Chau Ju-kwa has the following passage in Cambodia (p. 53): "(The people)
are devout Buddhists. There are serving (in the temples) some three
hundred foreign women; they dance and offer food to the Buddha. They are
called a-nan or slave dancing-girls."
Hirth and Rockhill, who quote Marco Polo's passage, remark, p. 55 n.:
"A-nan, as here written, is the usual transcription of the Sanskrit word
ananda, 'joy, happiness.' The almeh or dancing-girls are usually called
in India deva-dasi ('slave of a god') or ramjani."
In Guzerat, Chau Ju-kwa, p. 92, mentions: "Four thousand Buddhist temple
buildings, in which live over twenty thousand dancing-girls who sing twice
daily while offering food to the Buddha (i.e., the idols) and while
offering flowers."
XVIII., p. 356.
TRADITIONS OF ST. THOMAS.
"The traditional site of the Apostle's Tomb, now adjacent to the sea-shore,
has recently come to be enclosed in the crypt of the new Cathedral of San
Thome." (A.E. MEDLYCOTT, India and the Apostle Thomas. An inquiry. With a
critical analysis of the Acta Thomae. London, David Nutt, 1905, 8vo.)
In the beginning of the sixteenth century Barbosa found the church of St.
Thomas half in ruins and grown round with jungle.
