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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. XXX. INDIAN GEOGRAPHY OF MARCO POLO
403
It is probable that Polo merely coasted Mekrán ; he seems to know nothing of the Indus, and what he says of Mekrán is vágue.
NOTE 2.—As Marco now winds up his detail of the Indian coast, it is proper to try to throw some light on his partial derangement of its geography. In the following columns the first shows the real geographical order from east to west of the Indian provinces as named by Polo, and the second shows the order as he puts them. The Italic names are brief and general identifications.
| MAABAR, f 3?• • including 1 4• 5• MELIBAR, 6. including { 7. GUZIRAT, 8. or LAR, 9. including to. | Real order. Mutfili (Telingana). St. Thomas's (Madras). Maabar Proper, Kingdom of Sonder Bandi ( Tanjore). Cail ( Tinnevelly). Comari (C. Comorin). Coilum ( Travancore). Eli (Cane nore). Tana (Bombay). Canbaet ( Cambay). Semenat (Somnath). Kesmacoran (Mekrán). | MAABAR, | Polo's order, I. Mutfili.
II. Canbaet. |
12. Semenat.
i 3. Kesmacoran.
It is difficult to suppose that the fleet carrying the bride of Arghun went out of its way to Maabar, St. Thomas's, and Telingana. And on the other hand, what is said in chapter xxiii. on Comari, about the North Star not having been visible since they approached the Lesser Java, would have been grossly inacccurate if in the interval the travellers had been north as far as Madras and Motupalle. That passage suggests to me strongly that Comari was the first Indian land made by the fleet on arriving from the Archipelago (exclusive perhaps of Ceylon). Note then that the position of Eli is marked by its distance of 300 miles from Comari, evidently indicating that this was a run made by the traveller on some occasion without an intermediate stoppage. Tana, Cambay, Somnath, would follow naturally as points of call.
In Polo's order, again, the positions of Comari and Coilum are transposed, whilst Melibar is introduced as if it were a country westward (as Polo views it, northward we should say)* of Coilum and Eli, instead of including them, and Gozurat is introduced as a country lying eastward (or southward, as we should say) of Tana, Cambaet, and Semenat, instead of including them, or at least the two latter. Moreover, he names no cities in connection with those two countries.
The following hypothesis, really not a complex one, is the most probable that I can suggest to account for these confusions.
I conceive, then, that Cape Comorin (Comari) was the first Indian land made by the fleet on the homeward voyage, and that Hili, Tana, Cambay, Somnath, were touched at successively as it proceeded towards Persia.
I conceive that in a former voyage to India on the Great Kaan's business Marco had visited Maabar and Kaulam, and gained partly from actual visits and partly from information the substance of the notices he gives us of Telingana and St Thomas's on the one side and of Malabar and Guzerat on the other, and that in combining into one series the results of the information acquired on two different voyages he failed rightly to co-ordinate the material, and thus those dislocations which we have noticed occurred, as they very easily might, in days when maps had practically no existence ; to say nothing of the accidents of dictation.
The expression in this passage for " the cities that lie in the interior," is in the G. T. "celz ge sun/ en fra terres"; see I. 43. Fauthier's text has " celles qui soot en ferme terre," which is nonsense here.
* Abulfeda's orientation is the same as Polo's.
VOL. II, 2 C 2
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