"At sunrise the gilded disks of the
vane are lit up with dazzling glory, whilst the gentle breeze of
morning causes the precious bells to tinkle with a pleasing sound."
(Beal, p. 204.)
CHAPTER LV.
CONCERNING THE PROVINCE OF BANGALA.
Bangala is a Province towards the south, which up to the year 1290, when
the aforesaid Messer Marco Polo was still at the Court of the Great Kaan,
had not yet been conquered; but his armies had gone thither to make the
conquest. You must know that this province has a peculiar language, and
that the people are wretched Idolaters. They are tolerably close to India.
There are numbers of eunuchs there, insomuch that all the Barons who keep
them get them from that Province.[NOTE 1]
The people have oxen as tall as elephants, but not so big.[NOTE 2] They
live on flesh and milk and rice. They grow cotton, in which they drive a
great trade, and also spices such as spikenard, galingale, ginger, sugar,
and many other sorts. And the people of India also come thither in search
of the eunuchs that I mentioned, and of slaves, male and female, of which
there are great numbers, taken from other provinces with which those of
the country are at war; and these eunuchs and slaves are sold to the
Indian and other merchants who carry them thence for sale about the world.
There is nothing more to mention about this country, so we will quit it,
and I will tell you of another province called Caugigu.
NOTE 1. - I do not think it probable that Marco even touched at any port of
Bengal on that mission to the Indian Seas of which we hear in the
prologue; but he certainly never reached it from the Yun-nan side, and he
had, as we shall presently see (infra, ch. lix. note 6), a wrong
notion as to its position. Indeed, if he had visited it at all, he would
have been aware that it was essentially a part of India, whilst in fact he
evidently regarded it as an Indo-Chinese region, like Zardandan,
Mien, and Caugigu.
There is no notice, I believe, in any history, Indian or Chinese, of an
attempt by Kublai to conquer Bengal. The only such attempt by the Mongols
that we hear of is one mentioned by Firishta, as made by way of Cathay and
Tibet, during the reign of Alauddin Masa'ud, king of Delhi, in 1244, and
stated to have been defeated by the local officers in Bengal. But Mr.
Edward Thomas tells me he has most distinctly ascertained that this
statement, which has misled every historian "from Badauni and Firishtah to
Briggs and Elphinstone, is founded purely on an erroneous reading" (and
see a note in Mr. Thomas's Pathan Kings of Dehli, p. 121).
The date 1290 in the text would fix the period of Polo's final departure
from Peking, if the dates were not so generally corrupt.
