share of the brother who succeeded him. Malik-i 'Azam Taki-uddin continued prime minister as before, and in (act ruler of that kingdom, and his glory and magnificence were raised a thousand times higher." f
Seventeen years later (1310) Wassdf introduces another king of Ma'bar called Kalesa Dmar^ who had ruled for 40 years in prosperity, and had accumulated in the treasury of Shahr-Mandi (/.^.,as Dr. Caldwell informs me Madura, entitled by the Mahomedan invaders Shahr-Pandi, and still occasionally mispronounced Shahr-Mandi) 1200 crores (!) in gold He had two sons, Sundar Bandi by a lawful wife, and Pirabandi (\^ira Pandi ?) illegitimate. He designated the latter as his successor. Sundar Bandi, enraged at this, slew his father and took forcible possession of Shahr-Mandi and its treasures. Pirabandi succeeded in driving him out ; Sundar Bandi went to Alduddin, Sultan of Delhi, and sought help. The Sultan eventually sent his general Haz^diniri (alias Malik Kifiir) to conquer Ma'bar.
In the 3rd volume of Elliot we find some of the same main facts, with some differences and greater detail, as recounted by Amir Khusru. Bir Pandiya and Sundara Pandiya are the Rais of Ma'bar, and are at war with one another, when the army of Aladddin, after reducing Bilil
♦ Wassaf has Fitan^ Mali Fitan^ Kdbil, and meant the names so, as he shows by silly puns. For my justification in presuming to correct the names, I must refer lo an article, in the J, A*. As. Soc., N.s. IV. p. 347, on Rashiduddin's Geography.
t The same information is given in almost the same terms by Rashiduddin (see El/wif I. 69). But he (at least in Elliot's translation) makes Shaikh Jumaluddin the successor of the Devar, instead of merely the narrator of the circumstances. This is evidently a mistake, probably of transcription, and Wassaf gives us the true version.
The members of the Arab family bearing the surname of Al-Thaibi (or Thibi*) appear to have been powerful on the coasts of the Indian Sea at this time. i. The Malik-ul-Isl^m Jamdluddin Ibrahim Al Thaibi was Farmer-General of Fars, besides Hieing quasi-independent Prince of Kais and other Islands in the Persian Gulf, and at the time of his death (1306) governor of Shiraz. He had the horse trade with India greatly in his hands, as is mentioned in a note (7) on next chapter. 2. The son of Jumaluddin, Fakhruddin Ahmed, goes ambassador to the Great Kaan in 1297, and dies near the coast of Ma'bar on his way back in 1305. A Fakhruddin Ahmed Bm Ibrahim al-Thaibi also appears in Hammer's extracts as ruler of Hormuz about the time of Polo's return (see ante vol. I. p. 125) ; and though he is there represented as opposed by Shaikh Jumaluddin (perhaps through one of Hammer's too frequent con- fusions), one should suppose that he must be the son just mentioned. 3. Takiuddin Abdurrahmdn, the Wazir and Marzb^n in Ma'bar ; followed successively in that posi- tion by his son Surajuddin, and his grandson Nizdmuddih. {Ilchan. II. 49-50, I97-S, 205-6 ; Elliot, III. 32, 34-5, 45-7.)
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Chap. XVI. SUNDAR BANDI DEVAR. 317
Deo of Dwdra Samudra, descends upon Ma*bar in the beginning of 131 1 (p. 87 seqq,).
We see here two rulers in Ma'bar, within less than 20 years, bear- ing the name of Sundara Pandi. And strange to say, more than a century before, during the continental wars of Pardkrdma Bahu I., the most martial of Singhalese Kings (a.d. ii 53-1 186), we find another Ktdasaikera ( = Kalesa of Wassaf), King of Madura, with another Vira Pdndi for son, and another Sundara Pandi Rdja, figuring in the history of the Pandianis Regio. But let no one rashly imagine that there is a confusion in the chronology here. The Hindu chronology of the continental states is dark and confused enough, but not that of Ceylon, which in this, as in sundry other respects, comes under Indo-Chinese rather than Indian analogies. (See Tumour's Ceyionese Epitome ^^.^i-/^^ ; and/. A. S, B,, XLI. Ft I. p. 197 segg.)
In a note with which Dr. Caldwell favoured me some time before the first publication of this work, he considers that the Sundar Bandi of Polo and the Persian Historians is undoubtedly to be identified with that Sundara Pandi Devar who is in the Tamul catalogues the last king of the ancient Pandya line, and who was (says Dr. Caldwell) " succeeded by Mahomedans, by a new line of Pandyas, by the Ndyak Kings, by the Nabobs of Arcot, and finally by the English. He became for a time a Jaina, but was reconverted to the worship of Siva, when his name was changed from Kun or Kubja^ " Crook-backed," to Sundara, " Beautiful," in accordance with a change which then took place, the Saivas say, in his personal appearance. Probably his name, from the beginning, was Sundara. .... In the inscriptions belonging to the period of his reign he is invariably represented, not as a joint king or viceroy, but as an absolute monarch ruling over an extensive tract of country, including the Chola country or Tanjore, and Conjeveram, and as the only possessor for the time being of the title Pandi Devar. It is clear from the agree- ment of Rashiduddin with Marco Polo that Sundara Pandi's power was shared in some way with his brothers, but it seems certain also from the inscription that there was a sense in which he alone was king."
I do not give the whole of Dr. Caldwell's remarks on this subject, because, the 3rd volume of Elliot not. being then published, he had not before him the whole of the information from the Mussulman historians which shows so clearly that two princes bearing the name of Sundara Pandi are mentioned by them, and because I cannot see my way to adopt his view, great as is the weight due to his opinion on any such question.
Elxtraordinary darkness hangs over the chronology of the South Indian kingdoms, as we may judge from the fact that Dr. Caldwell would have thus placed at the end of the 13th century, on the evidence of Polo and Rashiduddin, the reign of the last of the genuine Pandya kings, whom other calculations place earlier even by centuries. Thus, to omit views more extravagant, Mr. Nelson, the learned official historian of Madura,
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3l8 MARCO POLO. Book III.
supposes it on the whole most probable that Kun Pandya, cUias Sundara, reigned in the latter half of the nth century. "The Sri Tala Book, which appears to have been written about 60 years ago, and was probably compiled from brief Tamil chronicles then in existence, states that the Pandya race became extinct upon the death of Kdn Pandya ; and the children of concubines and of younger brothers who (had) lived in former ages, fought against one another, split up the country into factions, and got themselves crowned, and ruled one in one place, another in another. But none of these families succeeded in getting possession of Madura, the capital, which consequently fell into decay. And further on it tells us, rather inconsistently, that up to a.d. 1324 the kings * who ruled the Madura country were part of the time Pandyas, at other times foreigners.' " And a variety of traditions referred to by Mr. Nelson appears to interpose such a period of unsettlement and shifting and divided sovereignty, extending over a considerable time, between the end of the genuine Pandya Dynasty and the Mahomedan invasion ; whilst lists of numerous princes who reigned in this period have been handed down* Now we have just seen that the Mahomedan invasion took place in 131 1, and we must throw aside the traditions and the lists altogether if we suppose that the Sundara Pandi of 1292 was the last prince of the Old Line. Indeed, though the indication is faint, the manner in which Wassdf speaks of Polo's Sundara and his brothers as having established themselves in different territories, and as in constant war with each other, is suggestive of the state of unsettlement which the Sri Tala and the traditions describe.
There is a difficulty in co-ordinating these four or five brothers at constant war, whom Polo found in possession of different provinces of Ma'bar about 1290, with the Devar Kalesa, of whom Wassdf speaks as slain in 13 10 after a prosperous reign of 40 years. Possibly the brothers were adventurers who had divided the coast districts, whilst Kalesa still reigned with a more legitimate claim at Shahr-Mandi or Madura. And it is worthy of notice that the Ceylon Annals call the Pandi king whose army carried off the sacred tooth in 1303 Kuiasaikera^ a name which we may easily believe to represent Wassdf s Kalesa. {Ndsoris Madura^ 55, 67, 71-75 ; Turnout^ s Epitome^ p. 47.)
As regards the position of the port of Ma' bar visited, but not named, by Marco Polo, and at or near which his Sundara Pandi seems to have resided, I am inclined to look for it rather in Tanjore than on the Gulf of Manar south of the Rameshwaram shallows. The difficulties in this view are the indication of its being " 60 miles west of Ceylon," and the special mention of the Pearl Fishery in connexion with it We cannot however lay much stress upon Polo's orientation. When his general direction is from east to west, every new place reached is for him west of that last visited ; whilst the Kaveri Delta is as near the north point of Ceylon as Ramnad is to Aripo. The pearl difficulty may be solved by the probability that the dominion of Sonder Bandi eactmded to the coast of the Gulf of Manar.
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Chap. XVI. "CHINA" PAGODA AT NEGAPATAM. 319
On the other hand Polo, below (chap, xx.), calls the province of Sundara Pandi Soii^ which we can scarcely doubt to be Chola or Soia^ desam^ u e, Tanjore. He calls it also " the best and noblest Province of India," a description which even with his limited knowledge of India he would scarcely apply to the coast of Ramnad, but which might be justifi- ably applied to the well-watered plains of Tanjore, even when as yet Ardiur Cotton was not Let it be noticed too that Polo in speaking (chapter xix.) of Mutfili (or Telingana) specifies its distance firom Ma*bar as if he had made the run by sea from one to the other ; but afterwards when he proceeds to speak of Coil, which stands on the Gulf of Manar, he does not specify its position or distance in regard to Sundara Pandi's territory ; an omission which he would not have been likely to make had both lain on the Gulf of Manar.
Abulfeda tells us that the capital of the Prince of Ma'bar, who was the great horse-importer, was called Biyarddwal^ a name which now appears in the extracts from Amir Khusru {Elliot^ HI. 90-91) z.%Birdhul^ the capital of Bir Pandi mentioned above, whilst Madura was the resi- dence of his brother, the later Sundara Pandi. And from the indications in those extracts it can be gathered, I think, that Birdhul was not far from the ELaveri (called Kdnobari), not far from the sea, and 5 or 6 days* march from Madura. These indications point to Tanjore, Kombakonam, or some other city in or near the Kaveri Delta.t I should suppose that this BirdhiSl was the capital of Polo*s Sundara Pandi, and that the port visited was Kaveripattanam. This was a great sea-port at one of the mouths of the Kaveri, which is said to have been destroyed by an inun- dation about the year 1300. According to Mr. Bumell it was the " Faitat^am * par excellence ' of the Coromandel Coast, and the great port of the Chola kingdom." J
Some corroboration of the supposition that the Tanjore ports were those frequented by Chinese trade may be found in the fact that a remarkable Pagoda of uncemented brickwork, about a mile to the N.W. of Negapatam, popularly bears (or bore) the name of the Chinese Pagoda. I do not mean to imply that the building was Chinese, but that the application of that name to a ruin of strange character pointed to some tradition of Chinese visitors.§ Sir Walter Elliot, to whom I am indebted
f My learned fiiend Mr. A. Burnell suggests that Birdhul must have been Vriddachalam, Virdachellam of the maps, which is in South Arcot, about 50 miles north of Tanjore. There are old and well-known temples there, and relics of forti- fications. It is a rather famous place of pilgrimage.
X It was also perhaps the Fattan of the Mahomedan writers ; but in that case its destruction must have been after Ibn Batuta's time (say middle of 14th century).
§ I leave (his passage as it stood in the first edition. It is a mistake, but this mistake led to the engraving of Sir W. Elliot's sketch (perhaps unique) of a very interesting building which has disappeared. Dr. Caldwell writes : ** The native name was * the
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320 MARCO POLO. Book III.
for the sketch of it given here, states that this building differed essentially from any t5rpe of Hindu architecture with which he was acquainted, but being without inscription or sculpture it was impossible to assign to it any authentic origin. Negapatam was, however, cele- brated as a seat of Buddhist worship, and this may have been a reamant
AOKNC^.SC.
Chinese Pagoda (so called) at NcgapaUm. From a sketch taken in 1846 by Sir Walter Elliot
of their work. In 1846 it consisted of 3 stories divided by cornices of stepped brickwork. The interior was open to the top, and showed the marks of a floor about 20 feet from the ground. Its general appearance is shown by the cut This interesting building was reported in 1859 to be in too dilapidated a state for repair, and now exists no longer. Sir W. Elliot also tells me that collectors employed by him picked up in the sand, at several stations on this coast, numerous Byzantine and Chime
Jaina Tcnuer^'' turned by the English into China and Chinese, This I was told in Negi- patam 30 years ago, but to make sure of the matter I have now written to Negapatam, and obtained from the Munsiffof the place confirmation of what I had heard Jongaga It bore also the name of the * Tower of the Afaila.' The Chalukya Malla kings were at one time Jainas. The * Seven Pagodas * near Madras bear their name, MA-Mailf^ puram, and their power may at one time have extended as far south as Negapatam.' I have no doubt Dr. Caldwell is right in substance, but the name China Pa^a at Negapatam is at least as old as Baldaeus (1672, p. 149), and the ascription to the Chinese is in Valcntyn (1726, tom. v. p. 6). It is, I find, in the Atlas of India, •* Jayne Pagoda."
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Chap. XVI THE PEARL-FISHERY. 321
as well as Hindu coins.* The brickwork of the pagoda, as described by him, very fine and closely fitted but without cement, corresponds to that of the Burmese and Ceylonese medieval Buddhist buildings. The architecture has a slight resemblance to that of Pollanarua in Ceylon (see Fergusson, II. p. 512). (Abulf. in Gildemdster^ p. 185 ; Nelson^ part II. p. 27 seqq, ; Taylor's Catalogue Raisonne, III. 386-89.)
Ma'bar is mentioned {Maparh) in the Chinese Annals as one of the foreign kingdoms which sent tribute to Kublai in 1286 (supra^ p. 239) ; and Pauthier has given some very curious and novel extracts from Chinese sources regarding the diplomatic intercourse with Ma'bar in 1280 and the following years. Among other points these mention the " five brothers who were Sultans " {Suantan)^ an envoy Chamalating (Jumaluddfn) who had been sent from Ma'bar to the Mongol Court, Ac (see pp. 603 seqq,).
Note 2. — Marco's account of the pearl-fishery is still substantially correct Bettelar the rendezvous of the fishery was, I imagine, Patlam on the coast of Ceylon, called by Ibn Batuta Batthdla, Though the centre of the pearl-fishery is now at Aripo and Kondachi further north, its site has varied sometimes as low as Chilaw, the name of which is a corruption of that given by the Tamuls, Saldbham^ which means " the Diving," /. e, the Pearl-fishery. Tennent gives the meaning erroneously as "the Sea of Gain." I owe the correction to Dr. Caldwell. {Ceylon^ I. 440; Pridham^ 409; Ibn, Bat, IV. 166; Ribeyro^ ed. Columbo, 1847, App. p. 196.)
The shark-charmers do not now seem to have any claim to be called Abraiaman or Brahmans, but they may have been so in former days. At the diamond-mines of the northern Circars Brahmans are employed in the analogous oflftce of propitiating the tutelary genii. ' The shark-charmers are called in Tamul Kadal-Kaftiy "Sea-binders," and in Hindustani Hai- handa or ** Shark-binders." At Aripo they belong to one family, supposed to have the monopoly of the charm. The chief operator is (or was, not many years ago) paid by Government, and he also received ten oysters fi-om each boat daily during the fishery. Tennent, on his visit, found the incumbent of the office to be a Roman Catholic Christian, but that did not seem to aflfect the exercise or the validity of his functions. It is remarkable that when Tennent wrote, not more than one authenticated accident firom sharks had taken place, during the whole period of the British occupation.
The time of the fishery is a little earlier than Marco mentions, viz., in March and April, just between the cessation of the N.K and com- mencement of the S.W. monsoon. His statement of the depth is quite correct; the diving is carried on in water of 4 to 10 fathoms deep, and never in a greater depth than thirteen.
* Col. Mackenzie also mentions Chinese coins as found on this coast {J, R, A. S, J- 352-353).
VOL. II. Y
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322 MARCO POLO. Book III.
I do not know the site of the other fishery to which he alludes as prac- tised in September and October ; but the time implies shelter from the S. W. Monsoon, and it was probably on the east side of the island, where in 1750 there was a fishery, at Trincomalee. (Stewart in Trans, R. A, S. III. 456 seqq. ; Pridham^ u. s. ; Tennenty II. 564-5 ; Ribeyro^ as above, App. p. 196.)
CHAPTER XVII. Continues to speak of the Pj^ovince of Maabar.
You must know that in all this Province of Maabar there is never a Tailor to cut a coat or stitch it, seeing that everybody goes naked ! For decency only do they wear a scrap of cloth ; and so 'tis with men and women, with rich and poor, aye, and with the King himself, except what I am going to mention.'
It is a fact that the King goes as bare as the rest, only round his loins he has a piece of fine cloth, and round his neck he has a necklace entirely of precious stones, — rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and the Uke, insomuch that this collar is of great value." He wears also hanging in front of his chest from the neck downwards, a fine silk thread strung with 104 large pearls and rubies of great price. The reason why he wears this cord with the 104 great pearls and rubies, is (according to what they tell) that every day, morning and evening, he has to say 104 prayers to his idols. Such is their religion and their custom. And thus did all the Kings his ancestors before him, and they bequeathed the string of pearls to him that he should do the Uke, [The prayer that they say daily consists of these words, Pacauta! Pacauta! Pacauta ! And this they repeat 104 times.3]
The King aforesaid also wears on his arms three golden bracelets thickly set with pearls of great value, and anklets also of like kind he wears on his legs, and rings on his toes
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likewise. So let me tell you what this King wears, between gold and gems and pearls, is worth more than a city's ransom. And 'tis no wonder ; for he hath great store of such gear; and besides they are found in his kingdom. Moreover nobody is permitted to take out of the kingdom a pearl weighing more than half a saggio^ unless he manages to do it secretly.^ This order has been given because the King desires to reserve all such to himself; and so in fact the quantity he has is something almost incredible. More- over several times every year he sends his proclamation through the realm that if any one who possesses a pearl or stone of great value will bring it to him, he will pay for it twice as much as it cost. Everybody is glad to do this, and thus the King gets all into his own hands, giving every man his price.
Furthermore, this King hath some five hundred wives, for whenever he hears of a beautiful damsel he takes her to wife. Indeed he did a very sorry deed as I shall tell you. For seeing that his brother had a handsome wife, he took her by force and kept her for himself. His brother, being a discreet man, took the thing quietly and made no noise about it The King hath many children.
And there are about the King a number of Barons in attendance upon him. These ride with him, and keep always near him, and have great authority in the kingdom ; they are called the King's Trusty Lieges. And you must know that when the King dies, and they put him on the fire to bum him, these Lieges cast themselves into the fire round about his body, and sufifer themselves to be burnt along with him. For they say they have been his comrades in this world, and that they ought also to keep him com- pany in the other world.^
When the King dies none of his children dares to touch his treasure. For they say, " as our father did gather together all this treasure, so we ought to accumulate as much in our turn." And in this way it comes to pass that
*> Y 2
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324 MARCO POLO. BOOK III.
there is an immensity of treasure accumulated in this kingdom.^
Here are no horses bred ; and thus a great part of the wealth of the country is wasted in purchasing horses ; I will tell you how. You must know that the merchants of Kis and HoRMEs, Dofar and Soer and Aden collect great numbers of destriers and other horses, and these they bring to the territories of this King and of his four brothers, who are kings likewise as 1 told you. For a horse will fetch among them 500 saggi of gold, worth more than 100 marks of silver, and vast numbers are sold there ever}'^ year. Indeed this King wants to buy more than 2000 horses every year, and so do his four brothers who are kings likewise. The reason why they want so many horses every year is that by the end of the year there shall not be one hundred of them remaining, for they all die off. And this arises from mismanagement, for those people do not know in the least how to treat a horse ; and besides they have no farriers. The horse-merchants not only never bring any farriers with them, but also prevent any farrier from going thither, lest that should in any degree baulk the sale of horses, which brings them in every year such vast gains. They bring these horses by sea aboard ship.'
They have in this country the custom which I am going to relate. When a man is doomed to die for any crime, he may declare that he will put himself to death in honour of such or such an idol ; and the government then grants him permission to do so. His kinsfolk and friends then set him up on a cart, and provide him with twelve knives, and proceed to conduct him all about the city, proclaiming aloud: "This valiant man is going to slay himself for the love of (such an idol)." And when they be come to the place of execution he takes a knife and sticks it through his arm, and cries : " I slay myself for the love of (such a god) ! " Then he takes another knife and sticks it through his other arm, and takes a third knife
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and runs it into his belly, and so on until he kills himself outright. And when he is dead his kinsfolk take the body and burn it with a joyful celebration.® Many of the women also, when their husbands die and are placed on the pile to be burnt, do burn themselves along with the bodies. And such women as do this have great praise from all.'^
The people are Idolaters, and many of them worship the ox, because (say they), it is a creature of such excel- lence. They would not eat beef for anything in the world, nor would they on any account kill an ox. But there is another class of people who are called Govy^ and these are very glad to eat beef, though they dare not kill the animal. Howbeit if an ox dies, naturally or otherwise, then they eat him.'°
And let me tell you, the people of this country have a custom of rubbing their houses all over with cow-dung." Moreover all of them, great and small, King and Barons included, do sit upon the ground only, and the reason they give is that this is the most honourable way to sit, because we all spring from the Earth and to the Earth we must return ; so no one can pay the Earth too much honour, and no one ought to despise it.
And about that race of Govis^ I should tell you that nothing on earth would induce them to enter the place where Messer St. Thomas is — I mean where his body lies, which is in a certain city of the province of Maabar. Indeed, were even 20 or 30 men to lay hold of one of these Govis and to try to hold him in the place where the Body of the Blessed Apostle of Jesus Christ lies buried, they could not do it ! Such is the influence of the Saint ; for it was by people of this generation that he was slain, as you shall presently hear."
No wheat grows in this province, but rice only.
And another strange thing to be told is that there is no possibility of breeding horses in this country, as hath often
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been proved by trial. For even when a great blood-mare here has been covered by a great blood-horse, the produce is nothing but a wretched wry-legged weed, not fit to ride/3
The people of the country go to battle all naked, with only a lance and a shield; and they are most wretched soldiers. They will kill neither beast nor bird, nor any- thing that hath life ; and for such animal food as they eat, they make the Saracens, or others who are not of their own religion, play the butcher.
It is their practice that every one, male and female, do wash the whole body twice every day ; and those who do not wash are looked on much as we look on the Patarins. [You must know also that in eating they use the right hand only, and would on no account touch their food with the left hand. All cleanly and becoming uses are minis- tered to by the right hand, whilst the left is reserved for uncleanly and disagreeable necessities, such as cleansing the secret parts of the body and the like. So also they drink only from drinking vessels, and every man hath his own ; nor will any one drink from another's vessel. And when they drink they do not put the vessel to the lips, but hold it aloft and let the drink spout into the mouth. No one would on any account touch the vessel with his mouth, nor give a stranger drink with it. But if the stranger have no vessel of his own they will pour the drink into his hands and he may thus drink from his hands as from a cup.]
They are very strict in executing justice upon criminals, and as strict in abstaining from wine. Indeed they have made a rule that wine-drinkers and seafaring men are never to be accepted as sureties. For they say that to be a seafaring man is all the same as to be an utter desperado, and that his testimony is good for nothing.* Howbeit they look on lechery as no sin.
* * * Audax omnia perpdi^ " &c.
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[They have the following rule about debts. If a debtor shall have been several times asked by his creditor for pay- ment, and shall have put him off from day to day with promises, then if the creditor can once meet the debtor and succeed in drawing a circle round him, the latter must not pass out of this circle until he shall have satisfied the claim, or given security for its discharge. If he in any other case presume to pass the circle he is punished with death as a transgressor against right and justice. And the said Messer Marco, when in this kingdom on his return home, did himself witness a case of this. It was the King, who owed a foreign merchant a certain sum of money, and though the claim had often been presented, he always put it off with promises. Now, one day when the King was riding through the city, the merchant found his oppor- tunity, and drew a circle round both King and horse. The King, on seeing this, halted, and would ride no further; nor did he stir from the spot until the merchant was satisfied. And when the bystanders saw this they marvelled greatly, saying that the King was a most just King indeed, having thus submitted to justice.'^]
You must know that the heat here is sometimes so great that 'tis something wonderful. And rain falls only for three months in the year, viz., in June, July, and August. Indeed but for the rain that falls in these three months, refreshing the earth and cooling the air, the drought would be so great that no one could exist.'^
They have many experts in an art which they call Phy- siognomy, by which they discern a man's character and qualities at once. They also know the import of meeting with any particular bird or beast ; for such omens are regarded by them more than by any people in the world. Thus if a man is going along the road and hears some one sneeze, if he deems it (say) a good token for himself he goes on, but if otherwise he stops a bit, or peradventure turns back altogether from his journey.'*^
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As soon as a child is born they write down his nati\dty, that is to say the day and hour, the month, and the moon s age. This custom they observe because every single thing they do is done with reference to astrology, and by advice of diviners skilled in Sorcery and Magic and Geomancy, and such like diabolical arts ; and some of them are also acquainted with Astrology.
[All parents who have male children, as soon as these have attained the age of 13, dismiss them from their home, and do not allow them further maintenance in the family. For they say that the boys are then of an age to get their living by trade ; so off they pack them with some twenty or four-and-twenty groats, or at least with money equivalent to that. And these urchins are running about all day from pillar to post, buying and selling. At the time of the pearl-fishery they run to the beach and purchase, from the fishers or others, five or six pearls, according to their ability, and take these to the merchants, who are keeping indoors for fear of the sun, and say to them : " These cost me such a price ; now give me what profit you please on them." So the merchant gives something over the cost price for their profit. They do in the same way with many other articles, so that they become trained to be very dex- terous and keen traders. And every day they take their food to their mothers to be cooked and served, but do not eat a scrap at the expense of their fathers.]
In this kingdom and all over India the birds and beasts are entirely different from ours, all but one bird which is exactly like ours, and that is the Quail. But everything else is totally different. For example they have bats, — I mean those birds that fly by night and have no feathers of any kind ; well their birds of this kind are as big as a goshawk! Their goshawks again are as black as crows, a good deal bigger than ours, and very swift and sure.
Another strange thing is that they feed their horses with boiled rice and boiled meat, and various other kinds
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of cooked food. That is the reason why all the horses die off.''
They have certain abbeys in which are gods and god- desses to whom many young girls are consecrated ; their fathers and mothers presenting them to that idol for which they entertain the greatest devotion. And when the [monks] of a convent* desire to make a feast to their god, they send for all those consecrated damsels and make them sing and dance before the idol with great festivity. They also bring meats to feed their idol withal ; that is to say, the damsels prepare dishes of meat and other good things and put the food before the idol, and leave it there a good while, and then the damsels all go to their dancing and singing and festivity for about as long as a great Baron might require to eat his dinner. By that time they say the spirit of the idols has consumed the substance of the food, so they remove the viands to be eaten by themselves with great jollity. This is performed by these damsels several times every year until they are married.'^
[The reason assigned for summoning the damsels to these feasts is, as the monks say, that the god is vexed and angry with the goddess, and will hold no communication with her; and they say that if peace be not established between them things will go from bad to worse, and they never will bestow their grace and benediction. So they make those girls come in the way described, to dance and sing, all but naked, before the god and the goddess. And those people believe that the god often solaces himself with the society of the goddess.
The men of this country have tlieir beds made of very light canework, so arranged that, when they have got in and are going to sleep, they are drawn up by cords nearly to the ceiling and fixed there for the night. This is done to get out of the way of tarantulas which give terrible
• The G. T. has «////j, *^ U nosnain do mostiery But in Ramusio it is monks ^ which is more probable, and I have adopted it.
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bites, as well as of fleas and such vermin, and at the same time to get as much air as possible in the great heat which prevails in that region. Not that everybody does this, but only the nobles and great folks, for the others sleep on the streets.'^]
Now I have told you about this kingdom of the pro- vince of Maabar, and I must pass on to the other king- doms of the same province, for I have much to tell of their peculiarities.
Note 1. — The non-existence of tailors is not a mere figure of speech. Sundry learned pundits have been of opinion that the ancient Hindu knew no needle-made clothing, and Col. Meadows Taylor has alleged that they had not even a word for the tailor's craft in their language. These opinions have been patriotically refuted by Bdbii Rijendralil Mitra. {Proc, Ass. Soc, B, 187 1, p. 100.)
Ibn Batuta describes the King of Calicut, the great "Zamorin," coming down to the beach to see the wreck of certain Junks ; — " his clothing consisted of a great piece of white stufif rolled about him from the navel to the knees, and a little scrap of a turban on his head ; his feet were bare, and a young slave carried an umbrella over him. (IV. 97.)
Note 2. — ^The necklace taken from the neck of the Hindu King Jaipdl, captured by Mahmiid in a.d. iooi, was composed of large pearls, rubies, &c., and was valued at 200,000 dinars^ or a good deal more than 100,000/. (Elliot, II. 26.) Compare Correa's account of the King of Calicut, in Stanley's V, da Gama, 194.
Note 3. — The word is printed in Ramusio Pacauca, but no doubt Pacauta is the true reading. Dr. Caldwell has favoured me widi a note on this : " The word .... was probably Bagavd or Pagavdy the Tamil form of the vocative of Bhagavata^ * Lord,' pronounced in the Tamil manner. This word is frequently repeated by Hindus of all sects in the utterance of their sacred formulae, especially by Vaishnava devotees, some of whom go about repeating this one word alone. When I men- tioned Marco Polo's word to two learned Hindus at different times, they said, * No doubt he meant Bagava."^ The Saiva Rosary contains 32 beads ; the doubled form of the same, sometimes used, contains 64 ; the Vaishnava Rosary contains 108. Possibly the latter may have been meant by Marco."
* M. PauthicT has suggested the same explanation in his notes.
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Ward says : " The Hindiis believe the repetition of the name of God is an act of adoration .... Jdpd (as this act is called) makes an essen- tial part of the daily worship. . . . The worshipper, taking a string of beads, repeats the name of his guardian deity, or that of any other god, counting by his beads 10, 28, 108, 208, adding to every 108 not less than 100 more. (Madras ed. 1863, p. 217-18.)
No doubt the number in the text should have been 108, which is ap- parently a mystic number among both Brahmans and Buddhists. Thus at Gautama's birth 108 Brahmans were summoned to foretell his destiny ; round the great White Pagoda at Peking are 108 pillars for illumination ; 108 is the number of volumes constituting the Tibetan scripture called Kahgyur; the merit of copying this work is enhanced by the quality of the ink used, thus a copy in red is 108 times more meritorious than one in black, one in silver 108^ times, one in gold 108^ times; according to the Malabar Chronicle Parasurama established in that country 108 Iswars, 108 places of worship, and 108 Durga images ; there are said to be 108 shrines of especial sanctity in India ; there are. 108 Upanishads (a certain class of mystical Brahmanical sacred literature) ; 108 rupees is frequently a sum devoted to alms ; the rules of the Chinese Triad Society assign 108 blows as the punishment for certain offences ; — 108, according to Athenaeus, were the suitors of Penelope ! I find a Tibetan Tract quoted (by Koeppm^ II. 284) as entitled " The Entire Victor over all the 104 Devils," and this is the only example I have met with of 104 as a mystic number.
Note 4. — The Saggio, here as elsewhere, probably stands for the Misidl.
Note 5. — This is stated also by Abu Zaid in the beginning of the loth century. And Reinaud in his note refers to Mas'udi, who has a like passage in which he gives a name to these companions exactly corre- sponding to Polo's Feoiiz or Trusty Lieges : " When a King in India dies, many persons voluntarily burn themselves with him. These are called Baldnjariyah (sing. Baldnjar)^ as if you should say * Faithful Friends ' of the deceased, whose life was life to them, and whose death was death to them." {Anc. ReL I. 121 and note; Mas, II. 85.)
On the murder of Ajit Singh of Marwar, by two of his sons, there were 84 satis ^ and " so much was he beloved," says Tod, " that even men devoted themselves on his pyre" (I. 744). The same thing occurred at the death of the Sikh Giini Hargovind in 1645 (H, of Sikhs, p. 62).
Barbosa briefly notices an institution like that described by Polo, in reference to the King of Narsinga, /. e. Vijayanagar {Ram. I. f. 302). Another form of the same bond seems to be that mentioned by other travellers as prevalent in Malabar, where certain of the Nairs bore the name of Amuki, and were bound not only to defend the King's life with their own, but, if he fell, to sacrifice themselves by dashing among the enemy and slaying until slain. Even Christian churches in Malabar had
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332 MARCO POLO. Book 111.
such hereditary Amuki, (See F, Vine, Maria, Bk. IV. ch. vil, and Cesare Federici in Ram, III. 390, also Faria y Sousa, by Stevens, I. 348). There can be little doubt that this is the Malay Amuky which would therefore appear to be of Indian origin, both in name and practice. I see that De Gubematis, without noticing the Malay phrase, traces the term applied to the Malabar champions to the Sanskrit Amokhya, " in- dissoluble," and Amukta, " not free, bound " {Ficc, Encic. Ind, I. %%), The same practice, by which the followers of a defeated prince devote themselves in amuk {vulgo running Ormuck)* is called in the island of Bali Beia, a term applied also to one kind of female Sati, probably from S. Bali, " a sacrifice." (See Friedrich in Batavian Trans, XXIIL) In the first syllable of the Baldnjar of Mas'udi we have probably the same word. A similar institution is mentioned by Caesar among the Sotiates, a tribe of Aquitania. The Ftoilz of the chief were 600 in number and were called Soldurii ; they shared all his good things in life and were bound to share with him in death also. Such also was a custom among the Spanish Iberians, and the name of these Amuki sig- nified " sprinkled for sacrifice." Other generals, says Plutarch, might find a few such among their personal staff and dependents, but Seitorius was followed by many myriads who had thus devoted themselves. Procopius relates of the White Huns that the richer among them used to entertain a circle of friends, some score or more, as perpetual guests and partners of their wealth. But, when the chief died, the whole company were expected to go down alive into the tomb with him. The King of the Russians, in the tenth century, according to Ibn FozMn, was attended by 400 followers bound by like vows. And according to some writers the same practice was common in Japan, where the friends and vassals who were under the vow committed hara kiri at the death of their patron. The Likamankwas of the Abyssinian kings, who in battle wear the same dress with their master to mislead the enemy — ** Six Richmonds in the field " — form apparently a kindred institution {Bell, Gall, iil c 22 ; Flutarch. in Vit, Sertorii; Procop, DeB, Fers, I. 3 ; Ibn Fozlanhy Frcuhn, p. 22 ; Sonneraty I. 97).
Note 6. — However frequent may have been wars between adjoining states, the south of the peninsula appears to have been for ages free from foreign invasion until the Dehli expeditions, which occurred a few years later than our traveller's visit; and there are many testimonies to the enormous accumulations of treasure. Gold, according to the Masdlak-al'Absdry had been flowing into India for 3000 years, and had never been exported. Firishta speaks of the enormous spoils carried off by Malik Kdfur, every soldier's share amounting to 25 lbs. of gold! Some years later Mahomed Tughlak loads 200 elephants and several
♦ Running a-muck in the genuine Malay fashion is not unknown among the Rajputs ; see two notable instances in Tod^ II. 45, and 315.
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thousand bullocks with the precious spoil of a single temple. We have quoted a like statement from Wassdf as to the wealth found in the treasury of this very Sundara Pandi Dewar, but the same author goes far beyond this when he tells that Kales Dewar, Raja of Ma'bar about 1309, had accumulated 1200 crores of gold, 1. e, 12,000 millions of dinars, enough to girdle the earth with a fourfold belt of bezants ! {N. and E, XIII. 218, 220-1; Briggs's Firishta^ I. 373-4; Hammer's IlkhanSj II. 205.)
Note 7. — Of the ports mentioned as exporting horses to India we have already made acquaintance with Kais and Horm uz ; of Dofar and Aden we shall hear further on ; Soer is Sohar, the former capital of Oman, and still a place of some little trade. Edrisi calls it " one of the oldest cities of Oman, and of the richest. Anciently it was frequented by merchants from all parts of the world ; and voyages to China used to be made from it" (I. 152.)
Rashiduddin and Wassif have idehtical statements about the horse- trade, and so similar to Polo's in this chapter that one almost suspects that he must have been their authority. Wassdf says : " It was a matter of agreement that Malik-ul-Isldm Jamdluddin and the merchants should embark every year from the island of Kais and land at Ma'bar 1400 horses of his own breed It was also agreed that he should em- bark as many as he could procure from all the isles of Persia, such as Kdtif, Lahsd, Bahrein, Hurmuz, and Kalhdtti. The price of each horse was fixed from of old at 220 dinars of red gold, on this condition, that if any horses should happen to die, the value of them should be paid from the royal treasury. It is related by authentic writers that in the reign of Atdbek Abu Bakr (of Fars) 10,000 horses were annually exported from these places to Ma'bar, Kambdyat, and other ports in their neigh- bourhood, and the sum total of their value amounted to 2,200,000 dinars. .... They bind them for 40 days in a stable with ropes and pegs, in order that they may get fat ; and afterwards, without taking measures for training, and without stirrups and other appurtenances of riding, the
Indian soldiers ride upon them like demons In a short tune the
most strong, swift, fresh, and active horses become weak, slow, useless, and stupid. In short, they all become wretched and good for nothing. .... There is, therefore, a constant necessity of getting new horses annually." Amir Khusru mentions among Malik Kafiir's plunder in Ma'bar, 5000 Arab and Syrian horses. {Elliot, III. 34, 93.)
The price mentioned by Polo appears to be intended for 500 dinars, which in the then existing relations of the precious metals in Asia would be worth just about 100 marks of silver. Wassdfs price, 220 dinars of red gold, seems very inconsistent with this, but is not so materially, for it would appear that the dinar of red gold (so called) was worth two dinars*
♦ See Journ. Asiat, ser. 6, torn. xi. pp. 505 and 512. May not the din&r of red gold have been the gold mohr of those days, popularly known as the red tanga^ which
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334 MARCO POLO. Book III.
I noted an early use of the term Arab chargers in the famous Bodleian copy of the Alexander Romance (1338) :
** Alexand* descent du destrier Arrabis."
Note 8. — I have not found other mention of a condemned criminal being allowed thus to sacrifice himself; but such suicides in performance of religious vows have occurred in almost all parts of India in all ages. Friar Jordanus, after giving a similar account to that in the text of the parade of the victim, represents him as cutting off his own head before the idol, with a peculiar two-handled knife " like those used in currying leather." And strange as this sounds it is undoubtedly true. Ibn Batuta witnessed the suicidal feat at the Court of the Pagan King of Mul-Java (somewhere on the coast of the Gulf of Siam), and Mr. Ward, without any knowledge of these authorities, had heard that an instru- ment for this purpose was formerly preserved at Kshfra, a village of Bengal near Nadiya. The thing was called Karavat ; it was a crescent- shaped knife, with chains attached to it forming stirrups, so adjusted that when the fanatic placed the edge to the back of his neck and his feet in the stirrups, by giving the latter a violent jerk his head was cut oft Padre Tieffentaller mentions a like instrument at Pr^ (or Alla- habad). Durgavati, a famous Queen on the Nerbada, who fell in battle with the troops of Akbar, is asserted in a family inscription to have " severed her own head with a scimitar she held in her hand." Accord- ing to a wild legend told at Ujjain, the great king Vikramajit was in the habit of cutting ofif his own head daily ^ as an offering to DevL On the last performance the head failed to reattach itself as usual : and it is now preserved, petrified, in the temple of Harsuddi at that place.
I never heard of anybody in Europe performing this extraordinary feat except Sir Jonah Barrington's Irish mower, who made a dig at a salmon with the butt of his scythe-handle and dropt his own head in the pool ! (Jord, 33 ; /. B, IV. 246 ; Ward^ Madras ed. 249-50 ;y. A, S, B, XVII. 833 ; J^ds Mdia, II. 387.)
Note 9. — Satis were very numerous in parts of S. India. In 18 15 there were one hundred in Tanjore alone. (Ritter^ VI. 303 ; J, Cathajy p. 80).
Note 10.—" The people in this part of the country (Southern Mysore) consider the ox as a living god, who gives them bread ; and in every village there are one or two bulls to whom weekly or monthly worship is performed." {F, Buchanan^ II. 174.) " The low-caste Hindus, called Gavi by Marco Polo, were probably the caste now called Paraiyar (by the English, Faria/is), The people of this caste do not venture to kill the cow, but when they find the carcase of a cow which
Ibn Batuta repeatedly tells us was equal to 2 J dindrs of the west. 220 red tangas would be equivalent to 550 western dinirs, or x/j^/ of Polo {Elliot^ II. 332, III. 582),
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Chap. XVII. CURIOUS CUSTOM OF ARREST. 335
has died from disease, or any other cause, they cook and eat it The name Paraiyar, which means * Drummers,* does not appear to be ancient" • {Note by the Rev, Dr. Caldwell)
In the history of Bind called Chach Namah, the Hindus revile the Mahomedan invaders as Chanddls and cow-eaters {Elliot ^ I. 172, 193). The low castes are often styled from their unrestricted diet, e. g. Haldl- Khor(V. " to whom all food is lawful *'), Sab-khawd (H. " omnivorous **).
Bdbd Rijendraldl Mitra has published a learned article on Beef in ancient Indiay showing that the ancient Brahmans were far from enter- taining the modem horror of cow-killing. We may cite two of his numerous illustrations. Goghna^ " a guest," signifies literally " a cow- killer," I. e. he for whom a cow is killed. And one of the sacrifices prescribed in the Sutras bears the name of Sula-gava " spit-cow," /. e, roast beef (J. A, S. B, XLI. Pt I. p. 174 segg,).
Note 11. — ^The word in the G. T. is losd de buef which Pauthier's text has converted into suif de buef—\n reference to Hindus a prepos- terous statement Yet the very old Latin of the Soc. Geog. also has pinguedinenty and in a parallel passage about the Jogis {infra, chap, xx.), Ramusio's text describes them as daubing themselves with powder of ox-bones {fossa). Apparently fosd was not understood (It uscito).
Note 12. — Later travellers describe the descendants of St Thomas's murderers as marked by having one leg of immense size, /. e. by elephan- tiasis. The disease was therefore called by the Portuguese Fejo de Santo Toma,
Note 13. — Mr. Nelson says of the Madura country : " The horse is a miserable, weedy, and vicious pony ; having but one good quality, endurance. The breed is not indigenous, but the result of constant importations and a very limited amount of breeding." ( The Madura Country, pt ii. p. 94.) The ill success in breeding horses was exag- gerated to impossibility, and made to extend to all India. Thus a Persian historian, speaking of an elephant that was bom in the stables of Khosru Parviz, observes that " never till then had a she-elephant borne young in Irdn, any more than a lioness in Rdm, a tabby cat in China (!), ox a mare in IndiaT {/, A, S. ser. 3, tom. iii. p. 127.)
Note 14. — ^This custom is described in much the same way by the Arabo-Persian Zakariah Kazwini, by Ludovico Varthema, and by Alex- ander Hamilton. Kazwini ascribes it to Ceylon. " If a debtor does not pay, the King sends to him a person who draws a line round him, wheresoever he chance to be ; and beyond that circle he dares not to
• I observe, however, that Sir Walter Elliot thinks it possible that the Paraya which appears on the oldest of Indian inscriptions as the name of a nation, coupled with Chola and Kerala (Coromandel and Malabar), is that of the modem despised tribe {J. Ethn, Soc. n. s. I. 103).
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336 MARCO POLO. Book III.
move until he shall have paid what he owes, or ^ome to an agreement with his creditor. For if h^ should pass the circle the King fines him three times the amount of his debt ; one-third of this fine goes to the creditor and two-thirds to the King." Pfere Bouchet describes the strict regard paid to the arrest, but does not notice the symbolic circle. (Giidem. 197 ; Varthema, 147 ; Ham. I. 318; Lett Edif, XIV. 370.)
" The custom undoubtedly prevailed in this part of India at a former time. It is said that it still survives amongst the poorer classes in out- of-the-way parts of the country, but it is kept up by schoolboys in a serio-comic spirit as vigorously as ever. Marco does not mention a very essential part of the ceremony. The person who draws a circle round another imprecates upon him the name of a particular divinity, whose curse is to fall upon him if he breaks through the circle without satisfying the claim." {MS. Note by the. Rev. Dr. Caldwell.)
Note 15. — The statement about the only rains falling in June, July, and August is perplexing. ** It is entirely inapplicable to every part of the Coromandel coast, to which alone the name Ma'bar seems to have been given, but it is quite true of the western coast generally." {Rev. Dr. C.) One can only suppose that Polo inadvertently applied to Maabar that which he knew to be true of the regions both west of it and east of it. The Coromandel coast derives its chief supply of rain from the N.E. monsoon, beginning in October, whereas both eastern and western India have theirs from the S.W. monsoon, between June and September.
Note 16. — ^Abraham Roger says of the Hindus of the Coromandel coast : " They judge of lucky hours and moments also by trivial acci- dents, to which they pay great heed. Thus 'tis held to be a good omen to everybody when the bird Garuda (which is a red hawk with a white ring round its neck) or the bird Pala flies across the road in firont of the person firom right to left; but as regards other birds they have just
the opposite notion If they are in a house an)rwhere, and have
moved to go, and then any one should sneeze, they will go in again, regarding it as an ill omen," &c. {Abr. Roger ^ p. 75-6.)
Note 17. — Quoth Wassif: "It is a strange thing that when these horses arrive there, instead of giving them raw barley, they give them roasted barley and grain dressed with butter, and boiled cow's milk to drink : —
** Who gives sugar to an owl or a crow ? Or who feeds a parrot with a carcase ? A crow should be fed with carrion, And a parrot with candy and sugar. Who loads jewels on the back of an ass ? Or who would approve of giving dressed almonds to a cow ? "
Elliot, III. 33.
" Horses," says Athanasius Nikitin, " are fed on peas ; also on Kuheri^
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boiled with sugar and oil; early in the morning they get shishemvo,^ This last word is a mystery {India in XVth Century^ p. 10).
" Rice is frequently given by natives to their horses to fatten them, and a sheep's head occasionally to strengthen them" {Note by Dr, Caldwell).
The sheep's head is pecuHar to the Deccan, but ghee (boiled butter) is given by natives to their horses, I believe, all over India. Even in the stables of Akbar an imperial horse drew daily 2 lbs. of flour, lilb. of sugar, and in winter ilb. oighee! {A in Akb. 134.)
It is told of Sir John Malcolm that at an EngHsh table where he was present, a brother officer from India had ventured to speak of the sheep's- head custom to an unbelieving audience. He appealed to Sir John, who only shook his head deprecatingly. After dinner the unfortunate
Pagoda at Tanjore. VOL. II.
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story-teller remonstrated, but Sir John's answer was only, ** My dear fellow, they took you for one Munchausen ; they would merely have taken me for another !"
Note 18. — The nature of the institution of the Temple dancing-girls seems to have been scarcely understood by the Traveller. The like existed at ancient Corinth under the name of icpoSovXoi, which is nearly a translation of the Hindi name of the girls, Deva-ddsi (Straho, VIII. 6, § 20). " Each (Ddsi) is married to an idol when quite young. The female children are generally brought up to the trade of the mothers. It is customary with a few castes to present their superfluous daughters to the Pagodas." {Nelson's Madura Country^ pt ii. 79.) A full account of this matter appears to have been read by Dr. Shortt of Madras before the Anthropological Society. But I have only seen a newspaper notice of it.
Note 19. — The first part of this paragraph is rendered by Marsden : " The natives make use of a kind of bedstead or cot of very light cane- work, so ingeniously contrived that when they repose on them and are inclined to sleep, they can draw close the curtains about them by pulling a string'' This is not translation. An approximate illustration of the real statement is found in Pyrard de la Val, who says (of the Maldive Islanders) : " Their beds are hung up by four cords to a bar supported
by two pillars The beds of the king, the grandees, and rich folk
are made thus that they may be siivaing and rocked with facility." {Charton, IV. 277.) In the Rds Mdla swinging cots are several times alluded to (I. 173, 247, 423). In one case the bed is mentioned as sus- pended to the ceiling by chains.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Discoursing of the Place where lieth the Body of St. Thomas THE Apostle ; and of the Miracles thereof.
The Body of Messer St. Thomas th( province of Maabar at a certain little 1 population ; 'tis a place where few trad is very little merchandize to be got tl not very accessible/ Both Christians ever, greatly frequent it in pilgrimage also do hold the Saint in great rever
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was one of their own Saracens and a great prophet, giving him the title of Avarian^ which is as much as to say "Holy Man."' The Christians who go thither in pil- grimage take of the earth from the place where the Saint was killed, and give a portion thereof to any one who is sick of a quartan or a tertian fever ; and by the power of God and of St. Thomas the sick man is incontinently cured.3 The earth, I should tell you, is red. A very fine miracle occurred there in the year of Christ, 1288, as I will now relate.
A certain Baron of that country, having great store of a certain kind of corn that is called rice^ had filled up with it all the houses that belonged to the church, and stood round about it. The Christian people in charge of the church were much distressed by his having thus stuffed their houses with his rice ; the pilgrims too had nowhere to lay their heads; and they often begged the pagan Baron
A::cicnt Cross with Pehlvi Inscription on St. Thomas's Mount, near Madras (from Photography.
Z 2
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to remove his grain, but he would do nothing of the kind. So one night the Saint himself appeared with a fork in his hand, which he set at the Baron's throat, saying: "If thou void not my houses, that my pilgrims may have room, thou shalt die an evil death," and therewithal the Saint pressed him so hard with the fork that he thought himself a dead man. And when morning came he caused all the houses to be voided of his rice, and told everybody what had befallen him at the Saint's hands. So the Christians were greatly rejoiced at this grand miracle, and rendered thanks to God and to the blessed St. Thomas. Other great miracles do often come to pass there, such as the healing of those who are sick or deformed, or the like, especially such as be Christians.
[The Christians who have charge of the church have a great number of the Indian Nut trees, whereby they get their living ; and they pay to one of those brother Kings six groats for each tree every month.*]
Now, 1 will tell you the manner in which the Christian brethren who keep the church relate the story of the Saint's death.
They tell that the Saint was in the wood outside his her- mitage saying his prayers ; and round about him were many peacocks, for these are more plentiful in that country than anywhere else. And one of the idolaters of that country being of the lineage of those called Govi that I told you of, having gone with his bow and arrows to shoot pea- fowl, not seeing the Saint, let fly an arrow at one of the peacocks ; and this arrow struck the holy man in the right side, inspmuch that he died of the wound, sweetly addressing himself to his Creator. Before he came to that place where he thus died he had been in Nubia, where he converted much people to the faith of Jesus Christ.^
The children that are born here are black enough, but
* Should be ' * year " no doubt.
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the blacker they be the more they are thought of; where- fore from the day of their birth their parents do rub them every week with oil of sesame, so that they become as black as devils. Moreover, they make their gods black and their devils white, and the images of their saints they do paint black all over.^
They have such faith in the ox, and hold it for a thing so holy, that when they go to the wars they take of the hair of the wild-ox, whereof I have elsewhere spoken, and wear it tied to the necks of their horses ; or, if serving on foot, they hang this hair to their shields, or attach it to their own hair. And so this hair bears a high price, since without it nobody goes to the wars in any good heart. For they believe that any one who has it shall come scatheless out of battle.^
Note 1. — The little town where the body of St. Thomas lay was Mailapur, the name of which is still applied to a suburb of Madras about 3i miles south of Fort St. George.
The Little Mount of St. Thomas, near Madras.
Note 2. — The title of Avarian^ given to St Thomas by the Saracens, is judiciously explained by Joseph Scaliger to be the Arabic Hawdriy
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(pi. HawdriyHn), "An Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ" Scaliger somewhat hypercritically for the occasion finds fault with Marco for saying the word means " a holy man." {De Emendatione Temporum, Lib. VII., Geneva, 1629, p. 680.)
Note 3.— The use of the earth from the tomb of SL Thomas for miraculous cures is mentioned also by John Marignolli, who was there about 1348-49. Assemani gives a special formula of the Nestorians for use in the application of this dust, which was administered to the sick in place of the unction of the Catholics. It ends with the words : " Signatur et sanctificatur hie Hanana {puivis) cum hoc Taibutha {groHA) Sancti Thomcu Apostoli in sanitatem et medelam corporis et animae^ in nomen P, etK et S,S:' (III. Pt. 2, 278). The Abyssinians make a similar use of the earth from the tomb of their national Saint Tekla Haimanot (y. R. G. S, X. 483.) And the Shfahs, on solemn occasions, partake of water in which has been mingled the dust of Kerbela.
Fahian tells that the people of Magadha did the like, for the cure of headache, with earth from the place where lay the body of Kasjrapa a former Buddha. {Beai^ p. 133).
Note 4. — Vague as is Polo's indication of the position of the Shrine of St Thomas, it is the first geogmphical identification of it that I know of, save one. At the very time of Polo's homeward voyage, John of Monte Corvino on his way to China spent 13 months in Maabar, and in a letter thence in 1292-3 he speaks of the church of St Thomas there, having buried in it the companion of his travels. Friar Nicholas of Pistoia. But the tradition of Thomas's preaching in India is very old, so old that it probably is, in its simple form, true. St Jerome accepts it, speaking of the Divine Word as being everywhere present in His fulness : " cum Thoma in India y cum Petro Romae, cum Paulo in Illyrico," &a {Scti. Hieron, Epistolae, LIX., ad Marcellam.) So dispassionate a scholar as Prof. H. H. Wilson speaks of the preaching and martyrdom of St Thomas in S. India as " occurrences very far from invalidated by any arguments yet adduced against the truth of the tradition." I do not know if the date is ascertainable of the very remarkable legend of St Thomas in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, but it is presumably very old, though subsequent to the translation of the relics (real or sup>- posed) to Edessa, in the year 394, which is alluded to ih the story. And it is worthy of note that this legend places the martyrdom and original burial-place of the Saint upon a mount Gregory of Tours (a.d. 544-595) relates that " in that place in India where the body of Thomas lay before it was transported to Edessa, there is a monastery and a temple of great size and excellent structure and ornament In it God shows a wonderful miracle ; for the lamp that stands alight before the place of sepulture keeps burning perpetually, night and day, by divine influence, for neither oil nor wick are ever renewed by human hands ;" and this Gregory learned from one Theodoras who had visited the spot.
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The apocryphal history of St Thomas relates that while the Lord was still upon earth a certain King of India, whose name was Gondaphorus, sent to the west a certain merchant called Abban to seek a skilful architect to build him a palace, and the Lord sold Thomas to him as a slave of his own who was expert in such work. Thomas eventually converts King Gondaphorus, and proceeds to another country of India ruled by King Meodeus^ where he is put to death by lances. M. Reinaud first, I beheve, pointed out the remarkable fact that the name of the King Gondaphorus of the legend is the same with that of a King who has become known from the Indo-Scythian coins, Gondophares^ Yndoferres, or Gondaferres, This gives great interest to a votive inscription found near Peshawar, and now in the Lahore Museum, which appears to bear the name of the same King. This Professor Dowson has partially read : " In the 26th year of the great King Guna . . pharasa, on the 7 th seventh day of the month Vaisikha " . . . . Gen. Cunningham has read the dale with more claim to precision : " In the 26th year of King Guduphara, in the Sam vat year 103, in the month of Vaisikh, the 4th day " . . . . But Professor Dowson does not assent to these modifica- tions. Lassen put Yndoferres about 90 B.C., as Cunningham did formerly about 26 B.c. The chronology is very doubtful, but the evidence does not appear to be strong against the synchronism of the King and the legend (see Frinsefs Essays , II. 176, 177, and Mr. Thomas's remarks at p. 214; Triibner's Record^ June 30, 187 ; Cunningham's Desc, List of Buddhist Sculptures in Lahore Central Museum ; Reinaud^ Inde, /. 95).
Here then may be a faint trace of a true apostolic history. But in the 1 6th and 17th centuries Roman Catholic ecclesiastical story-tellers seem to have striven in rivalry who should most recklessly expand the travels of St Thomas. According to an abstract given by P. Vincenzo Maria, his preaching began in Mesopotamia, and extended through Bactria, &c., to China, "the States of the Great Mogul" (!) and Siam; he then revisited his first converts, and passed into Germany, thence to Brazil, " as relates P. Emanuel Nobriga,'* and from that to Ethiopia, After thus carrying light to the four quarters of the World, the indefati- gable Traveller and Missionary retook his way to India, converting Socotra as he passed, and then preached in Malabar, and on the Coro- mandel Coast, where he died, as already stated.
Some parts of this strange rhapsody, besides the Indian mission, were no doubt of old date ; for the Chaldaean breviary of the Malabar Church in its office of St. Thomas contains such passages as this : " By St Thomas were the Chinese and the Ethiopians converted to the Truth;" and in an. Anthem: "The Hindus, the Chinese, the Persians, and all the people of the Isles of the Sea, they who dwell in Syria and Armenia, in Javan and Romania, call Thomas to remembrance, and adore Thy Name, O Thou our Redeemer !"
The Roman Martyrology calls the city of martyrdom Calamina^ but there is (I think) a fair presumption that the spot alluded to by Gregory
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of Tours was Mailapiir, and that the Shrine visited by King Alfred's envoy, Sighelm, may have been the same.
Marco, as we see, speaks of certain houses belonging to the church, and of certain Christians who kept it Odoric, some 30 years later, found beside the church " some 15 houses of Nestorians," but the church itself filled with idols. Conti, in the following century, speaks of the church in which St Thomas lay buried, as large and beautiful, and says there were 1000 Nestorians in the city. Joseph of Cranganore, the Malabar Christian who came to Europe in 1501, speaks like our traveller of the worship paid to the Saint, even by the heathen, and compares the church to that of St John and St Paul at Venice. Certain Syrian bishops sent to India in 1504, whose report is given by Assemani, heard that the church had begun to be occupied by some Christian people. But Barbosa, a few years later, found it half in ruins and in the charge of a Mahomedan Fakir, who kept a lamp burning.
There are two St Thomas's Mounts in the same vicinity, the Great and the Little Mount A church was built upon the former by the Portuguese and some sanctity attributed to it, especially in connexion with the cross mentioned below, but I believe there is no doubt that the Little Mount was the site of the ancient church.
The Portuguese ignored the ancient translation of the Saint's remains to Edessa, and in 1522, under the Viceroyalty of Duarte Menezes, a com- mission was sent to Mailapiir, or San Tom^ as they called it, to search for the body. The narrative states circumstantially that the Apostle's bones were found, besides those of the king whom he had converted, &a The supposed relics were transferred to Goa, where they are still pre- served in the Church of St Thomas in that city. The question appears to have become a party one among Romanists in India, in connexion with other diflferences, and I see that the authorities now ruling the CathoUcs at Madras are strong in disparagement of the special sanctity of the localities, and of the whole story connecting St Thomas with Maila- piir. {Greg, Turon, Lib, Mirac,, L p. 85 ; Tr, jR, A. S. I. 761 ; Asse- mani^ III. pt ii. p. 32, 450; Novus Orbis (ed. 1555), p. 210; Maffd, Bk. VIIL ; Cathay, pp. 81, 197, 374-7, &c.)
The account of the Saint's death was no doubt that current among the native Christians, for it is told in much the same way by Marignolli and by Barbosa, and was related also in the same manner by one Diogo Femandes, who gave evidence before the commission of Duarte Menezes, and who claimed to have been the first Portuguese visitor of the site (see De Couto, Dec. V. Liv. vi. cap. 2, and Dec VII. Liv. x. cap. 5).
As Diogo de Couto relates the story of the localities, in the shape which it had taken by the middle of the i6th century, both Little and Great Mounts were the sites of Oratories which the Apostle had fi^ quented ; during prayer on the Little Mount he was attacked and wounded, but fled to the Great Mount where he expired. In repairing a hermitage which here existed, in 1547, the workmen came upon a
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stone slab with a cross and inscription carved upon it The story speedily developed itself that this was the cross which had been em- braced by the dying Apostle, and its miraculous virtues soon obtained great fame. It was eventually set up over an altar in the Church of the Madonna which was afterwards erected on the Great Mount, and there it still exists. A Brahman impostor professed to give an interpre- tation of the inscription as relating to the death of St. Thomas, &c, and this was long accepted. The cross seemed to have been long forgotten, when lately Mr. Bumell turned his attention to these and other like relics in Southern India. He has shown the inscription to be Pehlvi^ and probably of the 7th or 8th century. Mr. Fergusson considers the architectural character to be of the 9th. The interpretations of the In- scription as yet given are tentative and somewhat dis- crepant Thus Mr. Bumell reads : " In punishment (?) by the cross (was) the suffering
of this (one) : (He) who is the '
true Christ and God above, and Guide for ever pure." Prof. Haug: "Whoever be- lieves in the Messiah, and in God above, and also in the Holy Ghost, is in the grace of Him who bore the pain of the Cross." Mr. Thomas reads the central part, between two small crosses, "+ In the Name • , . . , -
of Messiah -j- ". See Kirchcr^ St. Thomas Localities at Madras.
China Illustrata, p. 55 segq, ;
De CoutOy u. s. (both of these have inaccurate representations of the cross) ; Academy, vol. V. (1874) p. 145, &c. ; and Mr. BurnelFs pam- phlet " On some Pahlavi inscriptions in South India'' To his kindness I am indebted for the illustration (p. 339).
The etymology of the name Mayildppur, popular among the native Christians, is " Peacock-Town," and the peafowl are prominent in the old legend of St Thomas. Polo gives it no name ; Marignolli (circa 1350) calls it MirapoliSy the Catalan Map (1375) Mirapor ; Conti (circa 1440) Malepor ; Joseph of Cranganore (1500) Milapar (or Milapor)\ De Barros and Couto, Meliapor, Mr. Bumell thinks it was probably il/ii/^z/-ppuram, " Mount-Town ;*' and the same as the Malifatan of the Mahomedan writers ; the last point needs further inquiry.
Note 6. — Dr. Caldwell, speaking of the devil-worship of the Shanars of Tinnevelly (an important part of Ma*bar), says : " Where they erect an image in imitation of their Brahman neighbours, the devil is generally
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of Brahmanical lineage. Such images generally accord with those monstrous figures with which all over India orthodox Hindus depict the enemies of their gods, or the terrific forms of Siva or Durga. They are generally made of earthenware, 2Si'^ painted white to look horrible in Hindu eycsr {The Ttnnevelly Shanars, Madras, 1849, p. 18).
Note 6. — The use of the Yak's tail as a military ornament had nothing to do with the sanctity of the Brahmani ox, but is one of the Pan- Asiatic usages of which there are so many. A vivid account of the extravagant profusion with which swaggering heroes in South India used those ornaments will be found in P, delta Valle, II. 662.
CHAPTER X.IX. Concerning the Kingdom of Mutfili.
When you leave Maabar and go about 1000 miles in a northerly direction you come to the kingdom of Mutpili. This was formerly under the rule of a King, and since his death, some forty years past, it has been under his Queen, a lady of much discretion, who for the great love she bore him never would marry another husband. And I can assure you that during all that space of forty years she had administered her realm as well as ever her husband did, or better ; and as she was a lover of justice, of equity, and of peace, she was more beloved by those of her kingdom than ever was Lady or Lord of theirs before. The people are Idolaters, and are tributary to nobody. They live on flesh, and rice, and milk.'
It is in this kingdom that diamonds are got ; and I will tell you how. There are certain lofty mountains in those parts ; and when the winter rains fall, which are very heavy, the waters come roaring down the mountains in great torrents. When the rains are over, and the waters from the mountains have ceased to flow, they search the beds of the torrents and find plenty of diamonds. In summer also there are plenty to be found in the mountains, but the heat of the sun is so great that it is scarcely possible to go
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thither, nor is there then a drop of water to be found. Moreover in those mountains great serpents are rife to a marvellous degree, besides other vermin, and this owing to the great heat. The serpents are also the most venomous in existence, insomuch that any one going to that region runs fearful peril ; for many have been destroyed by these evil reptiles.
Now among these mountains there are certain great and deep valleys, to the bottom of which there is no access. Wherefore the men who go in search of the diamonds take with them pieces of flesh, as lean as they can get, and these they cast into the bottom of a valley. Now there are numbers of white eagles that haunt those mountains and feed upon the serpents. When the eagles see the meat thrown down they pounce upon it and carry it up to some rocky hill-top where they begin to rend it. But there are men on the watch, and as soon as they see that the eagles have settled they raise a loud shouting to drive them away. And when the eagles are thus frightened away the men recover the pieces of meat, and find them full of diamonds which have stuck to the meat down in the bottom. For the abundance of diamonds down there in the depths of the valleys is astonishing, but nobody can get down ; and if one could, it would be only to be incontinently devoured by the serpents which are so rife there.
There is also another way of getting the diamonds. The people go to the nests of those white eagles, of which there are many, and in their droppings they find plenty of diamonds which the birds have swallowed in devouring the meat that was cast into the valleys. And, when the eagles themselves are taken, diamonds are found in their stomachs.
So now I have told you three different ways in which these stones are found. No other country but this kingdom of Mutfili produces them, but there they are found both abundantly and of large size. Those that are brought to our part of the world are only the refuse, as it were, of the
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finer and larger stones. For the flower of the diamonds and other large gems, as well as the largest pearls, are all carried to the Great Kaan and other Kings and Princes of those regions ; in truth they possess all the great treasures of the world.'
Ill this kingdom also are made the best and most delicate buckrams, and those of highest price ; in sooth they look like tissue of spider's web ! There is no King nor Queen in the world but might be glad to wear them.^ The people have also the largest sheep in the world, and great abundance of all the necessaries of Ufe.
There is now no more to say ; so I will next tell you about a province called Lar from which the Abraiaman come.
Note 1. — There is no doubt that the kingdom here spoken of is that of Telingana {Tiling of the Mahomedan writers) then ruled by the Kdkateya or Ganapati dynasty reigning at Warangol, N.E. of Hyderabad. But Marco seems to give the kingdom the name of that place in it which was visited by himself or his informants. Mutfili is,. with the usual Arab modification {e.g., Perlec, Ferlec — Pattan, Fattan) a port called MoTUPALL^, in the GantiSr district of the Madras Presidency, about 170 miles north of Fort St George. Though it has dropt out of most of our modem maps it still exists, and a notice of it is to be found in W. Hamilton and in Milbume. The former says : " MutapcUiy a town situated near the S. extremity of the northern Circars. A considerable coasting trade is carried on from hence in the craft navigated by natives,** which can come in closer to shore than at other ports on that coast
The proper territory of the Kingdom of Warangol lay inland, but the last reigning prince before Polo's visit to India, by name Kakateya Pratapa Ganapati Rudra Deva, had made extensive conquests on the coast, including Nellore, and thence northward to the fi-ontier of Orissa. This prince left no male issue, and his widow, Rudrama Devi, daughter of the Raja of Devagiri, assumed the government and continued to hold it for 28, or, as another record states, for 38 years, till the son of her daughter had attained majority. This was in 1292, or by the other account 1295, when she transferred the royal authority to this grandson Pratapa Vira Rudra Deva, the " Luddur Deo " of Firishta, and the last Ganapati of any political moment He was taken prisoner by the Dehli forces about 1323. We have evidently in Rudrama Devi the just and beloved Queen of our Traveller, who thus enables us to attach colour and character to what was an empty name in a dynastic list (Compare
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Chap. XIX. THE KINGDOM OF MUTFILI. 349
Wilsoris Mackenzie, I. cxxx ; Taylors Or, Hist MSS., I. 18 ; Do.'s Catalogue Radsonnk, III. 483.)
Mutfili appears in the Carta Catalana as Butiflis, and is there by some mistake made the site of St Thomas's Shrine. The distance from Maabar is in Ramusio only 500 miles— a preferable reading.
Note 2. — Some of the Diamond Mines once so famous under the name of Golconda are in the alluvium of the Kistna River, some distance above the Delta, and others in the vicinity of Kadapa and Kamiil, both localities being in the territory of the kingdom we have been speaking of.
The strange legend related here is very ancient and widely diffused. Its earliest known occurrence is in the Treatise of St Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, concemmg the 12 Jewels in the Rationale or Breastplate of the Hebrew High Priest, a work written before the end of the fourth century, wherein the tale is told of tht Jacinth, It is distinctly referred to by Edrisi who assigns its locality to the land of the Kirkfdr (probably Khirghiz) in Upper Asia. It appears in Kazwini's Wonders of Creation, and is assigned by him to the Valley of the Moon among the Mountains of Serendib. Sindbad the Sailor relates the story, as is well known, and his version is the closest of all to our author's. It is found in the Chinese Narrative of the Campaigns of Hulaku, translated by both R^musat and Pauthier. It is told in two different versions, once of tbe Diamond, and again of the Jacinth of Serendib, in the work on Precious Stones by Ahmed Taifdshi. It is one of the many stories in the scrap-book of Tzetzes. Nicolo Conti relates it of a mountain called Albenigaras, 15 days* journey in a northerly direction from Vijayanagar; and it is told again, apparently after Conti, by Julius Caesar Scaliger. It is related of diamonds and Balasses in the old Genoese MS., called that of Usodimare. A feeble form of the tale is quoted contemptuously by Garcias from one Francisco de Ta- marra. And Haxthausen found it as a popular legend in Armenia. (5. Epiph, deXIIL Gemmis^^c,, Romae, 1743 ; Jaubert, Edrisi, I. 500 ; / A. S, B, XIII. 657 ; Lanes Ar. Nights, ed. 1859, III. 88 ; Rim. Nouv, MeL Asiat, I. 183 ; Raineri, Fiordi Pensieridi Ahmed Teifascite, pp. 13 and 30; Tzetzes, ChiL XI. 376; India in XVth Cent, p. 29-30 ; /. C Seal, de SubHlitate, CXIII. No. 3 ; An, des Voyages, VIII. 195 ; Garcias, p. 71. ; Transcaucasia, p. 360 ; J, A, S. B, I. 354).
The story has a considerable resemblance to that which Herodotus tells of the way in which cinnamon was got by the Arabs (III, in). No doubt the two are ramifications of the same legend.
Note 3. — Here buckram is clearly applied to fine cotton stuffs. The districts about Masulipatam were long famous both for muslins and for coloured chintzes. The fine muslins of Masalia are mentioned in tha Periplus. Indeed even in tJie time of Sakya Muni Kalinga was already famous for diaphanous muslins, as may be seen in a story related in the Buddhist annals (/. A, S. B. VI. 1086).
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350 MARCO POLO. Book III.
CHAPTER XX.
Concerning the Province of Lar whence the Brahmins come,
Lar is a Province lying towards the west when you quit the place where the Body of St. Thomas lies ; and all the Abraiaman in the world come from that province/
You must know that these Abraiaman are the best merchants in the world, and the most truthful, for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth. [If a foreign merchant who does not know the ways of the country applies to them and entrusts his goods to them, they will take charge of these, and sell them in the most loyal manner, seeking zealously the profit of the foreigner and asking no commission except what he pleases to bestow.] They eat no flesh, and drink no wine, and live a life of great chastity, having intercourse with no women except with their wives ; nor would they on any account take what belongs to another ; so their law commands. And they are all distinguished by wearing a thread of cotton over one shoulder and tied under the other arm, so that it crosses the breast and the back.
They have a rich and powerful King who is eager to purchase precious stones and large pearls ; and he sends these Abraiaman merchants into the kingdom of Maabar called Soli, which is the best and noblest Province of India, and where the best pearls are found, to fetch him as many of these as they can get, and he pays them double the cost price for all. So in this way he has a vast treasure of such valuables.'
These Abraiaman are Idolaters; and they pay greater heed to signs and omens than any people that exists. I Avill mention as an example one of their customs. To every day of the week they assign an augury of this sort. Sup- pose that there is some purchase in hand, he who proposes
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Chap. XX. THE BRAHMANS. 35 1
to buy, when he gets up in the morning takes note of his own shadow in the sun, which he says ought to be on that day of such and such a length ; and if his shadow be of the proper length for the day he completes his purchase; if not, he vnll on no account do so, but waits till his shadow corresponds with that prescribed. For there is a length established for the shadow for every individual day of the week ; and the merchant will complete no business unless he finds his shadow of the length set down for that parti- cular day. [Also to each day in the week they assign one unlucky hour, which they term Choiach. For example, on Monday the hour of Half-tierce, on Tuesday that of Tierce, on Wednesday Nones, and so on.^]
Again, if one of them is in the house, and is meditating a purchase, should he see a tarantula (such as are very common in that country) on the wall, provided it advances from a quarter that he deems lucky, he will complete his purchase at once ; but if it comes from a quarter that he considers unlucky he will not do so on any inducement. Moreover, if in going out, he hears any one sneeze, if it seems to him a good omen he will go on, but if the reverse he will sit down on the spot where he is, as long as he thinks that he ought to tarry before going on again. Or, if in travelling along the road he sees a swallow fly by, should its direction be lucky he will proceed, but if not he will turn back again ; in fact they are worse (in these whims) than so many Patarins ! *
These Abraiaman are very long-lived, owing to their extreme abstinence in eating. And they never allow them- selves to be let blood in any part of the body. They have capital teeth, which is owing to a certain herb they chew, which greatly improves their appearance, and is also very good for the health.
There is another class of people called Chughi, who are indeed properly Abraiaman, but they form a religious order devoted to the Idols. They are extremely long-lived, every
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352 MARCO POLO. Book III.
man of them living to 150 or 200 years. They eat verj' little, but what they do eat is good ; rice and milk chiefly. And these people make use of a very strange beverage ; for they make a potion of sulphur and quicksilver mixt to- gether and this they drink twice every month. This, they say, gives them long life ; and it is a potion they are used to take from their childhood.^
There are certain members of this Order who lead the most ascetic life in the world, going stark naked ; and these worship the Ox. Most of' them have a small ox of brass or pewter or gold which they wear tied over the forehead. Moreover they take cow-dung and burn it, and make a powder thereof; and make an ointment of it, and daub themselves withal, doing this with as great devotion as Christians do show in using Holy Water. [Also if they meet any one who treats them well, they daub a little of this powder on the middle of his forehead.^]
They eat not from bowls or trenchers, but put their victuals on leaves of the Apple of Paradise and other big leaves ; these however they use dry, never green. For they say the green leaves have a soul in them, and so it would be a sin. And they would rather die than do what they deem their Law pronounces to be sin. If any one asks how it comes that they are not ashamed to go stark naked as they do, they say, "We go naked because naked we came into the world, and we desire to have nothing about us that is of this world. Moreover we have no sin. of the flesh to be conscious of, and therefore we are not ashamed of our nakedness, any more than you are to show your hand or your face. You who are conscious of the sins of the flesh do well to have shame, and to cover your nakedness.''
They would not kill an animal on any account, not even a fly, or a flea, or a louse,^ or anything in fact that has life ; for they say these have all souls, and it would be sin to do so. They eat no vegetable in a green state, only such as are dry. And they sleep on the ground stark naked.
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Chap. XX. THE JOGIS. 353
without a scrap of clothing on them or under them, so that it is a marvel they don't all die, in place of living so long as I have told you. They fast every day in the year, and drink nought but water. And when a novice has to be re- ceived among them they keep him awhile in their convent, and make him follow their rule of life* And then, when they desire to put him to the test, they send for some of those girls who are devoted to the Idols, and make them try the continence of the novice with their blandishments. If he remains indifferent they retain him, but if he shows any emotion they expel him from their society. For they say they will have no man of loose desires among them.
They are such cruel and perfidious Idolaters that it is very devilry ! They say that they burn the bodies of the dead, because if they were not burnt worms would be bred which would eat the body ; and when no more food remained for them these worms would die, and the soul belonging to that body would bear the sin and the punishment of their death. And that is why they burn their dead !
Now I have told you about a great part of the people of the great Province of Maabar and their customs ; but I have still other things to tell of this same province of Maabar, so I will speak of a city thereof which is called Cail.
Note 1. — The form of the word Abraiaman^ -main or -w/«, by which Marco here and previously denotes the Brahmans, probably repre- sents an incorrect Arabic plural, such as Abrdhamin ; the correct Arabic form is Bardhimah,
What is said here of the Brahmans coining from " Lar^ a province west of St Thomas's," of their having a special King, &c., is all very obscure, and that I suspect through erroneous notions.
Lar-Desa, " The Country of L4r," properly Ldt-desa^ was an early name for the territory of Guzerat and the northern Konkan, embracing Saimur (the modem Chaul as I believe), Tana, and Baroch. It appears in Ptolemy in the form Larike, The sea to the west of that coast was in the early Mahomedan times called the Sea of Ldr, and the language spoken on its shores is called by Mas'udi Ldri, Abulfeda's authority, Ibn Said, speaks of Ldr and Guzerat as identical. That position would certainly be very ill described as lying west of Madras, The kingdom
VOL. II. 2 A
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354 MARCO POLO. Book III.
most nearly answering to that description in Polo's age would be that of the Belldl Rajas of Dwara Samudra, which corresponded in a general way to modem Mysore. {Ma^udi, I. 330, 381 ; 11. 85 ; Gildem, 185 ; Elliot, I. dd.)
That Polo's ideas on this subject were incorrect seems clear from his conception of the Brahmans as a class of merchants. Occasionally they may have acted as such, and especially as agents ; but the only case I can find of Brahmans as a class adopting trade is that of the Konkani Brah- mans, and they are said to have taken this step when expelled from Goa, which was their chief seat, by the Portuguese. Marsden supposes that there has been confusion between Brahmans and Banyans ; and, as Gu- zerat or Ldr was the country from which the latter chiefly came, there is much probabihty in this.
The high virtues ascribed to the Brahmans and Indian merchants were perhaps in part matter of tradition, come down from the stories of Palladius and the like ; but the eulogy is so constant among medieval travellers that it must have had a solid foundation. In fact it would not be difficult to trace a chain of similar testimony from ancient times down to our own. Arrian says no Indian was ever accused of falsehood. Hwen T'sang ascribes to the people of India eminent uprightness, honesty, and disinterestedness. Friar Jordanus (circa 1330) says the people of Lesser India (Sind and Western India) were true in speedi and eminent in justice ; and we may also refer to the high character given to the Hindus by Abul Fazl. After 150 years of European trade indeed we find a sad deterioration. Padre Vincenzo (1672) speaks erf fraud as greatly prevalent among the Hindu traders. It was then com- monly said at Surat that it took 3 Jews to make a Chinaman, and 3 Chinamen to make a Banyan. Yet Pallas, in the last century, noticing the Banyan colony at Astrakhan, says its members were notable for an upright dealing that made them greatly preferable to Armenians. And that wise and admirable public servant, the late Sir William Sleeman, in our own time, has said that he knew no class of men in the world more strictly honourable than the mercantile classes of India,
We know too well that there is a very different aspect of the matter. All extensive intercourse between two races far asunder in habits and ideas, seems to be demoralizing in some degree to both parties, especially to the weaker. But can we say that deterioration has been aD on one side? In these days of lying labels and plastered shirtings does the character of English trade and English goods stand as high in Asia as it did half a century ago ? {Phi, Boudd. II. 83 ; Jordanus, p. 22 ; Ayem Akb, III. 8 ; P, Vincmzo,^, 114; Pallas, BeylrdgeyllLS$; RambUs and Peats. 11. 143).
Note 2. — The kingdom of Maabar called Soli is Chola or Sola- DESAM, of which Kanchi (Conjeveram) was the ancient capital* In the
* From Sola was formed apparently Sola-mandala or Chcla-mandala, which the Portuguese made into Choromandel and the Dutch into CoromandeL
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Chap. .XX. CALENDAR OF THE BRAHMANS. 355
Ceylon Annals the continental invaders are frequently termed Solli, The high tenns of praise applied to it as " the best and noblest province of India," seem to point to the well-watered fertility of Tanjore ; but what is said of the pearls would extend the territory included to the shores of the Gulf of Manir.
Note 3. — Abraham Roger gives from the Calendar of the Coro- mandel Brahmans the character, lucky or imlucky, of every hour of every day of the week ; and there is also a chapter on the subject in Sonnerat (I. 304 j^^.). For a happy explanation of the term Choiach I am indebted to Dr. Caldwell : ** This apparently difficult word can be iden- tified much more easily than most others'. Hindu astrologers teach that there is an unlucky hour every day in the month, /. e, during the period of the moon's abode in every ndkshatra^ or lunar mansion, throughout the limation. This inauspicious period is called Ty&jya^ * rejected.' Its mean length is one hour and thirty-six minutes, European time. The precise moment when this period commences differs in each nakshatra, or (which comes to the same thing) in every day in the lunar month. It sometimes occurs in the daytime and sometimes at night ; — see CoL Warreris Kola Sankatila^ Madras, 1825, p. 388. The Tamil pronuncia- tion of the word is Hyiuham^ and when tiie nominative case-termination of the word is rejected, as all the Tamil case-terminations were by the Mahomedans, who were probably Marco Polo's informants, it becomes tiy&ch, to which form of the word Marco's Choiach is as near as could be expected" (J/5. iV^^/^).*
The phrases used in the passage from Ramusio to express the time of day are taken from the canonical hours of prayer. The following passage from Robert de Borron's Romance of Merlin illustrates these terms : Gauvain " quand il se levoit le matin, avoit la force al millor chevalier del monde ; et quant vint k heure de prime si li doubloit, et k heure de tierce aussi ; et quant il vint k eure de midi si revenoit k sa premiere force ou il avoit est^ le matin ; et quant vint k eure de nonne et k toutes les eures de la nuit estoit-il toudis en sa premifere force." (Quoted in introd. to Mcssire Gauvain^ &c., edited by C, HippeaUy Paris, 1862, p. xii-xiii.) The term Half-Tierce is frequent in medieval Italian, e, g. in Dante : —
** Uvati su, disse V MaestrOy in pUde^
La via i lunga^ e V cammino h mahagio^ E gih il Sole a mezza terza rifde^ (Inf. xxxiv.).
Hatf-prime we have in Chaucer : —
** Say forth thy tale and tary not the time Lo Depeford, and it is half way prime. "
— (Reeve's Prologue.)
Definitions of these terms as given by Sir H. Nicolas and Mr. Thomas
* I may add that possibly the real. reading may have been thoiach.
2 A 2
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35^ MARCO POLO. Book III.
Wright {Chron, of Hist p. 195, and Marco PolOy p. 392) do not agree with those of Italian authorities ; perhaps in the north they were applied with variation. Dante dwells on the matter in two passages of his Convito (Tratt III. cap. 6, and Tratt IV. cap. 23) ; and the following diagram elucidates the terms in accordance with his words, and with other Italian authority, oral and literary : —
O \
•X3 t*
|
•TJ S |
H |
^ |
!^ S |
<! |
s: |
||||
|
1 1 |
ezza-Terza. rima. |
? |
C/3 |
0 B |
c/a p |
< |
|||
|
1 |
t--. |
• ♦•. |
....f... |
...ft... |
I...4K •*.•• |
• 1 * |
•♦•• |
..•• 1 ••• |
•••» |
|
1 |
12 I |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 7 |
8 |
9 |
iO |
|
Ecclesiastical Hours. |
|||||||||
|
.•^^ |
6 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
II |
12 I |
2 |
3 |
4 |
|
A.M. |
Civil Hours. F. M |
[. |
r^
^ i-
•t I
Note 4. — ^Valentyn mentions among what the Coromandel Hindus reckon unlucky rencounters which will induce a man to turn back on the road : an empty can, buffaloes, donkeys, a dog or he-goat without io^ in his mouth, a monkey, a loose hart, a goldsmith, a carpenter, a barber, a tailor, a cotton-cleaner, a smith, a widow, a corpse, a person coming from a funeral without havmg washed or changed, men canying butter, oil, sweet milk, molasses, acids, iron, or weapons of war. Lucky objecte to meet are an elephant, a camel, a laden cart, an unladen horse, a cow or bullock laden with water (if unladen 'tis an ill omen), a dog or he-goat with food in the mouth, a cat on the right hand, one carrying meat, curds, or sugar, &a, &c. (p. 91). See also Sonnerat, I. 73.
Note 5. — Chughi of course stands for Jooi, used loosely for any Hindu ascetic Arghun Khan of Persia (see Prologue, ch. xviL), who was much given to alchemy and secret science, had asked of the Indian Bakhshis how they prolonged their lives to such an extent They assured him that a mixture of sulphur and mercury was the Elixir of Longevity. Arghun accordingly took this precious potion for eight months; — and died shortly after ! (See Hammer, Ilkhans^ I. 391-3, and Q, R, p. 194.) Bemier mentions wandering Jogis who had the art of preparing mercury so admirably that one or two grains taken every morning restored the body to perfect health (II. 130). The Mercurius Vitac of Paracelsus, which according to him renewed youth, was composed chiefly of mercury and antimony {Opera, II. 20). Sulphur and mercury, combined under different conditions and proportions, were regarded by the Alchemists both of East and West as the origin of all the metals. Quicksilver was called the mother of the metals, and sulphur the father. (See VincaU. Bellov, Spec, NcUur, VII. c. 60, 62, and Bl. Ain-i-Akbari, p. 40.)
" The worship of the ox is still common enough, but I can find no
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Chap. XXI. THE CITY OF CAIL. 357
«
trace of the use of the effigy worn on the forehead The two Tam Pundits whom I consulted, said that there was no trace of the custom in Tamil Hterature, but they added that the usage was so truly Hindu in character, and was so particularly described, that they had no doubt it prevailed in the time of the person who described it" {MS, Note by the Rev, Dr. Caldwell,)
I may add that the Jangams, a Linga-worshipping sect of Southern India, wear a copper or silver linga either round the neck or on the forehead. The name of Jangam means " movable," and refers to their wearing and worshipping the portable symbol instead of the fixed one like the proper Saivas. {Wilson^ Mack. Coll. II. 3; / R, A. S. N.s. V. 142 seqg.)
Note 6. — In G. T. progues, which the Glossary to that edition absurdly renders /^r^; it is some form apparently oipidocchio.
Note 7. — It would seem that there is no eccentricity of man in any part of the world for which a close parallel shall not be found in some other part Such strange probation as is here spoken of appears to have had too close a parallel in the old Celtic Church, and perhaps even, at an earlier date, in the Churches of Africa. See Todd's Life of St. Patrick^ p. 91, note and references, and Saturday Review of 13th July, 1867, p. 65. The latter describes a system absolutely like that in the text, but does not quote authorities.
CHAPTER XXI.
Concerning the City of Cail.
Cail is a great and noble city, and belongs to Ashar, the eldest of the five brother Kings. It is at this city that all the ships touch that come from the west, as from Hormos and from Kis and from Aden, and all Arabia, laden with horses and with other things for sale. And this brings a great concourse of people jfrom the country round about, and so there is great business done in this city of Cail.^
The King possesses vast treasures, and wears upon his person great store of rich jewels. He maintains great state and administers his kingdom with great equity, and extends great favour to merchants and foreigners, so that they are very glad to visit his city.''
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358 MARCO POLO. Book III.
This King has some 300 wives ; for in those parts the man who has most wives is most thought of.
As I told you before, there are in this great province of Maabar five crowned Kings, who are all own brothers born of one father and of one mother, and this king is one of them. Their mother is still living. And when they dis- agree and go forth to war against one another, their mother throws herself between them to prevent their fighting. And should they persist in desiring to fight, she will take a knife and threaten that if they will do so she will cut off the paps that suckled them and rip open the womb that bare them, and so perish before their eyes. In this way hath she full many a time brought them to desist. But when she dies it will most assuredly happen that they will fall out and destroy one another.
[All the people of this city, as well as of the rest of India, have a custom of perpetually keeping in the mouth a certain leaf called Tembul^ to gratify a certain habit and desire they have, continually chewing it and spitting out the saliva that it excites. The lords and gentlefolks and the King have these leaves prepared with camphor and other aromatic spices, and also mixt with quicklime. And this practice was said to be very good for the health.^ If any one desires to offer a gross insult to another, when he meets him he spits this leaf or its juice in his face. The other immediately runs before the King, relates the insult that has been offered him, and demands leave to fight the offender. The King supplies the arms, which are sword and target, and all the people flock to see, and there the two fight till one of them is killed. They must not use the point of the sword, for this the King forbids.]*
Note 1. — Kail, now forgotten, was long a famous port on the coast of what is now the Tinnevelly District of the Madras Presidency. It is mentioned as a port of Ma'bar by our author's contemporary Rashid- uddin, though the name has been per\^erted by careless transcription
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Chap. XXI. THE CITY OF CAIL. 359
into Bdwal and Kdbal (see Elliot, I. pp. 69, 72). It is also mis- transcribed as Kdbil in Quatrem^e's publication of Abdurrazzik, who mentions it as " a place situated opposite the island of Serendib, other- wise called Ceylon," and as being the extremity of what he was led to r^ard as Malabar (p. 19). . It is mentioned as Cahila, the site of the pearl-fishery, by Nicolo Conti (p. 7). The Roteiro of Vasco da Gama notes it-as Caell, a state having a Mussulman King and a Christian (for which read Kdfir) people. Here were many pearls. Giovanni d' Empoli notices it (Gael) also for the pearl-fishery, as do Varthema and Barbosa. From the latter we learn that it was still a considerable seaport, having rich Mahomedan merchants, and was visited by many ships fi-om Malabar, Coromandel, and Bengal. In the time of the last writers it belonged to the King of Kaulam, who generally resided at KaiL
The real site of this once celebrated port has, I believe, till now never been identified in any published work. I had supposed the still existing Kayalpattanam to have been in all probability the place, and I am again indebted to the kindness of the Rev. Dr. Caldwell for conclusive and most interesting information on this subject He writes : " There are no relics of ancient greatness in Kayalpattanam, and no traditions of foreign trade, and it is admitted by its inhabitants to be a place of recent origin, which came into existence after the abandon- ment of the true Kiyal. They state also that the name of Kayalpattanam has only recently been given to it, as a reminiscence of the older city, and that its original name was Sdnagarpattanam.* There is another small port in the same neighbourhood, a little to the north of Kiyal- pattanam, called Pinna Cael in the maps, properly Punnei-Kdyal, from Funnd, the Indian Laurel ; but this is also a place of recent origin, and many of the inhabitants of this place, as of Kdyalpattanam, state that their ancestors came originally from Kiyal, subsequently to the removal of the Portuguese from that place to Tuticorin.
" The Cail of Marco Polo, commonly called in the neighbourhood Old Kdyaly and erroneously named Koil in the Ordnance Map of India, is situated on the Timrapam! River, about a mile and a half from its mouth. The Tamil word kdyal means *a backwater, a lagoon,' and the map shows the existence of a largie number of these kdyals or back- waters near the mouth of the river. Many of these kayals have now dried up more or less completely, and in several of them salt-pans have been established. The name of Kiyal was naturally given to a town erected on the margm of a kdyal; and this circumstance occasioned
♦ ** S6nagar or Jdnagar is a Tamil corruption of Vavanar, the Yavanas, the name by which the Arabs were known, and is the name most commonly used in the Tamil country to designate the mixed race descended from Arab colonists, who are called MdpiUas on the Malabar coast, and Lubbies in the neighbourhood of Madras." (Dr. C/s note.)
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360 MARCO POLO. Book III.
also the adoption of the name of Punnei Kiyal, and served to give currency to the name of Kiyalpattanam assumed by Sonagarpattanam, both those places being in the vicinity of kayals.
" Kayal stood originally on or near the sea-beach, but it is now about a mile and a half inland, the sand carried down by the river having silted up the ancient harbour^ and formed a waste sandy tract between the sea and the town. It has now shrunk into a petty village, inhabited partly by Mahommedans and partly by Roman Cathohc fisher- men of the Parava caste, with a still smaller hamlet adjoining inhabited by Brahmans and Vellalars ; but unlikely as the place may now seem to have been identical with * the great and noble city ' described by Marco Polo, its identity is established by the relics of its ancient greatness which it still retains. Ruins of old fortifications, temples, storehouses, wells and tanks, are found everywhere along the coast for two or three miles north of the village of Kayal, and a mile and a half inland ; the whole plain is covered with broken tiles and remnants of pottery, chiefly of China manufacture, and several mounds are apparent, in which, besides the shells of the pearl-oyster and broken pottery, mineral drugs (cinna- bar, brimstone, &c) such as are sold in tiie bazaars of sea-port towns, and a few ancient coins have been found. I send you herewith an interesting coin discovered in one of those mounds by Mr. R. Puckle, collector of Tinnevelly.*
** The people of the place have forgotten the existence of any trade between Kayal and China, though the China pottery that lies all about testifies to its existence at some former period ; but they retain a distinct tradition of its trade with the Arabian and Persian coasts, as vouched for by Marco Polo, that trade having in some degree survived to com- paratively recent times Captain Phipps, the Master Attendant
at Tuticorin, says : * The roadstead of Old Cael (Kiyal) is still used by native craft when upon the coast and meeting with south winds, from which it is sheltered. The depth of water is 16 to 14 feet ; I fancy years ago it was deeper. .... There is a surf on the bar at the
entrance (of the river), but boats go through it at all times.'
« « « «
" I am tempted to carry this long account of Kayal a little further, so as to bring to light the Kolkhoi [KoXxot c/ATrdptov] of the Greek mer- chants, the situation of the older city being nearly identical with that of the more modem one. Kolkhoi^ described by Ptolemy and the author
* I am sorry to say that the coin never reached its destination. In the latter part of 1872 a quantity of treasure was found near Kiyal by the labourers on irrigation works. Much of it was dispersed without coming under intelligent eyes, and most of the coins recovei cd were Arabic. One, however, is stated to have been a coin of •* Joanna of Caslille, a.d. 1236" {A/Un^s India Mail, Jan. 5, 1874). There U no such queen. Qu. Joanna I. of Navarre (1274- 1276)? or Joanna II. of Xarfarre (1328-1336)?
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Chap. XXI. THE CITY OF CAIL. 36 1
of the Periplus as an emporium of the pearl-trade, as situated on the sea-coast to the east of Cape Comorin, and as giving its name to the Kolkhic Gulf or Gulf of Manaar, has been identified by Lassen with Keelkarei; but this identification is merely conjectural, founded on nothing better than a slight apparent resemblance in the names. Lassen could not have failed to identify Kolkhoi with Korkai, the mother- city of Kayal, if he had been acquainted with its existence and claims. Korkai, properly Kolkai (the / being changed into r by a modem refinement — it is still called Kolka in Malayalam), holds an important place in Tamil traditions, being regarded as the birthplace of the Pan- dyan dynasty, the place where the princes of that race ruled previously to their removal to Madura. One of the titles of the Pandyan Kings is * Ruler of KorkaL' Korkai is situated two or three miles inland from Kayal, higher up the river. It is not marked in the Ordnance Map of India, but a village in the immediate neighbourhood of it, called Mdra- mangalam^ *the Good-fortune of the Pandyas,' will be found in the map. This place, together with several others in the neighbourhood, on both sides of the river, is proved by inscriptions and relics to have been formerly included in Korkai, and the whole intervening space between Korkai and Kayal exhibits traces of ancient dwellings. The people of Kayal maintain that their city was originally so large as to include Korkai, but there is much more probability in the tradition of the people of Korkai, which is to the effect that Korkai itself was originally a sea-port ; that as the sea retired it became less and less suitable for trade, that Kayal rose as Korkai fell, and that at length, as the sea continued to retire, Kayal also was abandoned. They add that the trade for which the place was famous in ancient times was the trade in pearls." In an article in the Madras Journal (VI I. 379) it is stated that at the great Siva Pagoda at Tinnevelly the earth used ceremonially at the annual festival is brought from Korkai, but no position is indicated.
Note 2. — Dr. Caldwell again brings his invaluable aid : — " Marco Polo represents Kayal as being governed by a king whom he calls Asciar (a name which you suppose to be intended to be pro- nounced Ashar)y and says that this king of Kayal was the elder brother of Sonderbandi, the king of that part of the district of Maabar where he landed. There is a distinct tradition, not only amongst the people now inhabiting Kayal, but in the district of Tinnevelly generally, that Kayal, during the period of its greatness, was ruled by a king. This king is sometimes spoken of as one of * the Five Kings ' who reigned in various parts of Tinnevelly, but whether he was independent of the King of
Madura, or only a viceroy, the people cannot now say The
tradition of the people of Kayal is that Stir-Raja was the name
of the last king of the place. They state that this last king was a Mahommedan, .... but though Sdr-Raja does not sound like the
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name of a Mahommedan prince, they all agree in asserting that this was his name. . . . Can this S(ir be the person whom Marco calls Asdar ? Probably not, as Asciar seems to have been a Hindu by religion. I have discovered what appears to be a more probable identification in the name of a prince mentioned in an inscription on the walls of a temple at Sri-Vaikuntham, a town on the Tamrapami R., about 20 miles from KayaL In the inscription in question a donation to the temple is recorded as having been given in the time of * Asa^ia-deva called also Surya-deva' This name *Asadia' is neither Sanscrit nor Tamil ; and as the hard ^ is often changed into r, Marco's Ashar may have been an attempt to render this Asad, If this Asadia or Surya-deva were really Sundara-pandi-deva's brother, he must have ruled over a narrow range of country, probably over Kayal alone, whilst his more eminent brother was alive ; for there is an inscription on the walls of a temple at Sindamangalam, a place only a few miles firom Kayal, which records a donation made to the place * in the reign of Sundara-pandi- deva.'"*
Note 8. — Tembul is the Persian name for the betel-leaf or pdn, from the Sanskrit Tdmbula. The latter is also used in Tamul, though Vettild is the proper Tamul word, whence Betel {Dr. Caldwell). Marsden supposes the mention of camphor among the ingredients with which the pdn is prepared to be a mistake, and suggests as a possible origin of the error that kdpur in the Malay language means not only camphor but quicklime. This is curious, but in addition to the fact that the lime is mentioned in the text, there seems ample evidence that his doubt about camphor is unfounded.
Garcias da Horta says distinctly : " In chewing hetre .... they mix areca with it and a little lime. . . . Some add Licio (/. e. catechu), but the rich and grandees add some Borneo camphor ^ and some also lign-aloes, musk, and ambergris" (31 v. and 32). Abdurrazzak also says: "The manner of eating it is as follows. They bruise a portion oifaufel (areca), otherwise called sipariy and put it in the mouth. Moistening a leaf of the betel, together with a grain of lime, they rub the one upon the other, roll them together, and then place them in the mouth. They thus take as many as four leaves of betel at a time and chew them. Sometimes they add camphor to it^^ (p. 32). And Abiil Fazl : " They also put some betel-nut and kath (catechu) on one leaf, and some lime-paste on another, and roll them up ; this is called a berah. Some put camphor and musk into it, and tie both leaves with a silk thread," &c (See Blochmann's
♦ See above, p. 317, as to Dr. Caldwell's view of Polo's SonderbandL May not AsAar very well represent Ashddhat "invincible," among the applications of which Williams gives "N. of a prince"? I observe also that Aschar (Sansk. ASchariya " marvellous ") is the name of one of the objects of worship in the dark Sakti system, once apparently potent in S. India (see Taylor's Catalogue RaisontU^ II. 414, 423, 426, 443, and remark p. xlix).
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TransL p. 73.) Finally one of the Chinese notices of Kamboja, trans- lated by Abel R^musat, says : " When a guest comes it is usual to present him with areca^ camphor^ and other aromcUics^^ {Nouv, MkL I. 84.)
Note 4. — This is the only passage of Ramusio*s version, so far as I know, that suggests interpolation from a recent author, as distinguished from mere editorial modification. There is in Barbosa a description of the duello as practised in Canara, which is rather too like this one.
CHAPTER XXII.
Of the Kingdom of Coilum.
When you quit Maabar and go 500 miles towards the south-west you come to the kingdom of Coilum. The people are Idolaters, but there are also some Christians and some Jews. The natives have a. language of their own, and a King of their own, and are tributary to no one.'
A great deal of brazil is got here which is called brazil Coilumin from the country which produces it ; 'tis of very fine quality.' Good ginger also grows here, and it is known by the same name of Coilumin after the country.^ Pepper too grows in great abundance throughout this country, and I will tell you how. You must know that the pepper-trees are (not wild but) cultivated, being regularly planted and watered ; and the pepper is gathered in the months of May, June, and July. They have also abundance of very fine indigo. This is made of a certain herb which is gathered, and [after the roots have been removed] is put into great vessels upon which they pour water and then leave it till the whole of the plant is decomposed. They then put this liquid in the sun, which is tremendously hot there, so that it boils and coagulates, and becomes such as we see it. [They then divide it into pieces of four ounces each, and in that form it is exported to our parts.] ^ And I assure you that the heat of the sun is so great there that it is scarcely to be endured ; in fact if you put an egg into one of the
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rivers it will be boiled, before you have had time to go any distance, by the mere heat of the sun !
The merchants from Manzi, and from Arabia, and from the Levant come thither with their ships and their mer- chandize and make great profits both by what they import and by what they export.
There are in this country many and divers beasts quite different firom those of other parts of the world. Thus there are Rons black all over, with no mixture of any other colour ; and there are parrots of many sorts, for some are white as snow with red beak and feet, and some are red, and some are blue, forming the most charming sight in the world ; there are green ones too. There are also some parrots of exceeding small size, beautiful creatures.^ They have also very beautiful peacocks, larger than ours, and different; and they have cocks and hens quite different from ours ; and what more shall I say ? In short, every- thing they have is different from ours, and finer and better. Neither is their fruit like ours, nor their beasts, nor their birds ; and this difference all comes of the excessive heat.
Corn they have none but rice. So also their wine they make from [palm-] sugar ; capital drink it is, and very speedily it makes a man drunk. All other necessaries of man's life they have in great plenty and cheapness. They have very good astrologers and physicians. Man and woman, they are all black, and go naked, all save a fine cloth worn about the middle. They look not on any sin of the flesh as a sin. They marry their cousins german, and a man takes his brother's wife after the brother's death ; and all the people of India have this custom.^
There is no more to tell you there ; so we will proceed, and I will tell you of another country called Comari.
Note 1. — Futile doubts were raised by Baldelli Boni and Hugh Murray as to the position of Coilum, because of Marco's mentioning it before Comari or Cape Comorin; and they have insisted on finding
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a Coilum to the east of that promontory. There is, however, in reality, no room for any question on this subject. For ages Coilum, Kaulam, or, as we now write it, Quilon, and properly Kollam, was one of the greatest ports of trade with Western Asia.* The earliest mention of it that I can indicate is in a letter written by the Nestorian Patriarch, Jesujabus of Adiabene, who died a.d. 660, to Simon Metropolitan of Fars, blaming his neglect of duty, through which he says, not only is India, " which extends from the coast of the Kingdom of Fars to Colon, a distance of 1 200 parasangs, deprived of a regular ministry, but Fars itself is lying in darkness." {Assent. III. pt ii. 437.) The same place appears in the earlier part of the Arab Relations (a.d. 851) as Kaulam- Male^ the port of India made by vessels from Maskat, and already frequented by great Chinese Junks.
Abulfeda defines the position of Kaulam as. at the extreme end of Balad'Ul'Falfaly i, e, the Pepper country or Malabar, as you go east- ward, standing on an inlet of the sea, in a sandy plain, adorned with many gardens. The brazil-tree grew there, and the Mahomedans had a fine mosque and square. Ibn Batuta also notices the fine mosque and says the city was one of the finest in Malabar, with splendid markets and rich merchants, and was the chief resort of the Chinese traders in India. Odoric describes it as " at the extremity of the Pepper Forest towards the south," and astonishing in the abundance of its merchandise. Friar Jordanus of Stfvdrac was there as a missionary some time previous to 1328, in which year he was at home and was nominated Bishop of the See of Kaulam, Latinized as Columbum or Columbus, Twenty years later John Marignolli visited " the very noble city of Columbum, where the whole world's pepper is produced," and found there a Latin church of St. George, probably founded by Jordanus.f Kaulam or Coilon con- tinued to be an important place to the beginnmg of the 16th century, when Varthema speaks of it as a fine port, and Barbosa as " a very great city," with a very good haven, and with many great merchants. Moors and Gentoos, whose ships traded to all the Eastern ports as far as Bengal, Pegu, and the Archipelago. But after this its decay must have been rapid, and in the following century it had sunk into entire iur significance. Throughout the Middle Ages it appears to have been one of the chief seats of the St Thomas Christians. Indeed both it and
* The etymology of the name seems to be doubtful. Dr. Caldwell tells me it is an error to connect it (as in the first edition) with the word for a Tank, which is Kulam, The apparent meaning oi Kollam is "slaughter," but he thinks (he name is best explained as ** Palace" or "Royal Residence.'*
t There is still a Syrian church of St. George at Quilon, and a mosque of some importance ;— the representatives at least of those noted above, though no actual trace of antiquity of any kind remains at the place. A vague tradition of extensive trade with China yet survives. The form Columhum is accounted for by an inscrip- tion, published by the Prince of Travancore {Ind. Antiq. II. 360), which shows that the dty was called in Sanskrit Kolamba. May not the real etymology be Sansk. Kolam^ ** Black pepper"?
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Kdyal were two out of the seven ancient churches which Indo-Syrian tradition ascribed to St Thomas himself.*
I have been desirous to give some illustration of the churches of that interesting body, certain of which must date from a very remote period, but I have found unlooked-for difficulties in procuring such illustration. Several are given in the Life of Dr. Claudius Buchanan from his own sketches, and a few others in the Life of Bishop D. Wilson.
♦ Burnell.
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Syrian Church at Caranyachirra (from ' Life of 6{>. D. Wilson '), showing the quasi- Jesuit facade generally adopted in modem times.
Interior of Syrian Church at Kdtteiyam in Travancore. (From ' Life of Bp. D. Wilson/)
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Kublai had a good deal of diplomatic intercourse of his usual kind with Kaulam. Demailla mentions the arrival at Tswanchau (or Zayton) in 1282 of envoys from Kiulan, an Indian State, bringing presents of various rarities, including a black ape as big as a man. The Emperor had three times sent thither an officer called Yangtingpi (IX. 415). Some rather curious details of these missions are extracted by Pauthier from the Chinese Annals. The royal residence is in these called A-pU'hota* The king is styled Pinati. I may note that Barbosa also tells us that the King of Kaulam was called Benate-deri (devar f). And Dr. Caldwell's kindness enables me to explain this title. Pinati ovBenate represents Vhnddan^ " the Lord of the Venidu," or Venattu, that being the name of the district to which belonged the family of the old kings of Kol- lam, and Vend^an being their regular dynastic name. The Rajas of Tra- vancore who superseded the Kings of Kollam, and inherit their titles, are still poetically styled Vend^an. {Pauthier^ p. 603 seqq, ; Ram, I. f. 304.)
Note 2. — The brazil-wood of Kaulam appears in the Commercial Handbook of Pegolotti (circa 1340) as Verzino ColombitWy and under the same name in that of Giov. d'Uzzano a century later. Pegolotti in one passage details kinds of brazil under the names of Verzino salvaiicOy dimesticOf and colombino. In another passage, where he enters into par- ticulars as to the respective values of different qualities, he names three kinds, as Colomni, Ameri^ and Seni^ of which the Colomni (or Colombino) was worth a sixth more than the Ameri and three times as much as the Seni, I have already conjectured that Ameri may stand for Lameri referring to Lambri in Sumatra {supra ch. xL, note 1); and perhaps Seni is Sini or Chinese, indicating an article brought to India by the Chinese traders, probably from Siam.
We have seen in the last note that the Kaulam brazil is spoken of by Abulfeda; and Ibn Batuta, in describing his voyage by the back waters from Calicut to Kaulam, says : " All the trees that grow by this river are either cinnamon or brazil trees. They use these for firewood, and we cooked with them throughout our journey." Friar Odoric makes the same hyperbolic statement : ** Here they bum brazil- wood for fuel."
It has been supposed popularly that the brazil-wood of commerce took its name from the great country so called ; but the verzino of the old Italian writers is only a form of the same word, and hresil is in feet the word used by Polo. So Chaucer : —
** Him nedeth not his colour for to dien With brazily ne with grain of Portingale."
— The Nun's Priest" s Tale,
The Eastern wood in question is now known in commerce by its Malay
♦ The translated passage about 'Apuhota is a little obscure. The name looks like Kapukada, which was the site of a palace north of Calicut (not in Kaulam), the Capucate of the Portuguese.
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name of Sappan (properly Sapang), which again is identical with the Tamil name Sappangi, This word properly means Japan, and seems to have been given to the wood as a supposed product of that region.* It is the wood of the Caesalpinia Sapan^ and is known in Arabic (and in Hindustani) as Bdkdm, It is a thorny tree, indigenous in Western India from Goa to Trevandrum, and growing luxuriantly in South Malabar. It is extensively used by native dyers, chiefly for common and cheap cloths, and for fine mats. The dye is precipitated dark-brown with iron, and red with alum. It is said, in Western India, to furnish the red powder thrown about on the Hindu feast of the H^li, The tree is both wild and cultivated, and is grown rather extensively by the Mahomedans of Malabar, called Moplahs (MapillaSy see p. 354), whose custom it is to plant a number of seeds at the birth of a daughter. The trees require fourteen or fifteen years to come to maturity, and then become the girl's dowry.
Though to a great extent superseded by the kindred wood from Pernambuco, the sappan is still a substantial object of importation into England. That American dye-stuff which now bears the name of brazil- wood is believed to be the produce of at least two species of Caesalpinia, but the question seems to partake of the singular obscurity which hangs over the origin of so many useful drugs and dye-stuffs. The variety called Braziktto is from C, bahamensis, a native of the Bahamas.
The name of brazil has had a curious history. Etymologists refer it to the colour of braise or hot coals, and its first application was to this dye-wood from the far East Then it was applied to a newly-discovered tract of South America, perhaps because producing a kindred dye-wood in large quantities : finally the original wood is robbed of its name, which is monopolized by that imported from the new country. The Region of Brazil had been originally styled Santa Cruz, and De Barros attributes the change of name to the suggestion of the Evil One, " as if the name of a wood for colouring cloth were of more moment than that of the Wood which imbues the Sacraments with the tincture of Salvation."
There may perhaps be a doubt if the Land of Brazil derived its name from the dye-wood. For the Isle of Brazil, long before the discovery of America, was a name applied to an imaginary Island in the Atlantic. This island appears in the map of Andrea Bianco and in many others, down at least to Coronelli's splendid Venetian Atlas (1696) ; the Irish used to fancy that they could see it from the Isles of Arran ; and the legend of this Island of Brazil still persisted among sailors in the last century.! The story was no doubt the same as that of the green Island, or Island of Youth, which Mr. Campbell tells us the Hebrideans
* Dr. Caldwell.
t Indeed, Humboldt speaks of Brazil Isle as appearing to the west of Ireland in a modem English map, — Pttrdfs -, but I do not know its date. (See Exanun, &c., II. 244-5.)
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MARCO POLO. Book III.
see to the west of their own Islands. (See Pop, Tales of West High- landsy IV. 163. For previous references, Delia Decima^ III. 298, 361 ; IV. 60 ; 7. B, IV. 99 ; Cathay, p. 77 ; Note by Br, H, Cleghom; Marsh's ed, of Wedgwood's Etym, Diet, I. 123 ; Southey^ H, of Brazil, I. 22.)
Note 3. — This is the Colombine ginger which appears not un- frequently in medieval writings. Pegolotti tells us that ** ginger is of several sorts, to wit, Belledi, Colombino, and Mecchino, And these names are bestowed from the producing countries, at least this is the case with the Colombino and Mecchino, for the Belledi is produced in many districts of India. The Colombino grows in the Island of Colombo of India, and has a smooth, delicate, ash-coloured rind; whilst the Mecchino comes from the districts about Mecca and is a small kind, hard to cut," &c. (Delia Dec. III. 359.) A century later, in G. da Uzzano, we still find the Colombino and Belladi ginger (IV. iii, 210, &c.). The Baladi is also mentioned by Rashiduddin as an export of Guzerat, and by Barbosa and others as one of Calicut in the beginning of the 1 6th century. The Mecchino too is mentioned again in that era by a Venetian traveller as grown in the Island of Camran in the Red Sea. Both Columbine (gigembre columbin), and Baladi ginger (gig, baladil) appear among the purchases for King John of France, during his cap- tivity in England. And we gather from his accounts that the price of the former was 13^. a pound, and of the latter 12^., sums representing three times the amount of silver that they now indicate, with a higher value of silver also, and hence equivalent to about 4^. and 4^. 4//. a pound. The term Baladi (Ar.), Indigenous or " Country " ginger, indicated ordinary (qualities of no particular repute. The word Baladi seems to have become naturalized in Spanish with the meaning ** of small value." We have noticed on a former occasion the decay of the demand for pepper in China. Ginger affords a similar example. This spice, so highly prized and so well known throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, 1 have found to be quite unknown by name and qualities to ser\ants in Palermo of more than average intelligence. {Elliot, I. 67 ; Ramusio, 1. ^- 275 V. 323; Dozy and Engelm,^, 232-3; Doud dArcq, p. 218; Philobiblon Soc, Miscellanies, vol. II. p. 116.)
Note 4. — In Bengal Indigo factories artificial heat is employed to promote the drying of the precipitated dye ; but this is not essential to the manufacture. Marco's account, though grotesque in its baldness, does describe the chief features of the manufacture of Indigo by feraien- tation. The branches are cut and placed stem upwards in the vat till it is three parts full ; they are loaded, and then the vat is filled with water. Fermentation soon begins and goes on till in 24 hours the contents of the vat are so hot that the hand cannot be retained in it. This is what Marco ascribes to the sun's heat. The liquor is then drawn off to another cistern and there agitated ; the indigo separates in flakes. A quantity of lime-water then is added, and the blue is allowed to subside. The
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371
clear water is dra^ii off; the sediment is drained, pressed, and cut into small squares, &c. (See Madras Journal^ vol VI 1 1. 198.)
Indigo had been introduced into Sicily by the Jews during the time of Frederick II., in the early part of Polo's century. Jews and Indigo have long vanished from Sicily. The dye is often mentioned in Pegolotti's Book ; the finest quality being termed Indaco Baccadeo, a corruption of BdghdddL Probably it came from India by way of Baghdad. In the Barcelona Tariffs it appears as Indigo de Bagadel, Another quality often mentioned is Indigo di Golfo, (See Cafmany^ MemoriaSy II. App. p. 73.) In the bye-laws of the London Painters' Guild of the 13th century, quoted by Sir F. Palgrave from the Liber Home^ it is forbidden to paint on gold or silver except with fine (mineral) colours, " e nimt de brasil, fu de inde de Baldas, ne de nul autre mauveise couieurJ* {The Merchant and the Friar, p. xxiii.). There is now no indigo made or exported at Quilon, but there is still some feeble export of sappan- wood, ginger, and pepper. These, and previous particulars as to the present Quilon, I owe to the kindness of Mr. Ballard, British Resident at Trevandrum.
Note 5. — Black Tigers and black Leopards are not very rare in Travancore (see Welsh's MiL Reminiscences , II. 102).
Note 6. — Probably founded on local or caste customs of marriage, several of which in South India are very peculiar; e,g,, see Nelson's Madura, pt. ii. p. 51.
CHAPTER XXIIL
Of the Country called Comari.
CoMARi is a country belonging to India, and there you can see something of the North Star, which we had not been able to see from the Lesser Java thus far. In order to see it you must go some 30 miles out to sea, and then you see it about a cubit above the water *
This is a very wild country, anu there are beasts of all kinds there, especially monkeys of such peculiar fashion that you would take them for men ! There are also gaU Pauls'" in wonderful diversity, with bears, lions, and leopards, in abundance.
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Note 1. — Kumdri is in some versions of the Hindu cosmography the most southerly of the nine divisions of Jambodvipa, the Indian world. Polo's Comari can only be the country about Cape Comorin, the Kofjudpta oKpov of Ptolemy, a name derived from the Sanskrit Kumdri^ " a Virgin,** an appellation of the goddess Durga. The monthly bathing in her honour, spoken of by the author of the Periplus, is still continued, though now the pilgrims are few.* Abulfeda speaks of J^ds Kumhdri as the limit between Malabar and Ma*bar. Kumdri is the Tamul pronunciation of the Sanskrit word and probably Comari was Polo's pronunciation.
At the beginning of the Portuguese era in India we hear of a small Kingdom of Comori, the prince of which had succeeded to the kingdom of Kaulam. And this, as Dr. Caldwell points out, must have been the state which is now called Travancore. Kumari has been confounded by some of the Arabian Geographers, or their modem commentators, with Kumdr, one of the regions suppl)dng aloes-wood, and which was apparently Khmer or Kamboja. (Caldweirs DraiK Grammar^ p. 67 ; Gildem. 185 ; Ram, I. 333.)
The cut that we give is, as far as I know, the first genuine view of Cape Comorin ever published.
Note 2. — I have not been able to ascertain with any precision what animal is meant by Gat-pauL The term occurs again, coupled with monkeys as here, at p. 240 of the Geog. Text, where speaking of Abyssinia it is said : "// ont gat paulz et autre gat-mcumon si divisez" &c GaUo maimone, for an ape of some kind, is common in old Italian, the latter part of the term, from the Pers. Maimun, being possibly connected with our Baboon, And that the Gatpaul was also some kind of ape is confirmed by the Spanish Dictionaries. Cobamibias gives : " Gato-Paus^ a kind of tailed monkey. Gato paus^ Gato pablo ; perhaps as they call a monkey 'Martha,' they may have called this particular monkey *Paul,' " &c. (f 431 v.). So also the Diccion, de la Lengua Castdlana comp, por la Real Academia (1783) gives : " Gato Paul, a kind of monkey of a grey colour, black muzzle and very broad tail" In fact, the word is used by Columbus, who, in his own account of his third voyage, de- scribes a hill on the coast of Paria as covered with a species of Gatos Paulos (see Navarrete^ Fr. ed. III. 21, also 147-8). It also occurs in Marmoly JDesc, General de Affrica^ who says that one kind of monkeys has a black face ; "_y estas comunemente se llaman en Espafia Gatos Paules, las quales se crian en la tierra de los Negros^^ (I. f 27). It is worth noting that the revisers of the text adopted by Pauthier have not understood the word. For they substitute for the " // hi a gat paul si divisez qe ce estoit mervoille" of the Geog. Text, ^^ et si a moult de granz paluz et moult grans pantains a merveilles'^ — wonderful swamps and marshes ! The Pipino Latin has adhered to the correct reading — ** IH sunt cati qui dicuntur pauli, valde diversi ab aliis,^
See Supplementary Note in Appendix L.
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1
s
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CHAPTER XXIV.
Concerning the Kingdom of Eli.
Eli is a kingdom towards the west, about 300 miles from Comari. The people are Idolaters and have a king, and are tributary to nobody; and have a peculiar language. We will tell you particulars about their manners and their products, and you will better understand things now because we are drawing near to places that are not so outlandish.'
There is no proper harbour in the country, but there are many great rivers with good estuaries, wide and deep.' Pepper and ginger grow there, and other spices in quan- tities.^ The King is rich in treasure, but not very strong in forces. The approach to his kingdom however is so strong by nature that no one can attack him, so he is afraid of nobody.
And you must know that if any ship enters their estuary and anchors there, having been bound for some other port, they seize her and plunder the cargo. For they say, " You were bound for somewhere else, and 'tis God has sent you hither to us, so we have a right to all your goods.'* And they think it no sin to act thus. And this naughty custom prevails all over these provinces of India, to wit, that if a ship be driven by stress of weather into some other port than that to which it was bound, it is sure to be plundered. But if a ship come bound originally to the place they receive it with all honour and give it due protection.* The ships of Manzi and other countries that come hither in summer lay in their cargoes in 6 or 8 days and depart as fast as possible, because there is no harbour other than the river-mouth, a mere roadstead and sandbanks, so that it is perilous to tarry there. The ships of Manzi indeed are not so much afraid of these roadsteads as others are, because they have such huge wooden anchors which hold in all weather.^
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Chap. XXIV. THE KINGDOM OF ELI. 375
There are many lions and other wild beasts here and plenty of game, both beast and bird.
Note 1 . — No city or district is now known by the name of Ely, but the name survives in that of Mount Dely^ properly Monte d'ELv, the Ydi-mala of the Malabar people, and called also in the legends of the coast Sapta-shailay or the Seven Hills. This is the only spur of the Chits that reaches the sea within the Madras territory. It is an isolated and very conspicuous hill, or cluster of hills, forming a promontory some 16 miles north of Cananore, the first Indian land seen by Vasco da Gama, on that memorable August morning in 1498, and formerly very well known to navigators, though it has been allowed to drop out of some of our most ambitious modem maps. Abulfeda describes it as " a great mountain projecting into the sea, and descried from a great distance, called Rets Haili;" and it appears in Fra Mauro's map as Cavo de Eli,
Rashiduddin mentions "the country of Hili," between Manjarur (Mangalore) and Fandaraina (miswritten in Elliot's copy Sadarsd), Ibn fiatuta speaks of Hili, which he reached on leaving Manjanir, as " a great and well-built city, situated on a large estuary accessible to great ships. The vessels of China come hither ; this, Kaulam, and Kalikut, are the only ports that they enter." From Hili he proceeds 12 miles further down- the coast to Jor-fattan^ which probably corresponds to Baliapatan. Elly appears in the Carta Catalana, and is marked as a Christian city. Nicolo Conti is the last to speak distinctly of the city. Sailing from Cambay, in 20 days he arrived at two cities on the sea- shore, Pacamuria {Faknur^ of Rashid and Firishta, Bactanor of old books, and now BirMr^ the Malaydlim Vdkkanur) and Helli. But we read that in 1527 Simon de Melo was sent to burn ships in the River oi Marabia and at Monte (TElli* When Da Gama on his second voyage was on his way from Baticala (in Canara) to Cananor, a squall having sprung his mainmast just before reaching Mt d*Ely, " the captain- major anchored in the Bay of Marabia, because he saw there several Moorish ships, in order to get a mast from them." It seems clear that this was the bay just behind Mt d*Ely.
Indeed the name of Marabia or Mdrdwi is still preserved in Mdddvi or M4d4i, corrupdy termed Maudoy in some of our maps, a township upon the river which enters the bay about 7 or 8 miles south-east of Mt d'Ely, and which is called by De Barros the Rio Marabia, Mr. Ballard informs me that he never heard of ruins of importance at Madai,
* The Town of Monte d*Ely appears {Monte Dil) in Coronelli's Atlas (1690) from some older source. Mr. Bumell thinks Baliapatan (properly Valarpattanam) which is still a prosperous Mappila town, on a broad and deep river, must be Hili. I se<» a little difficulty in this.
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but there is a place on the river just mentioned, and within the Madai township, called Payang&di (" Old Town "), which has the remains of an old fort of the Kolastri (or Kolatiri) Rajas. A palace at Madai (perhaps this fort) is alluded to by Dr. Gundert in the Madras Journal, and a Buddhist Vihara is spoken of in an old Malayalim poem as having existed at the same place. The same paper speaks of "the famous emporium of Cachilpatnam near Mt d*Ely," which may have been our city of HiU, as the cities Hili and Marawi were apparently separate though near.*
The state of Hili-M&rdwi is also mentioned in the Arabic work on the early history of the Mahomedans in Malabar, called Tuhfatal-Muja- hidiuy and translated by Rowlandson ; and as the prince is there called Kolturee^ this would seem to identify him either in family or person with the Raja of Cananor, for that old dynasty always bore the name of KoIatirL\
The Ramusian version' of Barbosa is very defective here, but in Stanley's version (Hak. Soc. East African and Malabar Coasts, p. 149) we find the topography in a passage from a Munich MS. clear enough : "After passing this place " (the river of Nirapura or Nileshwaram) " along the coast is the mountain Dely (of Ely) on the edge of the sea ; it is a round moimtain, very lofty, in the midst of low land ; all the ships of the Moors and Gentiles that navigate in this sea of India, sight this mountain when coming from without, and make their reckoning by it ; .... after this, at the foot of the mountain to the south, is a town called Marave, very ancient and well off, in which live Moors and Gentiles and Jews ; these Jews are of the language of the country ; it is a long time that they have dwelt in this place."
{Stanleys Correa, Hak. Soc. p. 145, 312-13; Gildem. p. 185; Elliot, I. 68; /. B, IV. 81 ; Conti, p. 6; Madras Journal, XIIL No. 31, p. 14, 99, 102, 104; De Barros, III. 9, cap. 6, and FV. 2, cap. 13 ; De Couto. IV. 5, cap. 4.)
Note 2. — This is from Pauthier's text, and the map with ch. xxi illustrates the fact of the many wide rivers. The G. T. has " a good river with a very good estuary " or mouth. The latter word is in the G. T. faces, afterwards more correctly foces, equivalent to fauces. We have seen that Ibn Batuta also speaks of the estuary or inlet at Hili. It may have been either that immediately east of Mount d'Ely, communicating with Kavvdyi and the Nileshwaram River, or the Madai
* Mr. Burnell thinks A'tfr^f/z/Zpattanam must be an error (easy in Malayalim) for Aflvw^attanam, i.e. Kavvdyi (Kanwai in our map).
t Ks printed by Rowlandson, the name is corrupt (like many others in the book), being given as Hubaee Murawee. But suspecting what this pointed to, I examined the MS. in the R. A. Society's Library. The knowledge of the Arabic character was
quite sufficient to enable me to trace the name as iS^SJuo /*V«^» HiH MArlnvi. {^QQ Rowlandson, pp. 54, 58-59, and MS. pp. 23 and 26 ; also Indian Antiquary^ III. p. 213.)
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River. Neither could be entered by vessels now, but there have been great littoral changes. The land joining Mt d'Ely to the main is mere alluvium.
Note 3. — Barbosa says that throughout the kingdom of Cananor the pepper was of excellent quality, though not in great quantity. There was much ginger, not first-rate, which was called Hely from its growing about Mount d'Ely, with cardamoms (names of which, Eld in Sanskrit, Hd'm Persian, I have thought might be connected with that of the hill), mirobolans, cassia fistula, zerumbet, and zedoary. The two last items are two species of curcuma^ formerly in much demand as aromatics ; the last is, I believe, the setewale of Chaucer : — ** There was eke wexin;^ many a spice,
As clowe gilofre and Licorice, Ginger and grein de Paradis,
Canell and setewale of pris,
And many a spice delitable
To (^aten when men rise from table." — R. of the Rose.
The Hely ginger is also mentioned by Conti.
Mount d'Ely, from the Sea, in last century.
Note 4. — This piratical practice is noted by Abdurrazzak also : " In other parts (than Calicut) a strange practice is adopted. When a vessel sets sail for a certain point, and suddenly is driven by a decree of Divine Providence into another roadstead, the inhabitants, under the pretext that the wind has driven it thither, plunder the ship. But at Calicut every ship, whatever place it comes from, or wherever it may be bound, when it puts into this port, is treated like other vessels, and has no trouble of any kind to put up with" (p. 14). In 1673 Sivaji replied to the pleadings of an English embassy, that it was ** against the Laws of
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Conchon" (Ptolemy's Pirate Coast!) "to restore any ships or goods that were driven ashore." {Fryer^ p. 261.)
With regard to the anchors, Pauthier's text has just the opposite of the G. T. which we have preferred : " Les nefs du Manzi f orient si grans ancres defust que il seuflrent moult de grans fortunes aus plajcsT Demailla says the Chinese consider their ironwood anchors to be much better than those of iron, because the latter are subject to strain {Lett, Edif, XIV. 10). Capt Owen has a good word for wooden anchors {Narr. of Voyages, 6-r. I. 385).
CHAPTER XXV.
Concerning the Kingdom of Melibar.
Melibar is a great kingdom lying towards the west. The people are Idolaters ; they have a language of their own, and a king of their own, and pay tribute to nobody.'
In this country you see more of the North Star, for it shows two cubits above the water. And you must know that from this kingdom of Melibar, and from another near it called Gozurat, there go forth every year more than a hundred corsair vessels on cruize. These pirates take with them their wives and children, and stay out the whole summer. Their method is to join in fleets of 20 or 30 of these pirate vessels together, and then they form what they call a sea cordon,* that is, they drop oflf till there is an interval of 5 or 6 miles between ship and ship, so that they cover something like an hundred miles of sea, and no merchant ship can escape them. For when any one corsair sights a vessel a signal is made by fire or smoke, and then the whole of them make for this, and seize the mer- chants and plunder them. After they have plundered them they let them go, saying : " Go along with you and get more gain, and that mayhap will fall to us also ! " But now the merchants are aware of this, and go so well manned and armed, and with such great ships, that they don t fear the corsairs. Still mishaps do befal them at times.^
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There is in this kingdom a great quantity of pepper, and ginger, and cinnamon, and turbit, and of nuts of India/ They also manufacture very delicate and beautiful buck- rams. The ships that come from the east bring copper in ballast. They also bring hither cloths of silk and gold, and sendels; also gold and silver, cloves and spikenard, and other fine spices for which there is a demand here, and exchange them for the products of these countries.
Ships come hither from many quarters, but especially from the great province of Manzi.^ Coarse spices are exported hence both to Manzi and to the west, and that which is carried by the merchants to Aden goes on to Alexandria, but the ships that go in the latter direction are not one to ten of those that go to the eastward ; a very notable fact that I have mentioned before.
Now I have told you about the kingdom of Melibar ; we shall now proceed and tell you of the kingdom of Gozurat. And you must understand that in speaking of these kingdoms we note only the capitals ; there are great numbers of other cities and towns of which we shall say nothing, because it would make too long a story to speak of all.
Note 1. — Here is another instance of that confusion which dislocates Polo's descriptions of the Indian coast; we shall recur to it under Ch. XXX.
Malabar is a name given by the Arabs, and varies in its form ; Ibn Batuta and Kazwini write it .UxOl, al-Malibdr^ Edrisi and Abulfeda jLuJl^ty ai'Manibdr^ &c., and like variations occur among the old EUiropean travellers. The country so-called corresponded to the Kerala of the Brahmans, which in its very widest sense extended from about lat. 15° to Cape Comorin. This, too, seems to be the extension which Abulfeda gives to Malabar, viz., from Hundwar to Kumhari; Rash- iduddin includes Sindibdr, /. e, Goa. But at a later date a point between Mt. d'Ely and Mangalore on the north, and Kaulam on the south, were the limits usually assigned to Malabar.
Note 2. — " II font eschiel en mer" (G. T.). Eschiel is the equivalent of the Italian schera or schiera^ a troop or squadron, and thence applied to order of battle, whether by land or sea.
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Note 3. — ^The northern part of Malabar, Canara, and the Konkan, have been nests of pirates from the time of the ancients to a very recent date. Padre Paohno specifies the vicinity of Mt d'Ely as a special haunt of them in his day, the latter half of last centur}'. Somewhat further north Ibn Batuta fell into their hands, and was stripped to his drawers.
Note 4. — There is something to be said about these Malabar spices. The cinnamon of Malabar is what we call cassia, the canella grossa of Conti, the canela brava of the Portuguese. Notices of it will be found in Rheede (I. 107) and in Garcias (f. 26 seqq.). The latter says the Ceylon cinnamon exceeded it in value as 4 : i. Uzzano discriminates canella lunga. Salami^ and Mahari, The Salami^ I have no doubt, is Sailani^ Ceylonese ; and as we do not hear of any cassia from Mabar, probably the last was Malabar cinnamon.
Turbit: Radex Turpethi is still known in pharmacy, at least in some parts of the Continent and in India, though in England obsolete. It is mentioned in the Pharmacopeia of India (1868) as derived from Ipomaa Turpet/ium,
But it is worthy of note that Ramusio has cubebs instead of turbit. The former does not seem now to be a product of Western India, though Garcias says that a small quantity grew there, and a Dutch report of 1675 in Valentyn also mentions it as an export of Malabar (K, Ceylon, p. 243). There is some ambiguity in statements about it, because its popular name Kdbab-chini seems to be also applied to the cassia bud: Cubeb pepper was much used in the Middle Ages as a spice, and imported into Europe as such. But the importation had long practically ceased, when its medical uses became known during the British occupation of Java, and the demand was renewed.
Budaeus and Salmasius have identified this drug with the wupucor, which Theophrastus joins with cinnamomum and cassia as an ingredient in aromatic confections. The inducement to this identification was no doubt the singular resemblance which the word bears to the Javanese name of cubeb pepper, viz., Kumukus, If the foundation were a little firmer this would be curious evidence of intercourse and trade with Java in a time earlier than that of Theophrastus, viz., the fourth century b.c.
In the detail of 3 cargoes from Malabar that arrived at Lisbon in Sept 1504 we find the following proportions: Pepper, 10,000 cantars ; cinnamon, 500; cloves, 450; zz, (i.e. zenzaro, ^xagtx), 130; lac and brazil, 750 ; camphor, 7 ; cubebs, 191 ; mace, 2 J ; spikenard, 3 : lign-aloes, 1^.
{Buchanan's Mysore, II. 31, III. 193, and App. p. v. ; Garcias, Ital. version 1576, f. 39-40; Saimas, Exerc, Flin, p. 923 ; Bud, on Thwph, 1004 and 1 010; Archiv, St, Ital,y Append. II. p. 19.)
Note 5. — We see that Marco speaks of the merchants and ships of
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Chap. XXV. THE KINGDOM OF MELIBAR. 38 1
Manzi, or Southern China, as frequenting Kaulam, Hili, and now Malabar of which Calicut was the chief port This quite coincides with Ibn Batuta, who says those were the three ports of India which the Chinese junks frequented, adding Fandaraina (i.e, Pandarani, or PantaMni, 16 miles north of Calicut), as a port where they used to moor for the winter when they spent that season in India. By the winter he means the rainy season, as Portuguese writers on India do by the same expression (IV, 81, 88, 96). I have been unable to find anything definite as to the date of the cessation of this Chinese navigation to Malabar, but I believe it may be placed about the beginning of the isth century. The most distinct allusion to it that I am aware of is in the information of Joseph of Cran- ganor, in the Novus Orbis (Ed. of 1555, p. 208). He says: "These people of Cathay are men of remarkable energy, and fonnerly drove a first-rate trade at the city of Calicut. But the King of Calicut having treated them badly, they quitted that city, and returning shortly after inflicted no small slaughter on the people of Calicut, and after that returned no more. After that they began to frequent Mailapetam, a city subject to the king of Narsingha ; a region towards the East, .... and there they now drive their trade." There is also in Caspar Correa's account of the Voyages of Da Gama a curious record of a tradition of the arrival in Malabar more than four centuries before of a vast merchant fleet "from the parts of Malacca, and China, and the Lequeos" (Lewchew); many from the company on board had settied in the country and left descendants. In the space of a hundred years none of these remained ; but their sumptuous idol temples were still to be seen (Stanleys TransL^ Hak, Soc,^ p. 147).* It is probable that both these stories must be referred to those extensive expeditions to the western countries with the object of restoring Chinese influence wTiich were despatched by the Ming Emperor Ching-tsu (or Yung-lo), about 1406, and one of which seems actually to have brought Ceylon under a partial subjection to China, which endured half a century. (See Tennent^ I. 623 seqq, ; 2SsA Letter of P, Gaubil in J, A, ser. 2, tom. x. p. 327-8.) De Barros says that the famous city of Diu was built by one of the Kings of Guzerat, whom he calls in one place Dariar Khan^ and in another Peruxiah^ in memory of victory in a sea-fight with the Chinese who then frequented the Indian shores. It is difficult to identify this King, though he is represented as the father of the famous toxico- phagous Sultan MahmiSd Begara (1459-15 11). De Barros has many other allusions to Chinese settlements and conquests in India which it is not very easy to account for. Whatever basis of facts there is
* It appears from a paper in the Mackenzie MSS. that down to Colonel Mac- kenzie's time there was a tribe in Calicut whose ancestors were believed to have been Chinese (see Taylor's Catal. Raisonni^ III. 664). And there is a notable passage in Abdurrazzak which says the seafaring population of Calicut were nick-named Chinl bachagdn, "China boys" {India in XVth Cent, p. 19).
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must probably refer to the expeditions of Ching-tsu, but not a little probably grew out of the confusion of Jainas and Chinas already- alluded to; and to this I incline to refer Correa's "sumptuous idol- temples."
There must have been some revival of Chinese trade in the last cen- tury, if P. Paolino is correct in speaking of Chinese vessels frequenting Travancore ports for pepper {De Barros, Dec. II. Liv. ii. cap. 9, anil Dec. IV. Liv. v. cap. 3 ; Paolino^ p. 74).
CHAPTER XXVI.
Concerning the Kingdom of Gozurat.
Medieval Architecture in Guzerat (from Fergusson).
Gozurat is a great kingdom. The people are Idolaters and have a peculiar language, and a king of their own, and are tributary to no one. It lies towards the west, and the
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North Star is here still more conspicuous, showing itself at an altitude of about 6 cubits.'
The people are the most desperate pirates in existence, and one of their atrocious practices is this. When they have taken a merchant-vessel they force the merchants to swallow a stuff called Tamarindi mixed in sea-water, which produces a violent purging. This is done in case the merchants, on seeing their danger, should have swallowed their most valuable stones and pearls. And in this way^ the pirates secure the whole.
In this province of Gozurat there grows much pepper, and ginger, and indigo. They have also a great deal of cotton. Their cotton trees are of very great size, growing full six paces high, and attaining to an age of 20 years. It is to be observed however that, when the trees are so old as that, the cotton is not good to spin, but only to quilt or stuff beds withal. Up to the age of 12 years indeed the trees give good spinning cotton, but from that age to 20 years the produce is inferior."
They dress in this country great numbers of skins of various kinds, goat-skins, ox-skins, buffalo and wild ox- skins, as well as those of unicorns and other animals. In fact so many are dressed every year as to load a number of ships for Arabia and other quarters. They also work here beautiful mats in red and blue leather, exquisitely inlaid with figures of birds and beasts, and skilfully embroidered with gold and silver wire. These are marvellously beautiful things ; they are used by the Saracens to sleep upon, and capital they are for that purpose. They also work cushions embroidered with gold, so fine that they are worth six marks of silver a piece, whilst some of those sleeping-mats are worth ten marks.^
Note 1. — Again we note the topographical confusion. Guzerat is mentioned as if it were a province adjoining Malabar, and before arriving at Tana, Cambay, and Somnath ; though in fact it includes those three
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cities, and Cambay was then its great mart Wassdf, Polo's contempo rary, perhaps acquaintance, speaks of " Gujarat which is commonly called Kambdyat {Elliot, III. 31).
Note 2. — The notice of pepper here is hard to explain. But Hwen T'sang also speaks of Indian pepper and incense (see next chapter) as grown at 'Ochali which seems to be some place on the northern border of Guzerat (II. 161).
Marsden, in regard to the cotton, supposes here some confused introduction of the silk-cotton tree {Bombax or Salmalia, the Semal of Hindustan), but the description would be entirely inapplicable to that great forest tree. It is remarkable that nearly the same statement with regard to Guzerat occurs in Rashiduddin's sketch of India, as translated in Sir H. Elliot's History of India (ed, by Prof. Dowson, I. 67) : " Grapes are produced twice during the year, and the strength of the soil is such that cotton-plants grow like willows and plane-trees, and yield produce ten years running." An author of later date, from whom extracts are given in the same work, viz., Mahommed Masiim in his History of Sind, describing the wonders of Sfwf, says : " In Korzamin and Chhatur, which are districts of Siwi, cotton-plants grow as large as trees, insomuch that men pick the cotton mounted " (p. 237).
These would appear to have been plants of the species of true cotton called by Royle Gossipium arboreum, and sometimes termed G. religiosunty from its being often grown in South India near temples or abodes of devotees ; though the latter name has been applied also to the nankeen cotton. That of which we speak is however, according to Dr. Cleghom, termed in Mysore Deo kapas, of which G, religiosum would be a proper translation. It is grown in various parts of India, but generally rather for ornament than use. It is stated, however, to be specially used for the manufacture of turbans, and for the Brahmanical thread, and probably afforded the groundwork of the story told by Philostratus of the wild cotton which was used only for the sacred vest- ments of the Brahmans, and refused to lend itself to other uses. One of Royle's authorities (Mr. Vaupell) mentions that it was grown near laige towns of Eastern Guzerat, and its wool regarded as the finest of any, and only used in delicate muslins. Tod speaks of it in Bikanir, and this kind of cotton appears to be grown also in China, as we gather from a passage in Amyot's Mtmoires (II. 606), which speaks of the " Cotonniers arbres, ijui ne devoient ^tre fertiles qu'aprbs un bon nombre d'acn^es."
The height appears to have been a difficulty with Marsden, who refers to the G, arboreum, but does not admit that it could be intended- Yet I see in the English Cydopcedia that to this species is assigned a height of 15 to 20 feet. Polo's six paces therefore, even if it means 30 feet as I think, is not a great exaggeration. {Royle, Cult of Cotton, 144, 145, 152 ; Eng. CycL art. Gossypium.)
NoTK '6. — Eml)roidered and inlaid leather-work for bed covers,
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Chap. XXVII. THE KINGDOM OF TANA. 385
palankin mats and the like, is still a great manufacture in Rajkot and other places of Kattiawar in Peninsular Guzerat, as well as in the adjoin- ing region of Sind (Note from Sir Bartle Frere). The embroidery of Guzerat is highly commended by Barbosa, Linschoten, and A. Hamilton.
The G. T. adds at the end of this passage : " ^ qe vos en diroi? Sachies tout voiremant qe en ceste reingne se lahoure roiaus dereusse de cuir et plus sotilment que ne fait en tout lo monde\ et celz qe sunt de grei- gnors vaiiance"
The two words in Roman type I cannot explain; qu. royaux devises ?
CHAPTER XXVII. Concerning the Kingdom of Tana.
Tana is a great kingdom lying towards the west, a kingdom great both in size and worth. The people are Idolaters, with a language of their own, and a king of their own, and tributary to nobody.^ No pepper grows there, nor other spices, but plenty of incense ; not the white kind however, but brown.^
There is much traffic here, and many ships and mer- chants frequent the place; for there is a great export of leather of various excellent kinds, and also of good buckram and cotton. The merchants in their ships also import various articles, such as gold, silver, copper, and other things in demand.
With the King's connivance many corsairs launch from this port to plunder merchants. These corsairs have a covenant with the King that he shall get all the horses they capture, and all other plunder shall remain with them. The King does this because he has no horses of his own, whilst many are shipped from abroad towards India ; for no ship ever goes thither without horses in addition to other cargo. . The practice is naughty and unworthy of a king.
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Note 1. — The town of Thana, on the landward side of the bland of Salsette, still exists, about 20 miles from Bombay. The Great Penin- sular Railroad here crosses the strait which separates Salsette from the continent
The Konkan is no doubt what was intended by the kingdom of Thdna. Albiruni speaks of that city as the capital of Konkan ; Rashiduddin calls it Konkan-Tdnay Ibn Batuta Kukin-Tdna, the last a form which appears in the Carta Catalana as Cudntana. Tieffentaller writes ^<?^;f, and this is said {Cunningham's Anc, Geog. 553) to be the local pronunciation. Abul- feda speaks of it as a very celebrated place of trade, producing a kind of cloth which was called Tdnasi, bamboos, and Tabashir derived from the ashes of the bamboo.
As early as the i6th year of the Hijra (a.d. 637) an Arab fleet from Oman made a hostile descent on tlie Island of Thdna, /. e, Salsette. The place {Sri Sthdnaka) appears from inscriptions to have been the seat of a Hindu kingdom of the Konkan, in the nth century. In Polo's time Thdna seems to have been still under a Hindu prince, but it soon afterwards became subject to the Dehli sovereigns ; and when visited by Jordanus and by Odoric some 30 years after Polo's voyage, a Mussuhnan governor was ruling there, who put to death four Fran- ciscans, the companions of Jordanus. Barbosa gives it the compound name of Tana-Maiambu, the latter part being the first indication I know of the name of Bombay {Mambai), It was still a place of many mosques, temples, and gardens, but the trade was small. Pirates still did business from the port, but on a reduced scale. Botero says that there were the remains of an immense city to be seen, and that the town still contained 5000 velvet-weavers (p. 104). Till the Mahrattas took Salsette in 1737, the Portuguese had many fine villas about Thina.
Polo's dislocation of geographical order here has misled Fra Mauro into placing Tana to the west of Guzerat, though he has a duplicate Tana nearer the correct position.
Note 2. — It has often been erroneously supposed that the frankincense {olibanum) of commerce, for which Bombay and the ports which preceded it in Western India have for centuries afforded the chief mart, was an Indian product But Marco is not making that mistake ; he calls the incense of Western India brown, evidently in contrast with the white incense or olibanum, which he afterwards assigns to its true locality {infra, ch. xxxvii., xxxviii.). Nor is Marsden justified in assummg that the brown incense of Tana must needs have been Benzoin imported from Sumatra, though I observe Dr. Birdwood considers that the term Indian Frankincense which occurs in Dioscorides must have included Benzoin. Dioscorides describes the so-called Indian Frankincense as blaekish; and Garcias supposes the name merely to refer to the colour, as he says the Arabs often gave the name of Indian to things of a dark colour.
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There seems to be no proof that Benzoin was known even to the older Arab writers. Western India supplies a variety of aromatic gum- resins, one of which was probably intended by our traveller :
I. BoswELLiA THURiFERA of Colebrooke, whose description led to a general belief that this tree produced the Frankincense of commerce. The tree is found in Oudh and Rohilkhand, in Bahir, Central India, Khandesh, and Kattiawdr, &c. The gum-resin is used and sold locally as an incense, but is soft and sticky, and is not the olibanum of com- merce \ nor is it collected for exportation.
The Coromandel Boswdlia glabra of Roxburgh is now included (see Dr. Birdwood's Monograph) as a variety under the B, thurifera. Its gum-resin is a good deal used as incense in the Tamul regions, under the name of Kundrikam, with which is apparently connected KunJur, one of the Arabic words for olibanum (see ch. xxxviii, note 2).
II. Valeria Indica (Roxb.), producing a gum-resin which when recent is known as Piney Varnish^ and when hardened, is sold for export under the names of Indian Copal^ White Dammar^ and others. Its northern limit of growth is North Canara ; but the gum is exported from Bombay. The tree is the Chloroxylon Dupada of Buchanan, and is I imagine the Dupu or Incense Tree of Rheede {Hort. Malab, IV.). The tree is a fine one, and forms beautiful avenues in Malabar and Canara. The Hindus use the resin as an incense, and in Malabar it is also made into candles which bum fragrantly and with little smoke. It is, or was, also used as pitch, and is probably the thus with which Indian vessels, according to Joseph of Cranganore (in Novus Orbis)^ were payed. Garcias took it for the ancient Cancamum, but this Dr. Birdwood identifies with the next, viz, ; —
III. Gardenia lucida (Roxb.). It grows in the Konkan districts, producing a fragrant resin called Dikamdli in India, and by the Arabs Kankham.
IV. Balsamodendron Mukuly growing in Sind, Kattiawar and the Deesa District, and producing the Indian Bdelliuniy Mukl of the Arabs and Persians, used as an incense and as a cordial medicine. It is believed to be the BScXAa mentioned in the Periplus as exported fi-om the Indus, and also as brought down with Costus through Ozene (Ujjain) to Barygaza (Baroch — see Miiller's Geog, Grcec, Minor, I. 287, 293). It is mentioned also {Mukl) by Albiruni as a special product of Kachh; and is probably the incense of that region alluded to by Hwen T*sang (see last chapter. Note 2). It is of a yellow, red, or brownish colour {Eng. Cyc, art Bdellium; Dowsotis Elliot ^ I. 66; Reinaud'mJ, As, ser. IV. tom. IV. p. 263).
V. Canarium strictum (Roxb.), of the Western Ghats, affording the Black Dammar of Malabar, which when fresh is aromatic and yellow in colour. It abounds in the country adjoining Tana. The natives use it as incense, and call the tree Dhup (incense) and Gugul (Bdellum).
Besides these resinous substances, the Costus of the ancients may be
2 C 2
Digitized by
388 MARCO POLO. Book III.
mentioned (Sansk. Kushth), being still exported from Western India, as well as from Calcutta, to China, under the name of Fuichok^ to be burnt as incense in Chinese temples. Its identity has been ascertained in our own day by Drs. Royle and Falconer, as the root of a plant which they called Aucklandia Costus, But the identity of the Fucho (which he gives as the Malay name) with Costus was known to Garcias. Alex. Hamilton, at the beginning of last century, calls it Ligna Dulds {su\ and speaks of it as an export from Sind, as did the author of the Periplus 1600 years earlier.
My own impression is that Mukl or Bdellium was the brown incense of Polo, especially because we see from Albiruni that this was regarded as a staple export from neighbouring regions. But Dr. Bird- wood considers that the Black Dammar of Canarium strictum is in question {Report on Indian Gum-Resins^ by Mr. Dalzell of Bot Gard. Bombay, 1866 ; Birdwood's Bombay Products^ 2nd ed, pp. 282, 287, &c; Drurfs Useful Plants of India^ 2nd ed. ; Garcias ; A, Hamilton^ 1. 127 ; Eng, Cyc.j art Putchuk; Buchanan's Journey^ II. 44, 335, &c.).
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Concerning the Kingdom of Cambaet.
Cambaet is a great kingdom lying further west. The people are Idolaters, and have a language of their own, and a king of their own, and are tributary to nobody/
The North Star is here still more clearly visible; and henceforward the further you go west the higher you see it.
There is a great deal of trade in this country. It pro- duces indigo in great abundance ; and they also make much fine buckram. There is also a quantity of cotton which is exported hence to many quarters ; and there is a great trade in hides, which are very well dressed ; with many other kinds of merchandize too tedious to mention. Merchants come here with many ships and cargoes, but what they chiefly bring is gold, silver, copper [and tutia.]
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Chap. XXIX. CAMBAET AND SEMENAT. 389
There are no pirates from this country ; the inhabitants are good people, and Hve by their trade and manufactures.
Note 1. — Cambaet is nearer the genuine name of the city than our Cambay. Its proper Hindu name was, according to Colonel Todd, Khamhavati^ " the City of the Pillar." The inhabitants write it Katn- bdyat. The ancient city is 3 miles from the existing Cambay, and is now overgrown with jungle. It is spoken of as a flourishing place by Mas'udi who visited it in a.d. 915. Ibn Batuta speaks of it also as a very fine city, remarkable for the elegance and solidity of its mosques, and houses built by wealthy foreign merchants. Cambeth is mentioned by Polo's contemporary Marino Sanudo, as one of the two chief Ocean Ports of India ; and in the fifteenth century Conti calls it fourteen miles in circuit It was still in high prosperity in the early part of the i6th century, abounding in commerce and luxury, and one of the greatest Indian naarts. Its trade continued considerable in the time of Federici, towards the end of that century ; but it has now long disappeared, the local part of it being transferred to Gogo and other ports having deeper water. Its chief or sole industry now is in the preparation of ornamental objects from agates, cornelians and the like.
The Indigo of Cambay was long a staple export, and is mentioned by Conti, Nikitin, Santo Stefano, Federici, Linschoten, and Abu'l Fazl.
The independence of Cambay ceased a few years after Polo's visit ; for it was taken in the end of the century by the armies of AMuddfn Khilji of Dehli, a king whose name survived in Guzerat down to our own day as Alduddin Khiini — Bloody Alauddin {Rds Mdld^ I. 235).
CHAPTER XXIX.
Concerning the Kingdom of Semenat.
Semenat is a great kingdom towards the west. The people are Idolaters, and have a king and a language of their own, and pay tribute to nobody. They are not corsairs, but live by trade and industry as honest people ought. It is a place of very great trade. They are forsooth cruel Idolaters.*
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390 MARCO POLO. Book III.
Note 1. — Somnath is the site of the celebrated Temple on the coast of Saurishtra, or Peninsular Guzerat, plundered by Mahmiid of
" The Gates of Somnath/' as preserved in the British Arsenal at Agra, from a photograph (converted into elevation).
Ghazni on his sixteenth expedition to India (a.d. 1023). The term " great kingdom " is part of Polo*s formula. But the place was at this
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Chap. XXIX. THE TEMPLE OF SOMNATH. 391
time of some importance as a commercial port, and much ^sited by the ships of Aden, as Abulfeda tells us. At an earlier date Albiruni speaks of it both as the seat of a great Mahadeo much frequented by Hindu pilgrims, and as a port of call for vessels on their way from Sofala in Africa to China, — a remarkable incidental notice of departed trade and civilization ! He does not give Somnath so good a cluu-acter as Polo does ; for he names it as one of the chief pirate-haunts. And Col. Tod mentions that the sculptured memorial stones on this coast frequently exhibit the deceased as a pirate in the act of boarding. In fact, piratical habits continued in the islands off the coast of Kattiawar down to our own day.
Properly speaking, three separate things are lumped together as Som- ndth : (i) The Port, properly called Veriwal, on a beautiful little bay : (2) The City of Deva-Pattan, Somnith-Pattan, or Prabhds, occupying a prominence on the south side of the bay, having a massive wall and towers, and many traces of ancient Hindu workmanship, though the vast multitude of tombs around shows the existence of a large Mussuhnan population at some time ; and among these are dates nearly as old as our Traveller's visit: (3) The famous Temple (or, strictly speaking, the object of worship in that Temple) crowning a projecting rock at the south-west angle of the city, and close to the walls. Portions of columns and sculptured fragments strew the soil around.
Notwithstanding the famous story of Mahmiid and the image stuffed with jewels, there is little doubt that the idol really termed Somndth (Moon's Lord) was nothing but a huge columnar emblem of Mahadeo. Hindu authorities mention it as one of the twelve most famous emblems of that kind over India, and Ibn Asir's account, the oldest extant narra- tive of Mahmdd's expedition, is to the same effect Every day it was washed with water newly brought from the Ganges. Mahmild broke it to pieces, and with a fragment a step was made at the entrance of the Jdmi' Mosque at Ghazni.
The temples and idols of Pattan undem^ent a second visitation at the hands of Aliuddin's forces a few years after Polo's visit (1300)*, and this seems in great measure to have wiped out the memory of Mahmdd. The temple, as it now stands deserted, bears evident tokens of having been converted into a mosque. A good deal of old and remarkable architecture remains, but mixed with Moslem work, and no part of the building as it stands is believed to be a survival from the time of Mah- miid ; though part may belong to a reconstruction which was carried out by Raja Bhima Deva of Anhilwara about 25 years after Mahmild's invasion. It is remarkable that Ibn Asir speaks of the temple plundered by Mahmdd as " built upon 56 pillars of teak-wood covered with lead." Is it possible that it was a wooden building ?
* So in Ellioi, II. 74. But Jacob says d;ere is an inscription of a Mussulman Governor in Pattan of 1297.
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392 MARCO POLO. Book III.
In connexion with this brief chapter on.Somnith we present a faith- ful representation of those Gates which Lord Ellenborough rendered so celebrated in connexion with that name, when he caused them to be removed from the Tomb of Mahmild, on the retirement of our troops from Kabul in 1842. His intention, as announced in that once famous paan of his, was to have Ihem carried solemnly to Guzerat, and there restored to the (long desecrated) temple. Calmer reflection prevailed, and the Gates were consigned to the Fort of Agra, where they still remain.
It is not probable that there was any real connexion between these Gates, of Saracenic design, carved (it is said) in Himalyan cedar, and the Temple of Somndth. But tradition did ascribe to them such a con- nexion, and the eccentric prank of a clever man in high place made this widely known. Nor in any case can we regard as alien to the scope of this book the illustration of a work of medieval Asiatic art, which is quite as remarkable for its own character and indisputable history, as for the questionable origin ascribed to it {Tod's Travels^ 385, 504; Burgess, Visit to Somnath, &c. ; Jacob's Report on Kattywar, p. 18 ; Gildemdster^ 185 ; Dowsoris Elliot, II. 468 seqq. ; Asiatic Journal, 3d series, vol. I.).
CHAPTER XXX.
Concerning the Kingdom of Kesmacoran.
Kesmacoran is a kingdom having a king of its own and a peculiar language. [Some of] the people are Idolaters, [but the most part are Saracens]. They live by mer- chandize and industry, for they are professed traders and carry on much traffic by sea and land in all directions. Their food is rice [and corn], flesh and milk, of which they have great store. There is no more to be said about them.*
And you must know that this kingdom of Kesmacoran is the last in India as you go towards the west and north- west. You see, from Maabar on, this province is what is called the Greater India, and it is the best of all the Indies. I have now detailed to you all the kingdoms and provinces and (chief) cities of this India the Greater, that are upon
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Chap. XXX. THE KINGDOM OF KESMACORAN. 393
the seaboard ; but of those that lie in the interior I have said nothing, because that would make too long a story.*
And so now let us proceed, and I will tell you of some of the Indian Islands. And I will begin by two Islands which are called Male and Female.
Note 1. — Though M. Pauthier has imagined objections there is no room for doubt that Kesmacoran is the province of Mekran, known habitually all over the East as Kij-Makran, from the combination with the name of the country of that of its chief town, just as we lately met with a converse combination in Konkan-tana, This was pointed out to Marsden by his illustrious friend Major Rennell. We find the term Kij'Makrdn used by Ibn Batuta (III. 47) ; by the Turkish Admiral Sidi 'Ali (/. As,^ ser. i, tom. ix. 72; and J. A. S. B. V. 463); by Sharifuddin (P. de la Croix, 1. 379, II. 417-18; in the famous Sindian Romeo^nd-Juliet tale of Sassi and PanniSn {Eiiioi, I. 333) ; by Pietro della Valle (I. 724, H. 35^); by Sir F. Goldsmid (J. ^. A, S,, n.s., I. ^%) ] and see for other examples,/. A, S. B, VII. 298, 305, 308 ; VIII. 764; XIV. 158; XVII. pt iL 559; XX. 262, 263.
The argument that Mekran was not a province of India only amounts to saying that Polo has made a mistake. But the fact is that it often a^tfj reckoned to belong to India, from ancient down to comparatively modem times. Pliny says : " Many indeed do not reckon the Indus to be the western boundary of India, but include in that term also four satrapies on this side the river, the Gedrosi, the Arachoti, the Arii, and the Parapomisadae (i, e, Mekran, Kandahar, Herat, and Kabul) .... whilst others class all these together under the name of Ariana" (VI. 23). Arachosia, according to Isidore of Charax, was termed by the Parthians " White India." Aelian calls Gedrosia a part of India {^Hist AnimaL XVII. 6). In the 6th century the Nestorian Patriarch Jesu- jabus, as we have seen {supra, ch. xxii. note 1), considered all to be India from the coast of Persia, /. e, of Fars, beginning from near the Gulf. According to Ibn Khurdddbah the boundary between Persia and India was seven days' sail from Hormuz and eight from Daibul, or less than halfway from the mouth of the Gulf to the Indus. (/. As., ser. 6, tom. v. 283). Beladhori speaks of the Arabs in early expeditions as invading Indian territory about the Lake of Sijistan ; and Istakhri represents this latter country as bounded on the north zxiA partly on the westhy portions of India. Kabul was still reckoned in India. Chach, the last Hindu king of Sind but one, is related to have marched through Mekrdn to a river which formed the limit between Mekrdn and Kermdn. On its banks he planted date-trees, and set up a monument which bore : " This was the boundary of Hind in the time of Chach, the son of Siliij, the son of Basdbas." In the Geography of Bakui we find it stated
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394 MARCO POLO. Book III.
that " Hind is a great country which begins at the province of Mekran." {N, and E. II. 54.) In the map of Marino Sanuto India begins from Hormuz ; and it is plain from what Polo says in quitting that city that he considered the next step from it south-eastward would have taken him to India (supra, I. p. 103).
We may add a Romance definition of India from King Alisaunder : —
" Lordynges, also I fynde At Alede begynneth Ynde: For sothe ich wote it stretcheth farest Of alle the Londcs in the Est ; And oth the South half sikerlyk To the Sec taketh of Afryk ; And the north half to a Mountayne That is yclep^d Caucasayne."— L. 4824-4831.
It is probable that Polo merely coasted Mekran ; he seems to know nothing of the Indus, and what he says of Mekran is vague.
Note 2. — As Marco now winds up his detail of the Indian coast, it is proper to try to throw some light on his partial derangement of its geography. In the following columns the first shows the r^r/z/ geographical order from east to west of the Indian provinces as named by Polo, and the second shows the order as he puts them. The Italic names are brief and general identifications.
Maabar, including
MELIBARiJ
including (
GUZERAT, '
or Lar, including
It is difficult to suppose that the fleet canying the bride of Arghun went out of its way to Maabar, St Thomas's, and Telingana. And on the other hand, what is said in chapter xxiiL on Comari, about tbe North Star not having been visible since they approached the Lesser Java, would have been grossly inaccurate if in the interval the travellers had been north as far as Madras and Motupalle. That passage suggests to me strongly that Comari was the first Indian land made by the fleet on arriving from the Archipelago (exclusive perhaps of Ceylon). Note
|
Real order. |
PolSs order. |
|
|
I. ^MXiiXxiTelingana), |
I. Mutfili. |
|
|
2. St. Thomas's (Madras), |
2. St Thomas's (Lar, |
|
|
3. Maabar Proper, Kingdom |
Maabar, including |
west of do.). |
|
of Sonder Bandi ( Tanjore), |
3. Maabar proper, or |
|
|
4. QTCxX^Tinmvelly), |
Soli. |
|
|
5. Comari (C. Comorin). |
4. Cail. |
|
|
6. (ZoAyxm. {Travancore). |
5. Coilum. |
|
|
7. Eli {Cananore). |
6. ComarL |
|
|
8. Tzxi?i {Bombay), |
7. Eli. |
|
|
9. Canbaet (CViOT^). |
8. (Melibar). |
|
|
10. Semenat (.S"tfiw«aM). |
9 (Gozurat) . |
|
|
II. Kcsmacoran (i1/if/&rfl»). |
] ] |
to. Tana. [I. Canbaet [2. Semenat [3. KesmacoraiL |
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Chap. XXX. THE MALE AND FEMALE ISLANDS. 395
then that the position of Eli is marked by its distance of 300 miles from Comari, evidently indicating that this was a run made by the traveller on some occasion without an intermediate stoppage. Tana, Cambay, Somnath, would follow naturally as points of call.
In Polo's order, again, the positions of Comari and Coilum are trans- posed, whilst Melibar is introduced as if it were a coimtry westward (as Polo views it, northward we should say)* of Coilum and Eli, instead of including them, and Gozurat is introduced as a country lying eastward (or southward, as we should say) of Tana, Cambaet, and Semenat, in- stead of including them, or at least the two latter. Moreover, he names no cities in connexion with those two countries.
The following hypothesis, really not a complex one, is the most probable that I can suggest to account for these confusions.
I conceive, then, that Cape Comorin (Comari) was the first Indian land made by the fleet on the homeward voyage, and that Hili, Tana, Cambay, Somnath, were touched at successively as it proceeded towards Persia.
I conceive that in a former voyage to India on the Great Kaan's business Marco had visited Maabar and Kaulam, and gained partly from actual visits and partly from information the substance of the notices he gives us of Telingana and St Thomas's on the one side and of Malabar and Guzerat on the other, and that in combining into one series the results of the information acquired on two different voyages he failed rightly to co-ordinate the material, and thus those dislocations which we have noticed occurred, as they very easily might, in days when maps had practically no existence ; to say nothing of the accidents of dictation.
The expression in this passige for " the cities that lie in the interior," is in the G. T. " cdz qe sunt en fra terres ;" see I., 45. Pauthier's text has ** celles qui sont en ferme terre," which is nonsense here.
CHAPTER XXXI.
DiSCOURSETH OF THE TWO ISLANDS CALLED MALE AND FEMALE, AND WHY THEY ARE SO CALLED.
When you leave this Kingdom of Kesmacoran, urhich is on the mainland, you go by sea some 500 miles towards the south; and then you find the two Islands, Male and Female, lying about 30 miles distant from one another. The people are all baptized Christians, but maintain the
* Abulfeda's orientation is the same as Polo's.
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396 MARCO POLO. Book III.
ordinances of the Old Testament ; thus when their wives are with child they never go near them till their confine- ment, or for forty days thereafter.
In the Island however which is called Male, dwell the men alone, without their wives or any other women. Every year when the month of March arrives the men all set out for the other Island, and tarry there for three months, to wit, March, April, May, dwelling with their wives for that space. At the end of those three months they return to their own Island, and pursue their husbandry and trade for the other nine months.
They find on this Island very fine ambergris. They live on flesh and milk and rice. They are capital fisher- men, and catch a great quantity of fine large sea-fish, and these they dry, so that all the year they have plenty of food, and also enough to sell to the traders who go thither. They have no chief except a bishop, who is subject to the archbishop of another Island, of which we shall presently speak, called Scotra. They have also a peculiar language.
As for the children which their wives bear to them, if they be girls they abide with their mothers; but if they be boys the mothers bring them up till they arc fourteen, and then send them to the fethers. Such is the custom of these two Islands. The wives do nothing but nurse their children and gather such fruits as their Island produces ; for their husbands do furnish them with all necessaries.'
Note 1. — It is not perhaps of much use to seek a serious identifi- cation of the locality of these Islands, or, as Marsden has done, to rationalize the fable. It ran from time immemorial, and as nobody ever found the Islands, their locality shifted with the horizon, though the legend long hung about Socotra and its vicinity. Coronelli's Atlas (Venice, 1696) identifies these islands with those called Abdul Kurincar Cape Gardafui, and the same notion finds favour with Marsden. No islands indeed exist in the position indicated by Polo if we look to his direction " south of Kesmacoran," but if we take his indication of " half way between Mekran and Socotra," the Kuria Muria Islands on the
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Chap. XXXI. THE MALE AND FEMALE ISLANDS. 397
Arabian coast, in which M. Pauthier longs to trace these veritable Male and Female Isles, will be nearer than any others. Marco's statement that they had a bishop subject to the metropolitan of Socotra certainly looks as if certain concrete islands had been associated with the tale. Friar Jordanus (p. 44) also places them between India the Greater and India Tertia (/. e, with him Eastern Africa). Conti locates them not more than five miles from Socotra, and yet 100 miles distant from one another. "Sometimes the men pass over to the women, and sometimes the women pass over to the men, and each return to their own respective island before the expiration of six months. Those who remain on the island of the others beyond this fatal period die immediately" (p. 21). Fra Mauro places the islands to the south of Zanzibar and gives them the names of Mangla and Nebila, One is curious to know whence came these names, one of which seems to be Sanskrit, the other (also in Sanudo's map) Arabic; {Nabiiah^ Ar., "Beautiful;" Mangala, Sansk., " Fortunate").
A savour of the story survived to the time of the Portuguese dis- coveries, and it had by that time attached itself to Socotra. {De Barros^ Dec. II. Liv. i. cap. 3 ; Bartoii, H. della Comp, di GesUy Asia, I. p. 37 ; F. Vincenzo, p. 443.)
The story was, I imagine, a mere ramification of the ancient and wide-spread fable of the Amazons, and is substantially the same that Palladius tells of the Brahmans ; how the men lived on one side of the Ganges and the women on the other. The husbands visited their wives for 40 days only in June, July, and August, " those being their cold months, as the sun was then to the north." And when a wife had once borne a child the husband returned no more. (Muller^s Ps, CallistJu 105.) The Mahibhirata celebrates the Amazon country of Rdnd Para- mitd, where the regulations were much as in Polo's islands, only male children were put to death, and men if they overstayed a month. (Whfder's India, I. 400.)
Hwen T'sang's version of the legend agrees with Marco's in placing the Woman's Island to the south of Persia. It was called the Kingdom of Western Women, There were none but women to be seen. It was under /i?//« (the Byzantine Empire), and the ruler thereof sent hus- bands every year ; if boys were born, the law prohibited their being brought up. {Vie ei Voyages,^, 268.) Alexander, in Ferddsi's poem, visits the City of Women on an island in the sea, where no man was allowed.
The Chinese accounts, dating from the 5th century, of a remote Eastern Land called Fusang, which Neumann fancied to have been Mexico, mention that to the east of that region again there was a Woman's Island, with the usual particulars. {Lassen, IV. 751.) Oddly enough Columbus heard the same story of an island called Matityna or Matinino (apparently Martinique) which he sighted on his second voyage. The Indians on board *' asserted that it had no inhabitants but women.
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398 MARCO POLO. Book III.
who at a certain time of the year were visited by the Cannibals (Caribs) ; if the children born were boys they were brought up and sent to their fathers, if girls they were retained by the mothers. They reported also that these women had certain subterraneans caverns in which they took refuge if any one went thither except at the estabHshed season," &c. {P, Martyr in Ramusio^ III. 3 v, and see 85.) Similar Amazons are placed by Adam of Bremen on the Baltic shores, a story there supposed to have originated in a confusion between Gwenland, i.e, Finland, and a land of Cwens or Women.
Mendoza heard of the like in the vicinity of Japan (perhaps the real Fusang story), though he opines judiciously that " this is very doubtfull to be beleeved, although I have bin certified by religious men that have talked with persons that within these two yeares have beene at the saide ilands, and have seene the saide women." {H, of China^ II. 301.) Lane quotes a like tale about a horde of Cossacks whose wives were said to live apart on certain islands in the Dnieper {Arab, Nights^ 1859, III. 479). The same story is related by a missionary in the Lettres £difiante$ of certain unknown islands supposed to lie south of the Marian group. Pauthier, from whom I derive this last instance, draws the conclusion : " On voit que le r^cit de Marc Pol est loin d'etre imaginaire." Mine from the premises would be different I
Sometimes the fable took another form ; in which the women are entirely isolated, as in that which Mela quotes from Hanno (IIL 9). So with the Isle of Women which Kazwini and Bakui place to the south of China. They became enceintes by the Wind, or by eating a particular fruit, or, as in a Chinese edition related by Magaillans, by looking at their own faces in a well ! The like fable is localized by the Malays in the island of Engano off Sumatra, and was related to Pigafetta of an island under Great Java called Ocoloro, perhaps the same.
{Magail, 76; Gildem. 196; N, a. Ex, II. 398; Pigafetta, 173; Marsdetis Sumatra, ist ed. p. 264.)
CHAPTER XXXII.
Concerning the Island of Scotra.
When you leave those two Islands and go about 500 miles further towards the south, then you come to an Island called Scotra. The people are all baptized Christians; and they have an Archbishop. They have a great deal of ambergris ; and plenty also of cotton stuffi and other
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Chap. XXXII. THE ISLAND OF SCOTRA. 399
merchandize; especially great quantities of salt fish of a large and excellent kind. They also eat flesh and milk and rice, for that is their only kind of corn ; and they all go naked like the other Indians.
[The ambergris comes from the stomach of the whale, and as it is a great object of trade, the people contrive to take the whales with barbed iron darts, which, once they are fixed in the body, cannot come out again, A long cord is attached to this end, to that a small buoy which floats on the surface, so that when the whale dies they know where to find it. They then draw the body ashore and extract the ambergris from the stomach and the oil from the head.']
There is a great deal of trade there, for many ships come from all quarters with goods to sell to the natives. The merchants also purchase gold there, by which they make a great profit ; and all the vessels bound for Aden touch at this Island.
Their Archbishop has nothing to do with the Pope of Rome, but is subject to the great Archbishop who lives at Baudas. He rules over the Bishop of that Island, and over many other Bishops in those regions of the world, just as our Pope does in these."
A multitude of corsairs frequent the Island ; they come there and encamp and put up their plunder to sale ; and this they do to good profit, for the Christians of the Island purchase it, knowing well that it is Saracen or Pagan gear."*
And you must know that in this Island there are the best enchanters in the world. It is true that their Arch- bishop forbids the practice to the best of his ability ; but 'tis all to no purpose, for they insist that their forefathers followed it, and so must they also. I will give you a sample of their enchantments. Thus, if a ship be sailing past with a fair wind and a strong, they will raise a contrary wind and compel her to turn back. In fact they make the wind blow as they list, and produce great tempests and
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400 MARCO POLO. Book III.
disasters ; and other such sorceries they perforin, which it will be better to say nothing about in our Book.*
Note 1. — Mr. Blyth appears to consider that the only whale met with now-a-days in the Indian Sea north of the line is a great Rorqual or Balaenopteray to which he gives the specific name of Indica (see/. A, S, B, XXVIII. 481). The text, however (from Ramusio), clearly points to the Spermaceti whale ; and Maury's Whale-Chart consists with this.
" The best ambergris," says Mas'udi, " is found on the islands and coasts of the Sea of Zinj (Eastern Airica) ; it is round, of a pale blue, and sometimes as big as an ostrich ^gg, . . . These are morsels which have been swallowed by the fish called AwdL When the sea is much agitated it casts up fragments of amber almost like lumps of rock, and the fish swallowing these is choked thereby, and floats on the surface. The men of Zinj, or wherever it be, then come in their canoes, and fell on the creature with harpoons and cables, draw it ashore, cut it up, and extract the ambergris" (I. 134).
Kazwini speaks of whales as often imprisoned by the ebb tide in the channels about Basra. cThe people harpooned them, and got much oil out of the hrain^ which they used for lamps and smearing their ships. This also is clearly the sperm whale. {Ethk^ p. 268.)
After having been long doubted, scientific opinion seems to have come back to the opinion that ambergris is an excretion from the whale. ** Ambergris is a morbid secretion in the intestines of the cachalot, deriving its origin either from the stomach or biliary ducts, and allied in its nature to gall-stones, . . . whilst the masses found floating on the sea are those that have been voided by the whale, or liberated from the dead animal by the process of putrefaction." (Bennett^ Whaling Voyage Round the Globe^ 1840, II. 326.)
Note 2. — Scotra probably represented the usual pronunciation of the name Socotra, which has been hypothetically traced to a Sanskrit original, Dvlpa-Sukhadhdra^ " the Island Abode of Bliss," firom which (contracted Diuskadra) the Greeks made " the island of Dioscorides!'
So much painful interest attaches to the history of a people once Christian, but now degenerated almost to savagery, that some detail may be permitted on this subject.
The Periplus calls the island very large, but desolate ; .... the inhabitants were few, and dwelt on the north side. They were of foreign origin, being a mixture of Arabs, Indians, and Greeks, who had come thither in search of gain. . . , The island was under the king of the Incense Country. . . . Traders came from Muza (near Mocha) and sometimes from Limyrica and Barygaza (Malabar and Guzerat), bringing rice, wheat, and Indian muslins, with female slaves, which had a ready
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sale. Cosmas (6lh century) says there was in the island a bishop, appointed from Persia. The inhabitants spoke Greek, having been originally settled there by the Ptolemies. ** There are clergy there also, ordained and sent from Persia to minister among the people of the island, and a multitude of Christians. We sailed past the island, but did not land. I met, however, with people from it who were on their way to Ethiopia, and they spoke Greek."
The ecclesiastical historian Nicephorus Callistus seems to allude to the people of Socotra, when he says that among the nations visited by the missionary Theophilus, in the time of Constantius, were " the Assy- rians on the verge of the outer ocean towards the East .... whom Alexander the Great, after driving them from Syria, sent thither to settle, and to this day they keep their mother tongue, though all of the blackest, through the power of the sun's rays." The Arab voyagers of the 9th century say that the island was colonized with Greeks by Alexander the Great, in order to promote the culture of the Socotrine aloes ; when the other Greeks adopted Christianity these did likewise, and they had con- tinued to retain their profession of it. The colonizing by Alexander is probably a fable, but invented to account for facts.
In the list of the metropolitan sees of the Nestorian Church we find one called Kotrobah^ which is supposed to stand for Socotra. Accord- ing to Edrisi, Kotrobah was an island inhabited by Christians ; he speaks of Socotra separately, but no island suits his description of Kotrobah but Socotra itself; and I suspect that we have here geography in duplicate, no uncommon circumstance. There is an epistle extant from the Nestorian Patriarch Jesujabus (a.d. 650-660), ad Episcopos CcUarmsium^ which Assemani interprets of the Christians in Socotra and the adjacent coasts of Arabia (III. 133). Abulfeda says the people of Socotra were Nestorian Christians and pirates. Nicolo Conti, in the first half of the T5th century, spent two months on the island (Sechutera), He says it was for the most part inhabited by Nestorian Christians.
Some indications point rather to a connexion of the island's Chris- tianity with the Jacobite or Abyssinian Church. Thus they practised circumcision, as mentioned by Maffei in noticing the proceedings of Albuquerque at Socotra. De Barros calls them Jacobite Christians of the Abyssinian stock. Barbosa speaks of them as an olive-coloured people, Christian only in name, having neither baptism nor Christian knowledge, and having for many years lost all acquaintance with the Gospel. Andrea Corsali calls them Christian shepherds of Ethiopian race, like Abyssinians. They lived on dates, milk, and butter ; some rice was imported. They had churches like mosques, but with altars in Christian fashion.
When Francis Xavier visited the island there were still distinct traces of the Church. The people reverenced the cross, placing it on their altars, and hanging it round their necks. Every village had its minister, whom they called Kashis (Ar, for a Christian Presbyter), to whom they
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paid tithe. No man could read. The Kashls repeated prayers anti- phonetically in a forgotten tongue, which De Barros calls Chaldee, frequently scattering incense ; a word like AlUluia often recurred For bells they used wooden rattles. They assembled in their churches four times a day, and held St Thomas in great veneration. The Kashfses married, but were very abstemious. They had two Lents, and then fasted strictly from meat, milk, and fish.
The last ves'tiges of Christianity in Socotra, so far as we know, are those traced by P. Vincenzo, the Carmelite, who visited the island after the middle of the 17 th century. The people still retained a profession ot Christianity, but without any knowledge, and with a strange jumble of rites ; sacrificing to the moon ; circumcising ; abominating wine and pork. They had churches which they called Moquame (Ar, Maidm, '* Locus, Statio " ?), dark, low, and dirty, daily anointed with butter. On the altar was a cross and a candle. The cross was regarded with igno- rant reverence, and carried in processions. They assembled in their churches three times in the day, and three times in the night, and in their worship burned much incense, &c The priests were called Odamh, elected and consecrated by the people, and changed every year. Of baptism and other sacraments they had no knowledge.
There were two races : one, black with crisp hair ; the other, less black, of better aspect and with straight hair. Each family had a cave in which they deposited their dead. They cultivated a few pahns, and kept flocks ; had no money, no writing, and kept tale of their flocks by bags of stones. They often committed suicide in age, sickness, or defeat When rain failed they selected a victim by lot, and placing him within a circle addressed prayers to the moon. If without suc- cess they cut off* the poor wretch's hands. They had many who practised sorcery. The women were all called Maria, which the author regarded as a relic of Christianity ; this De Barros also notices a century earlier.
Now, not a trace of former Christianity can be discovered — ^unless it be in the name of one of the villages on the coast, CoUsseeah, which looks as if it faintly commemorated both the ancient religion and the ancient language (ckkXi/o-ml). The remains of one building, traditionally a place of worship, were shown to Wellsted ; he could find nothing to connect it with Christianity.
The social state of the people is much as Father Vincenzo described it; lower it could scarcely be. Mahomedanism is now the universal profession. The people of the interior are still of distinct race, with curly hair, Indian complexion, regular features. The coast people are a mongrel body, of Arab and other descent Probably in old times the case was similar, and the civilization and Greek may have been confined to the littoral foreigners. {Mullet's Geog. Gr, Minores^ I. p. 280-1 ; Relations, I. 139-140; Cathay, clxxi,^ ccxlv, 169; Conti, 20; Mqffd, lib. in. ; Biisching, IV. 278; Faria, L 117-118; Ram. I, £ i8i v. and
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292 ; JarriCy Thes, Rer. Indie, I. 108-9 \ -^- ^'^^- ^32, 442 , /, R, G. S. V. 129 seqq,)
Note 3. — As far back as the loth century Socotra was a noted haunt of pirates. Mas'udi says : " Socotra is one of the stations fre- quented by the Indian corsairs called Bawdrij\ which chase the Arab ships bound for India and China, just as the Greek galleys chase the Mussulmans in the sea of Riim along the coasts of Syria and Egypt " (III. 37). The Bawdrij were corsairs of Kach*h and Guzerat, so called from using a kind of war-vessel called Bdrja {Elliot^ I. 65). Ibn Batuta tells a story of a friend of his, the Shaikh Sa'fd, superior of a convent at Mecca, who had been to India and got large presents at the court of DehlL With a comrade called Hajji Washl, who was also carrying a large sum to buy horses, " when they arrived at the island of Socotra .... they were attacked by Indian corsairs with a great number of vessels. . . . The corsairs took everything out of the ship, and then left it to the crew with its tackle, so that they were able to reach Aden." Ibn Batuta's remark on this illustrates what Polo has said of the Malabar pirates, in chap. xxv. supra: "The custom of these pirates is not to kill or drown anybody when the actual fighting is over. They take all the property of the passengers, and then let them go whither they will with their vessel" (I. 362-3).
Note 4. — ^We have seen that P. Vincenzo alludes to the sorceries of the people; and De Barros also speaks of \}[\q feiticeria or witchcraft by which the women drew ships to the island, and did other marvels (u. s.).
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Concerning the Island of Madeigascar.
Madeigascar is an Island towards the south, about a thousand miles from Scotra. The people are all Saracens, adoring Mahommet. They have four Esheks, u e. four Elders, who are said to govern the whole Island. And you must know that it is a most noble and beautiful Island, and one of the greatest in the world, for it is about 4000 miles in compass. The people live by trade and handi- crafts.
In this Island, and in another beyond it called Zan- GHiBAR, about which we shall tell you afterwards, there are
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more elephants than in any country in the world. The amount of traffic in elephants' teeth in these two Islands is something astonishing.
In this Island they eat no flesh but that of camels; and of these they kill an incredible number daily. They say it is the best and wholesomest of all flesh ; and so they eat of it all the year round/
They have in this Island many trees of red sanders, of excellent quality ; in fact, all their forests consist of it/ They have also a quantity of ambergris, for whales are abundant in that sea, and they catch numbers of them; and so are Oil-heads^ which are a huge kind of fish, which also produce ambergris like the whale.^ There are numbers of leopards, bears, and lions in the country, and other wild beasts in abundance. Many traders, and many ships go thither with cloths of gold and silk, and many other kinds of goods, and drive a profitable trade.
You must know that this Island lies so far south that ships cannot go further south or visit other Islands in that direction, except this one, and that other of which we have to tell you, called Zanghibar. This is because the sea- current runs so strong towards the south that the ships which should attempt it never would get back ag^n. Indeed, the ships of Maabar which visit this Island of Madeigascar, and that other of Zanghibar, arrive thither with marvellous speed, for great as the distance is they accomplish it in 20 days, whilst the return voyage takes them more than 3 months. This (I say) is because of the strong current running south, which continues with such singular force and in the same direction at all seasons.^
'Tis said that in those other Islands to the south, which the ships are unable to visit because this strong current prevents their return, is found the bird Gryphon^ which appears there at certain seasons. The description given of it is however entirely different fi"om what our stories and pictures make it. For persons who had been there and
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had seen it told Messer Marco Polo that it was for all the world like* an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size ; so big in fact that its wings covered an extent of 30 paces, and its quills were 1 2 paces long, and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces ; having so killed him the bird gryphon swoops down on him and eats him at leisure. The people of those isles call the bird Ruc^ and it has no other name.^ So I wot not if this be the real gryphon, or if there be another manner of bird as great. But this I can tell you for certain, that they are not half lion and half bird as our stories do relate ; but enormous as they be they are fashioned just like an eagle.
The Great Kaan sent to those parts to enquire about these curious matters, and the story was told by those who went thither. He also sent to procure the release of an envoy of his who had been despatched thither, and had been detained ; so both those envoys had many wonderful things to tell the Great Kaan about those strange islands, and about the birds I have mentioned. [They brought (as I heard) to the Great Kaan a feather of the said Rue, which was stated to measure 90 spans, whilst the quill part was two palms in circumference, a marvellous object! The Great Kaan was delighted with it, and gave great presents to those who brought it.^] They also brought two boar's tusks, which weighed more than 14 lbs. a piece; and you may gather how big the boar must have been that had teeth like that ! They related indeed that there were some of those boars as big as a great buffalo. There are also numbers of giraffes and wild asses ; and in fact a marvellous number of wild beasts of strange aspect.^
Note 1. — Marco is, I believe, the first writer, European or Asiatic, who unambiguously speaks of Madagascar; but his information about it
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was very incorrect in many particulars. There are no elephants nor camels in the island, nor any leopards, bears, or lions.
Indeed, I have no doubt that Marco, combining information from diflferent sources, made some confusion between Makdashau (Magadoxo) and Madagascar^ and that particulars belonging to both are mixed up here. This accounts for Zanghibar being placed entirely beyond Mada- gascar, for the entirely Mahomedan character given to the population, for the hippopotamus-teeth and staple trade in ivory, as well for the lions, elephants, and other beasts. But above all the camel-killing indi- cates Suraili Land and Magadoxo as the real locality of part of the information. Says Ibn Batuta : " After leaving Zaila we sailed on the sea for 15 days, and arrived at Makdashau, an extremely large town. The natives keep camels in great numbers, and they slaughter several hundreds daily ^ (II. 181). The slaughter of camels for food is still a Sumili practice. (See/. R, G, S, VL 28, and XIX. 55.) Perhaps the Sliaikhs {Esceqe) also belong to the same quarter, for the Arab traveller says that the Sultan of Makdashau had no higher title than Shaikh (183) ; and Brava, a neighbouring settlement, was governed by 12 shaikhs {De Barros, I. viii. 4). Indeed, this kind of local oUgarchy still prevails on that coast.
We may add that both Makdashau and Brava are briefly described in the Annals of the Ming Dynasty. The former Mu-ku-tu-su, lies on the sea, 20 days from Siao-Kolan (Quilon?), a barren mountainous country of wide extent, where it sometimes does not rain for years. In 1427, a mission came from this place to China. Fu-lawa (Brava, pro- perly Bariwa) adjoins the former, and is also on the sea. It produces olibanum, myrrh, and ambergris ; and among animals elephants, camels, rhinoceroses, spotted animals Hke asses &c.*
It is, however, true that there are traces of a considerable amount of ancient Arab colonization on the shores of Madagascar. Arab descent is ascribed to a class of the people of the province of Matitdnana on the east coast, in lat 2i°-23° south, and the Arabic writing is in use there. The people of the St Mary's Isle of our maps off the east coast, in lat ly*^, also call themselves the children of Ibrahim, and the island Nusi- Ibrahim, And on the north-west coast, at Bambeluka Bay, Capt Owen found a large Arab population, whose forefathers had been settled there from time immemorial. The number of tombs here and in Magambo Bay showed that the Arab population had once been much greater. The government of this settlement, till conquered by Radama, was vested in three persons ; one a Malagash, the second an Arab, the third as guardian of strangers; a fact also suggestive of Polo's four sheikhs {Ellis y I. 131 ; Owen, II. 102, 132. See also Sonneraty II. 56). Though the Arabs were in the habit of navigating to Sofala, in about
* Bretschneider Ofi the Kmnvhuii^e possessed Ity the Attcient Chinese of the Arabs ^ &c. London, 1 87 1, p. 21.
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Chap. XXXIII. THE ISLAND OF MADEIGASCAR. 407
lat 20° south, in the time of Mas*udi (beginning of loth century), and must have then known Madagascar, there is no intelligible indication of it in any of their geographies that have been translated.*
Note 2. — There is, or used to be, a trade in sandal-wood from Madagascar. (See Owen, II. 99.) In the map of S. Lorenzo (or Madagascar) in the Isole of Porcacchi (1576), a map evidently founded on fact, I observe near the middle of the Island : quivi sono boschi di sandari rossi.
Note 3. — "The coast of this province" (Ivongo, the N.E. of the Island) " abounds with whales, and during a certain period of the year Antongil Bay is a favourite resort for whalers of all nations. The inha- bitants of Titingue are remarkably expert in spearing the whales from their slight canoes." (Lloyd in J, R. G, S. XX. 56.) A description of the whale-catching process practised by the Islanders of St. Mary's, or Nusi Ibrahim, is given in the Quinta Pars Indiae Orientalis of De Bry, p. 9. Owen gives a similar account (I. 170).
The word which I have rendered Oil-heads is Capdoilles or Capdols, representing Capidoglio^ the appropriate name still apphed in Italy to the Spermaceti whale. The Vocab, ItaL Univ. quotes Ariosto (VII. 36) : —
** / Capidogli co^ vecchi marini
Vengon turbati dal tor pigro sonno.^^
The Spermaceti-whale is described under this name by Rondeletius, but from his cut it is clear he had not seen the animal.
Note 4. — De Barros, after describing the dangers of the Channel of Mozambique, adds : " And as the Moors of this coast of Zanguebar make their voyages in ships and sambuks sewn with coir, instead of being nailed like ours, and thus strong enough to bear the force of the cold seas of the region about the Cape of Good Hope, .... they never dared to attempt the exploration of the regions to the westward of the Cape of Currents, although they greatly desired to do so " (Dec. I. viiL 4; and see also IV. i. 12). Kazwini says of the Ocean, quoting Al Biruni : " Then it extends to the sea known as that of Berbera, and stretches from Aden to the furthest extremity of Zanjibar ; beyond this goes no vessel on account of the great current Then it extends to what are called the Mountains of the Moon, whence spring the sources of the Nile of Egypt, and thence to Western Sudan, to the Spanish Countries and the (Western) Ocean." There has been recent controversy
* Mas'udi speaks of an island Kanbdldy well -cultivated and populous, one or two days from the Zinj coast, and the object of voyages from Oman, from which it was about 500 parasangs distant. It was conquered by the Arabs, who captured the whole Zinj population of the island, about the beginning of the Abasside dynasty (circa A.D. 750). Barbier de Meynard thinks this may be Madagascar. I suspect it rather to be Pemba (see Prairies d'Or, I. 205, 232, and IIT. 31.)
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between Capt. A. D. Taylor and Commodore Jansen of the Dutch navy, regarding the Mozambique currents, and (incidentally) Polo's accuracy. The currents in the Mozambique channel vary with the monsoons, but from Cape Corrientes southward along the coast runs the permanent LaguUas current, and Polo*s statement requires but little correction. {Ethk^ p. 214-15; see also Barbosa in Ram, I. 288; Owen, I. 269 ; Stanleys Correa^ p. 261 ; /. R. G, S. II. 91 ; Fra Maun? in Zur/a, p. 61 ; see also Reinaucfs Abulfeda, voL L p. 15-16; and Ocean Highways^ August to Nov. 1873.)
Note 5. — The fable of the Rukh was old and widely spread, like that of the Male and Female Islands, and, just as in that case, one accidental circumstance or another would give it a local habitation, now here now there. The Garuda of the Hindus, the Simurgh of the old
The Rukh (from Lane's 'Arabian Nights'), after a Persian drawing.
Persians, the 'Angka of the Arabs, the Bar Yuchre of the Rabbinical legends, the Gryps of the Greeks, were probably all versions of the same original fable.
Bochart quotes a bitter Arabic proverb which says, " Good-Faith, the Ghul, and the Gryphon (Angka) are three names of things that exist nowhere." And Mas'udi, after having said that whatever country he visited he always found that the people believed these monstrous creatures to exist in regions as remote as possible from their own, observes : " It is not that our reason absolutely rejects the possibility of
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the existence of the Nesnds (see vol. i. p. 206) or of the 'Angka^ and other beings of that rare and wondrous order ; for there is nothing in their existence incompatible with the Divine Power ; but we decline to believe in them because their existence has not been manifested to us on any irrefragable authority."
The circumstance which for the time localized the Rukh in the direction of Madagascar was perhaps some rumour of the great fossil Aepyomis and its colossal eggs, found in that island. According to Geoffroy-St Hilaire, the Malagashes assert that the bird which laid those great eggs still exists, that it has an immense power of flight, and preys upon the greater quadrupeds. Indeed the continued existence of the bird has been alleged as late as 1861 and 1863 1
On the great map of Fra Mauro (1459) near the extreme point of Africa which he calls Cavo de Diab^ and which is suggestive of the Cape of Good Hope, but was really perhaps Cape Corrientes, there is a rubric inscribed with the following remarkable story : " About the year of Our Lord 1420 a ship or junk of India in crossing the Indian Sea was driven by way of the Islands of Men and Women beyond the Cape of Diab, and carried between the Green Islands and tiie Darkness in a westerly and south-westerly direction for 40 days, without seeing any- thing but sky and sea, during which time they made to the best of their judgment 2000 miles. The gale then ceasing they turned back, and were 70 days in getting to the aforesaid Cape Diab. The ship having touched on the coast to supply its wants the mariners beheld there the egg of a certain bird called Chrocho^ which egg was as big as a butt* And the bigness of the bird is such that between the extremities of the wings is said to be 60 paces. They say too that it carries away an elephant or any other great animal with the greatest ease, and does great injury to the inhabitants of the country, and is most rapid in its flight"
G.-St Hilaire considered the Aepyornis to be of the Ostrich family ; Prince C. Buonaparte classed it with the Inepti or Dodos ; Duvemay of Valenciennes with aquatic birds ! There was clearly therefore room for difference of opinion, and Professor Bianconi of Bologna, who has written much on the subject, concludes that it was most probably a bird of the vulture family. This would go far, he urges, to justify Polo's account of the Rue as a bird of prey, though the story of its lifting any large animal could have had no foundation, as the feet of the vulture kind are unfit for such efforts. Humboldt describes the habit of the condor of the Andes as* that of worrying, wearying, and frightening its four-footed prey until it drops ; sometimes the condor drives its victim over a precipice.
* *'Dela grandgza de una bota d'anfora:' The lowest estimate that I find of the Venetian anfora makes it equal to about 108 imperial gallons, a little less than the English butt. This seems intended. The ancient amphora would be more reasonable, being only 5 "66 gallons.
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Bianconi concludes that on the same scale of proportion as the con- dor's, the great quills of the Aepyomis would be about lo feet long, and the spread of the wings about 32 feet, whilst the height of the bird would be at least four times that of the condor. These are indeed littie more than conjectures. And I must add that in Professor Owen's opinion there is no reasonable doubt that tlie Aepyomis was a bird allied to the Ostriches.
We gave, in the first edition of this work, a drawing of the great Aepyomis egg in the British Museum of its tme size, as the nearest approach we could make to an illustration of the Rukh from nature. The actual content of this ^g% will be about 2*35 gallons, which may be compared with Fra Mauro's anfora ! Except in this matter of size, his story of the ship and the tgg may be true.
A passage from Temple's Travels in Pern has been quoted as ex- hibiting exaggeration in the description of the condor surpassing any- thing that can be laid to Polo's charge here ; but that is, in fact, only somewhat heavy banter directed against our traveller's own narrative. (See Travels in Various Farts of Peru, 1830, II. 414-417.)
Recently fossil bones have been found in New Zealand which seem to bring us a step nearer to the realization of the Rukh. Dr. Haast discovered in a swamp at Glenmark in the Province of Otago, along with remains of the Dinornis or Moa, some bones (femur, ungual phalanges, and rib) of a gigantic bird which he pronounces to be a bird of prey, apparently allied to the Harriers, and calls Harpagomis, He supposes it to have preyed upon the Moa, and as that fowl is calculated to have been 10 feet and upwards in height, we are not so very far from the elephant-devouring Rukh. (See Comptes Kmdtis^ Ac, des Sciences 1872, p. 1782 ; and Ibis^ Oct 1872, p. 433.) This discovery may possibly throw a new light on the traditions of the New Zealanders. For Professor Owen, in first describing the Dinornis in 1839, mentioned that the natives had a tradition that the bones belonged to a bird of the eagle kind, (see Eng. Cyc, Nat Hist, sub v. Dinornis), And Sir Geo. Grey appears to have read a paper, 23rd Oct 1872,* which was the description by a Maori of the Hokiol, an extinct gigantic bird of prey of which that people have traditions come down from their ancestors, said to have been a black hawk of great size, as large as the Moa.
Sindbad's adventures with the Rukh are too well known for quo- tation. A variety of stories of the same tenor hitherto unpublished, have been collected by M. Marcel de Vic from an Arabic work of the loth century on the * Marvels of Hind,' by ah author who professes only to repeat the narratives of merchants and mariners whom he had questioned A specimen of these will be found under note 6. The story takes a peculiar form in the Travels of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela. He heard that when ships were in danger of being lost in the
• The friend who noted this for me, omitted to name the Society.
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stormy sea that led to China the sailors were wont to sew themselves up in hides, and so when cast upon the surface they were snatched up by great eagles called gryphons, which carried their supposed prey ashore, &C, It is curious that this very story occurs in a Latin poem stated to be at least as old as the beginning of the 13th century, which relates the romantic adventures of a certain Duke Ernest of Bavaria ; whilst the story embodies more than one other adventure belonging to the History of Sindbad.* The Duke and his comrades, na\dgating in some unknown ramification of the Euxine, fall within the fatal attraction of the Magnet Mountain. Hurried by this augmenting force, their ship is described as crashing through the rotten forest of masts already drawn to their doom : —
•* Et ferit impulsus majoris verbere montem Quam si diplosas impingat macbina turres."
There they starve, and the dead are deposited on the lofty poop to be carried away by the daily visits of the gryphons : —
" Quae grifae membra leonis
Et pennas aquilae simulantes unguibus atris Tollentes mlseranda suis dant prandia puUis."
When only the Duke and six others survive, the wisest of the party suggests the scheme which Rabbi Benjamin has related : —
** Quaeramus tergora, et armis
Vestiti prius, optatis volvamur in illis, Ut nos tollentes mentita cadavera Grifae PuUis objiciant, a queis facientibas armis Et cute dissuta, nos, si volet, Ille Deorum Optimus eripiet."
Which scheme is successfully carried out. The wanderers then make a raft on which they embark on a river which plunges mto a cavern in the heart of a mountain ; and after a time they emerge in the country of Arimaspia inhabited by the Cyclopes ; and so on. The Gryphon story also appears in the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, as well as in the tale called * Hasan of el-Basrah* in Lane's Version of the Arabian Nights.
It is in the China Seas that Ibn Batuta beheld the Rukh, first like a mountain in the sea where no mountain should be, and then " when the sun rose," says he, " we saw the mountain aloft in the air, and the clear sky between it and the sea. We were in astonishment at this, and I observed that the sailors were weeping and bidding each other adieu, so I called out, 'What is the matter?' They replied, * What we took for
♦ I got the indication of this poem, I think, in Bochart. But I have since observed that its coincidences with Sindbad are briefly noticed by Mr. Lane (ed. 1859, III. 78) from an article in the * Foreign Quarterly Review.'
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a mountain is " the Rukh." If it sees us, it will send us to destruction.' It was then some lo miles from the junk. But God Almighty was gracious unto us, and sent us a fair wind, which turned us from the direction in which the Rukh was ; so we did not see him well enough to take cognizance of his real shape." In this story we have evidently a case of abnormal refraction, causing an island to appear suspended in the air.*
The Archipelago was perhaps the Intimate habitat of the Rukh, before circumstances localized it in the direction of Madagascar. In the Indian Sea, says Kazwini, is a bird of size so vast that when it is dead men take the half of its bill and make a ship of it ! And there too Pigafetta heard of this bird, under its Hindu name of Garuda, so big that it could fly away with an elephantt Kazwini also says that the 'Angka carries off an elephant as a hawk flies off with a mouse ; his flight is like the loud thunder. Whilom he dwelt near the haunts of men, and wrought them great mischief. But once on a time it had carried off a bride in her bridal array, and Hamdallah, the Prophet of those day^ invoked a curse upon the bird. Wherefore the Lord banished it to an inaccessible Island in the Encircling Ocean.
The Simurgh or *Angka, dwelling behind veils of Light and Darkness on the inaccessible summits of Caucasus, is in Persian m3rsticism an emblem of the Almighty.
In Northern Siberia the people have a firm belief in the former existence of birds of colossal size, suggested apparently by the fossil bones of great pachyderms which are so abundant there. And the com- pressed sabre-like horns of Rhinoceros tichorinus are constantly called, even by Russian merchants, birds' claws. Some of the native tribes fancy the vaulted skull of the same rhinoceros to be the bird's head, and the leg-bones of other pachyderms to be its quills ; and they relate that their forefathers used to fight wonderful battles with this bird. Erman ingeniously suggests that the Herodotean story of the Gryphons, from under which the Arimaspians drew their gold, grew out of the legends about these fossils.
I may add that the name of our rook in chess is taken from that of this same bird ; though first perverted from (Sansc) rath a chariot
Some eastern authors make the Rukh an enormous beast instead of a bird (seey! R, A, S, XIII. 64, and Eiiioty II. 203). A Spanish author of the 1 6th century seems to take the same view of the Gryphon, but he
♦ An intelligent writer, speaking of such effects on the same sea, says : *'The boats floating on a calm sea, at a distance from the ship, were magnified to a great size ; the crew standing up in them appeared as masts or trees, and their arms in motion as the wings of windmills ; whilst the surrounding islands (especially at their low and tapered extremities) seemed to be suspended in the air, some feet above the ocean's level" {Dennetts Whaling Voyage^ IL 71-72).
t An epithet of the Garttda is Gajaktirmdsin ** elephant-cum-tortoise-devourcr,*' because said to have swallowed both when engaged in a contest with each other.
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is prudently vague in describing it, which he does among the animals of Africa : " The Grifo which some call Camello pardal .... is called by the Arabs Yfrit (!). and is made just in that fashion in which we see it painted in pictures " {Martnol, Descripcion General de Affrica^ Granada, 1573, I. f. 30). The Zorafa is described as a different beast, which it certainly is !
{Bvchart, Ifierozoica, II. 852 seqq, ; Mas'udi, IV. 16 ; Mem, delP Acad, delP Instit di Bologna ^ III. 174 seqq.^ V. 112 seqq,; Zurla on Fra MaurOy p. 62 ; Lan^s Arabian Nights y Notes on Sindbad ; Benj, of Tudela^ p. 117 ; De Varia Fortuna Emesti Bavariae Duds, in Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum of Martene and Durand, voL III. col. 353 seqq,; I, B, IV. 305; Gildem, p. 220; Figafetta, p. 174; Major's Frince Henry, p. 311 ; Erman, II. 88 ; Garcin de Tossy, La Fotsie philos. 6^c,, chez les Fersans, 30 seqq,)
Note 6. — Sir Thomas Brown says that if any man will say he desires before belief to behold such a creature as is the Rukh in Paulus Venetus, for his own part he will not be angry with his incredulity. But M. Pauthier is of more liberal belief; for he considers that, after all, the dimensions which Marco assigns to the wings and quills of the Rukh are not so extravagant that we should refuse to admit their possibility.
Ludolf will furnish him with corroborative evidence, that of Padre Bolivar a Jesuit, as communicated to Th^v^not ; the assigned position will suit well enough with Marco's report : " The bird condor differs in size in different parts of the world. The greater species was seen by many of the Portuguese in their expedition against the Kingdoms of Sofala and Cuama and the Land of the Caffres from Monomotapa to the Kingdom of Angola and the Mountains of Teroa. In some countries I have myself seen the wing-feathers of that enormous fowl, although the bird itself I never beheld. The feather in question, as could be deduced from its form, was one of the middle ones, and it was 28 palms in length and three in breadth. The quill part, from the root to the extremity was 5 palms in length, of the thickness of an average man's arm, and of extreme strength and hardness. The fibres of the feather were equal in length and closely fitted, so that they could scarcely be parted without some exertion of force ; and they were jet black, whilst the quill part was white. Those who had seen the bird stated that it was bigger than the bulk of a couple of elephants, and that hitherto nobody had succeeded in killing one. It rises to the clouds with such extraordinary swiftness that it seems scarcely to stir its wings. Inform it is like an eagle. But although its size and swiftness are so extraordinary, it has much trouble in procuring food, on account of the density of the forests with which all that region is clothed. Its own dwelling is in cold and desolate tracts such as the Mountains of Teroa, /. e, of the Moon ; and in the valleys of that range it shows itself at certain periods.
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Its black feathers are held in very high estimation, and it is with the greatest difficulty that one can be got from the natives, for one such serves to fan ten people, and to keep off the terrible heat from them, as well as the wasps and flies." (Ludolf, Hist Aethiop, Comment p. 164.)
Abu Mahomed, of Spain, relates that a merchant arrived in Barbary who had lived long among the Chinese. He had with him the quill of a chick Rukh, and this held nine skins of water. He related the story of how he came by this, — a story nearly the same as one of Sindbad's about the Rukh^s ^gg, (Bochart, II. 854.)
Another story of a seaman wrecked on the coast of Africa is atoong those collected by M. Marcel de Vic. By a hut that stood in the middle of a field of rice and durra there was a trough. " A man came up leading a pair of oxen, laden with 12 skins of water, and emptied these into the trough. I drew near to drink, and found die trough to be polished like a steel blade, quite different from either glass or pottery. * It is the hollow of a quill ' said the man. I would not believe a word of the sort, until, after rubbing it inside and outside, I found it to be transparent, and to retain the traces of the barbs" (Comptes Rmdus 6-r., ut supra).
Fr. Jordanus also says : " In this India Tertia (Eastern Africa) are certain birds which are called Roc^ so big that they easily carry an elephant up into the air. I have seen a certain person who said that he had seen one of those birds, one wing only of which stretched to a length of 80 palms " (p. 42).
The Japanese Encyclopaedia states that in the country of the Tsatgn' (Zinjis) in the S. W. Ocean, there is a bh-d called pheng, which in its flight eclipses die sun. It can swallow a camel; and its quills are used for water casks. This was probably got from the Arabs. (/. As.^ ser. 2, tom. xii. 235-6.)
I should note that the Geog, Text in the first passage where the feathers are spoken of says : ^^e ce qeje en vi voz dirai en autre leu^pora qe il convient ensifaire d nostre iivre" — " tliat which / have seen of them I will tell you elsewhere, as it suits the arrangement of our book." No such other detail is found in that text, but we have in Ramusio this passage about the quill brought to the Great Kaan, and I suspect that the phrase, ** as I have heard," is an interpolation, and that Polo is here telling ce qe il en vit. What are we to make of the story? I hare sometimes thought that possibly some vegetable production, such as a great frond of the Ravenala^ may have been cooked to pass as a Rukh's quill.
Note 7. — The giraffes are an error. The Eng. Cyc. says that wild asses and zebras (?) do exist in Madagascar, but I cannot trace authority for this.
The great boar's teeth were indubitably hippopotamus-teeth, which
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form a considerable article of export from Zanzibar * (not Madagascar). Burton speaks of their reaching 1 2 lbs. in weight. And Cosmas tells us : " The hippopotamus I have not seen indeed, but I had some great teeth of his that weighed thirteen pounds^ which I sold here (in Alexandria). And I have seen many such teeth in Ethiopia and in Egypt" (See /. R. G, S. XXIX. 444 ; Cathay, p. clxxv.) *
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Concerning the Island of Zanghibar. A word on India IN general.
Zanghibar is a great and noble Island, with a compass of some 2000 miles/ The people are all Idolaters, and have a king and a language of their own, and pay tribute to nobody. They are both tall and stout, but not tall in proportion to their stoutness, for if they were, being so stout and brawny, they would be absolutely like giants ; and they are so strong that they will carry for four men and eat for five.
They are all black, and go stark naked, with only a little covering for decency. Their hair is as black as pepper, and so frizzly that even with water you can scarcely straighten it. And their mouths are so large, their noses so turned up, their lips so thick, their eyes so big and bloodshot, that they look like very devils; they are in fact so hideously ugly that the world has nothing to show more horrible.
Elephants are produced in this country in wonderful profusion. There are also lions that are black and quite different from ours. And their sheep and wethers are all exactly alike in colour ; the body all white and the head black ; no other kind of sheep is found there, you may rest assured.' They have also many giraffes. This is a beauti-
* The name as pronounced seems to have been Zangibdr (hard g\ which polite Arabic changed into Zanjibdr, whence the Portuguese made Zanzibar.
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ful creature, and I must give you a description of it. Its body is short and somewhat sloped to the rear, for its hind legs are short whilst the fore-legs and the neck are both very long, and thus its head stands about three paces from the ground. The head is small, and the animal is not at all mischievous. Its colour is all red and white in round spots, and it is really a beautiful object.^
* * The women of this Island are the ughest in the world, with their great mouths and big eyes and thick noses; their breasts too are four times bigger than those of any other women ; a very disgusting sight.
The people live on rice and flesh and milk and dates ; and they make wine of dates and of rice and of good spices and sugar. There is a great deal of trade, and many mer- chants and vessels go thither. But the staple trade of the Island is in elephants' teeth, which are very abundant; and they have also much ambergris, as whales are plenti- ful^
They have among them excellent and valiant warriors, and have little fear of death. They have no horses, but fight mounted on camels and elephants. On the latter they set wooden castles which carry from ten to sixteen persons, armed with lances, swords, and stones, so that they fight to great purpose fi-om these castles. They wear no armour, but carry only a shield of hide, besides their swords and lances, and so a marvellous number of them fall in batde. When they are going to take an elephant into battle they ply him well with their wine, so that he is made half drunk. They do this because the drink makes him more fierce and bold, and of more service in battle.*
As there is no more to say on this subject I will go on to tell you about the Great Province of Abash, which constitutes the Middle India ; — but I must first say some- thing about India in general.
You must understand that in speaking of the Indian Islands we have described only the most noble provinces
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and kingdoms among them ; for no man on earth could give you a true account of the whole of the Islands of India. Still, what I have described are the best, and as it were the Flower of the Indies. For the greater part of the other Indian Islands that I have omitted are subject to those that I have described. It is a fact that in this Sea of India there are 12,700 Islands, inhabited and uninhabited, accor- ding to the charts and documents of experienced mariners who navigate that Indian Sea.
India the Greater is that which extends from Ma- abar to Kesmacoran ; and it contains 13 great kingdoms, of which we have described ten. These are all on the mainland.
India the Lesser extends from the Province of Champa to Mutfili, and contains eight great kingdoms. These are likewise all on the mainland. And neither of these numbers includes the Islands, among which also there are very numerous kingdoms, as I have told you.^
Note 1. — Zangibar, "the Region of the Blacks," knoA\Ti to the ancients as Zingis and Zingium. The name was applied by the Arabs, according to De Barros, to the whole stretch of coast from the Kilimanchi River, which seems to be the Jubb, to Cape Corrientes beyond the Southern Tropic, /. e, as far as Arab traffic extended ; Burton says now from the Jubb to Cape Delgado. According to Abulfeda, the King of Zinjis dwelt at Mombasa. In recent times the name is by Europeans almost appropriated to the Island on which resides the Sultan of the Maskat family, to whom Sir B. Frere lately went as envoy. Our author's " Island " has no reference to this ; it is an error simply.
Our traveller's information is here, I think, certainly at second hand, though no doubt he had seen the negroes whom he describes with such disgust, and apparently the sheep and the giraffes.
Note 2. — These sheep are common at Aden, whither they are im- ported from the opposite African coast They have hair like smooth goats, no wool. Varthema also describes them (p. 87). In the Cairo Museum, among ornaments found in the mummy-pits, there is a little figure of one of these sheep, the head and neck in some blue stone and the iKxly in white agate {Note by Author of the sketch on next page).
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Note 3. — A giraffe — made into a seraph by the Italians — ^had been frequently seen in Italy in the early part of the century, there being one in the train of the Emperor Frederic II. Another was sent by Bibars to the Imperial Court in 1261, and several to Barka Khan at Sarai in 1263 ; whilst the King of Nubia was bound by treaty in 1275 to deliver to the Sultan three elephants, three giraffes, and five she-panthers (Kington, I. 471 ; Makrizi, I. 216; II. 106, 108). The giraffe is some- times wrought in the patterns of medieval Saracenic damasks, and in Sicilian ones imitated from the former. Of these there are examples in the Kensington Collection.
I here omit a passage about the elephant. It recounts an old and long persistent fable, exploded by Sir T. Brown, and indeed before him by the sensible Garcias da Horta.
Ethiopian Sheep.
Note 4. — The port of Zanzibar is probably the chief ivory mart in the world. Ambergris is mentioned by Burton among miscellaneous exports, but it is not now of any consequence. Owen speaks of it as brought for sale at Delagoa Bay in the south.
Note 5. — Mas'udi more correctiy says : " The country abounds with wild elephants, but you don*t find a single tame one. The Zinjes em- ploy them neither in war nor otherwise, and if they hunt them 'tis only to kill them " (III. 7). It is difficult to conceive how Marco could have got so much false information. The only beast of burden in Zanzibar, at least north of Mozambique, is the ass. His particulars seem jumbled
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from various parts of Africa, The camel-riders suggest the Bejas of the Red Sea coast, of whom there were in Mas*udi's time 30,000 warriors so mounted, and armed with lances and bucklers (III. 34). The elephant stories may have arisen from the occasional use of these animals by the Kings of Abyssinia. (See Note 4 to next chapter.)
Note 6. — An approximation to 12,000 as a round number seems to have been habitually used in reference to the Indian Islands ; John of Montecorvino says they are many more than 12,000; Jordanus had heard that there were 10,000 inhabited, Linschoten says some esti- mated the Maldives at 11,100. And we learn from Pyrard de Laval that the Sultan of the Maldives called himself Ibrahim Sultan of Thirteen Atollons (or coral groups) and of 12,000 Islands ! This is probably the origin of the proverbial number. Ibn Batuta, in his excellent account of the Maldives, estimates them at only about 2000. But Captain Owen, commenting on Pyrard, says that he believes the actual number of islands to be treble or fourfold of 12,000. {P, de Laval m Charton^ IV. 255 ; /. B, IV. 40 ; / R. G. S. II. 84.);.
Note 7. — The term " India " became very vague from an early date. In fact, Alcuin divides the whole world into three parts, Europe, Africa, and India. Hence it was necessary to discriminate different Indias, but there is very little agreement among different authors as to this discrimination.
The earliest use that I can find of the terms India Major and Minor is in the Liber Junioris Philosophi published by Hudson, and which is believed to be translated from a lost Greek original of the middle of the 4th century. In this author India Minor adjoins Persia, So it does with Friar Jordanus. His India Minor appears to embrace Sind (pos- sibly Mekran), and the western coast exclusive of Malabar. India Major extends from Malabar indefinitely eastward. His Lndia Tertia is Zanjibar. The Three Indies appear in a map contained in a MS. by Guido Pisanus, written in 11 18. Conti divides India into three; (i) From Persia to the Indus (/. e, Mekran and Sind) ; (2) From the Indus to the Ganges ; (3) All that is beyond Ganges (Indo-China and China).
In a map of Andrea Bianco at Venice (No. 12) the divisions are — (i) India Minor, extending westward to the Persian Gulf; (2) India Media, " containing 14 regions and 12 nations;" and (3) India Superior, containing 8 regions and 24 nations.
Marino Sanuto places immediately east of the Persian Gulf " India Minor quaeet Ethiopia^
John Marignolli again has three Indias ; (i) Manzi or India Maxima (S. China); (2) Mynibar (Malabar); (3) Maabar. The last two with Guzerat are Abulfeda's divisions, exclusive of Sind.
We see that there was a traditional tendency to make out Three Indies^ but little concord as to their identity. With regard to the expressions Greater and Lesser India, I would recall attention to what
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has been said about Greater and Lesser Java {supra^ chap. ix. note 1). Greater India was originally intended, I imagine, for the real India, what our maps call Hindustan. And the threefold division, with its inclination to place one of the Indies in Africa, I think may have originated with the Arab Hindy Sindy and Zinj, I may add that our vernacular expression " the Indies " is itself a vestige of the twofold or threefold division of which we have been speakfng.
The partition of the Indies made by King Sebastian of Portugal in 157 1, when he constituted his eastern possessions into three govern- ments, recalled the old division into Three Indias. The first, India, extending from Cape Gardafui to Ceylon, stood in a general way for Polo's India Major ; the second Monomotapa, from Gardafui to Cape Corrientes (IndiaTertia of Jordanus) ; the third Malacca, from P^ to China (India Minor). {Faria y Souza, II. 319.)
Polo's knowledge of India, as a whole, is so little exact that it is too indefinite a problem to consider which are the three kingdoms that he has not described. The ten which he has described appear to be— (i) Maabar, (2) Coilum, (3) Comari, (4) Eli, (5) Malabar, (6) Guzerat, (7) Tana, (8) Canbaet, (9) Semenat, (10) Kesmacoran. On the one hand this distribution in itself contains serious misapprehensions, as we have seen, and on the other there must have been many dozens of king- doms in India Major instead of 13, if such states as Comari, Hill, and Somnath were to be separately counted. Probably it was a common saying that there were 12 king§ in India, and the fact of his having himself described so many, which he knew did not nearly embrace the whole, may have made Polo convert this into 13. Jordanus says: **In this Greater India are 1 2 idolatrous kings and more ;" but his Greater India is much more extensive than Polo's. Those which he names are Molebar (probably the kingdom of the Zamorin of Calicut), Singuyli (Cranganor), Columhum (Quilon), Molephatan (on the east coast, uncertain, see above PP- 316, 381), and Sylen (Ceylon), Java, three or four kings, TeUnc (Polo's Mutfili), Maratha (Deogir), Batigala (in Canara), and in Champa (apparently put for all Indo-China) many kings. According to Firishta there were about a dozen important principahties in India at the time of the Mahomedan conquest, of which he mentions eJcvai, viz., (i) Kanauj\ (2) Mirat (or DehH), (3) Mahdvan (Mathra), (4) Lahore, (5) Malwa, (6) Guzerat, (7) Ajmir,{Z^ Gwalior, (9) Kalinjar,{io) Multdn, (11) Ujjain. {Ritter, V. 535.) This omits Bengal, Orissa, and all the Deccan. Twelve is a round number which constantly occurs in such statements. Ibn Batuta tells us there were 12 princes in Malabar alone. Chinghiz, in Sanang-Setzen, speaks of his vow to subdue the twelve kings of the human race (91). Certain figures in a temple at Anhilwara in Guzerat are said by local tradition to be the effigies of the twelve great kings of Europe. {Todd's Travels y p. 107.) The King of Arakan used to take the title of " Lord of the 1 2 provinces of Bengal" {Reinaud, Inde, \\ 139.)
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The Masdlak-ai'Absdr of Shihabuddin Diraishki, written some forty years after Polo's book, gives a list of the provinces (twice twelve in number) into which India was then considered to be divided It runs — (i) Dehliy (2) Deogir, (3) Multdn^ (4) Kehran {Kohrdm^ in Sirhind Division of Province of Dehli?), (5) Sdmdn (Samdna, N.W. of Dehli ?), (6) Siwastdn (Sehw^), (7) Ujah (Uchh), (8) ZTij/ (Hansi), (9) SarsaH (Sirsa), (10) Mdbar^ (11) Tilings (12) Gujerat^ (13) Baddun^ (14) Audh^ (15) Kanauj^ (16) Laknaoti (Upper Bengal), (17) Bakdr^ (18) Karrdh (in the Doab), (19) Maldwa, (Mdlwa), (20) Lahaur^ (21) Kdldnur (in the Bdri Dodb above Lahore), {22) Jdjnagar (according to Elphinstone, Tipura in Bengal), (23) Tilinj (a repetition or error), (24) Dursamand (Dwara Samudra, the kingdom of the Belldls in Mysore). Neither Malabar nor Orissa is accounted for. (See Not et Ext XIII. 170). Another list, given by the historian Zfi-uddin Bami some years later, embraces again only twelve provinces. These are (i) DehU, (2) Gujerat, (3) Mdlwah, (4) Deogir, (5) Tiling, (6) Kampilah (in the Dodb, between Koil and Farakhdbdd), (7) Dur Samandar, (8) Ma*bar, (9) Tlrhut^ (10) Lakhnaoti, (11) Satghnw^ (12) Sundrganw (these two last forming the Western and Eastern portions of Lower Bengal).*
CHAPTER XXXV.
Treating of the Great Province of Abash which is Middle India, and is on the Mainland.
Abash is a very great Province, and you must know that it constitutes the Middle India; and it is on the mainland. There are in it six great Kings with six great Kingdoms ; and of these six Kings there are three that are Christians and three that are Saracens; but the greatest of all the six is a Christian, and all the others are subject to him/
The Christians in this country bear three marks on the face ;* one from the forehead to the middle of the nose, and one on either cheek. These marks are made with a hot iron, and form part of their baptism ; for after that they have been baptised with water, these three marks are made, partly as a token of gentility, and partly as the
• E, Thomas^ Chronicles of the Pathin Kings of Dehli, p. 203.
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' completion of their baptism. There are also Jews in the country and these bear two marks, one on either cheek ; and the Saracens have but one, to wit, on the forehead extending halfway down the nose.
The Great King lives in the middle of the country; the Saracens towards Aden. St. Thomas the Apostle preached in this region, and after he had converted the people he went away to the province of Maabar, where he died; and there his body lies, as I have told you in a former place.
The people here are excellent soldiers, and they go on horseback, for they have horses in plenty. Well they may; for they are in daily war with the Soldan of Aden, and with the Nubians, and a variety of other nations.' I will tell you a famous story of what befel in the year of Christ, 1288.
You must know that this Christian King, who is the Lord of the Province of Abash, declared his intention to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to adore the Holy Sepulchre of Our Lord God Jesus Christ the Saviour. But his Barons said that for him to go in person would be to run too great a risk; and they recommended him to send some bishop or prelate in his stead. So the King assented to the counsel which his Barons gave, and despatched a certain Bishop of his, a man of very holy life. The Bishop then departed and travelled by land and by sea till he arrived at the Holy Sepulchre, and there he paid it such honour as Christian man is bound to do, and presented a great offering on the part of his King who had sent him in his own stead.
And when he had done all that behoved him, he set out again and travelled day by day till he got to Aden. Now that is a Kingdom wherein Christians are held in great detestation, for the people are all Saracens, and their enemies unto the death. So when the Soldan of Aden heard that this man was a Christian and a Bishop, and
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an envoy of the Great King of Abash, he had him seized and demanded of him if he were a Christian ? To this the Bishop replied that he was a Christian indeed. The Soldan then told him that unless he would turn to the Law of Mahommet he should work him great shame and dishonour. The Bishop answered that they might kill him ere he would deny his Creator.
When the Soldan heard that he waxed wroth, and ordered that the Bishop should be circumcised. So they took and circumcised him after the manner of the Saracens. And then the Soldan told him that he had been thus put to shame in despite to the King his master. And so they let him go.
The Bishop was sorely cut to the heart for the shame that had been wrought him, but he took comfort because it had befallen him in holding fast by the Law of Our Lord Jesus Christ ; and the Lord God would recompense his soul in the world to come.
So when he was healed he set out and travelled by land and by sea till he reached the King his Lord in the Kingdom of Abash. And when the King beheld him, he welcomed him with great joy and gladness. And he asked him all about the Holy Sepulchre ; and the Bishop related all about it truly, the King listening the while as to a most holy matter in all faith. But when the Bishop had told all about Jerusalem, he then related the outrage done on him by the Soldan of Aden in the King's despite. Great was the King's wrath and grief when he heard that ; and it so disturbed him that he was like to die of vexation. And at length his words waxed so loud that all those round about could hear what he was saying. He vowed that he would never wear crown or hold kingdom if he took not such condign vengeance on the Soldan of Aden that all the world should ring therewithal, even until the insult had been well and thoroughly redressed.
And what shall I say of it ? He straightway caused the
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array of his horse and foot to be mustered, and great numbers of elephants with castles to be prepared to accom- pany them ;^ and when all was ready he set out with his army and advanced till he entered the Kingdom of Aden in great force. The Kings of this province of Aden were well aware of the King's advance against them, and went to encounter him at the strongest pass on their frontier, with a great force of armed men, in order to bar the enemy from entering their territory. When the King arrived at this strong pass where the Saracens had taken post, a batde began, fierce and fell on both sides, for they were very bitter against each other. But it came to pass, as it pleased our Lord God Jesus Christ, that the Kings of the Saracens, who were three in number, could not stand against the Christians, for they are not such good soldiers as the Christians are. So the Saracens were defeated, and a marvellous number of them slain, and the King of Abash entered the Kingdom of Aden with all his host. The Saracens made various sallies on them in the narrow defiles, but it availed nothing ; they were always beaten and slain. And when the King had greatly wasted and destroyed the kingdom of his enemy, and had remained in it more than a month with all his host, continually slaying the Saracens, and ravaging their lands (so that great numbers of them perished), he thought it time to return to his own kingdom, which he could now do with great honour. Indeed he could tarry no longer, nor could he, as he was aware, do more injury to the enemy ; for he would have had to force a way by still stronger passes, where, in the narrow defiles, a handful of men might cause him heavy loss. So he quitted the enemy's Kingdom of Aden and began to retire. And he with his host got back to their own country of Abash in great triumph and rejoicing; for he had well avenged the shame cast on him and on his Bishop for his sake. For they had slain so many Saracens, and so wasted and harried the land , that 'twas something to be astonished at.
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And in sooth 'twas a deed well done! For it is not to be borne that the dogs of Saracens should lord it over good Christian people ! Now you have heard the story .^
I have still some particulars to tell you of the same province. It abounds greatly in all kinds of victual ; and the people live on flesh and rice and milk and sesame. They have plenty of elephants, not that they are bred in the country, but they are brought from the Islands of the other India. They have however many giraffes, which are produced in the country ; besides bears, leopards, lions in abundance, and many other passing strange beasts. They have also numerous wild asses; and cocks and hens the most beautiful that exist, and many other kinds of birds. For instance they have ostriches that are nearly as big as asses ; and plenty of beautiful parrots, with apes of sundry kinds, and baboons and other monkeys that have counte- nances all but human.*
There are numerous cities and villages in this province of Abash, and many merchants ; for there is much trade to be done there. The people also manufacture very fine buckrams and other cloths of cotton.
There is no more to say on the subject ; so now let us go forward and tell you of the province of Aden.
Note 1. — Abash (Abasce) is a close enough representation of the Arabic Habsh or Habash^ u e, Abyssinia. He gives as an alteraative title Middle India. I am not aware that the term India is applied to Abyssinia by any Oriental (Arabic or Persian) writer, and one feels curious to know where our Traveller got the appellation. We find nearly the same application of the term in Benjamin of Tudela :
" Eight days from thence is Middle India, which is Aden, and in Scripture Eden in Thelasar. This country is very mountainous, and contains many independent Jews who are not subject to the power of the Gentiles, but possess cities and fortresses on the summits of the mountains, from whence they descend into the country of Maatum, with which they are at war. Maatum, called also Nubia, is a Christian king- dom and the inhabitants are called Nubians," &c. (p. 117). Here the Rabbi seems to transfer Aden to the west of the Red Sea (as Polo also seems to do in this chapter) ; for the Jews warring against Nubian Chris-
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426 MARCO POLO. Book III.
tians must be sought in the Falasha strongholds among the mountains of Abyssinia. His Middle India is therefore the same as Polo's or nearly so. In Jordanus, as already mentioned, we have India Tertia^ which combines some characters of Abyssinia and Zanjibar, but is distinguished from the Ethiopia of Prester John, which adjoins it.
But for the occurrence of the name in R. Benjamin I should have supposed the use of it to have been of European origin and current at most among Oriental Christians and Frank merchants. The European confusion of India and Ethiopia comes down from Virgil's time, who brings the Nile from India. And Servius (4th century) commenting on a more ambiguous passage —
** Soia India nigrum
Fert dinum^^
says explicitly ** Indiam omnem plagam ^Ethiopia accifimus" Procopius brings the Nile into Egypt li *lvhSty ; and the Ecclesiastical Historians Sozomen and Socrates (I take these citations, like the last, from Ludolf), in relating the conversion of the Abyssinians by Frumentius, speak of them only as of the ^IvhSiiv twv ^8or^, ** Interior Indians," a phrase intended to imply remoter^ but which might perhaps give rise to the term Middle India, Thus Cosmas says of China : " ij? hi^i^m, there is no other country;** and Nicolo Conti calls the Chinese Interiores Indi^ which Mr. Winter Jones misrenders "natives of Central India."* St. Epiphanius (end of 4th century) says India was formerly divided into nine kingdoms, viz., those of the (i) Alabastri^ (2) Homeriiae, (3) Azumiti, and Dulites^ (4) Bugaei^ (5) Taiani, (6) Isabeni^ and so on, several of which are manifestly provinces subject to Abyssinia.t Roger Bacon speaks of the "Ethiopes de Nubii et ultimi illi qtu vocantur Indi^ propter approximationem ad Indiam J^ The term India Minor is applied to some Ethiopic region in a letter which Matthew Paris gives under 1237. And this confusion which prevailed more or less till the 1 6th century was at the bottom of that other confusion, what- ever be its exact history, between Prester John in remote Asia and Prester John in Abyssinia. In fact the narrative by Damian de Goes of the Embassy from the King of Abyssinia to Portugal in 15 13, which was printed at Antwerp in 1532, bears the title ^^ LegaHo Magni Indorum Imperatoris^' &c. {Ludolf^ Comment, p. 2 and 75-76 ; Epiph, de GemmiSy &c., p. 15 ; I^. Bacon^ Opus Majus, p. 148; Matt, Paris, P-372.) _
♦ Reinaud {Abu If, I. 81) says the word Interior applied by the Arabs to a country, is the equivalent of citerior^ whilst by exterior they mean ulterior. But the truth is just the reverse, even in the case before him, where Bolghdr al-Dakkila^ *Bulgari Interiores,* are the Volga Bulgars. So also the Arabs called Armenia on the Araxes Interior^ Armenia on Lake Van Exterior {St, Martin^ I. 31).
t Thus (2) the Homeritae of Yemen, (3) the people of Axum, and Adulis or Zulla, (5) the Bugaei or Bejahs of the Red Sea coast, (6) Taiani or Tiamo, appear in Salt's Axum Inscription as subject to the King of Axum in the middle of the 4th century.
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Chap. XXXV. ABYSSINIA STYLED "MIDDLE INDIA." 427
Wadding gives a letter from the Pope (Alex. IL) under date 3rd Sept. 1329, addressed to the Emperor of Ethiopia^ to inform him of the appointment of a Bishop of Diagorgan. As this place is the capital of a district near Tabriz (Dehi-Khorkhdn) the papal geography looks a little hazy.
Note 2. — The allegation against the Abyssinian Christians, some- times extended to the whole Jacobite Church, that they accompanied the rite of Baptism by branding with a hot iron on the face, is pretty old and persistent
The letter quoted from Matt Paris in the preceding note relates of the Jacobite Christians " who occupy the kingdoms between Nubia and India," that some of them brand the foreheads of their children before Baptism with a hot iron " (p. 302). A quaint Low-German account of the East, in a MS. of the 14th century, tells of the Christians of India that when a Bishop ordains a priest he fires him with a sharp and hot iron from the forehead down the nose, and the scar of this wound abides till the day of his death. And this they do for a token that the Holy Ghost came on the Apostles with fire. Frescobaldi says those called the Christians of the Girdle were the sect which baptized by branding on the head and temples. Clavijo says there is such a sect among the Christians of India, but they are despised by the rest Bar- bosa, speaking of the Abyssinians, has this passage : "According to what is said, their baptism is threefold, viz., by blood, by fire, and by water. For they use circumcision like the Jews, they brand on the forehead with a hot iron, and they baptize with water like Catholic Christians." The resi)ectable Pierre Belon speaks of the Christians of Prester John, called Abyssinians, as baptized with fire and branded in three places, ue. between the eyes and on either cheek. Linschoten repeats the like, and one of his plates is entitled Habitus Ahissinorum quibusloco Baptismatis from inuritur, Ariosto, referring to the Emperor of Ethiopia, has :- -
** Gli ?, j' io non piglio err ore, in quest 0 loco Ove al battesimo loro usano il fuoco^''
As late as 18 19 the traveller Dupr^ published the same statement about the Jacobites generally. And so sober and learned a man as Assemani, himself an Oriental, says: "-^thiopes vero, seu Abissini, praeter circumcisionem adhibent etiam ferrum candens, quo pueris notara inurunt"
Yet Ludolf s Abyssinian friend, Abba Gregory, denied that there was any such practice among them. Ludolf says it is the custom of various African tribes, both Pagan and Mussulman, to cauterize their children in the veins of the temples, in order to inure them against colds, and that this, being practised by some Abyssinians, was taken for a religious rite. In spite of the terms " Pagan and Mussulman," I suspect that Herodotus was the authority for this practice. He states that many of
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428 MARCO POLO. Book III.
the nomad Libyans, when their children reached the age of four, used to bum the veins at the top of the head with a flock of wool ; others burned the veins about the temples. And this they did, he says, to prevent their being troubled with rheum in after Ufe.
Indeed Andrea Corsali denies that the branding had aught to do with baptism, " but only to observe Solomon's custom of marking his slaves, the King of Ethiopia claiming to be descended from him." And it is remarkable that Salt mentions that most of the people of Dixan had a cross marked (/. e, branded) on the breast, right arm, or forehead. This he elsewhere explains as a mark of their attachment to the ancient metropolitan church of Axum, and he supposes that such a practice may have originated the stories of fire-baptism. And we find it stated in Marino Sanudo that " some of the Jacobites and Syrians who had crosses branded on them said this was done for the destruction of the Pagans, and out of reverence to the Holy Rood." Matthew Paris, com- menting on the letter quoted above, says that many of the Jacobites before baptism brand their children on the forehead with a hot iron, whilst others brand a cross upon the cheeks or temples. He had seen such marks also on the arms of both Jacobites and Syrians who dwelt among the Saracens. It is clear, from Salt, that such branding was prac- tised by many Abyssinians, and that to a recent date, though it may have been entirely detached from baptism. A similar practice is followed at Dwdrika and Koteswar (on the old Indus mouth, now called Lakpat River), where the Hindu pilgrims to these sacred sites are branded with the mark of the god.
{Orient und Occident^ Gottingen, 1862, I. 453; Frescob, 114; Clavijo, 163; Ramus, I. f. 290, v., f. 184; Marin. Sanud, 185, and Bk. iil pt viiL ch, iv. ; ClusiuSy Exotica, pt ii. p. 142 ; Orland, Fur, XXXIIL st 102 ; Voyage en Perse, dans les Armtes 1807-9 \ Assemani, II. c ; Ludolfy iii. 6, § 41 ; Salt, in Valentids Trav. II. p. 505, and his Second Journey , French Tr., II. 2\^\ M, Paris, p. 373 ; /. R. A, S, L 42.)
Note 3. — It is pretty clear from what follows (as Marsden and others have noted) that the narrative requires us to conceive of the Sultan of Aden as dominant over the territory between Abyssinia and the sea, or what was in former days called Adel, between which and Aden confusion seems to have been made. I have noticed in note 1 the appearance of this confusion in R. Benjamin ; and I may add that also in the Map of Marino Sanudo Aden is represented on the western shore of the Red Sea. But is it not possible that in the origin of the Mahomedan States of Adel the Sultan of Aden had some power over them ? For we find in the account of the correspondence between the King of Abyssinia and Sultan Bibars, quoted in the next note but one, that the Abyssinian letters and presents for Egypt were sent to the Sultan of Yemen or Aden to be forwarded.
Note 4. — This passage is not authoritative enough to justify us in
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Chap. XXXV. USE OF AFRICAN ELEPHANTS IN WAR. 429
believing that the medieval Abyssinians or Nubians did use elephants in war, for Marco has already erred in ascribing that practice to the Blacks of Zanjibar.
There can indeed be no doubt that elephants from the countries on the west of the Red Sea were caught and tamed and used for war, systematically and on a great scale, by the second and third Ptolemies, and the latter (Euergetes) has commemorated this, and his own use of Troglodytic and Ethiopic elephants, and the fact of their encountering the elephants of India, in the Adulitic Inscription recorded by Cosmas.
This author however, who wrote about a.d. 545, and had been at the Court of Axum, then in its greatest prosperity, says distinctly : " The Ethiopians do not understand the art of taming elephants ; but if their King should want one or two for show they catch them young, and bring them up in captivity." Hence, when we find a few years later (A.D. 570) that there was one great elephant, and some say thirteen elephants,* employed in the army which Abraha the Abyssinian Ruler of Yemen led against Mecca, an expedition famous in Arabian history as the War of the Elephant, we are disposed to believe that these must have been elephants imported from India. There is indeed a notable statement quoted by Ritter, which if trustworthy would lead to another conclusion : '* Already in the 20th year of the Hijra (a.d. 641) had the Nubas and Bejas hastened to the help of the Greek Christians of Oxy-
rhynchus {Bahnasa of the Arabs) against the first invasion of the
Mahommedans, and according to the exaggerated representations of the Arabian Annalists, the army which they brought consisted of 50,000 men and 1300 war-elephants r \ The Nubians certainly must have tamed elephants on some scale down to a late period in the Middle Ages, for elephants, — in one case three annually, — formed a frequent part of the tribute paid by Nubia to the Mahomedan sovereigns of Egypt at least to the end of the 13th century; but the passage quoted is too isolated to be accepted without corroboration. The only approach to such a corroboration that 1 know of is a statement by Poggio in the matter appended to his account of Conti*s Travels. He there repeats some information derived from the Abyssinian envoys who visited Pope Eugenius IV. about 1440, and one of his notes is : " They have elephants very large and in great numbers ; some kept for ostentation or pleasure, some as useful in war. They are hunted ; the old ones killed, the young ones taken and tamed." But the facts on which this was founded probably amounted to no more than what Cosmas had stated. I believe no trustworthy authority since the Portuguese discoveries confirms the
• Muir's Life of Mahomet^ I. cclxiii.
+ Ritter y Africa^ p. 605. The statement appears to be taken fiom Burckhardt's SubiOy but the reference is not c|uite clear. ^Thcre is nothing about this army in <Juatrcmerc's Mem. sur la \ubie {^MJm. sitr PE^y/>(i\ vol. ii.).
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430 MARCO POLO. Book III.
use of the elephant in Abyssinia ;* and Ludolf, whose infonnadon was excellent, distinctly says that the Abyssinians did not tame them. {Cathay^ p. clxxxi ; Quat^ Mem. sur V&gypte^ II. 98, 113; India in XV, cent 37 ; Ludolf^ I. 10, 32 ; Armandiy H, MiUtaire des El^hanis, p. 547.)
Note 5. — To the tenth century at least the whole coast country of the Red Sea, from near Berbera probably to Sudkin, was still subject to Abyssinia. At this time we hear only of " Musahnan families " residing in Zaila' and the other ports, and tributary to the Christians (see Maiudi,
III. 34).
According to Bruce's abstract of the Abyssinian chronicles, the royal line was superseded in the loth century by Falasha Jews, then by other Christian families, and three centuries of weakness and disorder suc- ceeded. In 1268, according to Bruce's chronology, Icon Amlac of the House of Solomon, which hzui continued to rule in Shoa, regained the empire, and was followed by seven other princes whose reigns come down to 131 2. The history of this period is very obscure, but Bruce gathers that it was marked by civil wars, during which the Mahomedan communities that had by this time grown up in the coast-country became powerful and expelled the Abyssinians from the sea-ports. Inland pro- vinces of the low country also, such as Ifat and Dawaro, had fellen under Mahomedan governors, whose allegiance to the Negush, if not re- nounced, had become nominal.
One of the principal Mahomedan communities was called Add^ the name, according to modern explanation, of the tribes now called Da- ndkfl. The capital of the Sultan of Adel was according to Bruce at Aussa, some distance inland from the port of Zaila', which also belonged to Add
Amda Zion, who succeeded to the Abyssinian throne, according to Bruce's chronology, in 13 12, two or three years later, provoked by the Governor of Ifat, who had robbed and murdered one of his Mahomedan agents in the Lowlands, descended on Ifat, inflicted severe chastisement on the offenders, and removed the governor. A confederacy was then formed against the Abyssinian King by several of the Mahomedan Sutes or chieftainships, among which Adel is conspicuous. Bruce gives a long and detailed account of Amda Zion's resolute and successful campaigns against this confederacy. It bears a strong general resemblance to Marco's narrative, always excepting the story of the Bishop, of which Bruce has no trace, and always admitting that our traveller has con- founded Aden with Adel.
♦ Armandi indeed quotes a statement in support of such us€ from a Spaniard, Marmoly who travelled (he says) in Abyssinia in the beginning of the i6th century. But the author in question, already quoted at pp. 368 and 407, was no traveller, only a compiler ; and the passage cited by Armandi is evidently made up from the state- ment in Poggio and from what our traveller has said about Zanjibar {sufra, p. 4"- See Alarmol^ Desc. de Affricay 1. f. 27. v.)
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Chap. XXXV. CHRONOLOGY OF THE ABYSSINIAN STORY. 431
But the chronology is obviously in the way of identification of the histories. Marco could not have related in 1298 events that did not occur till 1 315-16. Mr. Salt however, in his version of the chronology, not only puts the accession of Amda Zion eleven years earlier than Bruce, but even then has so little confidence in its accuracy, and is so much disposed to identify the histories, that he suggests that the Abyssinian dates should be carried back fiirther still by some 20 years, on the authority of the narrative in our text M. Pauthier takes a like view.
I was for some time much disposed to do likewise, but after exam- ining the subject more minutely, I am obliged to reject this view, and to abide by Bruce*s Chronology. To elucidate this I must exhibit the whole list of the Abyssinian Kings from the restoration of the line of Solomon to the middle of the i6th century, at which period Bruce finds a check to the chronology in the record of a solar eclipse. The chrono- logies have been extracted independently by Bruce, Riippell, and Salt ; the latter using a different version of the Annals from the other two. I set down all three.
|
Bruce. || RtJppEL. |
Salt. |
||||
|
Reigns. |
Duration of reign. |
Dates. |
Duration of reign. |
o- „ Duration ^«^- of reign. |
Dates. |
|
Icon Ainlac Igba Zion Bahar Segued Jan ., .... Hazeb Araad Kedcm Segued . . . ^Vcdem Arad Amda Zion SaifArad Wedem Asferi .... David 11 Thcodorus |
years. »S 9 1- »5 30 38 10 29 } .* 34 xo ] - «3 32 |
1268—1283 1283—1292 1292— 1297 ia97-'3" 1313—1342 1342 - 1370 '370—1380 1380—1409 1409—1412 1412— 1429 1429 1429-1433 "433— '434 1434—1468 1468— 1478 1478 -1495 '495-«5o8 1508—1540 1540 |
years. >5 9 5 >5 28 10 29 1 3 'k 4 I lO «3 32 |
yean. 14 Woudem Arad... 15 Kudma Asgud . . . Asfa 3 Sinfa , , Bar ,, ... s Igba Zion 9 :: :•. 'i 10 37 .... 1 15 .... 7 5 5 34 xo x6 X3 32 |
1255-1269 1269—1284 1284 — 1287 1287 — 1292 1292 — 1301 »30i— «33« 1331—1359 «35«>-i369 I ibg — 1401 1401—1402 1402 — 1417 1417—1424 1424—1429 1429—1434 M34— 1468 1468—1478 1478—1494 1494—1507 1507— 1536 |
|
Andreas Haseb Nanya .... Sarwe Vasus Am«da Yasus Zara Jacob Beda Mariam I^kander Ameda Zion Naod Uavidlll |
|||||
Bruce checks his chronology by an echpse which took place in 1553, and which the Abyssinian chronicle assigns to the 13th year of Claudius. This alone would be scarcely satisfactory as a basis for the retrospective control of reigns extending through nearly three centuries ; but we find some other checks.
Thus in Quatrem^re's Makrizi we find a correspondence between Sultan Bibars and the King of Habasha, or of Amhara, Mahar Amlak, which occurred in a.h. 672 or 673, i.e, a.d. 1273-74. This would foil
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43 2 MARCO POLO. Book III.
within the reign of Icon Amlak according to Bruce's chronology, but not according to Salt's, and d fortiori not according to any chronology throwing the reigns further back still.
In Quatrem^re's ^gypte we find another notice of a letter which came to the Sultan of Egypt from the King of Abyssinia, Iakba Siun, in Ramadhan 689, /. e, in the end of a.d. 1289.
Again, this is perfectly consistent with Bruce's order and dates, but not with Salt's.
The same work contains a notice of an inroad on the Mussulman territory of Assuan by David (II.) the son of Saif Arad, in the year 783 (a.d. 1381-2).
In Rink's translation of a work of Makrizi's it is stated that this same King David died in a. h. 812,/. e, a.d. 1409 ; that he was succeeded by Theodorus whose reign was very brief, and he again by Isaac, who died in Dhulkada 833, i, e. July-August 1430. These dates are in close or substantial agreement with Bruce's chronology, but not at all with Salt's or any chronology throwing the reigns further back. Makrizi goes on to say that Isaac was succeeded by Andreas who reigned only 4 months, and then by Hazbana who died in Ramadhan 834, /. e, May-June, 1431. This last date does not agree, but we are now justified in suspecting an error in the Hijra date,* whilst the 4 months' reign ascribed to Andreas shows that Salt again is wrong in extending it to 7 years^ and Bruce pre- sumably right in making it 7 months.
These coincidences seem to me sufficient to maintain the substantial accuracy of Bruce's chronology, and to be fatal to the identification of Marco's story with that of the wars of Amda Zion. The general identity in the duration of reigns as given by Riippell shows that Bruce did not tamper with these. It is remarkable that in Makrizi's report of the letter of Igba Zion in 1289 (the very year when according to the text this anti-Mahomedan war was going on), that Prince tells the Sultan that he is a protector of the Mahomedans in Abyssinia, aaing in that respect quite differently from his Father who had been so hostile to them. ^ I suspect therefore that Icon Amlak must have been the true hero of Marco's story, and that the date must be thrown back, probably to 1278.
Ruppell is at a loss to understand where Bruce got the long story of Amda Zion's heroic deeds, which enters into extraordinary detail, em- bracing speeches after the manner of the Roman historians and the like, and occupies some 60 pages in the (French) edition of Bruce which I have been using. The German traveller could find no trace of this story in any of the versions of the Abyssinian chronicle which he con- sulted, nor was it known to a learned Abyssinian whom he names. Bruce himself says that the story which he has " a little abridged and accommodated to our manner of writing, was derived from a work
* 834 for 836.
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Chap. XXXV. CHRONOLOGY OF THE ABYSSINIAN STORY. 433
written in very pure Gheez, in Shoa, under the reign of Zara Jacob ;" and though it is possible that his amplifications outweigh his abridg- ments, we cannot doubt that he had an orig-nal groundwork for his narrative.
The work of Makrizi already quoted speaks of seven kingdoms in Zaila* (here used for the Mahometan low country) originally tributary to the Hati (or Negush) of Amhara, viz., Aufat* DawarOy Arababni, Hadiahy Shirha, Bali, Darah. Of these Ifat, Dawaro, and Hadiah repeatedly occur in Bruce's story of the war. Bruce also tells us that Amda Zion, when he removed Hakeddin the Governor of Ifat, who had murdered his agent, replaced him by his brother Sahreddin, Now we find in Makrizi that about a.h. 700, the reigning governor of Aufat under the Hati was Sabreddin Mahomed Valahui ; and that it was 'Ali the son of this Sabreddin who first threw off allegiance to the Abyssinian King, then Saif Arad (son of Amda Zion). The latter displaces 'Ali and gives the government to his son Ahmed. After various vicissitudes Hakeddin, the son of Ahmed, obtains the mastery in Aufat, defeats Saif Arad com- pletely, and founds a city in Shoa called Vahal, which superseded Aufat or Ifat Here the Sabreddin of Makrizi appears to be identical with Amda Zion*s governor in Bruce's story, whilst the Hakeddins belong to two different generations of the same family. But Makrizi does not notice the wars of Amda Zion any more than the Abyssinian Chronicles notice the campaign recorded by Marco Polo.
(Bruce^ voL III. and vol. IV., pp. 23-90, and Salfs Second Journey to Abyssinia, 11. 270, &c.; both these are quoted from French versions which are alone available to me, the former by Castera, Londres, 1790, the latter by -P. Henry, Paris, 181 6; Fr, Th. Rink, A I Macrisiy Hist, Rerum Islamiticarum in Abyssinia, &c., Lugd. Bat. 1798; RUppell, Dissert on Abyss. Hist and Chronology in his work on that country; Quat, Makr, II. 122-3; Quat. Mhm, sur f£g}'pte, II. 268, 276.)
Note 6. — The last words run in the G. T. : " // ont singles de plo- sors maineres, II ont gat paulz (see note 2, chap, xxiii. supra), et autre gat maimon si devisez qe pou s'en faut de tiel hi a qe ne setibUnt a vix d'omesP The beautiful cocks and hens are, I suppose, Guinea fowl
* On Aufat, see De Sacy, Crestom Arabe^ I. 457.
VOL. II. 2 ^'
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434 MARCO POLO. Book III.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Concerning the Province of Aden.
You must know that in the province of Aden there is a Prince who is called the Soldan. The people are all Sara- cens and adorers of Mahommet, and have a great hatred of Christians. There are many towns and villages in the country.
This Aden is the port to which many of the ships of India come with their cargoes ; and from this haven the merchants carrj'^ the goods a distance of seven days further in small vessels. At the end of those seven days they land the goods and load them on camels, and so carry them a land journey of 30 days. This brings them to the river of Alexandria, and by it they descend to the latter city. It is by this way through Aden that the Saracens of Alex- andria receive all their stores of pepper and other spicery; and there is no other route equally good and convenient by which these goods could reach that place.'
And you must know that the Soldan of Aden receives a large amount in duties from the ships that traffic between India and his country, importing different kinds of goods ; and from the exports also he gets a revenue, for there are despatched from the port of Aden to India a very large number of Arab chargers, and palfreys, and stout nags adapted for all work, which are a source of great profit to those who export them.' For horses fetch very high prices in India, there being none bred there, as I have told you before ; insomuch that a charger will sell there for 100 marks of silver and more. On these also the Soldan of Aden receives heavy payments in port charges, so that 'tis said he is one of the richest princes in the world.^
And it is a fact that when the Soldan of Babylon went against the city of Acre and took it, this Soldan of Aden
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Chap. XXXVI. THE PROVINCE OF ADEN. 435
sent to his assistance 30,000 horsemen and full 40,000 camels, to the great help of the Saracens and the grievous injury of the Christians. He did this a great deal more for the hate he bears the Christians than for any love he bears the Soldan of Babylon ; for these two do hate one another heartily/
Now we will have done with the Soldan of Aden, and I will tell you of a city which is subject to Aden, called Esher.
Note 1. — This is from Pauthier's text, which is here superior to the G. T. The latter has : " They put the goods in small vessels, which proceed on a river about seven days." Ram, has, "in other smaller vessels, with which they make a voyage on a gulf of the sea for 20 days, more or less, as the weather may be. On reaching a certain port they load the goods on camels, and carry them a 30 days' journey by land to the River Nile, where they embark them in small vessels called Zerms, and in these descend the current to Cairo, and thence by an artificial cut, called Calizene, to Alexandria." The last looks as if it had been edited ; Polo never uses the name Cairo. The canal, the predecessor of the Mahmudiah, is also called // Caligine in the journey of Simon Sigoli {Frescobaldi, p. 168). Brunetto Latini, too, discoursing of the Nile, says : —
** Cosi serva suo filo
Ed e chiamato Nilo :
D' un suo ramo si dice
Ch' h chiamato Calked
— Tesoretlo^ p. 63.
Also in the Sfera of Dati : —
" Chiamasi Caligine
E Gion e Nilo, e non si sa 1' origine."
The word is (Ar.) Khalij, applied in one of its senses specially to the canals drawn from the full Nile. The port on the Red Sea would be either Suikin or Aidhdb ; the 30 days' journey seems to point to the former. Polo's contemporary, Marino Sanudo, gives the following ac- count of the transit, omitting entirely the Red Sea navigation, though his line correctly represented would apparently go by Kosseir: "The fourth haven is called Ahaden, and stands on a certain little island joining, as it were, to the main, in the land of the Saracens. The spices and other goods from India are landed there, loaded on camels, and so carried by a journey of nine days to a place on the River Nile, called Chus (Xus, the ancient Cos below Luksor), where they are put into boats and conveyed in 1 5 days to Babylon. But in the month of
2 F 2
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436 MARCO POLO. Book III.
October and thereabouts the river rises to such an extent that the spices, &c., continue to descend the stream from Babylon and enter a certain long canal, and so are conveyed over the 200 miles between Babylon and Alexandria." (Book I. pt i. ch. i.).
Makrizi relates that up to a. h. 725 (1325), from time immemorial the Indian ships had discharged at Aden, but in that year the exactions of the Sultan induced a shipmaster to pass on into the Red Sea, and eventually the trade came to Jidda. (See De Sacy^ Crest Arabe, II.
556)
Aden is mentioned {Atan) in the Ming history as having sent an embassy to China in 1427. The country, which lay 22 days' voyage west oi KuU (supposed Calicut, but perhaps Kiyal), was devoid of grass or trees. {Bretschndder^ p. 18.)
Note 2. — The words describing the horses are (P.*s text) : ^^dehons destriers Arrahins et chei^aux et grans roncins k ij selles." The meaning seems to be what I have expressed in the text, fit either for saddle or packsaddle.
In one application the Deux selles of the old riding-schools were the two styles of riding, called in Spanish Montar d la Gineta and Mon- tar d la Brida. The latter stands for the old French style, with heavy bit and saddle, and long stirrups just reached by the toes ; the former the Moorish style, with short stirrups and lighter bit But the phrase would also seem to have meant saddle and packsaddle. Thus Cobami- vias explains the phrase Hombre de dos sillas, " Conviene saber de la gineta y brida, ser de silla y albarda (packsaddle), servir de todo^ and we find the converse expression. No ser para silla ni para albarda^ good for nothing.
But for an example of the exact phrase of the French text I am indebted to P. della Vaile. Speaking of the Persian horses, he says : *' Few of them are of any great height, and you seldom see thorough- breds among them ; probably because here they have no liking for such and don't seek to breed them. For the most part they are of that very useful style that we call horses for both saddles {clu noi chiamiamo da due selle)^' &c. (See Cobarruvias, under Silla and Brida; Dice, de laLengua Castellana por la Real Acadetnia Espanola, under Silla, Gineta^ Brida ; P. della Valle, Let. XV. da Sciraz, § 3, vol. ii. p. 240.)
Note 3. — The supposed confusion between Adel and Aden does DOt affect this chapter.
The " Soldan of Aden " was the Sultan of Yemen, whose chief resi- dence was at Ta'izz, N.R of Mokha. The prince reigning in Polo's day was Malik Muzaffar Shamsuddin Abul Mahasen Yusu£ His father, Malik Mansiir, a retainer of the Ayubite dynasty, had been sent by Saladin as Wazir to Yemen, with his brother Mahk Muazzam Turan Shah. After the death of the latter, and of his successor, the Wazir assumed the government and became the founder of a dynasty. Aden
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Chap. XXXVI. THE PROVINCE OF ADEN. 437
was the chief port of his dominions. It had been a seat of direct tnule with China in the early centuries of Islam.
Ibn Batuta speaks of it thus correctly : " It is enclosed by mountains, and you can enter by one side only. It is a large town, but has neither corn nor trees, nor fresh water, except from reser- voirs made to catch the rainwater; for other drinking water is at a great distance from the town. The Arabs often prevent the towns- people coming to fetch it until the latter have come to terms with them, and paid them a bribe in money or cloths. The heat at Aden is great It is the port frequented by the people from India, and great ships come thither from Kunbdyat, Tina, Kaulam, KalikCiJ, Fandariina,
Shiliit, Manjanir, Fdkaniir, i
Hinaur, Sinddbiir,* &c. There e
are Indian merchants residing in g
the city, and Egyptian merchants <
as well." I
The tanks of which the Moor >
speaks had been buried by debris ; of late years they have been cleared and repaired. They are grand works. They are said to have been formerly 50 in number, with a capacity of 30 million gallons.
This cut, from a sketch by Dr. Kirk, gives an excellent idea of Aden as seen by a ship approaching from India. The large plate again, reduced from a grand and probably unique con- temporary wood engraving of great size, shows the impression
* All ports of Western India : Pan- darani, Shalia (near Calicut), Manga- lore, Baccanore, Onore, Goa.
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^
^
438 MARCO POLO. Book III.
that the city made upon European eyes in the beginning of the 1 6th century. It will seem absurd, especially to those who knew Aden in the early days of our occupation, and no doubt some of the details are extravagant, but the general impression is quite con- sonant with that derived from the description of De Barros and Andrea Corsali: "In site and aspect from the seaward," says the.l^ former, "the city forms a beautiful object, for besides the part which rM lies along the shore with its fine walls and towers, its many public ^^ buildings and rows of houses rising aloft in many stories with -^^ terraced roofs, you have all that ridge of mountain facing the sea i A | and presenting to its very summit a striking picture of the operations \^ ] of Nature, and still more of the industry of man." This historian says that the prosperity of Aden increased on the arrival of the Portu- guese in those seas, for the Mussulman traders from Jidda and the Red Sea ports now dreaded these western corsairs, and made Aden fl^J an entrepdt, instead of passing it by as they used to do in days of mu unobstructed navigation. This prosperity however must have been ^J of very brief duration. Corsali's account of Aden (in 15 17) is excellent, ^^ but too long for extract. {Makrizi^ IV. 26-27 ; Playfair^ H. of Yemen, p. 7 ; Ibn Batuta, II. 177 ; De Barros, II. vii. 8; Ram. L f 182.) ^*
Note 4. — I have not been able to trace any other special! notice of the part taken by the Sultan of Yemen in the capture of | Acre by the Mameluke Sultan, Malik Ashraf Khalil, in 1291. Ibn j Ferat, quoted by Reinaud, says that the Sultan sent into ail the pro- vinces the most urgent orders for the supply of troops and machines ; | and there gathered from all sides the warriors of Damascus, of Hamath, and the rest of Syria, of Egypt, and of Arabia, (Michaud, BibL dis j Croisades, 1829, IV. 569.)
" I once " (says Joinville), " rehearsed to the Legate two cases of sin that a priest of mine had been telling me of, and he answered me thus : ' No man knows as much of the heinous sins that are done in Acre as I do ; and it cannot be but God will take vengeance on them, in such a way that the city of Acre shall be washed in the blood of its inhabitants, and that another people shall come to occupy alter them.' The good man's prophecy hath come true in part, for of a truth the city hath been washed in the blood of its inhabitants, but those to replace them are not yet come : may God send them good when it pleases Him !" (p. 192).
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Chap. XXXVII. THE CITY OF ESHER. 439
CHAPTER XXXVII. Concerning the City of Esher.
EsHER is a great city lying in a north-westerly direction from the last, and 400 miles distant from the Port of Aden. It has a king, who is subject to the Soldan of Aden. He has a number of towns and villages under him, and admi- nisters his territory well and justly.
The people are Saracens. The place has a very good haven, wherefore many ships from India come thither with various cargoes; and they export many good chargers thence to India.'
A great deal of white incense grows in this country, and brings in a great revenue to the Prince ; for no one dares sell it to any one else ; and whilst he takes it from the people at 10 livres of gold for the hundredweight, he sells it to the merchants at 60 livres, so his profit is immense."
Dates also grow very abundantly here. The people have no corn but rice, and very little of that ; but plenty is brought from abroad, for it sells here at a good profit. They have fish in great profusion, and notably plenty of tunny of large size ; so plentiful indeed that you may buy two big ones for a Venice groat of silver. The natives live on meat and rice and fish. They have no wine of the vine, but they make good wine from sugar, from rice, and from dates also.
And I must tell you another very strange thing. You must know that their sheep have no ears, but where the ear ought to be they have a little horn ! They are pretty little beasts.^
And I must not omit to tell you that all their cattle, including horses, oxen, and camels, live upon small fish and nought besides, for 'tis all they get to eat. You see
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440 MARCO POLO. Book III.
in all this country there is no grass or forage of any kind ; it is the driest country on the face of the earth. The fish which are given to the cattle are very small, and during March, April, and May, are caught in such quantities as would astonish you. They are then dried and stored, and the beasts are fed on them from year's end to year's end. The cattle will also readily eat these fish all alive and just out of the water.*
The people here have likewise many other kinds of fish of large size and good quality, exceedingly cheap; these they cut in pieces of about a pound each, and dry them in the sun, and then store them, and eat them all the year through, like so much biscuit.^
Note 1. — SAifir or SAefir, with the article, Es-Shehr, still exists on the Arabian coast, as a to\\Ti and district about 330 m. east of Aden. In 1839 Captain Haines described the modem town as extending in a scattered manner for a mile along the shore, the population about 6000, and the trade considerable, producing duties to die amount of 5000/. a year. It was then the residence of the Sultan of the Hamdm tribe of Arabs. There is only an open roadstead for anchorage. Perhaps, how- ever, the old city is to be looked for about ten miles to the westward, where there is another place bearing the same name, " once a thriving town, but now a desolate group of houses with an old fort, formerly the residence of the chief of the Ka^aidi tribe." {/, R, G, S. IX. 15 1-2.) Shehr is spoken of by Barbosa {Xaer in Lisbon ed. ; Pecker in Ramusio ; Xeher in Stanley ; in the two last misplaced to the east of Dhofar) : " Ii is a very large place, and there is a great traffic in goods imported by the Moors of Cambaia, Chaul, Dabul, Batticala, and the cities of Mala- bar, such as cotton-stuffs .... strings of garnets, and many other stones of inferior value ; also much rice and sugar, and spices of all sorts, with coco-nuts ; . . . . their money they invest in horses for India, wliich are here very large and good. Every one of them is worth in India 500 or 600 ducats." {Ram. f. 292.) The name Shehr in some of the Oriental geographies, includes the whole coast up to Omin.
Note 2. — The hills of the Shehr and Dhafdr districts were the great source of produce of the Arabian frankincense. Barbosa says of Shehr : " They carry away much incense, which is produced at this place and in the interior ; .... it is exported hence all over the world, and here it is used to pay ships with, for on the spot it is worth only 150 farthings
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Chap. XXXVIII. THE CITY OF DUFAR. 441
the hundredweight" See note 2, ch. xxvii. supra; and next chapter, note 2.
Note 3. — This was no doubt a breed of four-horaed sheep, and Polo, or his informant, took the lower pair of horns for abnormal ears. Probably the breed exists, but we have littie information on details in reference to this coast The Rev. G. P. Badger, D.C.L., writes : " There are sheep on the eastern coast of Arabia, and as high up as Mohammerah on the Shatt-al-Arab, with very small ears indeed ; so small as to be almost imperceptible at first sight near the projecting horns. I saw one at Mohammerah having six horns." And another friend, Mr. Arthur Grote, tells me he had for some time at Calcutta a 4-homed sheep from Aden.
Note 4. — This custom holds more or less on all the Arabian coast from Shehr to the Persian Gulf, and on the coast east of the Gulf also. Edrisi mentions it at Shehr (printed Shajr^ I. 152), and the Admiral Sidi 'AH says : *' On the coast of Shehr, men and animals all live on fish " (/. A, S. B. V. 461). Ibn Batuta tells the same of Dhafdr, the subject of next chapter : " The fish consist for the most part of sardines, which are here of the fattest The surprising thing is that all kinds of cattle are fed on these sardines, and sheep likewise. I have never seen any- thing like that elsewhere" (II. 197). Compare Strabo*s account of the Ichthyophagi on the coast of Mekran (XV. 11), and the like account in the life of ApoUonius of Tyana (III. 56).
Note 5. — At Hdsik, east of Dhafir, Ibn Batuta says : " The people here live on a kind of fish called Al-Lukham, resembling that called the sea-dog. They cut it in slices and strips, dry it in the sun, salt it, and feed on it Their houses are made with fish-bones, and their roofs with camel-hides" (II. 214).
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Concerning the City of Dufar.
DuPAR is a great and noble and fine city, and lies 500 miles to the north-west of Esher. The people are Saracens, and have a Count for their chief, who is subject to the Soldan of Aden ; for this city still belongs to the Province of Aden. It stands upon the sea and has a very good haven, so that there is a great traffic of shipping between this and
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44^ MARCO POLO. Book III.
India; and the merchants take hence great numbers of Arab horses to that market, making great profits thereby. This city has under it many other towns and villages.'
Much white incense is produced here, and I will tell you how it grows. The trees are like small fir-trees ; these are notched with a knife in several places, and from these notches the incense is exuded. Sometimes also it flows from the tree without any notch ; this is by reason of the great heat of the sun there.'
Note 1. — Dufar, The name .Ul^ is variously pronounced DhafiLr, Dhofar, Zhafir, and survives attached to a well-watered and fertile plain district opening on the sea, nearly 400 miles east of Shehr, though according to Haines there is now no town of the name. Ibn Batuta speaks of the city as situated at the extremity of Yemen (" the province of Aden "), and mentions its horse-trade, its unequalled dirt, stench, and flies, and consequent diseases. (See II. 196 seqq.) What he says of the desert character of the tract round the town is not in accordance with modern descriptions of the plain of Dhafdr, nor seemingly with his own statements of the splendid bananas grown there, as well as other Indian products, betel, and coco-nut His account of the Sultan of Zhafir in his time corroborates Polo's, for he says that prince was the son of a cousin of the King of Yemen, who had been chief of Zhafdr under the suzerainefe of that King and tributary to him. The only ruins mentioned by Haines are extensive ones near Haffer, towards the western part of the plain ; and this Fresnel considers to be the site of the former city. A lake which exists here, on the landward side of the ruins, was, he says, formerly a gulf, and formed the port, " the very good haven," of which our author speaks.
A quotation in the next note however indicates Merbit, which is at the eastern extremity of the plain, as having been the port of Dhafdr in the Middle Ages. Professor Sprenger is of opinion that the city itself was in the eastern part of the plain. The matter evidently needs further examination.
This Dhafdr, or the bold mountain above it, is supposed to be the Sephar of Genesis (X. 30). But it does not seem to be the Sapphara metropolis of Ptolemy, which is rather an inland city of the same name : ** Dhafdr was the name of tivo cities of Yemen, one of which was near Sana'i .... it was the residence of the Himyarite Princes ; some authors allege that it is identical with Sana'd " {Mardsid-ai-Ittiid, in Reinaud's Abulfeda, I. p. 124).
Dofar is noted by Camoens for its fragrant incense. It was believed in Malabar that the famous King Cheram Perumal, converted to Islim,
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Chap. XXXVIII. THE CITY OF DUFAR. 443
died on the pilgrimage to Mecca and was buried at Dhafdr, where his tomb was much visited for its sanctity.
The place is mentioned (Tsafarh) in the Ming Annals of China as a Mahomedan country lying, with a fair wind, 10 days N.W. of Kuli {supra p. 436). Ostriches were found there, and among the products are named drugs which Dr. Bretschneider renders as Oiibanum, Storax iiquida, Myrrh^ Catechu (?), Dragon's blood. This state sent an embassy (so-called) to China in 1422 (Haines in /, R, G, S. XV. 116 seqq, ; Play fair's Yemen, p. 31 ; Fresnel in J, As, ser. 3, tom. V. 517 seqq, ; Tohfut'Ul-Mujahidem^ P- 5^ ; Bretschneider ^ p. 19).
Note 2. — Frankincense presents a remarkable example of the ob- scurity which so often attends the history of familiar drugs ; though in this case the darkness has been, like that of which Marco spoke in his account of the Caraonas (vol. I. p. 99), much of man's making.
This coast of Hadhramaut is the true and ancient xt»>pa \ifio.voi^po% or \ifiavwTo<t>6poqj indicated or described under those names by Theo- phrastus, Ptolemy, PUny, Pseudo-Arrian, and other classical writers ; /. e, the country producing the fragrant gum-resin called by the Hebrews Lebonah^ by the Brahmans apparently Kundu and Kunduru, by the Arabs Lubdn and Kundur, by the Greeks Libanos^ by the Romans Thus, in medieval Latin Olibanum, and in English Frankincense^ i, <r., I appre- hend, " Genuine Incense," or " Incense Proper."* It is still produced in this region and exported from it : but the larger part of that which enters the markets of the world is exported from the roadsteads of the opposite Sumdlf coast In ancient times also an important quantity was exported from the latter coast, immediately west of Cape Gardafui {Aromatum Prom,), and in the Periplus this frankincense is distinguished by the title Peratic, " from over the water."
The Mard{id-al-Ittila\ a Geog. Dictionary of the end of the 14th century, in a passage of which we have quoted the commencement in the preceding note, proceeds as follows : " The other Dhafdr, which still subsists, is on the shore of the Indian Sea, distant 5 parasangs from M^rbith in the province of Shehr. Merbath lies below Dhafdr, and serves as its port Olibanum is found nowhere except in the mountains
* ** Drogue franche : — Qui a les qualites requises sans melange" {Liiiri). ** Franc ^. . . . Vrai, veritable" [Raynouard),
The medieval Olibanum was probably the Arabic Al-lubdn, but was popularly interpreted as OUum Libani, Dr. Birdwood saw at the Paris Exhibition of 1867 samples of frankincense solemnly labelled as the produce of Mount Lebanon !
•* Professor Diiroichen, of Strasburg, has discovered at the Temple of Dayr-el- Bihri, in Upper Egypt, paintings iUustrating the traffic carried on between Egypt and Arabia, as early as the 1 7th century B.C. In these paintings there are representa- tions, not only of bags of olibanum, but also of olibanum-trees planted in tubs or boxes, being conveyed by ship from Arabia to Egypt *' {//anbury and Fliickiger, Pharnia- cographia, p. 121).
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444 MARCO POLO. Book 111.
of Dhaf^, in the territory of Shehr ; in a tract which extends 3 days in length and the same in breadth. The natives make incisions in the trees with a knife, and the incense flows down. This incense is careftilly watched, and can be taken only to DhafKr, where the Sultan keeps the best part for himself; the rest is made over to the people. But anyone who should carry it elsewhere than to Dhafir would be put to death."
The elder Niebuhr seems to have been the first to disparage the Arabian produce of olibanum. He recognizes indeed its ancient cele- brity, and the fact that it was still to some extent exported from Dha^ and other places on this coast, but he says that the Arabs preferred foreign kinds of incense, especially benzoin ; and also repeatedly speaks of the superiority of that from India (des Indes and de Plnde), by which it is probable that he meant the same thing — viz., benzoin from the Indian Archipelago. Niebuhr did not himself visit Hadhramaut
Thus the fame of Arabian olibanum was dying away, and so was our knowledge of that and the opposite African coast, when Colebrooke (1807) published his Essay on OUbanum, in which he showed that a gum-resin, identical as he considered with frankincense, and so named {Kundur), was used in India, and was the produce of an indigenous tree, BosweUia serrata of Roxburgh, but thereafter known as B, thurifera. This dis- covery, connecting itself, it may be supposed, with Niebuhr's statements about Indian olibanum (though probably misunderstood), and wdi the older tradition coming down from Dioscorides of a so<alled Indian libanos (supra p. 386), seems to have induced a hasty and general assumption that the Indian resin was the oUbanum of commerce; insomuch that the very existence of Arabian oHbanum came to be treated as a matter of doubt in some respectable books, and that down to a very recent date.
In the Atlas to Bruce's Travels is figured a plant under the name of Angoudy which the Abyssinians believed to produce true olibanum, and which Bruce says did really produce a gum resembling it
In 1837 Lieift Cruttenden of the Indian Navy saw the fi^nkincense tree of Arabia on a journey inland from Merbdt, and during the ensuing year the trees of the Sumali country were seen, and partially described by Kempthorne, and Vaughan of the same service, and by Cruttenden himself. Captain Haines also in his report of the Survey of the Hadhra- maut coast in 1843-4,* speaks, apparently as an eye witness, of the frankincense trees about Dhafar as extremely numerous, and adds that from 3000 to 10,000 maunds were annually exported " from Merbdt and Dhafdr." ** 3 to 10 " is vague enough ; but as the kind of maund is n(5t specified it is vaguer still. Maunds differ as much as livres Fran^ais and lii'res sterling. In 1844 and 1846 Dr. Carter also had opportunities of examining olibanum trees on this coast, which he turned to good ac- count, sending to Government cuttings, specimens, and drawings, and
Publishe<l in J, R. G, S., vol. XV. (for 1845).
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Chap. XXXVIII. FRANKINCENSE. 445
publishing a paper on the subject in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the R. As. Society (1847).
But neither Dr. Carter's paper and specimens, nor the previous looser notices of the naval officers, seemed to attract any attention, and men of no small repute went on repeating in their manuals the old story about Indian olibanum. Dr. G. Birdwood however, at Bombay, in the
The Harvest of Frankincen«e in Arabia. Facsimile of an engraving in Thevel's CoitnographU UniverseUe (1575), reproduced from ihe Bible Lducator.*
years following 1859 took up the subject with great zeal and intelligence, procuring numerous specimens of the Sumali trees and products ; and
* By courtesy of the publishers, Messrs. Casscll, TeUcr, and Galpin.
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446 MARCO POLO. Book HI.
his monograph of the genus Boswdlia in the Linnaean Transactions (read April 1869), to which this note is very greatly indebted, is a most interesting paper, and may be looked on, I beheve, as embodying the most correct knowledge as yet attainable. The species as ranked in his table are the following :
1. Boswdlia Carterii (Birdw.), including the Arabian tree of DhaKr, and the larger variety called Mohr Madau by the SumdHs.
2. B, Bhaii'dajiana (Birdw.), Mohr A*d of the Sumdlfs.
3. B. papyrifera (Richard). Abyssinian species.
4. B, thurifera (Colebr.), see p. 387 supra,
5. B, Frereana (Birdw.), Yegdr of the Sumdlfs — named after Mr. WilHam Frere, Member of Council at Bombay. No. 2 was named from Bhau Ddji, a very eminent Hindu scholar and physician at Bombay (Birdw.).
No. I produces the Arabian olibanum, and Nos i and 2 together the bulk of the olibanum exported from the Sumdlf coast under the name Lubdti'Shehri, Both are said to give an inferior kind besides, called Z. Bedawi, No. 3 is, according to Birdwood, the same as Brace's Angpua, No. 5 is distinctly a new species, and affords a highly fragrant resin sold under the name of Luhdn Meti,
Bombay is now the great mart of frankincense. The quantity exported thence in 1872-73 was 25,000 <rzc//., of which nearly one quarter went to China.
Frankincense when it first exudes is milky white ; whence the name " White Incense " by which Polo speaks of it And the Arabic name iubdn apparently refers to milk. The Chinese have so translated, calling it /U'Siang or Milk-perfume.
Polo, we see, says the tree was like a fir tree ; and it is remarkable that a Chinese Pharmacology quoted by Bretschneider says the like, which looks as if their information came from a common source. And yet I think Polo*s must have been oral. One of the meanings o{ Lubdn, from the Kdmds, is Finns (Freytag), This may have to do with the error. Dr. Birdwood, in a paper in CasselVs Bible Educator^ has given a copy of a remarkable wood engraving from Thevet*s Cosmograpkit Universelle (1575) representing the collection of Arabian olibanum, and this through his kind intervention I am able to reproduce here. The text (probably after Polo) speaks of the tree as resembling a fir, but in the cut the firs are in the background ; the incense-trees have some real suggestion of Boswellia^ and the whole design has singular spirit and verisimilitude.
Dr. Birdwood thus speaks of the B, Frereana^^ the only species that he has seen in flower : " As I saw the plant in Playfaifs garden at Aden .... in young leaf and covered with bloom, I was much struck by its elegant singularity. The long racemes of green star-like flowers, tipped with the red anthers of the stamens (like aigrettes of little stars of emerald set with minute rubies), droop gracefully over the clusters of glossy,
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Chap. XXXVIII. FRANKINCENSE. 447
glaucous leaves ; and every part of the plant (bark, leaves, and flowers) gives out the most refreshing lemon-like fragrance." (Birdwood in
Boswellia Frereana. Birdw.
Linnaean Transactions for 1869, pp. 109 seqq, ; Hanbury dead Fluckiger^s Pharmacographia, pp. 120 seqq. ; Ritter^ xii. 356 seqq, ; Ntebukr, Desc, de P Arabic, I. p. 202, II. pp. 125-132.)
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CHAPTER XXXIX.
Concerning the Gulf of Calatu and the City so called.
Calatu is a great city, within a gulf which bears the name of the Gulf of Calatu. It is a noble city, and lies 600 miles from Dufar towards the north-west, upon the sea-shore. The people are Saracens, and are subject to Hormos. And whenever the Melic of Hormos is at war with some prince more potent than himself, he betakes himself to this city of Calatu, because it is very strong, both from its position and its fortifications.'
They grow no corn here, but get it from abroad; for every merchant-vessel that comes brings some. The haven is very large and good, and is frequented by numerous ships with goods from India, and from this city the spices and other merchandize are distributed among the cities and towns of the interior. They also export many good Arab horses from this to India." For, as I have told you before, the number of horses exported from this and the other cities to India yearly is something astonishing. One reason is that no horses are bred there, and another that they die as soon as they get there, through ignorant handling; for the people there do not know how to take care of them, and they feed their horses with cooked victuals and all sorts of trash, as I have told you fully heretofore ; and besides all that they have no farriers.
This City of Calatu stands at the mouth of the Gulf, so that no ship can enter or go forth without the will of the chief. And when the Melic of Hormos, who is Melic of Calatu also, and is vassal to the Soldan of Kerman, fears anything at the hand of the latter, he gets on board his ships and comes from Hormos to Calatu. And then he prevents any ship from entering the Gulf. This causes
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great injury to the Soldan of Kerman ; for he thus loses all the duties that he is wont to receive from merchants frequenting his territories from India or elsewhere ; for ships with cargoes of merchandize come in great numbers, and a very large revenue is derived from them. In this way he is constrained to give way to the demands of the Melic of Hormos.
This Mehc has also a castle which is still stronger than the city, and has a better command of the entry to the Gulf.3
The people of this country live on dates and salt fish, which they have in great abundance ; the nobles, however, have better fare.
There is no more to say on this subject. So now let us go on and speak of the city of Hormos, of which we told you before.
Note 1. — Kalhdt, the Calaiate of the old Portuguese writers, is about ^00 m. by shortest sea-line north-east of Dhafdr. " The city of KaMt," says Ibn Batuta, " stands on the shore ; it has fine bazaars, and one of the most beautiful mosques that you could see anywhere, the walls of which are covered with enamelled tiles of Kdshin. .... The city is inhabited by merchants, who draw their support from Indian import trade .... Although they are Arabs, they don't speak correctly. After every phrase they have a habit of adding the particle no. Thus they will say, * You are eating, — no ? * You are walking, — no ?* * You are doing this or that, — no?* Most of them are schismatics, but they cannot openly practise their tenets, for they are under the rule of Sultan Kutbuddin Tehemten Malik, of Hormuz, who is orthodox " (11. 226).
Calaiate^ when visited by d* Albuquerque, showed by its buildings and ruins that it had been a noble city. Its destruction was ascribed to an earthquake. {De BarroSy II. iL i.) It seems to exist no longer. Wellsted says its remains cover a wide space ; but only one building, an old mosque, has escaped destruction. Near the ruins is a small fishing-village, the people of which also dig for gold coins. {J. R, G. S. VII. 104.)
What is said about the Prince of Hormuz betaking himself to Kalhat in times of trouble is quite in accordance with what we read in Teixeira's abstract of the Hormuz history. When expelled by revolution at Hor- muz or the like, we find the princes taking refiige at Kalhat VOL. II. 2 G
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450 MARCO POLO. Book III.
Note 2.—" Of the interior." Here the phrase of the G. T. is again " en fra tere a mairUe citi et castiaus^ (See supra^ Bk. I. ch. L note 2.)
There was still a large horse-trade from Kalhat in 15 17, but the Portuguese compelled all to enter the port of Goa, where according to Andrea Corsali they had to pay a duty of 40 saraffi per head. If these ashrafis were pagodas, this would be about 15/. a head; if they were dindrSy it would be more than 20/. The term is now commonly applied in Hindustan to the gold mohr.
Note 3. — ^This no doubt is Maskat
CHAPTER XL.
Returns to the City of Hormos whereof we spoke formerly.
When you leave the City of Calatu, and go for 300 miles between north-west and north, you come to the city of Hormos; a great and noble city on the sea/ It has a Melicj which is as much as to say a King, and he is under the Soldan of Kerman.
There are a good many cities and towns belonging to Hormos, and the people are Saracens. The heat is tre- mendous, and on that account their houses are built with ventilators to catch the wind. These ventilators are placed on the side from which the wind comes, and they bring the wind down into the house to cool it. But for this the heat would be utterly unbearable."
I shall say no more about these places, because I for- merly told you in regular order all about this same city of Hormos, and about Kerman as well. But as we took one way to go, and another to come back, it was proper that we should bring you a second time to this point.
Now, however, we will quit this part of the world, and tell you about Great Turkey. First, however, there is a point that I have omitted ; to wit, that when you leave the City of Calatu and go between west and north-west, a dis-
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Chap. XL. THE CITY OF HORMOS. 45 1
tance of 500 miles, you come to the city of Kis.^ Of that, however, we shall say no more now, but pass it with this brief mention, and return to the subject of Great Turkey, of which you shall now hear.
Note 1. — The distance is very correct; and the bearing fairly so for the first time since we left Aden. I have tried in my map of Polo*s Geo- graphy to realize what seems to have been his idea of the Arabian coast
Note 2. — These ventilators are a kind of masonry windsail, known as Bdd'gir, or " wind-catchers," and in general use over Oman,
A Persian Wind-catcher.
Kerman, the province of Baghdad^ Mekran, and Sind. A large and elaborate example, from Hommaire de HelFs work on Persia, is given in the cut above. Very particular accounts of these ventilators will be found in P. della Valle, and in the embassy of Don Garcias de Silva Figueroa. {Delia Vol. II. 333-35 ; Figueroa, Fr. Trans. 1667, p. 38 ; Ramus. I. 293 v. ; Macd, Kinneir^ p. 69.) A somewhat different arrange- ment for the same purpose is in use in Cairo, and gives a very pecuhar character to the city when seen from a moderate height.
2 G 2
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452 MARCO POLO. BOOK III.
Note 3. — On Kish see Book I. ch. vi. note 2.
The Turkish Admiral Sidi 'Ali, who was sent in 1553 to command the Ottoman fleet in the Persian Gulf, and has written an interesting account of his disastrous command and travels back to Constantinople from India, calls the island Kais, or " the old fformuz" This shows that the traditions of the origin of the island of Hormuz had grown dim, Kish had preceded Hormuz as the most prominent port of Indian trade, but old Hormuz, as we have seen (Bk. I. ch. xix.), was quite another place. (/. As. ser. i, tom. ix. 67.)
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BOOK FOURTH.
WARS AMONG THE TARTAR PRINCES
AND
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE NORTHERN COUNTRIES.
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Note, — A considerable number of the quasi-historical chapters in this section (which I have followed M. Pauthier in making into a Fourth Book) are the merest verbiage and repetition of narrative formulae without the slightest value. I hare therefore thought it undesirable to print all at length, and have given merely the gist (marked thusf)* or an extract, of such chapters. They will be found entire in English in H. Murray's and Wright's editions, and in the original French in the edition of the Society de G^graphie, in Bartoli, and in Pauthier.
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BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
Concerning Great Turkey.
In Great Turkey there is a King called Caidu, who is the Great Kaan s nephew, for he was the grandson of Chagatai, the Great Kaan's own brother. He hath many cities and castles, and is a great Prince. He and his people are Tartars alike ; and they are good soldiers, for they are constantly engaged in war.'
Now this King Caidu is never at peace with his uncle the Great Kaan, but ever at deadly war with him, and he hath fought great battles with the Kaan's armies. The quarrel between them arose out of this, that Caidu de- manded from the Great Kaan the share of his father's conquests that of right belonged to him ; and in particular he demanded a share of the Provinces of Cathay and Manzi. The Great Kaan replied that he was willing enough to give him a share such as he gave to his own sons, but that he must first come on summons to the Council at the Kaan's Court, and present himself as one of the Kaan's liegemen. Caidu, who did not trust his uncle very far, declined to come, but said that where he was he would hold himself ready to obey all the Kaan's commands.
In truth, as he had several times been in revolt, he dreaded that the Kaan might take the opportvmity to de- stroy him. So, out of this quarrel between them, there arose a great war, and several great battles were fought by the host of Caidu against the host of the Great Kaan his
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456 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
uncle. And the Great Kaan from year's end to year's end keeps an army watching all Caidu's frontier, lest he should make forays on his dominions. He, natheless, will never cease his aggressions on the Great Kaan's territory, and maintains a bold face to his enemies."
Indeed, he is so potent that he can well do so ; for he can take the field with 100,000 horse, all stout soldiers and inured to war. He has also with him several Barons of the imperial lineage ; i. ^., of the family of Chinghis Kaan, who was the first of their lords, and conquered a great part of the world, as I have told you more particularly in a former part of this Book.
Now you must know that Great Turkey lies towards the north-west when you travel from Hormos by that road I described. It begins on the fiirther bank of the River Jon,* and extends northward to the territory of the Great Kaan.
Now I shall tell you of sundry battles that the troops of Caidu fought with the armies of the Great Kaan.
Note 1. — We see that Polo's error as to the relationship between Kublai and Kaidu, and as to the descent of the latter (see Vol. I. p. 194) was not a slip, but persistent The name of Kaidu*s grandfather is here in the G. T. written precisely Chagatai {Ciagatat),
Kaidu was the son of Kashin, son of Okkodai, who was the third son of Chinghiz and his successor in the Kaanate. Kaidu never would acknowledge the supremacy of Kublai, alleging his own superior claim to the Kaanate, which Chinghiz was said to have restricted to the house of Okkodai as long as it should have a representative. From the vicinity of Kaidu's position to the territories occupied by the branch of Chaghatai he exercised great influence over its princes, and these were often his allies in the constant hostilities that he maintained against the Kaan. Such circumstances may have led Polo to confound Kaidu with the house of Chaghatai. Indeed, it is not easy to point out the mutual limits of their territories, and these must have been somewhat complex, for we find Kaidu and Borrak Khan of Chaghatai at one time exercising a kind of joint sovereignty in the cities of Bokhara and Samarkand. Probably, indeed, the limits were in a great measure tribal rather than territorial
* The Jaihun or Oxus.
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Chap. II. BATTLES BETWEEN CAIDU AND THE KAAN. 457
But it may be gathered that Kaidu's authority extended over Kashgar and the cities bordering the south slopes of the Thian Shan as far east as Kara Khoja, also the valley of the Talas River, and the country north of the Thian Shan from Lake Balkhash eastward to the vicinity of Barkul, and in the further north the country between the Upper Yenisei and the Irtish.
Kaidu died in 1301 at a very great age. He had taken part, it was said, in 41 pitched battles. He left 14 sons (some accounts say 40), of whom the eldest, called Shabar, succeeded him. He joined Dua Khan of Chaghatai in making submission to Teimui Kaan, the successor of Kublai ; but before long, on a quarrel occurring between the two former, Dua seized the territory of Shabar, and as far as I can learn no more is heard of the house of Kaidu. Vdmb^ry seems to make the Khans of Khokand to be of the stock of Kaidu ; but whether they claim descent from Yiinus Khin, as he says, or from a son of Baber left behind in his flight from Ferghina, as Pandit Manphdl states, the genealogy would be from Chaghatai, not from Kaidu.
Note 2.— "To the N.N.W. a desert of 40 days' extent divides the states of Kublai from those of Kaidu and Dua. This frontier extends for 30 dajrs* journey from east to west From point to point," &c., see continuation of this quotation from Rashfduddfn, m Vol. I. p. 216.
CHAPTER II.
Of certain Battles that were Fought by King Caidu against THE Armies of his Uncle the Great Kaan.
Now it came to pass in the year of Christ's incarnation, 1266, that this King Caidu and another prince called Yesudar who was his cousin, assembled a great force and made an expedition to attack two of the Great Kaan's Barons who held lands under the Great Kaan, but were Caidu's own kinsmen, for they were sons of Chagatai who was a baptized Christian, and own brother to the Great Kaan; one of them was called Chibai, and the other Chiban.'
Caidu with all his host, amounting to 60,000 horse, engaged the Kaan's two Barons, those cousins of his, who
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458 MARCO POLO. Boor IV.
had also a great force amounting to more than 60,000 horsemen, and there was a great battle. In the end the Barons were beaten, and Caidu* and his people won the day. Great numbers were slain on both sides, but the two brother Barons escaped, thanks to their good horses. So King Caidu returned home swelling the more with pride and arrogance, and for the next two years he remained at peace, and made no further war against the Kaan.
However, at the end of those two years King Caidu assembled an army composed of a vast force of horsemen. He knew that at Caracoron was the Great Kaan's son No- MOGAN, and with him George the grandson of Prestcr John. These two princes had also a great force of cavalry. And when King Caidu was ready he set forth and crossed the frontier. After marching rapidly without any adven- ture, he got near Caracoron, where the Kaan's son and the younger Prester John were awaiting him with their great army, for they were well aware of Caidu s advance in force. They made them ready for battle like vaUant men, and all undismayed, seeing that they had more than 60,000 well-appointed horsemen. And when they heard Caidu was so near they went forth valiantly to meet him. When they got within some 10 miles of him they pitched their tents and got ready for battle, and the enemy who were about equal in numbers did the same; each side forming in six columns of 10,000 men with good captains. Both sides were well equipped with swords and maces and shields, with bows and arrows and other arms after their fashion. You must know that the practice of the Tartars going to battle is to take each a bow and 60 arrows. Of these, 30 arc light with small sharp points, for long shots and following up an enemy, whilst the other 30 are heavy, with large broad heads which they shoot at close quarters, and with which they inflict great gashes on face and arms, and cut the enemy's bowstrings, and commit great havoc. This every one is ordered to attend to. And when they have
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Chap. II. BATTLES BETWEEN CAIDU AND THE KAAN. 459
shot away their arrows they take to their swords and maces and lances, which also they ply stoutly.
So when both sides were ready for action the Naccaras began to sound loudly, one on either side. For 'tis their custom never to join battle till the Great Naccara is beaten. And when the Naccaras sounded, then the battle began in fierce and deadly style, and furiously the one host dashed to meet the other. So many fell on either side that in an evil hour for both it was begun ! The earth was thickly strewn with the wounded and the slain, men and horses, whilst the uproar and din of battle was so loud you would not have heard God's thunder! Truly King Caidu him- self did many a deed of prowess that strengthened the hearts of his people. Nor less on the other side did the Great Kaart's son and Prester John's grandson, for well they proved their valour in the medley, and did astonishing feats of arms, leading their troops with right good judg- ment.
And what shall I tell you ? The battle lasted so long that it was one of the hardest the Tartars ever fought. Either side strove hard to bring the matter to a point and rout the enemy, but to no avail. And so the battle went on till vesper-tide, and without victory on either side. Many a man fell there ; many a child was made an orphan there ; many a lady widowed ; and many another woman plunged in grief and tears for the rest of her days, I mean the mothers and the araines of those who fell.'
So when they had fought till the sun was low they left off, and retired each side to its tents. Those who were unhurt were so dead tired that they were like to drop, and the wounded, who were many on both sides, were moaning, in their various degrees of pain ; but all were more fit for rest than fighting, so gladly they took their repose that night. And when morning approached. King Caidu, who had news from his scouts that the Great Kaan was sending a great army to reinforce his son, judged that it was time
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46o MARCO POLO. Book IV.
to be off; so he called his host to saddle and mounted his horse at dawn, and away they set on their return to their own country. And when the Great Kaan's son and the grandson of Prester John saw that King Caidu had retired with all his host, they let them go unpursued, for they were themselves sorely fatigued and needed rest. So King Caidu and his host rode and rode, till they came to their own realm of Great Turkey and to Samarcand ; and there they abode a long while without again making war.'
Note 1. — The names are uncertain. The G. T. has " one of whom was called Tibai or Ciban ;" Pauthier, as in the text
The phrase about their being Kaidu's kinsmen is in the G. T., "f<r zinzinz (?) mdsme esioient de Caidu roi^
Note 2. — Araines for Harims^ I presume. In the narrative of a merchant in Ramusio (II. 84, 86) we find the same word represented by Arin and Arino,
Note 3. — The date at the beginning of the chapter is in G. T., and Pauthier*s MS. A. as we have given it Pauthier substitutes 1276,35 that seems to be the date approximately connecting Prince Numughan with the wars against Kaidu. In 1275 Kublai appointed Numugbaii to the command of his N.W. frontier, with Ngantung or 'Antung, an able general, to assist him in repelling the aggressions of Kaidu. In the same year Kaidu and Dua Khan entered the Uighur country (W. and N.W. of Kamul), with more than 100,000 men. Two years later, viz., in 1277, Kaidu and Shireghi, a son of Mangu Khan, engaged near Almalik (on the Hi) the troops of Kublai, conmianded by Numughan and 'Antung, and took both of them prisoners. The invaders then marched towards Karakorum. But Bayan, who was in Mongolia, marched to attack them, and completely defeated them in several engagements. {Gauhil^ 69, 168, 182.)
Pauthier gives a Uttle more detail from the Chinese amials, but throws no new light on the discrepancies which we see between Polo's account and theirs. 'Antung, who was the grandson of Mokli, the Jelair, one of Chinghiz's Orlok or Marshals, seems here to take the place assigned to Prester John's grandson, and Shireghi perhaps that of Yesudar. The only prince of the latter name that I can find is a son of Hulaku's.
The description of the battle in this chapter is a mere formula again and again repeated. The armies are always exactly or nearly equal they are always divided into corps of 10,000 (tomam), they always halt
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Chap. IV. KING CAIDU^S VALIANT DAUGHTER. 46 1
to prepare for action when within 10 miles of one another, and the terms used in describing the fight are the same. We shall not inflict these tiresome repetitions again on the reader.
CHAPTER III.
What the Great Kaan said to the mischief done by Kaidu
HIS Nephew.
-{^(That were Caidu not of his own Imperial blood, he would make an utter end of him, &c.)
CHAPTER IV. Of the Exploits of King Caidu's valiant Daughter.
Now you must know that King Caidu had a daughter whose name was Aijaruc, which in the Tartar is as much as to say "The Bright Moon." This damsel was very beautiful, but also so strong and brave that in all her father's realm there was no man who could outdo her in feats of strength. In all trials she showed greater strength than any man of them.'
Her father often desired to give her in marriage, but she would none of it. She vowed she would never marry till she found a man who could vanquish her in every trial ; him she would wed and none else. And when her father saw how resolute she was, he gave a formal consent in their fashion, that she should marry whom she list and when she list. The lady was so tall and muscular, so stout and shapely withal, that she was almost Uke a giantess. She had distributed her challenges over all the kingdoms, de- claring that whosoever should come to try a fall with her, it should be on these conditions, viz.^ that if she vanquished
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462 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
him she should win from him 100 horses, and if he van- quished her he should win her to wife. Hence many a noble youth had come to try his strength against her, but she beat them all ; and in this way she had won more than 10,000 horses.
Now it came to pass in the year of Christ 1280 that there presented himself a noble young gallant, the son of a rich and puissant king, a man of prowess and valiance and great strength of body, who had heard word of the damsel's challenge, and came to match himself against her in the hope of vanquishing her and- winning her to wife. That he greatly desired, for the young lady was passing fair. He too was young and handsome, fearless and strong in every way, insomuch that not a man in all his fathers realm could vie with him. So he came full confidently, and brought with him 1000 horses to be forfeited if she should vanquish him. Thus might she gain 1090 horses at a single stroke ! But the young gallant had such con- fidence in his own strength that he counted securely to win her.
Now ye must know that King Caidu and the Queen his wife, the mother of the stout damsel, did privily beseech their daughter to let herself be vanquished. For they greatly desired this prince for their daughter, seeing what a noble youth he was, and the son of a great king. But the damsel answered that never would she let herself be van- quished if she could help it ; if, indeed, he should get the better of her then she would gladly be his wife, according to the wager, but not otherwise.
So a day was named for a great gathering at the Palace of King Caidu, and the King and Queen were there. And when all the company were assembled, for great numbers flocked to see the match, the damsel first came forth in a strait jerkin of sammet ; and then came forth the young bachelor in a jerkin of sendal ; and a winsome sight they were to see. When both had taken post in the middle of
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Chap. IV. KING CAIDU»S VALIANT DAUGHTER. 463
the hall they grappled each other by .the arms and wrestled this way and that, but for a long time neither could get the better of the other. At last, however, it so befel that the damsel threw him right valiantly on the palace pave- ment. And when he found himself thus thrown, and her standing over him, great indeed was his shame and dis- comfiture. He gat him up straightway, and without more ado departed with all his company, and returned to his father full of shame and vexation, that he who had never yet found a man that could stand before him should have been thus worsted by a girl! And his 1000 horses he left behind him.
As to King Caidu and his wife they were greatly an- noyed, as I can tell you ; for if they had had their will this youth should have won their daughter.
And ye must know that after this her father never went on a campaign but she went with him. And gladly he took her, for not a knight in all his train played such feats of arms as she did. Sometimes she would quit her father's side, and make a dash at the host of the enemy, and seize some man thereout, as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him to her father; and this she did many a time.
Now I will leave this story and tell you of a great battle that Caidu fought with Argon the son of Abaga, Lord of the Tartars of the Levant.
Note 1. — The name of the lady is in Pauthier's MSS. Agiaint^ Agy- anie; in the Bern, Agyanic; in the MS. of the G. T., distinctly ^/Jg^'an^, though printed in the edition of 1824 as Aigiarm, It is Oriental Turkish, Ai-Yari^^5, signifying precisely Lucent Lune^ as Marco explains it For this elucidation I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Vdmbdry, who adds that the name is in actual use among the Uzbek women.
Kaidu had many sons, but only one daughter, whom Rashiduddin (who seems to be Hammer's authority here) calls Kutulun. Her father loved her above all his sons ; she used to accompany him to the field,
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MARCO POLO. BOOK IV.
and aid in state affairs. Letters were exchanged between her and Ghazan Elhan, in which she assured him she would marry no one else; but her father refused her hand to all suitors. After Kaidu's death, this ambitious lady made some attempt to claim the succession. {Hammers Ilkhansy IL 143-4.)
The story has some resemblance to what Ibn Batuta relates of another warlike princess, Urdiija, whom he professes to have visited in the questionable kingdom of Tawdlisi on his way to China : " I heard . . . that various sons of kings had sought Urduja's hand, but she always answered, * I will marry no one but him who shall fight and conquer me ;* so they all avoided the trial, for fear of the shame of being beaten by her." (/. B. IV. 253-4.) I have given reasons {Cathay, p. 520) for suspecting that this lady with a Turkish name in the Indian Archipelago is a bit of fiction. Possibly Ibn Batuta had heard the legend of King Kaidu's daughter.
The story of Kaidu*s daughter, and still more the parallel one from Ibn Batuta, recall what Herodotus tells of the Sauromatae, who had married the Amazons ; that no girl was permitted to marry till she had killed an enemy (IV. 117). They recall still more closely Brunhild, in the Nibelungen : —
** a royal maiden who reigned beyond the sea :
From sunrise to the sundown no paragon had she. All boundless as her beauty was her strength was peerless too, And evil plight hung o'er the knight who dared her love to woo. • For he must try three bouts with her ; the whirling spear to fling ; To pitch the massive stone ; and then to follow with a spring ; And should he beat in every feat his wooing well has sped, But he who fails must lose his love, and likewise lose his head.
CHAPTER V.
How Abaga sent his Son Argon in command against King Caidu.
Abaga the Lord of the Levant had many districts and provinces bordering on King Caidu's territories. These lay in the direction of the Arbre Sol, which the Book of Alexander calls the Arbre Sec^ about which I have told you before. And Abaga, to watch against forays by Caidu's people, sent his son Argon with a great force of horsemen, to keep the marches between the Arbre Sec and the River Jon. So there tarried Argon with all his host*
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Chap. VI. ACOMAT'S USURPATION. 465
Now it came to pass that King Caidu assembled a great army and made captain thereof a brother of his called Barac, a brave and prudent man, and sent this host under his brother to fight with Argon."
^ (Barac and his army cross the Jon or Oxus and are totally routed by Argon, to whose history the traveller now turns.)
Note 1. — The government of this frontier, from Kazwin or Rei to the banks of the Oxus, was usually, under the Mongol sovereigns of Persia, confided to the heir of the throne. Thus, under Hulaku it was held by Abdki, under Abdki by Arghdn, and under Arghiin by Ghdzin. (See Hammer, passim.)
We have already spoken amply of the Arbre Sol (Vol I. p. 132 se^g,).
Note 2. — Barac or Borrak, who has been already spoken of in chap. iii. of the Prologue (Vol. I. p. 10), was no brother of Kaidu*s. He was the head of the house of Chaghatai, and in alliance with Kaidu. The invasion of Khorasan by Borrak took place in the early part of 1269. Arghiin was only about 15, and his father Abdkd came to take the command in person. The battle seems to have been fought some- where near the upper waters of the Murghab, in the territory of Badghfs (north of Herat). Borrak was not long after driven from power, and took refuge with Kaidu. He died, it is said from poison, in 1270.
CHAPTER VI.
How Argon after the Battle heard that his Father was dead,
AND WENT TO ASSUME THE SOVEREIGNTY AS WAS HIS RIGHT.
After Argon had gained this battle over Caidu s brother Barac and his host, no long time passed before he had news that his father Abaga was dead, whereat he was sorely grieved.' He made ready his army and set out for his father's Court to assume the sovereignty as was his right ; but he had a march of 40 days to reach it.
Now it befel that an uncle of Argon's whose name was AcoMAT SoLDAN (for he had become a Saracen), when he heard of the death of his brother Abaga, whilst his nephew
VOL. If. 2 H
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466 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
Argon was so far away, thought there was a good chance for him to seize the government. So he raised a great force and went straight to the Court of his late brother Abaga, and seized the sovereignty and proclaimed himself King ; and also got possession of the treasure, which was of vast amount. All this, like a crafty knave, he divided among the Barons and the troops to secure their hearts and favour to his cause. These Barons and soldiers accord- ingly, when they saw what large spoil they had got from him, were all ready to say he was the best of kings, and were full of love for him, and declared they would have no lord but him. But he did one evil thing that was greatly reprobated by all ; for he took all the wives of his brother Abaga, and kept them for himself."
Soon after he had seized the government, word came to him how Argon his nephew was advancing with all his host. Then he tarried not, but straightway summoned his Barons and all his people, and in a week had fitted out a great army of horse to go to meet Argon. And he went forth light of heart, as being confident of victorj% showing no dismay, and saying on all occasions that he desired nought so much as to take Argon, and put him to a cruel death.3
Note 1. — ^Abdkd died at Hamadan ist April, 1282, twelve yean after the defeat of Borrak.
Note 2. — This last sentence is in Pauthier's text, but not in the G. T. The thing was a regular Tartar custom (Vol I. pp, 245, 248), and would scarcely be " reprobated by all"
Note 3. — Acomat Soldan is Ahmad, a younger son of Hulaku, whose Mongol name was Tigiidar, and who had been baptized in his youth by the name of Nicolas, but went over to Islam, and thereby gained favonr in Persia. On the death of his brother Abdkd he had a strong paity and seized the throne. Arghdn continued in sullen defiance, gathering means to assist his claim.
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CHAPTER VII.
How ACOMAT SOLDAN SET OUT WITH HIS HOST AGAINST HIS NEPHEW WHO WAS COMING TO CLAIM THE THRONE THAT BELONGED TO HIM.
-jf (Relates how Acomat marches with 60,000 horse, and on hearing of the approach of Argon summons his chiefs together and addresses them.)
CHAPTER VIII.
How Argon took Counsel with his Followers about attacking HIS Uncle Acomat Soldan.
^ (Argon, uneasy at hearing of Acomat's approach, calls together his Barons and counsellors and addresses them.)
CHAPTER IX. How THE Barons of Argon answered his Address.
^ (An old Baron, as the spokesman of die rest, expresses their zeal and advises immediate advance. On coming within ten miles of Acomat, Argon encamps and sends two envoys to his uncle.)
CHAPTER X.
The Message sent by Argon to Acomat.
^ (A remonstrance and summons to surrender the throne.)
2 H 2
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468 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
CHAPTER XL
How ACOMAT REPLIED TO ARG0N*S MESSAGE.
And when Acomat Soldan had heard the message of Argon his nephew, he thus replied : " Sirs and Envoys," quoth he, " my nephew's words are vain ; for the land is mine, not his, and I helped to conquer it as much as his father did. So go and tell my nephew that if he will I will make him a great Prince, and give him ample lands, and he shall be as my son, and the greatest lord in the land after myself. But if he will not, let him be assured that I will do my best to bring him to his death! That is my answer to my nephew, and nought else of concession or covenant shall you ever have from me! " With that Acomat ceased, and said no word more. And when the Envoys had heard the Soldan's words they asked again : " Is there no hope that we shall find you in different mind ? ** " Never,** quoth he, " never whilst I live shall ye find my mind changed.**
^I^ (Argon's wrath at the reply. Both sides prepare for battle.)
CHAPTER XII.
Of THE Battle between Argon and Acomat, and the CAPnvm
OF Argon.
^I^ (There is a prolix description of a battle almost identical with those already given in chapter ii. of this Book and previously. It ends with the rout of Argon's army, and proceeds :)
And in the pursuit Argon was taken. As soon as this happened tliey gave up the chase, and returned to their camp fiill of joy and exultation. Acomat first caused his nephew to be shackled and well guarded, and then, being
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Chap. XIII. ARGON DELIVERED FROM PRISON. 469
a man of great lechery, said to himself that he would go and enjoy himself among the fair women of his court. He left a great Mehc * in command of his host, enjoining him to guard Argon like his own life, and to follow to the Court by short marches, to spare the troops. And so Acomat departed with a great following, on his way to the royal residence. Thus then Acomat had left his host in command of that Mehc whom I mentioned, whilst Argon remained in irons, and in such bitterness of heart that he desired to die.'
Note 1. — This is in the original Belie, for Melic, /. ^., Ar. Maliky chief or prince.
Note 2. — In the spring of 1284 Ahmad marched against his nephew Arghiin, and they encountered in the plain of Ak Khoja, near Kazwin. Arghun*s force was very inferior in numbers, and he was defeated. He fled to the Castle of Kala*at beyond Tiis, but was persuaded to sur- render. Ahmad treated him kindly, and though his principal followers urged the execution of the prisoner, he refused, having then, it is said, no thought for anything but the charms of his new wife Tudai.
CHAPTER XIII. How Argon was delivered from Prison.
Now it befel that there was a great Tartar Baron, a very aged man, who took pity on Argon, saying to himself that they were doing an evil and disloyal deed in keeping their lawful lord a prisoner, wherefore he resolved to do all in his power for his deliverance. So he tarried not, but went incontinently to certain other Barons and told them his mind, saying that it would be a good deed to deliver Argon and make him their lord, as he was by right. And when the other Barons had heard what he had to put before them, then both because they regarded him as one of the wisest men among them, and because what he said
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was the truth, they all consented to his proposal and said that they would join with all their hearts. So when the Barons had assented, Boga (which was he who had set the business going), and with him Elchidai, Togan, Tegana, Tagachar, Ulatai, and Samagar, — all those whom I have now named, — proceeded to the tent where Argon lay a prisoner. When they had got thither, Boga, who was the leader in the business, spoke first, and to this effect: "Good my Lord Argon," said he, "we are well aware that we have done ill in making you a prisoner, and we come to tell you that we desire to return to Right and Justice. We come therefore to set you free, and to make you our Liege Lord as by right you are ! " Then Boga ceased and said no more.
CHAPTER XIV.
How Argon got the Sovereignty at last.
When Argon heard the words of Boga he took them in truth for an untimely jest, and replied with much bitter- ness of soul : " Good my Lord,** quoth he, " you do ill to mock me thus ! Surely it suffices that you have done me so great wrong already, and that you hold me, your lawful Lord, here a prisoner and in chains ! Ye know well, as I cannot doubt, that you are doing an evil and a wicked thing, so I pray you go your way, and cease to flout me." *^ Good my Lord Argon,** said Boga, " be assured we arc not mocking you, but are speaking in sober earnest, and we will swear it on our Law." Then all the Barons swore fealty to him as their Lord, and Argon too swore that he would never reckon it against them that they had taken him prisoner, but would hold them as dear as his father before him had done.
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Chaps. XV. & XVI. ACOMAT ARRESTED AND SLAIN. 471
And when these oaths had passed they struck off Argon s fetters, and hailed him as their lord. Argon then desired them to shoot a volley of arrows into the tent of the Melic who had held them prisoners and who was in command of the army, that he might be slain. At his word they tarried not, but straightway shot a great number of arrows at the tent, and so slew the Melic. When that was done Argon took the supreme command and gave his orders as sovereign, and was obeyed by all. And you must know that the name of him who was slain, whom we have called the Melic, was Soldan; and he was the greatest Lord after Acomat himself. In this way that you have heard, Argon recovered his authority.
CHAPTER XV.
How ACOMAT WAS TAKEN PRISONER.
-f- (A MESSENGER breaks in upon Acomat's festivities with the news that Soldan was slain, and Argon released and marching to attack him. Acomat escapes to seek shelter with the Sultan of Babylon, i. e. of Egypt, attended by a very small escort. The Officer in command of a Pass by which he had to go, seeing the state of things, arrests him and carries him to the Court (probably Tabriz), where Aj-gon was already arrived.)
CHAPTER XVI.
How ACOMAT WAS SLAIN BY ORDER OF HIS NEPHEW.
And so when the Officer of the Pass came before Argon bringing Acomat captive, he was in a great state of exulta-
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472 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
tion, and welcomed his uncle with a malediction,* saying that he should have his deserts. And he str^ghtway ordered the army to be assembled before him, and with- out taking counsel with any one commanded the prisoner to be put to death, and his body to be destroyed. So the officer appointed to this duty took Acomat away and put him to death, and threw his body where it never was seen again.
CHAPTER XVII. How Argon was recx)Gnizkd as Sovereign.
And when Argon had done as you have heard, and re- mained in possession of the Throne and of the Royal Palace, all the Barons of the different Provinces, who had been subject to his father Abaga, came and performed homage before him, and obeyed him, as was his due.' And after Argon was well estabUshed in the sovereignty he sent Casan his son with 30,000 horse to the Arbre SeCy I mean to the region so called, to watch the frontier. Thus then Argon got back the government. And you must know that Argon began his reign in the year 1286 of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Acomat had reigned two years, and Argon reigned six years; and at the end of those six years he became ill and died ; but some say 'twas of poison.*
Note 1. — ArghiSn, a prisoner (see last note), and looking for the worst, was upheld by his courageous wife Bulughan (see Prologue, chap, xvil), who shared his confinement The order for his execution, as soon as the camp should next move, had been issued.
BuKA the Jelair, who had been a great chief under Abdki, and had resentments against Ahmad, got up a conspiracy in favour of Aighiin, and eflfected his release as well as the death of Alinak, Ahmad's com-
•* // dit a son ungU qe il soil U mauvenu " (see supra^ p. 15).
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Chap. XVIII. KIACATU'S SOVEREIGNTY. 473
mander-in-chief. Ahmad fled towards Tabriz, pursued by a band of the Karaunas, who succeeded in taking him. When ArghiSn came near and saw his uncle in their hands, he called out in exultation Morio ! — an exclamation, says Wassif, which the Mongols used when successful in archery, — ^and with a gesture gave the signal for the prisoner's death ( I oth August, 1284).
Buka is of course the Boga of Polo ; Alinak is his Soldan, The conspirators along with Buka, who are named in the history of Wassdf, are Yesubuka, Gurgan, Aruk, Kurmishi^ and Arkasun Noian, Those named by Polo are not mentioned on this occasion, but the names are all Mongol. Tagajar, Ilchidai, Tughan, Samaghar, all appear in the Persian history of those times. Tagajar appears to have had the honour of a letter from the Pope (Nicolas IV.) in 1291, specially exhorting him to adopt the Christian faitfi ; it was sent along with letters of like tenor addressed to Arghiin, Ghizdn, and other members of the imperial family. Tagajar is also mentioned by the continuator of Abulfaraj as engaged in the conspiracy to dethrone Kaikhitu. Ulatai was probably the same who went a few years later as Arghun's ambassador to Cam- baluc (see Prologue ch. xvii.) ; and Polo may have heard the story from him on board ship.
(Assem, III. pt 2, 118; Moshdm^ p. 80; Ilchan,^ passim.) Abulferagius gives a fragment of a letter from ArghiSn to Kublai, reporting the deposition of Ahmad by the princes because he had " apostatized from the law of their fathers, and adopted that of the Arabs" {Assemani, u, s, p. it 6). The same historian says that Ahmad was kind and liberal to the Christians, though Hayton speaks differently.
Note 2. — ^ArghiSn obtained the throne on Ahmad's death, as just related, and soon after named his son Ghizdn (born in 127 1) to the government of Khorasan, Mazanderan, Kumis, and Rei. Buka was made Chief Minister. The circumstances of Arghdn's death have been noticed already {supra^ p. 356).
CHAPTER XVIII.
How KlACATU SEIZED THE SOVEREIGNTY AFTER ARGON'S DEATH.
And immediately on Argon's death, an uncle of his who was own brother* to Abaga his father, seized the throne, as he found it easy to do owing to Casan's being so far
* Frer carnaus (I. p. 195).
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474 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
away as the Arbre Sec. When Casan heard of his father's death he was in great tribulation, and still more when he heard of Kiacatu's seizing the throne. He could not then venture to leave the frontier for fear of his enemies, but he vowed that when time and place should suit he would go and take as great vengeance as his father had taken on Acomat. And what shall I tell you ? Kiacatu continued to rule, and all obeyed him except such as were along with Casan. Kiacatu took the wife of Argon for his own, and was always dallying with women, for he was a great lechour. He held the throne for two years, and at the end of those two years he died ; for you must know he was poisoned.*
Note 1. — Kaikhat6, of whom we heard in the Prologue {Vol I. p. 35), was the brother, not the uncle, of ArghiSn. On the death of the latter there were three claimants, viz., his son Ghdzin, his brother Kiikhatu, and his cousin Baidu, the son of Tarakai one of Hulaku*s sons. The party of Kdikhatu was strongest, and he was raised to the throne at Akhlath, 23rd July, 1291. He took as wives out of the Royal Tents of ArghiSn the Ladies Bulughdn (the 2nd, not her named in the Prologue) and Uruk. All the writers speak of Kiikhatu's character in the same way. Hayton calls him " a man without law or faith, of no valour or experience in arms, but altogether given up to lechery and vice, living like a brute beast, glutting all his disordered appetites ; for his dissolute life hated by his own people, and lightly regarded by foreigners." {Ram, 11. ch. xxiv.) The continuator of Abulfaraj, and Abulfeda in his Annals, speak in like terms. {Assem. III. Pt 2nd, 1 19-120; Reiske, Ann. Abulf, III. loi.)
Baidu rose against him ; most of his chiefs abandoned him, and he was put to death in March-April, 1295. He reigned therefore nearly four years, not two as the text sa)rs.
CHAPTER XIX.
How Baidu seized the Sovereignty after the Death of Kiacatu.
When Kiacatu was dead, Baidu, who was his uncle, and was a Christian, seized the throne.* This was in the year
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Chap. XIX. BAIDU AND CASAN. 475
1294 of Christ*s Incarnation. So Baidu held the govern- ment, and all obeyed him, except only those who were with Casan.
And when Casan heard that Kiacatu was dead and Baidu had seized the throne, he was in great vexation, especially as he had not been able to take his vengeance on Kiacatu. As for Baidu, Casan swore that he would take such vengeance on him that all the world should speak thereof; and he said to himself that he would tarry no longer, but would go at once against Baidu and make an end of him. So he addressed all his people, and then set out to get possession of his throne.
And when Baidu had intelligence thereof he assembled a great army and got ready, and marched ten days to meet him, and then pitched his camp, and awaited the advance of Casan to attack him ; meanwhile addressing many prayers and exhortations to his own people. He had not been halted two days when Casan with all his followers arrived. And that very day a fierce battle began. But Baidu was not fit to stand long against Casan, and all the less that soon after the action began many of his troops abandoned him and took sides with Casan. Thus Baidu was discom- fited and put to death, and Casan remained victor and master of all. For as soon as he had won the battle and put Baidu to death he proceeded to the capital and took possession of the government; and all the Barons performed homage and obeyed him as their liege lord. Casan began to reign in the year 1294 of the Incarnation of Christ.
Thus then you have had the whole history from Abaga to Casan, and I should tell you that Alaii the conqueror of Baudac, and the brother of the Great Kaan Cublay, was the progenitor of all those I have mentioned. For he was the father of Abaga, and Abaga was the father of Argon, and Argon was the father of Casan who now reigns.*
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476 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
Now as we have told you all about the Tartars of the Levant, we will quit them and go back and tell you more
about Great Turkey But in good sooth we have told
you all about Great Turkey and the history of Caidu, and there is really no more to tell. So we will go on and tell you of the Provinces and nations in the for North.
Note 1. — The Christian writers often ascribe Christianity to various princes of the Mongol dynasties without any good grounds. Certain coins of the Ilkhans of Persia, up to the time of Ghazan's conversion to Islam, exhibit sometimes Mahomedan and sometimes Christian for- mulae, but this is no indication of the religion of the prince. Thus coins not merely of the heathen Khans Abaka and Arghdn, but of Ahmad Tigudar the fanatical Moslem, are found inscribed " In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" Raynaldus, under 1285, gives a frag- ment of a letter addressed by Arghdn to the European Powers, and dated from Tabriz, " in the year of the Cock," which begins " In Christi Nomen^ Amen /" But just in like manner some of the coins of Noraian kings of Sicily are said to bear the Mahomedan profession of faith ; and the copper money of some of the Ghaznevide sultans bears the pagan effigy of the bull Nandi, borrowed from the coinage of the Hindu kings of Kabul.
The European Princes could not get over the belief that the Mongols were necessarily the inveterate enemies of Mahomedanism and all its professors. Though Ghdzdn was professedly a zealous Mussulman, we find King James of Aragon, in 1300, offering Cassan Rey del Mo§ol amity and alliance with much abuse of the infidel Saracens ; and the same feeling is strongly expressed in a letter of Edward II. of England to the " Emperor of the Tartars," which apparently was meant for Oljaita the successor of Ghdzdn. {Fraehn de Ikhan, Nummis^ vi and passim ; Raynald, III. 6ii)\ J. A, S, B. XXIV. 490; Kington's Frederick IL I. 396 ; Cqpmany, Antiguos TratadoSy &c. p. 107 ; Rymer^ 2d Ed. III. 34; see also p. 15.)
There are other assertions, besides our authors, that Baidu professed Christianity. Hayton says so, and asserts that he prohibited Maho- medan proselytism among the Tartars. The continuator of Abulferaj says that Baidu's long acquaintance with the Greek Despina Khatun, the wife of Abdki, had made him favourable to Christians, so that he willingly allowed a church to be carried about with the camp, and beDs to be struck therein, but he never openly professed Christianity. In fact at this time the whole body of Mongols in Persia was passing over to Islam, and Baidu also, to please them, adopted Mahomedan practices. But he would only employ Christians as Ministers of State. His rival
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Chap. XIX. BAIDU AND GHAZAN. 477
Ghdzin, on the other hand, strengthened his own influence by adopting Islam ; Baidu's followers fell off from him, and delivered him into Ghdzdn's power. He was put to death 4th of October, 1295, about seven months after the death of his predecessor. D'Ohsson's authorities seem to mention no battle such as the text speaks of; but Mirkhond, as abridged by Teixeira, does so, and puts it at Nakshiwin on the Araxes (p. 341).
Note 2. — Hayton testifies from his own knowledge to the remark- able personal beauty of Arghiin, whilst he tells us that the son Ghizin was as notable for tiie reverse. After recounting with great enthusiasm instances which he had witnessed of the daring and energy of Ghizdn, the Armenian author goes on : " And the most remarkable thing of all was that within a frame so small, and ugly almost to monstrosity, there should be assembled nearly all those high qualities which nature is wont to associate witii a form of symmetry and beauty. In fact among all his host of 200,000 Tartars you should scarcely find one of smaller stature or of uglier and meaner aspect than this Prince."
Pachymeres says that Ghizin made Cyrus, Darius, and Alexander his patterns, and delighted to read of them. He was very fond of the mechanical arts ; " no one surpassed him in making saddles, bridles, spurs, greaves, and helmets ; he could hammer, stitch, and polish, and in such occupations employed the hours of his leisure from war." The
Tomb of Oljaitu Khan, the brother of Polo's '* Cawn," at Sultaniah (from Fcrgusson).
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478 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
same author speaks of the purity and beauty of his coinage, and the excellence of his legislation. Of the latter, so famous in the East, an account at length is given by D'Ohsson. (Hayton in Ramus, II. ch. xxvi. ; Pachym. Andron, PalaeoL VI. i ; UOhsson, Vol IV.)
Before finally quitting the " Tartars of the Levant," we give a repre- sentation of the finest work of architecture that they have left behind them, the tomb built for himself by Oljaitu (see preceding page), or, as his Moslem name ran, Mahomed Khodabandah, in the city of Sultaniah, which he founded. Oljaitu was the brother and successor of Marco Polo's friend Ghdzin, and died in 13 16, eight years before our traveller.
CHAPTER XX.
Concerning King Conchi who rules the Far North.
You must know that in the far north there is a King called Conchi. He is a Tartar, and all his people are Tartars, and they keep up the regular Tartar religion. A very brutish one it is, but they keep it up just the same as Chinghis Kaan and the proper Tartars did, so I will tell you something of it.
You must know then that they make them a god of felt, and call him Natigai ; and they also make him a wife ; and then they say that these two divinities are the gods of the Earth who protect their cattle and their corn and all their earthly goods. They pray to these figures, and when they are eating a good dinner they rub the mouths of their gods with the meat, and do many other stupid things.
The King is subject to no one, although he is of the Imperial lineage of Chinghis Kaan, and a near kinsman of the Great Kaan.' This King has neither city nor castle; he and his people live always either in the wide plains or among great mountains and valleys. They subsist on the milk and flesh of their cattle, and have no corn. The King has a vast number of people, but he carries on no war with anybody, and his people live in great tranquillit)% They
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Chap. XX. KING CONCHI OF THE FAR NORTH. 479
have enormous numbers of cattle, camels, horses, oxen, sheep, and so forth.
You find in their country immense bears entirely white, and more than 20 palms in length. There are also large black foxes, wild asses, and abundance of sables; those creatures I mean from the skins of which they make those precious robes that cost 1000 bezants each. There are also vairs in abundance ; and vast multitudes of the Pharaoh's rat, on which the people live all the summer time. Indeed they have plenty of all sorts of wild creatures, for the country they inhabit is very wild and trackless.'
And you must know that this King possesses one tract of country which is quite impassable For horses, for it abounds greatly in lakes and springs, and hence there is so much ice as well as mud and mire, that horses cannot travel over it. This difficult country is 13 days in extent, and at the end of every day's journey there is a post for the lodgment of the couriers who have to cross this tract. At each of these post-houses they keep some 40 dogs of great size, in fact not much smaller than donkeys, and these dogs draw the couriers over the day's journey from post-house to post-house, and I will tell you how. You see the ice and mire are so prevalent, that over this tract, which lies for those 13 days' journey in a great valley between two mountains, no horses (as I told you) can travel, nor can any wheeled carriage either. Wherefore they make sledges, which are carriages without wheels, and made so that they can run over the ice, and also over mire and mud without sinking too deep in it. Of these sledges indeed there are many in our own countr)'^, for 'tis just such that are used in winter for carrying hay and straw when there have been hea\y rains and the country is deep in mire. On such a sledge then they lay a bear-skin on which the courier sits, and the sledge is drawn by six of those big dogs that I spoke of. The dogs have no driver, but go straight for the next post-house, drawing the sledge
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48o MARCO POLO. Book IV.
famously over ice and mire. The keeper of the post-house however also gets on a sledge drawn by dogs, and guides the party by the best and shortest way. Ahd when they arrive at the next station they find a new relay of dogs and sledges ready to take them on, whilst the old relay tiurns back; and thus they accomplish the whole journey across that region, always drawn by dogs.^
The people who dwell in the valleys and mountains adjoining that tract of 13 days' journey are great huntsmen, and catch great numbers of precious little beasts which are sources of great profit to them. Such are the Sable, the Ermine, the Vair, the Erculin^ the Black Fox, and many other creatures from the skins of which the most cosdy furs are prepared. They use traps to take them, from which they can t escape.^ But in that region the cold is so great that all the dwellings of the people are under- ground, and underground they always live.^
There is no more to say on this subject, so I shall proceed to tell you of a region in that quarter, in which there is perpetual darkness.
Note 1. — There are two Kuwinjis, or Kaunchis, as the name, from Polo's representation of it, probably ought to be written, mentioned in connexion with the Northern Steppes, if indeed there has not been con- fusion about them; both axe descendants of Juji the eldest son of Chinghiz. One was the twelfUi son of Shaibani, the 5th son of Jujl Shaibani's Yurt was in Siberia, and his family seem to have become pre- dominant in that quarter. Arghdn, on his defeat by Ahmad {supra p. 462) was besought to seek shelter with Kaunchi. The other Kaunchi was the son of Sirtaktai, the son of Orda, the eldest son of Juji, and was, as well as his father and grandfather, chief of the White Horde whose territory lay north-east of the Caspian. An embassy from this Kaunchi is mentioned as having come to the court of Kaikhatu at Siah-Kuh (north of Tabriz) with congratulations, in the summer of 1293. Polo may very possibly have seen the members of this embassy, and got some of his information from them. (See Gold, Horde^ 149, 249; Ilkhans^ L 354j 403 \ II- ^93> where Hammer writes the name Kandschi,)
It is perhaps a trace of the lineage of the old rulers of Siberia that the old town of Tyuman in Western Siberia is still known to the Tartars as ChinghiZ'Tora, or the Fort of Chinghiz. (Erman, I. 310.)
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Chap. XX. POLO'S ACCOUNT OF SIBERIA. 48 1
Note 2. — We see that Polo's information in this chapter extends over the whole latitude of Siberia ; for the great White Bears and the
r.§
i| •is
!l
I la
III
w "5 2
s|
is
s J
if
gS
w
Black Foxes belong to the shores of the Frozen Ocean ; the Wild Asses VOL. II. 2 I
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482 MARCO POLO. ' Book IV.
only to the southern parts of Siberia. As to the Pharaoh's Rat, see Vol. I. p. 246.
Note 3. — No dog-sledges are now known, I believe, on this side of the course of the Obi, and there not south of about 61° 30'. But in the nth century they were in general use between the Dwina and Petchora. And Ibn Batuta's account seems to imply that in the 14th they were in use far to the south of the present limit : " It had been my wish to visit the Land of Darkness, which can only be done from Bolghar. There is a distance of 40 days' journey between these two places. I had to give up the intention however on account of the great difficulty attending the journey and the little fruit that it promised. In that country they travel only with small vehicles dra>^Ti by great dogs. For the steppe is covered with ice, and the feet of men or the shoes of horses would slip, whereas the dogs having claws their paws don't slip upon the ice. The only travellers across this wilderness are rich merchants, each of whom owns about 100 of these vehicles, which are loaded with meat, drink, and firewood. In fact, on this route there are neither trees nor stones, nor human dwellings. The guide of the travellers is a dog who has often made the journey before ! The price of such a beast is sometimes as high as 1000 dinirs or thereabouts. He is yoked to the vehicle by the neck, and three other dogs are harnessed along with him. He is the chief, and all the other dogs with their carts follow his guidance and stop when he stops. The master of this animal never ill-uses him nor scolds him, and at feeding-time the dogs are always served before the men. If this be not attended to, the chief of the dogs will get sulky and run off, leaving the master to perdition" (II. 399-400).
The bigness attributed to the dogs by Polo, Ibn Batuta, and Rubni- quis, is an imagination founded on the work ascribed to them. Mr. Kennan says they are simply half-domesticated Arctic wolves. Erman calls them the height of European spaniels (qu. setters?), but much slenderer and leaner in the flanks. A good draught-dog according to Wrangell should be 2 feet high and 3 feet in length. The number of dogs attached to a sledge is usually greater than the old travellers represent, — none of whom however had seen the thing.
Wrangell's account curiously illustrates what Ibn Batuta says of the Old Dog who guides : " The best-trained and most intelligent dog is often yoked in front. . . . He often displays extraordinary sagacity and influence over the other dogs, e.g. in keeping them from breaking after game. In such a case he will sometimes turn and bark in the opposite direction ; . . . . and in crossing a naked and boundless taundra in dark- ness or snow-drift he will guess his way to a hut that he has never visited but once before" (I. 159). Kennan also says : "They are guided and controlled entirely by the voice and by a lead-dog who is especially trained for the purpose." The like is related of the Esquimaux dogs. Kennan' s Tent Life in Siberia, p. 163-4 ; IVooiTs MammaHay p. 266.
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Chap. XXI. THE LAND OF DARKNESS. 483
Note 4. — On the Erculin and Ercolin of the G. T., written Arculin in next chapter, Arcolino of Ramusio, Herculini of Pipino, no light is thrown by tJie Italian or other editors. One supposes of course some animal of the ermine or squirrel kinds affording valuable fur, but I can find no similar name of any such animal. It may be the Argali or Siberian Wild Sheep, which Rubruquis mentions : " I saw another kind of beast which is called Arcali ; its body is just like a ram's, and its horns spiral like a ram's also, only they are so big that I could scarcely lift a pair of them with one hand. They make huge drinking-vessels out of these" (p. 230).
Vair^ so often mentioned in medieval works, appears to have been a name appropriate to the fur as prepared rather than to the animal. This appears to have been the Siberian squirrel called in French pctit-gris^ the back of which is of a fine grey and the belly of a brilliant white. In the Voir (which is perhaps only varius or variegated) the backs and bellies were joined in a kind of checquer; whence the heraldic checquer called by the same name. There were two kinds, tnenu-vair corrupted into minever^ and gros-vair^ but I cannot learn clearly on what the dis- tinction rested (see Douet d'Arcq^ p. xxxv). Upwards of 2000 ventres de menuvair were sometimes consumed in one complete suit of robes (ib. xxxiL).
The traps used by the Siberian tribes to take these valuable animals are described by Erman (I. 452), only in the English translation the description is totally incomprehensible; also in Wrangell, I. 151.
Note 5. — The country chiefly described in this chapter is probably that which the Russians, and also the Arabian Geographers, used to term Yugria, apparently the country of the Ostyaks on the Obi. The winter-dwellings of the people are not strictly speaking underground, but they are flanked with earth piled up against the walls. The same is the case with those of the Yakuts in Eastern Siberia, and these often have the floors also sunk 3 feet in the earth. Habitations really sub- terranean, of some previous race, have been found in the Samoyed country {Klaprot/is Mag, Asiatique, II. 66).
CHAPTER XXI.
Concerning the Land of Darkness.
Still further north, and a long way beyond that kingdom of which I have spoken, there is a region which bears the name of Darkness, because neither sun nor moon nor stars appear, but it is always as dark as with us in the
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twilight. The people have no king of their own, nor are they subject to any foreigner, and live like beasts. [They are dull of understanding, like half-witted persons.']
The Tartars however sometimes visit the country, and they do it in this way. They enter the region riding mares that have foals, and these foals they leave behind. After taking all the plunder that they can get they find their way back by help of the mares, which are all eager to get back to their foals, and find the way much better than their riders could do.'
Those people have vast quantities of valuable peltry; thus they have those costly Sables of which I spoke, and they have the Ermine, the Arculin, the Vair, the Black Fox, and many other valuable furs. They are all hunters by trade, and amass amazing quantities of those fiirs. And the people who are on their borders, where the Light is, purchase all those furs from them ; for the people of the Land of Darkness carry the fiirs to the Light coimtry for sale, and the merchants who purchase these make great gain thereby, I assure you.^
The people of this region are tall and shapely, but very pale and colourless. One end of the country borders upon Great Rosia. And as there is no more to be said about it, I will now proceed, and first I will tell you about the Province of Rosia.
Note 1. — In the Ramusian version we have a more intelligent repre- sentation of the facts regarding the Land of Darhuss : " Because for most part of the winter montiis the sun appears not, and the air is dusky, as it is just before the dawn when you see and yet do not see ' and again below it speaks of the inhabitants catching the fur animals " in summer when they have continuous daylight" It is evident that the writer of this version did and the writer of the original French which we have translated from did not understand what he was writing. The whole of the latter account implies belief in the perpetuity of the dark- ness. It resembles Pliny*s hazy notion of the northern regions :• "pars
♦ That is, in one passage of Pliny (iv. 12) ; for in another passage from his molti- farious note book, where Thule is spoken of^ the Arctic day and night are much moit distinctly characterized (IV. 16).
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Chap. XXI. THE LAND OF DARKNESS. 485
mundi damnata a rerum naturi et densd mersa caligine." Whether the fault is due to Rustician*s ignorance or is Polo*s own, who can say ? We are willing to debit it to the former, and to credit Marco with the im- proved version in Ramusio. In the Masdlak-al-Absdr^ however, we have the following passage in which the conception is similar : " Merchants do not ascend (the Wolga) beyond Bolghar ; from that pomt they make excursions through the province of Julman (supposed to be the country on the Kama and Viatka). The merchants of the latter country pene- trate to Yughra which is the extremity of the North. Beyond that you see no trace of habitation except a great Tower built by Alexander, after which there is nothing but Darkness." The narrator of this, being asked what he meant, said : " It is a region of desert mountains, where frost and snow continually reign, where the sun never shines, no plant vegetates, and no animal lives. Those mountains border on the Dark Sea, on which rain falls perpetually, fogs are ever dense, and the sun never shows itself, and on tracts perpetually covered with snow." (iVI d Ex, XIII. L 285.)
Note 2. — This is probably a story of great antiquity, for it occurs in the legends of the mythical Ughuz^ Patriarch of the Turk and Tartar nations, as given by Rashiduddin. In this hero's campaign towards the far north, he had ordered the old men to be left behind near Almalik ; but ^ very ancient sage called Bushi Khwaja persuaded his son to carry him forward in a box, as they were sure sooner or later to need the counsel of experienced age. When they got to the Land of Kard HuIuTiy Ughuz and his officers were much perplexed about finding their way, as they had arrived at the Land of Darkness. The old Bushi was then consulted, and his advice was that they should take with them 4 mares and 9 she-asses that had foals, and tie up the foals at the entrance to the Land of Darkness, but drive the dams before them. And when they wished to return they would be guided by the scent and maternal instinct of the mares and she-asses. And so it was done (see Erdmann Temudschin^ p. 478). Ughuz, according to the Mussul- man interpretation of the Eastern Legends, was the great-grandson of Japhet.
The story also found its way into some of the later Greek forms of the Alexander Legends. Alexander, when about to enter the Land of Darkness, takes with him only picked young men. Getting into diffi- culties, the Kmg wants to send back for some old sage who should advise. Two young men had smuggled their old father with them in anticipation of such need, and on promise of amnesty they produce him. He gives the advice to use the mares as in the text. (See MiilUr's ed, oi Pseudo-Caliisthenes, Bk. II. ch. xxxiv.)
Note 3. — Ibn Batuta thus describes the traffic that took place with the natives of the Land of Darkness : " When the Travellers have accom- plished a journey of 40 days across this Desert tract they encamp near
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486 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
the borders of the Land of Darkness. Each of them then deposits there the goods that he has brought with him, and all return to their quarters. On the morrow they come back to look at their goods, and find laid beside them skins of the Sable, the Vair, and the Ermine. If the owner of the goods is satisfied with what is laid beside his parcel he takes it, if not he leaves it there. The inhabitants of the Land of Darkness may then (on another visit) increase the amount of their deposit, or, as often happens, they may take it away altogether and leave the goods of the foreign merchants untouched. In this way is the trade conducted. The people who go thither never know whether those with whom they buy and sell are men or goblins, for they never see any one 1 "
(11. 401.)
Abulfeda gives exactly the same account of the trade ; and so does Herberstein. Other Oriental writers ascribe the same custom to the IVisu, a people 3 months' journey from Bolghar. These Wisu have been identified by Fraehn with the JVesses, a people spoken of by Russian historians as dwelling on the shores of the Bielo Osero, which Lake indeed is alleged by a Russian author to have been anciendy called Wusu, misunderstood into Weissmsee, and thence rendered into Russian Bielo Osero (" White Lake ") {Golden Hordt^ App. p. 429 ; Busching, IV. 359-60; Herberstein in Ram, II. 168 v.; Fraehn^ Bolghar^ p. 14, 47 ; Do., Ibn Fozlan, 205 seqq., 221). Dumb trade of the same kind is a circumstance related of very many different races and periods, e. g.j of a people beyond the Pillars of Hercules by Herodotus, of the Sabaean dealers in frankincense by Theophrastus, of the Seres by Pliny, of the Sasians far south of Ethiopia by Cosmas. of the people of the Clove Islands by Kazwini, of a region beyond Segelmessa by Mas'udi, of a people far beyond Timbuctoo by Cadamosto, of the Veddas of Ceylon by MarignoUi and more modem writers, of the Poliars of Malabar by various authors, by Paulus Jovius of the Laplanders, &c., &c.
Pliny's attribution, surely erroneous, of this custom to the Chinese, suggests that there may have been a misunderstanding by which this method of trade was confused with that other curious system of dumb higgUng, by the pressure of the knuckles under a shawl, a masonic system in use from Peking to Bombay, and possibly to Constantinople.
ITie term translated here ** Light," and the " Light Country," is in the G. T. " a la Cartel' " a la Cartes^ This puzzled me for a long time, as I see it puzzled Mr. Hugh Murray, Signor Bartoli, and Lazari (who passes it over). The version of Pipino, " ad Lucis terras finitimas deferunt" points to the true reading ; — Carte is an error for Clarte,
The reading of this chapter is said to have fired Prince Rupert with the scheme which resulted in the establishment of the Hudson's Bay Company.
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Chap. XXII. ROSIA AND ITS PEOPLE. 487
CHAPTER XXII. Description of Rosia and its People. Province of Lac.
RosiA is a very great province, lying towards the north. The people are Christians, and follow the Greek doctrine. There are several kings in the country, and they have a language of their own. They are a people of simple man- ners, but both men and women very handsome, being all very white and [tall, with long fair hair]. There are many strong defiles and passes in the country; and they pay tribute to nobody except to a certain Tartar king of the Ponent, whose name is Toctai ; to him indeed they pay tribute, but only a trifle. It is not a land of trade, though to be sure they have many fine and valuable furs, such as Sables, in abundance, and Ermine, Vair, Ercolin, and Fox skins, the largest and finest in the world [and also much wax]. They also possess many Silver-mines, from which they derive a large amount of silver/
There is nothing else worth mentioning ; so let us leave Rosia, and I will tell you about the Great Sea, and what provinces and nations lie round about it, all in detail ; and we will begin with Constantinople.— First, however, I should tell you of a province that lies between north and north- west. You see in that region that I have been speaking of there is a province called Lac, which is conterminous with Rosia, and has a king of its own. The people are partly Christians and partly Saracens. They have abundance of furs of good quality, which merchants export to many countries. They live by trade and handicrafts."
There is nothing more worth mentioning, so I will speak of other subjects ; but there is one thing more to tell you about Rosia that I had forgotten. You see in Rosia there is the greatest cold that is to be found anywhere, so great as to be scarcely bearable. The country is so great that it reaches even to the shores of the Ocean Sea, and 'tis in
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488 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
that sea that there are certain islands in which are produced numbers of gerfalcons and peregrine falcons, which are carried in many directions. From Russia also to Oroech it is not very far, and the journey could be soon made, were it not for the tremendous cold; but this renders its accomplishment almosf impossible.^
Now then let us speak of the Great Sea, as I was about to do. To be sure many merchants and others have been *there, but still there are many again who know nothing about it, so it will be well to include it in our Book. We will do so then, and let us begin first with the Strait of Constantinople.
Note 1. — Ibn Fozlan, the oldest Arabic author who gives any detailed account of the Russians (and a very remarkable one it is), says he " never saw people of form more perfectly developed ; they were tall as palm-trees, and ruddy of countenance," but at the same time " the most uncleanly people that God hath created," drunken, and fright- fully gross in their manners (Fraehn's Ibn Fozlan^ p. 5 seqq.\ Ibn Batuta is in some respects less flattering ; he mentions the silver-mines noticed in our text : " At a da/s distance from Ukak * are the hills of the Russians, who are Christians. They have red hair and blue eyes ; ugly to look at, and crafty to deal with. They have silver-mines, and it is from their country that are brought the saum or ingots of silver with which buying and selling is carried on in this country (Kipchak or the Ponent of Polo). The weight of each saumah is 5 ounces* (II. 414). Mas'udi also says: "The Russians have in their country a silver-mine similar to that which exists in Khorasan, at the mountain of Banjhir" (/. e, Panjshir; II. 15; and see supra^ VoL I. p. 170). These positive and concurrent testimonies as to Russian silver-mines are re- markable, as modem accounts declare that no silver is foimd in Russia. And if we go back to the i6th century, Herberstein says the same. There was no silver, he says, except what was imported; silver money had been in use barely 100 years; previously they had used oblong ingots of the value of a ruble, without any figure or legend. {Ram, IL
159.)
But a welcome communication from Professor Bruun points out
• This Ukak of Ibn Batuta is not, as I too hastily supposed (Vol. L p. 8), the Ucaca of the Polos on the Volga, but a place of the same name on the Sea of Azo^ which appears in some medieval maps as Lccac or Locaq (i.e. VOcac)^ and which filie de Laprimaudaie in his Periplus of the Medieval Caspian, locates at a place called Kaszik, a little east of Mariupol. {Et. stir le Comm. au Afoyen Agf, p. 23a) I owe this correction to a valued correspondent, Professor Bruun, of Odessa.
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Chap. XXII. ROSIA AND ITS PEOPLE. 489
that the statement of Ibn Batuta identifies the silver-mines in question with certain mines of argentiferous lead-ore near the River Mious (a river falling into the Sea of Azof, about 2 2 m. W. of Taganrog) ; an ore which even in recent times has afforded 60 per cent of lead, and ^ per cent of silver. And it was these mines which furnished the ancient Russian rubies or ingots. Thus the original ruble was the saumah of Ibn Batuta, the sommo of Pegolotti. A ruble seems to be still called by some term like saumah in Central Asia; it is printed soom in the
Medieval Russian Church, from Fergusson.
Appendix to Davies's Punjab Report, p. xi. And Professor Bruun tells me that the silver ruble is called Som by the Ossethi of Caucasus.*
Franc-Michel quotes from Fitz-Stephen's Desc. of London (Jenip. Henry II) :—
** Aurum mittit Arabs .... S^res purpureas vestes ; Galli sua vina ; Norwegi^ Russi, varium, grysium, sabelinas.'*
Russia was overrun with fire and sword as far as Tver and Torshok by Batu Khan (1237-38), some years before his invasion of Poland and
* The word is, however, perhaps Or. Turkish ; Som^ "pure, solid*' (see Pavet dt CourUiliCy and Vdmbh^\ s. v.).
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490 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
Silesia, Tartar tax-gatherers were established in the Russian cities as far north as Rostov and Jaroslawl, and for many years Russian princes as far as Novgorod paid homage to the Mongol Khans in their court at Sarai Their subjection to the Khans was not such a trifle as Polo seems to imply; and at least a dozen Russian princes met their death at the hands of the Mongol executioner.
Note 2. — The Lac of this passage appears to be Wallachia, Abulfeda calls the Wallachs Auldk; Rubruquis Iliac, which he says is the same word as Bloc (the usual European form of those days being Blachiy Blachia), but the Tartars could not pronounce the B (p. 275). Abulghazi says the original inhabitants of Kipchak were the Urus, the Olaks, the MajarSy and the Bashkirs,
Rubruquis is wrong in placing Iliac or Wallachs in Asia ; at least the people near the Ural, who he says were so-called by the Tartars, cannot have been Wallachs. Professor Bruun, who corrects my error in following Rubruquis, thinks those Asiatic Blac must have been Folowtzi, or Cumanians.
Note 3. — Oroech is generally supposed to be a mistake for NoroecK NoRWEGE or Norway, which is probable enough. But considering the Asiatic sources of most of our author's information, it is also possible that Oroech represents Wareg. The Waraegs or Waratigs are cele- brated in the oldest Russian history as a race of warhke immigrants, of whom came Rurik the founder of the ancient royal dynasty, and whose name was long preserved in that of the Varangian guards at Constan- tinople. Many Eastern geographers, from Al Biruni downwards, speak of the Warag or Warang as a nation dwelling in the north, on the borders of the Slavonic countries, and on the shores of a great arm of the Western Ocean, called the Sea of Warang, evidently the Baltic The Waraegers are generally considered to have been Danes or North- men, and Erman mentions that in the bazaars of Tobolsk he found Danish goods known as Varaegian, Mr. Hyde Clark, as I learn from a review, has recently identified the Warangs or Warings with the Varini, whom Tacitus couples with the Angli, and has shown probable evidence for their having taken part in the invasion of Britain. He has also shown that many points of the laws which they established in Russia were purely Saxon in character. (Bayer in Comment. Acad. PetropoL V^. 276 seqq, ; Fraehn in App. to Ibn Fozlan, p. 177 seqq.; Erman, I. 374 ; Sat. Review, June 19, 1869 j Gold, Horde, App. p. 428.)
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Chap. XXIV. THE TARTARS OF THE PONENT. 491
CHAPTER XXIII.
He begins to speak of the Straits of Constantinople, but decides to leave that matter.
At the straits leading into the Great Sea, on the west side,
there is a hill called the Faro. But since beginning
on this matter I have changed my mind, because so many people know all about it, so we will not put it in our description, but go on to something else. And so I will tell you about the Tartars of the Ponent, and the lords who have reigned over them.
CHAPTER XXIV. Concerning the Tartars of the Ponent and their Lords.
The first lord of the Tartars of the Ponent was Sain, a very great and puissant king, who conquered Rosia and Comania, Alania, Lac, Menjar, Zic, Gothia, and Ga- ZARIA ; all these provinces were conquered by King Sain. Before his conquest these all belonged to the Comanians, but they did not hold well together nor were they united, and thus they lost their territories and were dispersed over divers countries; and those who remained all became the servants of King Sain.'
After King Sain reigned King Patu, and after Patu Barca, and after Barca Mungletemur, and after Mungle- temur King Totamangul, and then Toctai the present sovereign.^
Now I have told you of the Tartar kings of the Ponent, and next I shall tell you of a great battle that was fought
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49^ MARCO POLO. Book IV.
between Alau the Lord of the Levant and Barca the Lord of the Ponent.
So now we will relate out of what occasion that battle arose, and how it was fought.
Note 1. — The Comanians, a people of Turkish race, the Polmotu of the old Russians, were one of the chief nations occupying the plains on the north of the Black Sea and eastward to the Caspian, previous to the Mongol invasion. Rubruquis makes them identical with the KiP- CHAK, whose name is generally attached to those plains by Oriental writers, but Hammer disputes this.
Alania, the country of the Alans on the northern skirts of the Cau- casus and towards the Caspian ; Lac, the Wallachs as above. Men jar is a subject of doubt It may be Mdjar^ on the Kuma River, a city which was visited by Ibn Batuta, and is mentioned by Abulfeda as Kummdjar, It was in the 14th century the seat of a Franciscan convent Coins of that century, both of Majar and New Majar, are given by Erdmann. The building of the fortresses of Kichi Majar and Ulu Majar (little and great) is ascribed in the Derbend Nameh to Naoshirwan. The ruins of Majar were extensive when seen by Gmelin in the last century, but when visited by Klaproth in the early part of the present one there were few buildings remaining. Inscriptions found there are, like the coins, Mongol-Mahomedan of the 14th century. Klaproth, with reference to these ruins, says that Majar merely means in " old Tartar" a stone building, and denies any connexion with the Magyars as a nation. But it is possible that the Magyar country, i, e. Hungary, is here intended by Polo, for several Asiatic writers of his time, or near it, speak of the Hungarians as Mqfdr. Thus Abulfeda speaks of the infidel nations near the Danube as including Auldk, Majors, and Serbs ; Rashiduddin speaks of the Mongols as conquering the country of the Bashkirds, the Majors, and the Sassan (probably Saxons of Trans)!- vania). One such mention from Abulghazi has been quoted in note 2 to chap. xxii. ; in the Masdlak-ai-Absdr, the Cherkes^ Russians^ Aas (or Alans), and Majar are associated ; the Majar and Aldn in Sharifiiddin. Doubts indeed arise whether in some of these instances a people located in Asia be not intended.* (Ruhr, p. 246 ; UAvaac^ p 486 seqq,; Golden Horde, p. 5; /. B. II. 375 segq, ; Buschingy IV. 359;
♦ This doubt arises also where Abulfeda speaks of Majgaria in the £ir north. ** the capital of the country of the Madjgars, a Turk race " of pagan nomads, by whom he seems to mean the Bashkirs {Reinaud'^s Abulf, I. 324V For it is to the Bashkir country that the Franciscan travellers apply the tenn Great Hungary, show- ing that they were led to believe it the original seat of the Magyars {Rukr. 274, /^«- Carpin. 747 ; and in same vol., jyAvczac, p. 49 1). Further confusion arises finom the fact that, besides the Uralian Bashkirs, there were, down to the 13th century, Bashkirs
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Chap. XXIV. THE TARTARS OF THE PONENT. 493
Cathay^ p. 233 ; NumiAsiatidy I. 333, 451 ; KlaprotHs Travels^ ch. xxxL ; N. et Ex, XIII. L 269, 279 \ P.dela Croix, II. 383 ; Rein. Abulf. I. 80 ; jyOhsson, II. 628.)
Zic is Circassia. The name was known to Pliny, Ptolemy, and other writers of classic times. Ramusio (II. 196 v) gives a curious letter to Aldus Manutius from George Interiano, " Delia vita d^ Zychi chiamati Circassi^' and a great number of other references to ancient and me- dieval use of the name will be found in D*Avezac*s Essay so often quoted (p. 497).
GoTHiA is the southern coast of the Crimea from Sudak to Bala- klava and the mountains north of the latter, then still occupied by a tribe of the Goths. The Genoese officer who governed this coast in the 15 th century bore the title of Capitanus Gotiae; and a remnant of the tribe still survived, maintaining their Teutonic speech, to the middle of the 1 6th century, when Busbeck, the emperor's ambassador to the Porte, fell in with two of them, from whom he derived a small vocabulary and other particulars. {Busbequii Opera, 1660, p. 321 seqq, ; HAvezaCy p. 498-9; Heyd, II. 123 seqq,; Cathay, p. 200-201.)
Gazaria, the Crimea and part of the northern shore of the Sea of Azov, formerly occupied by the Khazars, a people whom Klaproth endeavours to prove to have been of Finnish race. When the Genoese held their settlements on the Crimean coast the Board at Genoa which administered the affairs of these colonies was called The Office of Gazaria.
Note 2.— The real list of the " Kings of the Ponent," or Khans of the Golden Horde, down to the time of Polo's narrative, runs thus : — Batu, Sartaky Ulagchi (these two almost nominal), Barka, Mangku TiMUR, TuDAi Mangku, Tulabugha, Tuktuka or Toktai. Polo here omits Tulabugha (though he mentions him below in chap, xxix.), and introduces before Batu, as a great and powerful conqueror, the founder of the empire, a prince whom he calls Sain, This is in fact Batu him- self, the leader of the great Tartar invasion of Europe (i 240-1 242), whom he has split into two kings. Batu bore the surname of Sain Khan, or "the G^^</ Prince," by which name he is mentioned, e,g, in Makrizi (Quatremh'is Trans, II. 45), also mV^z&^i (Hammer^ s Trans, p. 29-30). Piano Carpini's account of him is worth quotmg : " Hominibus quidem ejus satis benignus ; timetur tamen valde ab iis ; sed crudehssimus est
recognized as such, and as distinct from the Hungarians though akin to them, dwelling in Hungarian territory, Ibn Said, speaking of Sebennico (the cradle of the Polo family), says that when the Tartars advanced under its walls (1242?) "the Hungarians, the Bashkirs, and the Germans united their forces near the dty '* and gave the invaders a signal defeat (Reinaud's Abulf, I. 312 ; see also 294, 295.) One would gladly know what are the real names that M. Reinaud renders Hongrois and AlUmands, The Christian Bashkirds of Khondemir, on the borders of the Franks, appear to be Hungarians (see J. As., ser. iv. tom. xvii. p. ill).
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494 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
in pugni ; sagax est raultum ; et etiam astutissimus in bello, quia longo tempore jam pugnavit." This Good Prince was indeed cruddissimus in pugnd. At Moscow he ordered a general massacre, and 270,000 right ears are said to have been laid before him in testimony to its accomplishment It is odd enough that a mistake Hke that in the text is not confined to Polo. The chronicle of Kazan, according to a Russian writer, makes Sain succeed Batu, {Carpini^ p. 746; J. As., ser. 4, torn. xvii. p. 109; Bilschingy V. 493 ; also Golden Horde, p. 142, note.)
Batu himself, in the great invasion of the West, was with the southern host in Hungary; the northern army which fought at Liegnitz was under Baidar, a son of Chaghatai.
According to the Masalak-al-Absdr the territory of Kipchak, over which this dynasty ruled, extended in length from the Sea of Istambul to the River Irtish, a journey of 6 months, and in breadth from Bolghar to the Iron Gates, 4 (?) months* journey. A second traveller, quoted in the same work, says the empire extended from the Iron Gates to Yu- ghra (see p. 483 supra), and from the Irtish to the country of the Nenuj, The last term is very curious, being the Russian Niemicz^ " Dumb," a term which in Russia is used as a proper name of the Germans ; a people, to wit, unable to speak Slavonic. (A^ et Ex, XIII. i. 282, 284.)
Figure of a Tartar under the feet of Henry II. Duke of Silesia, Cracow, and Poland, from the tomb at Breslau of that Prince, killed in battle with the Tartar host at Liegnitz, April 9th 1241.
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Chap. XXV. WAR BETWEEN ALAU AND BARCA. 495
CHAPTER XXV.
Of the War that arose between Alau and Barca, and the Battles that they fought.
It was in the year 1261 of Christ's incarnation that there arose a great discord between King Alau the Lord of the Tartars of the Levant, and Barca the King of the Tartars of the Ponent ; the occasion whereof was a province that lay on the confines of both/
'^'(They exchange defiances, and make vast prepara- tions.)
And when his preparations were complete, Alau the Lord of the Levant set forth with all his people. They marched for many days without any adventure to speak of, and at last they reached a great plain which extends between the Iron Gates and the Sea of Sarain." In this plain he pitched his camp in beautiful order ; and I can assure you there was many a rich tent and pavilion therein, so that it looked indeed like a camp of the wealthy. Alau said he would tarry there to see if Barca and his people would come; so there they tarried, abiding the enemy's arrival. This place where the camp was pitched was on the frontier of the two kings. Now let us speak of Barca and his people.^
Note 1. — " Qjue marcesoit ^ le un d ct le autre;' in Scotch phrase, "which marched yi\\}ci both."
Note 2. — Respecting the Iron Gates, see Vol. I. p. 55. The Cas- pian is here called the Sea of Sarain^ probably for Sarai^ after the great city on the Volga. For we find it in the Catalan Map of 1375 termed the Sea of Sarra, Otherwise Sarain might have been taken for some corruption oi Shirwdn ; see Vol. I. p. 60, note.
Note 3. — The war here spoken of is the same which is mentioned in the very beginning of the book, as having compelled the two Elder Polos to travel much further eastward than they had contemplated.
Many jealousies and heart-burnings between the cousins Hulaku
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496 MARCO POLO. ' Book IV.
and Barka had existed for several years. The Mameluke Sultan Bibars seems also to have stimulated Barka to hostility with Hulaku. War broke out in 1262, when 30,000 men from Kipchak, under the command of Nogai, passed Derbend into the province of Shirwaru They were at first successful, but afterwards defeated. In December, Hulaku at the head of a great army, passed Derbend, and routed the forces which met him. Abaka, son of Hulaku, was sent on with a large force, and came upon the opulent camp of Barka beyond the Terek. They were revelling in its plunder, when Barka ralUed his troops and came upon the army of Abaka, driving them southward again, across the frozen river. The ice broke and many perished. Abaka escaped, chased by Barka to Derbend Hulaku returned to Tabriz and made great preparations for vengeance, but matters were apparently never carried further. Hence Polo*s is any- thing but an accurate account of the matter.
The following extract from Wassif s History, referring to this war, is a fine sample of that prince of rigmarole :
"In the winter of 662 (a.d. 1262-3) when the Almighty Artist had covered the River of Derbend with plates of silver, and the Furrier of the Winter had clad the hills and heaths in emline; the river being frozen hard as a rock to the depth of a spear's length, an army of Mongols went forth at the command of Barka Aghul, filthy as Ghiils and Devils of the dry-places, and in numbers countless as the rain-drops," &c, &c. {Gddm Horde^ p. 163 seqq,; Ilchan, I. 214 seqq, ; Q, R, 'p. 393 seqg.; Q. Muk- rizi, I. 170; Hammer's JVassd/y p. 93.)
CHAPTER XXVI. How Barca and his Army advanced to meet Alua.
•|*(Barca advances with 350,000 horse, encamps on the plain within 10 miles of Alau; addresses his men, an- nouncing his intention of fighting after 3 days, and expresses his confidence of success as they are in the right and have 50,000 men more than the enemy.)
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Chap. XXIX. TARTARS OF THE PONENT. 497
CHAPTER XXVII.
How Alau addressed his Followers.
-[•(Alau calls together "a numerous parliament of his worthies " * and addresses them.)
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Of the Great Battle between Alau and Barca.
-[•(Description of the Battle in the usual style, with nothing characteristic^ Results in the rout of Barca and great slaughter.)
CHAPTER XXIX.
How TOTAMANGU WAS LORD OF THE TARTARS OF THE PONENT.
You must know there was a Prince of the Tartars of the Ponent called Mongotemur, and from him the sovereignty passed to a young gentleman called Tolobuga. But To- tamangu, who was a man of great influence, with the help of another Tartar King called Nogai, slew Tolobuga and got possession of the sovereignty. He reigned not long however, and at his death Toctai, an able and valiant man, was chosen sovereign in the place of Totamangu. But in the mean time two sons of that Tolobuga who was slain were grown up, and were likely youths, able and prudent.
So these two brothers, the sons of Totamangu, got together a goodly company and proceeded to the court of Toctai. When they had got thither they conducted
* * * // asenbU encore sez parlement de grand quantiU des btutis homes,^^ VOL. II. 2 K
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498 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
themselves with great discretion, keeping on their knees till Toctai bade them welcome, and to stand up. Then the eldest addressed the Sovereign thus: "Good my Lord Toctai, I will tell you to the best of my ability why we be come hither. We are the sons of Totamangu, whom Tolo- buga and Nogai slew, as thou well knowest. Of Tolobuga we will say no more, since he is dead, but we demand justice against Nogai as the slayer of our Father ; and we pray thee as Sovereign Lord to summon him before thee and to do us justice. For this cause are we come ! " '
(Toctai agrees to their demand and sends two messen- gers to summon Nogai, but Nogai mocks at the message and refuses to go. Whereupon Toctai sends a second couple of messengers.)
Note 1. — I have not attempted to correct the obvious confusion here ; for in comparing the story related here with the regular historians we find the knots too complicated for solution.
In the text as it stands we first learn that Totamangu by help of Nogai kills Tolobuga^ takes the throne, dies and is succeeded by Toctai But presently we find that it is the sons of Totamangu who claim vengeance from Toctai against Nogai for having aided Tolobuga to slay their father. Turning back to the list of princes in chapter xxiv. we find Totamangu indeed, but Tolobuga omitted altogether.
The outline of the history as gathered firom Hammer and D'Ohsson is as follows : —
NoGHAi, for more than half a century one of the most influential of the Mongol Princes, was a great-great-grandson of Chinghiz, being the son of Tatar, son of Tewal, son of Juji. He is first heard of as a leader under Batu Khan in the great invasion of Europe (1241), and again in 1258 we find him leading an invasion of Poland.
In the latter quarter of the century he had established himself as practically independent, in the south of Russia. There is much about him in the Byzantine history of Pachymeres ; Michael Palaeologus sought his alliance against the Bulgarians (of the South), and gave him his ille- gitimate daughter Euphrosyne to wife. Some years later Nc^hai gave a daughter of his own in marriage to Feodor Rostislawitz, Prince of Smolensk.
Mangu- or Mangku-Temur, the great-nephew and successor of Barka, died in 1280-81 leaving nine sons, but was succeeded by his brother TuDAi Mangku (Polo's Totamangu), This Prince occupied himself
Digitized by
Chap, XXIX. TOCTAI AND NOGHAI. 499
chiefly with the company of Mahomedan theologians and was averse to the cares of government In 1287 he abdicated, and was replaced by TuLABUGHA {Tolobugo) the son of an elder brother, whose power how- ever was shared by other princes. Tulabugha quarrelled with old Noghai and was preparing to attack him. Noghai however persuaded him to come to an interview, and at this Tulabugha was put to death. Toktai, one of the sons of Mangku-Temur, who was associated with Noghai, obtained the throne of Kipchak. This was in 1291. We hear noSimg of sons of Tudai-Mangku or Tulabugha.
Some years later we hear of a symbolic declaration of war sent by Toktai to Noghai, and then of a great battle between them near the banks of the Don, in which Toktai is defeated. Later, they are again at war, and somewhere south of the Dnieper Noghai is beaten. As he was escaping with a few mounted followers, he was cut down by a Russian horseman. *' I am Noghai," said the old warrior, " take me to Toktai" The Russian took the bridle to lead him to the camp, but by the way the old chief expired. The horseman carried his head to the Khan; its heavy grey eyebrows, we are told, hung over and hid the eyes. Toktai asked the Russian how he knew the head to be that of Noghai ? "He told me so himself," said the man. And so he was ordered to execution for having presumed to slay a great Prince without orders. How Uke the story of David and the Amalekite in Ziklag! (2 Samuel, ch. i.).
The chronology of these events is doubtful. Rashiduddin seems to put the defeat of Toktai near the Don in 1298-99, and a passage in Wassif extracted by Hammer seems to put the defeat and death of Noghai about 1303. On the other hand there is evidence that war between the two was in full flame in the beginning of 1296; Makrizi seems to report the news of a great defeat of Toktai by Noghai as reaching Cairo mjumadah I. a.h. 697 or February-March 1298. And Novairi, from whom D'Ohsson gives extracts, appears to put the defeat and death of Noghai in 1299. If the battle on the Don is that recounted by Marco it cannot be put later than 1297, and he must have had news of it at Venice, perhaps from relations at Soldaia. I am indeed reluctant to believe that he is not speaking of events of which he had cognizance before quitting the East ; but there is no evidence in favour of that view. {Golden Horde^ especially 269 seqq, ; Ilchan, II. 347, and also p. 35; nOhsson, IV. Appendix; Q, Makrizi, IV. 60.)
The symboliod message mentioned above as sent by Toktai to Noghai, consisted of a hoe, an arrow, and a handful of earth. Noghai interpreted this as meaning, ** If you hide in the earth, 1 will dig you out ! If you rise to the heavens I will shoot you down ! Choose a batde field 1" What a singular similarity we have here to the message that reached Darius 1800 years before, on this very ground, from Toktai's predecessors, alien from him in blood it may be, but identical in customs and mental characteristics : —
2 K 2
Digitized by
500 MARCO POLO. Book IV.
" At last Darius was in a great strait, and the Kings of the Scythians having ascertained this, sent a herald bearing, as gifts to Darius, a bird,
a mouse, a frog, and five arrows Darius's opinion was that the
Scythians meant to give themselves up to him But the opinion
of Gobryas, one of the seven who had deposed the Magus, did not coin- cide witii this ; he conjectured that the presents intimated : * Unless, 0 Persians, ye become birds, and fly into the air, or become mice and hide yourselves beneath the earth, or become frogs and leap into the lakes, ye shall never return home again, but be stricken by these arrows.' And thus the other Persians interpreted the gifts." {Herodotus, by Carey, IV. 131, 132.) Again more than 500 years after Noghai and Toktai were laid in the steppe, when Muravieflf reached the court of Khiva in 1820, it happened that among the Russian presents offered to the Khan were two loaves of sugar on the same tray with a quantity of powder and shot The Uzbegs interpreted this as a symbolical demand : Peace or War? {V. en Turcotnanie, p. 165).
CHAPTER XXX.
Of the Second Message that Toctai sent to Nogai, and HIS Reply.
'f*(THEY carry a threat of attack if he should refuse to present himself before Toctai. Nogai refuses with defiance. Both sides prepare for war, but Toctai's force is the greater in numbers.)
CHAPTER XXXI.
How Toctai marched against Nogai.
'|*(The usual description of their advance to meet one an- other. Toctai is joined by the two sons of Totamangu with a goodly company. They encamp within ten miles of each other in the Plain of Nerghi.)
Digitized by
Chap. XXXI V. CONCLUSION. 501
CHAPTER XXXII.
how toctai and nogai address their people, and the next Day join Battle.
-f-(THE whole of this is in the usual formula without any circumstances worth transcribing. The forces of Nogai though inferior in numbers are the better men-at-arms. King Toctai shows great valour.)
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The valiant Feats and Victory of King Nogai.
-f-(THE deeds of Nogai surpass all; the enemy scatter like a flock, and are pursued, losing 60,000 men, but Toctai escapes, and so do the two sons of Totamangu.)
CHAPTER XXXIV. AND LAST.
Conclusion.*
And now ye have heard all that we can tell you about the Tartars and the Saracens and their customs, and likewise about the other countries of the world as far as our researches and information extend. Only we have said nothing whatever about the Greater Sea and the pro- vinces that lie round it, although we know it thoroughly. But it seems to me a needless and useless task to speak about places which are visited by people every day. For there are so many who sail all about that sea constantly.
* This conclusion is not found in any copy except in the Crasca Italian, and, with a little modification, in another at Florence, belonging to the Pucci family. It is just possible that it was the embellishment of a transcriber or translator ; but in any case it is very old, and serves as an epilogue.
Digitized by
502 MARCO POLO. Bk. IV., Ch. XXXIV.
Venetians, and Grenoese, and Pisans, and many others, that everybody knows all about it, and that is the reason that I pass it over and say nothing of it.
Of the manner in which we took our departure from the Court of the Great Kaan you have heard at the begin- ning of the Book, in that chapter where we told you of all the vexation and trouble that Messer MafFeo and Messer Nicolo and Messer Marco had about getting the Great Kaan's leave to go ; and in the same chapter is related the lucky chance that led to our departure. And you may be sure that but for that lucky chance, we should never have got away in spite of all our trouble, and never have got back to our country again. But I believe it was God's pleasure that we should get back in order that people might learn about the things that the world contains. For accord- ing to what has been said in the introduction at the begin- ning of the Book, there never was a man, be he Christian or Saracen or Tartar or Heathen, who ever travelled over so much of the world as did that noble and illustrious citizen of the City of Venice, Messer Marco the son of Messer Nicolo Polo.
tS^anfm be to €roti ! Smen ! 9mm !
Asiatic Warriors of Polo's Age, from a contemporary Persian Miniature.
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APPENDICES.
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app. b. the two polo families. 507
Appendix B. — continued, (IL) The Polos of San Gkremia.
The preceding Table gives the Family of our Traveller as far as I have seen sound data for tracing it, either upwards or downwards.
I have expressed, in the introductory notices, my doubts about the Venetian genealogies, which continue the family down to 14 18 or 19, because it seems to me certain that all of them do more or less confound with our Polos of S. Giovanni Grisostomo, members of the other Polo Family of S. Geremia. It will help to disentangle the subject if we put down what is ascertained regarding the S. Geremia family.
To the latter with tolerable certainty belonged the following : —
1302. Marco Polo of Cannareggio, see vol. i. pp. 6U-65. (The Church of S.
Geremia stands on the canal called Cannareggio.) (1319. Bianca, widow of Giovanni Polo?)*
1332. 24th March. Concession, apparently of some privilege in connexion
with the State Lake in San Basilio, to Donato and Hermorao {=Hermolaus or Almoro) Paulo (Document partially illegible).t
1333. 23rd October. Will of Marcbesina Comer, wife of Marino Gradenigo
of S. Apollinare, who chooses for her executors " my mother Dona Flordelisa Comaro, and my uncle {Barba) Ser Marco Polo.**t Another extract apparently of the same will mentions " mia cusina Maria Polo," and *^mio cusin Marco Polo " three times.§ 1349. Marino Polo a^d Brothers. J
1348. About this time died NicoLO Polo of S. Geremia,^ who seems to have been a Member of the Great Council** He had a brother Marco, and this Marco had a daughter Agnesina. Nicolo also leaves a sister Barbara (a nun), a son Giovannino (apparendy illegiti- mate **), of age in 135 i,Y a nephew Gherardo, and a niece FiLiPPA,1[ Abbess of Sta. Catarina in Mazzorbo.
The executors of Nicolo are Giovanni and Donato Polo.lT We have not their relationship stated.
I>ONATO must have been the richest Polo we hear of, for in the Estimo or forced Loan of 1379 for the Genoese War, he is assessed at 23,000 Ure,\\ A history of that war also states tiiat he ("Donado Polo del Canareggio") presented the Government with 1000 ducats, besides maintaining in arms himself, his son, and seven
* Document in Archioio of the Cam diRicovero, Bundle LXXVIL, No. 909.
t Rtgistro di GroMu, 4® c. Comm. by Sign. Berchet.
X Arch. Gen. dti Giudici del Propria, Perg. No. 82, ist July, 1342, dtcs this (Sign. Berchet).
^ Arch, dti Procuratori di San Marco, with Testam. 1327, January, marked '*N. H. Ser Marco Gradenigo." (Sign. Berchet.)
Q Document in Archioio of the Ceua di Ricovero, Bundle LXXIV., No. 651.
% List (extracted in 1868-9) of Documents in the above Archivio, but which seem to have been since mislaid.
** Parchment in the possession of Cav. F. Stefani, containing a decision, dated i6th September, X355f signed by die Doge and two Councillors, b favour of Giovannino Polo, natural son of the Noble Nicolctto of S. Geremia {qu. Nobilis Viri Nicoleti Paulo).
tt In GaUiceiolli, Dell* Mem. Ven. AntUhe, Yen. 1795. II. p. 136. In the MS. of CapeUari, Cam/id^Jjflio Vene/o, in the Mardana, the sum stated is 3000 only.
Digitized by
5o8
MARCO POLO. App. B.
others.* Under 1388 we find Donato still living, and mention of
Cataruzza d. of Donato ; t and under 1390 of Elena, widow of
Donato.t The Testamentary Papers of Nicolo also speak of Giacomo Polo.
He is down in the Estimo of 1379 for looo IJre ; \ and in 1371 an
inscription in Cicogna shows him establishing a family bnrial-place
in Sta. Maria de' Servi.J (1353. 2nd June. Viriola, widow of Andrea or Andriuolo Polo of Sta.
Maria Nuova ?)§ 1379. In addition to those already mentioned we have NicOLO assessed at
4000 lire\ 1381. And apparently this is the NicOLO, son of Almoro {flermolaus), who
was raised to the Great Council, for public service rendered, among
30 elected to that honour after the War of Chioggia.^ Under 1410
we find Anna, relict of Nicolo Polo.** 1379. In this year also, Almoro, whether father or brother of the last, con- tributes 4000 lire to the Estimo. || 1390. Clemente Polo (died before 1397) ** and his wife Maddaluzia.**
Also in this year Paolo Polo, son of Nicolo, gave his daughter in
marriage to Giov. Vitturi.tt 1408 and 141 1. Chiara, daughter of Francesco Balbi, and widow of Er-
MOLAO (or Almoro) Polo, called of Sta, Trinith*^ 1416. Giovanni, perhaps the Giovarmino mentioned above.** 142a 22nd November. Bartolo son of Ser Almoro and of the Nobil
Donna Chiara Orio. (?) W This couple probably the same as in the
penultimate entry. 1474, seqq. Accounts belonging to the Trust Estate of Bartolomeo Polo of
S. Geremia.**
There remains to be mentioned a Marco PobO, member of the Greater Council, chosen Auditor Sententiaruniy 7th March, 1350, and named among the electors of the Doges Marino Faliero (1354) and Giovanni Gradenigo (1355). The same person appears to have been sent as Proweditore to Dalmatia in 1355. As yet it is doubtful to what family he belonged, and it is possible that he may have belonged to our traveller's branch, and have continued that branch according to the tradition. But I suspect that he is identical with the Marco, brother of Nicolo Polo of S. Geremia, mentioned above, under 1348 (see also vol. i. p. 72). Capellari states distinctly that this Marco was the father of the Lady who married Azzo Trevisan (see Introd. pp. 77-78)*
We have intimated the probability that he was the Marco mentioned twice in connexion with the Court of Sicily (see vol. i. p. 78^ note),
A later Marco Polo, in 1537, distinguished himself against the Turks in command of a ship called the Giustiniana ; forcing his way past the enemy's batteries into the Gulf of Prevesa, and cannonading that fortress. But he had to retire, being unsupported.
• Delia Presa di Chiozza in Muratori^ Scriptt. xv. 785.
t Documents seen by the Editor in the Arch, of the Casa di Ricovcro.
X Cicogna^ I. p. 77.
$ Arch, Gen. deiGittd. Perg. No 120.
II In GalliccwUi, Delle Mem. Ven. Antiche, Ven. 1795, II. p. I36. ^f Capellari, MS. ; Sanuio, Vite d^ Duchidi Ven. in Muralori, XXII. 73O. •* Documents seen by the Editor in the Arch, of the Casa di Ricovero. ft Capellari. tt Libra d'Oro from 1414 to 1497 in Museo Corrcr. Comm. by Sign. Berchet,
Digitized by
app. c. calendar of documents. 509
It may be added that a Francesco Paulo appears among the list of those condemned for participation in the conspiracy of Baiamonte Tie- polo in 1310 {Dandulo in Mur. XII. 410, 490).
Appendix C. — Calendar of Documents Relating to Marco Polo and his Family,
1.— (1280).
Will of Marco Polo of S. Severo, uncle of the Traveller, executed at Venice, 5th August, 1280. An abstract given in vol. i. pp. 23—24),
The originals of this and the tw^o other Wills (Nos. 2 and 8) are in St. Mark's Library. They were published first by Cicogna, Iscrizioni Veneziane^ and again more exactly by Lazari.
2.-(i300).
Will of Maffeo Polo, brother of the Traveller, executed at Venice, 31st August, 1300. Abstract given at pp. 62-63 of vol. i.
3.— (1302). Archivio Generale—Maggior Consiglio— Liber Magnus^ p. 81.*
1302. 13 Aprilis. (Capta est) : Quod fit gratia provido viro Marco Paulo quod ipse absolvatur a penS incurs^ pro eo quod non fecit circari unam suam con- ductam cum ignoraverit ordinem circa hoc.
(Signatiu'es.)
4.— (1305). Resolution of the Maggior Consiglio ^ imder date loth April, 1305 (given verbally in first edition), in which Marco Polo is styled Marcus Paulo Millioni. (See p. 66 of voL i.) In the Archivio Generate, Maggior Cons. Reg. MS., Carta 82.t
5.-(i3ii). Decision in Marco Polo's suit against Paulo Girardo, 9th March, 131 1, for recovery of the price of musk sold on commission, &c. (From the Archives of the Casa di Ricovero at Venice, Filza No. 202.) (See voL i. p. 68^ (Considerable extracts of this were given in the First Edition.)
6.-(i3i9). In a list of documents preserved in the Archives of the Casa di Ricovero, occurs the entry which follows. But several recent searches have been made for the document itself in vain.
* ** No. 94 Marco Galletti investecUllaproprietd dei beni che si trovano in S. Giovanni Grisostomo Marco Polo di Nicolo. 1319, 10 Sdtem- brcy rogato dal notcdo Nicolo Prete di S. Canciano?^
* For this and for all the other documents marked with an * I am under obligation to Signor Berchet. There is some doubt if this refer to our Marco Polo (see vol. i. p. 64). f For the indication of this I was indebted to Professor Minotto.
Digitized by
5 1 0 MARCO POLO. App. C
The notary here is the same who made the official reoml of the document last cited.
7. -(1323). Document concerning House Property in S. Giovanni Grisostorao, adjoin- ing the property of the Polo Family, and sold by the Lady Donata to her husband Marco Polo. Dated May, 1323.
See No. i6 below.
8.-(i324).
Will of Marco Polo. (In St Mark's Library.)
In the first edition this was printed line for line with the original ; but I have not thought it necessary to reprint it The translation is given in Introductory Essay, voL i. p. 69 segg.j with a facsimile.
9.-.(i325).
Release, dated 7th June, 1325, by the Lady Donata and her three daughters Fantina, BelleUa, and Marota, as Executors of the deceased Marco Polo, to Marco Bragadino. (From the Archivio NotariU at Venice.) (Printed in full in first edition.)*
10.-.(i326).
Resolution of Counsel of XL. condemning Zanino Grioni for insulting Donna Moreta Polo in Campo San Vitale.
(Awogaria di Comun. Reg. I. Raspe, 1324-41, Carta 23 del 1325.)*
** Mcccxxv. Die xxvL FebroariiL ** Cum Zaninus Grioni quondam Ser Lionardi Grioni contrate Sanctc Heustachii diceretur intulisse iniuriam Domine Morete qm. Dni. Marci Polo, de presente mense in Campo Sancti Vitalis et de verbis iniuriosis et factis .... Capta fait pars hodie in dicto consilio de XL. quod dictus Zaninus condemnatns sit ad standum duobus mensibus in carceribus comunis, scilicet in quarantia.
*'Die eodem ante prandium dictus Zaninus Grioni fiiit consignatas capi- taneo et custodibus quarantie," &c.
IL— (1328).
{Maj, Cons, Delib, Brutus^ c. 77.)*
" Mccxxvii. Die 27 Jannaril ** Capta. Quod quoddam instrumentum vigoris et roboris processi et fiicti a quondam Ser Marco Paulo contra Ser Henricum Quirino et Pauli dictum dictum Sclavo [sic] Johanni et Phylippo et Anfosio Quirino, scriptum per presbyterum Johannem Taiapetra, quod est adheo corosum quod legi non potest, relevetur et fiat," &c.
12.-(I328).
Judgment on a Plaint lodged by Marco Polo, called Marcolino, regarding a legacy from Maffeo Polo the Elder. (See I. p. 76).
{Awogaria di Comun, Raspe Reg. L 1324-41, c 14 tergo, del
1329.)*
** 1328. Die XV. Mensis MardL
**Cum coram dominis Advocatoribus Comunis per D. Marcum, dictum
Marcolinum Paulo sancti Johannis Grisostomi fuisset querela depositata de
translatione et alienatione imprestitorum olim Domini Maphei Paulo majoris
Scti. Job. Gris., facta domino Marco Paulo de dicto confinio in MCCCXVIU
Digitized by
4
app. c calendar of documents. 5 1 1
mense Mail, die xi, et postea facta heredibus ejusdem dni. Marci Paulo post
ejus mortem, cum videretur eisdem dominis Advocatoribus quod dicte
translationes et alienationes imprestitorum fuerint injuste ac indebite facte, vide- licet in tantum quantum sunt libre mille dimisse Marco dicto Marcolino Paulo predicto in testamento dicti olim dnl Mathei Paulo maioris, facti in anno domini Mcccviii mense Februarii die vi intrante indictione viii* .... Capta fuit pars in ipso consilio de XL** quod dicta translactio et alienatio imprestitorum
revocentur, cassentur, et annolentur, in tantum videlicet quantum sunt
dicte mille libre," &c.
13.— (1328). Grant of Citizenship to Marco Polo's old slave Peter the Tartar (see voL i. p. 70)'
(Maj, Cone, Delib, Brutus^ Cart. 78 t)*
** Mcccxxviii, die vii Aprilis. ** (Capta) Quod fiat gratia Petro S. Marie Formose, olim sclavorum Ser Marci Pauli Sancti Joh. Gris., qui longo tempore fuit Venetiis, pro suo bono porta- mento, de cetero sit Venetus, et pro Venetus [«r] haberi et tractari debeat."
14.~(i328). Process against the Lady Donata Polo for a breach of trust See vol. i.
p. 7Q (as No. 12, c. 8, del 1328).*
" Mcccxxviii. Die ultimo Mail
" Cum olim de mandato curie Petitionum, ad petitionem Ser Brr-
TUTii QuiRiNO factum fuerit apud Dominam Donatam Paulo Sancti Joh. Gris., quoddam sequestrum de certis rebus, inter quas erant duo sachi cum Venetis grossis intus, legati et buUati, et postea in una capsell& sigillat^ repositi, prout in scripturis dicti sequestri plenius continetur. £t cum diceretur fiiisse subtractam aliquam pecunie quantitatem, non bono modo, de dictis sachis, post dictum
sequestrum, et dicti de causi per dictos dominos Advocatores fuerit
hodie in conscUio de XL. pladtata dicta Dna. Donata Paulo, penes quam dicta capsella cum sachis remansit hucusque.
cum per certas testimonias habeatur quod tempore sequestri
facti extimata fuit pecunia de dictis sacchis esse libras Ixxx grossorum vel circha,t et quando postea numerata fuit inventam esse solummodo libras xlv grossorum et grossos xxii, quod dicta Dna. Donata teneatur et debeat restituere et con^ignare in saculo seu saculis, loco pecunie que ut predicitur deficit et extrata et ablata est Ubras xxv \sic\ grossorum. Et ultra hoc pro pen& ut ceteris transeat in exem- plum condempnetur in libris ducentis et solvat eas."
15— (1330). Remission of fine incurred by an old servant of Marco Polo's. (Reg. Grazie 3", c. 40.)*
•* Mcccxxx, iiii Septembris. "Quod fiat gratia Manulli familiari Ser Marci Polo sancti Joh. Gris. quod absolvatur a pen& librarum L pro centenariis, quam dicunt officiates Levantis inctirrisse pro eo quod ignorans ordines et pure non putans facere contra aliqua nostra ordinamenta cum galeis que de Ermenii venerunt portavit Venedas tantum piperis et lanse quod constitit supra soldos xxv grossorum tanquam forenses (?). Et officiates Levantis dicunt quod non possunt aliud dicere nisi quod solvat Sed consideratis bonitate et legalitate dicti Manulli, qui mercatores cum quibus stetit fideliter servivit, sibi videtur pecatum quod debeat araittere aliud parum quod tam longo tempore cum magnis laboribus aquisivit, sunt contenti quod dicta gratia sibi fiat."
t About ;^3oo sterling.
Digitized by
512 MARCO POLO. App.C.
16.-(i333). Attestation by the Gastald and Officer of the Palace Court of his having put the Lady Donata and her daughters in possession of two tene- ments in S. Giovanni Grisostomo. Dated 12th July, 1333.
(From the Archvvio of the Istituto degli EsposH, No. 6.)t
The document begins with a statement dated 22nd August, 1390, by MoRANDUS DE Carovellis, parson of St. Apollinaris and Chancellor of the Doge's Aula, that the original document having been lost, he, under authority of the Doge and Councils, had formally renewed it from the copy recorded in his office.
(See i. p. 29. Large extracts of this are printed in the first edition.)
17.^(1336). Release granted by Agnes Lauredano, sister, and by Fantina Bragadino and Moreta Dolphyno, daughters, and all three Trustees of the late Domina Donata, relict of Dominus Marcus Polo of S. Giov. Griso- stomo, to Dominus Raynuzo Dolphyno of the same, on account of 24 lire ofgrossiX which the Lady Donata Polo had advanced to him on pledge of many articles. Dated 4th March, 1336. The witnesses and notary are the same as in the next.
(In the Archivio Generale; Pacta, Serie T, No. 144-)
18.-(i336). Release by the Ladies Fantina and Moreta to their aunt Agnes Laure- dano and themselves, as Trustees of the late Lady Donata, on account of a legacy left them by the latter.§ Dated 4th March, 1336. (In the Archivio Generale; Pacta, Serie T, No. 143.)
(Chief part printed in first edition.)
f For this I was indebted to Signor Barozzi.
X About 90/.
$ Of 48 lire of grossi, or about i8o/.
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App. D. different recensions of POLO'S TEXT. 513
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Digitized by
5l6 MARCO POLO. App.L
Appendix E. — The Preface of Friar Pipino to his Latin Version of Marco Polo,
(Circa 13 15 — 1320.)
" The Book of that prudent, honourable, and most truthful gentleman, Messer Marco Polo of Venice, concerning the circumstances and manners of the Regions of the East, which he conscientiously wrote and put forth in the Vulgar Tongne, I, Friar Francesco Pipino of Bologna, of the Order of the Preaching Friars, am called upon by a number of my Fathers and Masters to render faithfully and truthfully out of the vulgar tongue into the Latin. And this, not merely because they are themselves persons who take more pleasure in Latin than in vemacolar compositions, but also that those who, owing to the diversity of languages and dialects, might find the perusal of the original difficult or impossible, may be able to read the Book with understanding and enjoyment
** The task, indeed, which they have constrained me to undertake, is one which they themselves could have executed more competently, but they were averse to distract their attention from the higher contemplations and sublime pursuits to which they are devoted, in order to turn their thoughts and pens to things of the earth earthy. I, therefore, in obedience to their orders, have rendered the whole substance of the Book into such plain Latin as was suited to its subject.
'* And let none deem this task to be vain and unprofitable ; for I am of opinioQ that the perusal of the Book by the Faithful may merit an abounding Grace from the Lord ; whether that in contemplating the variety, beauty, and vastness of God's Creation, as herein displayed in His marvellous works, they may be led to bow in adoring wonder before His Power and Wisdom ; or, that, in considering the depths of blindness and impurity in which the Gentile Nations are involved, they may be constrained at once to render thanks to God Who hath deigned to call his faithfiil people out of such perilous darkness into His marvellous Light, and to pray for the illumination of the hearts of the Heathen. Hereby, also, the sloth of un- devout Christians may be put to shame, when they see how much more ready the nations of the unbeUevers are to worship their Idols, than are many of those who have been marked with Christ's Token to adore the True God. Moreover, the hearts of some members of the religious orders may be moved to strive for the diffusion of the Christian Faith, and by Divine Aid to carry the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, forgotten among so vast multitudes, to those blinded nations, among whom the harvest is indeed so great, and the labourers so few.
**But lest the inexperienced Reader should regard as beyond belief the many strange and unheard of things that are related in sundry passages of this Book, let all know Messer Marco Polo, the narrator of these marvels, to be a most respectable, veracious, and devout person, of most honourable character, and receiving such good testimony from all his acquaintance, that hb many virtues cla^m entire belief for that which he relates. His Father, Messer Nicolo, a man of the highest respectability, used to relate all these things in the same manner. And his uncle, Messer Maffeo, who is spoken of in tho Book, a man of ripe wisdom and piety, in familiar conversation with his Confessor when on his death-bed, maintained unflinchingly that the whole of the contents of this Book were true.
"Wherefore I have, with a safer conscience, undertaken the labour of this Translation, for the entertainment of my Readers, and to the praise of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of all things visible and invisible."
Digitized by
App. F.
MSS. OF MARCO POLO.
517
Appendix Y.—Note of MSS, of Marco Polo so far as they are known.
In the first edition of this work a detailed list of these MSS. was given, with particulars regarding most of them. It is not thought needful to reprint this, and only an abstract statement will be given. I have since the first edition been able to add only three to the list. Two of these are in French ; one in the British Museum collection, Egerton, 2176, which appears to be a version from Pipino's Latin ; the other belonging to the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, with miniatures, some of which are en- graved in MceurSy Usages et Costumes du Moyen Age, par le Biblio- phile Jacob, pp. 41 1-4 1 3. The third is a partial and defective transcript in the Venetian dialect, under the title of Itinerario di Levante, in the Riccardian Library at Florence (No. 1924), for the notice of which I am indebted to Sign. G. Uzielli.
The whole number now registered is as follows : —
French. Latin. Italian.
British Museum
f\^c^^A S Bodleian
^'^^^^jMerton College .. ..
Cambridge IcoS^d'Ss '.'. Glasgow, Hunterian Collection . . Ireland
Irish.
::l
Paris
Total, Great Britain and Ireland
National Library .... 5 3
Formerly in Walckenaer Li- brary (present locality unknown)
Arsenal Library
Total, France Luxemburg, City Library
( St, Mark's . . . . Venice < Museo Civico . .
I Count Don^ dalle Rose Ferrara, Public Library. . Milan, Ambrosian Library . . Modena, Este Library
I Nazionale and Palatina
Florence \ Riccardian Library
I Pucci Library Lucca, now in Public Library Siena, Public Library . . . { Vatican
Barberini
Corsini
Chigi
Rome <
Total in Italy
Escurial
Toledo, Cathedral Library . .
Total in Spain
Digitized by
5i8
MARCO POLO.
App. F.
Bern, Canton Library
Total in Switzerland
French.
I
Italian. German. I .. 2
Munich, Royal Library . . Wolfenbiittd, Ducal Library Berlin, Royal Library . . Wiirtzburg, Royal Library . ,
Giessen University
Jena University
Mentz, Metropolitan Chapter
4
I
Total in Germany 15
Prague, Chapter of St Vitus Vienna, (?)
Total in Austria
doubtful
Stockhohn, (?) I . . . . I
And thus, classified by language, they would be distributed as follows : —
Pipino's Latin 29
Other Latin versions or abridgments . . . . 12
French Italian ' German Irish . . Doubtful
—41 10 21
4
I I
Total 78
By country : —
Great Britain and Ireland 14
France 11
Italy 29
Germany 15
Austria 2
Switzerland 2
Spain 3
Sweden i
Luxemburg i
Total
78
I add Lists of the Miniatures in two of the finer MSS. as noted from examination.
List of Miniatures in the Great Volume of the French National Library, commonly known as * Le Livre des Merveilles ' (Fr. 2810),
WHICH BELONG TO THE BOOK OF MaRCO POLO.
1. Frontispiece. " Comment les deux
freres se partirent de Constanti- nople pour chechier du monde."
2. Conversation with the Ambassadors at Bokhara (fol. 2).
3. The Brothers before the G. Kaan (f. 2 v.).
4. The Kaan giving them Letters
(f. 3).
5. ,, ,, ,, ,, a Golden Tablet (f. 3 v.),
6. The Second Departure from Venice
(f. 4).
Digitized by
App. F.
MSS. OF MARCO POLO— MINIATURES.
519
7. The Polos before Pope Gregory
8. The two elder Polos before the
Kaan presenting Book and Cross
(f. 5)-
9. The Polos demand congi (f. 6). I a (Subject obscure) (f. 7).
11. Georgians, and Convent of St.
Leonard (f. 8).
12. The Calif shut up in his Treasury
(f. 9).
13. The Calif ordering Christians to move the Mountain (f. 10).
14. Miracle of the Mountain (God is seen pushing it) (f. 10 v,).
15. The three Kings en route (f. 1 1 v.),
16. ,, ,, „ adoring the Fire
(f. 12).
17. (Subject obscure — Travelling in
Persia?) (f. izv.)
18. Cattle of Kerman (f. 13 v,).
19. Ship from India arriving at Hormus (f. 14 v.),
2a Travelling in a Wood, with Wild Beasts (f. 15 v.).
21. The Old Man's Paradise (f. 16 v.).
22. The Old Man administering the Potion (f. 17).
23. Hunting Porcupines in Badashan (f. 18).
24. Digging for Rubies in Badashan
(f. 18).
25. Kashmir — the King maintaining Justice (/. e., seeing a Man's head cut off) (f. 19 z/.).
26. Baptism of Chagatai (f. 20 v,).
27. People of Charchan in the Desert
(C 21 V,),
28. Idolaters of Tangut with Ram before Idol (f. 22 v.),
29. Funeral Festivities of Tangut (f. 23).
30. (Subject obscure.)
31. Coronation of Chinghiz.
32. Chinghiz sends to Prester John.
33. Death of Chinghiz.
34. (Subject obscure.)
35. Some of Plmy's Monsters {.apropos de bottes).
36. A Man herding White Cattle (?).
37. Kublai hawking, with Cheeta at croupe,
38. Kaan on Elephant, in Battle with Nayan.
39. The Kaan's four Queens.
40. The Kaan's Palace (?).
4>« »f «. , with the Lake
and Green Mount.
42. The Kaan's Banquet 43' >f worship of Idols.
44. The Kaan travelling in Horse- litter. 45- »» hunting.
46. „ in Elephant-litter.
47. The White Feast
48. The Kaan gives Paper for Treasure.
49. Couriers arrive before Kaan.
50. The Kaan transplants big Trees.
51. The Bridge Pulisangin.
52. The Golden King as a Cow-herd.
53. Trade on the Caramoran.
54. The Girls of Tibet
55. Fishing Pearls in Caindu.
56. Dragons of Carajan.
57. Battle of Vochan.
58. The Forests of Mien, Elephants in the Wood.
59- M f» and Unicorns, &C.
60. Lion hunting in Coloman.
61. Return from the Chase.
63. The Queen of Manzi surrenders.
64. The City of Quinsai.
65. The Receipt of Custom at Quinsai.
66. Curiosities brought from India to Great Kaan.
67. War with Chipangu.
68. Scene at Sea (an exj>edition to Chipangu ?).
69. Cannibals of Sumatra.
70. Cynocephali (rather Alopeco- cephali !).
71. The folk of Ma'abar, without rai- ment
72. Idol worship of Indian girls.
73. The Valley of Diamonds.
74. Brahmin Merchants.
75. Pepper gathering.
76. Wild Beasts.
77. City of Cambaia.
78. Male and Female Islands.
79. Madagascar.
80. Battle of the Abyssinian Kings.
81. City of the Ichthyophagi.
82. Arab Horses at Calatu.
83. Wars of Caidu.
84. Prowess of Caidu's daughter.
Of these Nos. i, 12, 19, 35, 37, 44, 46, 5i» 55» 56, 59, 66, 70, 75. 78, 81, are engraved in Charlottes Voyageur du Moyen A^^e, vol. ii., besides two others which 1 seem to have over- looked. No. 5 is engraved at p. 15. of vol. i. of the present work.
Digitized by
520
MARCO POLO.
App. F.
List of Miniatures in the Bodleian MS. of Marco Polo.
1. Frontispiece,
2. The Kaan giving the Golden Tablet.
3. Presentation of Pope's Letter.
4. Taking of Baudas.
5. The Bishop before the Calif.
6. The Three Kings at Bethlehem.
7. White Oxen of Kerman.
8. Paradise of the Old Man.
9. River of Balashan.
10. City of Campichu.
11. Battle with Prester John.
12. Tartars and their Idols.
13. The Kaan in his Park at Chandu.
14. Idol Worship.
15. Battle with Nayan.
16. Death of the Rebels.
1 7. Kaan rewarding his Officers.
18. „ at Table.
19. ,, Hunting.
20. The Kaan and his Barons.
21. The Kaan's alms.
22. City of Kenjanfu.
23. tf >f Sindinfu.
24. People of Carajan.
25. The Couvade.
26. Gold and Silver Towers of Mien.
27. Funeral Customs.
28. The Great River Kian?
29. The Attack of Saianfu (with a
Cannon, a Mangonel, and a Cross- bow).
30. City of Quinsay.
31. Palace of Facfur. Port of Zayton. Cynocephali.
32- 33. 34- 35. 36.
Idolaters of Little Java. Pearl divers.
37, Shrine of SL Thomas.
38. The Six Kings, subject to Abyssinii. Part of the Frontispiece is engraved in
vol. i. p. n^ of the present work.
Digitized by
App. G.
FILIATION OF CHIEF MSS.
5^1
Digitized by
522 MARCO POLO. APP. H.
Appendix H. — Bibliography of Marco Polo's Book. I. — Principal Editions.
I do not intend to attempt a list of all the editions of Polo ; a task for which I have no advantages, and which will be found well done in Lazari's Appendix, based on Marsden. But it may be useful to mention the chief Editions, with their dates.
1477. The first Printed Edition is in German. We have given a reduced Fac- simile of its Frontispiece at page 7A. ** Diss hat gedruckt Fria Creiissntr zu Nurmberg nach cristi gepurdt Tausent vUrhundert vnd im sibeti vnd sibatczigU iar " (Marsden).
1 48 1. A reproduction of the preceding at Augsburg, in the same volume with the History of Duke Leopold and his Son IViliiam 0/ Austria.
About 1490. Pipino's Latin ; the only printed edition of that version- Without place, date, or printer^s name.
1496. Edition in Venetian Dialect, printed by G. B. Sessa.
1500. The preceding reproduced at Brescia (often afterwards in Italy).
1502. Portuguese version from Pipino, along with the Travels of Nicolo Conti. Printed at Lisbon by Valentjrm Fernandez Alemao (see voL ii. of this work, p. 278). Stated to have been translated from the MS. presented by Venice to Prince Pedro (vol. i. p. iso).
1520. Spanish version by Rodrigo de Santaella. Sevilla.
1529. Ditto. Reprinted at Logrono.
1532. Novus Orbis — Basilese (see voL i. p. 95).
1556. French version from the Nomis Orbis.
1559. Ramusio's 2nd volume, containing his version of Polo, of which we have spoken amply.
1579. First English Version, made by John Frampton, according to Marsden, from the Spanish version of Seville or Logrono.
1625. Purchas's Pilgrims, vol. iii. contains a very loose translation from Ramusia
1664. Dutch Version, from the Novus Orbis. Amsterdam.
167 1. Andreas Miiller of Greiffenhagen reprints the Latin of the Novus Orbis^ with a collation of readings from the Pipino MS. at Berlin ; and with it the book of Hayton, and a disquisition De Chaiaid. The Editor appears to have been an enthusiast in his subject, but he selected his text very injudiciously (see vol. i. p. 94).
1735. Bergeron's interesting collection of Medieval Travels in Asia, published in French at the Hague. The Polo is a translation from Miiller, and hence is (as we have already indicated) at 6th hand.
1 747. In Astley's Collection, IV. 580 seqq., there is an abstract of Polo's book, with brief notes, which are extremely acute, though written in a vulgar ,tone, too characteristic of the time.
1818. Marsden's famous English Edition.
1824, The Publication of the most valuable MS. and most genuine form of the text, by the Soc. de Geographic of Paris (see vol. i. p. si). It also contains the Latin Text (No. 19 in our list of MSS. in first Exlition).
1827. Baldelli-Boni published the Crusca MS. (No. 34), and republished the Ramusian Version, with numerous notes and interesting dissertations. The 2 volimies are cumbered with 2 volumes more, containing, as a Preliminary, a History of the Mutual Relations of Europe and Asia, which probably no man ever read. Florence,
1844. Hugh Murray's Edition. It is, like the present one, eclectic as regards the text, but the Editor has taken large liberties with the arrangement of the Book.
Digitized by
App. H. bibliography of POLO'S BOOK. 523
1845. Biirck's German Version, Leipzig. It is translated from Ramusio, with copious notes, chiefly derived from Marsden and Ritter. There are some notes at the end added by the late Karl Friedrich Neumann, but as a whole these are disappointing.
1847. Lazari's Italian edition was prepared at the expense of the late Senator L. Pasini, in commemoration of the meeting of the Italian Scientific Congress at Venice in that year, to the members of which it was pre- sented. It is a creditable work, but too hastily got up.
1854. Mr. T. Wright prepared an edition for Bohn*s Antiq. Library. The notes are in the main (and professedly) abridged from Marsden*s, whose text is generally followed, but with the addition of the historical chapters, and a few other modifications from the Geographic Text.
1854-57. Voyagfurs Anciens et Modertus^ dfc Far M, Ed, Charton, Paris. An interesting and creditable popular work. Vol. ii. contains Marco Polo, with many illustrations, including copies from miniatures in the Dvre des MervtilUs (see list in App. F.).
1863. Signor Adolfo Bartoli reprinted the Crusca MS. from the original, making a careful comparison with the Geographic Text. He has prefixed a valuable and accurate Essay on Marco Polo and the Literary History of his Book, by which I have profited.
1865. M. Pauthier*s learned edition.
1 87 1. First edition of the present work.
1873. First publication of Marco Polo in Russian. I have no particulars.
II.— Titles of Sundry Books and Papers which treat OF Marco Polo and his Book.
1. Salviati, Cavalier Lionardo. Degli Awertimenti della Lingua
sofira H Decanter one. In Venezia, 1584. Has some brief remarks on Texts of Polo, and on references to him or his story in Villani and Boccaccio.
2. Martini, Marti no. Navus Atlas Sinensis, Amstelodami, 1655.
The Maps are from Chinese sources, and are surprisingly good. The Descrip- tions, also from Chinese works but interspersed with information of Martini's own, have, in their completeness, never been superseded. This estimable Jesuit often refers to Polo with affectionate zeal, identifying his localities, and justifying his descriptions. The edition quoted in this book forms a part of Blaeu's Great Atlas (1663). It was also reprinted in Th^venot's Collection. •
3. Kircher, Athanasius. China Illustrata, Amstelodami, 1667. He also often refers to Polo, but chiefly in borrowing from Martini.
4. Magailijvns, Gabriel de (properly Magalhaens). Nouvelle Des-
cription de la Chine^ contenant la description des Particularith les plus considerables de ce Grand Empire, Paris, 1688. Contains many excellent elucidations of Polo's work.
5. CORONELLI, ViNCENZO. Atlante Veneto, Venezia, 1690.
Has some remarks on Polo, and the identity of Cathay and Cambaluc with China and Peking.
6. Muratori, Lud. Ant. Perfetta Poesia, con note di Salvini.
Venezia, 1724. In vol. ii. p. 117, Salvini makes some remarks on the language in which he supposes Polo to have composed his Book.
Digitized by
524 MARCO POLO. App. H.
7. FOSCARINI, Marco. D^lla Letteratura Veneziana, Padova, 1752.
Vol. i. 414 seqq,
8. , , Frammento inedito diy intorno at Viaggiaton Vene-
ziani; accompanied by Remarks on Biirck's German edition of Marco Polo, by Tommaso Gar (late Director of the Venice Archives). In Archivio Storico lialiano, Append, torn. iv. p. 89 segq.
9. Zeno, Apostolo. Annotazioni sopra la Biblioteca delV Eloquenza
Italiana di Giusto Fonianini. Venezia, 1753.
See Marsden's Introduction, passim,
10. TiRABOSCHi, GiROLAMO. Storia della Letteratura Italiana.
Modena, 1 772-1 783. There is a disquisition on Polo, with some judicious remarks (iv. pp. 68-73).
1 1 . TOALDO, Giuseppe. Saggi di Studj Veneti nelP Astronomia e nella
Marina, Ven. 1782.
This work, which I have not seen, is stated to contain some remarks on Polo's Book. The author had intended to write a Commentary thereon, and had col- lected books dnd copies of MSS. with this view, and read an article on the subject before the Academy of Padua, but did not live to fulfil his intention (d. 1 797).
12. FORSTER, J. Reinhold. H, des Dicouvertes et des Voyages Jaits
dans le Nord, French Version. Paris, 1788.
13. Sprengel, Mathias Christian. Geschichte der wichtigsien
geographischen Entdeckungen^ &c. 2nd Ed. Halle, 1792.
This book, which is a marvel for the quantity of interesting matter which it contains in small space, has much about Polo.
14. ZURLA, Abate Placido. Life of Polo, in Collesione di Vite e
Ritratti d'lllustri Italiani, Padova, 1816.
This book is said to have procured a Cardinal's Hat for the author. It is a respectable book, and Zurla's exertions in behalf of the credit of his countrymen are greatly to be commended, though the reward seems inappropriate.
15. ZURLA, Abate Placido. Dissertazioni di Marco Polo e degli altri
Viaggiatori Veneztani^6y*c, Venezia, 181 8-19.
16. 17, 18. Quarterly Review, voL xxi. (1819), contains an Article
on Marsden's Edition, written by John Barrow, Esq. ; that for July, 1868, contains another on Marco Polo and his Recent Editors, written by the present Editor; and that for Jan. 1872, one on the First Edition of this work, by R. H. Major, Esq.
19. Asia, Hist, Account of Discovery and Travels in. By HUGH
Murray. Edinburgh, 1820.
20. Klaproth, Julius. A variety of most interesting articles in the
Journal Asiatique (see ser. i. torn, iv., torn. ix. ; ser. iL torn, i., torn, xi., &c.), and in his Mimoires Relatifs a VAsie, Paris, 1824.
Klaproth speaks more than once as if he had a complete Commentary 00 Marco Polo prepared or in preparation (^. ^., see 5^ As,y ser. t torn. iv. p. 380). But the examination of his papers after his death produced little or nothing of this kind.
Digitized by
App. H. bibliography of POLO'S BOOK. 525
21. CicoGNA, Emmanuele. DelU Iscrizioni Vcneziane^ Raccolte ed
Illustrate, Venezia, 1 824-1 843. Contains valuable notices regarding the Polo family.
22. RiMUSAT, Jean Pierre, Abel-. Milanges Asiatiques. Paris, 1825.
Nouvelles Melanges As, Paris, 1829. The latter contains (i. 381 s(qq.) an article on Marsden's Marco Polo, and one (?• 397 ^^^9') upon Zurla's Book.
23. Antologia, edited by Vieussieux. Tom. xix, B. pp. 92-124.
Firenze, 1825. A Review of the publication of the old French Text by the Soc. de G^graphie.
24. Annali Universali di Statistica. Vol. xvi. p. 286. Milano.
1828. Article by F. CUSTODI.
25. Walckenaer, Baron C. Vies de plusieurs Personnes Cillbres^
Laon, 1830. This contains a life of Marco Polo, but I have not seen it.
26. St. John, James Augustus. Lives of Celebrated Travellers,
London (circa 183 1). Contains a Life of Marco Polo, which I regret not to have seen.
27. CoOLEY, W. D. Hist, of Maritime and Inland Discovery, London,
(circa 1831). This excellent work contains a good chapter on Marco Polo.
28. RiTTER, Carl. Die Erdkunde von Asien, Berlin, 1832, seqq. This great work abounds with judicious comments on Polo's geography, most
of which have been embodied in Burck's edition.
39, Delecluze, M. Article on Marco Polo in the Revue des Deux Mondes for July, 1832. Vol. vii.
30. Paulin-Paris, M. Papers of much value on the MSS. of Marco
Polo, &c., in Bulletin de la Soc. de G^ographie for 1833, torn. xix. pp. 23-31 ; as well as in Journal Asiatique^ ser. ii. torn. xii. pp. 244-54; n Institute Journal des Sciences, &*c,y Sect. II. torn. xvi. Jan. 185 1.
31. Malte-Brun. Precis de la Gdog, Universelle, 4^^© Ed. par HuoT.
Paris, 1836. VoL i (pp. 551 seqq,) contains a section on Polo, neither good nor correct.
32. De Montemont, Albert. Bibliothique Universelle des Voyages, In vol. xxxi. pp. 33-51 there is a Notice of Marco Polo.
33. Palgrave, Sir Francis. The Merchant and the Friar, London, 1837. The Merchant is Marco Polo, who is supposed to visit England, after his return
from the East, and to become acquainted with the Friar Roger Bacon. The book consists chiefly of their conversations on many subjects.
It does not affect the merits of this interesting book that Bacon is believed to have died in 1292, some years before Marco's return from the East.
34. D'AVEZAC, M. Remarks in his most valuable Notice sur les Anciens
Voyages de Tartaric^ dyc.y in the Recueilde Voyages et de Mdmoires publii par la Sociiti de Giographiey torn. iv. p. 407 seqq, Paris, 1839. Also article in the Bulletin de la Soc, de Giog,y &*c,y for August, 1 841 ; and in Journal A siat. ser. ii. torn. xvi. p. 117.
Digitized by
526 MARCO POLO. App. H.
35. Paravey, M. Article in Journ, Asiatique^ ser. il torn. xvi. 1841,
p. lOI.
36. Hammer-Purgstall, in Bull, de la Soc, de Giog,^ torn. iii.
No. 21, p. 45.
37. QUATREM^RE, £tienne. His translations and other works on
Oriental subjects abound in valuable indirect illustrations of M. Polo ; but in Notices el Extraits des MSS, de la BiblioMgue du Bot\ torn, xiv. Pt i. pp. 281-286, Paris, 1843, there are some excellent remarks both on the work itself and on Marsden's Edition of it
38. Macfarlane, Charles. Romance of Travel. London. C. Knight
1846. A good deal of intelligent talk on Marco Polo.
39. Meyer, Ernst H. F. Geschichte der Botanik. K6nigsberg, 1854-57. In vol. iv. there is a special chapter on Marco Polo's notices of plants.
40. Thomas, Professor G. M. A paper on Marco Polo in the Sitzungs-
berichten der Miinchner Akademie^ 4th March, 1862.
41. Khanikoff, Nicolas de. Notice sur le Livre di Marco Pole,
idit^ et comments par M. G, Pauthier, Paris, 1866. Extracted from the Journal Asiatique, I have frequenUy quoted this with advantage, and sometimes have ventured to dissent from it
42. Cahier, P^re. Criticism of Pauthier's Marco PolOy and reply by
M. Pauthier. in Etudes Littdr aires et Religieuses of 1866 and 1867. Paris. Not seen by present editor.
43. Barthi^lemy de St. Hilaire. A series of articles on Marco Polo
in the Journal des Savants for January-May, 1867, chiefly con- sisting of a reproduction of Pauthier's views and deductions.
44. De Gubernatis, Prof. Angelo. Memoria intorno ai Viaggiatori
Italiani nelle Indie Orientali, dal secolo XII L a tutto il XVL Firenze, 1867.
45. BiANCONi, Prof. Giuseppe. Degli Scritti di Marco Polo e delV
Uccello Rue da lui menzionato, 2 parts. Bologna, 1862 and 186$. A meritorious essay, containing good remarks on the comparison of different Texts.
46. KiKGSLEY, Henry. Tales of Old Travel renarrated London, 1869. This begins with Marco Polo. The work has gone through several editions,
but I do not know whether the author has corrected some rather eccentric geo- graphy and history that were presented in the first. Mr. Kingsley is the author of another story about Marco Polo in a Magazine, but I cannot recover the reference.
47. Notes and Queries for China and Japan. This was published
for some years at Hong-Kong under able editorship, and contained some valuable notes connected with Marco Polo's chapters on China.
48. Ghika, Princess Elena {Dora d* Istria), Marco Polo^ II Cristoforo
Colombo delP Asia, Trieste, 1869.
49. Buss a, Quinto. Marco Polo^ Orazione commemorativa, Genova,
1872.
Digitized by
App. I. LIST OF WORKS CITED. 527
50. Edinburgh Review, January, 1872. A Review of the first edition
of the present work, acknowledged by Sir Henry Rawlinson, and full of Oriental knowledge. (See also No. 18 supra).
51. Ocean Highways, for December, 1872, p. 285. An interesting letter
on Marco Polo's notices of Persia, by Major Oliver St. John, R.E.
52. Richthofen, Baron F. von. Das Land und die Stadt Caindu von
Marco Polo, a valuable paper in the «Verhandlungen der Gesell- schaftfur Erdkunde zu Berlin, No. i of 1874, p. 33.
53. Bushell, Dr. S. W., Physician to H.M.'s Legation at Peking. Notes
of a Journey outside the Great Wall of China, embracing an account of the first modem visit to the site of Kublai's Palace at Shangtu. Will appear in f, R, G, S, vol. xliv.
54. Phillips, George, of H.M.'s Consular Service in China. Notices
of Southern Mangi, in same volume as the last. Also papers in the Chinese Recorder (Foochow), Nos. i, 2, 3, 4, 5, for 1870. (See pp. 215, 222, of the present volume.)
55. Wheeler, J. Talboys. History of India (voL iii. pp. 385-393)
contains a r^sumd of, and running comment on, Marco Polo's notices
of India. Mr. Wheeler's book says : ** His travels appear to havt been written at Comorin, the most southerly point of India" (p. 385). The words that I have put in Italics are evidently a misprint, though it is not clear how to correct them.
56. De Skattschkoff, M. Constantin. Le Vinitien Marco Polo, et les services quUl a rendus enfaisant connattre PAsie. Read before the Imp, Geog, Society at St Petersburg, -^ October, 1865 ; translated by M. Emile Durand in the Journ, Asiatique, ser. vii. torn. iv. pp. 122 seqq, (September, 1874).
The Author expresses his conviction that Marco Polo had described a number of localities after Chinese written authorities ; for in the old Chinese descriptions of India and other transmarine countries are found precisely the same pieces of information, neither more nor fewer, that are given by Marco Polo. Though proof of this would not be proof of the writer's deduction that Marco Polo was acquainted with the Chinese language, it would be very interesting in itself, and would explain some points to which we have alluded [e.g.^ in reference to the frankincense plant, p. 446, and to the confusion between Madagascar and Mak- dashau, p. 406). And Mr. G. Phillips has urged something of the same kind. But M. de Skattschkoff adduces no proof at all ; and for the rest his Essay is full of inaccuracy.
Appendix I. — Titles of Works which are cited by abbreviated
References in this Book. Abdallatif. Relation de PEgypte. Trad. par. M. Silvestre de Sacy.
Paris, 18 10. Abulpharagius. Hist, Compend, Dynastiarum, &c., ab Ed. Pocockio.
Oxon. 1663. Abr. Roger. See La Porte ouverte, Acad. Mint, de PAcadimie des Inscriptions,
Digitized by
528 MARCO POLO. [App.1.
Ain-i-Akbari or Ain. Akb. Bl. refers to Blochmann's Translation in Bibliotkeca Indica, Calcutta, 1869, seqq,
Alexandriade, ou Chanson de Geste d^AUxAe-Grand^ de Lambert k Court et Alex, de Bemay. Dinan et Paris, 1861.
Alphabetum Tibetanum Missionum Apostolicarum commodo editum;
A. A. Georgii. Romae, 1762. Am. Exot. Engelbert Kaekipfer's Amoenitatum ExoHcarum Fasciculi V,
Lemgoviae, 17 12.
Amyot. Mintoires concernant les Chinois^ &c. Paris, v. y.
Arabs., Arabshah. Ahmedis Arabsiadts Vitae .... Timuri .... Historia, Latine vertit . . . . S. H. Manger. Franequerae, 1767.
Arch. Stor. Ital. Arckivio Storico Italiano. Firenze, v. y.
Assemani, Bibliotkeca Orientalis. Romae, 1719-28.
ASTLEY. A New General Collection of Voyages^ &c. London, 1745-47-
AVA, Mission to, Narrative of Major Phayre's. By Capt H. Yule, London, 1858.
Ayeen Akbery refers to Gladwin's TransL, Calcutta, 1787.
Baber, Memoir of. TransL by Leyden and Erskine. London, 1826.
Bacon, Roger. Opus Majus, Vcnet. 1750.
Baer und Helmersen. Beitrdge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches^ Sf*c. St. Petersburg, 1839, seqq,
Baudouin de Sebourg. Li Romans de Bauduin de 5., /// Roy de Jherusalem, Valenciennes, 1841.
Benjamin of Tudela. Quoted from T. Wright's Early Travels in Palestine, Bohn, London, 1848.
Bridgman, Rev. Dr. Sketches of the Meaou-tszd, transl. by. In J, K Ck, Br. R. As. Soc. for Dec. 1859.
Browne's Vulgar Errors, in Bohn's Ed. of his Works. London, 1852.
BUCHON. Chronigues Etrangh^es relatives aux Expeditions Fran^aises pendant le XI 11^ Siicle. Paris, 1841.
Burnes, Alex. Travels into Bokhara. 2nd Ed. London, 1835.
BuscHlNG'S Magazin fUr die neue Historic und Geographic. Halle, 1779, seqq.
Cahier et Martin. Milanges d'Archiologu. Paris, v. y.
Capmany, Antonio. Memoruis Histortcas sobre la marina . . . , de Barcelona. Madrid, 1779-92.
Carp., Carpini. As published in Recueil de Voyages et de Mhnoires de la Soc. de Giog. Tom. iv. Paris, 1839.
Cathay, and the Way Thither. By CoL H. Yule. Hakluyt Society, 1866.
Chardin, Voyages en Perse de. Ed. of Langl^s. Paris, 18 11,
China Illustrata. See Kircher.
Digitized by
App. r. FULLER TITLES OF WORKS CITED. 529
Chine Ancienne. By Pauthier, in UUnivers Pittaresque. Paris, 1837.
MoDERNE. By do. and Bazin, in do. Paris, 1853.
Chin. Rep. Chinese Repository. Canton, 1832, segq, Clavijo. Transl. by C. R. Markham. Hak. Society, 1859. Consular Reports. (See this vol. p. 126.)
CONTI, Travels ofNicolo, In India in the XVth Century; Hak. Society, I8S7.
D'AVEZAC See App. H. No. 32.
Davies's Report. Rep, on the Trade and Resources of the Countries on the N,W. Boundary of Br. India (By R. H. Davies, now (1874), Lieut.-Govemor of the Panjdb).
Deguignes. Hist. Gin. des Huns, &*c. Paris, 1756.
(the Younger). Voyages d Peking, &*c. Paris, 1808.
Della Decima, &c. Lisbone e Lucca (really Florence) 1765-66. The 3rd volume of this contains the Mercantile Handbook of Pegolotti (circa 1340), and the 4th vol. that of Uzzano (1440).
Della Penna. Breve Notizia del Regno del Thibet. An extract from the Journal Asiatique, ser. ii. torn. xiv. (pub. by Klaproth).
Della Valle, P. Viaggi. Ed. Brighton, 1843.
De Mailla. H. Ghtirale de la Chine, 6t*c. Paris, 1783.
DiCT. DE LA Perse. Diet. Giog. Hist, et Litt. de la Perse, &*c.; par Barbier de Meynard. Paris, 1861.
D'Ohsson. H. des Mongols. La Haye et Amsterdam, 1834.
DOOLITTLE, Rev. J. The Social Life of the Chinese. Condensed Ed, London, 1868.
Douet D'Arcq. Comptes de PArgenterie des Rois de France au XIV' Sihle. Paris, 185 1.
Dozy and Engelmann. Glossaire des Mots Espagnols et Portugais d^ivis de PArabe. 2de. Ed. Leyde, 1869.
Duchesne, Andreae, Historiae Francorum Scriptores. Lut. Par. 1636-49.
Early Travels in Palestine, ed. by T. Wright, Esq. Bohn, London, 1848.
Edrisi. Trctd. par Am^^ Jaubert ; in Rec. de Voy. et de Mim., torn. V. et vi. Paris, 1836-40.
ilLiE DE Laprimaudaie. Etudes sur le Commerce au Moyen Age.
Paris, 1848. Elliot. The History of India as told by its own Historians. Edited
from the posthumous papers of Sir H. M. Elliot, by Prof. Dowson.
1867, ^^^Q* Erdmann, Dr. Franz v. Temudschin der UnerschUtterliche. Leipzig,
1862. «
VOL. II. a M
Digitized by
530 MARCO POLO. App. I.
Erman. Travels in Siberia, Transl. by W. D. Cooley. London, 1848. ESCAYRAC DE Lauture, Mhnoires sur la Chine, Paris, 1865. ^TUDE Pratique, &c. See Hedde,
Faria y Souza. History of the Discovery and Conquest of India by the
Portuguese. Transl. by Capt. J. Stevens. London, 1695. Ferrier, J. P. Caravan Journeys^ df*c, London, 1856. Fortune. Two Visits to the Tea Countries of China. London, 1853.
Francisque-Michel. Recherches sur le Commerce^ la fabrication^ et Pusage des itoffes de Soie, 6r*c. Paris, 1852.
Frescob. Viaggiin Terra Santa di L. Frescobaldi, &c. (1384). Firenze, 1862.
Garcias da Horta. Garzia dalP Horto, DelP Istoria dei semflici ed altre cose che vengono portate dalP Indie Orientalij &*c. Trad, dal Portughese da Annib. Briganti. Venezia, 1589.
Garnier, Francis. Voyage d'Expioration en Indo-Chine. Paris, 1873.
Gaubil. H, de Gentchis Can et de Toute la Dinastie des Mongous.
Paris, 1739. GiLDEM. GiLDEMElSTER, Scriptorum Arabum de Rebus Indicts, &'c.
Bonn, 1838. Gold. Horde. See Hammer.
Hamilton, A. New Account of the East Indies. London, 1744. Hammer-Purgstall. Geschichte der Goldenen Horde. Pesth, 1840. . Geschichte der Ilchane. Darmstadt, 1842.
Hedde et Rondot. Etude Pratique du Commerce d' Exportation de la
Chine, par L Hedde. Revue et complitie par N. Rondot. Paris,
1849. He YD, Prof. W. Le Colonic Commerciali degli Italiani in Oriente ntl
Medio Evo; Dissert. Rifatt. dalP Autore e recate in Italiano dal
Prof. G. Miiller. Venezia e Torino, 1866. H. T. or Hwen-T'sang. Vie et Voyages, viz. Hist de la Vie de Hiouen
Thsang et de ses Voyages dans I'Inde, &c. Paris, 1853. or . Mimoires sur les Contries Occidentales, &*c.
Paris, 1857. Sec Pelerins Bouddhistes. Hue. Recollections of a Journey through Tartary, 6r*c. Condensed
TransL by Mrs. P. Sinnett. London, 1852.
I. B., IBN. Bat., Ibn Batuta. Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah par Defrinury
et Sanguinetti. Paris, 1853-58. ILCH., Ilchan., Hammer's Ilch. See Hammer. India in XVth. Century. Hak. Soc. 1857. IND. Ant., Indian Antiquary, a Journal of Oriental Research. Bombay,
1872, seqq.
J. A. S. B. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. '
Digitized by
App. I. FULLER TITLES OF WORKS CITED. 53 1
J. As. Journal Asiatique,
J. IND. Arch. Journal of the Indian Archipelago,
J. N. C. Br. R. A. S. Journal of the North China Branch of the R, Asiatic Society,
J. R. A. S. Journal of the Royal As, Society,
J. R. G. S. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society,
JOINVILLE. Edited by Francisque-MicheL Firmin-Didot : Paris, 1867.
Kaempfer. See Am, Exot,
Khanikoff, Notice. See App. H., II., No. 39.
M^MOIRE sur la Partie Miridtonale de PAsie Centrale.
Paris, 1862.
KiRCHER, Athanasius, China^ Monumentis^ &*c,y Illustrata, Amstdod.
1667. Klap. Mem. See App. H., II., No. 18. KOEPPEN, Die Religion des Buddha^ von Carl Friedrich. Berlin,
1857-S9.
La Porte Ouverte, &c., ou la Vraye Representation de la Vie^ des Moeurs, de la Religion^ et du Service Divin des Bramines, &*c., par le Sieur Abraham Roger, trad, en Francois. Amsterdam, 167a
Ladak, &c. By Major Alex. Cunningham. 1854.
Lassen. Indische A Iterthumskunde, First edition is cited throughout.
Lecomte, P^ L. Nouveaux Mimoires sur les Chinois, Paris, 1701.
Levchine, Alexis de. Desc, des Hordes et des Steppes des Kirghiz KaisscUcs; trad, par F. de Pigny. Paris, 1840.
LiNSCHOTEN. Hist, de la Navigation de Jean Hugues de Linschot, ykmc ed. Amst, 1638.
Magaillans. See App. H., II., No. 4. Makrizi. See Q^at, Mak,
Mar. San., Marin. Sanut., Marino Sanudo. Liber Secretorum
Fidelium Crucis, in Bongarsii Gesta Dei per Francos, Hanoviae,
1611. Tom. ii. MARTiNE ET DuRAND. Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, Paris, 1717. Martini. See App. H., II., No. 2. Mas'udi. Les Prairies d'Or^ par Barbier de Meynard et Pavet de
Courteille. Paris, 1861, segg, Matthioli, p. a. Commentarii in libros VL Pedacii Dioscoridis de
Medicd Materid, Venetiis, 1554; sometimes other editions are
cited. MAtJNDEVlLE. Halliwell's Ed. London, 1866. Mem. de l*Acad, See Acad,
Mendoza. H, of China, Ed. of Hak. Society, 1853-54- Michel. See Francisgue-Michel, Mid. Kingd. See Williams,
2 M 2
Digitized by
$^2 MARCO POLO. App. I.
MOORCROFT and Trebecl^s Travels; edited by Prot H. H.Wilson. 1841. MOSHEIM. Historia Tartar orum Ecclesiastica. Helmstadi, 1741. MuNTANER, in BuchoHy q. v.
N. & E., Not. et Ext. Notices et Extraits des MSS, de la Bibliotkkque du Roy, Paris, v, y.
N. & Q. Notes and Queries,
N. & Q. C. & J. Notes and Queries for China and Japan,
Nelson, J. H. The Madura Country, a Manual, Madras, 1868.
Neumann, C. F. His Notes at end of Biirck's German ed. of Polo.
Novus Orbis Regionum &*c, Veteribus incognitarum, Basil Ed. 155$.
P. DE LA Croix. Pfois de la Croix, Hist, de Timurbec, &*c, Paris, 1722.
P. della V. See Delia Valle,
P. ViNC. Maria, P. Vincenzo. Viaggio alV Indie Orientali del P. F. V, M, di S, Catarina da Siena, Ronui, 1672.
Pallas. Voyages dans piusieurs Provinces de P Empire de Russie, &*c. Paris, Tan XI.
Paolino. Viaggio alle Indie, &*c,, da Fra P. da S. Bartolomeo. Roma,
1796. Pegolotti. See Della Decima,
Pelerins Bouddhistes, par Stan. Julien. This name covers the two works entered above under the heading H. T., the Vie et Voyages forming vol i., and the M/moires, vols, ii and iii.
Pereg. Quat. Peregrinatores Medii Aevi Quatuor, &*c, Recens. J. M. Laiirent Lipsise, 1864.
Post und Reise Route. See Sprenger, Prairies d'Or. See Mas'udi, PuNjAUB Trade Report. See Davies.
Q. R., Quat. Rashid. H. des Mongols de la Perse, par Raschid-el-din,
trad, &*c, par M. Quatremfere. Paris, 1836. Quat. Mak., Quatrem^re's Mak. H, des Sultans Mamlouks de
PEgypte, par Makrisi, Trad, par Q, Paris, 1837, j/^^.
Ras Mala, or Hindoo Annals of Gooserat, By A. K. Forbes. London,
1856. Reinaud, Rel. Relations des Voyages fails par les Arabes dans Tlnde
et la Chine, &*c, Paris, 1845. •, INDE, MAn, Giog, Histor, et Scientifique sur P, &*c Paris,
1849. Relat., Relations. See last but one. RiCHTHOFEN, Baron F. von. Letters (addressed to the Committee of die
Shanghai Chamber of Conmierce) on the Interior Provinces of
China, Shanghai, 1870-72.
Digitized by
app. k. values of money, weights, &c 533
Roman. Romanin, Storia Docummtata di Venesia, Vcnezia, 1853, seqq.
Rub., Rubruquis. Cited from edition in Recueil de Voyages et de MdmoireSy torn. iv. Paris, 1839.
S. S., San. Setz., Ss. Ssetz. See Schmidt
Santarem, Essaisur PHist. de la Cosmographies &*c, Paris, 1849.
Sanudo. See Mar, San.
SCHILTBERGER, Reisen des Johan. Ed. by Neumann. Miinchen, 1859.
Schmidt. Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen, &*c., verfasst von Ssanan^-
Ssetzen Chungiaidschi. St Petersburg, 1829. SONNERAT. Voyage aux Indes Orientates. Paris, 1782. Sprenger. Post und Reise Route des Orients. Leipzig, 1864.
St. Martin, M. J. Mhnoires Historiques et Giographiques sur PAr- menie, &*c. Paris, 181 8-19.
Teixeira, Relaciones de Pedro, del Origen Descendencia y Succession de los Reyes de Persia, y de HarmuZj y deun Viage hecho por el mismo aotor, &*c. En Amberes, 1670.
TiMKOWSKi. Travels, &c., edited by Klaproth. London, 1827.
UzZANO. See Delia Decima.
Varthema'S Travels. By Jones and Badger. Hak. Soc., 1863.
ViGNE, G. T. Travels in Kashmir, &*c. London, 1842.
ViN. Bell., Vinc. Bellov. Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Historiale,
Speculum Naturale, &*c. ViSDELOU. Supplement to D'Herbelot. 1780.
Williams's Middle Kingdom. 3rd Ed. New York and London, 1857. Williamson, Rev. A Journeys in N. China, &*c. London, 1870. Weber's Metrical Romances of the Xlllth, XlVth, and XVth Centuries. Edinburgh, 18 10.
Witsen. Noorden Oost Tartaryen, 2nd Ed. Amsterdam, 1785.
Appendix K. — Values of certain Moneys, Weights, and Measures, occurring in this Book.
French Money.
The Llvre Toumois of the period may be taken, on the mean of five valuations cited in a footnote at p. 88 of vol L, as eqoal
vn modem silver value io \%'0^/rancs.
Say English money 141. y%d.
Digitized by
534 MARCO POLO. . App.K.
The LiTre Parisis was worth one-fourth more than the Tour- noi?y* and therefore equivalent in silver value to ... . 22'^$ frana.
Say English money l^s. io&/.
(Gold being then to silver in relative value about 12 : i instead of about 15 : i as now, one-fourth has to be added to the values based on silver in equations with the gold coin of the period, and one-fifth to be deducted in values based on gold value. By oversight, in voL i. p. 88, I took 16 : i as the present gold value, and so exaggerated the value of the livre Toumois as compared with gold.)
M. Natalis de Wailly, in his recent fine edition of Joinville, determines the valuation of these livres, in the reign of St Lewis, by taking a mean between a value calculated on the present value of silver, and a value calculated on the present value of gold,t and his result is :
Livre Toumois = iff ^francs,
Livre Parisia = 2533 „
Though there is something arbitrary in this mode of valuation, it is, perfas^ on the whole the best ; and its result is extremely handy for the memoiy (as some- body has pointed out) for we thus have
One Livre Toumoia = One Napoleon. ,, „ Parisia = One Sovereign.
Venetian Money.
The Mark of Silver all over Europe may be taken fairly at 2/. 4/. of our money in modem value ; the Venetian mark being a fraction more, and the marks of England, Germany and France fractions less.^
The Venice Gold Ducat or Zeochin, first coined in accordance with a Law of 31st Oct. 1283, was, in our gold value ^ worth . . \v%2frana.%
or English 9^. 4*284//.
The Zecchin when first coined was fixed as equivalent to 18 grossi, and on this calculation the Groaao should be almost exactly 5^. sterling.jl But it is evident from what follows that there must have been another grosso, perhaps only of account, which was only J of the former, therefore equivalent to 3f</. only. This seems to me the only clue to difficulties which I do not find dealt with by anybody in a precise or thorough manner.
Accounts were kept at Venice not in ducats and grossi, but in Zi>r, of which there were several denominations, znz.:
I. Lira dei Grossi, called in Latin Documents Libra denariorum Vau- toruM grosorum.\ Like every Lira or Pound, this consisted of 20 soldif and each soldo of 12 denari or denier s** In this case the
* See {Dupri de St. Maur) Essai sur Us Monnoitt, &»c. Buris, 1746, p. zv; and D^»«t eTArcq^ pp. 5, 15, &c
+ He takes the silver value of the gros Tournois (the sol of the system) at 0*8924 fr.^ wbawe the Livre = 17*849 yV. And the gold value of the golden Agiul, which passed for z>i Wf Toumois^ is t^'ij^^/r. Whence the Livre ^=^ aa'SjSg/r. Mean = 90*2639^.
X The Mark was § of a pound. The English Pound Sterling of the period was in aha value = 3/. 5*. »/. Hence the Iffark = a/, y. 5*44^. The Cologne Mark, accoiding to ftgo- lotti, was the same, and the Venice Mark of silver wtts = i English Tower Mark -f 3k $terfiag» (i.e. pence of the period), =thercfore to 2/. 4X. 4*84//. The French Mark of Silver, accordiag to Dupri de St. Maur, was about 3 Livres, presumably Toumois, and therefore 2/. 2/. tii^.
i Cibrario, Pol. Ec. dtl Med. Evo. III. 228. The Oold Florin of Florence was wwth a fraction more = 9^ . 4*85^.
II For fg of the florin will be 6'23(/., and deducting |, as pointed out above, we have 4*99^- ** the value of iHxegrosso.
I have a note that the grosso contained 437^ Venice grains of pure silver. If the Venice fraiii be the same as the old Milan grain ('051 grammes) this will give exactly the same value of 51/-
II Also called, according to Komanin, Lira d*in;prestidi. See Introd. Essay in vol. i. p. Si-
•• It i.s not too universally known to be worth notine that our j^ s. d. refwe^cnts Livrti, st^/s, dcnters.
Digitized by
app. k. value of money, weights, &c. 535
Lira was equivalent to lo golden ducats; and its Denier, as the name implies, was the Grosso. The Grosso therefore here was ^ of lo ducats or ^ of a ducat, instead of -j^.
2. Lira ai Grossi (Z. den, Ven, ad grossos). This by decree of June 2nd,
1285, wci^t two to the ducat. In fact it is the soldo of the preceding Lira^ and as such the Grosso was, as we have just seen, its denier ; which is perhaps the reason of the name.
3. Lira del Plocoli (Z. den. Ven, parvulorum). The ducat is alleged to
have been at first equal to three of these Lire {Romanin, I. 321) ; but
the calculations of Marino Sanudo (1300-1320) in the Secreta Fidelium
Cruets show that he reckons the Ducat equivalent to 3*2 lire oi piccoli.^
In estimating these Lire in modern English money, on the basis of their
relation to the ducat, we must reduce the apparent value by J. We then have :
1. Lira del Grossi equivalent to nearly 3/. \^s. od, (therefore exceeding
by nearly icxr. the value of the Pound sterling of the period, or Lira di Sterlini, as it was called in the appropriate Italian phrase).t
2. Lira ai Grossi 3J. 9^.
3. Lira dei Piccoli zr. 4//.
The Tomese or Tomesel at Venidb was, according to Romanin (III. 343) =4 Venice deniers : and if these are the deniers of the Lira ai Grossi, the coin would be worth a little less than f^., and nearly the equivalent of the denier Toumois, from which it took its name.t
The term Bezant is used by Polo always (I believe) as it is by Joinville, by Marino Sanudo, and by Pegolotti, for the Egyptian gold dinir, the intrinsic value of which varied somewhat, but can scarcely be taken at less than los, 6d. or lis. (See Cathay, p. 440-441; and see alsojy. As, ser. vi. tom. xL p. 506-7.) The exchange of Venice money for the Bezant or Dinar in the Levant varied a good deal (as is shown by examples in the passage in Cathay just dted), but is always in these examples a large fraction (J up to 4) more than the Zecchin. Hence, when Joinville gives the equation of St Lewis's ransom as 1,000,000 bezants or 500,000 Irvres, I should have supposed these to be Ivvres Parisis rather than Toumois, as M. de Wailly prefers.
There were a variety of coins of lower value in the Levant called Bezants, § but these do not occur in our Book.
The Venice Saggio, a weight for precious substances, was \ of an ounce, corresponding to the weight of the Roman gold solidus, from which was originally derived the Arab M1fl]j:rtl. And Polo appears to use saggio habitually as the equivalent of Misfidl. His pois or peso, applied to gold and silver, seems to have the same sense, and is indeed a literal translation of Miskdl (see vol. ii. P- 32).
• He also states the grosso to have been worth 3a ^iccoli^ which is consistent with this and thb two preceding statements. For at 3a lire to the ducat the latter would = 768 piccoli, and Jj of this''= 3a piccoli. Pegolotti also assigns 24 grossi to the ducat (p. 151).
The tendency of these Lire^ 2a of pounds generally, was to degenerate in value. In Uzzano (1440) we find the Ducat equivalent to xoo soldi, i.e. to 5 lire.
Everybody seems to be tickled at the notion that the Scotch Pound or Livre was only ao Pence. Nobody finds it funny that the French or Italian Pound is only ao halfpence, or less !
t UsMano in Delia Decima, IV. 124.
X According to Gallicdolli (II. 53) piccoli (probably in the vague sense of small copper coin) were called in the Levant ropvtaia.
^ Thus in the document containing the autograph of King Hayton, presented at p. IS of Introductory Essay, the King gives with his daughter, "Damobelle Femie," a dowry of 25/xx> besans sarrnsinas, and in payment 4 of his own bezants stanrats (presumably so caUed from bearing a cross) are to count as one Saracen Bezant [Cod. Diplomat, del S. Mil. Ord. Gero- solim, I. 134).
Digitized by
536 MARCO POLO. App.L
For measures Polo uses the palm rather than the foot I do not finda tihe of the Venice pahn, but over Italy that measure yaries from 9) inches to sodm- thing over 10. The Genoa Palm is stated at 9725 inches.
Jal {ArchhlogU Nov. I. 271) cites the following Table of
Old Venice Measures of Length.
4 fingers = i handbreadth.
4 handbreadths = i foot
5 feet = I pace. 1000 paces = I mile.
4 miles = I league.
Appendix L. — Sundry Supplementary Notes on Special Subjects.
1. NaHonaliiy of the Traveller William 10. The BdrgiU or Sporting Eagle,
de Rubruk. ! 11. Astronomical Instruments of tki
2. Sarai. Age of Kublai Kaon,
3. The Wall of Alexander. \ 12. Former Practice of Cremation hy
4. '* Reobarles." | the Chinese,
5. Pamir ^ and the Ovis Poll, 13. The Squares in the City of Kinsay.
6. Chingintalas. ' 14. Derivation of the name KoUam or
7. The Site of Karakorum, Quilon.
8. Pr ester John. 15. Cape Comorin,
9. The Milk Libation of Kublai Kaan, , 16. The Rue.
I.— Nationality of the Traveller William de Rubruk, com- monly CALLED RUBRUQUIS {Introductory Essay ^ p. 1(?2).
The latter form of the name has been habitually used in this book, perhaps without sufficient consideration, but it is the most familiar in England from its use by Hakluyt and Purchas. The former, who first published the narradre, professedly printed from an imperfect MS. belonging to the Lord Lumley, which does not seem to be now known. But all the MSS. collated by Messrs. Frandsqne- Michel and Wright, in preparing their edition of the Traveller, call him simply Willelmus de Rubruc or Rubruk.
Some old authors, apparently without the slightest ground, having called him Risbroucke and the like, it came to be assumed that he was a native of Ruysbrocck, a place in South Brabant
But there is a place still called Rubrouck in French Flanders. This is a commune containing about 1500 inhabitants, belonging to the Canton ofCissel and arrondissement of Hazebrouck, in the Department du Nord. And we miy take for granted, till facts are alleged against it, that this was the place from which the envoy of St. Lewis drew his origin. Many documents of the Middle Ages referring expressly to this place Rubrouck, exist in the Library of St. Omcr, and a detailed notice of them has been published by M. Edm. Coussemaker, of LUlc Several of these documents refer to persons bearing the same name as the Traveller: e. g.^ in 11 90, Thierry de Rubrouc ; in 1202 and 1221, Gauthier du Rubrouc ; in 1 250, Jean du Rubrouc ; and in 1258, Woutermann de Rubrouc It is reasonable to suppose that Friar William was of the same stock. See BuUetiM
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de la Soe, de Ghgraphie, 2nd voL for 1868, pp. 569-70, in which there are some remarks on the subject by M. D'Avezac ; and I am indebted to the kind courtesy of that eminent geographer himself for the indication of this reference and the main facts, as I had lost a note of my own on the subject.
It seems a somewhat complex question whether a native even of French Flanders at that time should be necessarily claimable as a Frenchman ;* but no doubt on this point is alluded to by M. D' Avezac, so he probably had good ground for that assumption.
2.— SarAI (Vol. i. pp. 5-6).
In corroboration {quantum vaUat) of my su^estion that there must have been two Sarais near the Volga, Professor Bruun of Odessa points to the fact that Fra Mauro's map presents two cities of Sarai on the Akhtuba ; only the Sarai of Janibeg is with him no longer New Sarai, but Great Sarai.
The use of the latter name suggests the possibility that in the Saracanco of Pegolotti the latter half of the name may be the Mongol Kiink *' Great " (see Pavet de CourteilU, p. 439).
Prof. Bruun also draws attention to the impossibility of Ibn Batuta's travelling from Astrakhan to Tzarev in three days, an argument which had already occurred to me and been inserted in the present edition.
3.— The Wall of Alexander (VoL l p. 55).
To the same friendly correspondent I owe the following additional particulars on this interesting subject, extracted from Eickwald^ Periplus des JCasp, M. I. 128.
** At the point on the mountain, at the extremity of the fortress (of Derbend), where the double wall terminates, there begins a single wall constructed in the same style, only this no longer runs in a straight line, but accommodates itself to the contour of the hill, turning now to the north and now to the south. At first it is quite destroyed, and showed the most scanty vestiges, a few small heaps of stones or traces of towers, but all extending in a general bearing from E. to W. It is not till you get four versts from Derbend, in traversing the moun- tains, that you come upon a continuous wall. Thenceforward you can follow it
over the successive ridges and through several villages chiefly occupied
by the Tartar hill-people. The wall makes many windings, and eveiy
} verst it exhibits substantial towers like those of the city-wall, crested with loop- holes. Some of these are still in tolerably good condition ; others have fallen, and with the wall itself have left but slight vestiges.''
Eichwald altogether followed it up about 18 versts (12 miles), not venturing to proceed further. In later days this cannot have been difficult, but my kind cor- respondent had not been able to lay his hand on information.
A letter from Mr. Eugene Schuyler, received too late for other than briefest reference, communicates some notes regarding inscriptions that have been found at and near Derbend, embracing Cufic of a.d. 465, Pehlvi, and even Cuneiform. Alluding to the fact that the other Iron-gate, south of Shahr-sabz, was called also Kalugah^ or Kohlugah^ he adds : *' I don't know what that means, nor do I know if the Russian Kaluga, S.W. of Moscow, has anything to do with it> but I am told there is a Russian popular song, of which two lines run : —
* Ah Derbend, Derbend Kaluga, Derbend my little Treasure ! ' "
* The, County of Flanders was at this time in large part a iief of the French crown (see M. NataMs de WaiUy, notes to Joinville, p. 576). But that would not much affect the question either one way or the other.
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MARCO POLO. App. L.
I may observe that I have seen it lately pointed out that Kaluga is a Mongol word signifying a barrUr; and I see that Timkowski (L 288) g:ives the same explanation of Kalgan^ the name applied by Mongols and Russians to the gate in the Great Wall, called Chang-kia-Kau by the Chinese, leading to Kiakhta.
4-—*' Reobarles " (Vol. i. p. 117).
In revising the page cited, I had not by me Mr. Blochmann's letter, or I should have quoted it, as showing that my originsd suggestion of the meaning was by no means indefensible. He says : ** After studying a language for years, one acquires a natural feeling for anything un-idiomatic ; but I must confess I see nothing un-Persian in riidbdr-i-duzdy nor in ntdbdr-i-lasj . . . How common la^f is, you may see from one fact, that it occurs in children's reading- books.*'
5.— Pamir and the Ovis Pou (Vol. i. p. 185).
From the officers who explored Pamir in the spring of 1874 we have as yet no formal report ; but it would seem, from such notices as have been received, that there is not, strictly speaking, one steppe called Pamir, but a variety of Pamirs^ which are lofty valleys between ranges of hills, presenting luxuriant summer pasture, and with floors more or less flat, but nowhere more than 5 or 6 miles in width and often much less.
Colonel Gordon, the head of the exploring party detached by Sir Douglas Forsjrth, brought away a head of Oins Poli, which quite bears out the account by its eponymus of horns **good 6 palms in length, " say 60 inches. This head, as I learn from a letter of Colonel Gordon's to a friend, has one horn perfect which measures 65 J inches on the curves ; the other, broken at the tip, measures 64 inches ; the straight line between the tips is 55 inches !
6.— Chingintalas (Vol. i. p. 214).
I have left the identity of this name undecided, though pointing to the general position of the region so-called by Marco, as indicated by the vicinity of the Tangnu-Ola mountains (p. 217). A passage in the Journey of the Taouist Doctor, Chang-chun, as translated by Dr. Bretschneider {Chinese Recorder and Miss, ydurn.y Shanghai, Sept.-Oct., 1874, p. 258), suggests to me the strong probability that it may be the Kem-khn-jiit of Rashiduddin, called by the Chinese teacher Kien'kien-f^zxu
Rashiduddin couples the territory of the Kirghiz with Kemkemjut, but defines the country embracing both with some exactness : "On one side (south- east ?), it bordered on the Mongol country ; on a second (north-east ?), it was bounded by the Selenga ; on a third (north), by the "great river called Angara, which flows on the confines of Ibir-Sibir" (1. e. of Siberia) ; on a fourth side by the territory of the Naimans. This great country contained many towns and 7'iilag€Sy as well as many nomad inhabitants." Dr. Bretschneider's Chinese Traveller speaks of it as a country where good iron u-as found, where (grey) squirrels abounded, and wheat was cultivated. Other notices quoted by him show that it lay to the S.£. of the Kirghiz country, and had its name from the Kien or Ken R., i, e. the Upper Yenisei.
The name {Kieftkien)^ the general direction, the existence of good iron ("sted and ondanique "), the many towns and villages in a position where we should little look for such an indication, all point to the identity of this region with the Chingintalas of our text. The only alteration called for in the Itinerary Map (No. IV.) would be to spell the name Kinkin, or Ghinghin (as it is in the Geographic Text), and to shift it a very little further to the north.
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7.— The Site of Karakorum (VoL i. p. 229).
In the Giographical Magazine for July, 1874 (p. 137), I have been enabled, by the kind aid of Madame Fedtchenko in supplying a translation from the Russian, to give some account of Mr, Paderin*s visit to the place, in the summer of 1873, along with a sketch-map.
The site visited by Mr. Paderin is shown, by the particulars stated in that paper, to be sufficiently identified with Karakorum. It is precisely that which Remusat indicated, and which bears in the Jesuit maps, as published by D* Anville, the name of Talarho Hara Palhassoun (/. e, Kard Balgh^un), standing 4 or 5 miles from the left bank of the Orkhon, in lat (by the Jesuit Tables) 47° 32' 24". It is now known as Kara-kh^ram (Rampart), or Kara Balghasun (city). The remains consist of a quadrangular rampart of mud and sun-dried brick, of about $00 paces to the side, and now about 9 feet high, with traces of a higher tower, and of an inner rampart parallel to the other.. But these remains probably appertain to the city as re-occupied by the descendants of the Yuen in the end of the 14th century, after their expulsion from China.
8.— Prester John (Vol. i. p. 229).
Reference is there made in a footnote to a new theory regarding the original Prester John, propounded by Professor Bruim in a Russian work entitled ** The Migrations of Prester JoAn.^^ The author has been good enough to send me large extracts of this essay in (French) translation ; and I will endeavour to set forth the main points as well as the small space that can now be given to the matter will admit Some remarks and notes shall be added, but I am not in a position to do justice to Prof. Bruun's views, from the want of access to some of hb most important authorities, such as Brosset's History of Georgia and its appendices.
It will be well, before going further, to give the essential parts of the passage in the History of Bishop Otto of Freisingen (referred to in vol. i. p. 229), which contains the first allusion to a personage styled Prester John :
** We saw also there [at Rome in 1145] the afore-mentioned Bishop of Gabala,
from Syria We heard him bewailing with tears the peril of the Church
beyond-sea since the capture of Edessa, and uttering his intention on that account to cross the Alps and seek aid from the King of the Romans and the King of the Franks. He was also telling us how, not many years before, one John, King and Priest, who dwells in the extreme Orient beyond Persia and Armenia, and is (with his people) a Christian, but a Nestorian, had waged war against the brother Kings of the Persians and Medes who are called the Samiards, and had captured Ecbatana, of which we have spoken above, the seat of their dominion. The said Kings having met him with their forces made up of Persians, Medes, and Assyrians, the battle had been maintained for 3 days, either side preferring death to flight But at last Presbyter John (for so they are wont to style him), having routed the Persians, came forth the victor from a most sanguinary battle. After this victory (he went on to say) the aforesaid John was advancing to fight in aid of the Church at Jerusalem ; but when he arrived at the Tigris, and found there no possible means of transport for his army, he turned northward, as he had heard that the river in that quarter was frozen over in winter-time. Halting there for some years * in expectation of a frost, which never came, owing to the mildness of the season, he lost many of his people through the unaccustomed climate, and was obliged to return homewards. This personage is said to be of the ancient race of those Magi who are mentioned in the Gospel, and to rule the same nations that they did, and to have such glory and wealth that he uses (they say) only an emerald
* Sic ; Per aliquot annos, but an evident error.
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540 MARCO POLO. App.L
sceptre. It was (they say) from his being fired by the example of his Others, who came to adore Christ in ihe cradle, that he was proposing to go to Jerusalem, when he was prevented by the cause already alleged."
Professor Bruun will not accept Oppert*s explanation, which identifies this King and Priest with the Gur-Khan of KaraoUhay, for whose profession of Christianity there is indeed (as has been indicated, I. 230) no real evidence ; who could not be said to have made an attack upon any pair of brother Kings of the Per- sians and the Medes, nor to have captured Ecbatana (a city, whatever its identity, of Media) ; who could never have had any intention of coming to Jenisalem ; and whose geographical position in no way suggested the mention of Armenia.
Professor Bruun thinks he finds a warrior much better answering to the indica- tions in the Georgian prince John Orbelian, the general-in-chief under several successive Kings of Georgia in that age.
At the time when the Gur-Khan defeated Sanjar the real brothers of the latter had been long dead ; Sanjar had withdrawn from interference with the affiurs of Western Persia ; and HanuuUn (if this is to be regarded as Ecbatana) wis do residence of his. But it was the residence of Sanjar's nephew Mas'ud, in whose hands was now the dominion of Western Persia ; whilst Mas'ud's nephew, Diod, held Media, 1. £. Adherbdjdn, Arr^ and Armenia. It is in these two princes that Prof. Bruun sees the SanUardi fraires of the German chronicler.
Again the expression " extreme orient " is to be interpreted by local usage. And with the people of Little Armenia, through whom probably such intelligence reached the Bishop of Gabala, the expression the Ecut signified specifically Great Armenia (which was then a part of the kingdom of Georgia and Abkhasia), as Dulaurier has stated.*
It is true that the Georgians were not really Nestorians, but followers of the Greek Church. It was the fact however that in general the Armenians, whom the Greeks accused of following the Jacobite errors, retorted upon members of the Greek Church with the reproach of the opposite heresy of Nestorianism. And the attribution of Nestorianism to a Georgian Prince is, like the expression " extrtme East,*^ an indication of the Armenian channel through which the story came.
The intention to march to the aid of the Christians in Palestine is more like the act of a Georgian General than that of a Karacathajran Khan ; and there are in the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem several indications of the proposal at least of Georgian assistance.
The personage in question is said to have come from the country of the Magi, from whom he was descended. But these have frequently been supposed to come from Great Armenia. E.g. Friar Jordanus sa]rs they came from Moghin.t
The name Ecbatana has been so variously applied that it was likely to lead to ambiguities. But it so happens that, in a previous passage of his History, Bidiof> Otto of Freisingen, in rehearsing some oriental information gathered apparently from the same Bishop of Gabala, has shown what was the place that he had bees taught to identify with Ecbatana, viz. the old Armenian dty of Ani.J Now this
* y. As. ser. v. com. xL 449.
t The Great Plain on the Lower Araxes and Cyrus. The word Mogfa&n=if^*: and Abolfedt quotes this as the etymology of the name {.ReuunuTs Abulf. 1. 300). — Y.
X Here is the passage, which is worth giving for more reasons than one :
*' That portion of ancient Babylon which is still occupied is (as we have beard firom pecsoos of character from beyond sea) styled Baldach, whilst the part that lies, accoiding to the prophecy, deserted and pathless extends some ten miles to the Tower of Babel. The spt^Mt^ portion called Baldach b very large and populous ; and though it should belong to the Pernii monarchy it has been conceded by the Kings of the Persians to their High Priest, whom thejr call the CaUfh; in order that in this also a certain analogy [qmudam habitud<f\ such as has been often remarked before, should be exhibited between Babylon and Rome. For the same (privi- lege) that here in the dty of Rome has been made over to our Chief PcmtiflTby the Ouiitiss Emperor, has there been conceded to their High Priest by the Pagan Kings of Persia, to whom Babylonia has for a loQg time been subject. But the Kings of the Persians (just as our King»
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dty was captured from the Turks, on behalf of the King of Georgia David the Restorer, by his great sbasalar * John Orbelian in 1123-24.
Professor Bruun also lays stress upon a passage in a German chronicle of date some years later than Otho's work :
"1141. Liupoldus dux Bawariorum obiit, Henrico fratre ejus succedente in ducatu. lohannes Presbyter Rex Armenise et Indise cum duobus regibus fratribus Persarum et Medorum pugnavit et vicit.'*t
He asks how the Gur-Khan of Karakhitai could be styled King of Armenia and of India ? It may be asked« per contra^ how either the King of Georgia or his Peskwa (to use the Mahratta analogy of John Orbelian's position) could be styled King of Armenia and of India f In reply to thb, Professor Bruun adduces a variety of quotations which he considers as showing that the tenn India was applied to some Caucasian r^on.
My own conviction is that the report of ^Otto of Freisingen is not merely the first mention of a great Asiatic potentate called Prester John, but that his state- ment is the whole and sole basis of good faith on which the story of such a potentate rested ; and I am quite as willing to believe, on due evidence, that the nucleus of fact to which his statement referred, and on which such a pile of long- enduring fiction was erected, occurred in Armenia as that it occurred in Turan. Indeed in many respects the story would thus be more comprehensible. One cannot attach any value to the quotation from the Annalist in Pertz,' because there seems no reason to doubt that the passage is a mere adaptation of the report by Bishop Otto, of whose work the Annalist makes other use, as is indeed admitted by Professor Bruun, who (be it said) is a pattern of candour in controversy. But much else that the Professor alleges is interesting and striking. The fact that Adherbeijan and the adjoining regions were knoMm as "the East " is patent to the readers of this book in many a page, where the Khan and his Mongols in occupation of that region are styled by Polo Lord of the Levant, Tartars of the Levant (/. e, of the East), even when the speaJcer's standpoint is in far Cathay.^ The mention of Ani as identical with the Ecbatana of which Otto had heard is a remarkable circumstance which I think even Oppert has overlooked. That this Georgian hero was a Christian and that his name was John are considerable facts. Oppert*s conversion of Korkhan into Yokhanan or John is anything but satisfactory,* The identification proposed again makes it quite intelligible how the so-called Prester John should have talked about coming to the aid of the Crusaders; a point so difficult to explain on Oppert's theory, that he has been obliged to introduce a duplicate John in the person of a Greek Emperor to solve that knot ; another of the weaker links in his argument In fact Professor Bruun*s thesis seems to me more than fairly successful in paving the way for the introduction of a Caucasian Prester John ; the barriers are removed, the carpets are spread, the trumpets sound royally — but the conquering hero comes not I
He does very nearly come. The almost royal power and splendour of the Orbelians at thb time is on record: "They held the office of Sbasalar or Generalissimo of all Georgia. All the officers of the King's Palace were under their authority. Besides that they had 12 standards of their own, and under each
have their royal city, Iflce Aachen) have themselves established the seat of their kingdom at Eg- batana, which in the Book of Judith Arphaxat is said to have founded, and which in their tongue is called Hani, containing as they allege xoo,ooo or more fighting men, and have reserved to them- selves nothing of Babylon except the nominal dominion. Finally the place which is now vulgarly called Babylonia, as I have mentioned, is not upon the Euphrates (at all) as people suppose, but on the Nile, about 6 day&' journey from Alexandria, and is the same as Memphis, to which Cambyses the son of Cyrus anciently gave the name of Babylon."— Ottonis Frising. Lib. VII. cap. J, in Germank Hist. lUnst, &*€. Christiani Urstisii Basiliensis^ Francof. 1585. — ^Y.
• Sbasalar, or " General-in-chief," = Pers. Sipdhsdl4r.—\ .
f CoftttKuaiio Ann. Admutensium, in Pertz, Scriptores, IX. 580. % E. g. it 43.
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standard looo warriors mustered. As the custom was for the King's flag to be white and the pennon over it red, it was ruled that the Orpelian flag should be red and the pennon white. ... At banquets they alone had the right to coocfaes whilst other princes had cushions only. Their food was served on silver ; and to them it belonged to crown the kings," * Orpel Ivan^, /. e. John Orbelian, Grand Sbasalar^ was for years the pride of Georgia and the hammer of the Turks. In ii2y-2i^ he wrested fix>m them Tiflis and the whole country up to the Arazes, including Ani as we have said, tiis King David the Restorer bestowed on him large additional domains from the new conquests ; and the like brilliant senrice and career of conquest was continued under David's sons and successors Deme- trius and G^rge ; his later achievements, however, and some of the most brilliant, occurring after the date of the Bishop of Gabala's visit to Rome. But still we hear of no actual conflict with the chief princes of the Sdjukian house, and of no event in his history so important as to account for his being made to play the part of Presbyter Johannes in the story of the Bishop of Gabala. Pro- fessor Bruun's most forcible observation in reference to this rather serious difficulty is that the historians have transmitted to us extremely little detail con- cerning the reign of Demetrius II., and do not even agree as to its duration. Carebat vate sacro : ** It was,*' says Brosset, **long and glorious, but it lacked a commemorator." If new facts can be alleged, the identity may still be proved. But meantime the conquests of the Gur-Khan and his defeat of Sanjar, just at a time which suits the story, are indubitable, and this great advantage Oppert's thesis retains. As regards the claim to the title of Presbyter nothing worth mentioning is alleged on either side.
Leaving this part of an entangled subject, a few words remain to be said upon another branch of it ; viz., with reference to Polo's story of Prester John and the Golden King (voL ii. pp. 12 seqq,),
Mr. Wylie, who is of opinion, like Baron Richthofen, that the Cakku which Polo makes the scene of that story, is Kiai-chau (or Hiai-chau as it seems to be pronounced), north of the Yellow River, has been good enough to search the histories of the Liao and Kin dynasties, but without finding any trace of such a story, or of the Kin Emperors having resided in that neighbourhood.
On the other hand, he points out that the story has a strong resemblance to a real event which occurred in Central Asia in the beginning of Polo's century.
The Persian historians of the Mongols relate that when Chinghiz defeated and slew Taiyang Khan the king of the Naimans, Kushluk, the son of Taiyang, fled to the Gur-Khan of Karakhitai and received both his protection and the hand of his daughter (see i. 231) ; but afterwards rose against his benefactor and usurped his throne. ** In the Liao history I read, " Mr. Wylie says, " that Chih-lu-ku, the last monarch of the Karakhitai line, ascended the throne in 1168, and in the 34th year of his reign, when out hunting one day in autunm, Kushluk, who had 8000 troops in ambush, made him prisoner, seized his throne and adopted the custcmis of the Liao, while he conferred on Chih-lu-ku the honourable title of T(U'skang' hwang * the old emperor.' " t
It is this Kushluk, to whom Rubruquis assigns the r61e of King (or Prester) John, the subject of so many wonderful stories. And Mr. Wylie points out that not only was his father Taiyang Khan, according to the Chinese histories, a mudi more important prince than Aung Khan or Wang Khan the Kerait, but his name Tai' Yang' Khan is precisely ** Great King Jolm " as near as John (or Yohana) can
• St. Martin^ MHh. snrrArminiet II. 77.
f See also Oppert (p. Z57}» who cites this story from Visdelou, but does not notice its analogr to Polo's.
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be expressed in Chinese. He thinks therefore that Taiyang and his son Kushluk, the Naimans, and not Aung Khan and his descendants, the Keraits, were the parties to whom the character of Prester John properly belonged, and that it was probably this story of Kushluk's capture of the Karakhitai monarch {^oi de Fer) which got converted into the form in which he relates it of the Roi <fOr.
The suggestion seems to me, as regards the story, interesting and probable ; though I do not admit that the character of Prester John properly belonged to any real person.
I may best explain my view of the matter by a geographical analogy. Pre- colnmbian maps of the Atlantic showed an Island of Brazil, an Island of Antillia, founded — who knows on what ? — whether on the real adventure of a vessel driven in sight of the Azores or Bermudas, or on mere fancy and fogbank. But when discovery really came to be undertaken, men looked for such lands and found them accordingly. And there they are in our geographies, Brazil and the Antilles 1
9.— The Milk Libation of Kublai Kaan (VoL i. p. 291).
The following passage occurs in the narrative of the Journey of Chang-te-hui, a Chinese Teacher, who was summoned to visit the camp of Kublai in Mongolia, some twelve years before that Prince ascended the throne of the Kaans :*
**0n the 9th day of the 9th Moon (October), the Prince, having called his subjects before his chief tent, performed the libation of the milk of a white mare. This was the customaiy sacrifice at that time. The vessels used were made of birch-bark, not ornamented with either silver or gold. Such here is the respect for simplicity
"At the last day of the year the Mongols suddenly changed their camping- ground to another place, for the mutual congratulation on the first moon. Then there was every day feasting before the tents for the lower ranks. Beginning with the Prince, all dressed themselves in white fur clothing f
"On the 9th day of the 4th Moon (May) the Prince again collected his vassals before the chief tent for the libation of the milk of a white mare. This sacrifice is performed twice a year."
It will be seen by reference to vol. i. p. 300, that Rubruquis also names the 9th day of the May moon as that of the consecration of the white mares. The autumn libation is described by Polo as performed on the 28th day of the August moon ; probably because it was unsuited to the circumstances of the Court at Cambaluc, where the Kaan was during October, and the day named was the last of his Annual stay in the Mongolian uplands.
10.— The Burgut, or Sporting Eagle (VoL i. pp. 384-386).
In justice both to Marco Polo and to Mr. Atkinson I have pleasure in adding a vivid account of the exploits of this bird, as witnessed by one of my kind correspondents, the Governor-General's late envoy to Kashgar. And I trust Sir Douglas Forsyth will pardon my quoting his own letter ^ just as it stands : —
** Now for a story of the jff«r^(cw/— Atkinson's * Bearcoote.* I think I told you it was the Golden Eagle, and supposed to attack wolves and even bears. One
* This narrative, translated from Chinese into Russian by Father Palladius, and from the Russian into Elnglish by Mr. Eugene Schuyler, Secretary of the U.S. Legation at St. Petersburg, was obligingly sent to me by the latter gentleman, and will appear in the Geographical Magazine for January, 1875. f See vol. i. p. 376.
% Dated Yangi Hissar, loth April, 1874. BiirgHt is, I find from M. Pavet de Courteille's Dictionary, the correct spelling — not BarkUt^ as in vol. i.
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544 MARCO POLO. App, L.
day we came across a wild hog of enonnous size, for bigger than any that gave sport to the Tent Club in Bengal. The Burgoot was immediately let loose, and went straight at the hog, which it kicked, and flapped with its wings, and utterly flabbergasted, whilst our Kashgaree companions attacked him with sticks and
brought him to the ground. As Friar Odoric would say, I, T. D. F ^ have
seen this with mine own eyes."
II.— Astronomical Instruments of the Age of Kublai Kaan (VoL i. p. 435).
Two beautiful photographs are before me of large instruments now standing in the garden of the Observatory of Peking and which are ascribed to the Mongol era. A generalized and incorrect view of these is given at p. 436 of vol. i^ and they are also referred to at p. 365-66 of the same volume. At p. 435 it is stated that I abstained from giving an illustration of one of these instruments because doubts had been cast upon the age assigned to them, which demanded inquiry. The result of that inquiry convinces me that those doubts were without any just foundation, and I am glad to close this work with a representation in outline of this instrument, regarding it as a most interesting illustration at once of the Science and the Art of Cambaluc under Kublai. The drawing has been made for publi- cation here with the permission of Mr. Thomson, the author of the photographs ^ and I am indebted yet again to the generous zeal of Mr. Wylie, of Shanghai, for the principal notes and extracts which will, I trust, satisfy others as well as my- self that this instrument belongs to the period of Marco Polo's residence in China.
The objections to the alleged age of this and the associated instruments were entirely based on an inspection of these photographs. The opinion was given very strongly that no instrument of the kind, so perfect in theory and in execution, could have been even imagined in those days, and that nothiog of such scientific quality could have been made except by the Jesuits. In fact it was asserted or implied that these instruments must have been made about the year 1700, and were therefore not earlier in age than those which stand on the terraced roof of the Observatory, and are well known to most of us from the representation in Duhalde and in many popular works.
The only authority that I could lay hand on, was Lecomte, and what he says was not conclusive. I extract the most pertinent passages :
** It was on the terrace of the tower that the Chinese astronomers had set their instruments, and though few in number they occupied the whole area. But Father Verbiest, the Director of the Observatory, considering them useless for astronomical observation, persuaded the Emperor to let them be removed, to make way for several instruments of his own construction. The instruments set aside by the European astronomers are still in a hall adjoining the tower, buried in dust and oblivion ; and we saw them only through a grated window. They appeared to us to be very large and well cast, in form approaching our astronomical drdes ; that is all that we could make out. There was however, thrown into a back yard by itself, a celestial globe of bronze, of about 3 feet in diameter. Of this we were able to take a nearer view. Its form was somewhat oval ; the divisions by no means exact, and the whole work coarse enough.
*' Besides this in a lower hall they had established a gnomon. This
observatory, not worthy of much consideration for its ancient instruments, much
* This one is now published in vol. iv. of his book Illustraiiani 0/ Chitut tmd it* PetpU, a work which I regret not to have seen. Besides the works quoted in the text I have only been able to consult Gaubil's notices, as abstracted in Lalande ; and the Introductory Remarks to Mr. J. Williams's Obtervaiion$ of Comets .... extracted from the Ckixese AmmoIs, London, 1871.
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app. l. supplementary notes. 545
less for its situation, its fonxi, or its construction, is now enriched by several bronye instruments which Father Verbiest has placed there. These are large, well cast, adorned in every case with figures of dragons," &c. He then proceeds to describe them:
•* (i). Armillary Zodiacal Sphere of 6 feet diameter. This sphere reposes on the heads of four dragons, the bodies of which after various convolutions come to rest upon the extremities of two brazen beams forming a cross, and thus bear the entire weight of the instrument These dragons .... are represented according to the notion the Chinese form of them, enveloped in clouds, covered above the horns with long hair, with a tufted beard on the lower jaw, flaming eyes, long sharp teeth, the gaping throat ever vomiting a torrent of fire. Four lion-cubs of the same material bear the ends of the cross beams, and the heads of these are raised or depressed by means of attached screws, according to what is required. The circles are divided on both exterior and interior surface into 360 degrees ; each degree into 60 minutes by transverse lines, iMid the minutes into sections of 10 seconds each by the sight-edge * applied to them."
Of Verbiest's other instnunents we need give only the names : (2) Equinoxial Sphere, 6 feet diameter. (3) Azimuthal Horizon, samediam. (4) Great Quadrant, of 6 feet radius. (5) Sextant of about 8 feet radius. (6) Celestii^ Globe of 6 feet diam.
As Lecomte gives no details of the old instruments which be saw through a grating, and as the description of this zodiacal sphere (No. i) corresponds in some of its main features with that represented in the photograph, I could not but recognize the possibility that thb instrument of Verbiest*s had for some reason or other been removed from the Terrace, and that the photograph might therefore possibly not be a representation of one of the ancient instruments displaced by hiro.f
The question having been raised it was very desirable to settle it, and I applied to Mr. Wylie for information, as I had received the phQto^;raphs from him, and knew that he had been Mr. Thomson's companion and helper in the matter.
** Let me assure you," l^e writes (21st Aug. 1874), ** the Jesuits had nothing to do with the manufacture of the so-called Mongol instruments ; and whoever made them, they were certainly on the Peking Observatory before Loyola was bom. They are not made for the astronomical sjrstem introduced by the Jesuits, but are altogether conformable to the system introduced by Kublai's astronomer
Ko-show-King I will mention one thing which is quite decisive as to the
Jesuits. 754^ eireU is dirnded into 365} degrees^ each degree into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. The Jesuits always used the sexagesimal division, Lecomte speaks of the imperfection of the division on the Jesuit-made instruments ; but those on the Mongol instruments are immeasurably coarser,
*'I understand it is not the ornamentation your friend objects to?{ If it is,
* Pinmmia. The French /inmidf is properly a sight-vane at the end of a traversing bar. The tra$uverse lisus imply that minutes were read by the system of our diagonai scales; and these 1 understand to have be^n subdivided still further by aid of a divided edge attached to the sight- vane : qu. a Vernier ?
f Verbiest himself speaks of the displaced instruments thus " ut nova in&trumenta
a&tronomica facienda mihi imponeret, qua: scilicet more Europaco afiabre facta, et in specula Astrop- tica Pekinensi collocata, setemam Imperii Tartarici mcmoriam apud posteritatem servarent, ^riorilms instritmentis Sinicis rudioris Minrrv<e, qua jam a treccntis proxime annis speculam occupabant^ ind* amotis. Imperator statim annuit illonim postulatis, et totius rei curam, publico diplomate mihi imposuit. Ego itaque intra quadriennis spatium sex diversi generis instruraenta confed." This is from an account of the Observatory written by Verbiest himself, and printed at Peking in 1668 {Liber Orfanictts Astronomia Europ<ete a^ud Sinas Restituttr^ &c.). My friend Mr. D. Hanbury ma^e the extract from a copy of this rare book in the London Institu- tion Library. An enlarged edition was published in Europe (Dillingen, 1687).
\ On the contrary, he considered the pf^Qtographs ix^tcrcsting, as showing to how late ^ period the art of fine casfing had endured,
VOJ,, IL a N
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MARCO POLO. App. L.
I would observe diat there is no evidence of progress in the decorative and ornamental arts during the Ming Dynasty; and even in the Jesuit instruments that part of the work is purely Chinese, excepting in one instrument, which I am persuaded must have been made in Europe.
** I have a Chinese work called Luh-King-ioO'Kaou^ * Illustrations and Inves- tigations of the Six Classics.* This was written in a.d. 1131-1162, and revised and printed in 1 165- 11 74. It contains a representation of an armillary sphere, whidi appears to me to be much the same as the sphere in question. There is a solid horizon fixed to a graduated outer circle. Inside the latter is a meridian circle, at right angles to which is a graduated colure ; then the equator, apparently a double ring, and the ecliptic ; also two diametric bars. The cut is rudely executed, but it certainly shows that some one imagined something more perfect The instrument stands on a cross frame, with 4 dragon supporters and a prop in the centre.*
'* It should be remembered that under the Mongol dynasty the Chinese had much intercourse with Central Asia ; and among others Yelewchootsae, as con- fidential minister and astronomer, followed Chinghiz in his Western campaign, held intercourse with the astronomers of Samarkand, and on his retiim laid some astronomical inventions before the Emperor.
**I append a notice of the Observatory taken from a popular description of Peking, by which it will be seen that the construction of these instruments is attributed to Ko-show-king, one of the most renowned astronomers of China. He was the chief astronomer under Kublai Kaan.
" It must be remembered that there was a special vitality among the Chinese under the Yuen with regard to the arts and sciences, and the emperor had the choice of arlizans and men of science from all countries. From the age of the Yuen till the arrival of the Jesuits, we hear nothing of any new instruments having been made ; and it is well known that astronomy was never in a lower condition than under the Ming."t
Mr. Wylie then draws attention to the account given by Trigault of the instruments that Matteo Ricci saw at Nanking, when he went (in the year 1599) to pay a visit to some of the literati of that city. He transcribes the account from the French Hist, de VExpidition Chrestietine en la Chitif^ 16 18. But as I have the Latin, which is the original and is more lucid, by me, I will translate from that.t
** Not only at Peking, but in this capital also (Nanking) there is a College of Chinese Mathematicians, and this one certainly is more distinguished by the vastness of its buildings than by the skill of its professors. They have little talent and less learning, and do nothing beyond the preparation of the almanacs on the rules of calculation made by the ancients ; and when it chances that events do not agree with their calculation they assert that what they had calculated was the regular course of things, but that the aberrant conduct of the stars was a prognostic from heaven of something going to happen on the earth. This something they make out according to their fancy, and so spread a veil over their own blunders. These
* This ancient instrument is probably the same that is engraved in Pauthier's Chine Amcieime under the title of " The Sphere of the Emperor Shun " (b.c. 2255 !).
t Afler the death of Kublai astronomy fell into neglect, and when Hongwu, the first Ming sovereign, took the throne (1368} the subject was almost forgotten. Nor was there any revival till the time of Ching. The latter was a prince who in X573 associated himself with the astronomer Hing-yun-Iu to reform the state of astronomy [Gaubilj,
What Ricci has recorded (in Trigaudus) of the dense ignorance of the Chinese literati m astronomical matters is entirely consistent with the preceding sutements.
X I had entirely forgotten to look at Trigault till Mr. Wylie sent me the extract. The copy I use (J9r Ckristiand Expediiione apud Sinas .... Auct. Nicolao Trigautio) is of Lngdun, 1616. The first edition was published at August. VhuUlicorum (Augsburg) in 16x5 : the French tn 1618.
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gentlemen did not mucU trust Father Matteo, fearing, no doubt, lest he should put them to shame ; but when at last they were freed from this apprehension they came and amicably visited the Father in hope of learning something from him. And when he went to return their visit he saw something that really was new and beyond his expectation.
** There is a high hill at one side of the city, but still within the walls. On the top of the hill there is an ample terrace, capitally adapted for astronomical observation, and surrounded by magnificent buildings which form the residence of the Professors. . . . On this terrace are to be seen astronomical instruments of cast-metal, well worthy of inspection whether for size or for beauty; and we certainly have never seett or read of anything in Europe like thetn. For nearly 250 years they have stood thus exposed to the rain, the snow, and all other atmospheric inclemencies, and yet they have lost absolutely nothing of their original lustre. And lest I should be accused of raising expectations which I do not justify, I will do my best in a digression, probably not unwelcome, to bring them before the eyes of my readers.
•• The larger of these instruments were four in nimiber. First we inspected a great globe [A], graduated with meridians and parallels ; we estimated that three men would hardly be able to embrace its girth. ... A second instrument was a great sphere [B], not less in diameter than that measure of the outstretched arms which is commonly called a geometric pace. It had a horizon and poles ; instead of circles it was provided with certain double hoops {armillce)^ the void space between the pair serving the purpose of the circles of our spheres. All these were divided into 365 degrees and some odd minutes. There was no globe to repre- sent the earth in the centre, but there was a certain tube, bored like a gun-barrel, which could readily be turned about and fixed to any azimuth or any altitude so as to observe any particular star through the tube, just as we do with our vane- sights ;* — not at all a despicable device I The third machine was a gnomon [C], the height of which was twice the diameter of the former instrument, erected on a very large and long slab of marble, on the northern side of the terrace. The stone slab had a channel cut round the margin, to be filled with water in order to determine whether the slab was level or not, and the style was set vertical as in hour-dials.t We may suppose this gnomon to have been erected that by its aid the shadow at the solstices and equinoxes might be precisely noted, for in that view both the slab and the style were graduated. The fourth and last instru- ment, and the largest of all, was one consisting as it were of 3 or 4 huge astrolabes in juxtaposition [D] ; each of them having a diameter of such a geometrical pace as I have specified. The fiducial line, or Alhidada, as it is called, was not lacking, nor yet the Dioptra\ Of these astrolabes, one having a tilted position in the direction of the south represented the equator ; a second, which stood cross- wise on the first, in a north and south plane, the Father took for a meridian ; but it could be turned round on its axis ; a third stood in the meridian plane with its axis perpendicular, and seemed to stand for a vertical circle ; but this also could be turned round so as to show any vertical whatever. Moreover all these were graduated and the degrees marked by prominent studs of iron, so that in the night the graduation could be read by the touch without a light All this compound astrolabe instrument was erected on a level
• " PinnuILs,'* f Et stilus to modo quo in horologiis ad perpendiculum collocatus**
X The Alidada is the traversing index bar which carries the dioptra^ pinnules^ or sight-vanes. The word is found in some older English Dictionaries, and in France and Italy is still applied to the traversing index of a plane table or of a sextant. Littr^ derives it from (Ar.) 'addd^ enume- ration : but it is really from a quite different word, a/- *idddat ( S jLa£ ) " ^ door-post," which is round in this -cnse in an Arabic trc^ii'e on the Astrolabe (see Dozy and Engelmann^ p. «4o).
2 N 2
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548 MARCO POLO. App. L.
marble platform with channels round it for levelling. On each of these instruments explanations of everything were given in Chinese characters; and there were also engraved the 24 zodiacal constellations which answer to our 12 signs, 2 to each.* There was, however, one error common to all the instruments, viz., that, in all, the elevation of the Pole was assumed to be 36^. Now there can be no question about the fact that the city of Nanking lies in lat. 32P ; whence it would seem probable that these instruments were made for another locality, and had been erected at Nanking, without reference to its position, by some one ill-versed in mathematical science.f
"Some years afterwards Father Matteo saw similar instruments at Peking, or rather the same instruments, so exactly alike were they, insomuch that they had unquestionably been made by the same artist. And indeed it is known that they were cast at the period when the Tartars were dominant in China ; and we may without rashness conjecture that they were the work of some foreigner acquainted with our studies. But it is time to have done with these instruments" {Lib. IV. cap. 5).
In this interesting description it will be seen that the Armillary Sphere [B] agrees entirely with that represented in our frontispiece from Mr. lliomson's photograph. And the second of his photographs in my possession, but not, I believe, yet published, answers perfectly to the curious description of the 4th instrument [D]. Indeed, I should scarcely have been able to translate that description intelligibly but for the aid of the photograph before me. It shows the 3 astrolabes or graduated circles with travelling indexes arranged exactly as described, and pivoted on a complex frame of bronze ; (i) circle in the plane of the equator for measuring right ascensions ; (2) circle with its axis vertical to the plane of the last, for measuring declinations ; (3) circle with vertical axis ; for zenith distances ? The Gnomon [A] was seen by Mr. Wylie in one of the lower rooms of the Observatory (see below). Of the Globe we do not now hear ; and that mentioned by Lecomte among the ancient instruments was inferior to what Ricci describes at Peking.
I now transcribe Mr. Wylie's translation of an extract from a Popular Description of Peking :
**The observatory is on an elevated stage on the city waU, in the south-east comer of the (Tartar) city, and was built in the year (a.d. 1279). In the centre was the Tze-weiX Palace, inside of which were a pair of scrolls, and a cross
* This is an error of Ricd's, as Mr. Wylic observes, or of his reporter.
The Chinese divide their year into 24 portions of 15 days each. Of these 24 divu>ions twelve called Kung mark the twelve places in which the sun and moon come into conjunction, and are thus in some degree analogous to our 12 signs of the Zodiac. The names of these Kumg^xt entirely different from those of our signs, though since the 17th century the Western Zodiac, with paraphrased names, has been introduced in some of their books. But besides that, they divide the heavens into 28 stellar spaces. The correspondence of this division to the Hindu system of the 28 Lunar Mansions, called Nakshatras, has given rise to much discussion. The Chinese sieu or stellar spaces are excessively unequal, varying from 24^ in equatorial extent down to 84'.— IVaiinms, op. ctt.
t Mr. Wylie is inclined to distrust the accuracy of this remark, as the only dty nearly on the 36th parallel is P'ing^angfu.
But we have noted in regard to this (Polo's Pianfu, vol. iL p. 12} that a college for the educa- tion of Mongol youth was instituted here, by the great minister Yeliuchutsai, whose devotion to astronomy Mr. Wylie has noticed above. In fact two colleges were established by him, one at Yenking, i.e. Peking, the other at Fingyang ; and astronomy is spedfied as one of the studies to be pursued at these (see D^Ohsson II. 71-72, quotbg de Mailla). It seems highly probable that the two sets of instruments were originally intended for these two institutions, and that one set was carried to Nanking, when the Ming set their capital there in 1368.
X The 28 sieu or stellar spaces, above spoken of, do not extend to the Pole ; they are indeed very unequal in extent on the meridian as well as on the equator. And the area in the northern dcy not embraced in them is divided into three large spaces called Yh€h or endosures. of
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inscription, by the imperial hand. Formerly it contained the Hivan-tfen-e [BJ *Armillary Sphere;' the Keen-e [D ?J * Transit Instrument' (?); the Tung-kew [AJ 'Brsiss Globe;* and \\i^ Lcang-ieen-chth^ 'Sector,' which were constructed by Ko-show-king under the Yuen Dynasty.
"In (1673) the old instruments, having stood the wear of long past years, had become almost useless, and six new instruments were made by imperial authority. These were the Teen-t^-e * Celestial Globe ' (6) ; Chih-taou-e * Equinoctial Sphere' (2); Hwang-taou-e *2Miacal Sphere' (i); Te-ping King-e *Azimuthal Horizon ' (3) ; Te-ping-wei-e * Altitude Instrument ' (4) ; Ke-yen-e * Sextant ' (5). These were placed in the observatory, and to the present day are respect- fully used. The old instruments were at the same time removed, and deposited at the foot of the stage. In (1715) the Te-ping King-wn-e 'Azimuth and Altitude Instrument' was made;* and in 1744 the Ke-hang-foo-chin-e ^xXjtxiXiy 'Sphere and Tube instrument for sweeping the heavens '). All these were placed on the observatory stage.
** There is a wind-index-pole called the * Fair- wind- pennon,' on which is an iron disk marked out in 28 points, corresponding in number to the 28 constella- tions."t
Mr. Wylie justly observes that the evidence is all in accord, and it leaves, I think, no reasonable room for doubt that the instruments now in the Obser- vatory garden at Peking are those which were cast aside by Father Verbiest in 1668 ; which Father Ricci saw at Peking at the beginning of the century, and of which he has described the duplicates at Nanking ; and which had come down from the time of the Mongols, or, more precisely, of Kublai Khan.
Ricci speaks of their age as nearly 250 years in 1599 ; Verbiest as nearly 300 years in 1668. But these estimates evidently point to the termination of the Mongol Dynasty (1368), to which the Chinese would naturally refer their oral chronology. We have seen that Kublai's reign was the era of flourishing astro- nomy, and that the instruments are referred to his astronomer Kosheu-king ; nor does there seem any ground for questioning this. In fact, it being once established that the instruments existed when the Jesuits entered China, all the objections fall to the ground.
We may observe that the number of the ancient instruments mentioned in the popular Chinese account agrees with the number of important instruments described by Ricci, and the titles of three at least out of the four seem to indicate the same instruments. The catalogue of the new instruments of 1673 (or 1668) given in the native work also agrees exactly with that given by Lecomte.J And in reference to my question as to the possibility that one of Verbiest's instruments might have been removed from the terrace to the garden, it is now hardly worth while to repeat Mr, Wylie's assurance that there is no ground whatever for such a supposition. The instruments represented by Lecomte are all still on the terrace, only their positions have been somewhat altered to make room for the two added in last century.
Probably, says Mr. Wylie, more might have been added from Chinese works, especially the biography of Ko-sheu-king. But my kind correspondent was unable to travel beyond the books on his own shelves. Nor was it needful.
It will have been seen that, beautiful as the art and casting of these instni-
which the field of drcumpolar stars (or circle of perpetual apparition) forms one which is called 'r%€-Weu {WUliamt.)
The southern circumpolar stars form a fourth space, beyond the 28 siat. — Ibid.
* " This was obviously made in France. There is nothing Chinese about it, either in con- struction or ornament. It is very different from all the others." {Note by Mr. Wylie.)
+ " There follows a minute description of the brass clepsydra, and the brass gnomon, which it is unnecessary to translate. I have seen both these instruments, in two of the lower rooms."—/*/.
X We have attached letters A, 6, C, to indicate the correspondences of the ancient instru- ments, and cyphers z, 2, 3, to indicate the correspondences of the modern instruments.
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550 MARCO POLO. App. L.
ments is, it would be a mistake to suppose that they are entitled to equally hig^ rank in scientific accuracy. Mr. Wylie mentioned the question that had been started to Freiherr von Gumpach, who was for some years Professor of Astronomy in the Peking College. Whilst entirely rejecting the doubts that had been raised as to the age of the Mongol instruments, he said that he had seen those of Tycho Brahe, and the former are quite unworthy to be compared with Tycho's in scientific accuracy.
The doubts expressed have been useful in drawing attention to these remark- able reliques of the era of Kublai*s reign, and of Marco Polo^s residence in Cathay, though I fear they are answerable for having added some pages to a work that required no enlargement I
12.— Former Practice of Cremation by the Chinese (Vol. IL
p. ii6).
We have noticed the apparent inconsistency of the assertions of this practice, by Polo and other Western travellers of the NIongol era, with the known insti- tutions of the Chinese, both at earlier and later periods ; and though one indirect confirmation is quoted from a Chinese source (p. 117), I had been unable to find in any translated Chinese work a direct recognition of the prevalence of the custom. And I am now greatly indebted to the kindness of an eminent Chinese scholar, Mr. W. F. Mayers, of Her Majest/s Legation at Peking, who, in a letter, dated Peking, Sept. 18th, 1874, sends me the following memorandum om the subject : —
** Col. Yule's Marco Polo, ii. 97 [First Edition]. Burning of tJu Dead,
**0n this subject compare the article entitled Huo Tsang, or 'Cremation Burials,' in book xv. of the Jih Che Luh, or * Daily Jottings,* a great collection of miscellaneous notes on classical, historical, and antiquarian subjects, by Ku Yen- wu, a celebrated author of the 1 7 th century. The article is as follows : —
** * The practice of burning the dead flourished (or flourishes) most extensively in Kiang-nan, and was in vogue already in the period of the Sung Dynasty. According to the History of the Simg Dynasty, in the 27th year of the reign Shao-hing (a.I). 1 1 57), the practice was animadverted upon by a public ofl5ciaL* (Here follows a long extract, in which the burning of the dead is reprehended, and it is stated that cemeteries were set apart by Government on behalf of the poorer classes.
" * In A.D. 1261, Hwang Chen, governor of the district of Wu, in a memorial praying that the erection of cremation furnaces might thenceforth be prohibited, dwelt upon the impropriety of burning the remains of the deceased, for whose obsequies a multitude of observances were prescribed by the religious rites. He further exposed the fallacy of the excuse allied for the practice, to wit, that burning the dead was a fulfilment of the precepts of Buddha, and accused the priests of a certain monastery of converting into a source of illicit gain the practice of cremation.' *'
13.— The Squares in the City of Kinsay (Vol. ii. p. 191, and note).
In the note allusion is made to figures in a medieval Chinese work, which per- haps throw some light on the squares spoken of by Marco Polo (p. 184) and alluded to by Wassdf (p. 196). As Mr. Wylie has sent me a tracing of these figures, it is worth while to append them, at least in diagram.
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No. I.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.
No. a.
55^
No. 3.
t t
a b c
No. z. Plan of a Fang or Square.
No. 2. ,, „ in the South of the Imperial City of Singanfu.
No. 3. Arrangement of Two-Fang Square, with 4 streets and 8 gates.
a. The Market Place.
b. The Official Establishment.
c. Office for regulating Weights.
Compare Polo's statement that in each of the squares at Kinsay, where the markets were held, there were two great Palaces facing one another, in which were established the officers who decided differences between merchants, &c.
The double lines represent streets, and the J are gates.
14.— Derivation of the Name of Kollam or Quilon. {Coilum of Polo, Vol. ii. p. 365.)
On the suggestion ventured in the second footnote. Dr. Caldwell writes : ** I fancy Kdla^ a name for pepper in Sanskrit, may be derived from the name of the country K6lam^ North Malabar, which is much more celebrated for its pepper than the country about Quilon. This Kdlam^ though resembling Kollam^ is really a separate word, and never confounded with the latter by the natives. The prince of Kolam (North Malabar) is called Kolastri or Kolattiri* Compare also Kdlagiri^ the name of a hill in the Sanskrit dictionaries, called also KBlla giri. The only possible derivations for the Tamil and Malayalim name of Quilon that I am acquainted with, are these: (r.) From Kolu^ the * Royal Presence' or presence-chamber, or hall of audience. Kollam might naturally be a derivative of this word ; and in confirmation I find that other residences of Malabar kings were also called Kollam, e, g, Kodungalur or Cranganore. (2.) From Kolu^ the same word, but with the meaning *a height' or *high ground.' Hence Kollei, a very common word in Tamil for a * dry grain field, a back-yard.' Kolli is also in the Tamil poets said to be the name of a hill in the Chera country, 1. e, the Malabar coast. KQlam in Tamil has not the meaning of pepper ; it means * beauty, ' and it is said also to mean the fruit of the jujuba. (3.) It might possibly be derived from Koly to slay ; — Kollam^ slaughter, or a place where some slaughter happened .... in the absence, however, of any tradition to this effect, this derivation of the name seems improbable."
15.— Cape Comorin (Vol. ii. p. 372).
Mr. Talboys Wheeler, in his History of India^ vol. III. recently published (p. 386), says of this tract :
**The region derives its name from a temple which was erected there in honour
• Sec II. 376.
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55^ MARCO POLO. App. L.
of Kum^, ' the Virgin ;' the infant babe who had been exchanged for Krishna, and ascended to heaven at the approach of Kansa." And in a note :
"Col. Yule identifies Kumdri with Durgd. This is an error. The temple of Kumdri was erected by Krishna Raja of Narsinga, a zealous patron of the Vaishnavas."
Mr. Wheeler quotes Faria y Souza, who refers the object of worship to what is meant for this story (11. 394), but I presume from Mr. Wheeler's mention of the builder of the temple, which does not occur in the Portuguese history, that he has other information. The application of the Virgin title connected with the name of the place may probably have varied with the ages, and, as there b no time to obtain other evidence, I have removed the words which identified the existing Umple with that of Durgd. But my authority for identifying the object of worsAipy in whose honour the pilgrims bathe monthly at Cape Comorin, with Durgi, is the excellent one of Dr. Caldwell (see his Dravidian Grammar as quoted in the passage). Krishna Raja of whom Mr. Wheeler speaks, reigned after the Portuguese were established in India, but it is not probable that the Krishna stories of that class were even known in the Peninsula (or perhaps any- where else) in the time of the author of the PeripluSy 1450 years before ; and 'tis as little likely that the locality owed its name to Yasoda's Infant, as that it owed it to the Madonna in St Francis Xavier*s church that overlooks the Cape.
Fra Paolino, in his unsatisfactory way ^Viaggio^ p. 68), speaks of Cape Comorin ** which the Indians call Canyamuri^ Virginis Promontorium^ or simply Comqri or Cumari *a Virgin,' because they pretend that anciently the goddess Comari * the Damsel,* who is the Indian Diana or Hecate, used to bathe '* &c However, we can discover from his book elsewhere (see pp. 79, 285) that by the Indian Diana he means Pdrvati, i. e, Durgd.
Lassen at first* identified the Kumari of the Cape with Parvati ; but after- wards connected the name with a story in the Mahibhdrata about certain Apsa- rases changed into Crocodiles.! On the whole there does not seem sufficient ground to deny that Pdrvati was the original object of worship at Kumdri, though the name may have lent itself to various legends.
16.— The Rue (Vol. ii. p. 410).
I have to thank Mr. Arthur Grote for a few words more on that most interest- ing subject — touched on at page 410 — ^the discovery of a real fossil Rue in New Zealand. He informs me (under date December 4th, 1874) that Professor Owen is now working on the huge bones sent home by Dr. Haast, **and is convinced that they belonged to a bird of prey, probably (as Dr. Haast suggested) a Harrier, double the weight of the Moa^ and quite capable therefore of preying on the youi^ of that species. Indeed, he is disposed to attribute the extinction of the Harpa- gomis to that of the Moa, which was the only victim in the country which coidd supply it with a sufl5ciency of food."
One is tempted to add that if the Moa or Dinomis of New Zealand had its Harpagornis scourge, the still greater Aepyomis of Madagascar may have had a proportionate tyrant, whose bones (and quills?) time may bring to light And the description given by Sir Douglas Forsyth on page 542, of the action of the Golden Eagle of Kashgar in dealing with a wild boar, illustrates how sudi a bird as our imagined Harpagornis Aepyornithon might master the larger pachy- dcrmata, even the elephant himself, without having to treat him precisely as the Persian drawing at p. 408 represents.
• Ind, Alt, ist ed. 1. 158. t Id- 564 ; and and ed. I. 193.
Digitized by
( 553 )
INDEX.
^.^.— References to Editorial Matter are in ordinary Type,
References to the Text of Marco Polo are in heavy type and figures. References expressed in Italic digits are to the Introductory Notices.
aAS.
ADEN.
A AS, Asu (or AkmSy q. v.).
Abacan, a Tartar general, II. 887, 244*
Abah, see Ava.
Abaji, son of Kublai, 353.
Abaka (Abaga), Khan of Persia, 33, 36, 93, 105 ; IL 468-466, 472-476, 496.
Abano, Pietro of, his notice of Polo, 116.
Abash iHahsh, i. e. Abyssinia, q. v.), 11. 416; ^Iseqq.
Abba Gregory, IL 427.
Abbott, Mr. Consul Keith E., 82, 91, 93, 98, loi seqq.'y 1 14-115; 1 29-130.
Abdul Kuri Islands, II. 396.
Mejid, 185.
Abher, 38, 82.
AbnuSf the word, II. 252.
Abraha, Ruler of Yemen, II. 429.
Abraiaman {BrahmtM, q. y.), employed as shark'Charmers, II. 814, 321; 848; high character, 860 ; distinctive thread, ib. ; their king ; their heed to omeus, 861 ; Ion* gevity; the word, 353.
Abubakr, Atobeg of Fars, 87 ; II. 333.
, Ibrahim and Mahomed, engineers em- ployed by Kublai, II. 152.
Abulfeda, his geography, u ; at the Siege of Acre, II. 148.
Abyssinia (Abash), II. 421 seqq.\ outrage by Soldan of Aden causes the King of — to attack the latter, 484; his vengeance, further particulars regarding, ib. ; domi- nion on the Coast, 430; Medieval Hist, and chronology, ib. ; Table of Reigns, 43 1 ; wars with Mahomedan States, 433.
Aobaleo Manzi, II. 87, 28.
, or Aobaluo (Chingtingfu), II. 8, 9-10.
Aooambale, K. of Champa, II. 849, 25 1.
Acheh, Achem, see next word.
Achiu, II. 267 ; Gold of, 268 ; Lign-uloes, t6. ;
conversion of, 269 ; its great power at one time, 270; elephants at, 271 ; 277; 279; 283, 286 ; 288 ; 290.
Achin Head, II. 283, 289, 290.
Achmath {Ahmad, q. v.) the Bailo, his power, oppressive malversations, death, and posthumous condemnation, 401 seqq.
Acomat Soldan {Ahmad Sultan), seizes throne of Tabriz II. 466-466 ; goes to en- counter Argon, 467 ; rejects his remon- strance, 468 ; defeats and takes him, 469 ; but hears of Argon's escape, is taken and put to death, 471 ; Notes on the history^ II. 469, 472-473-
Acorn bread, 126.
Acqui, Friar Jacopo d*, his notice of Polo, 62, 66, 116.
Acre ; Broils at, between Venetians and Ge- noese, ld)\ 17-88; plan of, 18; capture by Saracens, II. 148,484; wickedness of, 438.
Adam, Legend of, Seth, and the Tree of Life, 141.
^*8 Apple, 10 1,
's Sepulchre on Mountain in Ceylon
(Adam's Peak), II. 898 ; — 's teeth, hair, &c., 801-802; the Footmark, 302 8eqq.\ the Peak, 898, 304, 310.
Adamodana, 59.
Adel, perhaps confused with Aden, II. 428 ; 430; 436.
Aden, Horse and other Trade with India, II. 824, 333, 867, 484, 437; 879, 391 ; 899 ; 407; 488; the Soldan's treatment of a bishop, 488; Vengeance of the K. of Abyssinia on him, 484; apparently con- fused with Adel, 428 ; account of the Km. of, 484; 437-438 I the Sultan, 484, 436, 489, 441 ; Intercourse and Trade with China, 436, 437; Tanks, 437.
Digitized by
554
ADORATION.
INDEX.
ANAMIS.
Adoration of the Emperor, 878.
AdtUiSj II. 436 ; Inscription of, 439.
Aepyomis and its £ggs, IL 409.
Aetius, his prescription of musk, 271 ; of
camphor, IL 385. Africa, Sea surrounding, to the South, II. 407. Agassiz, Prof., 101. Agathocles, Coins of, 173. *Aya0ov ZaiiMvoSy Island, II. 293. Agha Khan Mehelati, the Living Old Man of
the Mountain, 153 seqq. Aghrukji, son of Kublai, 353. AguiL Mongol general, II. 118, T30. Ahmad of Fenaket, Kublai*s oppressive Mi- nister, see Aohmath, and hist, notes, 406-408.
Sultan, Khan of Persia, see Aoozoat.
Ahmadi, 116. Aidhab, II. 435. Aidhej, 86.
Aljaruo, Kaidu's daughter, II. 461 ; her strength and prowess, seqq.\ her name, 463 ; the real lady, t6. Ajmir, II. 420.
Akbar and Kublai, Parallel of, 340. Ak-bulak salt-mines, 162. Akhaltzike', 59. Akhtuba River, 5, 6. Ak-khoja, IL 469. Aktar, 98. Alabastrij II. 426. Alaoou (Hulaku)^ 241. See Alau, Alamut, Castle of the Ismaelites, 147-154. Alania,IL 491,492.
Alans (or Aas), Massacre of a party of, at Changchau, IL 168 ; note on employment of, under the Mongols, 164. Alaone, the name, 5L Alarm Tower at Cambaluc, 868, 365 ; at
Kinsay, IL 172. Alau {HuhkUy q. v.). Khan of Persia, 5, 8, 10 ; takes Baghdad, and puts the Khalif to death, 66 ; Longfellow's Poem on the sub- ject, 68 ; makes an end of the Old Man of the Mountain, 152 ; IL 476, 482 : his war with Barka, I. 4, IL 496 seqq, Alauddin (Aloadln), the Old Man of the Mountain, 146 seqq.] 153.
{AlawcLting of Mufaix), an engineer in
Kublai's service, II. 152.
Khilji, Sultan of Delhi, II. 146, 153;
316; 389; 391. Albenigaras, II. 349. Al Biruni, 107, 183. Alohemy, the Khan*8, 409. Alexander tlie Great, allusions to the
Legendary History of, and Romances regard- ing, IJO seqq. ; 14, 62; 181, 133-138; MS, 159; 165, 166; IL 304,485. Alexander the Great, Extract from Frenck prose romance of, 134, 138.
builds the Iron-gate, 62 ; site of battle
with Darius, 181, 143 ; kills a lion, 160.
Wall of, 55; IL 537 ; Princes claiming
descent from, I. 166, 168 ; 6xes chains 011 Adam*s Peak, IL 304 ; said to hare colo- nized Socotra, 401 ; tower of, on the boi^ ders of Darkness, 485.
Alexandria, 9; U. 217; trade to, fnwu India, 879, 484.
Alhiiide, Aljindej AJ-hmt, 94.
'Ali and 'Aliites, 146.
Alidada, IL 547.
Alihaiya, general of Kublai's, IL 152.
Alinak, IL 472-473.
Alligator, described, and mode of killing, IL 46 ; eaten, 47, 49 ; prophecy about, at Bhartpiir, IL 112.
Almalik, II. 460.
Almanacs, Chinese, 488, 435.
Almonds, 160, 162.
Aloes, Socotrine, IL 401.
wood, the name, IL 25 2. See Lign-^doet.
* AloTf* the war-cry, U,
Al-Ramni, Al-Hamin (Sumatra), IL 270, 283.
Altai Mountains, 217.
(Altay), the mountain where the Kaans
were buried, 241, 261; what mowitain intended, 242.
used for the Khingan Range, 243, 297.
Altun Khan (mountain), 242.
(Sovereign), 11. 10.
Al-Thaibi, Family of, 125 ; U. 316.
Amazons, IL 397.
Amber-rosolli (?), 118.
Ambergris, IL 291; 896, 898; how got, 899,400; 404,416,418.
Amda Zion, K. of Abyssinia, his wars against the Mahomedans, II. 430 seqq, ; not the K. mentioned by Polo, 431, 432.
Ameri, kind of Brazil wood so called, IL 283, 368.
Amhara, U. 431, 433.
Amien (Burma), II. 71, 72, 74, same » Mien, q. v.
Amita Buddha, 44T, 442.
Amoy; Harbour, IL 222, 223; 225; — lan- guage, 227.
Amphora f AnforOy II. 409.
Amu, Aniu, see Anin.
AmukitOT Devoted Comrades of the King, II. 3 3 1 .
AnamiSf R., 118.
Digitized by
ANANDA.
INDEX.
ARMENIA.
555
Ananda, a grandson of Eublai, II. 3^. Anaranhta, K. of Burma, II. 64, 312. Ancestor Worahip, II. 70, 78. Anohors, Woodes, II. 874, 378. Andame, Andenc^ Andctnicumf kind of iron,
see Ondanique. Andaman Islands, II. 391 ; Natives, 893,
393-394. See Angamanaln. Andragiri, II. 384. Andrea Bianco's Maps, 139. Andreas, K. of Abyssinia, II. 431, 433. Andrew, Bishop of Zayton, II. 330. Andromeda ovaHfoiia, poisonous, 330. Andun, Andan, words for steel, 95. Angamanaln (Andaman Islands), II. 289;
described, 398 ; form of the word, 16. ; 396. Angan or Hanjam, 118. Angelic French, 86. 'Angka (Gryphon), II. 408, 409, 41 3. Ani in Armenia, II. 540. Animal Patterns, see Beast. Anin, Province of, described, II. 101-108,
104; 106, III, 113, 113 ; 348. Annals of the Indo-Chinese States, Remarks
on the Written, II. 88. 'An-nan, or Tongking, IL 103, 348. Antarctic, Star at the, as drawn by Marco
Polo, 116. Anthropoides VirgOy 388. Antillia Island, II. 543. Antongil Bay, Madagascar, II. 407. ApostoiUe (for * Pope '), 13. Apples of Paradise, 99, 10 1 ; II. 863. Apricots, II. 193. *Apvihota (Kapnkada?), II. 368. Apusoa (Apushka), Tartar £nvoy from Per- sia, 88, 33. Arab Geography, 127. — Seamen's Traditions about Java, II. 355.
colonies in Madagascar, IL 407.
•-~-^ Horses, early literary recognition oi^
II. 334; trade in, see Horses.
Merchants in S. India, II. 864.
Arabl, People called, (Arabs), 61.
Arabia, see Vol. II. pp. 484-449.
Arabic character, 30.
Arababni, II. 433.
Arachosia, AratMU, II. 311, 393.
' Aralnes,' the word, II. 469, 460.
Arakan, II., 83 ; 367 ; 373 ; 381.
' Airam' {Eardmi), the word, 146, 147.
Ararat, 47 ; ascents of, 5 1.
Arblasts, II. 64; 143, and see Crossbows.
Arbre Sol or Arbre Sec, Region of the,
(Khorasan), 38, 84, 181 ; II. 464, 478,
474; Note on the subject, I. 133 teqq.
Arbre Sol described, 181 ; the CMnar; va- rious readings, 133 ; the Tree of the Sun Legend (Arbre Sot)y 133-135 ; the Chris- tian Legend of the Dry Tree {Arhre Sec\ 136 ; engrafted in the Legends of Alex- ander, 137; Trees of Grace in Persia, 140 ; Dry Trees in Mahomedan Legend, 141 ; in Rabbinical and Buddhist stories, and in the Legends of the Wood of the Cross, 141- 143 ; Polo's Arbre to be sought near Damghan, 143 ; the Chinar, and Sabaean Apologue regarding it, 143 ; possible clue to Polo's geographical use of the term, 155.
Arbre /Sec, 110,
Seul (a wrong reading), 133, 145.
Arcali, Arculln, see Erculin.
Archbishop of Socotra, II. 896, 896, 899, 401.
, Great, of Baudas, II. 899. Sec
Patriarchs, CitholicoSy Sees.
Architectural Remains in Indo-China, 12.
Areca, II. 363.
Areng Saccharifera, II. 379.
Argaeus, Mount, 47.
Argali, II. 483.
Arghun Khan (Argon, Lord of the Levant, of Polo), of Persia, il-Sii\ sends an em- bassy to the great Kaan for a wife, 88, 33 ; is dead when she arrives, 86, 36; 38; 103; IL 43; his unhappy use of the Elixir Vitae, 356; 464-466; advances against his uncle Ahmad, 466 ; harangues his chiefs, 467; sends Ahmad a remon- strance ; is taken prisoner, 468 ; released by certain chiefs, 471; gets the sove- reignty, 471 ; and puts Ahmad to death ; is recognized as sovereign, 473 ; his death, I*. Notes on these events, 466, 469, 473, 474, 476 ; his beauty, 477; 480.
Argons or Half-breeds {Arghun), 103 ; 376, 379 seqq.
Arii, Ariana, II. 393.
Arikbuga, brother of Kublai, 336.
Arimaspia, II. 411.
Arimaspian gold, 41 3.
Arlora Keshimur, 87 ; 100, 106 ; meaning of Ariora^ 106.
Aripo, II. 318, 331.
Arjish (ArzizlX 50.
Arkasun Noian, II. 473.
Arkhaiun, applied to Oriental Christians or their clergy, 380.
Armenia (Hermenia) Lesser (or Cilician), 10 \ invaded by Bundukdar, 38, 33, 34; characterized, 48, 44; II. 540.
the Greater, 47, 100 ; II. 540 seqq.
Digitized by
556
ARMENIANS.
INDEX.
BAHREIN.
Annenians, 46, 47, 76.
Armenian Christians, 280.
Armillarj Sphere, Ancient, 435; II. 547; Jesuit — , 545.
Arms of Kerman celebrated, 98, 96.
of the Tartars, 268, 255 ; II. 468.
Arrow Divination, 238.
Arrows, Tartar, II. 468.
Artacki, 273.
Arts, the Seven, 18, 14-
Am (in Sumatra), II. 286.
Arucki, 273.
Aruk, II. 473.
Arulun-Tsaghan-Balghasun, 287, 297.
Arya Chakrararti, II. 298.
Aryavartta, 106.
Anlxiga (Erzingan), 47, 4B.
Arziron (Erzrum), 47, 50.
Arzizi (Arjfsh), 47, 5 a
Asbestos and the Salamander, 217, 218.
Asceticism of the Sensin, 894; of the Jogis, II. 862.
Asciar, see Ashar.
Asedin Soldan (Ghaiassuddin), an Indian Prince, 100, 107.
Ashar, King of Cail, II. 867; Note on, 361.
Ashishin (Assassins), 146, 148.
Asikan, Mongol general, II. 242, 244.
Asoka, II. 310.
Asper, II. 17, 18.
Assassins, see Ism 1 elites.
Asses, Fine, in Persia, 86, 88.
, Wild, in Persia, 90, 91; 187, 227;
in Mongolia, 896, 227 ; 884 ; in Madagas- car, II. 406, 414 ; in Abyssinia, 486 ; in Far North, 479, 481.
Astrolabe, 489 ; II. 547.
Astrology, Astrologers, in Tangut, 908; of Chinghiz, 887; at the Kaan's Court, 298, 877 ; at Cambaluc, 482 ; at Einsay, li. 174, 186 ; in Maabar, 828 ; in Coilum, 864.
Astronomical Instruments, Ancient Chinese, 366, 435 ; II. 544 seqq.
Atebegs, of Liir, 86; of Pars, 87, 125 ; II. 285 ; of Yezd, I. 90; of Kerman, 93.
Atkinson's Narratives and their credibility, 216, 217,11.543-
Atlas, Chinese, in Magliab. Library, II. 176.
*ATTa7Ay (the Black Partridge?), 101.
Auberoche, Siege of, II. 145, 149.
Audh (Oudh), U. 421.
Aufat, Ifat, II. 430, 433.
Augury, see Omens.
Aung Khan (ITnc Can, the Prester John of Polo, q. v.), 227, 251, 232 ; 276, 278, 279; Chinghiz's victory over, 299 ; II. 14.
Aurangzfb, 178.
Aurora, striking description of, 8.
Aussa, II. 430.
Ava (Ayah or Abah), one of the dties of the
Magi, 81, 82, 84. ' Avarian,' epithet of St. Thomas, IL 889 ;
explained, 341. Avicenna's classification of Iron, 95. * Avigi,* the word, 62, $8. Axum ; Inscription, IL 426 ; Church ot, 428 ;
Court of, 429. Ayas (Layas, Aiazzo, Giazza, &c, a port oi
Cilician ArmeniaX IS ; sea-fight at, U, iS,
62; 16, 17,80,23, 24; 48,45- Ayuthia, IL 259, 260. Azumitiy II. 426. Azure (Ultramarine) ; Mines in Badakhshaa,
166, 1 70 ; Mines in Tenduc, 276, 279 ; ore
of, 867, 359.
B.
Baba Buzurg, worshipped by the Lnrs, 86. Baboons, etym. of the word, II. 372 ; 426. Babylon, Babylonia (Cairo or Egypt), 28.
24 ; IL 808, 212 ; Sultan of, 22, 484, 486.
471; 540,541- Babylonish garments, 67. Baccadeo. Indigo^ II. 371. Baccanor, II. 375.
Bacon, Roger, as Geographer, 11^ its. Bacsi (Bakhshi), i.e. Lamas, 292, 288, 305 ;
various changes of meaning, 306, 307,
899, 482. Badakhshan (Badashan), 100, 106 ; People
of, 162, 168; Mirs of, 164, 165, 163 ; 180.
181, 183; CapiUls, 164; described, 165;
Kings of, claim descent from Alexander,
166, 168; dialects, 168; scenery, 167,
171 ; depopulation of, 165, 172 ; Forms of
the Name, 169; 177; Rirer of, (Upper
Oxus), 180. Badaiin, II. 421.
Badger, Rev. Dr. G. P., 66; IL 441. Badghls, 157; IL465. Badgir, or Wind-catchers, II. 460, 45 1. Badruddin Lulu of Mosul, 62. Bafk, 91. Bafl, 114. Baghdad (Baudas q. t.), 64 seqq.
Indigo of (Baccftde9)y II. 371.
Bagratidae, of Armenia, 44 ; of Georgia, 54. Bahar, II. 421. Baharak, Plain of, 164. Bahiluddin Ayaz, 124, 125. Bahrein, II. 333.
Digitized by
BAIBERDON.
INDEX.
BAUDEKINS.
SSI
Bcaberdcm (Baibnrt), 50.
BaidUf II. 474 ; seizes the throne of Persia, 474 ; displaced and put to death by Ghazan, 476 ; alleged to be a Christian, 474, 4.76.
Bailo, the title, 402 ; eiym. of, 407.
Baku ; Naphtha of, 48, 5 1 ; Sea of, (Caspian), 60, 61.
Bakhtiy^Uis of Luristan, 89.
Bala-Sagnn, 339.
Balad-ui-Falfal (Malabar), II. 365.
Bofarfi, The Word, U. 370.
Balalaika, a Tartar Instrument? 381.
Baldnjariyah, or Devoted Lieges, II. 331.
Balas Rubies, 165, 169 ; II. 349.
Balo (Balkh), 156.
Baldac, see Baudas.
Baldhcchini, Brocades made at Baldac or Baghdad, 67.
Baldwin de Oourtenay, Emp. of Constan- tinople, 8.
Bali, Island of, II. 367.
(in Abyssinia), II. 43 3.
Balios, 407.
Baiish (a money of account), II. ^02.
Balistaj medievally always a croB8bow,II.i43.
Balkhash, Lake, II. 45 7.
Ballads, Genoese, on sea-fights at Ayas and Curzola, Al seqq,
Ballard, Mr., II. 371, 375.
fialor, Balaur, Bilaur, Malaur, see Bolor.
Balsamodendron Mukul^ 11. 387, 388.
Balti, 168, 187.
Balustrade, etym. of the word, 56.
Bamboos ; Multifariotis uses of, 298 ; Jungle of, on fire, II. 38; largest size of, t6. ; in Chekiang, 205, and see Canes.
Bamian, Caves at, 164; enormous recumbent image at, 223.
Bam-i-dunyahy 184.
Bamm, T16.
Bam<S, and River of — , II. 87, 89, 90, 93.
Bander- Abbasi, 114, 115, 117, 123.
Bangala, see BengiL
Baptism accompanied by branding in Abys- sinia, II. 481, 437.
Bara, H. 288.
Barao {Barrak q. v.) Khan of Chagatai, 10. 10 ; his war with Arghun, II. 465.
Barberino, Francesco da, 5^: mentions Ca- thay, IM; J 21.
Bardesir, 115.
Bargo, Plain of, 861.
Bargaerlac, Bird called (^Syrrhaptes Paliaait), 868, 364.
Barguchin Tugrnm, 263.
Barguzinsk, 16.
Barin, Mongol Tribe, II. 131.
Bark, Fine cloths from, II. 106.
Barka Khan (Barca), Ruler of Kipchak, 4, 5 ; n. 418 ; 491 seqq.; his war with Hu- laku, I. 4, 105 ; II. 495 seqq.
Barkul, 336.
Barkuty properly Burgutt Eagle trained to the chase, 864, 386; II. 543.
Barlaam and Josaphat, Story of Saints, bor- rowed from Legend of Buddha. II. 305 seqq.
Barley, Huskless, 166, 171.
Baroch, II. 353.
Baron-tala, name applied to Tibet, 3 16.
Barozzi, Dr. Nicolo, «8, 68.
Barskul (BarscolX 885, 336.
Barsauma (St Braseamo), 76.
Barus, Barros, in Sumatra, and its Camphor, n. 385, 387, 288.
Barussae Insuiae^ IL 293.
Barygaza, IL 387, 400.
Bashai (Pashai), T74.
Bashpah Lama and the Mongol character called after him, 29, 344; II. 38.
Basma (Pasei, q. v.), Km. of Sumatra, II. 865,866,270,874,288.
BasmnlSj 282. See Guasmuls.
Baspa, see Bashpah,
Basra (Basora or Bastra), 64, 66.
Bathang, IL 3 7» 39, 48, 55. 57-
Baths; Natural Hot, near Hormuz, 118, 126; Hot, in Cathay, 486; Public, at Kinsay, IL 178, 181.
Batigala, Batticala, U. 420, 440.
Batochina, IL 284.
Bats, Large, in India, II. 888.
Battas of Sumatra and their cannibalism, IL 369; 280, 281.
Batthala (Patlam in Ceylon; Bettelar), II. 321.
Battles described ; Kublai*s with Nayan, 889, and note, 333; Tartars and the King of Mien, 1 1. 85; Kaidu and the Kaan's Forces, 459; Borrak and Arghun (details omittedy, 465; Arghun and Ahmad (do.), 468 ; Hulaku and Barka (do.), 497 ; Toktai and Noghai (do.), 501. Remarks on the authorship of these passages at p. 110.
Bata, Khan of Kipchak, sumamed Sain or Good, 10 ; Founder of Sarai, 5 ; 841, 242 ; his invasion of Russia, II. 491, 493 ; made into two Kings (Sain and Patu) by Polo, 491 ; character and cruelty, 493.
Baudas (Baghdad), 68 ; described, 64 ; taken by Alau (Hulaku), 65 ; Calif of, and the Miracle of the Mountain, 70 seqq,
Baudekins, see Baidacchini.
Digitized by
558 BAUDUIN DE SEBOURG. INDEX.
BODHISATVA.
Bauduin de Seboorg, the Romanoe of, and its borrowings from Polo, 118 seqq, ; 147 ; 150; 196; 218. Bavaria, Duke Ernest of, a Medieval Ro- mance, II. 411. Batpdrij Corsairs, II. 403. Bayan Chingsian, a great Mongol Captain under Knblai, 11; 326; 353; II. 120; prophecy connected with his name, 188 8eqq.f 135; his conquest of Manzi or S. China, 189, 132-133 ; note on his history and character, 131; his exceptional cruelty at Changchau, 168, 164-165, 191 ; 460. Bayan, one of the Kaan's Masters of the Hounds, 886, 387.
, son of Nasruddin, II. 87.
Khagan of the Avars, 11. 1 3 1.
Bdellium, II, 387, 388. Beads, Hindu, U. 888, 330. Bearcoote, see Barkut.
Bears, 888, 884, 887; II. 86, 80, 84, 68; 871, 404, 486; white, in far North, 479, 481. Beast and Bird Patterns on silks, &c, 66,
67; 98; 97-98; 385; II. 4r8. 'Beaten Gold,' 874, 375. Beauty of Georgians, 68, 55 ; of women of Khorasan, 181 ; of women of Kashmir,176 ; of women of Sinju, 867 ; of the half-breeds or Argons^ 876 ; of the tribe of XJngrat {Knngwrat\ 848 ; of people of CJoloman, II. 106; of the women of Kinsay, 170; of Kaidu's Daughter, 461 ; of Arghun Khan, 47 7 ; of the Russians, 487. Beds, arrangement of, in India, II. 889, 338. Beef not eaten in Maabar, II. 886, except by the Govi, <b.y 334; anciently eaten in India, 335- Bejas of Red Sea Coast, II. 419, 426, 429- * Belie * for * Melic,' II. 469. Bell, Great, at Cambaluc, 868, 365 ; 899. Belial Rajas, 11. 354. Belledi (or Ballodi)\ Ginger, so called, U.
3 70 ; Spanish use of the word, ib, Bendooquedar, see Bibars Bvndukddri, Benedict XII., Pope, II. 164. Bengal (Bangala), is ; the King of Mien (Burma) and — , II. 81 ; how Polo came to unite these titles; relations between medieval Burma and — ; modern claim preferred by K. of Burma, 82, 83 ; de- scribed, 97 ; alleged Mongol invasion of, a mistake, 98; 101, 106; confounded by Polo with Pegu, iii; 114. Benjamin of Tudela on the Gryphon, II. 410. Benzoin, etym. of, II. 266 ; 386.
Berard, Thomas, Master of the Temple, 25.
Berbera, Sea of, II. 407.
Berchet, Cavaliere G., 25 ; 11. 507 wy?.
Bern MS. of Polo's Book, 57, 89, 9f.
BerriCj meaning and etym., 233.
Bettelar, rendezvous of Pearl Fishen, II.
814, 321. Beyamini} Wild Oxen called, IL 41 ; 44- Bezants, 814 ; 891 ; 410, 4U, ^ih 430; IL
33; 170; Value of, 535. Bhagavata! II. 330. Bhartptur, Prophecy regarding, IL 132. Bianooni, Prof., on the Text of Polo, 87, W. Biar, II. 288.
Bibars Bnndukdari (Bendooqoedar), Mam- liik Sultan of Egypt ; invades CiliciaB Ar- menia, 88, 23; his character, 24; extT»- ordinary Letter of, 25; 151; killed by Kumiz, 251 ; IL 418; 428; 431; 496. Bielo Osero, II. 486. *Blgonoio,' 371. BiMchis, 103 ; their robber raids, 109; Lnmii,
117. Binh-Thuan (Champa), XL 25 a Binkin, IL 212. Bintang (Pentam), II. 261.
Birch-bark Books, 159; vessels, IL543.
Bird-hunts ; Siberian, 861, 264.
Bir-dhdl or Biyardawnl, capital of MaHiar,
II. 319. Bir-Pandi or Pira-Bandi, U. 316, 317. Birdwood, Dr. G., IL 387, 443 sffqq, Birhors of Chata Nagpiir, IL 281. Birthday of the Great Kaan, its celcfara-
tion, 878. Bishbalik, 216, 426. Bishop ; of Male Island, II. 896 ; story of
an Abyssinian, 488 teqq. Bitter Bread, 118, 126.
Water, 118, 186, 200, 201, 203.
Blac, Blachia (Lac, Wallach), U. 49a Black Orane, 886, 288.
Sect in Tibet, 317.
Saints, White Devils in India, H.
841, 345-6. Blacker the more beautiful, U. 841. Blochmann, Mr. H., 117; IL 538. Block- Books; supposed to have been iativ-
duced from China, 188 seqq.
Printing in Persia, 416.
Blood-sucking, Tartar, 864, 256, 257.
* Blous, Bloies,' the words, 32a
Boar's Tusks, Huge (HippopotamnsX IL
406, 415- Boccassini, the word, 64. Bodhisatva Avalokite^vara, IL 247.
Digitized by
BODLEIAN.
INDEX.
BUCKRAMS.
559
Bodleian MS. of Polo, 17, 89^ 99; List of Miniatures in, IL 520.
Boeach, a mistake for Locac, and its sup- posed position, n. 26 r.
Boemond, Prince of Antioch, Letter of Bibars to, 25.
Boga(Buka), a great Mongol officer, delivers Arghun, IL 47O-473.
Bohea Country, IL 206-212.
Bohra, Sect of W. India, 154.
Boikofi*, Russian Envoy, 220.
Bokhara (Bocara), 9, 10; IL 456.
Bolgana, Queen, see Buiughan,
Bolgbar (Bolgara) on the Wolga, 4, 5 ; ac- coant of, 6; Ruins of, 7 ; Court of, 371 ; IL 482, 435, 486, 494«
Bolghar, Borgal, i. e. Russia Leather, 7 ; 881, 582.
Bolivar, Padre, S. J., his account of the Con- dor {Eakh) of Africa, IL 413.
Bolor, ISl, 182, 187-188.
Bombay, II. 386, 387.
Bonga, II. 78.
Bonifece VIIL, /a, 60, 5S.
Bonoccio di Mestre, 65, 66,
Bonpos, Old Tibetan Sect, 306, 314, 315- 319.
Bonus (Ebony), IL 260.
Book of Marco Polo; its contents, 78 \ ori- ginal language French, 79 ; oldest Italian MS. 16.; "Geographic Text" in rude French, its peculiarities and indications of originality, 80 seqq. ; Various Types of Text— (1) The "Geographic,*' 88; (2) Pauthier*s MSS. 89; (3) Pipino's Latin, 9S; Grynaeus*s Latin, 9S; Miiller*s re- print, 9Uy (4) Ramusio*s Italian edition, and its peculiarities, 9ir-99 ; probable truth about it, 98; Bases of it, 99; discovery of a MS. with some of its peculiarities, 100 ; General View of the relation of the Texts, 99 ; Notice of an old Irish version, 100 ; Tabular View of the Filiation of the Chief MSS. and editions, IL 521; Geographical data in the Book, 106 ; how far it is in- fluenced in form by Rusticinn, 109; per- haps in descriptions of Battles, 110 ; Esti- mate of diffusion and number of MSS., 113 ; Bases of present version, 135 seqq.
Bore in Hangchau Estuary, II. 191.
Borgal, see Bolghar,
Born, Bertram de, Ai.
Borneo, Tailed Men in, IL 284.
Camphor, see Camphor,
Borubodor, If.
Borrak (Barao), Khan of Chagatai, 10;
105 ; IL 456, 465, 466. Borrak, Amir, Prince of Kerman, 93. Bostam, 141-143. Boswellia thur^era, IL 387, 444, 446;—
senrata, 444 ; — Carterii,—Bhaudajiana,—
papyrifera, — Frereana, 446.
glabra, IL 38?.
Bouqueran, see Buckram. Boxwood Forests in Georgia, 52, 58.
* Bozzi,' the word, 214.
* Bra,* the word, A5.
Bragadino, Marco, Husband of Marco Polo's Daughter Fantina, 75,
, Pietro, supp. son of the preceding, t&.
Brahma's Temple, Hangchau, IL 195.
Brahmans (Abraiaman) ; Fish-charmers to the Pearl Fishery, IL 814, 321; Polo's view of them as merchants, II. 850, 354; virtues ascribed to them, ih. ; their augu- ries, 16. 360; longevity, 851; 360; Palla- dian Legend of, 397.
Brahmanioal Thread, II. 850.
Brahuis, 103.
Brakhimov, 7.
Brambanan, Ruins at. It,
Bran diet, 294, 313.
Brazil (Wood) ; in Locac, IL 257, 260 ; in Sumatra, 282; manner of growth, t^.; 289, 292 ; in Ceylon, 295, 297 ; in Coilum, called Coilnmin, 868, 368-370; different kinds, ih. ; vicissitudes of the word, 369 ; Atlantic Island of Brazil, i5., and 543 ; use of, prohibited by Painters' Guild, 371.
Brephung Monastery, 311.
'Bretesche,' the word, 331.
Brichu (Brius, the Upper Kiang), IL 55.
Bridges; of Pulisanghin, II. 8; at Sindafu (Chingtu),80 ; of Suchau, 166 ; of Kinsay, 169, 171, 172, 178, 184, 19;; at Kien- ningfu, 208, 21 r; Fuchau, 215, 216; at Zayton. or Chinchau, 223.
Brine-wells, see Salt.
Brius, the River (Kinsha Kiang), IL 47, 52, 55-
Brown, Sir Thomas, on Polo, 113.
Bruce's Abyssinian Chronology, II. 430 seqq.
Brunetto Latini's Book Li Tresor, 86; lis,
Brunhilda, IL 464.
Bruun, Prof. Ph., 229; IL 488; 490; 537;
Si9S€qq.
Bucephalus, Breed of, 166, 170.
Buckrams; of Arzinga, 47; note on the stuff so called by Polo, 48 ; etymologies, so; at Mardin, 62, 64; IL 87; at MutHli, 848, 349; ia Malabar, 879; 885; 888; 425.
Digitized by
560
BUDDHA.
INDEX.
CAMBALUC.
Buddha, see Sakya MunL
; bis Footmark on Adam's Peak, 11.
302; a Saint of the Greek and Romnn Churches, 305-J07; his Tooth Relic, 801, 311 ; his Alms Dish, 801, 310, 312-313.
Buddhism ; in Kashmir, 178, 1 79 ; in Tangut, 309; in Eamnl, 213 ; Ameliorating effect of, on rude nations, 432; Occasional spiritual force of, in China, 441 seqq, ; in S. India, II. 320; and see Idolatry.
Buddhist; Decalogue, 180; Idols, II. 247, and see TdoU.
Buffet and Vessels of the Kaan's Table, 8$9, 371.
Bugaeiy II. 426.
Buka (Boga, q. v.), a Great Mongol Chief, II. 472, 473.
Bulargoohi, or * Keeper of Waifs,' 889, 393.
Bulgaria, Great, II. 267, and see Bolghar.
Bulughan, the Lad j (Bolgana), )9i ; 88,32, 38; 11.472.
(another), IL 474.
Bundiikdari, see Btbars.
Bnrkan Kaldnn, 242-243.
Burma, King of, II. 82 9eqq.\ 312, and see Mien.
Bomell, Mr. Arthur, 319 ; 345 ; 376.
Burning the Dead; in Tangut, 907, 208, 210; in China, apparently common in Middle Ages, U. 116, 550, and see Dead.
Burning paper imitations of property at funerals, 907, 908, 210; 969, 960, 261 ; 11. 175.
Heretical Men and Books, 313, 314.
"Widows in South India, II. 896, 334.
Buryats or Buraets, 250, 274.
Bushell, Dr. S., his visit to Shangtu, 26;
287» 397- Butchers; in Kashmir, 177 ; in Tibet, r8o;
in S. India, IL 896, Butiflis (for MutflU), II. 349.
Ca* Polo, or Ca* Milion, or Corte del Milioni, the House of the Polos at Venice, 4; 25 sefiq.\ 51; C8\ 76.
Oaaju, Castle of, 940.
Cabs, Peking, II, 194.
Caoanfu (Hokiang-fu), II. 109, 116.
Caohanfti (Fuchau-fu), li. 9, 17, 18, 19.
Cachar Modun, 890, 394.
Cuchilpatnam, II. 376.
Caesalpima^ II. 369 See Brazil.
Caesarea of Cappadocia (Oasaria), 47.
Oaiohu, Castle o^ II. 9, 19, 14, 16, 19, ai; 541.
Caidu, see Kaidu.
Oaiju (on the Hwang-ho), H. 194.
(on the Kiang, Kwachau), IL 165,
169.
Oail (Kiyal), n. 319; 868; a great port of commerce, 867; the King, •!».; identified, 359; meaning of name, ib. ; renuins, 360; 394.
Caindu (a region of Eastern Tibet), IL tt, 44, 47, 48, 5 h 55 ;— identified, 57-58.
Caingan, IL 168.
Cairo; Museum at, IL 417; 435; Venti- lators at, 45 1. See Babylon.
^aiton, see Zayton.
Gala Ataperistan (or Gueber's CasUeX T9, 80.
Calaohan, 979, 273.
Calaiate, see Eialhat.
* Oalamanz,' the word, IL 25 2.
Calamina, the city, II. 343.
Oalatu, see KalKat.
Caldwell, Rev. Dr. R. ; On name of CejloD, IL 297; On Shahr-Mandi and Sondan Pandi, 316, 317; on the Tower at Nega- patam, 319-320; etymology of name Chilaw, 321 ; on Pacauta, 330; on <?«u, 334; on singular custom of Arrest, 356; on Rainy Season, ib, ; on food of horw. 337 ; on Shanar deril-images, 345 ; on the word choiach, 3^5 ; on porUble ima^ of oxen, 358 ; on the city of Call or KayiL on Eoikhoij 360 ; on King Ashar of Cdl 361; Etymology of i&ttwn, 365, and 551; on Pinati, 368; Etymology of Sapift;, 369, 372 ; on Cape Comorin, 552.
Calendar, Ecclesiastical Buddhist, 981, iiy. The Tartar, 488, 435.
of Documents relating to Marco Pdt
and his Family, IL 503. Calicut; the King 0^ and his costume, II.
330; 368; 370; 377; 381; 436. Calif, see Khalif. Caliginc, Calieene (Khdlij, a canal from Nik V
u. 435.
Camadi, a ruined dty, 98, 114, 116; poc- sibly a generic name, ib.
Cambaluc (Khanbalig or Peking), tiif capital of Cathay; the Kaan's lewrn thither from campaign against Naraa, 888; the palaces there, 364 segq.; tbe City, 861 aeqq.; its extent, 869; Wall* and gates; plan, Bell-Tower, Ac A; 899, 896, 897 ; its vast suburbs, hosteln«. &c. ; 898 ; cemeteries ; women ; pttrols
Digitized by
CAMBUSCAN.
INDEX.
CASVIN.
561
388; great Traffic, ib,, AOl; Palaoe of the
12 Barons at, 417 ; Roads radiating from,
418 ; Astrologers of, 432 ; U. 8 ; 115 ; 196 ;
301, 800. See Peking. Cambay (Oambaet, Cambeth, Kunbdyat),
Km. of^ IL 383 ; described, 888; 389, 394,
395; 420; 437; 440. * Camboscan * of Chaucer, origin of the name,
242. Oamels ; Camlets from wool of, 272, 278 ;
white, 272 and 274; Incensing, 300;
alleged to be eaten in Madagascar, II. 404 ;
but really in Magadoxo, 406; ridden in
war, 416, 419. Camexu, Kamichu, 222, 273, see Camplohu. Camlets (Cammellottl), 272, 278; what?
274. Camoens, II, 248. Oamphor ; Trees of (Laurus Camphora\ in
Fokien, II. 217, and manufacture there, 219. CamphorofSumatra,lI. 268; 282; Fansuri,
ib, ; 283 ; details regarding, 285 seqq, ;
earliest mention of, 285 ; superstitions
regarding, 286; description of the — Tree
(Dryabalanops Camphora), 287; value
attached to, by Chinese ; recent prices of
different kinds, 287-288; 292; use of
with Betel, 888, 362.
oU, II. 287.
Oamplohu (Kanchau), City of, 221, 222;
226; 282,266. Oamul (Kamul, Komul), Province of, de- scribed, 212, 2x3. Oamilt, or fine shagreen leather, 881, 382. Canal, Qrand, of China, II. 118; 121, 122,
122, 123; 126; 136; 138; construction
o^ 188, 160; 191; 205. Canale, Cristoforo, MS. by, S3, 56. Martino da, French Chronicle of Venice
by,«J, Cananore, IL 375, 376. Canara, II. 380. CancamMtn, II. 387. Cane, Canes (always means Bambooe in
Polo); Kaan's Palace at Chandu made of
280; how used to make roofs, t6., 298;
Great, on banks of Caramoran R., II. 17 ;
Forests of, and their loud explosions when
burning, II. 33, 38; Ropes of, 156, 158;
of great size in Chekiang, 208. See
Bamboos, Ccmela bravoy II. 380. Cannibalism; ascribed to Tibetans, &c.,
282; Foundation for such charges, 302
seqq. ; ascribed to Hill-people in Fokien. II.
VOL. II.
207, 209 ; to Islanders in the Seas of China
and India, 248; in Sumatra, 268, 274,
276, 276, 269, 280 ; the Battas and regu-
lations of their — , 269 ; ascribed to the
Andaman Islanders, 282, 293. Cannibals, t. e. Caribs, II. 398. Canonical Hours, II. 355-356. Cansay, (Kinsay, q, v.), II. 195. Canton, 5; Temple at,75; II. 181 ; 220; 225 ;
226; 234. Cape Corrientea, or of Currents, II. 407 ; 409.
Delgado, II. 417.
of Good Hope, II. 409.
Capidoglio, *CapdoiUe' (Sperm Whale), II.
407. Cappadocian Horses, 46. Caraooron (Kar4 Korum), 227; 261; IT.
468, 460; Recent visit to, 539. Caraian, II. 58, 59; but see Carajan Province (Kurajang or Yunnan), so ;
47, 62, 53, 68-68; 62, 65 ; 68; 71; 75.
, City of (Talifu), II. 58 ; 62, 65.
Caramoran, R. (Hwang-hoX H- 13, 1 7 ; 124-
127; 186, see Htcang-ho, Carans or Scarans, 102. Caraonas (Earaunahs, q. v.), 88. Carats, 35 1.
Cfarbincy etym. of the word, 103. Cardamom, II. 377. Cardinal's Wit, 21. Caribs, II. 293 ; 398. Carpets; of Turcomania (Turkey), 46; of
Herman, 96. Carriages ; at Kinsay, II. 188 ; Chinese, 193. Carrion shot from Engines, II. 144. ' Carte, & la,' the expression, II. 486. Carts, Mongol, 246. Caryota urms, II. 288. Casan, see Qkazan Khan, Casarla (Caesarea of Cappad.), 46, 47. Casoar (Kashgar), 188. Casern (Kinhm, q. v.), 160. Casoni, Giovanni ; on the Ca' Polo, f7, fss ; on
Medieval Galleys, 51-55. Caspian; Ancient error about, i, Jih-y 64;
Names of, 60, 6f ; II. 486. Cassay (Kinsay, q. v.), II. 196. (^sia, U. 50, 51, 58; 380.
Buds, II. 50; 380.
Fistula, II. 377.
Castaldi, Panfilo, his alleged invention of
movable Tyjiea, 1S9-1S5. Castelli, P. di, 54, 55. Casvin (Knswin q. v.), a Km. of Persia, 84,
85.
2 O
Digitized by
562
CATALAN.
INDEX.
CHINANGLI.
Catalan Map of 1375 (or Carta Catalana), characterized, ifO; 61; II. 225; 267; 349; 375; 386; 49S-
Catalan Navy ; S6-^.
Oathay (Northern China), f; Origin of Name, 11; 15; Icnown by name in Europe before Polo's return, lu-lis; in Maps, 1S8 8eqq.\ 62; 77; 276; Cambaluc the Capitol of, 8M, S67, S9B; 899; 404; 427, 428; U. 7; 109; 115; U7, 121; 128; 176; 381; 488. Generally Cathay is treated of in Book IL Pts. i and 2.
Cathayans; their conspiracy against Ah- mad, 408 8eqq. ; their wine, 427 ; astrolo- gers, 482 ; Religion of, 487 ; transmigra- tion i&.; politeness; filial duty: gaol de- liveries, 488; gambling, 16.; 440.
Catholicos ; of Sis, 44 ; of the Nestorians, 61, 63; U. 899.
Cators, or Great Partridges {Chakors t), 287, 288,
CatVHead Tablet, 347.
Cats in China, II. 335.
Caucasian Wall, 55.
Caugiga, Province of, II. 97, 99, icx>, 101 ; 106; III, 114.
Caulking of Chinese Ships, II. 282, 233.
Cauly, see KauU.
Causeway, south of the Yellow R., II. 186.
Cauterizing heads of children, II. 427.
Cave-houses, 161, 164; II. ir.
Cavo de Eli, 11. 375.
de Diab, II. 409.
Cayu (Kao-yu), II. 186.
Celtic Church, II. 35 7.
Census of Houses in Kinsay, II. 176.
Tickets , ih.
Ceremonial of Mongol Court, see Etiquette.
Ceylon (Seilan), II. 292, 296 8eqq.\ circuit of, 296; Etym. of name, ib.\ the monn- toin of Adam's sepulchre, otherwise of Sagamoni Borcan's, 298; the history of this person (Buddha) and the origin of Idolatry, 299 9eqq,\ subject to China, 381.
Chachan (properly Charchand), see Ohar- chan.
Cbagan-Nur (N.E. of Kamul), 216.
, site of a palace of Kublai's, 286,
287; 297; 397; 408.
Balghassun, 287, 297; II. 9; 28.
Jang, II. 59.
Kuren, II. 17.
Ctaagatai (Sigatay), son of Chinghiz, 10, 100; 191, 194; II. 466, 456, 467.
Chakor (kind of Partridge), 288.
Chalukya Malla Kings, II. 320.
Champa (Chamba), Kingdom of, II. 841;
Kublai's Exp. against, 249; the King sad
his Wives ; products, 260 ; 250-25 } ; 417 ;
420. Chandra Bann, II. 297. Ohandu (Shangtu), City and Summer Paitoe
of the Kaan, 26; 289, 294; 896-897:
421. Changan, II. 166, 168, 169. Changchau (Ohinginju), IL 163, 164.
(in Fokien), IL 222 aeqq^ 227.
Changgan, IL 21, 22.
Changlu, II. 116 teq*^,
Changshan (Chanahan), IL 180; 2O8-206;
226. Chang-ie-hui, Journey of, IL 543. Chang-y, 408.
Chao or Paper Money, 412, 415, 416. Khanahs, Bank-note offices in Perns
('294), 415-
, the Siamese Title, II. 59.
di Buxj 58.
Naiman Sum^ Khotaa, or Shangtu, 294.
See Djao, Chaohien, Sung Prince, II. 134. Chaotong, IL 113. Chapn, IL 181. Charaoters, Written; Four acquired br
Marco Polo, 28, 29; one in Maori, bat
divers spoken dialects, 11. 218. Charohan (Chachan of Johnson, CkarchandX
198, 200, 20 r, 202. Charities of the Kaan, tt6, 426, 48t
, Buddhistic and Chinese, 43 2.
at Kinsay, II. 172, i8a
* Chasteaux,' sense of the word, 46. Chankans or Temporary Wires at Kaskgtf,
191. Chaul, U. 35 1 ; 440. Cheapness in China, II. 184. Cheetas, or Hunting Leopards, 384-385. Cheinan, Gulf of, II. 247. Chekiang into Fokien, Roads from, I!. 30,-
206. Chenching (Cochin-China), IL 250-2$ i ; 2^9. Chenohu conspires with Vanchu ag«o»t
Ahmad, 408; puts A. to death, 404. Chen, the Seven, IL 258. Chibai and Chiban, U. 467. Chi law, IL 321.
Chin, the Sea of, II. 246-247- China ; appears in Maps, ISl ; the name, IL
247 ; King of Malacca at Court of, 263 ;
trade to, from Arabia, 333 ; from Sofala in
Africa, 391. See Cathay and BCaoii ChinangU (T*sinan-fu), IL 116, 117, 119.
Digitized by
CHINAR.
INDEX.
CHRISTIANITY.
563
CMit&r, see Phfw.
Ohinchaa or Ichin-hien, II. T38; 156: 158.
i Chincheo, ChiDckew, Chwanchew,
Tswanchaa, II. 214, 219, 221, 222, 223, 327. See Zayton. Chinese; Maroo ignorant of language, 107 \ 30; Epigrams, 180; Funeral Customs, 210; feeling towards Eublai, 408, and see 406 ; Religion, 487, and character for irre- ligion, 44X teqq. : politeness, 488, 443 ; respect to parents, i&. ; gambling, 488; mourning customs, II. 174; character as regards integrity, 187, 193 ; written cha* racter, 218, and varieties of dialect, t&., and 226 seqq. ; ships, 281 aeqq. (see Ships) ; Pagodas (so-called) at Negapatam, 319 seqq.; and elsewhere, 381 ; coins found in S. India, 320; potterj, do., 360; trade and intercourse with S. India, 360, 368, 874,. 879, 381, its cessation, 381.
Ohinghian-fu (Chinkiang.fu), II. IM, 161, 162-
Chinghia Eaan ; io, 11 ; reported to be a Christian, 14; his capture of Talikan, 161 ; ravages Badakhshan, 172; at Samarkand favours Christians, 194; his campaigns in Tangut, 209, 240, 272; 228; Rubruquis's account of, 231; 233; made King of the Tartars, 288; his system of conquests, 284; asks Prester John's daughter; is refused with scorn ; note on this, 235 ; his anger and advance against P. John, 286 ; arrival at plain of Tenduc, 286; calls his Astrologers, 287 ; Presage of victory ; he gains it, 289 ; his death, 240 ; his favour to Christians, 239 ; his alleged relation to Aung Khan, t6. ; his aim at conquest of the world, 240 ; real circumstances of his death, 240 ; wound received, ib, ; his tomb, 241, 242-243 ; funeral, 243 ; 261 ; his presage of Kublai's capacity, 323 ; re- wards his captains, 342 ; 861, 352 ; alleged invasion of Tibet by, II. 38 ; his mechanical artillery, 152; his cruelty, 165 ; 466 ; 478, 480 ; Table of Genealogy of his House, 5 15.
(liinghiz Tora, II. 480.
Ching-hwang Tower at Hangchau-fu, II. 198.
Chinghn, II. 206.
Chingixija (Changchau), IL 162.
Chlngintalas, Province of, 214 ; the region intended, 216; II. 538.
Chingsang, Chlncsan (Ch. Ching^siang)^ title of a Chief Minister of SUte, 418; II. 128, iiijiM, 202.
Chingting-fu (AobaluoX H. 9, 10.
Chingtsu or Yunglo, Emperor, II. 381.
Chini (coarse sugar), II. 213.
Chinldn, Chingkim, Kublai*s Heir Apparent,
861, 352, 353; his palace, 867, 361 ; 408-
404; 407. CAtn-ton, or Chinasth^ba, Chinese etym. of,
II. lOI.
Chinuohi (or Cuniobl ?), 886, 388.
Chipangu (Japan), II. 288 ; described, 286 ; Kublai sends an expedition against, 287; its disasters, 287-241 ; history of the ex- pedition, 242 seqq,
Chitral, 162, 168, 173, 174.
CMoroxylon Dupada, II. 387.
Chochau (JujuX H. 5» 7 ; "4-
' Choiaob,' the term, II. 861 ; 355.
Chda, or Sola-desam (Soli, Tanjore), II. 3 1 7, 319; 860; 354.
Chonka, Km. of, (Fokien), II. 218; explan. of name difficult, 214; 218.
Chonkw^ II. 214.
Choroha (the Church^ or Hanchu Country), 227, 229; 886, 336; U. 344.
Chriatian ; Astrologers, 287, 488 ; Churches, Early — in China, II. 21 9eqq. ; Inscription of Singanfu, 22; — ^Alans in the Mongol Service, 168, 164.
Chriatiaiis ; of the Greek Rite (Georgians), 62, (Russians), U. 487; at Mosul, I. 48, 61, 62 ; among the Curds, 62, 63-64; the Califs plot against the, at Baghdad, 70 seqq. ; in Kashgar, 191 ; at Samarkand, •6. ; their arrogance when in fitvour, 192, 194; miracle of the Stone removed, A.; in Tarkand, 196; in Chingintalas, 216; in Suhchau, 219 ; in Kanchau, 221 ; in Chinghiz*s camp, 287; in Erguiul, 266; in Sinju, 16. ; churches of, in Egrigaia, 272; in authority in Tenduc, 276; on the borders of Cathay towards Sindachu, 276 ; Nayan one, 881 ; gibes at the, on his account, 886, and the Kaan's judg- ment thereon ; at the Kaan's Court, 874 ; in Yunnan, U. 62 ; at Cacanfu, 116 ; at Yangchau, 138; churches of^ at Chinki- angfo, 162; one at Kinsay, 176; at St. Thomas's, 889-840; at Coilum, 868; in the Male and Female Islands, 896 ; in So- ootra, 898, 899; and note on, 401; in Abyssinia, and their fire-baptism, 421 seqq,, and 427 ; of the Girdle, 427 ; 484; in Lac (Wallachia), 487.
Christianity ; attributed to many Chinghiiide Princes, 14, II. 474 and 476; Kublai's views on, I. 3 39 ; Former, of Soootra, II. 402.
202
Digitized by
564
CHROCHO.
INDEX.
COLON.
Chrocho (The Rukh), II. 409.
Chronology and chronological data discussed ; of First Jonmej of Polos, 7 ; of the war of Barka and Hulaka, 8 ; of the Polos' stay at Bokhara, lo-ti ; of their departure on their Second Journey from Acre, 23-24 ; of their return voyage and arrival in Persia on return, «f, 38 ; and of their arrival at Venice, SS ; of the story of Nigudar, 10?- 106 ; of Princes of Hormnz, 1 24 ; of de- struction of the Ismaelites, 1 5 2 ; of history of Chinghiz, 234, 237, 240 ; of KublaPs ac- cession and birth, 325-326; of Nayan's rebellion, 326,337; of Polo's visit to Yunnan, 20 and II. 65 ; of the Battle with the K. of Mien, 87, find other wars be- tween Chinese and that country (Burma), 87-88 ; 95, 96 ; value of Indo-Chinese, 88; conquest of S. China, 131; of cap- ture of Siang-yang, 151; of Kublai's dealings with Japan, 242 ; of ditto, with diampa, 251, and of Marco's visit to that country, t5. ; of Kublai's expedition again ts Java, 256; Review of the Malay, 26}; of events in Ma'bar, 3 r6 aeqq, ; of King Ck>ndophares, 343 ; of cessation of Chinese navigation to India, 381 ; of Abyssinia, 430 8€qq. ; of Kaidu's wars, 460, 465 ; of Mongol revolutions in Persia, see notes from 469 to 474 ; of wars of Toktai and Noghai, 499. See Dates,
Chuchn (in Kiangsi), II. 206, 2 r 2.
Chughis, see Jogis.
Chungkw^ (* Middle Kingdom *), II. 2 14.
Chungtu (Peking), 11.
Churohes, Christian ; in Kashgar, 191 ; in Samarkand, 16., 194; in Egrigaia, 278; in Tenduc, 278: Early, in China, 11. 21 ; at Tangchau, 138 ; at Chinkiang-fu, 168; at Kinsay, 176; at Zayton, 220-221 ; at St. Thomas's, 889-840, 344 ; in Coilum, 365- 366 ; in Socotra, 401, 402.
Churchd or Nyuch^ il, ^nd see Cboroha.
Oielstan, Suolstan (Shiilistan), 84, 86.
Cinnamon, 11. 40, 42 ; 47, 50 ; Ceylon, 297 ; Malabar, 879, 380 ; story of, in Herodotus, 879, 380.
Ciroumoision, Forcible, of a Bishop, II. 488 ; of Socotrans, 401 ; of Abyssinians, 427.
Cirophanes, or Syrophenes, Story of, II. 309-
3TO.
Civet of Sumatra, II. 277. Clemently., Pope, 17, 18. Clepsydra, 366 ; II. 198.
Cloves, n. 864 ; 289, 298 ; Clore-like plant in Caindu, 47, 50, 5 r.
Coal ; ancient store ot, in Palace Garden at Peking, 360 ; burned in Cathay, 488 ; nu- merous fields of, in ChluA ; in Scotland in Middle Agea, 4^9 ; H. 900.
Cobinan (Koh-banan), 187, 188, 181 ; idee- tified, 129.
Cobler, the Story of the Holy, 78 a^.
Cocachin (KokHchin) the Lady, fl-SS; se- lected as bride of Arghnn Khan, 88 ; made over to Kaikhatu in Persia, and married to Ghazan, 86 ; wept at parting with Polos 36; notice of her in Persian historv, 38.
Cochin-China ; the medieval Champa, II. 250. 258.
Coco-nut (Indian Nut), 111 ; II. 876 ; 889; 290, 29 I ; 840 ; 879.
Islands, of Hwen Tsang, 11. 290.
Cooos Islands, II. 292.
Coeur-de-Lion, his mangonels. II. T48, 150.
Coffins, Chinese (in Tangut), 808.
Cogachin (or Hukaji), son of Kublai, IL 88, 65, and see I. 353.
Cogatai, 404, 406.
Cogatal, a Tartar sent envoy to the Pope, 13; is left behind ill, 16.
Coiganja(Hwaingan-fu), II. 184, 181, 186.
OoUum (Kollam, Kaulam, Quilon), Km. oC n. 868 ; identity of, 364 ; meaning of name, 365, and 551 ; Church of St. George at, 365 ; Kublai's intercourse with, 363 ; modem state o£^ 365; 394, 395; 406; 420.
OoUamin, CohmbinOy Colomni; Brazil-wood 80 called, 11. 868; ginger so called, 363, 370.
Coins ; of Cilician Armenia, 44 ; of Mosul, 62 ; with Lion and Sun, 343 ; of Agathocles and Pantaleon, 172; found at Siang-Taii|^, XL 154; of K. Gondophares, 343; o{ Tartar Heathen Princes bearing Mahomedan a^ CThristian formulae, 476.
Coja (Koja), Tartar envoy from Persia to the Kaan, 88, 33 ; 38.
Cold, intense, in Mns. of Kerman, 98. 1 15 ; in Russia, II. 487.
* Mountains,' 117.
Coleridge's verses on Kublai's Paradise, 396.
College at Pingyangfu, IL 12, S48.
Coloman, Province of, II. 104, 108 ; i r r- 114; 248.
ColombinOy see Collumin..
Colon, II. 365. See Coilum.
Digitized by
COLOSSAL BUDDHAS.
INDEX.
CURRENCY.
565
Colossal Bnddhas, Recuml)ent. 221. 225. Columbus ; Polo paralleled with, 5 ; Remarks
on such a parallel, lOS; shows mo know- ledge of Polo's Book, 103. Columbum (Coilom, q. v.), the see of a Latin
Bishop, U. 365; rationale of that form of
name, t6. ; 420. Comania. Comanians, 52; IL 491, 492. Combermere, Propbecj applied to Lord, IL
132. Oomari, Comori (Cape Comorin and adjoining
district; Travancore), IL 804, 871,874;
394 ; 420. ' Oomeroque,' the word, II. 80, 32. Comorin, Cape, see above ; also II. 315, 361,
379; Temple at, 37'»S5i- CompartmentB in Hulls of Ships, IL 281,
233.
Compass, Mariner's, ISi,
Competitive Examinations in Beauty, 351.
Conohi, King of the North, IL 478, 480.
Conoubines, how selected for the Koan, 848.
Condor ; habits of, II. 409 ; Temple's necnunt of; 410; Padre Bolivar's of the African, 413-
Oondur, Sondur and, IL 266.
Cundux (Sable or Beaver), 395.
Ck>iiia, Coyne (Iconium), 46.
Conjeveram, IL 317.
Conjoriiig ; Weather-, 09, 109 ; 175, 1 78, ^^^ 301, 339 8eqq. ; Lamas', 299, 306 8eqq,'y Extraordinary, 308 seqq. See Sorcery y also Devii-Dancing,
Conosalinl, 100, 109.
Oonstantinople, 2 ; IL 148 ; 487.
Convents, see Monasteries,
Cookery, Tartar horse-, 256,
Cooper, Mr. T. T., traveller on Tibetan fron- tier, 37; 39>4o; 44; 50; 55.
Ck>pper ; Token currency of Mahomed Tugh- lak, 416 ; imported to Malabar, II. 879; to Cambay, 888.
Ooral ; highly valued in Kashmir, Tibet, &c., 177,180; U.40.44.
Corea, 336.
Com, the Emperor's Store and distribu- tion of, 429.
Coromandel (Maabar, q. v.), II. 315 ; Rainy Season in, 336; omens followed in, 355,
356.
Corsairs, see Pirates. Corte del Milione, *^ seqq. See Ca'. ^— Sabbionera at Venice, S6 seqq. Cosmography, Medieval, ISO seqq.
Costusy II. 387.
Ootan, see Khotan.
Cotton ; at Mardin, 62 ; in Persia, 88 ; at Kashgar, 190 ; at Yarkand, 196 ; at Kho- tan, 196; at Pein, 198 ; in Bengal, IL 97 ; Bushes of gigantic size, 888, 384; 888, 888 ; stuffs of, L 47, 48 ; 62 ; IL 848, 349; 379; 886; 888; 898; 425.
Counts in Vokhan, 181, 183 ; at Dofar, IL 441.
Courts of Justioe at Kinsay, II. 186.
Cowoadey Custom of, IL 70, 75.
Cowdung, how used in Maabar, IL 826 ; 862.
Cowell, Prof., 108.
Cowries (Foroelain Shells, pig-shells), cur- rency of, IL 62 ; value and extensive use of, 60 ; 62 ; 70 ; 106 ; procured from Lo- cac, 267, 260.
' Cralantur ' (?), the word, 72.
Cramoisy, 46; 66, 67.
Cranes, Five Kinds of, described, 286, 287-288.
Crawfurd, John, IL 258.
Cremation among Medieval Chinese, IL ri6, 550. See Burning,
Cremesor (Garmsir), 76.
Cross, Legend of the Tree of the, 141 seqq.
^, Gibes against, on defeat of Nayan, 886.
on Monument at Singanfu, IL 22, 24.
Cross-bows; on galleys, do, SUyS6'y IL 64. 67,68; 14^ 144.
Cruelties, Tartar, 158, 161, 257, 258 ; IL 165.
Crusca MS. of Polo, 80.
Cubeb Pepper, IL 264 ; 380.
Cubits, Astron. altitude estimated by, IL 817, 878, 888.
Cublay, see KvblaL
Cucintana, II. 386.
Cudgel, use of, among the Tartars, 269, 260 ; 899.
Cuiju, Prov. of; (Kweichau), II. 108, 110- 113.
Cuirbouly, 262, 255 ; IL 64, 67.
Cuju, IL 204, 205, 206, 207.
Cunoun, Prov. of, IL 19, 26, 26, 28.
Cunningham, M.-Gen. A., 12 ; 106, 164, 183 ; IL 343.
Cups, Flsring, 292, 306 ; 339.
Curds and Curdistan, 62, 64; 84, 85, 86 ; 104; 149, 152.
Curmosa (Hormuz, q. v.), 86, 89.
Currency, Paper, in China, 409 seqq.y 412 seqq.'y attempt to institute, in Persia, 415 ; allusions to, II. 108, 109, no; 116, 117.
Digitized by
566
CURRENCY.
INDEX.
DECIMAL.
|
121, 122, 128, 124; 186, 187, 188, 189; |
Ddr^piir, 107-108. |
|
140; 154, 169, 161, 168, 16d, 166; 171; |
Darius, 181, 143 ; 158, 159. |
|
208,204. |
Dark Ocean of the South, IL 409. |
|
Currency, Copper Token, in India, 416. |
Darkness, Magical, 99, 100; 108; 17i. |
|
, Salt, II. 87, 45, 48-50. |
, Land of, U. 418; how the Ttrttrs |
|
, Cowrie, see Cowries, |
find their way out of, 484; the people and |
|
, Leather, 416. |
their peltry, 16. and 486 ; Alexander's le- |
|
Current, Strong South, along E. Coast of |
gendary entrance into, 485 ; Dumb Tnit |
|
Africa, U. 404, 407. |
of, 486. |
|
Currents, Cape of, or Corrientes, II. 408-409. |
Darraj or Black Partridge, and what it says, |
|
Curzola, Island of, U; Battle there and |
lOI. |
|
victory of Genoese, 6, 1*5 seqq. ; Map of, IS. |
Damna Salt Mined, 162. |
|
Cnrzon, Hon. R., on Invention of Printing, |
Darwaz, 168. |
|
ISt, ISS. |
Dasht of Baharak, 164. |
|
Customs, Custom House, II. 80, 32 ; 155 ; |
Dashtishtan, 87. |
|
186; 200; 217. |
Dates (t.tf. Trees or Fruit); Woods of, 61 |
|
Cutch Pirates, IL 403. |
67, 90, 91; 99, 110, 112, 118; 114, 115, |
|
Cuxstac, Kuhesiec, 113. |
119; IL 877; wine of, L 110, 118, IL |
|
Cuy Eaan (Guyuk), 241. |
856;-^and Fish, Diet of, L 110, 119; U- |
|
Cycle, Chinese, 488, 435. |
449. |
|
Cynooephali, IL 292, 293. |
Dates (ChronoL) in Polo's Book; gencrallT |
|
Cypresses, Sacred, of the Magians, 135. |
erroneous, £5, 2 ; stated, 2, 2, 17, 86, 61. |
|
152, 288, 824(2); U. 81, 07, 128, 168, |
|
|
D. |
241; 249, 250; 801, 880; 422; 457; 461: |
|
472; 475(2); 495. |
|
|
Dabul, II. 440. |
Daughters of Marco Polo, 68, fi9, 75, 7$, 77 ; |
|
Dadidn, Title of Georgian Kings, 54. |
IL 504, 506. |
|
Da Gama, IL 375, 381. |
d*Avezac, M., II. 537. |
|
DagroiEUi, Km. of, in Sumatra, described, 11. |
David, Kings of Georgia, 52, 54 ; II. 541 «7/. |
|
275 ; probable position of, 280. |
, King of Abyssinia, IL 431, 432. |
|
Daitu (Peking), 296, 297. See Tavdu. |
Dawaro, II. 430, 433. |
|
Dailiu(Tali), IL59. |
Daya, II. 283, 288. |
|
Dakidnus, City of, 116. |
De Barros, Geography of J., 5. |
|
Daiada, or Tooth-Relique of Buddha, IL 311. |
Do Bode, Baron, 86. |
|
Dalai Lama with four hands, IL 247. |
De Borron, Robert and Helie, 57-£». |
|
D'Alboquerque, IL 263-264; 401; 449; w»d |
De Cepoy, Thibault; his mission to Veniw |
|
see plate of Aden, opp. p. 438. |
and receipt of a copy of the Book ftca |
|
DaUvar, Dilivar, a prov. of India, 100, 107- |
Marco himself, 67 seqq.; 90; lis. |
|
108. |
|
|
Dalmian, II. 280. |
De Gast, Luces, 57, 58; 54. |
|
Damascus, 24; 149; Siege of, IL 149. |
Dead ; Door of the, 211 ; Tkrtar aversiM t» |
|
Damasks with Cheetas on them, 385 ; with |
meddle with things of the, IL 98. |
|
Giraffes, IL 418. See Silk and Oold. |
— r-. Disposal of the; in Tangut, 2O7-906, |
|
Damghan, 148, 154- |
210; at Cambaluc, 898; in Colonui, U- |
|
Dancing Dervishes, IL 80. |
105 ; in China, partial change in Custom, |
|
Girls in Hindu Temples, IL 829, 338. |
116 and 550; in Dagroian, 276; by tk |
|
Dandolo, Andrea, Admiral of the Venetian |
Battas, &c., 280 ; see next head. |
|
Fleet at Curzola, 6, u ; captivity and sui- |
, Burning of the, 207; n. 105; 111 |
|
cide, /^is ; funeral at Genoa, ib. |
117, 122, 128, 124. 185, 186, 187, M |
|
D'Anghieria, Pietro Marlire, 3A; 117. |
140; 166; 174; 208;204; 287;825;m |
|
Dantapura, II. 311. |
, Eating the, see Ccmnibidism. |
|
Dante ; Number of MSS. of, 113 ; does not |
Debt, Singular Arrest for, 11. 887, 53$ |
|
allude to Polo or his Book, m. |
Decima, or Tithe on Bequest at Venice, ». |
|
Darabjird, 87. |
Decimal Organization of Tartar Armts |
|
Darah, IL 433. |
258, 255-2S6. |
Digitized by
DEGENERATION.
INDEX.
DZUNGARIA.
567
Degeneration of Tartars, 8M, 258$ and of other warlike conquerors of China, II. 15. DeggAns, Dehgins, 159. Deh-Bakri, 115, 116. Deh^uiah, 159.
Delhi; Saltans of, IS; IL 420, 421. Del Negro, Andalo, 66, Del Ricdo, Pier, 80,
D'El^, Monnt, II. 874 s^qq. ; 380. See £U, Demoiselle Crane, 288. Deogir, II. 421.
Depopulation of Badakhshan, 165, 172. Derbend ; Wall of, 55 ; II. 496, 537. See Iron- Gate. Deserts; of Kemuui or of Liit, 126, T27; ISl ; of I^horasan, 16% ; of Charchan, 800 ; of Lop (Gobi), 808, 803, 204; 818, 814, 216, 885; of Karakorom, 886-886; 888; 233.
» Hannted, 808, 204; 866.
Deegodins, Abb^, II. 49. Despina Khatnn, II. 476. Derapattan, IL 391. Devaddsi, IL 338. Devil'Dancing, 307 ; II. 71, 79-80.
Trees, 142.
PevUs, Wliite, n. 841, 346. Dha&r (Dofar, Zhafar), IL 884; 441; its incense, Ice, 442 ; two places of the name, t6. Dhdrani or mystic charms, 307. jykMkamain (Alexander), see Zulkamain. Dialects, Chinese, II. 818, 226 seqq. Diamonds in India, and how they are found, IL 846 seqq. ; Mines of, 349 ; diffusion of the legend about, ib. Dictation of their Narratives by celebrated
Travellers, 87, ' Diez Terrien,' i47» 148* DiUwar, supp. Dilivar of Polo, 107. J>indr8y 413; II. 33; 202; 330; 333; 535- See Bezani,
of Bed gold, IL 333.
Dinomii, II. 552. Dioptra, IL 547. J>io90oridi$ InsulOf IL 400. Dir.lOO, 106; 173, 174. Dirakht-i-FaMl^ 140 teqq,
i-Khuahkj 141.
Dish of Sakya or of Adam, IL 801, 310 uqq.
Diu^Sind, 87.
Divination by Twigs or Arrows, 887, 238.
Dixan, Branding with Cross at, IL 428.
Disabnius, Pavilion of, 372.
Djao Naiman Snm^ 26. See C7Aao.
Doctors at Kinsay, II. 185.
Dofiur, see Dhafar.
Dogana, 158; possible explanations, 159. Dogh&bah River, 159. Dog-headed Baces, IL 888, 293. Dogs ; the Kaan's Mastiffs, 887 ; Tibetan, II.
87, 41 ; 44 ; Fierce, in Cuiju, 108. Dog-sledging in Far North, IL 478-480, 481-
482 ; Note on the dogs, ib, Dolfino, Ranuzzo, Husband of Polo's daughter
Moreta, 76, Dominicans sent with the Polos but turn
back, 88-88. * D'or plain,' the expression, 861. Doria Family at Meloria, 61^
, Lamba, 6\ Admiral of Genoese Fleet
sent to Adriatic, A5 ; his victory, i6 $eqq, ; his honours, i^ ; tomb and descendants, Uf ; at Meloria with six sons, 6U. — ^, Octaviano, Death of; i6.
, Tedisio, Exploring voyage of, A9.
Dorji, 352.
Douglas, Rev. Dr. C, IL 215, 219, 222, 223,
227. Doyley, Sir Fulke, IL 150. ' 'Draps entaiUes,' 379. Drawers, enormous, of women in Badakh- shan, 168, 172. Drawing after Marco Polo, 118. Dreams, Notable, 296. Drums, Sound of, in certain Sandy Tracts,
808,206. Dryabahnops Camphora, II. 287. Dna Khan, IL 45 7, 460. Ducat, or Sequin, 412 ; II. 534. Dudley's Arcano del Mart, IL 248. Duel, Mode of, in S. India, IL 888. Dufour on Medieval Artillery, II. 143, 146. Dukuz Khatun, 279. Duloamon, 169. DviiUs, IL 426. Dumb Trade, II. 436. Dimgeny Tungani, q. v. Duplicates in Geography, IL 401. Jh^fm, II. 387. DUrer's Map of Venice, so-called, «6, S8, also
cut at 73. Dursamand, IL 421. Dushdb.Si). Dust-storms, 108-109.
Duties ; on Great Kiang, IL 188 ; on goods at Kinsay and Zayton, 178, 188, 817 ; on Horses, 484, 450; at Hormnx, 448. See Customs and Tithe. Dwara Samudra, IL 276, 354, 421. Dzegun4ala, name applied to Mongolia, 216. Dzungaria, ibid.
Digitized by
568
EAGLE MARK.
INDEX.
ETYMOLOGIES.
Eagle Mark on shoulder of Georgian Kings, 62.
Eagles trained to kill large game, 894, 386, II. 543.
White, in the Diamond country, II. 847.
Eagle- wood; origin of the name, II. 752. See Lign-aloes.
Earth Honoured, II. 326.
East, State of the, circa 1260, 8 9eqq.
Ebony (Bonus), II. 260, 253.
Ecbatana, II. 539 seqq,
Edkins, Rer. Mr., II. 181.
Edward I. ; 57, 60, 51; 21.
II. ; correspondence with Tartar Princes,
36; U. 476.
EflTemlnaoy in Chinese Palaces, II. 12, 15 ; 128; 189-190.
Eggs of the Bnc, and of the Aepyomu, II. 409, 41a
Egrigeda, Province of, 272.
Ela (Cardamom), II. 377.
Elohidai, II. 470, 473-
Elephantiasis, 196 ; II. 335.
Elephants; Kublai carried by Four, on a timber Bartizan, 829 ; the Kaan's, 877, 379; his litter borne by, 890, 394; of the K. of Mien, II. 81 ; numbers of men alleged to be carried by, 83 ; how the Tartars routed them, 86 ; the Kaan begins to keep, 86; wild, 89, 92; 99, loi ; in Champa, 260, 25?, 252; in Locac,267, 260; in Su- matra, 266, 270; 332; 335; in Madagas- car and Zanghibar, 404 ; trade in Teeth of, 16., 416 ; carried off by the Rue, 406, 409, 412, 4r4; in Zanghibar, 416; used in war, 416 ; an erroneous statement, 418 ; Nubian, 418 ; fable about, t6. ; alleged to be used in war by Abyssinians, 424 ; not bred there, 426 ; Note on alleged use by Abys., 429 ; and on training of African elephants, ib. ; War of the Elephant, t6.
Eli, Ely, EUy (Hili), Kingdom of, II. 374; position, 375 seqq. ; 394, 395 ; 4^0.
Elias, Mr. Ney, 217; 227; 269; 279, 28r.
Eludr Vitae of the Jogis, II. 862, 356.
Elliot, Sir Walter, II. 319, 3J0.
Embroidery; at Kerman, 92; of leather in Guzerat, II. 888, 384-
Empoli, Giov. d*, IL 221. ,
Emjnisay 205. I
Enchanters ; at Socotra, II. 899.
Enohantments ; of the Caraonas, 99. S«e Sorcerers, SorcerieSf Conjuring.
* En fira terre,' the phrase, 45 ; II. 39$ ; 450. Engano, Legend regarding Island oC II. 398. Engineers, Growing Importance of, in Middle
Ages, n. 149-150. Engineering Feat, Curious, A8. England ; Kublai's message to King of, 84 ;
correspondence of Tartar Princes witfc
Kings of, 36 ; IL 476. English Trade and Character in Asia, II. 354. Enlightenment, Land of, 441-442. Erculin, Aroulln (an animal), IL 480, 483,
484, 487. Erguiul, ProT. of, 206. Ermine, 891 ; U. 480, 484, 487. Erzingan (Arzinga), 47, 48. Erzrum (Arziron), 47, 50.
* Esohiel,' the word, II. 379.
Esher (Shehr, Es-shehr), II. 486 ; described, 489 ; trade with India, Incense ; ichtkjo- phagy ; singular sheep, ib. ; position, lie, 440; 443-
Essentemur (Isentimur), grandson of En* blai, IL 62.
EstimOy The Venetian, or Forced Loan, 45; 75] IL 501-502.
Ethiopia and India, Confusion of, IL 426.
Ethiopian Sheep, II. 416, 417, 418.
Etiquettes of the Mongol Court, 869, 870; 372; 877; 379; 4*0.
Etymologies. Balustrade^ 50; Budkram, 48; Ayigi, 58; Qelui, 60; Jatolio, 63; Muslin, 63; Baudekins, 67; Cramoisyt 67 ; Ondanique, 93 ; Z^fVL, loi ; OWk, 103 ; Dulcamon, 169 ; Balas, 169 ; Axore and Lazuli, 170 ; None, 182 ; MmomHvMi Mummery, 196; Salamander, 21 8 ; Berrk, 333 ; Barguerlac, 264; ^Img, 268, 274; SickUcun, 274; Argon, 280; Twgam, 281 ; Guasmul, 282 ; Ohakor, 288; Jddu and Yadah, 301 ; Tafur, 305 ; Bacsl ib.; Sensin, 314 «W-» -P'««vys3i8; Carquois, 353; Keshikan, 367; Yet- nique, 371 ; Gamut, Borgal, Shagrm, 382 ; Chinuohi or Chunlohi, 388 ; Toe- caol, 393 1 Bularguohi, 394; FondsoOr 401; Bailo, 407; Ck>merqua, II. 32; Foroelain, 61 ; Sangon,i2o; Faghftir, 131 ; Manjanik, Mangonel, Mangle, tc. 147; Galingale, 211; ChM and Mitri 213 ; Satin, 224; Eagle-^cood, 252; Aioa- wood; ib. ; Bonfis, ib. ; Galamans, A.; Benzoin, 266; China Pagoda, 320; Pt- cauca, 330; Balanjar, 333; A-muek,^,;
Digitized by
ETYMOLOGIES.
INDEX.
FOOT-MARK.
569
Pariahj 335; Oovi, ib.; AYarian, 34i; Abndaman, 353 ; Choiaoh, 355 ; proques, 357 ; Tembul and Betdf 363; Sappan and Brazil, 369; BoUladi, BeUedi, 370; Indigo BaccadeOf 371; Gatpaul, 372; Baboofiyib,; Saiami Cinnamon, 380; K^fuucopj ib.; Rook (in chess), 412; Araine, 460 ; Eroulin and Yair, 4B3 ; Miakdly 535 ; Alidada, 547.
Etymologies (of Proper Names) ; Ourd, 64 ; Dztrngarioy 216; Chlngintalas, tb. (but see II. 5 38) ; CcsmJbuscany 242 ; Oirad, 299 ; ICtmguraty 350; Manzi, II. 127 ; Bayan, 131; Klnsay, 1 76 ; Japan, 238; Somau, 260; Narkandam, 294; Ceylon, 296 ; Ma*bar, 315 ; ChUaw, 321 ; MaiiapAr, 345 ; Bona- tfarpattanam, 359; Pvnnei-Kdyal, i&. ; Eayal, A.; Eollam (Coilnm), 365, 547; Hlli (Ely), 397 ; Oambaet, 3^9 ; Mangla and Nebiia, 377; Socotra, 400; Cofes- Beeah, 402 ; CaHgme, 435 ; Aijarao, 461 ; Nemejy 494; Kaigan and Kalugah, 538.
— — Chinese, II. 100.
StKina,tt5.
Snnocks, 848 ; procured from Bengal, IL
97,98. Suphrates ; 45 ; said to flow into Caspian,
84,56. Euphratesia, 45. Euxine, see Blank 8m, Execution of Princes of the Blood, Mode of,
69; 885, 336. Eyircaya, 273.
F.
Kacen, Dr. J., 155.
Faghfur (FaofUT, the Emp. of S. China), II. 187; meaning of title, 131; 189 9eqq.\ his effeminate diversions, 189; decay of the Palace of, 190. See Manzi, King of.
Faizabad in Badakhshan, 163-165, l^i,
Fakata, II. 243.
Fakhruddin Ahmad, 125 ; II. 316.
Fakandr, II. 437.
Falcons, see Hawks.
Falconers, the Kaan*s, 897, 889, 891, 393.
Famine Horrors, 304.
Fanchan, i.e. Fmgchang, title of a 2nd class Cabinet Minister, 418; II. 164.
Fanchan Lake, II. 23.
Fanching, Siege of, II. 151-152.
Fandaraina, II. 375, 381, 437.
Fcmg, see Squares,
Fansur, Km. of, in Sumatra, II. 888 ; posi- tion of, 285.
Fansuri Camphor, II. 888, 285-288.
Fanwenhu, or Fanbunko, a general in Japan- ese Elzpedition, II. 242, 244.
Faro of Constantinople, II. 491.
Farriers ; none in S. India, II. 884, 448.
Fars, Prov. of, 87; II. 316 ; 333 ; 365 ; 39}.
Fassa, 87.
Fasting Days, Buddhist, 888, 223.
Fattan in Ma'bar, II. 316; J 19.
Fausto, Vettor, his great Quinquereme, SI,
Female attendants on Chinese Emperors, II. 18, 15; 180; 189-190.
Ferlec, Km. of, in Sumatra (Parliik, q. v.), 86«, 268; 276; 277; 288.
Fernandez or Moraria, Valentine, II. 278; 5"- -
Festivals, Order of the Saan's, 868 9eqq.
FfcusvastOy 132.
Fidavn, or Ismaelite adepts, 150, 151.
Filial Piety in China, 488, 443.
Finn, 126.
Fiordelisa, supposed to be Nioolo Polo's 2nd wife, 18, SU, U,
, daughter of younger Maffeo Polo, 18,
63.
, wife of Felice Polo, SU, 6S,
Firando, Island of, II. 242.
Firdils, a Castle of the Ismaelites, 154.
Firddsf, 134.
Fire ; affected by height of Plain o( Pamir, 181, 187; regulations about, at Kinsay, II. 178.
Baptism ascribed to Abyssinians, 11.
481, 427.
Fire- Worship ; in Persia, 79 aeqq, ; by the Sensm in Cathay, 894, 318.
Pao (or Engines of War), supposed
Rockets, 334.
Fish ; Miracle regarding, in Georgia, 64, 59 ; — and Date diet, 110, 119; II. 449; sup- ply of, at Kinsay, II. 184-186 ; food for cattle, 489, 441 ; and stored for man and beast, 440.
Florin or Ducat, II. 199; 534.
Flour, Trees producing (Sago), IL 888.
FlUckiger, Dr., II. 209.
Fokien, Km. of Fuju, q. v.; II. 204, 206, 209, 211-215,219, 222, 225, 23J, 255; Dialect of, 209; 2id, 226-228, 258.
Folin (Byzantine Empire), II. 397.
Foodaoo, 401 ; 11. 220.
Foot-mark on Adam's Peak, II. 302 ; discre- pant dimensions, 303.
Digitized by
57°
FOOT-POSTS.
INDEX.
GENOA*
Foot-posts in Cathay, 481.
Forg, 87.
Formosa, Plain of, 110, 117; the name,
118. Foreyth, Sir T. D. ; account of the Burgut or
Trained Eagle, II. 543, 551. Fortune, Mr. B., II. 180; 204-206; 212;
215. Foundlings provided for, II. 180, 135. Four-homed Sheep, II. 489, 440. Fowls with hair, II. 808, 2ir. Foxes, Black, U. 479, 480, 484, 487. Fra Mauro's Map, 150, 139; II. iii; 386;
397; 409; 536. < Fra Terre,' see Sn fra terre. Fracastoriufi, Jerome, *. Franciscan CJonvents; in the Wolga region,
5, 9; II. 492; at Yang-chau, II. 138 ; at
Zayton, 220. Francollns, 99, loi; 110, 115; ^^8. Frankincense, see Inoense. Frederic II., the Emperor ; his account of the
Tartars, 56; his ChcetaSj 384; his leather
money, 416; his Giraffe, II. 418. French; the original language of Polo's
Book, 79 teqq. ; its large diffusion in that
age, 8U seqq. ; U9. Expedition up the Kamhoja River, II.
50, 51, 55, 65, 103, 104, and see Oamier, Missions and Missionaries in China, II.
31, 39.44,49, 55, 78, 79, no-
'FrSre Chamel,' meaning of, 195.
Frere, Sir Bartle, 96, 119, 123 ; II. 385 ; 417-
Fuchau (Fuju, q. ▼.) ; Paper money at, 414 ; II. 134; 212; its identity with Fuju dis- cussed, 214 se^^.; 216; 221; language of, 227; 233; Tooth-relique at, 312.
Fuju (Fokien and Fuchau), II. 904; 807; 809; 211; 818,814; 215; 817; 221.
Funeral rites (Chinese), in Tangut, 807 seqq. ; of the Kaans, 841, 243 ; at Kinsay, 11.174. See Dead.
Fungul, City of, II. 108; 110-113.
Furs of the Northern Regions, 849; 891, 395 ; II. 480, 483 ; 484, 487.
Fusang, fancied Mexico, II. 397, 398.
Fuyang, II. 204-205.
Fuzo (Fuchau), II. 220.
Gabala, Bishop of, 229 ; II. 539 seqq, Gaisue, officer of Kublai*s Astr. Board, 435. Galashkird, 109.
Oakazza ; Venetian, 54 ; 1 22.
Oalingsle, II. 97; 807, 806, 211 ; 854.
Galletti, Marco, tS ; IL 509.
Galleys of the Middle Ages, On the War-, » seqq. ; peculiar arrangement of the oars, S»- 51; number of oars. Si, 54; dimenrioas, 5i-i55; tactics in fight, 56; toil in rowiaj, A. ; strength of crew, 57 ; cost, ib. ; Staff of a Fleet, $8 ; description from Joinrille, ib. ; some customs of, 59.
Galley-slaves, not usual in Middle Ages, 5(nr.
Gambling prohibited by the Kaan, 438.
Game ; References to, see Sport
•. supplied to the Court at Cambalac,
888,887.
Laws, Mongol, 888, 898; a 8.
Ganapati Kings, II. 348.
Gandhdra,IL 96; 310; 312; 386; theniiM applied to Yunnan by the Buddbirts, IL
59. Ganfu, the Port of Kinsay, II. 178. Gantanpouhoa, son of Kublai, 353. GanttCr, II. 348.
OardeniGf Fruit and Dye, 11. 209. Gardiner's (misprinted Gardners) TrareU,
168, 188. Gardner, Mr. C, IL 179, 180, 181. Garmsir, Ghermseer (Gremosor), 71, 77;
lOI.
Gamier, M. Francis, IL 31 ; 40; 50, 5I) S^*
55, 56, 60, 61; his daring journey to
Talifu,65; 74, 75, 77; 82; 102,103,104,
107, 112, 113; 180; 259. Garrisons, Mongol, in Cathay and Manzi,
328 ; IL 174, 182 ; disliked by the people,
187; 818. Garttda, IL 336 ; 408, 4^2. Qtiie of Iron, Existing, ascribed to Deriiaid,
58. Gates; of Kaan's Palace, 88i, 358; ofCsm-
balnc, 868, 364 ; of Somuith, II. 392. ' Gat-pa\ilB,' Gatopaui, Gaios-paulas, 0. STL
37^; 433- ' Gatto-maimone,' II. 372. Gauenispola, Island of; IL 888 ; 289-19^ Gazarla, U. 491, 493- Gedrosi, IL 393. Gelath, Iron Gate at, 58. Geliz, the word, 60. Genealogy of Polos, 13 ; Errors iu, as firei br
Barbaro, &c, 77-78 ; Tabular, IL 506.
of House of Chiuf^iix, IL 505.
Genoa and Venice, Rivalry and Wan d, »
seqq. Pisa, Do. do., ib. and Si seqq.
Digitized by
GENOA.
INDEX.
GONDOPHARES.
571
Genoa, Polo's Captivity at, fi ; 146-6$.
Genoese ; their growth in skill and splen- dour, 40; character as seamen by a poet of their own, UU ; Character given of, by an old Italian author, 1,6 ; their navigation of the Caspian, 64, 61; their merchants at Tabriz, 76, 77, and in Fokien, II. 220.
Gentile Plural names converted into local singulars, 60.
'Geographical Text' of Polo's Book; cha- racter of its language, 81 ; proofs that it is the original, 89 seqq.\ peculiarities of language, 8S; indications of verbal dicta- tion, 82; Tautology, &f; proof that it is the source of the other Texts, P),; its use essential to a full view of Polo's Work, 136.
George, King, of the line of Prester John, 276, 276, 278; possible true form of his name, 279; possible descendant, 279 note; II. 46S seqq.
Georgia (Georglania) and Georgians de- scribed, 62 seqq.; their Kings, 62, 54; beautv of people, ib.
GerfiOoons; 262, 265, 286, 888, 890; II. 488.
, Tablets engraved with, 86 ; 842, 347.
German Follower of the Polos, IL 141.
Ghaiassuddin Balban, 107, 108.
Ghaxan Khan (Casan) of Persia, son of Ar- ghun ; tS-SS ; knew the Frank tongue, ^, '29; his regard for the Polos, 86; marries the Lady Kukachin, 16.; 86, 38 ; 90; 106 ;
"5; 143; 299; 415; ^^-48; 149; 464.
465 ; set to watch the Khorasan Frontier, 472, 473; 478, 474; obtains the throne, 476 ; his aspect and accomplishments, 477.
Ghel or Ghelan (Ghel-U-ohelan), Sea of, I. e, the Caspian, 64, 60.
Ghell6 silk {6Ui) 64, 60.
Ohez Tree, 91.
Ghiuja, II. 208, 205, 206.
GkuU (Goblins), 205 : U. 408.
Ghiir, 104.
Giglioli, Prof. H., i9.
Gil or Gilan, 60.
Gilgit, 168.
Ginao Mountain and Hot Springs, 1 26.
Gindanes of Herodotus, II. 39.
Ginger, U. 17, 27, 47 ; alleged to grow in Kiangnan, 166, but it is believed incor- rectly, 167; 207, 208; at Coilum, 868; Different qualities of, 370; prices, •&. ; at Ely, 874, 377; in Malabar, 879; in Guzerat, 888.
Giraffes, II. 406, 414; described, 416; me- dieval notices of, 418 ; 426.
Girardo, Paul, Marco Polo's Lawsuit with, 63; II. 509.
Girdkuh, an Ismaelite Fortress, its long De- fence, 153, 155.
Girls consecrated to Idols in India, II. 829.
Glaza (^AyaSf q. v.), 5S.
Gleemen and Jugglers conquer Mien (or Burma), U. 92.
Goa, U. 344, 450.
Gobemador, Straits of, II. 262.
Go6s, Benedict, 19, 185, 220.
Gog and Magog ; Legend of, 5 6, 5 8 ; Country of, 276 ; Wall of China suggests the name, 283; 285.
Gogo, II. 389.
Goitre at Yarkand, 196.
Golconda Diamond Mines, IL 349.
Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, their mystic meanings, 79, 81.
— ; dust in Tibet, IL 40; in Caindu ex- changed for salt, 46, 48 ; dust in the River Brius, 47; dust and nuggets in Carajan, 62 ; 70; abundance of, in Yunnan, 76; 88, 89; in Caugigu, 99; in Coloman, 106; in Chipangu infinite, 236, 238; in Islands of Sea of Chin, 246 ; dust in Islands of Gulf of Cheinan, 248 ; not really found in Java, 254; in Locac, 267, and the Ma- layo-Siamese territories, 260 ; in Sumatra, 264, 268 ; vast accumulations of, in S. India, IS, 824, 332; imported into Mala- bar, 879 ; and to Cambay, 888 ; purchased in Socotra, 899.
Gold to Silver, Relative value of, 413, II. 77, and see IL 53, 62, 70, 88; 238; 534.
and Silver Towers of Mien, II. 91.
of the Gryphons in Herodotus, explained,
IL 413.
, Goths of, 44, 62, 62, 66, 67: 76, 86,
276, 874 ; IL 17. See SUk and Goid.
Teeth (Zardandan), a people of West- em Yunnan, U. 69 seqq., 73 teqq.
Golden King, Tale of the, IL 12.
Island, IL 158 ; 169, 160.
Horde, (Kings of the Ponent), U.
493- Oolfo, Indigo <it, IL 371. Gomispola, Gomispoda (Gauenispola, q. r.\
II. 289 seqq. Gomushtapah, Wall of^ 58. Gomuti Palm, IL 279. Gondophares, a King in the St. Tboma*
legends, IL 343.
Digitized by
57^
GOR KHAR.
INDEX.
HAYTON.
Oor Khar, or Wild Ass, 91.
Gordon's * Ever-Victorious Army/ II. 163.
^,Col.T. E., II. 538.
Goriosan, II. 242.
Goshawks; in Georgia, 6S; 58; 98; 244;
888; Black, II. 266, 828. Gothia (Crimean), II. 481 ; its limit, 493 ;
language, ib, Govy, a low caste in Maabar, II. 825, 334;
840. Goza, 38.
Gozurat, see Ourerat. Grail, Buddhist Parallel to the Holy, II. 313. Granaries, Imperial, 429, 430. Grass-Cloths, II. iia Grasso, Donato, HU* Great or Greater Sea (The Black Sea),
3; IL487; 488; 491.
Bear (Meistre), II. 274, 279.
and Little, Force of these epithets,
application to certain regions, II. 267. Greek Fire, 56; U. 149; 165. Greeks in Turcomania, 46. — and Greek Tongue in Socotra, IL 400,
40X ; possible relic of, 402. Green, Rev. D. D., U. 176. Green Island, Legendary, II. 369.
Islands, H. 409.
Mount at Cambaluc, 867, 360.
River, see Tsien Tang,
Gregorieff, Mr., his excavations at Sarai, 6. Gregory X., Pope, see Theobald. (jfriut {Kurut or Sourcurd), 257. Groat, or Venetian Grosso, 410, 412; II.
17,68, 186, 184, 207,218, 220; 3+0; 534-5. Grote, Mr. Ajrthur, II. 441, 551. Gnieber and Dorville, Jesuit Travellers, 268. Or us cinerMf — Antigone, — Leucogeranus, —
Monachus, 288. Grynaeus's Version of Polo, 93-9L Gryphon, The, alias Rue, II. 401-406, 408
seqq, Guasmnl, 276, 282. Gudderi, the Musk Animal, II. 87. Guebers, 90, 98. See Fire, Chtgalj or Bdellium, IL 387. Guilds of Craftsmen at Kinsay, U. 169.
Venetian, 70,
G\iinea-fowl, IL 426; 433- Guions, a quasi-Tibetan tribe, II. 5 1. Gumish-Kh^ah silver-mines, 50. Gumpach, Herr von, IL 550. Gunpowder, 1S3. Gurgan, a Tartar chief, IL 473. Gurgan (* Son-in-law *), a title, 279.
Qurhhan, of Karacathay, 230; II. 540 s*^-,
542. Gutturals, Mongol elision of, 8, 66. Guzerat (Gozurat), IL 353, 354; 878, 878;
described, 882, 888, 385, 390» 39^; 394;
420,421.
Haast, Dr., discovers a foRsil Rue, U. 41a S5:.
Habsh (Abash, Abyssinia, q. v.), II. 425.
Hadiah, IL 433.
Hafier, IL 442.
Hainan ; Gulf of, IL 348 ; language of, 227.
Hairy Men in Sumatra, II. 284.
Hajji Mahomed, 213, 222.
Hakeddin, II. 433.
Half-breeds, tee Argons.
Hammer-Purgstall on Marco Polo, lli,
Hamtim Arabs, II. 440.
Hamza-Pantsdri or Fantsiiri, II. 286.
Han River, IL 25, 27, 28, 29; 132 ; 151.
Dynasty, II. 25, 28.
Hanbury, Mr. D., IL 167, 209, 211, 545.
Hanchung, IL 25, 26, 28.
Hangchau-fu, 11\ VL, 131; 167-168; i;C; but see Kinsay.
Hanjam, 118.
Hankau, II. 158, 167.
Hansi, II. 421.
Hardm, the word, 147.
Harhaura, a region of India, ic6.
Jfarmozeia, 118.
JJarpagomis, a fossil Bac, II. 410.
Harsuddi, Temple of, II. 334.
Haru or Am, IL 286.
Hasik, U. 441.
IfashisMn (Ashlshin), 146 $eqq,, 147.
Hastings, Letter of Warren, 5 9.
Haunted Deserts, 208 ; 266.
Hawdriy (Avarian), the term, IL 341.
Hawks, Hawking; in Georgia, M, 58; ib Tezd and Kerman, 90, 92, 9H ; in Badakh- shan, 166; in Etzina, 226; among the Tartars, 244 ; on the shores and islandu of the Northern Ocean, 262, 265, also IL 488; Kublai's sport at Chagannur, I. 286; Us hawks in mew at Chandn, 289; trained eagles, 884, 386; Kublai's hawking esta- blishment, 888, and sport, 889, 890, 181. 892, 396 ; IL 8 ; in Tibet, 41 ; in Sumatn. 266; in Maabar, 828.
Hay ton I., King of Lesser Armenia, 1^; bt> autograph, W; 44; H- 535-
Digitized by
HAZARAS.
INDEX.
HULAKU KHAN.
573
Hazarns; their Mongol origin, 104-105 ; Lax custom ascribed to, 2r4; II. 48.
Hazbana, K. of Abyssinia, II. 432.
Heat, Vast, at Hormuz, 110, 111, 123 ; II. 450; in India, II. 887, 86S.
* Heaven City of (Klnsay), II. 106, 167, 169, 180.
Heibak, Cares at, 164.
Height, Effects on fire of great, 181, 187.
Hely Ela (Cardamom), II. 377.
Helli, II. 375.
Hemp of Kweichau, II. no.
Heraclius said to have loosed the shnt-np nations, 56.
Herat, [57; II. 393.
Hereditary Trades, II. 170, see 178.
Hereford Map, 127 y 139.
Hermenia, 1, 16, 90, 22, 48, 47. See Armenia.
Hermits of Kashmir, 176, 177, 179.
Herodotus and Polo, los.
Hethum, see Hayton,
Hides, II. 888. See Leather,
Hili, Hili-Marawi (Ely), II. 375-377, 380; 394, 395 ; 4^0.
Hill-people, Wild, of Fokien, II. 207, 209.
Hinnur, see Ifundtcar.
Hind, II. 39) ; 420
Hindu character. Remarks on frequent eulogy of, II, 354.
Hing-hwa, Language of, II. 227.
Hippopotamus Teeth, II. 405, 414.
Hips, Admiration of large, 168.
Hochang-fu (CachanAi), II. 19.
Hochau, in Szechwan, Mangku Kaan*s death at, 240.
, in Kansuh, II. 23.
Hokian-fu (Oaofiuifu), II. 116.
Hokow or Hokeu, II. 206, 212.
Holy Sepulchre ; Oil from Lamp of, 18, 19, 20,27; IL 422, 428.
JTomeritaey II. 426.
Horoi-chau or Ngo-ning, II. 104, 112, ri4.
' Homme,' technical use of the word, 27, 3 34.
Honhi Tribe (Anin), H. 102, ro3, 104.
Horiad Tribe (Uirat), 291, 299.
Hormuz (Hormos, Hormes, Curmosa), 19 ; 86, 89 ; 110 seqq. ; trade with India ; heat and sickliness; diet of people. 111; ships; intolerably hot and fatal wind; crops, 112; mourning customs; the King of, 118; another road from, to Kerman, tb ; road from Kerman to, 113; site of the old city, 114; Foundation of, 118; His- tory of, 124; n. 316; 824, 333; 867;
394; 448, 449, 460; the Melik of, 448, 460; great heat, 460; Old — , Confusion about, 450 ; 466.
Hormuz, Island of, or Jerun, 1 1 3, 1 14; Grgana of Arrian, 118; 123, 125.
Hormuzdia, J14.
Horns of Ovia Poli, 181, 185.
Horoscopes in China, 488; II. 174; in Maabar, 828.
Horse-Posts and Post-houses, 420, 424.
Horses; Turkish, 46, 46 ; of Persia, 84, 88 ; of Badakhshan, 166 ; of strain of Bucepha- lus, ib. ; sacriHced over Tombs of Kaans, 241 ; Tartar, 262, 25 7 ; and Mares, White, 291, 299, presented to the Kaan on New Year's Day, 877 ; of Carajan, II. 62, 68, 66 ; tails of, docked, 64, 67; of Anin, 101; tracking by, 158; decorated with Yaks' tails, 841.
, none, or only wretched ones, bred in
S. India, H. 824, 826-826, m ; 335, 484, 448.
, Oreat Trade in importing, to India ;
from Persia, 84, 88; mode of shipment, 111, 119 ; from Carajan, II. 68 ; from Anin, 101 ; from Kis, Hormuz, Dofar, Soer, and Aden, 824, 333, 867, 886, (Aden) 484, (Esher) 489, 440, (Dofar) 441, (Calatu) 448, 450; great prices fetched in India, I. 84, 88; IL 824, 353, 484; Duty on, 484, 450; captured by pirates, 886; extraor- dinary treatment and diet of, in India,
824,828,333,336-3 37,446.
Hospitals, Buddhist, 432.
Hostelries ; at Cambaluc, 898 ; on the post- roads of Cathay, 420; II. 26; at Kinsay, Regulations of, 176.
Hot Springs; in Armenia, 47, 48; near Hormuz, 118, 126.
Hounds, Masters of the Eaan's, 886, 388.
Hours ; struck from bell- tower at Cambaluc, 868,899; at Kinsay, IL 171.
, Unlucky, IL 851.
, Canonical, II. 355.
Huchau-fu (Vuju), II. r68.
Hukaji (Cogachin), son of Kublai, 353; II. 62,65.
Hukwan-hien, II. 212.
Hulaku Khan (Alau, and in one place Ala- COU), brother of Kublai, and founder of Mongol Dynasty in Persia, iO; his enter- prise against Baghdad, 66, 69 ; puts the Khalif to death, ift. ; 87; goes against the Ismaelites, 162, 160; 241, 242 ; 326 ;
Digitized by
574
HULLMANN.
INDEX.
INDIFFERENCE.
his first camp«ign, II. lio; treachery otf 142; 397; 399; hw war with Barka Khan of Kipchak, I. 4, 8, 105 ; XL 475 ; 4Mm?<7.
HuUmaim's extraordinary view of Polo's Book, us,
Haman fat, used for combustion in war, 11.
.65.
sacrifices, 210.
Hnmboldt, los, 108, 109, 117, ISO; 187. Huniwar (Onore, Hinaur), II. 379, 437. Hundred Byes, The Prophecy of the, II.
IM, 133. JTvnchcdniyy see Ondanlque. Hungary, Hungarians, II. 492-493.
, Great, II. 267; 492.
Hunting Sstablishments, Eublai's, 884,
886, 393. Sxpedition of Kublai described, 888 ;
of Kanghi, 393.
; Preseiret, H. 8. See Sport,
Hwa-chau, II. 23.
Hwai R., II. 125, 135.
Hwailu, II. 10, II.
Hwaingan-fu (Coiganju), U. 135, 136.
Hwan-ho, II. 5, 6.
Hwang-K 240, 273, 277; II. 17, 19-21;
changes in its course, 119, 125-126 ; 135 ;
its embankments, 1 26. See Caramoran. Hwen Thsang, 163, 173, 179, 187, 198, 205,
224, 298; U. 290, 296, 297 ; 310, 312; 397. Hyena, 385.
L
labadiu, II. 2C7.
Ibn Batuta (Moorish traveller, circa A.D. 1330-1350), »7; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 37; 46; 66; 67; 77; 86; 103; 113; 114; 119; 123; 154; 169; 205; 242; 283; his account of Chinese Juggling, 308; 337; 395 ; II. 1 17, 164; his account of Khansa (Kinsay), 197; of Zayton, 220, 266; in Sumatra, 271, 276; in Ceylon, 297, 298, 305, 304, 32 r ; in Ma*bar, 319, 350; 334; at Kaulam, 365, 368; at Hili, 375 ; 380; 381; 386; 389; 393; 403; 406; his sight of the Rukh, 411; 419; 420; 437;
441 ; 442 ; 449 ; 464 ; 482 ; 485 ; 488 ; 492. -^— Fozlan, Old Arab writer on Russian
Countries, 7 ; II. 488. Ichin-hien, II. 138, 152, 156, 158. Ichthyophagous Cattle and People, II.
439, 441* Icon Amlac, K. of Abyssinia, II. 430-4^3. Idols; Tartir, 249, 250, 438; 11.478; in
Tangnt, I. 807 ; colossal, 811, 223 ; of the Baosl or Lamas, 898; of the 86X]UBin,891, 316-319; of the East generally, IL M8, 247; in India, U. 888, 884, 889.
Idolatry (ie. Buddhism) and Idolaters; in Kashmir, 176, 1 78-180 ; in Tangnt, 807. 209; 818, 816, 819, 881, 886,866,868. 872, 876, 876, 891 segq,, 886, 874, 482,487.
Ozigin of; 168, II. 800, 309.
of Brahmans, II. 860 ; of Jogia, 868
*Up69w\oty II. 338.
leu, II. 303.
Ifat, Aufat, II. 430, 433.
Ig, Ij, or Irej, 87.
Igba Zion, lakba Siun, K. of Abyssinia, IL 431,432.
IlcMy meaning of the word, 3a
, Cap, of Khotan, 197.
Ilchigadai Khan, 194.
Imago Mundi of Jac d'Aoqui, St.
Imims of the Ismailis, 153.
Incense ; Sumatran, U. 266 ; Brown, in W. India, 886, 387-388 ; White, (1. e. Frankin- cense) in Arabia, 489, 440, 442 ; notes ea Frankincense, 443-447.
India, U; 1, 110-112, 177, 890; IL 68; 68; 89; 97; 101; 819; 281; Trade from, to Manzi or China, 178, 200, 218, 814, 217, 281 ; belicTed to breed no horses, see Horses ; Horse Trade to, see ibid. ; Westers limits of, II. 892, 393 ; Islands of, 416, and see Islands ; Division o£^ 417 ; Sundry lisu of States in, 420, 421, and see 394; Trade with Persia and Arabia, 867; with Adei and Egypt, 484, 435 ; with Arabian ports, 489,441,448. Vol. U. pp. 81^-888 trests specially of India.
and Ethiopia, Confusion of, IL 426.
the Greater, U. 818 seqq.; 898; its
extent, 417, 419 seqq,
the Lesser, its extent, IL 417, 419s«<9?.
, Middle (Abyssinia), IL 416, 481;
Remarks on this title, IL 425.
Tertia, IL 397, 419.
Maxima, U. 419.
Superior, II. 218 ; 419.
Sea of, see Sea.
Indian Steel (Ondanlque, q. v.), 93.
Geography, Dislocation of Polo's, IL
364, 379» 383, J94-395-
Nuts, see Coco-nuts,
Indies, The Three, and yarious distribution of
them, IL 419. IndiflTerenoe, Religious, of Mongol Emperors,
14, 3}9-340,IL4?6»«W.
Digitized by
INDIGO.
INDEX.
JEWS.
575
Indigo ; at Coilum, and mode of making, II. 868, 370; in Guzerat, 888; at Cambay, 888 ; prohibited by London Painters' Guild,
371- Indo-China, II. 419. Vol. II. pp. 88-106, and
848-867 treats of Indo-Chinese States. InDeuitg, Exposure of, II. 189, 135. Ingoshes of Caucasus, 361. Inscription, Jewish, at Kaifongfu, 337. Insnlt, Mode of; in S. India, II. 868. Intramural Interment prohibited, 898. Inyulnerabillty, Devices fbr, II. 841, 244- 'Mk, 76. Irghai, 273. Irish accused of eating their dead kin, II.
281.
MS. Version of Polo's Book, 100-101,
Iron ; in Herman, 98, 93 ; in Cobinan, 188,
129; see 816. Iron-Gate (Derbend); said to have been
built by Alexander, 68, 55 ; gate ascribed
to, 58; 11.494,496; 537. Irtish R., II. 494. Isaac, K. of Abyssinia, II. 48 2. Isabel, Queen of L. Armenia, 44. IsabenL, II. 426. Isentemur (Sentemur,Essentemar) godson
ofKublai, II. 68, 65; 81. Ish — ,The prefix, 164; — Kashm, 163, dialect,
168; 183. 'Ishfn, 123.
Iskandar Shah of Malacca, IL 263. TilanHa • of the Indian Sea, and their vast
number, II. 888, 416-417, 419; of China
Seas, II. 888, 846 ; and see Java, Chipan-
gu, Angaman, Nicoveran, Malaiur,
SeUan, Scotra, Madagascar, &c.
in the Gulf of Cheinan, II. 247.
Male and Female, II. 896 se^.
Isle of Rubies (Ceylon), II. 296.
d'Orl&ins, II. 257.
Ismaelites or Assassins, 85 ; 146 seqq. ; assas- sinations by, 15 1 ; destruction of, 168 seqq.;
survival and recent circumstances of the
sect, 153. Ispahan, 86.
Israel in China, 337. See Jews, Istan, see Istanit (supp. Ispahan), a Km. of Persia, 84,
86. Iteration, Wearisome, II. 116. Ivongu, II. 407. Lzzuddin Muzafiar suggests paper-money in
Persia, 415-416.
Jacinth, II. 349.
Jacob Baradaeus, 63.
Jacobite Ohristians; at Mosul, 48, 61;
Note on their Church, 63 ; at Tauris, 76;
at Varkand, 196 ; perhaps in China, 280 ;
n. 401; 437,428.
Jadahf Jddd, &c., 300. See Tadah.
Jade stone (Jasper) of Khotan, &c, 198, 199; 800.
Jaeschke, Rev. H. A., 211, 238, 306, 317.
Jaffa, Count of; his brave galley, 58, U/.
Jah&ngfr, 178.
Jaipal, Raja, II. 330.
Jajnagar, II. 421. *
Jalaluddin of Khvarizm, 93; 231.
Jamiluddin Al-Thaibi, II. 316, 333.
Envoy from Ma'bar to Khanbalig, 11.
321.
James of Aragon, King, II. 146, 476.
Jamisfulah (Gauenispola), II. 290.
Jamui Khatun, Kubiai^s favourite Queen; her kindness to the captured Chinese Prin- cesses, 39; 350; II. 134.
Jangama Sect, II. 357.
Janibek Khan of Sarai, 6 ; 343.
Japan (Chipangu, q. v.), II. 886 seqq. ; Eublai's expedition against, 242.
Japanese Paper-money, 4x5.
Jaroslawl, II. 490.
Jasper and Ohaloedony, 198, 800.
Jatolic {Catholioos) of the Nestorians, 61, 63.
Jauchau, II. 225.
Jauzgdn, former cap. of Badakhshan, 164.
Java the Great, is ; described, II. 864 ; its circuit; empires in, 255 ; Kublai's expedi- tion against, >6. ; 256.
— ^ the LiCSS, t. e. Sumatra ; Polo's party touched at, 84; described with its King- doms, II. 864 seqq.\ 266; application of the name, t6. ; later meaning of * Little Java,' 267; 888,871.
the Greater and Lesser; meaning of
these terms, IL 267; 419-420.
; in the sense of the following, II. 420.
ydtco, Jdwi'^ applied by the Arabs to the Islands and products of the Archipelago generally, II. 266.
Jerun, Zarun (the Island on which the later Hormuz stood), 113, 114, 118, 125.
Jerusalem, the World-centre, 1S5,
Jesuit Astronomers in China, II. 544 seqq.
Jesujabus, Nestorian Patriarch, II. 365 ; 40 r.
Jews ; in the Kaan's Camp and Court, 886,
Digitized by
576
JIBAL NaK<JS.
INDEX.
KANPU.
339; in China, 337; at Kaifongfa, and their inscription there, 16.; end of the Synagogue there, 338 ; in Coilum, II. 863; in Abyssinia, 422, 425, 430.
Jibal Nilcufl, 206.
ul-Thabiil, •&.
Jimft, 109, 114, 116.
Jogis (Chughl), Account of, II. 861 9eqq, ;
Johnson, Mr., his yisit to Khotan, 197, 198,
X99, 3or-2o3, 204. Johore, Saltan of, II. 262, 263. Jon Riyer (Jihon or Ozos), U. 466; 464,
466. Jorfattan (Baliapattan), U. 375. JubbR., II. 417. Jugglers; at Kaan's Feasts, 871, 373 ; 878;
and Gleemen conqner Mien (or Burma),
II. 92, 96. Juggling Extraordinary, 308 aeqq. Juji, eldest son of Chinghiz, iO ; 5 ; II. 480. Juju (Ohochau), IL 6; 7; 109, 114. Julman, II. 485. Junghuhn; on Batta Cannibalism, II. 269;
on Camphor Trees, 287. Junks, IL 234, and see Skips, Justinople (Capo d'Istria), «4. Juzgana (Dogana), 159.
* Kaan ' and * Khan ', The Words, d.
Kaan, The Great; see Eublai Eaan.
Kft^P" ; the series of, and their Burial Place, 241; massacre of all met by the funeral party of, ib, ; 242-243.
Kabul, 174; II. 393-
Kachkar, or Wild Sheep {OvU VigneC), 171.
Kadapah, IL 349.
Kafchi-kiie, II. iii.
K&firs of Hindu Kush ; their wine, 89, 162; 1 74.
Kaidu Khan (Caidu), cousin and lifelong opponent of Kublai, 10 \ 191, 194; 196; 216; ploU with Kayan, 823, 3^6; 888; II. 131; his differences with Kublai, 466, and constant aggressions, 466; his real relation to Kublai ; his Death, 45 7 ; end of his House, 16.; account of an expedi- tion of his against the Kaan, 467; and victory, 468; of another expedition, 468 seqq. Historical note, 460 ; the Kaan's re- sentment, 461 ; the story of his Daughter, and her vnlour, 461 8eqq,\ note on her, 463 ; 464 ; sends a Host against Abaga, 466.
Kaifung-lu ; Jews and their Synagogue there,
337; the Siege of, II. 152. Kaikhatu (Kiacatu) Khan of Persia; tf;
seizes the throne, 86, also U. 478 ; not the
lawful Prince, L 86, 38 ; 93 ; his dissolute
character, IL 474; his death, 4B0; his
Paper-Money scheme, I. 415. Kail, see CaiL
Kain, a City of Persia, 87 ; 147. Kaiping-fa (Keibung, Eaiminfu, Eemenfti),
26; 228; 294; 396,^97. Kairat-ul-'Arab, 115.
Kaisarfya (Caesaraeoj Oaaaria), 46, 47, 5c. Kais, see Kish.
Kajjala or Khajlak, a Mongol leader, 107. Kakateya Dynasty, II. 348. Kakhyens, Kachyens, Tribe on west of Ynu-
nan, U. 67 ; 73 ; 74. Kakula, IL 259. Kaia'a Safed, 86. Kalajan (Oalaohan), 272, 273. Kalantan, II. 260. Kalinur, IL 421. falchi, ^alakchi, 368. Kales Devar, King of Ma'bar, IL 316; 317;
318; his enormous wealth, 333. Kalgan or Chang-kia-keu, 286 ; IL 538. Kalhdt (Kalh&tii, Calatu, Calaiate), 124, H. 333; described, 448, 449; idiom of; i&.;4M. Kalidasa on the Yak, 270. KiUkiit, IL 375 ; 381; 436; 437- Kdlim or Kdlin (marriage priced 248 ; 378. Kalinga, IL 311, 312. Kalinjar IL 420.
KcUmia angtutifolia, Poisonous, 220. Kalugah, IL 537. Kamarah, Komar, U. 259. Kambala, grandson of Kublai, 353. Kambayat (Cambay), IL 389. Kamboja, II. 117, 259, 363. Kamul (Komal, Camul), 212; looee cbi-
racter and customs, »&.; 213 ; 216. J^andt, or Karez, 1 28. Kan&t-ul-Sh4m (Oonoealmi), 109. Kanauj, IL 421. Kanbalu Island, II. 407. Kanchau (Campioho, q. y.), 222, 273. Kandahir, Kandar, IL 59.
' — >n. 310; 393.
Kandy, IL 311.
Kanerkes or Kanishka; Coins of, 183. Kanghi, Emperor, 393 ; IL 6 ; 166. Kank, 201.
Kanpu (Ganpu), old Port of HangchaUt H- 181.
Digitized by
KANSUH.
INDEX.
KHAZARS.
sn
|
Kansuh, 209, 223. |
K&reripattanam, IT. 319. |
|
Kao-Hoshang, 408. |
Kayal, Kail, see Catt. |
|
Kaoyn (Cayu), 11. 136. |
Pattanam, II. 359. |
|
Kapilavastu, II. 304. |
-^-, Punnei-, II. 359. |
|
Kapukada, Capucate, II. 368. |
Kayteu, U. 216. |
|
Karabugha, Carabaga, Calabra, a military |
Kazan, 7. |
|
engine, II. 153. |
Kaz&winah, 103. |
|
Kari-Huiun, II. 485. |
Kaxwln (Oasvin), 84, 85 ; 103 ; 147-! |
|
Karajang (Oariyan, i.^. Yunnan), to, and see |
Kehran, II. 421. |
|
Carajan, |
Keiaz Tribe, 188. |
|
Karakhitaian Empire, 330 ; 11. 540. |
Keibung, see Kaiptng-fu, |
|
Princes of Kerman, 93. |
Eelinfii (Kienning-fu), 11. 908.; |
|
KaraKhoja, 216. |
EemenfU, see Kcnping-fa. |
|
Kar& ^omm (Oaraooron), 887, 228 ; 861 ; |
Kem Kern jut (Chingintalas), 11. 538. |
|
11.468,460; 539. |
KeujaBlti, ie. Singan-fu, II. 17, 18, 21 seqq. |
|
fard ^umizy a kind of drink, 25 2. |
Keraits, a great Tartar Tribe, 231, 232, 263, |
|
Karimdren (Caramoran, q. r.), the Hwang- |
278, 279. |
|
ho. |
Kerala, 11. 379. |
|
KaranOj meaning of, 103. |
Kermin, 87 ; 80; described, 91, 92 ; capiul, |
|
Kardni (vulgo Cranny), 16. |
ib. ; history ; steel of; manufactures, 96- |
|
Karanilt, a Mongol Sept, 102. |
98; 109; 119, 118, 113 seqq.; vessels |
|
Karaiin Jidun (or Khidun), t&. |
of, 119; 1 24-126; Desert of, 197; King |
|
Kar&unahs (Caraonas), a robber tribe, 89 ; |
(or Atabeg) of, 111, 118 ; U. 448, 449. |
|
88, 102 ieqq.; 126. |
to Hormuz, Route from, 99, 98-100, |
|
Karcmat, an instrument for self-decoliation. |
110, 118, 113 seqq. |
|
II. 334. |
Keshioan, the Kaan's Life-Guard, 866 ; true |
|
Karens, II. 59. |
form and proper etymology of word, |
|
Karmathian Heretics, 195. |
366-367; 880,381. |
|
Kamdl, II. 348. |
Kesmacoran (Mekrin), 87; U. 899; is |
|
Karrah, II. 421. |
Kij'Makrdn, 393 «d^.; 420. |
|
Manikpiir, 87. |
* Khakan,' The Word, 9. |
|
Kartazonon, Karkaddan (Rhinoceros), II. 273. |
Khalif (Calif of the Saracens, or of Baiidaft) |
|
Kasaidi Arabs, II. 440. |
of Baghdad {i.e. Mosta'sim Billah), 64; |
|
Kdsh (ije. Jade), 199. |
taken by Hulaku (Alan) and starred to |
|
Kashan, 82. |
death, 65. How a former — laid a plot |
|
Kashgar (Cascar), 188, 1915 II. 457; Chaw |
against the Christians, 70 seqq. ; its mira- |
|
kans of, 200. |
culous defeat ; he becomes secretly a Chris- |
|
Xashish, Kashis, 71 ; II. 401. |
tian, 71 |
|
Kashmfr (Keahimur), 100, io6; 178, 175 ; |
EWij, the word, II. 435. |
|
described, 175 seqq. ; the people and their |
Khan Badshah of Khotan, 197. |
|
sorceries; the country the source of |
Khanfu, U. 181. |
|
Idolatry (ue. Buddhism), 176, 177-180; |
Khanikoff, Mr. N. de, 136 ; Notes on Polo, 5 r, |
|
Language, 177. |
75» 9h 98, 103, lod, 107, 108, 117, 125, |
|
Kashmfris, 77 ; 175 seqq. |
127, 145, 148. |
|
Kasia People and Hills, 300; U. 51. |
|
|
Kasyapa Buddha, U. 342. |
128. |
|
Kataghan, 170. |
KhdnkAdndn, a title, 10. » |
|
Katif; II. 333. |
Khan-oolla; site of Tomb of Chinghiz, 243. |
|
KattUwir, 11. 385 ; Pirates, 391. |
Khansi, Khanzai (Kinsay, q. v.), II. 181, |
|
Kaidam (Coilum, q. v., Quilon, &c.), II. 315; 365««Vy.; 375, 395»437. |
196, 197, &C. |
|
Kharesem, 163. |
|
|
Mal^, II. 365. |
Khato Tribe, II. 103. |
|
Kauli (Oauly), i.e. Corea, 885, 336. |
Khitun-gol (Lady's Rirer, i.e, Hwang-ho), |
|
Kannchi Khan (Gonohi), II. 478, 480. |
240. |
|
Kireri R., DelU of, II. 318. |
Khazars, II. 493. |
VOL. II.
2 P
Digitized by
578
KHINSA.
INDEX.
KINS AY.
Khinsa, Khingsai, Khinzai (Einflay, q. v.),
II. 127, r6o, 196 seqq. KhiUn, Khitai, 11.
— Dynasty of Liao, 230, 279 ; II. 15 ; 542.
Character, 29.
Khmer (Komar, Kamboja), II. 259, 372.
Khojas, name of the modern Ismaelite sect, 15 3.
Khorasan, 38, 131, 135, 141, 156; II. 465,473-
Khormuzda, the Supreme Deity of the Tar- tars, 249.
Khotan (Cotan); described, 196; Routes between — and China, 198; Buried Cities of, 199; Jade of, 197, 199; 202; 204
Khumbayati (Cambay), II. 389.
Khumdan, II. 2i«
Kiaoatu, see Kaikhatu,
Kiai-chau, 11. 21 ; 542.
Kiaking, Emperor, II. 126.
I^iang, the Great (Kian and Klan-Suy, and in its highest course BiiUB, the Kinsha Kiang), II. 80, 32; 39; 47; 51; 55, 561 58; 112, 113; 132} 138; 164; its vast- ness and numerous craft, 166, 156-158 ; steamers on, 158; its former debouchure to the south, and changes, 181-182. See also Kmsha,
Kiangch^, IL 139; 2oi ; Limits of, 202, 207; 214.
Kiang-Hung, Xieng-Hung, II. loi ; no,
III, 112; 114 Kiangka, II. 39.
Kiang-mai (Zimmd, Xieng>mai), II. 100, 11 j ;
260. Kiangshan, II. 206. Kiangsi, II. 207, 209. Kiangtheu, II, 87; 93; 95- Kiang-Tung, II. 100. Kiaochi, i.e, Tungking ; Chinese etym. of, II.
lor; in. Kiayu-kuan, 177. Kichau, U. 20.
Kienchang (Calndu), II. 50, 51, 57, 58. Kien-chau, II. 214 Kien-kw^, t6.
Kienlung, Emperor, IL 6, 1 79. Kienning-fu (Kelinfu), II. 808, 209. Kij-Makran, see Eeamaooran. Kiliraanchi R., IL 417. Kin (or Golden) Dynasty in Northern China,
11; (Altun) 225 ; 279; their Paper-Money,
412; story of the Golden King, IL 13 seqq. ;
14, 19, 21; 152; 542. Kuicha (Ch. name for Kipchaks), II. 164 Kinchi or * Gold-Teeth,* see ZaroUmdan. King of the Abraiaman, IL 860.
King of France, Kublai's messages to, 84.
of England, do. i5. ; Intercourse with
Mongol Princes, 35 ; IL 476.
of Spain, do., t6.
Kings, Subordinate, or Viceroys, in China, 862, 353; 11. IB, 19, 24; 62; 02, 65; 178, 182.
of Maabar, the Five Brothers, IL 818,
315, 318, 321; 828, 828, 827, 867, 868; their mother's efforts to check their bpcnls, 868.
King, Rev. C. W., 359.
Kingsmill, Mr. T. W., IL 138; 168; 178; 204.
Kingsz^ II. 13T ; 176. See JDhsay.
King-te-ching Porcelain Manufacture, IL 225.
Kinhwa-fii, IL 206.
Kinsay {Kingsze or ' Capital,' Khansi, Khin- 64, Ehingsai, Khanzai, Cansay, CampsayX i.e. the city then called Linggan, nov called Hangchau-fu, 11 ; II. 129 ; its sur- render to Bayan, t\, 131 ; extreme public security, 180; 134; 139; alleged mean- ing of the name, 166, 167, 160; Descrip> tion of, 169 stqq.'y Bridges, •&.; Guilds and wealthy craftsmen, their dainty wives; the Lake, its Islands and Garden-Houses, 170 ; Stone-Towers ; People, their clothing and food ; Guards, and Police-regulatioiis, 171; Fires; Alarm-Towers, 172 ; Revenues; Pavements; Public Baths; the Port of Ganfu; the Province of — , and other Provinces of Manzi, 1,78; Garrisons ; Horo- scopes ; Funeral rites, 174 ; Palace of the expelled King; vast Census, 176.; Church; House Registers; Hostel Regulations, 176; Notes : Name ; Limits of the city at vahoos periods ; Bridges, 1 78 ; Hereditary trades ; Lake Sihu, 179; profusion of silks, 180; Charities; Pavements; Baths, 181 ; the Estuary and Sea-port; changes in the Great Kiang ; Provinces of S. China, 182 ; Garrisons ; Funeral customs, 183 ; Census tickets. Further Partkuktrs, 183 «*??.; Canals ; Market-places and Markets, 184 ; fruits and fish ; shops, 186 ; Women of the Town; City Courts, 186; immense daily consumption; character of People; behaviour to Women, and to Foreigners, 187 ; dislike to Soldiers ; Pleasures on the Lake, and in carriage excursions; Palace of the King, 188; his effeminate divo^ sions, 186; ruined state, 190. Xctes: These additions from Uamusio; Tides, 191; Plan of Hangchau ; public carriages.
Digitized by
KINSAY.
INDEX.
KtTBLAI RAAN.
579
1 94. Position, and Map of the Sung Palace,
1 95 ; Notices of Kinsny by other toriters :
Odoric; Archbp. of Soltania, 196; Mari-
gnoUi ; Wassdf; Nuthat-ul-Kulub, 197;
Masdlak'Ul-Ahsdr ; Ibn Batata; Martini;
Ships of, 287, 846. Kinsay, Reyenue of, 178, 178; Details,
19^ seqq, , Province of; 178; 199, 800; 908,
204,807; 818. Kinsha Kiang (Upper Br. of Great Kiang;
Brius), 32, 39»5i»55»58. Kinshan, see ^Oolden /sl<inV Kinto or Uintu, general against Japan, II.
242. Kipchak (Ponent, q. v.) ; Events in, related
by Polo, S2y 6, and II. 491 seqq, ; People of,
493 ; Extent of Empire, 494. Kirghiz, 300 ; II. 349-
Kazaks, 304.
Kiria, 199, 301.
Kffi, Kish, or Kais (Klsi, Kiflhi), an Island
in Persian Gulf, 04; story of the city, 66 ;
80; II. 316; 884,333; 857,461. Kishiky Kishikany Kiziky Keshikchi, see Keshi-
can. Kishm (Casern), 161 ; its position, 163 ;
164; 182. Kishm or Brakht, an Island in the Pers. Gulf,
125. Kistna R., II. 349. Kiuchau, II. 206. Kiuian (Quilon, Ooflum, q. v.). Kneeling oxen, 99, 101. Kobdo, 217.
Koh-Ban&n (Cobinan), 188, 129. Kokcha R., 162, 163, 164, 170. Kok- Task or * Green Stone * of Samarkand, 1 95 . Kolastri or Kolatiri Rajas, II. 376 ; 550. ^o/Mo» of Ptolemy identified, II. 360. Kollam, see Coilum. Koloman, see Coloman. Kolyma, Bird-hunting at, 264. Kc6fuucoK, II. 380. Komir, II. 259, 372. Kofidpia &Kpoy, II. 372. Konkan, II. 353, 354; 380, 386; and Kon-
kan-Tana, 386. Koranoy The epithet, on Indo-Scythic coins,
103. Komish or Kow-tow^ 379. Kosakio, a general against Japan, 11. 242. Koshduking, Astronomer, II. 545. Kosseir, II. 435. Kotlogh or Kutlugh, Sultan of Kerman, 93.
Kotlogh Shah, 106, 126.
Kotrobah, Island of, II. 401.
Kiiblli (Cublay) K£an, the Great Eaan, », 10, 11, 16; 19-22; Papal Missions io, 115; his Envoys fall in with the Two Elder Polos, 10 ; his reception of these, 11 ; sends them back as Envoys to the Pope, 18 ; de- sires Christian Teachers; gives them a Golden Tablet, 16; his death announced, 39; his greatness and power, 189, 191, 196, 197; 816; 841, 894, 888; 352 ; fore- told by Chinghiz, 323 ; Inscription of his at Shangtu, 295 ; hb lineage and accession, 824, 325 ; Age; hears of Nayan's Plot, 886; previous Campaigns, 326; marches against Nayan, 887 ; sui-prises him, 888-889 ; de- feats and captures him, 880-881 ; puts him to death, 886 ; rebukes gibes against the Christians, ib. ; returns to Cambaluc, 888 ; goes no more to the wars ; treats Four Re- ligions with equal respect, 339; views ex- pressed by him regarding Christianity, and his desire for learned missionaries, 18,339; Religion a matter of policy with him, 339- 340 ; rewards his Captains, 841-848 ; per- sonal appearance, 848 ; Wives, t6. and 350 ; selection of Damsels, for his service, 848, 350; his Sons, 861; full list of them, 353; his Palaces at Cambaluc, see Palace ; builds Cambaluc, 861 ; his Body-guard, 866 ; the order of his Feasts, 868 ; celebra- tion of his Birth-day, 878 ; adopts Chinese Ancestor-Worship, 379; his distribution of Robes, 874, 880 ; his New-Year Feast, 876 ; his Elephants, 877; his Hunting Establish- ments, 884-898 ; how he goes on a Hunt- ing expedition, 890; dbtribution of his time through the year, 896 ; influence of Ahmad over him, 401 ; his condemnation of Ahmad -after the latter's death, 406; his severities towards the Mahomedans, 16. and 408 ; Chinese view of Kublai*s Administration, 409 ; his Mint and Paper- Money, 409 seqq. ; his purchases of valu- ables, 411 ; his twelve Barons who admi- nister, 417 ; his Posts and Runners, 419 ; his remissions of Taxation, 486; his Justice, 426; plants trees by highways, 486; stores Corn to issue in dearth, 489; charity to the Poor, 481 ; provides for numerous astrologers, 488; his gaol-deliveries and prohibition of gambling, 488; his Early Campaign in Vunnan, II. 38 ; 64 ; 65 ; 81 ; 98; 97; 118; sends Buyan to invade Manzi, 188; his dealings with Bayan, 131; his
2 P 2
Digitized by
580
KtlBLAl KAAN.
INDEX.
LANGUAGE.
satisfaction with the Mangonels made by the Polos for the capture of Siangjang, 141; 151, 152; leS, 169; 171, 172, 178, 174; 186, 187; 190; his revenues from Kinsay, 199; 208 ; his revenue, segq,] from Zayton and its Province, 817-218; his Expedition against Chipangu (Japan), 287 seqq, ; sends a Force against Chamba, 249, 251; could not get Java, 264; his dis- astrous attempt, 219; his death stops pro- ceedings, 16.; 287; he sends to buy the Great Ceylon Ruby, 296, 298; sends to Ceylon for reliques of Sakya, 801, 311; testifies to miraculous powers of Sakya's Dish, 802; his communications with Ma'bar, 321, and with Kaulam, 368 ; his missions to Madagascar, 406; Kaidu's differences and frequent wars with him, 466 seqq.', his wrath against Eaidu, 461 ; his Milk-Liba- tions, L 291, II. 543 ; his Astronomical Instruments, $44.
Kiibl&i K4&n, Territories and people subject
" to, (in TurklBtan), 189, 196, 197, 202; (In Tangut and Mongolia) 206, 214, 219; 261, 266, 272, 276, 276; 417; (On the Tibetan Frontier and Yunnan) II. 42, 44, 62, 62, 89, 91; 9p, 101, 106; (Western China) 108, 109; (N. Eastern China) 116, 117, 121, 122, 128, 124; (In Manzi, or Southern China) 186, 186, 187; 164, 169, 161, 168, 166; (Chekiang) 171, 208 ; (In Fokien) 208, 218, 217 ; Champa, 249 ; (Sumatra), 266, 274, 276, 282, 279.
*s Palaces, see Palaces.
Kuch^, character of People of, 213.
Kudatku Bilik, an Uighur Poem, 29.
Kukachin, see Oooachin.
Kiikin-Tana, IL 386.
Kukju, son of Kublai, 353.
Kuku-Khotan, 277. See Kwei-^wa-ching.
Kdl&b; Salt Mines, 162.
J^uldn or Asinus Onager, 91.
Kulasaikera, IL 318.
Kumir, see fotnar,
kumhari, Kumari (Comarl), II. 372.
^unUz, Kimiz (Kemiz), the Tartar beverage, 249, 250-252; sprinkling of, 300; 372.
Kiimmijar, II. 49^.
Kunduz, 160-163 ; -Baghlin, 87.
^unduz (Beaver or Sable), 395.
Kungurits, Kunkurats (XJngrat), a Mongol Tribe, 38; 102; 350.
Kuniya (Iconium, Conia), 46, 47 1 347-
Kiinbum Monastery, 311.
Kunlun (Pulo Condore), II. 258.
Kurdistan, see Ourds.
Kuria Mtiria Islands, U. 396.
Kuridai, son of Kublai, 355.
furkah or Great Drum, 332, 333.
Kurmishi, U. 473.
Kurshids of Liiristan, 86.
^urut, Tartar curd, 250, 264, 257.
Kus or Cos (in Egypt), II. 435.
Kushluk, the Naiman, II. 542.
Kutan, son of Okkodai, U. 36.
Kutuktemur, son of Kublai, 353.
Kutulun, Princess, IL 463.
Kuwinji, see KavmchL
Kwachau (in Kansuh), 273.
(Caiju), at mouth of G. Canal or th«
Yangtse Kiang, IL 127, 159. Kwansin-fu, IL 205, 206. Kwawa, i.e. Java, Chin. etym. of, IL roo. Kweichau (Cuyu) and Kwangsi, IL 107;
108; 110-114. Kwei-hwa-ching, or Kuku-Khotan, 269, 277,
379. Kweilei R., 337. Kyahing, II. 168.
Lao (Wallachia), IL 487, 490, 491.
Ladies of Kinsay, IL 170.
Ladies' dresses in Badakhshan, 168, 172.
Lagong, IL 260.
Lahore, 107, 108; II. 420, 431.
Lahsa, IL 333.
Lake ; of Palace at Cambcauc, 866, 359.
, Fanchan, II. 23.
of Yunnan-fu, IL 68, 58.
of Caindu, II. 44, 58.
ofTalifu, IL65.
of Kinsay (Sihu), IL 170, 179, 188;
Boats and pleasure parties on, 187, 193; 197, 198. .
Laknaoti, IL 431.
Lamas of Tibetan Buddhism ; their supersti- tions and rites, 207, 209 seqq. ; 221, 223 seqq.; their magic, 292, 306; Married — 298, 311; Red — , see Bed, see also BacsL
Lambri, Km. of, (in Sumatra, also Lamuri, Lamori, &c), IL 269; 277; 280; 281; its position, &c, 283; 288; 289; 290, 291.
Lanoes of Sago-Palm, II. 288.
Lanchang, IL 260.
Langdarma, 178, 180.
Langting-Batghasun, 396 ; its position, 197.
Language of Polo's Book, Original, 79 m??-
Digitized by
LANGUAGES.
INDEX.
LOCKHART.
581
Languages ; used in Mongol court and admi* nistration, 28, 39 ; studied by Chinese, 39.
Lan-Ho, 196.
Lanja-Balus or Lankha Balus, II. 390, 393.
Lanka (Ceylon), II. 303.
Lanner Faloons, 106, 226 ; II. 4L
Lao-Kiun, or Lao-Tseu, the Philosopher, 314, 318, 319.
Laos, II. 75; 100; loi; iii; 359. See Shan,
Lar, Province of, II. 350; apparent con- fusion about, 353 ; 394.
or Lat-Desa, II. 353.
Larike, ib,
Latin Versions of Polo's Book, 61; 79; 88; 99; 9S; 100; and see Pipmo.
Latins, the tei-m, 10, 1 1, 12, 81.
Laurato, P., Picture by, S6.
Laurua Cixmphora, II. 319.
Lawek, Lawdkiy II. 359-360.
Laxities of marriage customs, see Marriage.
Layard, Mr., 86.
Lasras, see Ayas.
Leather, Fine and embroidered, exported from Guzerat, II. 888, 384; from Tana, 886; from Cambay, 888.
Leaves ; used for plates, II. 862 ; Green — , said to have a soul, t&.
Le Blunt or Le Blond, Gasses, 57.
Lecomte on the Instruments at Peking Ob- servatory, II. 544 aeqq,
Lelewel, Joachim, 1S8,
Lembeser, Ismaelite fortress, 153.
Lenzin, II. 123.
Leon I., K. of Little Armenia, 44.
U., do., do., 46.
. VI., last ditto, 44.
Leopards, n. 871, 404, 426.
, Hunting (or Cheetas), 290, 884.
Leung Shan, 340.
Levant ; term applied by Polo to the Km. of the Mongol Khans of Persia, 6, 8; 10; 82, 86; 46; 66; 86; 241; 262; IL 42; 864; 464; 476; 482; 406; ^i-
Levy at Venice, Method of, U-^. .
Lewchew, II. 381.
Leyes, see Ayas.
Lhasa; Monasteries at, 311 ; II. 37, 51.
Li, the Chinese Measure; supposed to be confounded with Miles, IL 176, 179, 191.
liampoo (Ningpo), IL 309, 323.
lAang or Taely 413, 413.
Liangchau-fu, 367, 373.
Liao Dynasty, 11; 330, 379; II. 542.
Liaotong, 336, 336.
Libanos, AifiavopSpos and hi$av^o^6pos
xApa, n. 443, 444. Libro (fOro, U. Lid^, II. 38a, 388. Lieuli-ho,1I. 5. Lign-saoes; IL 72; 217; 246; 260, 353;
from Lawak, 360 ; in Sumatra, 264, 368 ;
373; 318. Ligor, U. 259, 360. Ligurium, Stone called, 385. Ltkamanktoas of Abyssinian Kings, II. 333. Likiang-fu, IL 51; 59; 74. Lime used for offence at Sea, S6. Limyrioa, IL 400. Lindsay, Hon. R., II. 38, 61. iin^a, IL 357. Linju, U. 122, 133.
Lin-ngan, in Yun-nan, II. 103, 104, 113. — ^ (Hangchau), II. 131 ; 176. Lintching-y, or Linching-hien, II. 133. Lint'singchau, II. I3i, I33. Lion taught to do obeisance to the
Kaan, 881, 383. Lions; on the Oxus, 168, 159; IL 404;
426 ; Chinese notion of, 1. 386. (apparently for Tigers in following pas- sages); trained to hunt, 884, 386; skins
of, striped, 891 ; IL 80, 84; how hunted
with dogs, 108; 197; 208; 207; 208;
871; 876.
, Black, H. 864, 871 ; 416.
Lion and Sun, 343.
Lion's Head Tablets, 86, 842, 343.
ZiW, various Venetian, 64, 69; II. 534, 535.
of Gold, 71. See Livres.
Lismore, Book of, 100.
Lissu or Lisau Tribe, II. 5 r, 74.
Litan, Rebellion of, 304 ; II. 118, i3o.
Lithang, U. 39, 48, 55-
Little Orphan Rock, II. 158.
Liu-pang, IL 35.
Liu-pi, ib. and 36.
Livredes Merveilles, 117; IL 518.
Livres Toumois, 84, 88 ; II. 5 33-5 34*
Parisis, 88, II. 534-
ofGk)ld,II. 439-
Zo, Tribes of S. W. China so-called*, II. 105 ;
107; 113. ; Chin. Name of part of Siam, II. 358,
359. Lob, see Lop. Locac, Em. of, II. 266, 358-361; 261,
363. Lockhart, Dr. W., 360. 365, 414; II. 6; 31 ;
67; 107.
Digitized by
582
LOESS.
INDEX.
MAHOMEDANS.
Loessy singular surface formation, so called,
II. lo. XoA(jA, II. 258-259. Lolo Tribes, II. 40 ; 49 ; 51; 57; 107. Longevity of Brahmans and Jogis, IL
851, 362. Lop, City (and Lake) of, 901, 202, 304.
, Desert of, 202, 212, 214, 225.
Lophaburi, II. 259, 260.
Loping, II. 112, 113.
Lor (Lurist&n), a Km. of Persia, 84, 86.
Loredano, Agnes, 77.
, perhaps the name of Polo's wife Donata,
68,77,
Loups-oervlers, 385.
Low Caates, II. 335.
Lowatong, K., II. 113.
Loyang, Bridge of, II. 223.
Luang Prabang, II. 260.
Luhdn, II. 443, 446 ; — Jdwi, II. 266.
Lubbies, II. 3 $9.
Lucky cmd Unlucky Hours and Days,
II. 860, 861. Ludder Deo, II. 348.
Luh-ho-ta Pagoda, at Hangchau, II. 177. Lukyu-Kao (Pulisanghin), II. 5. Ldristan (Lor), 86; Great and Little, «6.;
87 ; character of Liirs, or people of^ 86, 87. Ldt, Desert of, 127. Lutze Tribe, II. 67. Lynxes trained to hunt, 884, 385.
Ma^bar (Maabar, i. e. Coromandel Coast), a Great Province of India, II. 818 ; its Five Brother Kings, t6., 291, 867, 858; 315, 318, 321; Pearl Fishery, 814, 318,321; Etym. of Name, 313 ; limits of, t&. ; ob- scurity of history, 316 seqq,\ Port of, visited by Marco Polo, 318; Nakedness of people, 822; the King, 822; his Jewels; his many wives, 828 ; his Trusty Lieges ; great Treasure; Importation of Horses, 824; superstitious customs; Ox-Worship, 825; The Govis; no horses bred; other customs, 826 ; singular mode of arrest for debt, 827 ; great heat ; regard for Omens ; Astrology, 828 ; treatment of boys ; Birds of the country ; girls consecrated to idols, 829; customs in sleeping, t&.; 338; 888, 846, 860; 868, 868; 868; 394; 417; 419; 421; ships of, 404.
Maatum^or Nubia, II. 425.
Machin, Mahichin (t. e. Great ChinaX naed often by Persian writers as synon. with Manzi, q. v. 77; II. 28; 127; 160; 177.
Machin, City of (i.e. Canton), IL 160.
Maclagan, M.-Gen. Robert, R.E., 107, 163.
Madagascar (Madelgasoar) ; described, IL 408 seqq, ; confused with Magadoxo, 406 ;
552-
Madai, Madavi, Maudoy, IL 375, 376.
Madjgaria, II. 492.
Madra, 106.
Madras, II. 341, 345.
Madura, U. 316, 317, 318, 319.
Maestro (or Great Bear), said to be invisible in Sumatra, II. 274; explanation q% 279.
Magadoxo, confused with Madaga&car, IL 406.
Magadha, II. 342.
Magellanic Cloud ; as drawn by Marco Polo, 116 \ 117,
Magi; Tomb of the, 79; Legend of the, A. seqq,; as told by Mas'udi, 82; source of fancies about, 83 ; Names assigned to, 84.
Magic; of Udyana, 173; Lamaitic, 292, 306 seqq. See Sorcerers.
Magnet Mountain, IL 411.
Magyars, II. 492.
Mahar Amlak, King of Ab3r8sinia, 11. 431.
Mahavan, II. 420.
Mahmud, Prince of Hormuz, 124-125.
of Ghazni, II. 390-391.
Mahmudiah Canal, IL 435.
Mahomed (Mahommet) ; his acconnt of Gog and Magog, 56; his Paradise, 146; his alleged prophecy of the Mongols, 258 ; his use of mangonels, II. 147.
, Supposed Worship of idols of, 196.
II. uses the old Engines of War, IL 144,
150.
Tughlak of Dehli; his Copper Tokea
Currency, 416 ; II. 332.
Shah of Malacca, IL 263.
Mahomedan; Revolts in China, II. 23, 60, 65 ; — conversion of Malacca, 263 ; of Ststes in Sumatra, 265, 269, 276, 277, 28?, 285 ; — butchers in Kashmir, L 177, aad Maabar, 11. 826 ; — merchants at Kayal, 359; —King of Kayal, 361; — settle- ments on Abyssinian Coast, 430.
Mahomedans (Saraoens); in Tnrcomania, 45; in and near Mausul, 61, 68; xhtar universal hatred to Christians, TOl 74; IL 422, 484, 485; in Tauria, L 76; ii Persia, 86; their hypocrisy about wise; at Yezd, 89; at Hormuz, 111; ai Cobinan, 128; in Tonocain, 181; at
Digitized by
MAILAPUR.
INDEX.
MANZI.
583
Sapnrgan, 166; at Taican, 100; in . Badakhshan, 165 ; in Wakhan, &c., 180 ; in Kashghar, 189 ; in Samarkand, and their strife with the Christians about a fine stone, 191 ; in Tarkand, 195 ; and Khotan, 106 ; in Pein, 197 ; in Charchan, 800 ; in Lop, 308; in Tangnt, 907; in Chingin- talas, 814; in Kanchau, 881; 865; in Erguinl, 966 ; in Sinja, ib. ; in Tendnc, and their half-bred progeny, 875 ; on N. Fron- tier of China, alleged origin of, 279 seqq.\ their gibes at Christians, 885 ; 898 ; 408 ; Kublai's dislike to, 405, 408 ; in Yunnan, IL 68, 53, 59, 60; in Champa, 250; in Sumatra, neeMahomedan ; Troops in Ceylon, 896 ; Pilgrims to Adam's Peak, 898, 801 ; honour St. Thomas, 888 ; 888 ; in Kesma- coran, 398 ; in Madagascar, 408 ; in Abys- sinia, 481 ; and Aden, 488 and 484 ; outrage by, and punishment from K. of Abyssinia, 488 aeqq. ; at Esher, 489 ; Dufar, 441 ; at Calatu, 448; at Hormuz, 450; Ahmad Sultan is one, 465 ; 501, 508.
Mailapur (shrine of St. Thomas), U. 341 seqq.
Maistre, The Word, II. 279.
MiMtreya Buddha, II. 313.
Majapahit, Empire of (Java), II. 255.
Majar (Men jar), n. 492; doubts about the name, 16. ; cities so called, ib.
Major, R. H., on Australia, II. 261.
Makdashau, see Magadoxo,
Malabar (Melibar, Malibar, Manibar), n. 878, 379 ; Products and imports, 879, 380 $eqq. ; Pirates of^ 878 ; extent, 379 ; Chinese ships in» 375> 381; 394; 419; Princes in, 420.
Malacca ; Gold in, II. 260 ; 262 ; Chronology of, discussed, 263 ; 381.
, Straits of; II. 262.
MaUdnr, Island and City, II. 861, 262 ; the name, 264.
Malapaga, a Prison at Genoa, 1,9.
Malasgird, 152.
Malay; Peninsula, II. 258; — Chronicle, 260, 263, 268, 269, 270, 276, 283, 285, Inrasion of Ceylon, 297 ; — origin of many geographical names in use, 296.
Malayo, or Tana Malayu, 11. 263.
Malcolm, Sir John, II. 337.
Maldire Islands, their number, II. 419.
Mal^ (in Burma), II. 93, 95.
Mala and Female Islands, II. 898 ; de- scribed, 895 teqq. ; the Legend widely dif- fused, 397 seqq. ; 408 ; 409-
Mali&ttan,n. 316.
Malik al Dhahir,K.ofSamudra,II. 270; 276.
Salih, do. II. 270, 276, 277.
Manstir, II. 270, 276.
^Kafur, n. 316.
Malpiero, Gasparo, u,
Malte-Brun, 109 ; 88.
Malwa, II. 420,421.
Mamaseni, 86.
Mamre, The Tree of, 136, 142.
Man, Col. Henry, II. 291, 294.
Mdn (Barbarians), IL 105, 127.
Mancopa, II. 283, 288.
Mandal^ (in Burma), II. 312.
Mandarin hmguage, II. 226, 228.
Mangalai, son of Kublai, :eo ; 353 ; n. 19, 23.24.
Mangalore, IL 375.
Mangi, see ManzL
Mangla and Nebila, Islands, IL 397.
Mangonels ; on board Galleys, se ; made by Polos for attack of Saianfu, II. 141, 143 ; 146 ; etym. of, 147 ; 153 ; 165. See ift/i- iary Engines.
Mangu Kaan (Mftngkii, Mongu), elder Brother of Kublai, 10,11; 62 ; 152 ; 818; 228; 232; his death, 240; reign, and massacre at his funeral, 848, 243 ; 343 ; IL26; 88,38.
^Temur (Mungnltemur), IL 491, 493
497, 499.
Manjanik (and ManjanikC), II. 147; 152; — Kumgha, 153; Western, »5. See Man- gonels.
Manjarur,IL375, 437.
Manjushri, Bodhisatva, II. 247.
Manphul, Pandit, 162, 164, 168, 170, 172.
Mantz^, Mants^ Aborigines, II. 51, 52 ; 127.
ManufiBustures, The Eaan's, 481.
Manuscripts of Polo's Book, 79 aeqq,y 88 $eqq, ; IL 517-521.
— of different works, Comparatire Num- bers of, lis,
Manzl (or Mangi), a name applied to China south of the Hwang-ho, held by the native Sung Dynasty till 1276, 5; IL 7; Wlllte City of the — Frontier, 87, 28; 89; 40; 181; 188; 187; entraoce to, 185; the name, 127; Conquest of, 188 seqq,; 185,186,188, 140, 161, 168, 165; 151; Character of the People of, 165, 187; divided into Nine Kingdoms, 178; its 1200 cities, and its garrisons, »&.; 176; 190; 800; 808; no sheep in, 804; 808; 813; 817; 818; written character and dialects, 818; called Ohin, 845, 247; 8M; Ships
Digitized by
584
MANZI.
INDEX.
MILITARY CNCINES.
and merchants of, in India, 864, 874, 879, 38r; 465. Manzi, The King of, styled Facfiir, II. 127, 134; flees from his capital, 129; his effeminacy and his charity, 128-180 ; dies among the Isles, 180; his Palace at Kin- say, 176, 188 seqq.^ 194-^; his effeminate hahits, 189-190.
, The Queen of, II. 129 ; surrenders,
t6., 134 ; her official report on the City of Kinsay, 169.
— , Princess of, sent with the Polos to Persia, I. 86, 39.
Map ; Data for one in Polo's Book, and con- struction from them, 106 ; alleged — from an original by Polo, 107; of Roger Bacon's, 127 \ — of Marino Sanndo, lt8\ Medicean, 129 ; Catalan, 16., and see s. v. ; Fra Manro's, 150, and see s. v. ; Ruysch's, •ft.; Mercator's, &c., i5/; Sanson's, &c., 1«P; Hereford, /«7, 139. See also Andrea,
Maps ; allusions to, in Polo's Book, II. 228 ; 296, 296; 417; early medieral, cha- racterized, 1S7 ; of the Arabs, ib. ; in the Palace at Venice, 107,
Mapillas or Moplas, II. 359, 369.
Mar Sarghis, II. 139, 162.
Mara Silu, U. 276.
Marabia, Maravia, Maravi, II. 375, 376.
Maramangalum, site of Kolkhoi, II. 361.
Maratha, II. 420.
Mardin (Merdin), 62, 64.
Mare's Milk, Sprinkling of, 291, 800, 896;
II. 543. Margaritone, 22. MarignoUi, John, II. 164; 176, 178; 196;
220, 221 ; 303. Markets in Kinsay, II. 184-186. Market-days, 162; II. 88, 89.
— Squares at Kinsay, IL 184, 191, 196 ; 547.
Marks of SHver, 86 ; II. 888 ; 5 34. Marriage Customs; in Tangut, 246, 248;
of the Tartars, 222, 267 ; in Chamba, II.
249; in India, 864.
— of deceased couples, 269, 260.
— Laxities of different peoples', 198, 200 ; 11.86,39; 46,48,51; W, 61.
Marsden's Ed. of Polo, Ilf ; 59, and passim. Martini ; his Atlas, ISt ; his account of
Hangchau (Kinsay), II. 197; tLad passim. Martyrs, Franciscan, II. 386. Masdlak-ai'Absdr, 88; II. 197, 332, and
passim, Maihhad, 163.
Maslcat, U. 450.
Mastiff Dogs, Keepers of the, 887, 388.
B of Tibet, see Dogs.
Mastodon, Bogged, II. 272. Ma-theUy the t«rm, II. 122. Mati Dwaja, II. 38. See Bashpah Lama. Matitanana, II. 406. Matityna (Martinique), II. 397. Maundevile; more popular than Polo ia Middle Ages, IIU; on the Tre«a of the Sun, 13s ; on the Dry Tree, 136. Mausul or Mosul, Km. of; 48, 61, 62, 63. * MauTenu,' the phrase, II. 15 ; 472. Mayers, Mr. W. F., on Chintz cremation, IL
550; see also 133. Mecchino Ginger, II. 3 70. Mediceo, Portulano, 129. Mekong R., 11. 65 ; r i r. Mekran; often reckoned part of India, II.
393; 394; 396. Mekr&nis, 109.
Melibar, II. 874, 394. See McUahar. Melic, the title, II. 448, 449; 469. Melons, Dried, 166, 157. Meloria, Battle of, 5U. Menangkabau, II. 267 ; 284. Menezes, Duarte, II. 344, Mengki, envoy to Java, II. 255. Menjar (Majar?), II. 492-493- Menuvair and Grosvair, II. 483. Merghuz Boiruk Khan, II. 14. Merkit, Mecrit, Mescript, a Tartar Tribe,
231; 261; 263. *Meshid, 157.
Messengers, Royal Mongol, 36. Miautse, II. 67.
Mien, Amien (Burma); The King of; IL 81 ; his battle with Tartars, 84 seqq, ; the name, 82; Different Wars with Chines*, 88, 93, 95 ; 89; City of —, 91; its Gold and Silver Towers, 92 ; how it was conquervd, ib. Communications and Wars with Mongok, 87 seqq, ; Chinese Notices, i&. and 93 w^^.; III. Mien, in Shonsi, II. 28. Military Engines of the Middle Ageii, Disser- tation on, II. 14} 8eqq.\ Two dasMS, 144; Baiistae or Crossbows ; TY-ebuchets or great slings, described ; Shot used ; carrion and other things projected ; live men; bags c( gold, 146; varieties of construction; the Mangonel; etymology and derivatives.
• The name is properly the same a« that writtn above, more ooneoUj, Miuhhmd,
Digitized by
MILK.
INDEX.
MOSTA'SIM BILLAH.
585
147; the Emperor Napoleon's Experiments ; Tast weights occasionally shot ; great bulk of the engines, 148; great numbers used; heavy discharges maintained, 149; accu- racy of shooting ; growing importance of such artillery; notable passage on romge from Sanudo, 150; late continuance of these mechanical engines. Effect on the Saracens as described in a romance, 150. Account of Kublai's procuring engines to attack Siangyang ; from Chinese and Persian histories, 15 1-15 2 ; not true that the Mon- gols then knew them for the first time, 152 ; former examples; the engine Kara- bvgha, or Cdlabra, 153 ; probable truth as to the noTelty used at Siangyang ; passage firom CJhinese history, t6.
Milk, Portable, or Curd, 8U, 257.
, Rite of Sprinkling Mare's, 891,
300; 896; IL 542.
* Million,' Use of the numeral, 65, and see II. 199-900.
Millione, Milioni, applied as a nickname to Polo and hU 3ook, 5; 5f ; 116; various explanations, 66 ; real one ; employment in a State Record, 66, and II. 509; personi- fied in Venice Masques, 66 \ lit. See pre- ceding heading.
MUlioni, Corte del, «5 seqq.
Min R. (in Szechwan), II. 32 ; 112.
(in Fokien), II. 212, 818, 214, 215.
Minao, 114, 118.
Mines and Minerals, see Iron, Ondaniquey Silcer, Jiubies, Gold, Azure, Asbestos, Tkrquoise, Diamonds, Jasper,
Minever, see Menuvair.
Ming ; the Chinese Dynasty which ousted the Mongols, A.D. 1368; their changes in Peking, }6o, 361; their Paper Money, 414; IL II ; their effeminate customs, 15 ; their expeditions to India, 381; annals,
1. 29, u. 406, 436, 442.
THHinflftn, Eaan's Master of Hounds, 886, 387.
Minjan, Dialect of, 168.
Minotto, Professor A. S., 5; II. 509.
Mint, the Eaan's, 409*
Mintsing-hien, II. 212.
Mirade Stories ; Respecting Fish in Lent, H, 59; of the Mountain moved, 193, 70 seqq. ; of the Girdles of St. Barsamo, 78; of the Holy Fire, 81 ; of the Stone at Samarkand, m, 191 seqq.; at St. Thomas's Shrine, H. 840, 34^} 345*
Mirat, II. 420.
' Mire,' the word, 81.
Mirabolans, II. 377.
Miskdl (a weight), 344; H. 32; 201; 535.
See also Saggio. Misri (sugar-candy), U. 213. Missionary Friars ; Powers conferred on, 88,
23 ; in China in 14th cent., 1S5, II. 138,
220, 223.
Martyrs, 303 ; II. 386.
Moa of N. Zealand, IL 552.
Modun Khotan, 394.
Moghistan, 1x3.
Mohammerah, II. 441.
Mokli, the Jelair, II. 460.
Molebar {Malabar q. v.), II. 420.
Molephatan, II. 420.
Moluccas, II. 247.
Mombasa, II. 417.
Momien, II. 49 ; 77, 78.
Monasteries of Idolaters (Buddhists), 176 ;
807; 881; 277; 898; 811; IL 166, 157;
169, 160; 196. Money Values, see 412 and II. 533 seqq. Mongol ; Power and Subdivision of it, 9-/0;
— Treachery and Cruelty, 62, 158, 258;
n. 165 ; inroads on India, I. 100, 105, 107,
108 ; Fall of the — Dynasty, 296. See
Tartar, and Mungol. Mongotay (Mangkutai), a Mongol officer, IL
118, 120. Mongou Eaan, see Manjku, Monjoie (at Acre), W. Monkeys, II. 866; passed off as pygmies, t6. ;
871, 486. Monks, Idolatrous, 898. See Monasteries. Monoceros and Maiden, Legend of, U. 878,
273. Monophysitism, 63. Monsoons, ts ; IL 846. Monte Corvino, John, Archbp. of Cambaluc.
278; IL 164, 342.
d'Ely,IL375«^7.
Montgomerie, Major, B.E., on Fire at great
Altitudes, 187. Monument at Singanfu, Christian, IL 21-22.
162. Moon, Mountains of the, II. 407, 413. Moplas, see Mapillas. Mortagne, Siege of, IL 149. Moscow, Tartar Matisacre at, IL 494. Mosolins, Stuffii and Merchants so-called,
68,68. Moeque at Tswanchau, IL 224. Mossos, a Tribe, II. 5 1, 74. MoeU'sim Billah, last Khalif of Baghdad;
Digitized by
586
MOSTOCOtTO.
INDEX.
NAYAN.
Story of his Death, 66, 68, 69 ; his aTaricd,
69. MostocottOf 89. Mosul, see Mausul. Motapalle; see Mutflli Moule, Rev. G., IL 177, 178, 179, 180, 191^
192, 19J. Moong MaoroDg, or Pong, Shan Km. o£^ II.
65 ; 95-
Mount, Green, in Palace Grounds at Pe- king, 367, 360.
St. Thomas's, II. 342, 344.
D'Ely, see Monte.
Mountain, Old Man of the, uOy m; 145 seqq. ; his present Representative, 153 seqq.
— Miracle of the, 70, and see 8€qq.
• Road in Shensi, Extraordinary, II. 25-26.
Mourning Customs ; at Hormuz, IIS ; in Tangut, 207 ; at Kinsay, II. 174.
Muang'; Term applied in Shan Coun- tries (Laos and W. Yunnan) to fortified tovns, as
Muang-Chi, II. 55.
Muang or Maung Maorong, II. 95.
Muang Yong, II. 50, 100, iii.
Shung, II. 104.
Mitlahi, Chinese form of the next.
Muldhidah (Mulehet), epithet of Ismaelites, 146, 147, 148.
Mulberry Trees, 409; IL 9; 18.
Mul-Java, IL 334.
Miiller, Prof, ^lax, on the Stories of Buddha and of St. Josafat, II. 305, 308, 309.
Multan, II. 420, 421.
Mdnal Pheasant, 272; desc. by Aelian, »6.
Mung {Nicaed)y 107.
Mungasht, 86.
Mungul (Mongol), 276.
Temur and Mongo-Temur (Mangku-
Temur), II. 491, 497.
Murad Beg, 164, 170, 172.
Murghab R., IL 465.
Mui-ray, Hugh, IL ri6, 123 ; 159; 190, 194; 486.
Murus Ussu (Brius, Upper Kiang), II. 55.
Mus and Merdin (Mush and Mardin), 62,
64. Musa'dd, Prince of Hormuz, 124, 125. Musk; Marco Polo's Lawsuit regarding,
68; IL 509; Earliest mention of, and use
in medicine, I. 270. Animal; described, 267, 270; 366;
U.27, 29; 37; 47. Muslin, 63; IL 349.
Mutfili (Motapall^ but put for TeliogauX IL 319 ; 346 ; story of its diamonds, 347- 348; idenUfied, 348; 394; 417.
Jfuza, II. 400.
Mynibar, II. 419.
Mysore, IL 302.
N.
Nac, Naques, a kind of Brocade, 66, 67;
276, 28$. Nacaires, S8, same as next. Naocara or Kettle-Drum ; The Great, which
signals the commencement of Battle, 389-
330; IL 469; account of, L 331 ; Um word
in European languages, 332. Nakedness of Jogis vindicated by them,
n. 362. Nakshatra^ II. 355. Nalanda, 298. Names, Baptismal, 5U, Nan-Chao, Shan Dynasty in Yunnan, IL 57,
59; 65. Kancouri, II. 291.
Nanghln (Nganking), U. 133, 139. Nangiass, Mongol name of Manxi, q. v., IL
127. Nankau, Archway in Pass of, with Polyglot
Inscription, 29, 444. Nanking; not named by Polo, IL 140; 546. Nanwuii, Lanmoli, (LainbriPX IL J 84, 28a Naobanjan, 86. Naoshirwan, 55. Naphtha, in the Caucasian Country, 43, 5 1.
fire in War, 102.
Napoleon lU., the Emperor; his Researciws
and Experiments on Medieval Engines dl
War, U. 143 aeqq.; 147; 149. Narakela-Dvipa, II. 290. Narkandam, Volcanic Island, II. 294. Narsinga, K. of, IL 331. Narwhal Tusk, the Medieval Unioodm*!
Horn, II. 273. Nasioh, a kind of Brocade, 66, 67; 2ffi»
285. Nasruddin (Nesoradin), an officer in the
Mongol service, IL 84, 87, 93, 96. Nassiruddin, K. of Delhi, If. Natigay, a Tartar Idol, 240, 250; 433; IL
473. Navapa (qu. Lop P), 204. Na versa (Anctzarbus\ 59. Nayan, kinsman of Kublai ; revolts, 326 ; kis
true relation to the Kaan, 376; is s»-
Digitized by
NEARCHUS.
INDEX.
OBI RIVER.
587
prised by Knblai, 889 ; defeated and taken, 834; was a Christian, ib.; the story as given by Gaubil, 3^? ^ P^^ ^^^ death, 885; his Provinces, •&., 336.
Nearchus at Hormuz, 118.
Nebila and Mangla Islands, II. 397.
Neoklaces, Precious, II. 822.
Necuyeran (Nicobar), IL 289 aeqq.
Negapatam, II. 319.
f Chinese Pagoda at, ib.
Negroes described, II. 416.
Negropont, 18, 19; 86.
Nellore, II. 315.
Nemej, Kiemicz (" Ihunb "), applied to Ger- mans by Slavs, II. 494.
Nerghi, Plain of, II. 600.
*Ner%* for Pigs^ II. 192.
Nesoradin (Kasruddin), a Mongol Captain, see Nasruddin.
Nesnds (a goblin), (103), 206 ; II. 409.
Nestorlan Christians ; at Mosul, 48, 61 ; note on, 62; at Tauris, 76; See of, at Eerman, 93 ; in Kashgar, 191 ; at Sa- markand, 191, 194; at Yarkand, 196; in Tangut, 207; at Kamal, 213 ; in Chingin- talas, 216 ; at Sukchor, 219 ; at Kampichu, 221; their diffusion in Asia, 232; among the Mongols, 237, 238-239; at Erguiul, 266; at Sinju, t6. ; in Egrigaia, 272; in Tenduc, 276 ; and east of it, 276 ; in China, 278; in Yachi or Yunnanfu, II. 52; at Cacanfu, 116; at Yangchau, 138; one in the suite of the Polos, 141 ; Churches of, at Chinghianfu, 162; Church of, at Kinsay, 176; 342; at St. Thomas's, 344; Patriarch of, I. 57, II. 365, 393, 899; Metropolitans, I. 170, 172, 186; II. 365, 393, 4or.
Nevergu, Pass of, 115.
New Year Celebration at Kaan's Court, 876.
Nganking (Nanghln), II. 189 seqq. ; 156.
Nganning-ho, II. 55, 56.
Kgantung, Mongol General, II. 460.
Kia, in Khotan, 202.
Kias, Island of, II. 281.
Nibong Palm, II. 288.
Nicobar Islands (NeouyeranX U. 289 seqq. ; 293, 294.
Nicolas, Friar, of Vicenza, 22 ; Fr., of Pistoia, II. 342.
, Christian name of Ahmad Sultan, II.
466.
Nigudar (Nogodar, q. v.); Mongol Princes of this name, 100, 104 seq^/. ; 173.
Nigudarian Ban^ 100, 104, 126, 173.
Nilawar (Nellore), II. 315.
Nile ; Sources of, II. 407 ; 484, 435.
NUeshwaram, II. 376.
Nimchah Mugu'.mdn^ 162.
Nine, an auspicious Number among Tartars,
877,378. *Nine Provinces;' (India) 106; (China) II.
178, 182. Ninghia, 273; II. 17. Ningpo, II. 206, 209. Ning-yuan-fu, II. 57, 58. Niriz, 87, 93.
Nirvana, Figures of Buddha in, 223. Nishapiir, 157.
Noah's Ark In Armenia, 47. Nobles of Venice, i4 ; Polo's claim to be one,
ib. Nogai Khan, II. 496; his intrigues and
wars, 497 seqq.'y his history, 498; wars
with Toktai, and death, 499. Nogodar (Nigudar) King of the Caraonas,
Story of, 100. See Nigudar, Nomade Tribes of Persia, 89. Nomogan (Numughan), son of Kublai, 353 ;
II. 458 seqq. ; 460. * None,' Nono, a title, 181, 183. North, Regions of the Far, II. 478 seqq.
Star, see Pole-star.
Norway, II. 490.
Notaries, Validity attaching to acts of, CUy 7i ;
Tabellumaio of, 16. Note-book, Polo's, II. 1 76. Novgorod, II. 490. Nubia; St. Thomas in, II. 840; 418; 422;
425 ; 429 ; alleged use of Elephants in, ib. Nukdaris, a tribe W. of Kabul, 104. Numbers, Mystic or auspicious ; Nine, 877 ;
378 ; One Hundred and Eight, II. 330-
331- NunOf see None. Nusi-Ibrahim, II. 406, 407. Nutmegs, U. 254; Wild, 292. Nyuch^ (Chinese appellation of the Churche
or race of the Kin Emperors) ; 11 ; Charac- ter employed by these Emperors, 29 ; 229,
SeeEin,
Oak of Hebron, see TerebttUh. Oaracta (Kishm or Brakhi), 1 1 8. Obedience of Ismaelites, Extraordinary, 150. Obi R., IL 482, 483.
Digitized by
588
OBSERVATORY.
INDEX.
PALACE.
Obeenratory at Peking, 365, 435; II. 544
Ooean-Sea, 110; in Far North, MS; 3S8; IL 8; encircles the World, 16; 80; 4f; 189; 187; 178; 818; 230; 888; all other Seas are parts of, 846 ; 487.
Ocoloro, II. 398.
Odoric, Friar ; Number of MSS. of his Book, IW; 82; 149; 278,279; 306; 372; 419; his notice of Cansay {Kinsay), II. 195 ; of Fuchau, 214; of Zayton, 220; of Champa, 251; of Java, 256; of Sumatra, 277; of St. Thomas's, 344; of the Pepper Forest, 365; of braxil-wood, 368; ofThana, 386,
Oger the Dane, 135.
Oil ; From Holy Sepulchre, 18, 19, 87 ; Foun- tain of (Naphtha, at Baku), 48, 5 1.
^j Whale, 111, 119; Walnut and Sesame,
166, 171.
Head (Capidoglio or Sperm- Whale),
n. 404, 407, and see 899.
Oirad or Uirad (Horiad), a great Tartar tribe, 891, 299.
Okkodai Khan, 3rd son of Chinghiz, 10, 228, 242.
Olak, Iliac, Aulak, see Laa
Old Man of the Mountain ; his Envoys to St. Lewis, 49 ; 145 seqq, ; how he trained Assassins, 148 seqq.; the Syrian — , 150; subordinate chiefs, 151; the end of him, 188; Modem Representative, 153.
Oljaitu Khan of Persia, his correspondence with European Princes, 14 ; his Tomb, II. 478.
Oman, II. 333» 45i-
Omens ; much regarded in Maabar, 11. 887, 336; and by the Brahmans, 880, 355, 3$6.
Onan Kerule, 232.
Ondanique (a fine kind of Steel) ; Mines of, in Kerman, 91 ; explanation of word, 93 seqq. ; 188 ; in Chingintalas, 815.
Ongkor, Ruins of, 12.
Opera-mortay S5, S5.
expert's Book on Prester John, 230, 279, 283 ; II. 541 seqq.
*Or Batiiz,' 375.
Orang Gugu, II. 284.
Orbelian, John, identified by Bruun with Prester John, II. 540 seqq.
Oriental Phrases in Polo's dictation, 81.
Orissa, II. 420.
Orleans, Defence of, II. 146.
, Isle d', II. 257.
Orloksy or Marshals of the Mongol Host, 255 ; 11.460.
Ormanni, Michele, SO.
Oroeoh, II. 488 ; note on, 490.
Onm, meaning of^ 106.
Orphanij Strange custom of the, II. 281.
*08oi,' the word, IL 335.
Ostriohes, U. 485.
Ostyaks, II. 483.
Otto, Bp. of Freisingen, IL 539 seqq.
Oulatay (Uladai), a Tartar Enroy from Persia, 88, 33.
Ovis Poliy see Sheep.
Oweke, see (Tcaoa,
Owen, Prof., II. 410, 551.
Oxen; Humped, in Kerman, 99, loi ; Wild, Shaggy (Yaks), 866, 268 ; Wild, in Eastern Tibet, U. 41 ; in Burma, 98, 96; —of Ben- gal, 97, 98; worshipped in Maabar, S86, 334} 35^; f^^ i^ot eaten; reverence for, 841; worshipped by Jogis, 858; fignree of, worn, t6. and 357.
Oxyrhynchus, U. 429.
Oteney U. 387.
Pacamoria (Baccanor), II. 375. Paoauta! (an invocation), II. 888, 330. Pacem, see PaseL Paddle-wheel barges, II. 198. Paderin, Mr., visits Karakorum, II. 539. Padish&h Kh&tun of Kerman, 93. Padma Sambhava, 173. Pagan (in Burma, Mien); Ruins at, Zl; IL 82, 89, 90, 93, 95, 96; Empire of, 26a
Old, IL 89, 95.
Pagaroyang, U. 267.
Paggi Islands, II. 281.
Pagodas ; Burmese, II, 90, 91, 96 ; Alleged Chinese, in India, IL 320-321, 381.
Pahang, U. 260.
Pai or Peyih Tribe, 30 ; II. 5 r, 103.
Paipurth (Baiburt), 47, 50.
Paizahy or Golden Tablets of Honour, 343-344, and see Tablet.
and TarUghy %b. and 315.
Pakwiha China ware, II. 225.
PmIu (a Bird), II. 336.
Palace; of the Kaan at Chagannor, 886; at Chandu (Shangtu), 889, 295 ; of Cane, there, 890; at Langtin, 297; at Cam- baluo, 854 seqq.; on the Green Monnt there, 857 ; of the Heir Apparent, ib. Note on Palaces of the character described U Cambaluc, 358.
Digitized by
PALACE.
INDEX.
PEIN.
589
Palace ; at EeDJanAl (Singanfu), U. 19, 23 ; of the Emperor of Manzi at Kinsay, 175, 188, 194-195 ; in Chipangu paved and roofed with gold, 236, 238, 156.
Palembang, II. 263.
• PalloUe, Or de ' for gold-dust, 11. 42.
Palm (measure), II. 536.
Pamier (Pamir), Plain of, 181; its Wild Sheep, ib. and 186 ; great height 184 ; pas- ture, &c., il). ; described hj Hwen Thsang, and by Wood ; Gofis and Abdul Mejid, 185 ; meaning of name, 16.; 188; Supp. Note,
n. 538.
Pan-Asiatic usages, 317; 328; II. 346.
Pandarani'or Fandaraina, II. 375, 381,
Pandyan Kings, II. 315-319, 361.
Panja R., or Upper Oxus, 182, 184.
Panjkora, 106.
Panjshir, 1 74 ; II. 488.
Pantaleon, Coins of, 172.
Panthiy or Mahomedan Kingdom in Yunnan,
II. 60, 65. Panya (in Burma), II. 95. Paoki-hien, II. 25, 26, 28. Pap^, Papesifu, 30; II. 100, iii. Paper-Money, The Eaan's; 409 seqq,;
412 seqq. ; modem, 414; also see Currency. Papien R., II. iii. Paradise ; of the Old Man of the Mountain,
146, 149 ; destroyed, 159, 154.
in Legend of the Cross, 141.
Apples of, 99, lor.
— of Persia, 117, and see 157.
1 Rivers of, 9.
Paramisura,. Founder of Malacca, II. 263. Parasol, the word, 345. Paravas, II. 360. Parez, Falcons of, 98. Pariahs {Paraiyar), etym. of, II. 334. Parlik or Perlak (Ferleo), a Km. in Suma- tra, IL 966, 268 ; 277, 286.
Tanjong, II. 269.
Parliament, Tartar, II. 497. Paropamisadae, II. 393. Parrots, 101; IL804; 426. Partridges, 90; Black, loi; Jirufti, 115;
Great, called Gators (chakors?) 887, 288 ;
in mew, 289. See Francolin. Parwana, a Traitor, eaten by the Tartars,
303. Paryan Silver-Mines, 170. Pascal of Vittoria, Friar, 9. Pasei, Pacem (Basma), a Km. of Sumatra,
IL966, 270; History of, 270; 276; 277;
278; 288; Bay of, 277, 278; 286; 288.
Pasha and Pashagar Tribes, 1 74.
Pashai, 178 ; what region intended, 1 73-1 75 ; Tribe so called, 174 ; their language, ib,
-Dlr, 100, 106.
Afroz, 175.
'Passo' (or Pace), Venetian, II. 861, 262; 536.
Patarins, 105; 894, 313 ; H* 886; 861.
Patera, Debased Greek, from Badakhsh&n, 167, 169.
Patlam, II. 321.
Pdtra or Alms-dish of Buddha, II. 301, 3 to ; Miraculous Properties, 894, 313 ; the Holy Grail of Buddhism, 313.
Patriarchs of Eastern Christians, 61, 63 ; U. 899. See Catholicos and Neetorian.
Patteik-kara, U. 82.
Patu (Batu), U. 491. See Batu.
Paukin (Pao-yng) H. 186.
Paulin-Paris, M., on Polo and Rusticiano, 5i; 67-61 \ 81.
Pauthier, M. ; Remarks on his text of Polo, 89 eeqq.y and numerous references through- out the work.
Payed Roads in China, IL 178-178, 180; — Streets of Kinsay, ib.
Payan, see Bayan.
Payangadi, IL 376.
Peace; between Venice and Genoa (1299), 60 ; between Genoa and Pisa, &S.
* Peaches, Yellow and White, IL 184; 192.
Peacocks, at St. Thomases, II. 840 ; special kind in Coilum, 864.
Pearls, 68; 110; 841; 874; 876; 880; 410, 411; in Caindu, IL 44, 4B; 818; 817; Rose-coloured in Chipangu, 887, 239 ; Fishery of, betw. Ceylon and Maabar, 318, 321, 888, 888; Do. at Gail, 359; and at ancient Kolkhoi, 361 ; — and pre- cious stones of King of Maabar, 888 ; 860 ;
355. Pears, Enormous, U. 184, 192. Pedir, IL 271, 278, 280, 288. Pedro, Prince, of Portugal, 107; ISO, Pegu; and Bengal confounded, U. 82, 98,
III. Peichau (Piju), IL 188. Pein (or Pern), Province of, 197 ; identity ot,
198-IQ9.
* The followtng passage, oocurring onl j in Ramo- slo, should have been introduced at p. 116 of voL ii., »ller the second line : ** [There grow in this district (Changlu) peaches of ezotllent quality and flavour, so big that one of ihem weighs two pounds aUa
Digitized by
590
PEKING.
INDEX.
POLOS, THE THREE.
Peking (Cambaluo), ll; Plan of Ancient and Modern, 563-364; 365; History of, 363 ; Walls of, ib. See Cambaluo. Pelly, Colonel (Sir Lewis), 86, 87, 11 3-1 14. Pema-ching, ll. 38. Pemberton, Capt. R., IL 65, 95. Pen and Ink, South European Dislike to, 87. Pentam (Bintang), II. 261, 264. Pepper ; Daily consumption of, at Kinsay, II. 186; change in Chinese use of, 192 ; great importation at Zayton, 217 ; duty on, ib. ; White and Black, 246 ; 264 ; in Coilum, 868 ; at Eli and Cananore, 874, 377; in Melibar, 879 ; in Guzerat, 888 ; Trade in, to Alex- andria, 217, 879, 484.
, Country, IL 365.
Peregrine Falcons, 262 ; II. 488. Perla (Perlec), IL 269. Persia ; Extension of the name to Bokhara, 10; spoken of, 76; 79; its 8 kingdoms, 84.
and India, Boundary of, II. 393.
Persian; Polo's familiarity with, 91; ap- parently the language of foreigners at the Mongol Court, 108, 368 ; IL 5. Pesh&war, IL 312. Peter, a Tartar Slave of Marco Polo, 70 ; II.
511. P^tis de la Croix, 191, 238. Ptaaraoh'8 Rats, 244, 246 ; II. 479. Phayre, Maj.-Gen. Sir Arthur, II. 78, 87, 94,
96. Pheasants; Large and long-tailed, 267;
probably Reeves'^, 271; II. 17; 186. Pheng (the Rukh), IL 414. Philippine Islands, II. 247, 248. Phillips, Mr. G., IL 213, 214, 215, 222, 224,
22s; 278; 291. Phipps, Capt., U. 360.
Phra Rama; Siamese Kings so-called, II.259. Phungan, Phungan-lu (PungulP), IL no,
112. Physician, A Virtuous, 442. Physicians, II. 186, 864. Physiognomy, Art of, II. 327. Pianfu (P'ing yang-fu), 1 1. 9, 12. Piccoli, II. 60. Pichalok, II. 260. Pigeon Posts, 424. Piju (Pei-chau), IL 123. Pilgrimages ; to Adam's Sepulchre in Cey- lon, II. 300; to the Shrine of St Thomas, 338. * Pillar-Road,' IL 26. Pima, 198-199.
Fmatiy K. of Kaolam, IL 368 ; ExplanatioD
of name, 3>. Pine-woods in Mongolian Desert, 226.
in South China, II. 281, 233.
P'mgchangf Fanchan, or 2nd CUs« Minister,
418. P*ingyang-fu, II. 9, 12; College there, 12. Pinna-Cael (Punnei-Kayal), IL 359. * Pinnule f* the word, II. 545. Pipino, Fr. Francesco ; his Latin TraulatioB
of Polo's Book, 64, 79, 9iy 101; the Man,
9f; 119; II. 516. Pirabandi or Bir Pandi (Vira Pandi), IL 316-
319. Pirada, II. 288. Pirates; of Malabar, IL 878, 38c; of Guw-
rat, 888; of Tana, 886; of Somnatb, 391 :
at Socotra, 899, 403. Piratical Chistom at Eli, II. 374, 377. Pisa and Genoa, Wars of, SU seqq. Pisan Prisoners at Genoa, 55.
Pronunciation of letter c, 1S7.
Pistachioes, 99, 117, 129; 160, 162. Plane, The Oriental, or Ckindr, 181, 132,
i35» MO, I45» 145- Piano Garpini, 15, Poison, Antidote to, II. 64. Poisonous Pasture, 219, 220. Pole or Jackdaws on Polo scutcheon, 7. Pole-star, invisible in Jara the Less, 26S,
274; visible again in India, 871, 878, 888,
388. Police; of Cambaluc, 399; of Kinsay, II.
171-172. PoUteness of Chinese, 488, 443. Polo, Andrea, grandfather of Marco, 7, U, £^ ~— Marco, the Elder, son of Andrea, aid
uncle of the traveller, lU; his Will, 18, i^
«^ II- 509; «^; 3,4.
, Nicolo and Maffeo, sons of AndrM;
their First Journey, lU seqq.; cross tie Black Sea to Soldai«», 72; tisH Vftlga country, &c., 4; go to Bokhara, 10; jots Envoys going to Great Kaan's Court, 11 ; well received ; Kublai's conversation with them on Religion, 339 ; and sent back u his Envoys to Pope, 18 ; receive a goldeo Tablet, 16; reach Ayas, 16, Acre, IT, Venice, 18 ; find young Marco there, ib*
, Nloolo, Mafifeo, and Marco ; proceed
to Acre, 19; set out for the East; are recalled from Ayas, 20 ; set out again with tht Pope's Letters, &c., 22 ; reach the Ean't Court, 26; and are welcomed, 27. See on their Journey outward also 19; their
Digitized by
POLO, NICOLO.
INDEX.
POLO, MARCO.
59^
alleged service in capture of Siangjang, f 2, and IL 141 seqq.; when they desire to return home, the Kaan refuses, L 82 ; are allowed to go with ambassadors returning to Persia, 88 ; receive Golden Tablets from the Kaan, 84. On' return see also Sl-U. Story of their arrival at Venice, A; and of the way they asserted their identity Ir-S ; its verisimilitude, 5; another tradition.
Polo, Nloolo ; his alleged second marriage after his return, and sons by it, 6, U; . probable truth as to time of a second marriage, 16-18 ; his illegitimate sons, f A, 96; approximate time of his death, 6t; his Tomb, 7S.
, liaffeo, brother of Nicolo; in Kanchau,
882; n. 141; lU; 6S; time of death, between 1309 and 1318, 6L
, Marco, our Traveller; veracity, 1, perplexities in his biography, t6. ; Ramu- 8io*s notices ; extracts from these, i seqq. ; recognition of his names of places ; paralleled with Columbus, s (see 102) ; why called Milionij 6 ; Story of his capture at Curzola, 5-0 ; and the writing of his Book in prison at Genoa, 6 ; release and marriage, 7 ; Arms, 7 ; his claim to nobility, lU ; supposed autograph, ib.\ his birth, U\ circumstances of his birth and doubts ; is taken to the East, 18 ; employment under Kublai, to ; mentioned in Chinese Records, t&. and 408; his mission to Yunnan, tO\ government of Yangchau, tl ; employment at Kanchau ; at Kara Korum, in Champa and Indian Seas, ib. ; return home, tt-SS ; mentioned in his Uncle Marco's Will, tu ; commands a galley at Curzola, U; is taken, and carried to Genoa, IS; his im- prisonment there, 60 8eqq,\ meets there Rusticiano, and dictates his Book, ib. ; release and return to Venice, 51; evidence as to the story of his capture, &c., 61-5S ; his dying vindication of his Book, 55; executor to his brother Mafieo, fif ; record of exemption from a municipal penalty, 6U ; his sobriquet of Milioni, 65 ; his present of his Book to T. de Cepoy, 67 ; his mar- riage and daughters, 68 ; his lawsuit with Paulo Girardo; proceeding regarding house property in S. Giov. Grisostomo, ib.; his illness and last Will, with translation, G9- 7t; dead before June 1325, 72; place of burial, ib.; Professed Portraits of, 75-^75; his alleged wealth, 76; estimate of him
and his Book, 102 aeqq,; parallel with Columbus futile ; his real and ample claims to glory, lOS-lOU; faint indications of his personality, 106; rare indications of humour ; absence of scientific notions, 106; geographical data in his Book ; his acqui- sition of languages, 107; Chinese evidently not one; de^ciendes as regards Chinese notices, 108; historical notices; had read romances, especially about Alexander, 110 ; incredulity about his stories, and singular modern instance, 112 ; contemporary recog- nition lis seqq.; by T. de Cepoy, 116; Friar Pipino, ib.; Jac. d'Aqui, 116; Giov. Villani, ib.; Pietro d'Abano; notice by John of Yprfes, 117; borrowings in the poem of Bauduin de Sebourg, 118 seqq. Influence on geography, ItU ; obstacles to its effect; character of medieval cosmo- graphy, 126; Roger Bacon, 126; Arab Maps, 127; Marino Sanudo's Map, 128; Medicean, 1S9; Carta Catalana largely based on Polo; increased appreciation of Polo's Book ; confusions of nomen- clature, 1S0-1S2; inventions which have been supposed to have been brought to Europe by — , 182; fictitious story of Invention of Printing by P. Castaldi of Feltre, 1S2-18U; the connection of Polo's name with this arbitrary, ISU ; dictates his Narrative, 8; found at Venice by his Father, 18; his true age, 19; circum- stances of his Birth, ib.; 22; 26; noticed by Kublai, 27 ; employed by him, 28 ; his tact and diligence ; grows into high favour, 80 ; goes on many missions, 80, 81 ; returns from one to India, 32 ; 84 ; escapes from the Karaunas, 100, 109 ; hears of the Breed .of Bucephalus in Badakhshan, 166 ; recovers from illness in the hill climate of that region, 167 ; hears from his friend Zulfikar about the Salamander, 215; at Kanchau on business, 222; brings home the hair of the Yak, 266 ; and the head and feet of the musk-deer, 267; a witness of the events connected with Ahmad's death, 406 ; the notice of him in Chinese Annals, 408 ; whether he had to do with the Persian scheme of Paper Currency in 1294, 416; is sent by the Kaan into the Western Provinces, II. 8; is made Governor of Yangchau, 187; probable extent of his authority, 139; aids in constructing engines for the Siege of Siangyang, 141 seqq. ; difficulties as to this statement, 151
Digitized by
59^
POLO FAMILY.
INDEX.
PRESTER JOHN.
8eqq.\ what he saw and heard of the number of vessels on the Great Kiang, 155 ; ignorant of Chinese, 167; his attestation of the greatness of Kinsay, 169 ; his notes, 176; sent by the Kaan to inspect the amount of Revenue from Kinsay, SOO ; his great experience, S19 ; never in the Islands of the Sea of Chin, 946 ; is in the Kingdom of Chamba, 950, 25 1 ; remark on his His- torical Anecdotes, *&. ; detained five months at Sumatra, 974, and stockades his party against the wild people ; brings Brazil seed home to Venice, 999; partakes of Tree- flour (Sago), »&., and brought some home to Venice, 288 ; was in six Kingdoms of Sumatra, 988 ; witnesses a singular arrest for debt in Maabar, 897; his erroneous ▼itw of the Arabian Coast, 45 1 (also 107) ; his unequalled Travels, 509; Venetian Documents about him, 509 9eqq»
Polo, Mafleo, Brother of the Traveller; 15, 16, probabilities as to his Birth, &c., 17-18', tS; 95; abstract of his Will, 6$-63j and see II. 509.
, Nicolo the Younger, cousin of the Tra- veller, 1U,U,6S; 4.
, Maroca, sister of the last, lUy 9Uj and
perhaps 6S ; 4.
, Stefiano and Giovannino, illeg. brothers
of the Traveller, tU\ t8; 63.
(?) or Trevisano (?) Fiordelisa ; perhaps
the second wife of Nicolo Polo the Elder, and mother of Mafieo the Younger, 18, th ; 55. See other Fiordelisas below.
, Antonio, illeg.son of the Elder Marco, fA.
Marco, called Marcolino, perhaps an
illeg. son of the elder Maffeo, 6^ 76, 77 ; U. 510.
, Donata, wife of the Traveller, 68 ; sale
of property to her husband, t8, 68; 69 aeqq. ; death betw. 1333-1336, 75; unplea- santly before the law in 1328, 76 ; may have been Loredano, 68, 77 ; II. 510, 512.
, or Bragadino, Fantina, eldest daughter
of the TVaveller ; 69-71 ; 75 ; II. 5 10, 512.
, Bellella, second daughter of ditto, 69-
71 ; died before 1333, 76; IL 510.
, or Delfino, Moreta, youngest daughter of
ditto, 69-71 ; 75 ; complaint of^ 76; II. 5 10, 512.
, Felice, a cousin, tu, 6S.
, Fiordelisa, wife of last, 16.
, daughter of Maffeo the Younger,
18, 6S,
or Trevisano, Maria, last survivor of
the Family, ^, 77, 78 ; doubts as to her kin- dred, ib.; II. 508.
Polo, Marco, last male survivor of the Family, see as in last.
, Other Persons bearing this name,
6U,77,78; IL 507, 508.
Family ; its duration and end, according
to Ramusio, 7-8 ; Origin of, IS ; Last notioes of, 75 aeqq,
N.B. — For therelationsfiipofthe difet-eHt Polos of the Travellers Family, see the Table at p. $0^ of this voL
, Branch of S. Geremia, lU,6U'y IL
507-508.
Polygamy; 999; 945; 987; suppoeed effect on population, 423 ; IL 950, 8^ 858.
Pomilo (Pamir), 184.
Pompholyx, 13a
Ponent (or * West *), term applied by Polo to the Mongol Khanate of the Volga (Kip- chak), 5, 8 ; 59 ; IL 487; 491 seqq. ; List of the Sovereigns, •&. ; errors therein, 495 ; extent of dominion, 494.
Pong (Medieval Shan State), IL 65, 95.
Poods, Russian, 170.
Population, Vast, of Cathay, 423-424.
Poroelaiii Manu&cture, IL 918, 225 ; frag- ments found at Kayal, 360.
Shells, see Cowries.
Pork, Mention of, omitted, IL 192.
PortohcU, SU.
Portulano Mediceo, IMS.
Posiin, 163.
Posts, Post-liouses, and Roxm^B, 419 aeqq.
Potala at Lhasa, 311.
Poultry, kind of, in Coilum, IL 804; in Abyssinia (Guinea-fowl ?), 495.
Pound Sterling, 69; It. 535.
Pourpre or Purpura, 67, 376.
Poyang Lake, IL 225.
Prakrama Bahu, III., K. of Ceylon, II. 297, 311.
Precious Stones (or Gems) ; 5 ; 76, 77 ; 110; 841: 856; 874; 880; 410-411; U. 185; 918, 917(2), 919; 987,946; 986; 899 ; 848 ; 850; how discovered by Pirates, 888.
Prester John, alias Uno Can (Aung Khan), receives tribute from the Tartars, 997 ; bat they revolt ; insults the Envoys of Chingfaiz, 984 ; comes out to engage the latter, 986 ; is slain, 980. Note on Prester John, 229 seqq.; Rise of the notion of such a personage, ib.; Letters under his name, •&.; first notice supposed to apply to the Fooader of
Digitized by
PRICES OF HORSES.
INDEX.
REFRACTION.
593
Kara Khitai, 230; ascription of Christi- anity to him ; various persons who came to be afterwards identified with the sup- posed great Christian Potentate, 231; Aung Khan, chief of the Keraits (Unc ^i>)> 231-233; Joinville's a«5count of Prester John, 233 ; marriage relati9ns with Chinghiz, 235, and 275, 279; real site of his first battle with Chinghiz, 237 ; and real fate of Aung Khan, 238. His line remaining in Tenduc, 275 ; their continu- ance under the Mongol Dynasty, 278, 279, and II. 458. The story of— and the Golden King, II. 12 seqq.yMxd II. S4o. Oppert's view about him, I. 206, 207, 25 3 ; Prof. Bruun's, II. 539 seqq.
Prices of Horses, see Horses.
Printing; imaginary connection of Polo's name with introduction of, ISS seqq. ; alleged invention by Panfilo Castaldi, ib.
Prisoners, Pisan, at Genoa, Sk ; their seal, 66 ; their release, 6».
Private Names, Supposed, 353.
PlX)bation of Jogis, II. 858; parallel, 357.
Prodieri, SU.
^Proquea,* the word, II. 357.
Prostitutes; at Cambaluc, 899; at Kinsay, n.l85.
Prophecy regarding Bayan, II. 128, 133.
Provinces, Thirty-four, of Kaan's Empire, 418.
Pseudo-Callisthenes, 110.
Ptolemy, f; his view of the Indian Ocean, ib, and UU; almost unknown in Middle Ages,i«».
Ptolemies trained African Elephants, II. 42.
Puching, II. 206, 212.
Puer and Esmok, H. 50, loa
Pulad Chingsang, H. 302.
Pulissughin, Biver and Bridge, near Cam- baluc, 108, 131 ; n. 8 ; meaning, 4 ; other applications, 5 ; account of, t&.
Pulo Condore (Somdur and Oondur), II. 266,257.
Gommes (Oauenispola), II, 290.
Nankai, or Nasi, ib.
Bras, ib.
We', Wai, or Wey, ib.
Punnei-Kiyal, U. 359, 360.
Purchas on Polo and Bamusio, 97.
Purpura, see Pourpre.
Putchock, n. 388.
Pygmies, Factitious, II. 286.
VOL. II.
Q-
Quails in India, II. 828.
Queen of Mutflli, II. 846 ; identified, 348.
Qulokallyer, and Sulphur Potion, 11. 852,
356.
, as regarded by Alchemists, II. 356.
Quills of the Rue, II. 405, 412, 41 3,
414 ; suggested explanation, 414. Quilon, Kaulam, &c., see Coilum. Quirino, Ysabeta, M. Polo's sister-in-law, 70. , Bertnccio, 76.
Rabbanta, a Nestorian Monk, 239.
Rain-makers, see Weather- Conjuring.
Rainy Season, II. 827, and note, 336.
Rajkot Leather-work, II. 385.
Rakka, Rakshasas, II. 280; 294.
Rameshwaram, II. 318.
Ramnid, II. 319.
Rampart of Gog and Magog, 56, 283.
Ramusio, Gior. Battista, his Biographical No- tices of Polo, f seqq., 60 ; his Polo Genealo- gies, and errors therein, 77 ; Notice of—, 9U ; his Edition of Polo, and its Peculiari- ties, »A-S9; II. 190; 194; 363. }!i.B.— 'Throughout the Book Passages pe- culiar to Pamusio, if introduced in the Text, are in brackets [thus]. And many others are given m the Notes.
Rana Paramita's Woman Country, II. 397.
* Paonano-Bao,' 183.
Ras H&ili, II. 375.
Kumhari, II. 372.
Rashiduddfn, Fazl-ulla Rashid 0/105,' Persian Statesman and Historian of the Mongols, contemporary of Marco Polo, perhaps drew some informatjpn ' from the latter, 117 ; is quoted frequently in the Notes.
Ravenala tree, II. 414.
Raw Meat eaten, II. 58, 61 ; 70.
Rawlinson, Sir H., 60, 86, 117, 118, 199; II. 31a
Pe Dor, II. 14.
Red Sea ; Trade from India to Egypt by, II. 484 ; described in some texts as a River, 435 ; possible origin of this mistake, 91.
Sect of Lamas, 306, 307, 3ri.
Gold, and Red Tangas, II. 353.
Refraction, Abnormal, II. 412.
2 a
Digitized by
594
REG RUWAN.
INDEX.
RUSTICIEN DE PISE.
Heg Ruwdn of Kabul, 206 ; of Sefstin, ib.
Reindeer ridden on, 261, 263.
Religion ; Indiflference of the Chinghizide
Princes in, 14, 3 39 seqq.y II. 476 5^7. ; oc- casional power of, among the Chinese, I.
441 seqq. RemisBions of Taxation by Kublai, 426. Rennell, Major James, II. 393. Beobarles, 96, 110, 112, 114, 116-117; II.
538. Keyenue of Einsay, II. 178-174; 199
seqg. . Rhinoceros (Unioom) ; in Samatra, II. 266,
271 ; habits, 272; four Asiatic species, 271.
Tichorimis, II. 412.
Rhubarb ; where got, 219, 220 ; also at Su-
chau (in Kiangnan), II. 166 ; which seems
to be an error, 167. Rialto, Bridge of, 28. Ricci, Matteo, II. 546. Rice; II. 27, 62, 70,97, 99, 106; 169, 164,
166; 274, 262, 292; 296, 826, 826; 889;
862,864,862; 896,899; 416,426; 489.
Wine, see Wine.
Trade on Grand Canal, II. 169.
Richthofen, Baron F. yon; 286; 428; II.
10; ri; 12; 17; 18; 20-21; 22; 23;
26, 27; 28,29; 31; 33; 37» 58, 40; 51,
52; Determination of Gaindii, 55-58;
65 ; on Fongul, 112; 204; 542. Right and Left, Ministers of the, 418. Rio Marabia, II. 375. HishiSf 179.
* River of China,' The, II. 205, 225, 226. RocmLb radiating from Cambaluc, 419. Robbers in Persia, 66, 89; 99, 100, 104. Robbers* River, 1 1 7.
Robes distributed by the Kaan, 874, 3 75 ;
860. Rockets,' 3 34.
' Roiaus dereusse ' (?), II. 385. Rome, the Sudarium at, 216. *■ Rondes^ Ingenious but futile explanation of,
395- Book in Chess, the word, II. 412. Rori-Bakkar, 87. Rosaries, Hindu, 11. 822, 330. Round-Table Romances compiled by Rusti-
cian, 5G seqq.
* Rose de TAgur,' 35 7.
Rubies; 6\ Balas, 166, 170; of Ceylon, II. 296 ; enormous, i&., and 297.
Ruble, Russian, II. 488-489.
Rubruquis, or Rubruc, Friar William de, 15 ; excellence of his narrative, lOS; studied by
Roger Bacon, IM; his family and nation- ality, II. 536.
Rue (Rukh) or Gryphon, the Crreat Bird called ; described, II. 404 ; its feather, 406 ; wide diffusion and various forms of the Fable, 408 seqq. ; the Eggs of the AepyomiSy 409; Fra Maaro's Story; Genus of that Bird, 410; the Condor, 410, 413; Re- markable recent discovery of the bones of HarpagomiSy apparently a real Rue in N. Zealand, 410 and 552; Sindbad; R. Benjamin, 410; the Romance of [hike Ernest, 411; Ibn Batuta*s sight of the Rukh ; probable explanation of that cnse. 412; parallel stories; the Rook of Che^: the dimensions given by Polo, 413; the Jesuit Bolivar's account; other notice^, 414; possible fiibrication of the quill.
Rildbir ; District and River of, 1 14 ; 11 7.
Rudder, Single, noted as peculiar by Polo, 111; II. 281; because the Double Rudder was usual in the Mediterranean, I. 119 seqq.
lifted, in Junks, IL 261.
Rddkh&nah-i-Shor (Salt River), 115.
i-Duzdi (Robbers' River), 117.
Rudra Deva, K. of Tilingnna, II. 348.
Rudrama Devi, Q. of Tilingana, ib,
Rnknuddin Mahmud, Prince of Hormaz, 1 24.
Masa'ud, do, 125.
Prince of the Ismaelites, 153.
Riim, 46.
Ruomedan Ahomet, King of Hormoe, 110, 125.
Rupen, Founder of Armenian State in C^da, 44.
Rupert, Prince, II. 486.
Riippell's Table of Abyssinian Kings, IL 43 1.
Russia (Rosia), IL 464; described, 4Sn ; great cold ; Arab accounts of, 488 ; Silver- Mines and Rubles; subjection to Tartars, 490 ; conquered by Batn, t&., 491.
; Leather, 7, 381, 382; cloths of — .
285.
Russians, the King oi, his Trusty Lieges, II. 332.
Rust&k, 182.
Rustioien de Fise, Rustidano, or Rtuti- chello ; in Prison at Genoa with M. Polo, and writes down his Book, S0\ Kottoes c< 5S seqq.; perhaps taken at Meloria, 55; mention 0^ by Sir Walter Scott, 56; his Romance Compilations, 9>.\ his connexioiL with Edward I., 67-58 \ extracts and cha- racter of his Compilations, 58 seqq.: his
Digitized by
RUYSCH'S MAP.
INDEX.
SALEM.
595
identity as the amanuensis of Polo, 69-60 ; various forms of his name, 69 ; coincidence of Preamble of one of his Romances with that of Polo's Book, 60] portrait of — , referred to, ib. ; mistake about a supposed grant to him by Henry III., 61 ; real name probably Rustichello, t&. ; 8t\ 86; 87; 109, 1 10 ; 137; his proem to the Book, 1, and introduction of himself as the Writer, 2. Ruyscb*8 Map, 180.
S.
Saba (Sava), City of the Magi, 79, 81, 82. Sable ; its costliness, 890, 395 ; II. 479 ;
480; 484, 4B6; 489. Sabreddin, II. 433. Sabzawar, 157. Saohiu (Shachau), 906, 209. Saorifloes ; of People of Tangut, 907.
Human, 210; II. 286.
Sadd'i-Iskandar^ 55.
* Safators/ the word, at.
SafOron, Fruit serying the purpose of, II. 207.
Sagacity of Sledge-Dogs, H. 482.
Sagamoni Boroan (Sakya-muni Buddha),
339; Story of, II. 298 ; the name explained,
302. Sagato, a General of the Eaan*s, II. 249, 25 1. Saggio, a weight (J of an ounce), see U. 5 35 ;
I. 841-842; II. 46, 48; 62; 199,200, 201; 828,824,331; 53$.
Sago described, II. 282, 288.
SaianAi, see Siangyamg^fu,
Saif Arad, K. of Abyssinia, H. 433.
Saifuddin Nazrat, 124.
Saimur (Chaul), U. 353.
Sain Khan (or Bata), II. 491, and see 493.
St. Anno of Cologne, 133.
St. Barlaam and St. Josafat, The Story of, or Buddha christianized, H. 304 aeqq.
Barsamo, Brassamus (Barsauma), 78.
Blaise, 46.
Brandon, H. 194.
Buddha I U. 307, 308-309.
Epiphanius, II. 349.
George, Church of, at Quilon, H. 365.
John Baptiat, Church of, at Samar- kand, 192.
John, Major Oliver, 93, 109, 115.
Iieonard's, in Georgia, and the Fish- Miracle there, 58, 59.
Lewis, 88 ; his campaign on the Nile,
II. 148, 149.
St. Mary's Island, Madagascar, II. 407.
Nina, 59.
Sabba's at Acre, ld>,
Thomas the Apostle, II. 303 ; 306 ;
his Shrine in India, 825, 888 aeqq. ; 850 ; reverenced by Saracens and heathens, 888, 344; Miracles there, 825, 889, 840, 345 ; Story of his death, 840, 344; his mur- derers, 825 ; their hereditary curse, 335 ; the tradition of his preaching in India, 342 ; translation of remains to Edessa, t6. ; King Gondopharus of the old legend a real King, 343 ; Roman martyrology, ib. ; the localities, 344, 345 ; alleged discovery of the rcliques in India, 344; schisms about them, 16. ; The Cross, 345 ; 394, 395 J 4°^ ; in Abyssinia, 422.
Thomas's Mounts, II. 344.
Saker Falcons, 166 ; 225 ; II. 41.
Sakta doctrines, 315, 318.
Sakya Muni (Sagamoni Boroan), 173, 179; death of — , 180; recumbent figures of, 221,223; 314; 316; 339; n. 247; 291; the Story of — , and its paraphrase into a Christian Romance, 298 aeqq,, 304 seqq. See Buddha.
Salamander, what it really Ib, 215, 217.
Salar (Hochau), II. 23.
Salem explores the Rampart of Gog, 58.
Salghur Atabegs of Pars, see Atabegs.
Salsette Island, II. 308; 386.
Salt, H., his version of the Abyssinian chro- nology, II. 431.
Salt; Bock — , 160, 162; used for cur- rency, II. 87, 45-46, 48 ; extracted from deep wells, 50, 58, 61 ; — manufacture in £. China, 115; manufacture, revenue, and traffic in — , 185, 187, 138, 155, 156 ; huge trade in — on the Kiang, 157; Junks employed therein, 158; — manu- facture and Bevenue at Kinsay, 199, 20 1~ 202.
Stream, 127.
Salwen R., or Lu-Kiang, 316.
Samagar, II. 470, 473.
Samana, II. 421.
Samara (Sumatra), Km. of, IL 274, 276 seqq. See Sumatra.
Samarkand ( Samarcan) ; Story of a Miracle there, 191 seqq.; colony from — near Peking, 281; Gardens in style of, ib.; XI. 456; 480.
Samsunji Bdshiy 387.
Samudra, Samathrah, Samuthrah, see Sa- mara and Sumatra.
2 Q 2
Digitized by
596
SAN GRISOSTOMO.
INDEX.
SHAHR-I-BABEIC
San Giovanni Grisostomo, Parish in Venice in which the Ca' Polo was, A, «5, 51 ; 6», 69 ; 76, 76 ; Theatre of, S7,
Lorenzo in Venice, Burial-place of
Marco Polo's Father and of himself, 7, 70, 7t, 7S.
Matteo at Genoa, US ; curious engineer- ing at, t6. ; Inscription on, us.
Sand; cities buried by — , 199; Sounds like Drums heard in — , 208, 206.
Grouse, 264.
Sandal-wood ; Bed Sanders, II. 817 ; 289, 292 ; 404, 407.
Sandu, 294, and see Chandu.
Sanf (Chamba, Champa), II. 250.
Sangin, Sangkan R., II. 5.
Sanglich, Dialect of, 168.
Sangon, the title {Taangkhm), II. 118, 120.
Sanitary Effects of Mountain Air, 187.
Sanjar Sovereigns of Persia, 230, II. 540.
Sankin Hoto, — Dalai, 217.
Sanudo of Torcelli, Marino ; shows no know- ledge of Polo, 115; his Map and Geog. knowledge, IfS ; his prophetic sense of the importance of long range, 11. 150.
Sappan-wood, see BraziL
Sapto-shaila, IL 375.
Sapurgan (Shibrg&n), 158.
' Saputa,' ' SQue,' Peculiar use of^ 423.
Saracanco, 6 ; II. 536.
Saraoens, see Mahomedans.
Sarai (Sara), capital of Kipchak, 4; the City and its remains, 5 ; perhaps occupied successive sites, 6, and II. 537; II. 405.
Sea of (Caspian), 61 ; II. 495.
8dra$ Crane, 388.
Sardines, IL 441.
Sarghalan R., 164.
Sarha, Port of Sumatra, 11. 276.
Sar-i-Kol, Lakes called, 171, 184.
Sars&ti, 11. 421.
Sartak, 11.
Sati, see Suttee.
* Satin,* Probable origin of word, IL 224. Saumy Sammo, silver ingots used in Kipchak,
IL 488 ; apparently the original i2u6fe, 489. Saurcmatae, II. 464. Savah (Saba), 79, 81, 82. Savast (Slwas), 48. Sbdsalar, Georgian Generalissimo, II. 541.
* Scarans,' * Carans,* see ScheranL Scasem, 163.
« Soherani,* 102. Schiltberger, Hans, 136. Schuyler, Mr. Eugene, II. 537.
Sootra, see Socotra,
Scott, Sir W., on Rustician, 58.
Sea Of India, 84, 84, 111, 178 ;IL 248; 417.
of Chin, U. 245, 248.
of England, IL 248.
of Ghel or Ohelan, 54.
of Rochelle, IL 248.
ofSarain,n.495.
Seal, Imperial, 857; 4ia
of Pisan Prisoners, 55,
Secreto, Nicolas, 6g.
, Catharine, wife of Maffeo Polo the
Younger, ib. Sees ; of Nestorian Church, 93, 191, 194, 209,
213; of Roman Church, 194; II. 220, 365. Seilan, see Ceylon. Self-decapitation, IL 334. Selitrennoi-Gorodok, 5, 6. ' Selles, Cheyauz a deuz,' the phrase, IL
436. Semal Tree, II. 384. Semenat, see Somnath. Sempad, Armenian Prince, 194; 343. Sendal, a Silk texture, n. 7, 81, 115, 188,
879,482. Sendemain, K. of SeHan, IL 295, 297. Sem, Vergmo, IL 368. Senshmg, 314.
Sensin, an Ascetic Sect, 298, 313 9eqq, Sentemur, II. 81. See Isentenmr. Sephar, II. 442. Sepulchre of Adam in Ceylon, IL 218
9eqq.; 303,304, 310.
, on from the Holy, 18, 19, 27.
Serano, Juan de, IL 278.
Serazi (Shiraz), a Km. of Persia, 84, 87.
Serendib, IL 296.
Seres', — and Simp, 11; their Tree-wool, II.
120 ; Ancient character of the, 193. Serpents ; Great, t>. AUigatort, IL 82 wtqq.,
66 ; — in the Diamond Valley, 847. Sertorius, IL 333. Sesam6, 150, 153 ; IL425. * Sesnes,' the word, 287. Seth*s Mission to Paradise, 141. Sevan Lake, 59.
Severtsoff, M., shoots the Ovis PoU, 186. Shabankira or Shawankira (SomotraX 81
87. Shabar, Son of I^aidu, II. 457. Shachau (Saohlu), 208, 209. Shadow, Augury from length of, IL S5L Shah Abbas, 301 ; his Court, 372.
Jahan, 1 78.
Shahr-i-Babek, 93.
Digitized by
SHAHR-I-NAO.
INDEX.
SILK.
597
Shahr-i-Nao (Siam), II. 260.
Mandi or — Pandi, II. 316.
Shaibani Khan, II. 480.
Shaikh-ul'Jibaly 148, 150, 151.
Shaikhs (Esheks) in Madagascar, II. 408, 406.
Shalifit, II. 457.
Shamanism, 307, 317, 318 ; II. 79. Seei>m^ Danang.
Shampath, ancestor of Georgian Kings, 54.
Shamsuddfn Shamatrini, II. 286.
Shamnihera (Sumatra), II. 377.
Shan (Laotian or ThaSy, 50, 51, 55, 59, 7?» 74, 75 ; 78 ; 95 ; R*ce and Country, II. 100; III; Dynasty in Yunnan, 59, 65 ; — y Ponies, 67 ; state of Pong, see Pong,
Shanars of Tinnerelly, II. 80, 345.
Shangking and Tungking, 337.
Shangtu, Shangdu (Ohandii, q. v.), 26, 294 aeqq. ; Dr. Bushell's desc. of, 295 ; Kublai's Annual Visits to, 299, 396.
Keibung, 297, 299.
Shanhai-Kwan, 393.
Shankdrah, Shabank&ra (Soncara), 84, 87, 88.
Shansi, II. 10 ; 11; 17; 18; 25; 125; 151.
Shantung, IL 119; Silk in, 118, 119; 123; 126; Pears from, 192.
Shaohing-fu, II. 204, 205, 206.
Sharakhs, 156.
Sharks and Shark-charmers, II. 814, 321.
Shawank^ra, 87.
Shaw, Mr. R. B., 268, 281.
Shawls of Kerman, 96.
Sheep ; Fat-tailed in Kerman, 99, loi ; with trucks behind, 102 ; Wild — of Badakh- shan, 166, 171; of Pamir, 181, 185, II. 538; none in Manzi, II. 804; Large In- dian, 848; — of Zanghibar, 415, 417; Singular at Shehr, IL 489, 441.
Sheep's head given to Horses, II. 337.
Shehr or Shihr (Esher), II. 487, 489, 440; 441, 442, 443 ; Shehrij IL 446.
Shenrabs, 316.
Shensi, II. 17; 19; 20; 21; 24; 25; 151.
Shentseu Tribe, II. 103.
Sheuping, II. 103, 104.
Shewa Plateau, 171.
Shibrgan (Sapurgan), 156, 157.
Shien-sienj SMi^sien, 314, 315.
Shieng, Shengy or Sing, The Supreme Board of Administration, 417 xqq. ; IL 187. Sec Sing,
Shighnan-CSyghinan), 165, 168, 170.
Sh^arai Malayu or Malay Chronicle, IL 268, 270, 276, 277, 283, 285.
Shikdrgdhf applied to Animal Pattern Tex- tures, 67.
Shinking or Mukden, 337.
Ships ; Chinese, 84, number of sails, 36 ; — of Hormuz, 111, 1 19 ; of the Great Kaan, IL 184; of Manzi or S. China, described, 881 ; their size, 234 ; accounts of them by other Medieval Authors; construction, 234^335 ; frequenting Java, 256.
Shiraz (Cerazl), 84 ; Wine of, 89.
Shireghi, IL 460.
Shirha, II. 433.
Shirwan, II. 495, 496.
Shi-tsung, Emperor, 301.
Shoa, IL 430, 433-
Shobaengs of Nicobar, II. 291.
Shor Rild (Salt River), 127.
Shot of Military Engines, IL 141; 144, 147- 148; 152.
Shulistin (Suolstan), 86.
Shdls or Shauls, a People of Persia, 86, 89.
Shut-up Nations, Legend of the. Hi, 131 ; 68, 56.
Shweli, R., II. 90.
Siam, IL 258-260; King of, 259.
Siangyang-fu (SaianfU), Alleged aid of the Poles in capturing, Si, 109 ; II. 141 ; the Siege of^ by Kublai's Forces, 131, 133, 140 wy^.; i50-r5i; difficulties in Polo's account, 151; not removed by Pauthier ; notice by Wassdf ; the Chinese account; Rashid's account, 152; Treasure buried during siege, 154, 156.
Siberia, see II. 478 seqq.
Siok Men put to death by their Friends and eaten, IL 876, 280.
Siclatoun, a kind of Texture, 274; II. 7.
Siddharta, II. 304.
Sidi 'Ali, 160; IL 4; 393 ; 441 ; 452.
Sien, Sien-Lo, Sien-Lo-Kok (Siam, Locao), II. 258-260.
Sifan, II. 51.
Sigatay, 191. See Chagatai,
Sighelm, Envoy from K. Alfred to India, II.
344- Si-hu, The Lake of Kinsay or Hangchau ;
Bright Descriptions of, IL 170, 179, 187-
188; 188; 185; 189; 190; J91; 193;
197; 198. Sijistan, 104. siju (Suthsian), IL 194. Sikintinju, 886, 337. Silk; caUed GheUd (of Gilan), 64; grown,
Digitized by
598
SILK STUFFS.
INDEX. SPERMACETI WHALES.
U. 9 (see 17); 18; M, n; 109; 118, 119; 198; 186; 189; 161; 168; 165; 166; 171; 900; 908; 906.
Silk Stuflfe and Goods ; of Turcomania, 46 ;
of Georgia, 69 ; of Baghdad, 65 ; of Yezd,
89, 90; 99; 976; 899; IL 6, 81; 115;
117 ; 166, 166 ; 171 ; 906 ; in Animal Pat- tern*, L 66, 99; with Cheetat, 385 ; with
Giraffes, 11. 418. and Gold Stuffs, 48; 69; 66; 76; 110
949, 976; 870; 874; 899; IL 6, 17, 18
116; 186; 189; 169; 166; 189; 879
404.
Tent Ropes, 891 ; — Bed-ftirniture, 490.
Trade at Cambaluc, 899; at Kinsay, 11.
171.
J Duty on, IL 900, and see I. 481.
, Cotton Tree, IL 384.
Sllyer; Mines at Baiburt, 47; at Gnmish
Khana, 50; in Badakhshan, 166; in N.
Shansi, 976, 286; in Yunnan, IL 77;
Russian, 487, 488-489- imported into Malabar, II. 879, and
Cambay, 888.
Chair, 849, 346.
Plate in Chinese Taverns, II. 170, 179-
180.
Island, II. 157-158.
Simon, Metropolitan of Pars, IL 365.
Magus, 306.
Simtim, Effects of, 111-119, 123.
Simurgh, II. 408, 41 3-
Sind, It,
Sindabur (Goa), IL 379; 437-
Sindaohu (Siwanhwa-fu), 976, 386.
Sindafti (Chingtu-fu), II. 99, 109, no.
Sindbad ; his Story of the Diamonds, U. 349 ;
of the Rukh, 410. Sindhu-Sauvira, Sindh-Sigor, 106. Sing, Shieng, The Board of Administration
of a Great Province (in China), 417, 418 ;
IL 23; 187, 138; 182; 22J. Singan-fu(Kenjanfii), IL 17, 18, 19, 21 seqq,]
the name in Polo, 25 ; Christian Inscnp-
tion at, 21-23, 25, 26, 27. Singapore, Singhapura, 37; IL 262, 263. Singkel, II. 283. Singphos, n. 73, 74- Singtur, Mongol Prince, IL 93. Singuyli (Cranganore), IL 420. Sinhopala (Aocambale), K. of Chamba, IL
949,251. Sinju (Smingfu), 966, 268. Sinju (Ichin-hien), IL 154. Sinjumatu, II. 119, 191, 199.
SinkalAn, S£n-ul-Sfn, Mahichfn, or Caaloii
L 283 ; IL 160, 225, 234. Sir^, 66.
Sirj^ 92, 98, 126. Sitting in Air, 307-308. Siuchan, II. 112, 113, 114. Siva, II. 303.
Slwanhwa-fii, see Sindaohu. Siwas (Savast), 46, 50. Siwastin, II. 421. Siwi, Gigantic Cotton in, IL 384. Sigchgoshy or Lynx, 386. Sladen, Miyor, U. 67, 73, 74, 77» 89 ; 180. Slaves and Slave Trade at Venice, £6 ; 70, 71. Sledges, Dog-, II. 479, 481, 482. SUng or ZUingy a woollen stuff, see ZUmg. Sluices of Grand Canal, 11. 160. Smith, Major, R.M.,R.£., 114, 115, 116, 126. Sneealng, Omen from, IL 85L Soap, use of in Naval fights, 56. Socotra (SootraX Island of, II. 896; 397;
described, 896; account of, from ancient
times, 400 aeqq. Soer (Suhar), II. 894, 333. Sofala to China, Trade from, II. 391. Sogomon Boroan, 339. See SagamonL Sol, Arbre, see Arlm. Soldaia, Soldachia, Suddk, M, £& ; 9, 3, 4. Soldan, a Melic, U. 469, 471. Soldurii or Trusty Lieges of Celtic Kings, U.
332. Soli, SoUi, Km. of {Chola or TanjoreX H.
317; 319; 350,354; 394. Solomon, House of^ in Abyssinia, IL 43a Sonmath (Semenat), II. 383 ; 889, 390-391 ;
gates of; 392, 394. Sonagar-pattanam, IL 359. Sonoara {Shawankdrd), a Km. of Persia, 64,
87. Sonder Bandi Davar, see Sundara PandL Sondur and Oondur (Pulo Condore Group),
IL956. Sopraoomito of a Galley, 57, U. Soroerers, Soroeries ; of Pashai, 179, ue, of
Udyana, 173 ; of Kashmir, 176, 177 smfq^y
999; Lamas and Tibetans, ib,; 306 Mqq.;
II. 41 ; of Dagroian, 975 ; of Socotra, 899,
402, 403. Somau (ue. Shahr-i-nau, Siam), IL 260. Soucat, IL 258. Spacm, or Ispahan, 84.
Spelling Names in present Translation, Prin- ciples of, 137. Spermaceti Whales, 11. 899, 400; 401
407.
Digitized by
'SPEZERIE.'
INDEX.
SUR-RAJA.
599
* Spezerie,' Sense of, 45,
Spioe, Splcery, 48 ; 62 ; 110 ; 208 ; 298 869; 427; II. 41; 47; 68; 97; 99;105 184; 199; 246; 264; 261 ; 264 ; 289 292; 868; 879; 886; 416; 484; 448.
Spioes in China, Duty on, II. 199, 217.
Spioe Wood, 891, 394.
Spikenard, II. 97 ; 264 ; 266, 268 ; 879.
Spinello Aretini, Fresco by, SU, 12 r.
Spirit Drawings, and Spiritual Flowers, 442.
Spirits haunting Deserts, 208, 206 ; 266,
Spintualism in China, 318.
Spittoons, 440.
Spodium, 129.
Sport and Game, Notices of, in the Book, 48; 90; 92; 166; 168; 161; 166; 168 181; 182; 226; 244; 262; 267; 276 286; 290; 884; 888 seqq.; 896; II. 8; 17 18; 26; 27; 47; 70; 92; 122; 124 186; 140 (2); 162; 168; 166; 184 190; 208; 204; 207; 208; 217; 266 282; 828; 871; 876.
Springolds, II. 143.
Crinkling of Drink, a Tartar rite, 291, 300; II. 542.
Squares at Kinsay, II. 191, 550.
Sri-Thammarat, II. 259.
Sri-Vaikuntham, II. 362.
Star of Bethlehem, Traditions about, 83.
Steamers on Yangtse-Kiang, II. 158.
Steel ; Mines of, 91, 93 seqq. ; Indian, 94 ; Asiatic view of, 96.
Stefani, Signor, 7, II. 507.
Stiens of Eamboja, II. 67, 79.
Stirrups, Short and Long, II. 64, 66.
Stitohed Vessels, 111, 119-
Stockade erected by PoIo*s Party in Suma- tra, II. 274.
Stone, Miracle of the, at Samarkand, 192 aeqq.j 194; the Green— there, 195.
Towers in Chinese Cities, II. 171.
Umbrella, II. 195.
Stones giving Invulnerability, II. 241, 244.
Suakiu, 435.
Submersion of part of Ceylon, II. 296, 296.
Subterraneous Irrigation, 91 ; 127; 128.
Suburbs of Cambaluo, 898.
Subutai, Mongol General, II. 152.
Suchau (Suju), II. 168 ; 166; 166; Ancient Plan of, on marble, 168; 182.
Sudarium,the Holy, 216, 218.
Suddodhana, II. 304, 305.
Sugar; grown, 11. 97; Manufacture, 199,
208, 218 ; Revenue from, 199 ; art of Re- fining, 208 ; 212 ; of Egypt and China, 213. See also 'Wine.
Suhchau (Sukchu), 219, 220, 273; II. 167.
Suicides before an Idol, II. 824-886, 334.
Sukchu, see Suhchau.
Sukchur, Province of, 219.
Sukkothai, II. 259, 260.
Sukldty a stuff, 274.
Suleiman, Sultan of Yunnan, II. 60, 65.
Sulphur and Quicksilver, Potion of Longe- vity, II. 862, 356.
Sultaniah, Monument at, II. 478.
Sultan Shah of Badakhshan, 172.
Sumatra, Island of (Java the Less), ^, 117 ; II. 264 ; circuit, &., 266 ; application of the name Java, ib. ; its gold, 268 ; its King- doms, ib. and 288; 270, 279, 283, 285. Pp. 264-289 are occupied with this Island.
f Samudra, City and Kingdom of (Sa- mara, for Samatra), II. 276 ; Legend ol Origin ; Ibn Batuta there, and others ; Position ; latest mention, 269 ; 286.
Sumbawa, II. 267.
Summers, Professor, II. 258.
Sumutahy Samuntala (Sumatra), II. 278.
Sun and Moon, Trees of the, 133 seqq.
Sundar Fuldt (Pulo Condore Group), II. 257.
Sundara Pandi Devar (Sondar Bandl Da- var), a King in Ma'bar, II. 818, 315 ; death of, 316 ; Dr. Caldwell's views about, 317 ; 318-320.
Another, II. 316; and yet another,
317-
Sung, a Native Dynasty reigning in Southern China till conquered by Kublai, 11 ; their Paper-Money; effeminacy of, IL 15, 128, 189 seqq. ; Kublai's War against, 1 31-134, 151-152, 164; end of them, 134; 176, 1 77. See Manzi, King of.
Sunnis and Shias, 153-154*
Suolstan (Shulistan), a Km. in Persia, 84, 86.
Superstitions ; in Tangut, the devoted Sheep, 207 ; the Dead Man's Door, 208, 211 ; as to chance shots, 426 ; Remarkable in Cara- jan, II. 64, 67-69; about devil-dancing, 71 ; about touching property of the dead, 92; of Suraatran People, 276, 280; of Malabar, 323 scqq.; as to omens, 327, 361.
Sur-Raja, II. 361.
Digitized by
6oo
SURVIVAL.
INDEX.
TARTAR LANGUAGE.
*Surviral,* Instances of, 210; IL 76. Soshun, Regent of China, Execution of (1861),
415- Suttees in S. India, II. 886, 334 ; of men,
Swans, WUd, 286, 287.
Swat, 168, 188.
River, 173.
Syghinan (Shighnin, q. r.), 165.
Sylen (Ceylon), IL 420.
Symbolical Messages, Scythian and Tartar, II. 499, 500.
Syrian Christians, II. 365 9eqq. ; 428.
Syrrhaptes PaWosii (Barguerlao), 264; im- migration of thb bird into England, 265.
Szechwan, IL 24, 25, 26, 29, 31, 33, 37, 38, 39»SO»5r» 57» "o» "7-
TcJbashir, IL 244 ; 386.
Tabellkmato of Notaries, 7f .
Table of the Great Kaan, 888.
Tables, how disposed at Mongol Feasts, 371.
Tablet, the Emperor's, adored with Incense, 878, 379.
Tablets worshipped by the Cathayans, 487, 440.
Tablets of Authority, Qolden (or Pdizah}; presented by the Kaan to the Brothers Polo, 15; their powers and privileges; again presented, 84; bestowed on distin- guished Captains, 841; their nature and inscriptions, t&. ; Lion's-Head Tablets and Gerfalcon Tablets, 85 and 842. Note on the subject, 342 seqq. ; — granted to Gover- nors of different rank, 417; Cat's Head,
347. Tabriz (Tauris), 25, 75, 77 ; IL 473, 476,
496. Tachindo, see Tathaianlu. Tactics, Tartar, 254-255, 258 ; IL 458. ' Taouln,' 488, 434- Tadinfu, U. 118, 121. Tacping (or*Taiping) Sovereigns* Effeminate
Customs, II. 15. Taeping Insurrection and Devastations, 304 ;
II. 138, 140, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, r68,
179, 206. Ta/urs, 305.
Tagaohar, II. 470, 473- Tagaung. IL 89, 93, 95. TowHi, IL 426.
Taianfii (Thaiyuan-fn), II. 7 ; described, 8.
Taican (Thaikan, Talikin), see Taiikan.
Taichau (TljuX H. 138.
Taiching-Kwan, 21.
Taidu or Daitn, Kublai's New City of Cam- baluo, q. v., 296 ; 862, 363.
Taikung, see Tagaung,
Tailed Men; in Sumatra, II. 282; else- where, 384; Englishmen, A,
Tailors, none In Maabar, II. 822.
Taimdni Tribe, ro2.
Taiting-fa (Tadinfti) or Yenchau, II. 119.
Taitong-fu, see Tathung,
Taiyang Khan, IL 542.
Tajiks, 162, 168.
Takfurj IL 131.
Taki-uddin-al-Thaibi, II. 316.
Talains, II. 59.
Tala8,R.,IL457.
Tali-fu (aty of Oarajan), II. 57 ; 59; 65 ; 87; 90; 93-
Talikan, Thaikan (TaicanX 160, 161-162,
179- TalUes, Record by, II. 70, 78. Tamarind, how used by Pirates, U. 88S. Tana (Axov), 9, Ul, 70. (near Bombay), Km. of, IL 353 ; 383 ;
885,386; 394, 395; 4^0 ; 437-
Maiambu, II. 386.
Tanas* cloth, ib,
Tanduc, see Tenduc,
Tangnu-oolla, a branch of Altai, 217.
Tangut, Prov. of, 207, 209 ; applications of
the name, •&.; 216, 219, 221, 222, 226,
226; 240; 266, 268; 272, 273. Tanjore, 11. 317, 318, 319; Suttees at, 334;
337; Fertility of, 355. Tankfz Kh&n (applied to Chinghiz), 242. Tanpiju (Shaohing ?), IL 208 seqq, Tantras, Tantrika, Tantrists, 307, 316, 318. Taoss^ Sect, 314 seqq,; persecuted under
Knblai, ib,; names applied to; Practices
and Rites, 315; application of the name to
Foreign Heretics, 317-318. Tapa-shan, IL 27, 29. Taprcbanoy Mistakes about, IL 277. Tarakai, II. 474. Tarantula, II. 829, 851. * Tarcasoi,' the word, 358. Tarem, or Tarum, 87, 126. Tares of the Parable, 1 26. Tarmabala, grandson of Kublai, 353. Tarok, Burmese name for Chinese, II. 94.
Man, and — Myo, 95.
Tartar Language, 12.
Digitized by
TABTAR.
INDEX.
THOMAS, MR.
60 1
Tartar; or Tatar? 12; proper use of the term, t&. ; misuse of, bj Ramiuio, see 440.
, Tartan, 1; 4; 6; 10; 18; 58; different
characters used bj, 88 ; identified with Gog and Magog, 56 ; — Ladies, 77 ; 79 ; 91 ; 98 ; 99; 100; 113; 126; 168; their first city, 887; their original countrj ; tributary to Prester John, ib, ; their ReTolt and Migration, 888 ; make Chinghiz their King, 888 ; his Suc- cessors, 841 ; their Customs, 844; Houses, &c., t&., 245 ; Waggons, 844, 246 ; Chas- tity of Women, 844, 248 ; Polygamy, t6., their Gods, 848 ; and Domestic Idols ^ their Drink, Eemiz (Knmiz), 849; Clothing; Note on Tartar Religion, 249 ; on Kumiz, 250; their Arms and Horses, 858; their Military Organization ; their sustenance on rapid marches, 858 ; their Portable Curd ; Mode of Engaging, 854 ; present degene- racy, 855 ; Note on their Arms, 255 ; Decimal Organization ; Blood-sucking ; Portable Curd, 257 ; Tactics and Cruelties ; Administration of Justice, 859 ; Marriage of deceased young couples, t&. and 260 ; the Cudgel among them, 859, 260; Punish- ment of Theft; Rabruquis's account of, 23 1 ; Joinville's, 23 3 ; their Custom to play and sing in concert before a Fight, 889; their want of Charity to the Poor, 488-488 ; their objection to meddle with things pertaining to the Dead, II. 98 ; Ad- miration of the Polo mangonels, 148 ; their own employment of Military Engines, 152 seqq. ; their Cruelties, 165 ; their excel- lence in Archery, 85; their equipment with Arrows of two sorts, 458 ; their Mar- riage Customs, I. 33 ; 845 ; II. 466.
in the Far North, U. 478.
of the Iievant, see Levant
of the Ponent, see Ponent
Tartary Cloths, 285-286.
Tatar, see Tartar above.
Tatariya coins, 12.
Tat'sianlu or Tachindo, II. 37, 38, 39, 40,
44,5»»55»57. Tat'sing R., II. 119, 125. Tattooing, H. 89, 74; 99, loi ; 807, 209;
Artbts in, 818, 224; 277, 280. Tat'ung or Taitongfu, 240, 277, 288. Taiiriz, see Tabriz. Taurizi, Torizl, 78, 77. Tawalisi, IL 464.
Taxes ; see Customs, Duties, Tithe. Tchakiri Mondou, 394. Tea, ignored by Polo, 108,
Tea-Trees in Eastern Tibet, U. 50.
^— Houses at Kingsz^ IL 179-180.
Tebet, see Tibet.
Tedaldo, see Theobald,
Teeth ; custom of casing, in Gold, II. 69,
72-73> 74 ; — of Adam, or of Buddha, 801,
311, 312; Conservation of — by the
Brahmans, 851. Tegana, II. 470. Teimur (Temur), Grandson and successor of
Kublai, 851, 352, 353; U. 132, 457. See
Timur, Tekla, Hamainot, II. 342. Telo Samawe, U. 277. Tembul (Betel), chewing, U. 858, 362. Temkan, son of Kublai, 353. Temple, Connection of the Order of the,
with Cilician Armenia, 25.
, Master of the, 88, 25.
Temple's account of the Condor, II. 410.
Temujin, see Chinghiz,
Tenduo or Tanduo, Plain of, 886, 237;
Province of, 875, 276, 279. Tengriy the Supreme Deity of the Tartars,
249* 250. Tennasserim, U. 260, 268 ; (Tanasari) 296. Tents, The Euan's, 890, 394-395. Terebinth, 129; of Mamre, 136, 140, 142. Terldrij a Goshawk, 98. Teroa Mountains, II. 413. Terra Australis, II. 255, and see 261. Terzaruoli, SO.
Thai, Great and Little, H. 259 ; 267. Thaigin, II. 19, 20, 21. Thaiyuanfu (Taianfti), II. 8, 9, 11. T'ang Dynasty, H. 22, 177. Thard-wahshf see Beast cmd Bird Patterns. Theatre, Malibran, 97. Theft, Tartar Punishment of; 859, 260. Theistic Worship, 487, 441. Thelasar, II. 425. Theobald or Tedaldo of Piaoenza, 17;
chosen Pope, as Gregory X., 80; Notes on
election and character, 21; sends two
friars with the Polos, and presents for the
Kaan, 88; 23. Theodorus, K. of Abyssinia, II. 43 2. Theophilus, a Missionary, II. 401. Thin TEv^ue, Siege o^ II. 144, 149. Thinae of Ptolemy, II. 21. Tholoman, see Coloman. Thomas, see St. Thomas. of Mancasola, Bishop of Samarkand,
194. , Mr. Edward, II. 98, 147, 345.
Digitized by
6o2
THOMSON, MR.
INDEX.
TREVISAN.
Thomson, Mr. J. ; hi« photographs, II. 544.
Thread, Brahmanical, II. MO.
'Three Kingdoms* (San-Kice), IL 31.
Threshold, To step on the, a great ofbnoe, 870, 372.
Thoran Shah's Hist, of Hormus, 124.
Tian-Shan, 185, 186, 198; II. 457.
Tiante-Kinn, 277.
Tibet (Tebet), Province of, U. 81, 88; 87, 40-42 ; Boundary of, 31; its acqnisition by the Mongols obscure, 32; organisation under Kublai, ib,; dogs of^ 87, 41, 44;
49; 55; 57-
Tibetan ; language and character, 29; — origin of Yuechi, 183.
Tibetans, 77; Superstitions of, 210-21 1; and Kashmiris (Tebet and Eeeimur), sor- ceries of, 898 S099., 806 9eqq. ; accused of cannibalism, 898, 302 ; also see TSxt,
Tides in Hangchau Estuarj, II. 134; 191.
Tieroe, Half-Tieroe, &c. Hours of, II. 851,
355- Tiflis, 59.
Tigado, Castle of, 154. Tigers; trained to the chase, 884, 386; in
Kweichau, II. 110; but see Lioru. Tigris, B., The Volga so called, 5, 9; at
Baghdad, 64. Tigudar (Aoomat Soldan), II. 466. Tlju, U. 187, 138. Tiles, Enamelled, 865, 358-9. Tilinga, Telingana, Tilink, Telenc, II. 348, 421. Timur (the GreatX 195 ; U. 150. Tinrfy 10 Taels of Silver (equivalent to a tael
of Gold), 413 ; II. 200-202. Tinnevelly, II. 358, 360, 394. Tintoretto, Picture by Domenico, 55, 35, Tithe on clothing material, 481. Tithing Men, Chinese, II. 183. Tjajya, see Ohoiaoh. Tod, Colonel James, 185, 191. Toddy, see Wine of Palm. Togan, II. 470, 473. Toghon-Temur, last Mongol Emperor, his
Wail, 296. Togrul Wang Khan, 232, 235. See Frester
John. Toktai Khan (Toctai, Lord of the Ponent),
71 ; II. 487, 491, 493 ; 497 seqg, ; Warn
of, with Noghai, 498 seqq. ; his symbolic
message, 499. Tolobnga, see Tulabugha. Tolon-nur, see Dolan^nur, Toman (Tuman), Mongol word for io,coc,
or a Corps of that number ; or a sum of
that amount; 102, 858, 255 ; II. 175, 183,
800, 202 ; 460. Tomb of Adam, see Adam. Tongking, Tungking, IL loi, 103, iii ; 248. Tooth-Relique of Buddha, II. 801; its
history, 31 1-3 12. Torchi, Dorj^ First-bom of Kublai, 352-353. Tomesel, 409, 412 ; IL 535.
ToroR.,337.
Torshok, II. 489.
Torture by constriction in raw Hide, II. 244.
'ToBoaol' or Watchman, 889; the word, 393.
Totamanga, Totamangul, see Tk^a- Mangku,
Tower and Bell, Alarm, at Peking, 86S, 365 ; at Kinsay, IL 178.
Tozan (Tathung ?), 278.
Trade, Dumb, IL 486. ' of India with Hormuz, 110; with Egypt, by Aden, 484, 435-6 ; with Esher, 489; with Dofar, 441 ; with Calate, 448.
— -— at Layas, I. 48; by Baudaa, 64; at Tauris, 75 ; at Cambaluc, 899 ; on the Caramoran, II. 17; on the Great Kianf. 80, 155; at Chinangli, 117; at Sinja Matu, 181 ; at Kinsay, 170, 178, 178, 185. 199; at Fuchau, 818; at Zayton, 817; at Java, 854 ; at Malaiur, 861 ; at CaU, 857 ; at Coilum, 868 ; in Melibar, 878 ; at Tans, 885; at Cambaet, 888; in Kesmacoran, 898; at Soootra, 899.
Trades in Manxi, alleged to be hereditary. IL 170; correction of this, 178.
* Tramontaine,' U. 279. Transmigration, 438 ; IL 196; 800. Traps for For Animals, IL 480, 483. Travancore, II. 372 ; 394; Raja of, 368. Treasure of Kings of Maabar, IL 894,
332.
Trebisond, Ul; 86; 47; Emperors of; and their Taib, 11. 284.
Trebuchets, n. 141, 143 tegq. See MiUtary Engines,
Trees ; of the Sun and Moon, &c, 133 seqq» see Ati>re Sol and Arbre Sec ; superstitions about, 135, 136, 140, 142; by the High- ways, 486 ; which give Camphor, U. 817 ; producing Wine, II. 874, 279, 888, 895; producing Flour, 888. See Pepper ^ Brazil^ Indian-Iiut, &c.
* Tregetour,' the word, 373. Trevisan, Jordan, 18, ik, 65. , Fiordelisa, i'>.
, Maroca and Pictro, fio.
Digitized by
TREVISAN.
INDEX.
UTTUNGADEVA.
603
Trevisan, Azso, 7, 77 ; Domenico, S,
, Marc* Antonio, Doge, S, 77.
Trincomalee, II. 333.
Tringano, II. 36a
Trinkat,U. 391.
' Trusty Lieges,' Devoted Comrades of K. ofMaabar, II. 828, 332.
T'sang-chau, II. 116, 119.
Tseut'ung, II. 319.
Tsiang-Iiiun (* General *) II. I30, 344.
Tsien-Tang R., II. 177, 181, 191, 198; 304- 306; Bore in the, 134, 191.
T'sinan-fu (Chlnangli), II. 119, 120.
T*sing-chau, II. i3o.
Tsing-chao, Kwei-hwa-chinoj, or Kuku Kho- tan, 277, 279, 381.
Tsing-ling, II. 37, 38, 29.
Tsining-cban, II. 119, 122.
Tsintstin, II. 213.
Tsinan-chau, Tswanchan, see Zayton.
Tsinsima Island, II. 343.
Tsongkhapa, Tibetan Reformer, 306.
Tsukuzi in Japan, II. 343.
Tsung-ngan-hlen, II. 206, 31 3.
Tuo, Tuk, or Tugh, the Horse-tail or Yak- tail Standard, 258, 355-356.
Tudai, wife of Ahmad Khan, II. 469.
Tadai-Mangka (Totamangu or Totaman- gulXn.491,493;4W,498,600.
Tughan, Tukan, son of Enblai, 353 ; II. 35 1.
Tughlak Shah, a Karaonah, 103.
Talabugha (TolobugaX II- ^7, 499.
Tuli, or Tului, Fourth Son of Chinghiz, 10 ; II. 36.
Tuman, see Toman.
Tumba, Angelo di, H ; Marco de, 65.
Tun, a City of E. Persia, 87.
Tungan, in Fokien, II. 335, 227.
Tunganiy or ' Converts,' a class of Mahome* dans in Northern China and Chinese Tur- kestan, 281, 282.
Tungchau (Tinju), II. 137.
Tungkwan, Fortress of, U. 10, 19, 20, 31.
Tunguses, 363.
Timny-flsh, 102, 109, II. 489.
Tunooain (Tiin-o-KainX a Km. of Persia, 84,87; 181,132, 143. 151-
Turbit, II. 879, 380.
Tnroomania (Anatolian Turkey), 46, 46.
Turkey, Great, i,e. Turkestan, 198; II. 367; 451, 466^166, 460; 476.
Turkman, 46, 104; Turkmans and Turks, distinction between, 46 ; — Horses, 45, 46.
Turks ; Ancient Mention of, 56 ; — and Mon- gols, 285 ; Turk friend of Polo's, 215.
Turquans, or Turkish Horses, 45.
Turmeric, II. 309.
Turquoises; in Kerman, 91, 93 ; inCaindu, U.45.
Turtle-doves, 99.
Turumpak, Hormuz, 114.
Tutia; Preparation of, 129, 130; U. 888.
Tuticorin, II. 359, 360.
Tut'song, Sung Emp. of China, II. 134; 194.
Tver, II. 489.
Twelve ; a fkvourite round number, II. 420.
Barons over the Kaan's Administra- tion, 417; 11.187.
Twigs, or Arrows, Divination by, 287, 238.
Tyuman, II. 480.
Tyunju Porcelain Manu£eu»ture, II. 218.
Tzarev, 6.
TTcaoa, (Ukak, Ukek, Uwek), a City on the Volga, 5; account of, 8; The Ukak of Ibn Batuta a difierent place, U. 488.
Uch'h II. 420; Multan, I. 87; — baligh,
m.
(Jdyana, 173.
Ughuz, Legend of, U. 485.
Uighur Character, 14; 39, 30; 169; 344 (and see plate at U. 472).
s; 77; 3i6; 338; 230; II. 164; 460.
Uiraca, 273.
Uirad, see Oircul
Ujjain; Legend of, U. 334; {Ozene), 387; 420.
Ulahai, 373.
XJlatai, IL 470, 473 ; also see L 82, j}.
Ulugh Bagh, on Badakhshan border, 161.
Uman and Peman (* Black and White Bar- barians'), II. 59.
Umbrellas, 842, 345.
XJnc Can (Aung Khan), see Prester John.
Ung (Ungkiit), a Tartar Tribe, 276, 385.
Ungrat (Kungurat), a Tartar Tribe, 848, 350.
Unioom, i. e. Rhinoceros (in Burma), II. 89 ; (in Sumatra), 265, 282; Legend of Virgin and, 266, 372; Horns of, 373.
Unken, II. 208.
ITnlucky Hours, II. 851.
Unyamwezi Superstition, 134.
Urduja, Princess, II. 464,
Uriangkadai, U. 38.
Uriangkiit (Tunguses), 363.
Urumtsi, 3 16.
Uttnngadeva, K. of Java, II. 755.
Digitized by
6o4
UWEK.
INDEX.
WHALES.
Uwek, see Ucaoa, Uzbeg Khan, 343. 6 of Kunduz, see Murad Beg,
V.
Yair (The Fur and Animal), 848; II. 480, 483, 484, 487, 489.
as an epithet of Eyes, 190 ; 369.
Vamb^, Prof. Hermann, 29, 216, 281, 299, 350,368,388; U.463.
Van, Lake, 59.
Yanohu (Wangchu); 97; conspires with Chenchu against Ahmad, 408; is alain, 404.
Varaegian, Varangian, U. 490.
Varaha Mihira, 107.
Varini, H. 490.
Varsach R., 163.
VasmviOj 283.
Vateria Induxiy II. 387.
VeUalars, U. 360.
Venddan, Title of K. of Kaulam, U. 368.
Venetian pronunciation, 97, 1S7,
Venice and Genoa, Rivalry and Wars of, 59 aeqq. ; Peace of 1299 between, 60.
, e; Return of Polos to, U, ftJ, 6t, 86;
exaltation of, after Latin conquest of Con- stantinople, 9 ; Nobles of, U; 16; 16; Man- sion of Polos at, il^ seqq. ; Galleys of, SO seqq. ; mode of levy for an expedition, U ; Arrogance of, J^ ; Curious deposits of Ar- chives at, 68; the Decima at, 69; Money of, 69; and II. 533 ; Guilds at, 70; Slavery and slave-trade at, t&. ; old Maps at, 107 ; 1; 2; 18; 19; 43; articles brought from the East to — by Marco, 886, 967, II. 289, 288.
YentilatorB at Hormus, II. 450, 451-
Verbiest, Father, II. 544.
'Yemiques,' the word, 869, 371. Verzino CohmbinOj and other kinds of Ver' zino (or Brazil q. v.), II. 368.
YesselB on the Eiang ; Vast numbers of, II. 155, 156, IS7 ; their size, t&. See Ships.
Vijayanagar, II. 349.
Vikramajit, Legend of, II. 334.
Vikrampiir, II. 82.
Villard de Honcourt, Album of, II. 148.
YineyardB; in Taican, 160; in Kashgar, 190; in Khotan, 196; in N. China, IL 6, 7,9, 11; 45. Virgin of Cape Comorin, II. 372, 552. Visconti, Mafieo, of Milan, 50.
YlBOonti, Tedaldo or Tebaldo (Pope Gregory X), 18; 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.
Yoohan (or TJnohan, Yungchang), IL 08, 71, 73 ; 77; Battle there, 8O-87.
Yokhan, see Wakhan.
Volga; caUed Tigris, 5, 9; 6, 8; IL 485, 488.
Yughin, U. 166.
Yuju (in Kiangnan), ib,
(in Chekiang), IL 208.
W.
Wakhan (Yokhan); Dialect of; i68; 181; 182.
Walaskjird, 109.
Wall; of Alexander (or CaucasianX 82, $5 ; n. 537; another, 55 ; of Gog and Magog, t. e. of China, 108, 83, 285 ; of Peking, 862, 365.
Walnut-oil, 166, 171.
Wang, (Chinese Title), 232, 353 ; IL 95.
Wangchu (Yanohu q. v.).
Wareg, Warang (Oroeoh 9\ IL 490.
Wass&f, The Historian 'Abdullah, son of Faxl- ullah of Shiraz, sumamed; perhaps drew information from Polo personally, 117-118 ; hb character of the Karaunas, 103; his notices of Hormuz, 125; his eulogy of Kublai, 323; 367; 419; story of KubUi, 426 ; his account of the taking of Siang- yang, IL 133, 151; of Kinaay, 196; of Ma1>ar, 315 seqq.; of the Horse Tiwle to India, 333; of the treatment of Hones there, 336; his extravagant style, 133; sample of it, 496 ; 499; 550.
Water; Bitter, (see that word); Cnsiom of lying in. 111, 123 ; consecration by Lamas, 300.
Clock, 365, 366; n. 547.
Wathek, the Khali^ 58.
Weather Ck>DJiiring, see (knjurv^.
Wei R. (in Shensi), IL 21.
(in Shantung), II. 122.
Weights and Measures, IL 534 »»iq.
Weining, IL 113, 114.
Wen R. (Do.), n. 122.
Whale-oil, including Spermaceti oil. 111, 1 19 ; U. 899, 400.
Whales, IL 281; taken in Socotra,398; and Madagascar, 404, 407 ; Species of tiie Indian Ocean, 400; sperm-whale (cap- doUle), 404, 407.
Digitized by
WHEATEN BREAD.
INDEX.
YARLIGH.
605
Wheaten Bread, not eaten, 424; H. 58,
60. Wheeler, Mr. J. T., H. 551. ' White City,' meaning of this term among
Tartars, 387 ; II. Jo ; of the Manzi
Frontier, 28. ; Camels, 279; Horses and Mares,
291, 877 ; II. 543 ; offered to the Eaan, I.
299. Feast, at the Kaan*s Conrt, 876, 378 ;
II. 543.
Devils, II. 841, 346 ; — Horde, H. 480.
Whittington and his Cat in Persia, 66. Wild Asses and Oxen, see Asses, Oxen. William of Tripoli, Friar, 21 ; his writings,
23,34. Williamson, Rey. A., 140; II. 6, 7, 8, it, I3 ;
17, 22; J20.
Wind, Poison-, 111-112, 123 ; Monsoons, U. 246.
Wine of the Vine ; in Persia, 85 ; Boiled, ib.j 89, 180, 162 ; laxity of Persians ahout, 89, 98 ; of ancient KapisOj 162 ; of Khotan, 196, and noie; in Shansi, II. 9, 11; im- ported at Kinsaj, 184.
from Bioe {Samshu or dards^), 427 ;
n. (and of wheat) 47, 50; 62; 70; 99; 106; 184; 186; 200; 416; 439-
of the Palm (Toddy) U. 274, 282;
296.
from Sugar (Arrack), H. 864, 489.
from Dates (Do.), 110, 118; U. 416;
489.
(nnspedfied), at the Kaan's Table, 869;
379; Not used in MaTwir, IL 826; nor by Brahmans, 860.
' Winter,' used for * Rainy Season,* II. 381.
Wisos or Wesses, a People of Russia, II. 486.
Women ; of Kerman, their embroidery, 92 ; mourners, 112; of Khorasan beautiful, 181 ; of Badakhshan, 168 ; of Kashmir, 176 ; of Khotan, 198; of Camul, fair and wanton, 212; of the Tartars, good and loyal, 244; of Erguiul, pretty creatures, 267; of the town, 898, and 11. 18$ ; of Tebet, evil customs, 86; also in Caindu, 46, and in Carajan, 68; of Zardandan, and their strange custom, 70; of Anin, 101; of Kinsay, charming, II. 170; Re- spectful Treatment of, 187 ; of Zanghibar, Frightful, 416; and see under Marriage^ Beauty,
, Island of, H. 397 seqq.
Wonders performed by the Baosi, 292 seqq, ; 339-
Wood, Lieutenant John, Indian Navy, IP; 165 ; his excellent elucidations of Polo in the Oxua Regions, 183 seqq.
Wood-oil, IL 282.
Wool, Salamander's, 216, 218.
Worship of Mahomed, Supposed, 196 (see Mahomed) % by the Bacsis, 293; of Fire, 294; Tartar, 248-249; Chinese, 487.
of the first ol^ect seen in the Day,
IL266.
Wuchau (Vuju), IL 206.
Wukiang-bien (Yughin?), IL 168.
Wylie, Mr. Alexander, and Debts of this book to him. See Prefaces, and 75 \ 29; 314; 364; IL 23; 3r; 154; 168; 177; '9' ) 195 « 3^1 ) ^^ Prester John and the Golden King, 542 seqq.\ on ancient astro- nomical Instruments at Peking, 544 seqq. ; on Fangs, the supposed Town squares of Kinsay, ^50.
* Xanadu,' 296.
Xavier ; at Socotra, II. 401 ; his Church at Cape Comorin, 549.
Y.
Yachau, IL 37, 40, 57.
Yachi City (Yunnan-fu), II. 62, 53, 54, 58, 59, 61, 65, 71, 93.
Yadahy Tadagari, Yadah-tdsh, the Science and Stone of the Weather-Conjuror, 300, 301.
Ydjiij and M^jilj, see Qog and Magog.
Yak, described, 266, 268, 269 ; its size and horns, ib. ; cross-breeds, 266, 269 ; its hair (taiU) carried to Venice, 266 ; much used in India for military decoration, II. 841, 346. See Tuc.
Ya'kdb Beg of Kasghar, 197.
Yakuts, n. 483.
Yalung R., U. 37, 55.
* Yam ' or * Yamb * (a post-stage or post- house), 420, 423 ; IL 196.
Yamgan, 170.
Yangchau (Yanju), City of, 419 ; IL 187, 138; Marco's goremment there, fl, 11. 187, 139 ; 164; Province of, 218.
Yarbeg of Badakhshan, 164.
Yarkand (Yaroan), 196.
TarHgh and Paizah, 315, 343.
Digitized by
6o6
YASDI.
INDEX.
ZURPICAR.
Yasdl (Yezd), S9.
, a stuff so called, ib. Yashm (i.e. Jade), 199. Yasodhara, bride of Sakya Sinha, II. 304. Yaranas, II. 359. Tdifti,»re. Year, Chinese, 375; MoLgol and Chinese
— Cycle, 488, 415- YelimaU (Mt. d*Ely), II. 375. Yeliuchntsai, Statesman and Astronomer, II.
12; 546,548. Yellow or Orthodox Lamas, 307, 317. Yemen, II. 426, 428, 436, 438, 44^ J and see
Aden, Yenchau (in Shantung), II. 119, 12 i.
(in Chekiang), II. 206.
Yenking (Old Peking), 363, 364.
Yenshan, II. 206.
Yesubnka, II. 473-
Yesudar, 11.457-
Yesngai, Father of Chinghiz, 232.
Yetsina (EtsinaX 226.
Yeid (Yasdl), 89 ; — silks, ib, and U. 7.
Yonth, Island of; II. 369.
Ypr^ John of, his notice of Polo and work,
117. Yrao, 76. Tsemain of HivUie^ Western Engineer, II.
152. Kti, see Jade, Yuechi, 183. Ytien^ Mongol Imperial Dynasty so styled,
364; II. 77-
^ ming-Tuen Palace, 298.
Yugria or Ynghra, in the Far North, 11.
483, 485 ; 494.
Ynkshan or Ynkshan Portage, II. 205, 206.
Yungchang-fn (Shensi), 268. .
(Ynnnan, Yoohan, q. v.), 11. 73, 74 ;
87, 88, 89, 90. Yunnan Province (Oarajan q. v.), Marco's
Mission to, fO, 38 ; 11. 8 eeqq. ; I. 326 ; II.
32; 37; conquest of, 38, 65 ; 48; 49» 50>
5i;52,53»55»57»59»6o,6i; Recent Ma-
homedan independence in, 60, 65 ; 67 ; 74 ;
77; 78; 82; 87; 89; 97; 103; 107;
no; in; 112. City (Yaohi q. v.), II. 53, 55, 57»
61; 65; 93; 103; 114. Yuthia, Ayuthia(i.e. Ayodhya) (med. capital
of Siam), i*; II. 259, 26a
Z.
Zaila', IL 406; 430; 433.
i^tfMtaA, probably origin of * Satin,* II. 224.
Zampa (Champa or Cbamba), II. 25 1.
ZanghflMT (Zangibar, Zanjibar, Zanzibar) II. 397; 408, 404; Ivory Trade, 406, 416 Currents off, 407 ; 415 ; the name, A. described, 415; its Blacks; Women; ap- plication of the name,, 417 ; 426.
Zanton (Shantung ?), 5.
Zardandan or 'Gold-Teeth,' a People of Western Yunnan, II. 69; the name, ios, and IL 73; identity doubtful, 73-74; the characteristic customs, 74 seqq. ; 81.
Zayton, ZaitiSn, Zeiton, (^ayton (Tswan- chau ; Chwanchau or Chinchew of modem charts), the great Medieval Port of China, II. 160; 218, 214, 215, 2f6; described, 217 seqq. ; Kaan's Revenue from, ib, ; porce- lain, 218 ; 225 ; language peculiar, t^. and 227 ; its identity, 219 eeqq. ; supposed ety- mologies of name ; medieval notices, 220- 221 ; Chinchew a name misapplied, 222 ; objections raised recently to identity of Zayton with T*swanchau, 222 ; how far they affect Editor's view, 223; present state of Tswanchau ; derivation of Satin^ 224; 225; ships built at, 234; 267; ships of, M6; 247; merchants of; 264; 368.
Zebu, lOi.
Zedoary, H. 377.
Zenier, Abate, t8,
Zerms (Jerms), n. 435.
Zerumbet, 11. 377.
ZeUani, U, 224.
Zhafiir (Dhafar, Do&r), II. 441, 442 seqq.
Zio (Orcassia), II. 461, 493-
Zimm^ see Kiang^mai,
Zinc, 13a
Zinj, Zingis, II. XI4, 417, 418, 420.
Zobeideh, the Lady, 164.
Zodiac, Chinese, and Stellar spaces, II. 548.
Zona, n. 244* See Ohoroha.
Zd'lkamain (Zuloamlan, i,e, Alexander)^ 166, 169.
Zurpioar(Zd'lfi^X a Turk friend of Marco Polo, 216.
FINIS.
LOXDOK : PBINTED BT WILLIAM CXOWBB AXD 80X8, STAMrOBD STaSR,
AKD CBARnra oaosi.
Digitized by
n.
Digitized by
Digitized by
r
D gitized by
Digitized by