Such
Tables We Find In Use In The Tenth Century, At The Court Of The King Of
Bolghar (See Prologue, Note 2, Ch.
Ii.), and at the Chinese
entertainments to Shah Rukh's embassy in the fifteenth century.
Megasthenes described the guests at an Indian banquet as having a table
set before each individual.
(Athenaeus, IV. 39, Yonge's Transl.)
[Compare Rubruck's account, Rockhill's ed., p. 210: "The Chan sits in a
high place to the north, so that he can be seen by all...." (See also
Friar Odoric, Cathay, p. 141.) - H. C.]
NOTE 2. - This word (G. T. and Ram.) is in the Crusca Italian transformed
into an adjective, "vaselle vernicate d'oro," and both Marsden and
Pauthier have substantially adopted the same interpretation, which seems
to me in contradiction with the text. In Pauthier's text the word is
vernigal, pl. vernigaux, which he explains, I know not on what
authority, as "coupes sans anses vernies ou laquees d'or." There is,
indeed, a Venetian sea-term, Vernegal, applied to a wooden bowl in which
the food of a mess is put, and it seems possible that this word may have
been substituted for the unknown Vernique. I suspect the latter was some
Oriental term, but I can find nothing nearer than the Persian Barni, Ar.
Al-Barniya, "vas fictile in quo quid recondunt," whence the Spanish word
Albornia, "a great glazed vessel in the shape of a bowl, with handles."
So far as regards the form, the change of Barniya into Vernique would
be quite analogous to that change of Hundwaniy into Ondanique, which
we have already met with.
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