And these people make use of a very strange beverage; for they
make a potion of sulphur and quicksilver mixt together and this they drink
twice every month. This, they say, gives them long life; and it is a
potion they are used to take from their childhood.[NOTE 5]
There are certain members of this Order who lead the most ascetic life in
the world, going stark naked; and these worship the Ox. Most of them have
a small ox of brass or pewter or gold which they wear tied over the
forehead. Moreover they take cow-dung and burn it, and make a powder
thereof; and make an ointment of it, and daub themselves withal, doing
this with as great devotion as Christians do show in using Holy Water.
[Also if they meet any one who treats them well, they daub a little of
this powder on the middle of his forehead.[NOTE 6]]
They eat not from bowls or trenchers, but put their victuals on leaves of
the Apple of Paradise and other big leaves; these, however, they use dry,
never green. For they say the green leaves have a soul in them, and so it
would be a sin. And they would rather die than do what they deem their Law
pronounces to be sin. If any one asks how it comes that they are not
ashamed to go stark naked as they do, they say, "We go naked because naked
we came into the world, and we desire to have nothing about us that is of
this world. Moreover, we have no sin of the flesh to be conscious of, and
therefore we are not ashamed of our nakedness, any more than you are to
show your hand or your face. You who are conscious of the sins of the
flesh do well to have shame, and to cover your nakedness."
They would not kill an animal on any account, not even a fly, or a flea,
or a louse,[NOTE 7] or anything in fact that has life; for they say these
have all souls, and it would be sin to do so. They eat no vegetable in a
green state, only such as are dry. And they sleep on the ground stark
naked, without a scrap of clothing on them or under them, so that it is a
marvel they don't all die, in place of living so long as I have told you.
They fast every day in the year, and drink nought but water. And when a
novice has to be received among them they keep him awhile in their
convent, and make him follow their rule of life. And then, when they
desire to put him to the test, they send for some of those girls who are
devoted to the Idols, and make them try the continence of the novice with
their blandishments. If he remains indifferent they retain him, but if he
shows any emotion they expel him from their society. For they say they
will have no man of loose desires among them.
They are such cruel and perfidious Idolaters that it is very devilry! They
say that they burn the bodies of the dead, because if they were not burnt
worms would be bred which would eat the body; and when no more food
remained for them these worms would die, and the soul belonging to that
body would bear the sin and the punishment of their death. And that is why
they burn their dead!
Now I have told you about a great part of the people of the great Province
of Maabar and their customs; but I have still other things to tell of this
same Province of Maabar, so I will speak of a city thereof which is called
Cail.
NOTE 1. - The form of the word Abraiaman, -main or -min, by which Marco
here and previously denotes the Brahmans, probably represents an incorrect
Arabic plural, such as Abrahamin; the correct Arabic form is
Barahimah.
What is said here of the Brahmans coming from "Lar, a province west of
St. Thomas's," of their having a special King, etc., is all very obscure,
and that I suspect through erroneous notions.
Lar-Desa, "The Country of Lar," properly Lat-desa, was an early name for
the territory of Guzerat and the northern Konkan, embracing Saimur (the
modern Chaul, as I believe), Tana, and Baroch. It appears in Ptolemy in
the form Larike. The sea to the west of that coast was in the early
Mahomedan times called the Sea of Lar, and the language spoken on its
shores is called by Mas'udi Lari. Abulfeda's authority, Ibn Said, speaks
of Lar and Guzerat as identical. That position would certainly be very ill
described as lying west of Madras. The kingdom most nearly answering to
that description in Polo's age would be that of the Bellal Rajas of Dwara
Samudra, which corresponded in a general way to modern Mysore. (Mas'udi,
I. 330, 381; II. 85; Gildem. 185; Elliot, I. 66.)
That Polo's ideas on this subject were incorrect seems clear from his
conception of the Brahmans as a class of merchants. Occasionally they
may have acted as such, and especially as agents; but the only case I can
find of Brahmans as a class adopting trade is that of the Konkani
Brahmans, and they are said to have taken this step when expelled from
Goa, which was their chief seat, by the Portuguese. Marsden supposes that
there has been confusion between Brahmans and Banyans; and, as Guzerat or
Lar was the country from which the latter chiefly came, there is much
probability in this.
