13 - The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Volume 2.

13 - The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Volume 2.  
13 - Book Third, Chapters 16 to 18. Concerning the great province of Maabar, which is called India the Greater. Of the place where lieth the body of Saint Thomas the Apostle.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section thirteen of the Book of Sir Marco Polo concerning
the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, Volume two. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Jeremiah Sutherland, Victoria, British Columbia.

(00:20):
The Book of Sir Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the
Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, by Rusticello da Pisa,
translated by Henry Yule, Book third, Chapters sixteen to eighteen,
concerning the Great Province of Mabar, which is called India,
the greater of the place where lieth the body of
Saint Thomas the Apostle. Chapter sixteen concerning the Great Province

(00:43):
of Mabar. When you leave the island of Celan and
sail westward about sixty miles, you come to the Great
Province of Mabar, 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 owned brothers. I will tell
you about each in turn. The province is the finest

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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 saunder 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 Celan and the mainland, and all round

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this gulf the water has a depth of no more
than ten or twelve fathoms, and in some places no
more than two fathoms. 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 Bethelar, and then
go sixty miles into the gulf. Here they cast anchor

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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

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fishes to prevent 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 a briaman,
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 a briaman know

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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 four to twelve 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 around

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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 lite
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

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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 dews upon those pearls. As
soon as the middle of May is passed, no more
of those pearl shells are found there. It is true, however,

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that a long way from that spot, some three hundred
miles distant, they are also found. But that is in September,
and the first half of October. Chapter seventeen continues to
speak of the province of Mabar. You must know that
in all this province of Mabar, there is never a
tailor to cut a coat or stitch it, seeing that
everybody goes naked for decency. Only they do wear a

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scrap of cloth. And so tis with men and women
with rich and poor eye, 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 like. Insomuch that

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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 one hundred and four large
pearls and rubies of great price. The reason why he
wears this cord with the one hundred and four great
pearls and rubies is according to what they tell that
every day, morning and evening he has to say one

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hundred and four prayers to his idols, such as 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 like. The
prayer that they say daily consists of these words, pakauta, pakauta, pakauta,
And this they repeat one hundred and four times. The

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King of f Or said, 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. 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

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they are found in his kingdom. Moreover, nobody is permitted
to take out of the kingdom a pearl weighing more
than half a sagyo, 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. Moreover, several times

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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 has some five hundred wives, for whenever he

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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

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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 burn him, these liegias cast themselves into
the fire round about his body, and suffer themselves to

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be burnt along with him. For they say they have
been his comrades in this world, and that they ought
also to keep him company 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 treasure, so we ought to accumulate as much
in our turn. And in this way it comes to

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pass that 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 mercians of kiss and Hormas and Dophar
and Sore and Aiden collect great numbers of destriers and
other horses, and these they bring to the territories of

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this king and of his four brothers, who are kings likewise,
as I told you, for a horse will fetch among
them five hundred saggiy of gold worth more than one
hundred marks of silver, and vast numbers are sold there
every year. Indeed, this king wants to buy more than
two thousand horses every year, and so do his four brothers,
who are kings. Likewise. The reason why they want so

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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 ferrire from going thither, lest that

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should in any degree bock 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 honor
of such or such an idol, and the government then

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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 become to the place of execution, he takes
a knife and sticks it through his arm and cries,

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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 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

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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 they say it is a creature of
such excellence. They would not eat beef for anything in
the world, nor would they on any account kill an ox.

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But there is another class of people who are called govi,
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,

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do sit upon the ground only. And the reason they
give is that this is the most honorable 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 honor, 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 Messieur Saint Thomas Is I mean where his

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body lies, which is in a certain city of the
province of Mabar. Indeed, were even twenty or thirty men
to lay hold of one of these govies 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

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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 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, rye legged weed, not fit
to ride. The people of the country go to battle

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all naked, with only a lance and a shield, and
they are most wretched soldiers. They will kill neither beast
nor bird, nor anything 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 everyone, male and female, do
wash the whole body twice every day, and those who

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do not wash are looked on, much as we look
on the patterns. 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 ministered 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

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the like. So also, they drink only from drinking vessels,
and every man hath his own, Nor will anyone 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

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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

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all the same as to be an utter desperado, and
that his testimony is good for nothing. Howbeit they look
on lesser, he is no sin. They have the following
rule about debts. If a debtor shall have been several
times asked by his creditor for payment, and shall have
put him off from day to day with promises, then
if the creditor can once meet the debtor and succeed

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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 dishtrice charge. If he,
in any other case, presumed 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.

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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 opportunity 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

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the spot until the merchant was satisfied. And when the
bystanders saw this, they marveled 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,

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but for the reign that falls in the 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 physiognomy, 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

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more than by any people in the world. Thus, if
a man is going along the road and here's someone 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. As soon
as a child is born, they write down his nativity,
that is to say, the day and hour, the month,

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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 diviner skilled and sorcery, and magic
and geomancy and such like diabolical arts, and some of
them are also acquainted with astrology. All parents who have
mad children, as soon as these have attained the age

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of thirteen, 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.

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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

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other articles, so that they become trained to be very
dexterous 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 Indiana, the birds and
beasts are entirely different from ours, all but one bird
which is exactly like ours, and that is the quail.

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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. While 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

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they feed their horses with boiled rice and boiled meat,
and various other kinds of cooked food. That is the
reason why all the horses die off. They have certain
abbeys in which are gods and goddesses 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

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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

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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

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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 goddess.

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And those people believe that the God often solaces himself
with the society of the Goddess. Men of the country
have their beds made of very light cane work, 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 bites, as well as of fleas and such

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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
Province of Mabar, and I must pass on to the
other kingdoms of the same province, for I have much
to tell of their peculiarities. Chapter eighteen, Discoursing of the

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place where lieth the Body of Saint Thomas the Apostle.
The body of Messr. Saint Thomas the Apostle lies in
this province of Mabar, at a certain little town, having
no great population, tis a place whither few traders go,
because there is very little merchandise to be got there,
and it is a place not very accessible. Both Christians
and Saracens, however, greatly frequented in pilgrimage. For the Saracens

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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. The Christians who
go thither in pilgrimage take of the earth from the
place where the Saint was killed, and give a potion
thereof to anyone who is sick of a courton or
Attertian fever. And by the power of God and of

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Saint Thomas, the sick man is incontinently cured. The earth,
i should tell you, is read a very fine miracle
occurred there in the year of Christ. At twelve eighty eight,
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.

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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 and 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

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avoid not my houses, that my pilgrims may have room,
thou shalt die in 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 a 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

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and rendered thanks to God and to the blessed Saint 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

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groats for each tree every month. 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 or many peacocks,
for these are more plentiful in that country than anywhere else.
And one of the idolators of that country, being of

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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,

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where he converted much people to the faith of Jesus Christ.
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 sesame, so that they
become as black as devils. Moreover, they make their gods
black and their devils white, and the images of their

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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, whereofive 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

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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. End of Section thirteen.