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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. XXXV BRANDING
433
i.e. between the eyes and on either cheek. Linschoten repeats the like, and one of his plates is entitled Habitus Abissinorunn quibus loco Baptismatis fions inzuritur, Ariosto, referring to the Emperor of Ethiopia, has :-
" Gli t, s' io non pig; lio errore, an questo loco Ove al battesimo loro usano it fuoco."
As late as 1819 the traveller Dupré published the same statement about the Jacobites generally. And so sober and learned a man as Assemani, himself an Oriental, says : " zEthiopes vero, seu Abissini, praeter circumcisionem adhibent etiam ferrum candens, quo pueris notam inurunt."
Yet Ludolf's Abyssinian friend, Abba Gregory, denied that there was any such practice among them. Ludolf says it is the custom of various African tribes, both Pagan and Mussulman, to cautei ize their children in the veins of the temples, in order to inure them against colds, and that this, being practised by some Abyssinians, was taken for a religious rite. In spite of the terms " Pagan and Mussulman," I suspect that Herodotus was the authority for this practice. He states that many of the nomad Libyans, when their children reached the age of four, used to burn the veins at the top of the head with a flock of wool; others burned the veins about the temples. And this they did, he says, to prevent their being troubled with rheum in after life.
Indeed Andrea Corsali denies that the branding had aught to do with baptism, " but only to observe Solomon's custom of marking his slaves, the King of Ethiopia claiming to be descended from him." And it is remarkable that Salt mentions that most of the people of Dixan had a cross marked (i.e. branded) on the breast, right arm, or forehead. This he elsewhere explains as a mark of their attachment to the ancient metropolitan church of Axum, and he supposes that such a practice may have originated the stories of fire-baptism. And we find it stated in Marino Sanudo that " some of the Jacobites and Syrians who had crosses branded on them said this was done for the destruction of the Pagans, and out of reverence t6 the Holy Rood." Matthew Paris, commenting on the letter quoted above, says that many of the Jacobites before baj5tism brand their children on the forehead with a hot iron, whilst others brand a cross upon the cheeks or temples. He had seen such marks also on the arms of both Jacobites and Syrians who dwelt among the Saracens. It is clear, from Salt, that such branding was practised by many Abyssinians, and that to a recent date, though it may have been entirely detached from baptism. A similar practice is followed at Dwárika and Koteswar (on the old Indus mouth, now called Lakpat River), where the Hindu pilgrims to these sacred sites are branded with the mark of the god.
(Orient and Occident, Göttingen, 1862, I. 453 ; Frescob. 114 ; Clavijo, 163 ; Ramus. I. f. 29o, v., f. 184 ; 11Thrin. Sanua'. 185, and 13k. iii. pt. viii. eh. iv.; Clusius, Exotica, pt. ii. p. 142 ; Orland. Fur. XXXIII. St. 102 ; Voyage en Perse, dans les Années 1807-1809 ; Assennzani, II. e. ; Ludolf, iii. 6, § 41 ; Salt, in Valencia's Tray. IL p. 505, and his Second Journey, French Tr., II. 219 ; M. Paris, p. 373 J. R. A. S. I. 42.)
NOTE 3.—It is pretty clear from what follows (as Marsden and others have noted) that the narrative requires us to conceive of the Sultan of Aden as dominant over the territory between Abyssinia and the sea, or what was in former days called ADEL, between which and Aden confusion seems to have been made. I have noticed in Note r the appearance of this confusion in R. Benjamin ; and I may add that also in the Map of Marino Sanudo Aden is represented on the western shore of the Red Sea. But is it not possible that in the origin of the Mahomedan States of Adel the Sultan of Aden had some power over them ? For we find in the account of the correspondence between the King of Abyssinia and Sultan Bibars, quoted in the next Note but one, that the Abyssinian letters and presents for Egypt were sent to the Sultan of Yemen or Aden to be forwarded.
NOTE 4.—This passage is not authoritative enough to justify us in believing that the media.=val Abyssinians or Nubians did use elephants in war, for Marco has al,ready erred in ascribing that practice to the Blacks of Zanjibar.
VOL. II. 2 E
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