In this author India Minor adjoins Persia. So it does with Friar
Jordanus. His India Minor appears to embrace Sind (possibly Mekran), and
the western coast exclusive of Malabar. India Major extends from Malabar
indefinitely eastward. His India Tertia is Zanjibar. The Three Indies
appear in a map contained in a MS. by Guido Pisanus, written in 1118.
Conti divides India into three: (1) From Persia to the Indus (i.e.
Mekran and Sind); (2) From the Indus to the Ganges; (3) All that is beyond
Ganges (Indo-China and China).
In a map of Andrea Bianco at Venice (No. 12) the divisions are - (1) India
Minor, extending westward to the Persian Gulf; (2) India Media,
"containing 14 regions and 12 nations;" and (3) India Superior, containing
8 regions and 24 nations.
Marino Sanuto places immediately east of the Persian Gulf "India Minor
quae et Ethiopia."
John Marignolli again has three Indias: (1) Manzi or India Maxima (S.
China); (2) Mynibar (Malabar); (3) Maabar. The last two with Guzerat are
Abulfeda's divisions, exclusive of Sind.
We see that there was a traditional tendency to make out Three Indies,
but little concord as to their identity. With regard to the expressions
Greater and Lesser India, I would recall attention to what has been
said about Greater and Lesser Java (supra, chap. ix. note 1). Greater
India was originally intended, I imagine, for the real India, what our
maps call Hindustan. And the threefold division, with its inclination to
place one of the Indies in Africa, I think may have originated with the
Arab Hind, Sind, and Zinj. I may add that our vernacular expression
"the Indies" is itself a vestige of the twofold or threefold division of
which we have been speaking.
The partition of the Indies made by King Sebastian of Portugal in 1571,
when he constituted his eastern possessions into three governments,
recalled the old division into Three Indias. The first, INDIA, extending
from Cape Gardafui to Ceylon, stood in a general way for Polo's India
Major; the second MONOMOTAPA, from Gardafui to Cape Corrientes (India
Tertia of Jordanus); the third MALACCA, from Pegu to China (India Minor).
(Faria y Souza, II. 319.)
Polo's knowledge of India, as a whole, is so little exact that it is too
indefinite a problem to consider which are the three kingdoms that he has
not described. The ten which he has described appear to be - (1) Maabar,
(2) Coilum, (3) Comari, (4) Eli, (5) Malabar, (6) Guzerat, (7) Tana, (8)
Canbaet, (9) Semenat, (10) Kesmacoran. On the one hand, this distribution
in itself contains serious misapprehensions, as we have seen, and on the
other there must have been many dozens of kingdoms in India Major instead
of 13, if such states as Comari, Hili, and Somnath were to be separately
counted.
