National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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426

MARCO POLO   Booz III.

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I I 18. Conti divides India into three : (I) From Persia to the Indus (i.e. Mekran

and Sind) ; (2) From the Indus to the Ganges ; (3) All that is beyond Ganges (Indo-

China and China).

In a map of Andrea Bianco at Venice (No. 12) the divisions are—(i) India Minor,

extending westward to the Persian Gulf ; (2) India Media, " containing 14 regions

and 12 nations ; " and (3) India Superior, containing 8 regions and 24 nations.

Marino Sanuto places immediately east of the Persian Gulf " India Minor quae et

Ethiopia."

John Marignolli again has three Indias : (i) Manzi or India Maxima (S. China) ;

(2) Mynibar (Malabar) ; (3) Maabar. The last two with Guzerat are Abulfeda's

divisions, exclusive of Sind.   (I)

We see that there was a traditional tendency to make out Three Indies, but little   ;11)

concord as to their identity. With regard to the expressions Greater and Lesser   log

India, I would recall attention to what has been said about Greater and Lesser Java (supra, chap. ix. note I). Greater India was originally intended, I imagine, for the real India, what our maps call Hindustan. And the threefold division, with its inclination to place one of the Indies in Africa, I think may have originated with the Arab Hind, Sind, and Zinj. I may add that our vernacular expression ' ` the Indies " is itself a vestige of the twofold or threefold division of which we have been speaking.

The partition of the Indies made by King Sebastian of Portugal in 1571, when he

constituted his eastern possessions into three governments, recalled the old division   T

into Three Indias. The first, INDIA, extending from Cape Gardafui to Ceylon, stood

in a general way for Polo's India Major ; the second MONOMOTAPA, from Gardafui to

Cape Corrientes (India Tertia of Jordanus) ; the third MALACCA, from Pegu to China

(India Minor). (Faria y. Souza, IL 319.)

Polo's knowledge of India, as a whole, is so little exact that it is too indefinite a

problem to consider which are the three kingdoms that he has not described. The   t
ten which he has described appear to be—(I) Maabar, (2) Coilum, (3) Comari, (4) Eli, (5) Malabar, (6) Guzerat, (7) Tana, (8) Canbaet, (9) Semenat, (io) Kesmacoran. On the one hand, this distribution in itself contains serious misapprehensions, as we have seen, and on the other there must have been many dozens of kingdoms in India Major instead of 13, if such states as Comari, Hili, and Somnath were to be separately counted. Probably it was a common saying that there were 12 kings in India, and the fact of his having himself described so many, which he knew did not nearly embrace the whole, may have made Polo convert this into 13. Jordanus says : " In this Greater India are 12 idolatrous kings and more ;" but his Greater India is much more extensive than Polo's. Those which he names are Molebar (probably the kingdom of the Zamorin of Calicut), Singuyli (Cranganor), Columbun (Quilon), lllolejhatan (on the east coast, uncertain, see above pp. 333, 391), and Sylen (Ceylon), Java, three or four kings, Telenc (Polo's Mutfili), Maratha (Deogir), Bati ala (in Canara), and in Chaanj5a (apparently put for all Indo-China) many kings. According to Firishta there were about a dozen important principalities in India at the time of the Mahomedan conquest of which he mentions eleven, viz.: (I) Kanauj, (2) Jlírat (or Delhi), (3) Mahávan (Mathra), (4) Lahore, (5) lkIalwa, (6) Guzerat, (7) Ajmir, (8) Gwalior, (9) Kalinjar, (io) llfultán, (i I) Ujjain. (Ritter, V. 535.) This omits Bengal, Orissa, and all the Deccan. Twelve is a round number which constantly occurs in such statements. Ibn Batuta tells us there were 12 princes in Malabar alone. Chinghiz, in Sanang-Setzen, speaks of his vow to subdue the twelve kings of the human race (91). Certain figures in a temple at Anhilwara in Guzerat are said by local tradition to be the effigies of the twelve great kings of Europe. (Todd Travels, p. 107.) The King of Arakan used to take the title of " Lord of the 11 provinces of Bengal" (Reinaud, Inde, p. 139.)_

The 117asálak-al-Absár of Shihabuddin Dimishki, written some forty years after Polo's book, gives a list of the provinces (twice twelve in number) into which India

was then considered to be divided. It runs— (i) Delhi, (2) Deogir, (3) 111u/tin, (4) Kehran (Kohránz, in Sirhind Division of Province of Delhi ?), (5) Sdnidn