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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
312
MARCO POLO BooK III.
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VA,
CHAPTER XIV.
CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF SEILAN.
ka
WHEN you leave the Island of Angamanain and sail
about a thousand miles in a direction a little south of
west, you come to the Island of SEILAN,1 which is in
good sooth the best Island of its size in the world.
You must know that it has a compass of 2 400 miles,
but in old times it was greater still, for it then had a
circuit of about 3600 miles, as you find in the charts
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fil
(Prussians) are a miserable people, and still more savage than the Russians
One reads in some books that the Borús have do; s' faces ; it is a way of saying that they are very brave." Ibn Batuta describes an Indo-Chinese tribe on the coast of Arakan or Pegu as having dogs' mouths, but says the women were beautiful. Friar Jordanus had heard the same of the dog-headed islanders. And one odd form of the story, found, strange to say, both in China and diffused over Ethiopia, represents the males as actual dogs whilst the females are women. Oddly, too, Père Barbe tells us that a tradition of the Nicobar people themselves represent them as of canine descent, but on the female side ! The like tale in early Portuguese days was told of the Peguans, viz.. that they sprang from a dog and a Chinese woman. It is mentioned by Camoens (X. 122). Note, however, that in Colonel Man's notice of the wilder part of the Nicobar people the projecting canine teeth are spoken of.
Abraham Roger tells us that the Coromandel Brahmans used to say that the Rákslzasas or Demons had their abode " on the Island of Andaman lying on the route from Pulicat to Pegu," and also that they were man-eaters. This would be very curious if it were a genuine old Brahmanical Srz,a; but I fear it may have been gathered from the Arab seamen. Still it is remarkable that a strange weird-looking island, a steep and regular volcanic cone, which rises covered with forest to a height of 2150 feet, straight out of the deep sea to the eastward of the Andaman group, bears
the name of Narkandanz, in which one cannot but recognise AN , Narak, "I Tell" ;
perhaps Naraka-kundana, " a pit of hell." Can it be that in old times, but still contemporary with Hindu navigation, this volcano was active, and that some Brahman St. Brandon recognised in it the mouth of Hell, congenial to the Rakshasas of the adjacent group ?
" Si est de saint Brandon le matère furnie ;
Qui fu si prés d'enfer, á nef et á galie,
Que déable d'enfer issirent, par maistrie,
Getans brandons de feu, pour lui faire hasquie."
—Bauch/in de Sebourc, I. 123.
(Ranzusio, III. 391 ; Ham. II. 65 ; Navarrete (Fr. Ed.), II. 'or ; Cathay, 467 ; Bullet. de la Soc. de Gefog sér. IV. tom iii. 36-37 ; f A. S. B. u. s. ; Reinaud's Abulfeda, I. 315 ;f Ind. Arch., N. s., III. I. 105; La Porte Ouverte, p. 188.) [I shall refer to my edition of Odoric, 206-217, for a long notice on dog-headed barbarians ; I reproduce here two of the cuts.—H. C.
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