the princess wrote Bismillah Arrahm6n Arrahim (In the name of God the merciful and compassionate !) saying to me "What's this ?" I replied " Tanzari nécm" (Tangri nam), which is as much as to say "the name of God ;" whereupon she rejoined "Khushn," or " It is well." She then asked from what country I had come, and I told her that I came from India. The princess asked again, "From the Pepper country ?" I said "Yes." She proceeded to put many questions to me abort India and its vicissitudes, and these I answered. She then went on, " I must positively go to war with that country and get possession of it, for its great wealth and great forces attract me." Quoth I, " You had better do so." Then the princess made me a present consisting of dresses', two elephant-loads of rice, two she buffaloes, ten sheep, four rothls of cordial syrup,' and four .Martabans, or stout jars,2 filled with ginger, pepper, citron and mango, all prepared with salt as for a sea voyage.
The skipper told me that Urduja had in her army free women, slave girls, and female captives, who fought just like men ; that she was in the habit of making incursions into the territories of her enemies, taking part in battle, and engaging in combat with warriors of repute. He also told me
1 Jalcib.
2 The word Martaban is unfamiliar to Dulaurier, who quotes from Father Azar a Maronite, that it means "a casket or vase for keeping medicines and comfits, etc." But the word is obviously used for the great vessels of glazed pottery, called Pegu or Martaban jars from the places where they were purchased, and which retained a wide renown up to the present century. " They make in this place" (Martaban), says Barbosa, quantities of great porcelain jars, very big, strong, and handsome; there are some of them that will hold two hogsheads of water a piece. They are coated with a black glaze, are in great esteem among the Moors, bearing a high price among them, and they export them from this place with a great deal of benzoin" (Livro de Duarte Barbosa, p. 367). Linschoten speaks to the same effect, adding that they were used on the Portuguese Indiamen for storing oil and water. So also Jarric : " Vas figlina qua vulgo Martabania dicuntur per Indiam nota
sunt Per orientem omnem, quin et Lusitaniam horum est usus"
(Linsch., e. xvii; Jar., iii, pt. ii, p. 339).
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