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| 0484 |
The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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1118. Conti divides India into three: (1) 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—(1) 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: (1) Manzi or India Maxima (S. China);
(2) Mynibar (Malabar): (3) Maabar. The last two with Guzerat are Abulfeda's
divisions, exclusive of Sind.
We see that there was a traditional tendency to make out Three Indies, but little
concord as to their identity. With regard to the expressions Greater and Lesser
India, I would recall attention to what has been said about Greater and Lesser Java
(supra, chap. ix. note 1). 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
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 Sousa, II. 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
ten which he has described appear to be—(1) Maabar, (2) Coilum, (3) Comari,
(4) Eli, (5) Malabar, (6) Guzerat, (7) Tana, (8) Canbaet, (9) Semenat, (10) Kesma-
coran. 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), Singayli (Cranganor), Columbum (Quilon),
Molephatan (on the east coast, uncertain, see above pp. 333, 391), and Sylen (Ceylon),
Moleghatan (on the east coast, uncertain, see above pp. 333, 391), and Sylen (Ceylon),
Java, three or four kings, Telene (Polo's Mutfili), Maratha (Deogir), Batigala (in
Canara), and in Champa (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.: (1) Kanauj, (2) Mirat
(or Delhi), (3) Mahâvan (Mathra), (4) Lahore, (5) Malwa, (6) Guzerat, (7) Ajmir,
(8) Gwalior, (9) Kalinjar, (10) Multân, (11) 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's
Travels, p. 107.) The King of Arakan used to take the title of "Lord of the 12
provinces of Bengal" (Reinaud, Inde, p. 139.)
The Masâlak-al-Absâr 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— (1) Delhi, (2) Deogir, (3) Multân,
(4) Kehran (Kohrâm, in Sirhind Division of Province of Delhi?), (5) Sâmân
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