IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
13Y JOAN DIP' MAIZIGNOLLI. 369
Apostolorum.1 They go about in procession every morning begging rice for their day's dinner. The princes and others go forth to meet them with the greatest reverence, and bestow rice upon them in measure proportioned to their numbers ; and this they partake of steeped in water, with coco-nut milk and plantains. These things I speak of as an eye-witness ; and indeed they made me a fester as if I were one of their own order.3
There follow Chapters concerning the Multiplication of the Human Race, The Offerings of Cain and Abel, etc., etc., to the end of the first section of his book, which he terms Thearchos. These chapters do not contain anything to our purpose except a few slight notices here and there, which I shall now extract. Thus of Cain he says :
If we suppose that he built his city after the murder of Abel there is nothing in this opposed to Scripture, unless so far that it seems to be implied that he never did settle down, but was always a vagabond and a fugitive. This city of his is thought to have been where now is that called KOTA in Seyllan,4 a place where I have been. After he had begotten many sons there he fled towards Damascus, where he was shot by the arrow of Lamech his descendant in the seventh generation; and there, hard by Damascus, his sepulchre is shown to this day.'
' This use of the phrase satisfactorily illustrates the alla apostolica. which Varthema so often uses. See Jones and Badger's Varthema (HAK. Soc.), pp. 78, 112, etc.
2 Lixam in aqua comedunt cum latte nargillorum .et musis."
3 A most accurate account of the Buddhist monks as they may be seen today in Burma, and I presume in Ceylon. What Marignolli saw he describes very correctly; his interpreters are, probably, therefore responsible for the stuff he says he heard.
4 The author curiously overlooks Gen. iv, 17. Kotta, or (Buddhistoclassically) Jâyawardanapwra, near Columbo, is first mentioned as a royal residence about 1314, but it again became the capital of the island in 1410, and continued about a century and a half. It appears to be represented as such in the great Map of Fra Mauro, under the name of Cotte Civitas.
This legend of Lamech shooting the aged Cain in a thicket, by mis-
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