The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 / Page 356 (Color Image)

0356	The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2

Lámeri.—II. C.] Mr. Anderson says there are “a few wild people in the Siak country, very little removed in point of civilisation above their companions the monkeys,” but he says nothing of hairiness nor tails. For the earliest version of the tail story we must go back to Ptolemy and the Isles of the Satyrs in this quarter; or rather to Ctesias who tells of tailed men on an Island in the Indian Sea. Jourdan also has the story of the hairy men. Galvano heard that there were on the Island certain people called Daraque Dara (?), which had tails like unto sheep. And the King of Tidore told him of another such tribe on the Isle of Batochina. Mr. St. John in Borneo met with a trader who had seen and felt the tails of such a race inhabiting the north-east coast of that Island. The appendage was 4 inches long and very stiff; so the people all used perforated seats. This Borneo story has lately been brought forward in Calcutta, and stoutly maintained, on native evidence, by an English merchant. The Chinese also have their tailed men in the mountains above Canton. In Africa there have been many such stories, of some of which an account will be found in the Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog. sér. IV. tom. iii. p. 31. It was a story among mediaeval Mahomedans that the members of the Imperial House of Trebizond were endowed with short tails, whilst medieval Continentals had like stories about Englishmen, as Matthew Paris relates. Thus we find in the Romance of Cour de Lion, Richard’s messengers addressed by the “Emperor of Cyprus”:

“Out, Taylards, of my paly!
Now go, and say your tayled King
That I owe him nothing.”
—Weber, II. 83.

The Princes of Purbandar, in the Peninsula of Guzerat, claim descent from the monkey-god Hanumán, and allege in justification a spinal elongation which gets them the name of Páncháriah, “Taylards.”

(Ethé’s Kazwini, p. 221; Anderson, p. 210; St. John, Forests of the Far East, I. 40; Galvano, Hak. Soc. 108, 120; Gildemeister, 194; Allen’s Indian Mail, July 28, 1869; Mid. Kingd. I. 293; N. et Ext. XIII. i. 380; Mat. Paris under A.D. 1250; Tod’s Rajasthan, I. 114.)

NOTE 3.—The Camphor called Fansúrī is celebrated by Arab writers at least as old as the 9th century, e.g., by the author of the first part of the Relatíons, by Mas’udi in the next century, also by Avicenna, by Abulfeda, by Kazwini, and by Abul Fazl, etc. In the second and third the name is miswritten Kansúrī, and by the last Káistírī, but there can be no doubt of the correction required. (Reinaud, I. 7; Mas. I. 338; Liber Canontis, Ven. 1544, I. 116; Büssching, IV. 277; Gildem. p. 209; Ain-i-Ákb. p. 78.) In Serapion we find the same camphor described as that of Pansor; and when, leaving Arab authorities and the earlier Middle Ages we come to Garcias, he speaks of the same article under the name of camphor of Barros. And this is the name—Kúpúr Bárís—derived from the port which has been the chief shipping-place of Sumatran camphor for at least three centuries, by which the native camphor is still known in Eastern trade, as distinguished from the Kúpúr Chíná or Kúpúr Japún, as the Malays term the article derived in those countries by distillation from the Laurus Camphora. The earliest western mention of camphor is in the same prescription by the physician Aétius (circa A.D. 540) that contains one of the earliest mentions of musk. (Súpra, I. p. 279.) The prescription ends: “and if you have a supply of camphor add two ounces of that.” (Aétii Medici Graeci Tetrabiblos, etc., Froben, 1549, p. 910.)

It is highly probable that Fansúrī and Barís may be not only the same locality but mere variations of the same name.* The place is called in the Shíjarat Málayu,

* Van der Tuck says positively, I find: “Fantsur was the ancient name of Bárus.” (J. R. A. S. n.s. II. 232.) [Professor Schlegel writes also (Geog. Notes, XVI. p. 9): “At all events, Fantsur or Pantsur can be naught but Baros.”—H.C.]

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

Citation Information

OCR Text

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

Citation Information

OCR Text

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