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.{1}
This is a very wild country, and there are beasts of all kinds there, especially monkeys of such peculiar fashion that you would take them for men! There are also gatpauls{2} in wonderful diversity, with bears, lions, and leopards, in abundance.
Note 1.—Kumári 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 κομάρια ἄκρον of Ptolemy, a name derived from the Sanskrit Kumári, “a Virgin,” an appellation of the goddess Durgá. 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 Rás Kumhări as the limit between Malabar and Ma’bar. Kumări is the Tamul pronunciation of the Sanskrit word and probably Comări 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 modern commentators, with Kumár, one of the regions supplying aloes-wood, and which was apparently Khmer or Kamboja. (Caldwell’s Drav. 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.
[Mr. Talboys Wheeler, in his History of India, vol. iii. (p. 386), says of this tract:
“The region derives its name from a temple which was erected there in honour of Kumárí, ‘the Virgin’; the infant babe who had been exchanged for Krishna, and ascended to heaven at the approach of Kansa.” And in a note:
“Colonel Yule identifies Kumárí with Durgá. This is an error. The temple of Kumárí 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 (II. 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 is no time to obtain other evidence, I have removed the words which identified the existing temple with that of Durgá. But my authority for identifying the object of worship, in whose honour the pilgrims bathe monthly at Cape Comorin, with Durgá, is the excellent one of Dr. Caldwell. (See his Dravidian Grammar as quoted in the passage above.) 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 anywhere else) in the time of the author of the Periplus, 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 Comarí or Cumarí ‘a Virgin,’ because they pretend that anciently the goddess Comari ‘the Damsel,’ who is the Indian Diana or Hecate, used to bathe” etc. However, we can discover from his book elsewhere (see pp. 79, 285) that by the Indian Diana he means Párvatí, i.e. Durgá.
Lassen at first[1] identified the Kumárí of the Cape with Párvatí; but afterwards connected the name with a story in the Mahábhárata about certain Apsarases changed into Crocodiles.[2] On the whole there does not seem sufficient ground to deny that Párvatí was the original object of worship at Kumárí, though the name may have lent itself to various legends.]
Cape Comorin. (From a sketch by Mr. Foote, of the Geological Survey of India.)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: “Il ont gat paulz et autre gat-maimon si divisez,” etc. Gatto maimone, for an ape of some kind, is common in old Italian, the latter part of the term, from the Pers. Maimún, being possibly connected with our Baboon. And that the Gat-paul was also some kind of ape is confirmed by the Spanish Dictionaries. Cobarrubias 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,’” etc. (f. 431 v.). So also the Diccion. de la Lengua Castellana 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, describes a hill on the coast of Paria as covered with a species of Gatos Paulos. (See Navarrete, Fr. ed. III. 21, also 147–148.) It also occurs in Marmol, Desc. General de Affrica, who says that one kind of monkeys has a black face; “y estas comunemente se llaman en España 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 “Il 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 à merveilles”—wonderful swamps and marshes! The Pipino Latin has adhered to the correct reading—“Ibi sunt cati qui dicuntur pauli, valde diversi ab aliis.”
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.{1}
There is no proper harbour in the country, but there are many great rivers with good estuaries, wide and deep.{2} Pepper and ginger grow there, and other spices in quantities.{3} 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.{4} 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.{5}
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’Ely, the Yeli-mala of the Malabar people, and called also in the legends of the coast Sapta-shaila, or the Seven Hills. This is the only spur of the Gháts 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 modern maps. Abulfeda describes it as “a great mountain projecting into the sea, and descried from a great distance, called Ras Haili”; and it appears in Fra Mauro’s map as Cavo de Eli.
Rashiduddin mentions “the country of Hili,” between Manjarúr (Mangalore) and Fandaraina (miswritten in Elliot’s copy Sadarsa). Ibn Batuta speaks of Hili, which he reached on leaving Manjarúr, 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 (Faknúr, of Rashid and Firishta, Baccanor of old books, and now Bárkúr, the Malayálim Vákkanúr) and Helli. But we read that in 1527 Simon de Melo was sent to burn ships in the River of Marabia and at Monte d’Elli.[1] 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 Máráwí is still preserved in Mádávi or Mádái, corruptly 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, but there is a place on the river just mentioned, and within the Madai township, called Payangádi (“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 Hili, as the cities Hili and Marawi were apparently separate though near.[2]
Mount d’Ely, from the Sea, in last century.The state of Hílí-Máráwi is also mentioned in the Arabic work on the early history of the Mahomedans in Malabar, called Tuhfat-al-Mujáhidín, 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 Kolatiri.[3]
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 mountain, 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.”
(Stanley’s Correa, Hak. Soc. pp. 145, 312–313; Gildem. p. 185; Elliot, I. 68; I. B. IV. 81; Conti, p. 6; Madras Journal, XIII. No. 31, pp. 14, 99, 102, 104; De Barros, III. 9, cap. 6, and IV. 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 Kavváyi and the Nileshwaram River, or the Madai 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, Elá in Sanskrit, Hel in 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 wexing many a spice,As clowe gilofre and Licorice,Ginger and grein de Paradis,Canell and setewale of pris,And many a spice delitableTo eaten when men rise from table.”—R. of the Rose.The Hely ginger is also mentioned by Conti.
Note 4.—This piratical practice is noted by Abdurrazzák 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 Conchon” (Ptolemy’s Pirate Coast!) “to restore any ships or goods that were driven ashore.” (Fryer, p. 261.)
Note 5.—With regard to the anchors, Pauthier’s text has just the opposite of the G. T. which we have preferred: “Les nefs du Manzi portent si grans ancres de fust, que il seuffrent moult de grans fortunes aus plajes.” De Mailla 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, etc., I. 385.)
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.{1}
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,{2} that is, they drop off 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 merchants 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 befall them at times.{3}
There is in this kingdom a great quantity of pepper, and ginger, and cinnamon, and turbit, and of nuts of India.{4} They also manufacture very delicate and beautiful buckrams. 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.{5} 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 المليبار, al-Malíbár, Edrisi and Abulfeda المنيبار, al-Maníbár, etc., and like variations occur among the old European 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 Hunáwar to Kumhári; Rashiduddin includes Sindábúr, i.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.—“Il font eschiel en la 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.
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 Paolino specifies the vicinity of Mt. d’Ely as a special haunt of them in his day, the latter half of last century. 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 Garcia (f. 26 seqq.). The latter says the Ceylon cinnamon exceeded it in value as 4:1. Uzzano discriminates canella lunga, Salami, and Mabari. 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 Pharmacopœia of India (1868) as derived from Ipomœa Turpethum.
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 Garcia says that a small quantity grew there, and a Dutch report of 1675 in Valentyn also mentions it as an export of Malabar. (V., Ceylon, p. 243.) There is some ambiguity in statements about it, because its popular name Kábab-chíní 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 κώμακον, 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 4th century B.C.
In the detail of 3 cargoes from Malabar that arrived at Lisbon in September 1504 we find the following proportions: Pepper, 10,000 cantars; cinnamon, 500; cloves, 450; zz. (i.e. zenzaro, ginger), 130; lac and brazil, 750; camphor, 7; cubebs, 191; mace, 2½; spikenard, 3; lign-aloes, 1⅓.
(Buchanan’s Mysore, II. 31, III. 193, and App. p. v.; Garcia, Ital. version, 1576, f. 39–40; Salmas. Exerc. Plin. p. 923; Bud. on Theoph. 1004 and 1010; Archiv. St. Ital., Append. II. p. 19.)
Note 5.—We see that Marco speaks of the merchants and ships of 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 Pantaláni, 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 15th century. The most distinct allusion to it that I am aware of is in the information of Joseph of Cranganore, in the Novus Orbis (Ed. of 1555, p. 208). He says: “These people of Cathay are men of remarkable energy, and formerly 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 Gaspar 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 settled 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. (Stanley’s Transl., Hak. Soc., p. 147.)[1] 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 which were despatched by the Ming Emperor Ch’êng-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.; and Letter of P. Gaubil in J. A. sér. II. tom. x. pp. 327–328.) [“So that at this day there is great memory of them in the ilands Philippinas, and on the cost of Coromande, which is the cost against the kingdome of Norsinga towards the sea of Cengala: whereas is a towne called unto this day the soile of the Chinos, for that they did reedifie and make the same. The like notice and memory is there in the kingdom of Calicut, whereas be many trees and fruits, that the naturals of that countrie do say, were brought thither by the Chinos, when that they were lords and gouernours of that countrie.” (Mendoza, Parke’s transl. p. 71.)] 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 toxicophagous Sultan Mahmúd Begara (1459–1511). 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 must probably refer to the expeditions of Ch’êng-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 century, if P. Paolino is correct in speaking of Chinese vessels frequenting Travancore ports for pepper. (De Barros, Dec. II. Liv. ii. cap. 9, and Dec. IV. Liv. v. cap. 3; Paolino, p. 74.)
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 North Star is here still more conspicuous, showing itself at an altitude of about 6 cubits.{1}
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.{2} 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.{3}
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.{4}
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 cities, and Cambay was then its great mart. Wassáf, Polo’s contemporary, perhaps acquaintance, speaks of Gujarat which is commonly called Kambáyat. (Elliot, III. 31.)
Note 2.—[“The origin of the name [Tamarina] is curious. It is Ar. tamar-u’l-Hind, ‘date of India,’ or perhaps rather, in Persian form, tamar-i-Hindī. It is possible that the original name may have been thamar, (‘fruit’) of India, rather than tamar, (‘date’).” (Hobson-Jobson.)]
Note 3.—The notice of pepper here is hard to explain. But Hiuen Tsang 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 Professor 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 Masúm in his History of Sind, describing the wonders of Síwí, 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. religiosum, 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. Cleghorn, termed in Mysore Deo kapás, 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 vestments of the Brahmans, and refused to lend itself to other uses. One of Royle’s authorities (Mr. Vaupell) mentions that it was grown near large towns of Eastern Guzerat, and its wool regarded as the finest of any, and only used in delicate muslins. Tod speaks of it in Bikanír, and this kind of cotton appears to be grown also in China, as we gather from a passage in Amyot’s Mémoires (II. 606), which speaks of the “Cotonniers arbres, qui ne devoient être fertiles qu’après un bon nombre d’années.”
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 Cyclopædia 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.)
Note 4.—Embroidered and Inlaid leather-work for bed-covers, palankin mats and the like, is still a great manufacture in Rajkot and other places of Kattiawár in Peninsular Guzerat, as well as in the adjoining 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: “E qe voz en diroi? Sachíés tout voiremant qe en ceste reingne se labore roiaus dereusse de cuir et plus sotilment que ne fait en tout lo monde, e celz qe sunt de greingnors vailance.”
The two words in Roman type I cannot explain; qu. royaux devises?
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.{1} No pepper grows there, nor other spices, but plenty of incense; not the white kind however, but brown.{2}
There is much traffic here, and many ships and merchants 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.
Note 1.—The town of Thána, on the landward side of the island of Salsette, still exists, about 20 miles from Bombay. The Great Peninsular Railroad here crosses the strait which separates Salsette from the Continent.
The Konkan is no doubt what was intended by the kingdom of Thána. Albiruni speaks of that city as the capital of Konkan; Rashiduddin calls it Konkan-Tána, Ibn Batuta Kúkin-Tána, the last a form which appears in the Carta Catalana as Cucintana. Tieffentaller writes Kokan, and this is said (Cunningham’s Anc. Geog. 553) to be the local pronunciation. Abulfeda speaks of it as a very celebrated place of trade, producing a kind of cloth which was called Tánasi, bamboos, and Tabashír derived from the ashes of the bamboo.
As early as the 16th year of the Hijra (A.D. 637) an Arab fleet from Oman made a hostile descent on the Island of Thána, i.e. Salsette. The place (Sri Sthánaka) appears from inscriptions to have been the seat of a Hindu kingdom of the Konkan, in the 11th century. In Polo’s time Thána seems to have been still under a Hindu prince, but it soon afterwards became subject to the Delhi sovereigns; and when visited by Jordanus and by Odoric some thirty years after Polo’s voyage, a Mussulman governor was ruling there, who put to death four Franciscans, 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 Thána.
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 assuming 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 blackish; and Garcia 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.
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 Bahár, Central India, Khandesh, and Kattiawár, etc. The gum-resin is used and sold locally as an incense, but is soft and sticky, and is not the olibanum of commerce; nor is it collected for exportation.
The Coromandel Boswellia 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 Kundur, one of the Arabic words for olibanum (see ch. xxxviii., note 2).
II. Vateria 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 burn 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. Garcia 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 Dikamáli in India, and by the Arabs Kankham.
IV. Balsamodendron Mukul, growing in Sind, Kattiawár and the Deesa District, and producing the Indian Bdellium, Muḳl of the Arabs and Persians, used as an incense and as a cordial medicine. It is believed to be the Βδέλλα mentioned in the Periplus as exported from the Indus, and also as brought down with Costus through Ozene (Ujjain) to Barygaza (Baroch—see Müller’s Geog. Græc. Minor. I. 287, 293). It is mentioned also (Muḳl) by Albiruni as a special product of Kachh, and is probably the incense of that region alluded to by Hiuen Tsang. (See last chapter, note 3.) It is of a yellow, red, or brownish colour. (Eng. Cyc. art. Bdellium; Dowson’s Elliot, I. 66; Reinaud in J. As. sér. 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 Dhúp (incense) and Gugul (Bdellium).
Besides these resinous substances, the Costus of the Ancients may be mentioned (Sansk. Kushṭh), being still exported from Western India, as well as from Calcutta, to China, under the name of Putchok, 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 Pucho (which he gives as the Malay name) with Costus was known to Garcia. Alex. Hamilton, at the beginning of last century, calls it Ligna Dulcis (sic), and speaks of it as an export from Sind, as did the author of the Periplus 1600 years earlier.
My own impression is that Muḳl 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. Birdwood 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, etc.; Drury’s Useful Plants of India, 2nd ed.; Garcia; A. Hamilton, I. 127; Eng. Cyc., art. Putchuk; Buchanan’s Journey, II. 44, 335, etc.)