NOTE 1. - CAMBAET is nearer the genuine name of the city than our CAMBAY.
Its proper Hindu name was, according to Colonel Tod, Khambavati, "the
City of the Pillar." The inhabitants write it Kambayat. The ancient city
is 3 miles from the existing Cambay, and is now overgrown with jungle. It
is spoken of as a flourishing place by Mas'udi, who visited it in A.D.
915. Ibn Batuta speaks of it also as a very fine city, remarkable for the
elegance and solidity of its mosques, and houses built by wealthy foreign
merchants. Cambeth is mentioned by Polo's contemporary Marino Sanudo, as
one of the two chief Ocean Ports of India; and in the 15th century Conti
calls it 14 miles in circuit. It was still in high prosperity in the early
part of the 16th century, abounding in commerce and luxury, and one of the
greatest Indian marts. Its trade continued considerable in the time of
Federici, towards the end of that century; but it has now long
disappeared, the local part of it being transferred to Gogo and other
ports having deeper water. Its chief or sole industry now is in the
preparation of ornamental objects from agates, cornelians, and the like.
The Indigo of Cambay was long a staple export, and is mentioned by Conti,
Nikitin, Santo Stefano, Federici, Linschoten, and Abu'l Fazl.
The independence of Cambay ceased a few years after Polo's visit; for it
was taken in the end of the century by the armies of Alauddin Khilji of
Delhi, a king whose name survived in Guzerat down to our own day as
Alauddin Khuni - Bloody Alauddin. (Ras Mala, I. 235.)
CHAPTER XXIX.
CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF SEMENAT.
Semenat is a great kingdom towards the west. The people are Idolaters, and
have a king and a language of their own, and pay tribute to nobody. They
are not corsairs, but live by trade and industry as honest people ought.
It is a place of very great trade. They are forsooth cruel Idolaters.
[NOTE 1]
[Illustration: 'The Gates of Somnath,' preserved in the British Arsenal at
Agra, from a photograph (converted into elevation)]
NOTE 1. - SOMNATH is the site of the celebrated Temple on the coast of
Saurashtra, or Peninsular Guzerat, plundered by Mahmud of Ghazni on his
sixteenth expedition to India (A.D. 1023). The term "great kingdom" is
part of Polo's formula. But the place was at this time of some importance
as a commercial port, and much visited by the ships of Aden, as Abulfeda
tells us. At an earlier date Albiruni speaks of it both as the seat of a
great Mahadeo much frequented by Hindu pilgrims, and as a port of call for
vessels on their way from Sofala in Africa to China, - a remarkable
incidental notice of departed trade and civilisation!