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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
R
268
MARCO POLO
You must know that in that kingdom no woman is
allowed to marry until the King shall have .seen her ; if
the woman pleases him then he takes her to wife ; if she
does not, he gives her a dowry to get her a husband
withal. In the year of Christ 1285, Messer Marco Polo
was in that country, and at that time the King had,
between sons and daughters, 326 children, of whom at
least 150 were men fit to carry arms.2
There are very great numbers of elephants in this
kingdom, and they have lignaloes in great abundance.
They have also extensive forests of the wood called
Bongs, which is jet-black, and of which chessmen and
pen-cases are made. But there is nought more to tell,
so let us proceed.3
IS
NOTE i.—;-The name CHAMPA is of Indian origin, like the adjoining Kamboja and many other names in Indo-China, and was probably taken from that of an ancient Hindu city and state on the Ganges, near modern Bhágalpúr. Hiuen Tsang, in the 7th century, makes mention of the Indo-Chinese state as Mahāchampā. (I-W. Bortdd, III. 83.)
The title of Champa down to the 15th century seems to have been applied by Western Asiatics to a kingdom which embraced the whole coast between Tong-king and Kamboja, including all that is now called Cochin China outside of Tong-king. It was termed by the Chinese Chen- Ching. In 1471 the King of Tong-king, Lê Thanh-tong, conquered the country, and the genuine people of Champa were reduced to a small number occupying the mountains of the province of Binh Thuan at the extreme south-east of the Coch. Chinese territory. To this part of the coast the name Champa is often applied in maps. (See j. A. sér. II. tom. xi. p. 31, and/ des Savans, 1822, p. 71.) The people of Champa in this restricted sense are said to exhibit Malay affinities, and they profess Mahornedanism. E" ` The Mussulmans of Binh-Thuan call themselves Bani or Oran, Bani, ` men mussulmans,' probably from the Arabic beni ` the sons,' to distinguish them from the Chains Djat ` of race,' which they name also Kapliir or Akaphir, from the Arabic word kajèr pagans.' These names are used in Binh-Thuan to make a distinction, but Banis and Kaphirs alike are all Chams. . . . In Cambodia all Chams are Mussulmans." (E. Aymonzer, Les Tchames, p. 26.) The religion of the pagan Chams of Binh-Thuan is degenerate Brahmanism with three chief gods, Po-Nagar,
Po-Romé, and Po-Klong-Garaï. (Ibid., p. 35.)—H. C.] The books of their
former religion they say (according to Dr. Bastian) that they received from Ceylon, but they were converted to Islamism by no less a person than 'Ali himself. The Tong-king people received their Buddhism from China, and this tradition puts Champa as the extreme flood-mark of that great tide of Buddhist proselytism, which went forth from Ceylon to the Indo-Chinese regions in an early century of our era, and which is generally connected with the name of Buddaghosha.
The prominent position of Champa on the route to China made its ports places of call for many ages, and in the earliest record of the Arab navigation to China we find the country noticed under the identical name (allowing for the deficiencies of the
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