The Body of Messer St. Thomas the Apostle lies in this province of Maabar at a certain little town having no great population. ’Tis a place where few traders go, because there is very little merchandize to be got there, and it is a place not very accessible.{1} Both Christians and Saracens, however, greatly frequent it in pilgrimage. For the Saracens also do hold the Saint in great reverence, and say that he 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.”{2} The Christians who go thither in pilgrimage 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 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.[1]]
Now, I 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 hermitage 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 peafowl, not seeing the Saint, let fly an arrow at one of the peacocks; and this arrow struck the holy man in the right side, insomuch 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.{4}
The children that are born here are black enough, but the blacker they be the more they are thought of; wherefore from the day of their birth their parents do rub them every week with oil of sesamé, 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.{5}
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.{6}
Note 1.—The little town where the body of St. Thomas lay was Mailapúr, the name of which is still applied to a suburb of Madras about 3½ miles south of Fort St. George.
Note 2.—The title of Avarian, given to St. Thomas by the Saracens, is judiciously explained by Joseph Scaliger to be the Arabic Ḥawáriy (pl. Ḥawáriyún), ‘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 St. Thomas for miraculous cures is mentioned also by John Marignolli, who was there about 1348–1349. 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 hic Hanana (pulvis) cum hac Taibutha (gratiâ) Sancti Thomae Apostoli in sanitatem et medelam corporis et animae, in nomen P. et F. 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. (J. R. G. S. X. 483.) And the Shíahs, on solemn occasions, partake of water in which has been mingled the dust of Kerbela.
Fa-hian tells that the people of Magadha did the like, for the cure of headache, with earth from the place where lay the body of Kasyapa, a former Buddha. (Beal, p. 133.)
The Little Mount of St. Thomas, near Madras.Note 4.—Vague as is Polo’s indication of the position of the Shrine of St. Thomas, it is the first geographical 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 thirteen months in Maabar, and in a letter thence in 1292–1293 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 fullness: “cum Thomâ in India, cum Petro Romae, cum Paulo in Illyrico,” etc. (Scti. Hieron. Epistolae, LIX., ad Marcellam.) So dispassionate a scholar as Professor 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 supposed) to Edessa, in the year 394, which is alluded to in 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 Theodorus, who had visited the spot.
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 believe, 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 Pesháwar, 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 seventh day of the month Vaisákha.”... General Cunningham has read the date with more claim to precision: “In the 26th year of King Guduphara, in the Samvat year 103, in the month of Vaisákh, the 4th day.”... But Professor Dowson now comes much closer to General Cunningham, and reads: “26th year of the King, the year 100 of Samvat, 3rd day of Vaisákha.” (See Rep. of R. As. Soc., 18th January, 1875.) In ordinary application of Samvat (to era of Vikramaditya) A.S. 100 = A.D. 43; but the era meant here is as yet doubtful. 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 Prinsep’s Essays, II. 176, 177, and Mr. Thomas’s remarks at p. 214; Trübner’s Record, 30th June, 187; Cunningham’s Desc. List of Buddhist Sculptures in Lahore Central Museum; Reinaud, Inde, p. 95.)
Here then may be a faint trace of a true apostolic history. But in the 16th 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, etc., 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 indefatigable Traveller and Missionary retook his way to India, converting Socotra as he passed, and then preached in Malabar, and on the Coromandel 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 of Tours was Mailapúr, 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 thirty 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 connection 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 commission was sent to Mailapúr, or San Tomé 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, etc. The supposed relics were transferred to Goa, where they are still preserved in the Church of St. Thomas in that city. The question appears to have become a party one among Romanists in India, in connection with other differences, and I see that the authorities now ruling the Catholics at Madras are strong in disparagement of the special sanctity of the localities, and of the whole story connecting St. Thomas with Mailapúr. (Greg. Turon. Lib. Mirac. I. p. 85; Tr. R. A. S. I. 761; Assemani, III. Pt. II. pp. 32, 450; Novus Orbis (ed. 1555), p. 210; Maffei, Bk. VIII.; Cathay, pp. 81, 197, 374–377, etc.)
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 Fernandes, 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.)
St. Thomas Localities at Madras.As Diogo de Couto relates the story of the localities, in the shape which it had taken by the middle of the 16th century, both Little and Great Mounts were the sites of Oratories which the Apostle had frequented; 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 stone slab with a cross and inscription carved upon it. The story speedily developed itself that this was the cross which had been embraced 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 interpretation of the inscription as relating to the death of St. Thomas, etc., and this was long accepted. The cross seemed to have been long forgotten, when lately Mr. Burnell 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 Inscription as yet given are tentative and somewhat discrepant. Thus Mr. Burnell reads: “In punishment (?) by the cross (was) the suffering to this (one): (He) who is the true Christ and God above, and Guide for ever pure.” Professor Haug: “Whoever believes 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 ✛.” See Kircher, China Illustrata, p. 55 seqq.; De Couto, u.s. (both of these have inaccurate representations of the cross); Academy, vol. v. (1874), p. 145, etc.; and Mr. Burnell’s pamphlet “On some Pahlavi Inscriptions in South India.” To his kindness I am indebted for the illustration (p. 351).
[“E na quelle parte da tranqueira alem, do ryo de Malaca, em hum citio de Raya Mudiliar, que depois possuyo Dona Helena Vessiva, entre os Mangueiraes cavando ao fundo quasi 2 braças, descobrirão hua ✛ floreada de cobre pouco carcomydo, da forma como de cavaleyro de Calatrava de 3 palmos de largo, e comprido sobre hua pedra de marmor, quadrada de largura e comprimento da dìtta ✛, entra huas ruynas de hua caza sobterranea de tijolos como Ermida, e parece ser a ✛ de algum christão de Meliapor, que veo em companhia de mercadores de Choromandel a Malaca.” (Godinho de Eredia, fol. 15.)—MS. Note.—H. Y.]
The etymology of the name Mayiláppúr, 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 Mirapolis, the Catalan Map (1375) Mirapor; Conti (circa 1440) Malepor; Joseph of Cranganore (1500) Milapar (or Milapor); De Barros and Couto, Meliapor. Mr. Burnell thinks it was probably Malai-ppuram, “Mount-Town”; and the same as the Malifatan of the Mahomedan writers; the last point needs further enquiry.
Note 5.—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 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, and painted white to look horrible in Hindu eyes.” (The Tinnevelly 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. della Valle, II. 662.
When you leave Maabar and go about 1,000 miles in a northerly direction you come to the kingdom of Mutfili. 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.{1}
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 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 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.{2}
In 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.{3} The people have also the largest sheep in the world, and great abundance of all the necessaries of life.
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 Kákateya or Ganapati dynasty reigning at Warangol, north-east 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, Faitan), a port called Motupallé, in the Gantúr district of the Madras Presidency, about 170 miles north of Fort St. George. Though it has dropt out of most of our modern maps it still exists, and a notice of it is to be found in W. Hamilton, and in Milburne. The former says: “Mutapali, 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.—[Cf. Hunter, Gaz. India, Motupalli, “now only an obscure fishing village.”—It is marked in Constable’s Hand Atlas of India.—H. C.]
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 frontier 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 twenty-eight, or, as another record states, for thirty-eight 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 Delhi 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 Wilson’s Mackenzie, I. cxxx.; Taylor’s Or. Hist. MSS. I. 18; Do.’s Catalogue Raisonné, 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 Kaḍapa and Karnúl, 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, concerning the twelve Jewels in the Rationale or Breastplate of the Hebrew High Priest, a work written before the end of the 4th century, wherein the tale is told of the Jacinth. It is distinctly referred to by Edrisi, who assigns its locality to the land of the Kirkhîr (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. [So Les Merveilles de l’Inde, pp. 128–129.—H. C.] It is found in the Chinese Narrative of the Campaigns of Hulaku, translated by both Rémusat and Pauthier. [We read in the Si Shi Ki, of Ch’ang Te, Chinese Envoy to Hulaku (1259), translated by Dr. Bretschneider (Med. Res. I. p. 151): “The kin-kang tsuan (diamonds) come from Yin-du (Hindustan). The people take flesh and throw it into the great valleys (of the mountains). Then birds come and eat this flesh, after which diamonds are found in their excrements.”—H. C.] It is told in two different versions, once of the Diamond, and again of the Jacinth of Serendib, in the work on precious stones by Ahmed Taifáshi. It is one of the many stories in the scrap-book of Tzetzes. Nicolo Conti relates it of a mountain called Albenigaras, fifteen 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 Tamarra. And Haxthausen found it as a popular legend in Armenia. (S. Epiph. de XIII. Gemmis, etc., Romae, 1743; Jaubert, Edrisi, I. 500; J. A. S. B. XIII. 657; Lane’s Ar. Nights, ed. 1859, III. 88; Rém. Nouv. Mél. Asiat. I. 183; Raineri, Fior di Pensieri di Ahmed Teifascite, pp. 13 and 30; Tzetzes, Chil. XI. 376; India in XVth Cent. pp. 29–30; J. C. Scal. de Subtilitate, 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. 111). 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 the Periplus. Indeed even in the time of Sakya Muni Kalinga was already famous for diaphanous muslins, as may be seen in a story related in the Buddhist Annals. (J. A. S. B. VI. 1086.)
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.{1}
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.{2}
These Abraiaman are Idolaters; and they pay greater heed to signs and omens than any people that exists. I will mention as an example one of their customs. To every day of the week they assign an augury of this sort. Suppose that there is some purchase in hand, he who proposes 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 will 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 particular 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.{3}]
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!{4}
These Abraiaman are very long-lived, owing to their extreme abstinence in eating. And they never allow themselves 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 man of them living to 150 or 200 years. They eat very 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 together 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.{5}
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.{6}]
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,{7} 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, 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 received 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 -min, by which Marco here and previously denotes the Brahmans, probably represents an incorrect Arabic plural, such as Abráhamín; the correct Arabic form is Baráhimah.
What is said here of the Brahmans coming from “Lar, a province west of St. Thomas’s,” of their having a special King, etc., is all very obscure, and that I suspect through erroneous notions.
Lar-Desa, “The Country of Lár,” properly Láṭ-desa, was an early name for the territory of Guzerat and the northern Konkan, embracing Saimur (the modern 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 Lár, and the language spoken on its shores is called by Mas’udi Lári. Abulfeda’s authority, Ibn Said, speaks of Lár and Guzerat as identical. That position would certainly be very ill described as lying west of Madras. The kingdom most nearly answering to that description in Polo’s age would be that of the Bellál Rajas of Dwara Samudra, which corresponded in a general way to modern Mysore. (Mas’udi, I. 330, 381; II. 85; Gildem. 185; Elliot, I. 66.)
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 Brahmans, 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 Guzerat or Lár was the country from which the latter chiefly came, there is much probability 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 mediæval 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. Hiuen Tsang 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 speech and eminent in justice; and we may also refer to the high character given to the Hindus by Abu’l Fazl. After 150 years of European trade indeed we find a sad deterioration. Padre Vincenzo (1672) speaks of fraud as greatly prevalent among the Hindu traders. It was then commonly said at Surat that it took three Jews to make a Chinaman, and three 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 demoralising in some degrees to both parties, especially to the weaker. But can we say that deterioration has been all 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! (Pèl. Boudd. II. 83; Jordanus, p. 22; Ayeen Akb. III. 8; P. Vincenzo, p. 114; Pallas, Beyträge, III. 85; Rambles and Recns. II. 143.)
Note 2.—The kingdom of Maabar called Soli is Chola or Soladesam, of which Kanchi (Conjeveram) was the ancient capital.[1] In the Ceylon Annals the continental invaders are frequently termed Solli. The high terms 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 Manár.
Note 3.—Abraham Roger gives from the Calendar of the Coromandel Brahmans the character, lucky or unlucky, of every hour of every day of the week; and there is also a chapter on the subject in Sonnerat (I. 304 seqq.). For a happy explanation of the term Choiach I am indebted to Dr. Caldwell: “This apparently difficult word can be identified much more easily than most others. Hindu astrologers teach that there is an unlucky hour every day in the month, i.e. during the period of the moon’s abode in every nákshatra, or lunar mansion, throughout the lunation. This inauspicious period is called Tyâjya, ‘rejected.’ Its mean length is one hour and thirty-six minutes, European time. The precise moment when this period commences differs in each nákshatra, 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 Colonel Warren’s Kala Sankatila, Madras, 1825, p. 388. The Tamil pronunciation of the word is tiyâcham, and when the 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 tiyâch, to which form of the word Marco’s Choiach is as near as could be expected.” (MS. Note.)[2]
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 à heure de prime si li doubloit, et à heure de tierce aussi; et quant il vint à eure de midi si revenoit à sa première force ou il avoit esté le matin; et quant vint à eure de nonne et à toutes les seures de la nuit estoit-il toudis en sa première force.” (Quoted in introd. to Messir Gauvain, etc., edited by C. Hippeau, Paris, 1862, pp. xii.–xiii.) The term Half-Tierce is frequent in mediæval Italian, e.g. in Dante:—
“Lèvati su, disse’l Maestro, in piede:La via è lunga, e’l cammino è malvagio:E già il Sole a mezza terza riede.” (Inf. xxxiv,)Half-prime we have in Chaucer:—
“Say forth thy tale and tary not the timeLo Depëford, and it is half way prime.”—(Reeve’s Prologue.)Definitions of these terms as given by Sir H. Nicolas and Mr. Thomas Wright (Chron. of Hist. p. 195, and Marco Polo, 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:—
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 food 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 having washed or changed, men carrying butter, oil, sweet milk, molasses, acids, iron, or weapons of war. Lucky objects 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, etc., etc. (p. 91). (See also Sonnerat, I. 73.)
Note 5.—Chughi of course stands for Jogi, used loosely for any Hindu ascetic. Arghun Khan of Persia (see Prologue, ch. xvii.), 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. 391–393, and Q. R. p. 194.) Bernier 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 Vitae 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 Vincent. Bellov. Spec. Natur. VII. c. 60, 62, and Bl. Ain-i-Akbari, p. 40.)
[We read in Ma Huan’s account of Cochin (J. R. A. S. April, 1896, p. 343): “Here also is another class of men, called Chokis (Yogi), who lead austere lives like the Taoists of China, but who, however, are married. These men from the time they are born do not have their heads shaved or combed, but plait their hair into several tails, which hang over their shoulders; they wear no clothes, but round their waists they fasten a strip of rattan, over which they hang a piece of white calico; they carry a conch-shell, which they blow as they go along the road; they are accompanied by their wives, who simply wear a small bit of cotton cloth round their loins. Alms of rice and money are given to them by the people whose houses they visit.”
(See F. Bernier, Voy., ed. 1699, II., Des Gentils de l’Hindoustan, pp. 97, seqq.)
We read in the Nine Heavens of Amír Khusrú (Elliot, III. p. 563): “A jogí who could restrain his breath in this way (diminishing the daily number of their expirations of breath) lived in an idol to an age of more than three hundred and fifty years.”
“I have read in a book that certain chiefs of Turkistán sent ambassadors with letters to the Kings of India on the following mission, viz.: that they, the chiefs, had been informed that in India drugs were procurable which possessed the property of prolonging human life, by the use of which the King of India attained to a very great age ... and the chiefs of Turkistán begged that some of this medicine might be sent to them, and also information as to the method by which the Ráís preserved their health so long.” (Elliot, II. p. 174.)—H. C.]
“The worship of the ox is still common enough, but I can find no 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 literature, 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; J. R. A. S. N.S. V. 142 seqq.)
Note 6.—In G. T. proques, which the Glossary to that edition absurdly renders porc; it is some form apparently of pidocchio.
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.