IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
iL~
,~
362 MARCO POLO BOOK III.
NOTE r.—There is no doubt that the kingdom here spoken of is that of TELINGANA (Tiling of the Mahomedan writers), then ruled by the Kákateya or Ganapati dynasty reigning at Warangol, north-east of Hyderabad. But Marco seems to give the kingdom the name of that place in it which was visited by himself or his in-
formants. MUTFILI is, with the usual Arab modification (e.g. Perlec, Ferlec-
Pattan, Fattan), a port called MOTUPALLu , in the Gantí r district of the Madras Presidency, about 17o miles north of Fort St. George. Though it has dropt out of most of our modern maps it still exists, and a notice of it is to be found in W. Hamilton, and in Milburne. The former says : " illetapali, a town situated near the S. extremity of the northern Circars. A considerable coasting trade is carried on from hence in the craft navigated by natives," which can come in c'oser to shore than at other ports on that coast.—[Cf. Hunter, Gaz. India, lliotupalli, " now only an obscure fishing village."—It is marked in Constable's Hand Atlas of India.—II. C.]
The proper territory of the Kingdom of Warangol lay inland, but the last reigning prince before Polo's visit to India, by name Kakateya Pratapa Ganapati Rudra Deva, had made extensive conquests on the coast, including Nellore, and thence northward to the frontier of Orissa. This prince left no male issue, and his widow, RUDRA`MA DEVI, daughter of the Raja of Devagiri, assumed the government and continued to hold it for twenty-eight, or, as another record states, for thirty-eight years, till the son of her daughter had attained majority. This was in 1292, or by the other account 1295, when she transferred the royal authority to this grandson Pratapa Vira Rudra Deva, the " Luddur Deo " of Firishta, and the last Ganapati of any political moment. He was taken prisoner by the Delhi forces about 1323. We have evidently in Rudrama Devi the just and beloved Queen of our Traveller, who thus enables us to attach colour and character to what was an empty name in a dynastic list. (Compare Wilson's Mackenzie, L cxxx. ; Taylor's Or. Hist. h ISS. I. IS ; Do.'s Catalogue Raisonnj, III. 483.)
Mutfili appears in the Carta Catalana as Butzflis, and is there by some mistake made the site of St. Thomas's Shrine. The distance from Maabar is in Ramusio only 50o miles—a preferable reading.
NOTE 2.—Some of the Diamond Mines once so famous under the name of Golconda are in the alluvium of the Kistna River, some distance above the Delta, and others in the vicinity of Kadapa and Karnúl, both localities being in the territory of the kingdom we have been speaking of.
The strange legend related here is very ancient and widely diffused. Its earlirst known occurrence is in the Treatise of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, concerning the twelve Jewels in the Rationale or Breastplate of the Hebrew High Priest, a work written before the end of the 4th century, wherein the tale is told of the jacinth. It is distinctly referred to by Edrisi, who assigns its locality to the land of the Kirkhîr (probably Khirghiz) in Upper Asia. It appears in Kazwini's Wonders of Creation, and is assigned by him to the Valley of the Moon among the mountains of Serendib. Sindbad the Sailor relates the story, as is well known, and his version is the closest of all to our author's. [So Les Merveilles de l'Inde, pp. 128-129.—H. C.] It is found in the Chinese Narrative of the Campaigns of Hulaku, translated by both Rémusat and Pauthier. [We read in the Si Shi Ki, of Ch'ang Te, Chinese Envoy to Hulaku (1259), translated by Dr. Bretschneider (Med. Res. I. p. 151) : " The kirzkang tsuan (diamonds) come from Yin-du (Hindustan). The people take flesh and throw it into the great valleys (of the mountains). Then birds come and eat this flesh, after which diamonds are found in their excrements."—H. C.] It is told in two different versions, once of the Diamond, and again of the Jacinth of Serendib, in the work on precious stones by Ahmed Taifáshi. It is one of the many stories in the scrap-book of Tzetzes. Nicolo Conti relates it of a mountain called Albenigaras, fifteen days' journey in a northerly Direction from Vijayanagar ; and it is told again, apparently after Conti, by Julius Caesar Scaliger. It is related of diamonds and Balasses in the old Genoese MS., called that of Usodimare: A feeble form of the
IS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.