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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
RAMUSIO'S ITALIAN VERSION
97
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those about the Magi, and the form of many proper names,
confirm this. But also many additional circumstances and
anecdotes are introduced, many of the names assume a new
shape, and the whole style is more copious and literary in
character than in any other form of the work.
Whilst some of the changes or interpolations seem to carry
us further from the truth, others contain facts of Asiatic nature
or history, as well as of Polo's own experiences, which it is
extremely difficult to ascribe to any hand but the Traveller's
own. This was the view taken by Baldelli, Klaproth, and
Neumann ; * but Hugh Murray, Lazari, and Bartoli regard the
changes as interpolations by another hand ; and Lazari is rash
enough to ascribe the whole to a rifacimento of Ramusio's own
age, asserting it to contain interpolations not merely from Polo's
own contemporary Hayton, but also from travellers of later
centuries, such as Conti, Barbosa, and Pigafetta. The grounds
for these last assertions have not been cited, nor can I trace them.
But I admit to a certain extent indications of modern tampering
with the text, especially in cases where proper names seem to
have been identified and more modern forms substituted. In
days, however, where an Editor's duties were ill understood, this
was natural.
61. Thus we find substituted for the Bastia (or Bascra) of the
older texts the more modern and incorrect Balsora, dear to
memories of the Arabian Nights ; among the provinces
Injudicious
of Persia we have Spaan (Ispahan) where older texts tamperings
read IstanZt; for Cosmos we have Ormus ; for Herminia in Ramusio.
and Laias, Armenia and Giazza ; Coulaln for the older Coilum ;
Socotera for Scotra. With these changes may be classed the
chapter-headings, which are undisguisedly modern, and probably
Ramusio's own. In some other cases this editorial spirit has
been over-meddlesome and has gone astray. Thus Malabar is
substituted wrongly for Maabar in one place, and by a grosser
error for Dalivar in another. The age of young Marco, at the
time of his father's first return to Venice, has been arbitrarily
altered from 15 to 19, in order to correspond with a date which
is itself erroneous. Thus also Polo is made to describe Ormus
* The old French texts were unknown in Marsden's time. Hence this question did not present itself to him.
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