We Find Nearly The Same
Application Of The Term In Benjamin Of Tudela:
"Eight days from thence is Middle India, which is Aden, and in Scripture
Eden in Thelasar.
This country is very mountainous, and contains many
independent Jews who are not subject to the power of the Gentiles, but
possess cities and fortresses on the summits of the mountains, from whence
they descend into the country of Maatum, with which they are at war.
Maatum, called also Nubia, is a Christian kingdom and the inhabitants are
called Nubians," etc. (p. 117). Here the Rabbi seems to transfer Aden to
the west of the Red Sea (as Polo also seems to do in this chapter); for
the Jews warring against Nubian Christians must be sought in the Falasha
strongholds among the mountains of Abyssinia. His Middle India is
therefore the same as Polo's or nearly so. In Jordanus, as already
mentioned, we have India Tertia, which combines some characters of
Abyssinia and Zanjibar, but is distinguished from the Ethiopia of Prester
John, which adjoins it.
But for the occurrence of the name in R. Benjamin I should have supposed
the use of it to have been of European origin and current at most among
Oriental Christians and Frank merchants. The European confusion of India
and Ethiopia comes down from Virgil's time, who brings the Nile from
India. And Servius (4th century) commenting on a more ambiguous passage -
- "Sola India nigrum
Fert ebenum,"
says explicitly "Indiam omnem plagam Aethiopiae accipimus." Procopius
brings the Nile into Egypt [Greek: ex Indon]; and the Ecclesiastical
Historians Sozomen and Socrates (I take these citations, like the last,
from Ludolf), in relating the conversion of the Abyssinians by Frumentius,
speak of them only as of the [Greek: Indon ton endotero], "Interior
Indians," a phrase intended to imply remoter, but which might perhaps
give rise to the term Middle India. Thus Cosmas says of China: "[Greek:
aes endotero], there is no other country"; and Nicolo Conti calls the
Chinese Interiores Indi, which Mr. Winter Jones misrenders "natives of
Central India."[1] St. Epiphanius (end of 4th century) says India was
formerly divided into nine kingdoms, viz., those of the (1) Alabastri,
(2) Homeritae, (3) Azumiti, and Dulites, (4) Bugaei, (5) Taiani,
(6) Isabeni, and so on, several of which are manifestly provinces
subject to Abyssinia.[2] Roger Bacon speaks of the "Ethiopes de Nubia et
ultimi illi qui vocantur Indi, propter approximationem ad Indiam." The
term India Minor is applied to some Ethiopic region in a letter which
Matthew Paris gives under 1237. And this confusion which prevailed more or
less till the 16th century was at the bottom of that other confusion,
whatever be its exact history, between Prester John in remote Asia, and
Prester John in Abyssinia. In fact the narrative by Damian de Goes of the
Embassy from the King of Abyssinia to Portugal in 1513, which was printed
at Antwerp in 1532, bears the title "Legatio Magni Indorum
Imperatoris," etc. (Ludolf, Comment. p. 2 and 75-76; Epiph.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 429 of 701
Words from 222953 to 223457
of 370046
