Tana, Cambay, Somnath, would follow
naturally as points of call.
In Polo's order, again, the positions of Comari and Coilum are transposed,
whilst Melibar is introduced as if it were a country westward (as Polo
views it, northward we should say)[1] of Coilum and Eli, instead of
including them, and Gozurat is introduced as a country lying eastward
(or southward, as we should say) of Tana, Cambaet, and Semenat, instead of
including them, or at least the two latter. Moreover, he names no cities
in connection with those two countries.
The following hypothesis, really not a complex one, is the most probable
that I can suggest to account for these confusions.
I conceive, then, that Cape Comorin (Comari) was the first Indian land
made by the fleet on the homeward voyage, and that Hili, Tana, Cambay,
Somnath, were touched at successively as it proceeded towards Persia.
I conceive that in a former voyage to India on the Great Kaan's business
Marco had visited Maabar and Kaulam, and gained partly from actual visits
and partly from information the substance of the notices he gives us of
Telingana and St Thomas's on the one side and of Malabar and Guzerat on
the other, and that in combining into one series the results of the
information acquired on two different voyages he failed rightly to
co-ordinate the material, and thus those dislocations which we have noticed
occurred, as they very easily might, in days when maps had practically no
existence; to say nothing of the accidents of dictation.
The expression in this passage for "the cities that lie in the interior,"
is in the G.T. "celz qe sunt en fra terres"; see I. 43. Pauthier's text
has "celles qui sont en ferme terre," which is nonsense here.
[1] Abulfeda's orientation is the same as Polo's.
CHAPTER XXXI.
DISCOURSETH OF THE TWO ISLANDS CALLED MALE AND FEMALE, AND WHY THEY ARE SO
CALLED.
When you leave this kingdom of Kesmacoran, which is on the mainland, you
go by sea some 500 miles towards the south; and then you find the two
Islands, MALE and FEMALE, lying about 30 miles distant from one another.
The people are all baptized Christians, but maintain the ordinances of the
Old Testament; thus when their wives are with child they never go near
them till their confinement, or for forty days thereafter.
In the Island however which is called Male, dwell the men alone, without
their wives or any other women. Every year when the month of March arrives
the men all set out for the other Island, and tarry there for three
months, to wit, March, April, May, dwelling with their wives for that
space. At the end of those three months they return to their own Island,
and pursue their husbandry and trade for the other nine months.
They find on this Island very fine ambergris. They live on flesh and milk
and rice. They are capital fishermen, and catch a great quantity of fine
large sea-fish, and these they dry, so that all the year they have plenty
of food, and also enough to sell to the traders who go thither. They have
no chief except a bishop, who is subject to the archbishop of another
Island, of which we shall presently speak, called SCOTRA. They have also a
peculiar language.
As for the children which their wives bear to them, if they be girls they
abide with their mothers; but if they be boys the mothers bring them up
till they are fourteen, and then send them to the fathers. Such is the
custom of these two Islands. The wives do nothing but nurse their children
and gather such fruits as their Island produces; for their husbands do
furnish them with all necessaries.[NOTE 1]
NOTE 1. - It is not perhaps of much use to seek a serious identification of
the locality of these Islands, or, as Marsden has done, to rationalise the
fable. It ran from time immemorial, and as nobody ever found the Islands,
their locality shifted with the horizon, though the legend long hung about
Socotra and its vicinity. Coronelli's Atlas (Venice, 1696) identifies
these islands with those called Abdul Kuri near Cape Gardafui, and the
same notion finds favour with Marsden. No islands indeed exist in the
position indicated by Polo if we look to his direction "south of
Kesmacoran," but if we take his indication of "half-way between Mekran and
Socotra," the Kuria Muria Islands on the Arabian coast, in which M.
Pauthier longs to trace these veritable Male and Female Isles, will be
nearer than any others. Marco's statement that they had a bishop subject
to the metropolitan of Socotra certainly looks as if certain concrete
islands had been associated with the tale. Friar Jordanus (p. 44) also
places them between India the Greater and India Tertia (i.e. with him
Eastern Africa). Conti locates them not more than 5 miles from Socotra,
and yet 100 mile distant from one another. "Sometimes the men pass over to
the women, and sometimes the women pass over to the men, and each return
to their own respective island before the expiration of six months. Those
who remain on the island of the others beyond this fatal period die
immediately" (p. 21). Fra Mauro places the islands to the south of
Zanzibar, and gives them the names of Mangla and Nebila. One is
curious to know whence came these names, one of which seems to be
Sanskrit, the other (also in Sanudo's map) Arabic; (Nabilah, Ar.,
"Beautiful"; Mangala, Sansk. "Fortunate").
A savour of the story survived to the time of the Portuguese discoveries,
and it had by that time attached itself to Socotra.
