IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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FRIAR ODORIC JJ
wide that they sweep the ground. And they go barefoot with drawers1 hanging about their feet, and their hair neither plaited nor braided, but in complete dishevelment ; and as here among us the men go first and the women follow, so there the women have to go before the men. [Here I saw a young man who was taking to wife a beautiful young woman, and she was accompanied by other beautiful maidens, who were weeping and wailing, whilst the young bridegroom stood by in very gay clothes, with his head hanging down. And by and bye the young man mounted his ass, and the bride followed him barefoot and wretchedly dressed, and holding by the ass, and her father went behind blessing them until they reached the husband's house] .2 And many other matters there be in this city which it booteth not greatly to detail.
So going thence I came to inland India, a region which the Tartars have greatly wasted.' And there you find
1 Sarabulas is the word in the Latin, Anglo-Indicé paijcimas. The term appears in various forms in Ducange as meaning braccce, and derived from a Chaldee word, which has been adopted into the Vulgate in Daniel, iii, 94. Ducange does not specify the word, but I suppose it is the counterpart of the Arabic Sarwccl, plural Sardwal, better known in India under the Persian form Shalwccr, and from which in its former shape the Spaniards have made Zaraguelles. (See Dozy, Diet. des Vêtements chez les Arabes, p. 233.) Ricold Montecroce says the Nestorians thought the sacrament profaned if any one entered with the head covered or without Sorrabula. Whereon his German editor says : "Soccabula fortasse sunt socci, calceorum genus. Ducangium, frustra consului, qui nec Sorrabula habeat nec Soccabula." (Peregrin. Med. Æv. IV, &c., Lipsi, 1864, p. 129). But if he had given Ducangius a little more tether in spelling he would have found not only Sarabula, but Serabula, Saraballa, Sarabella, Sarabola, Sarabara, and yet more ! The Bollandist Odoric has Scrobullas, a sheer error ; but Ducange has inserted it as muliebris vestis on that authority.
2 From MIN. RAM.
3 " India quce est infra terrain. The infra is to be taken in the Italian sense. It is plain that he means some region adjoining the Persian Gulf, and the following extract illustrates the matter more precisely :
" The Talmudic writers confounded Obillah [on the Lower Euphrates]
with the Mosaic Havilah and thus rendered Havilah everywhere
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