Pirates Still Did Business From The Port, But On A Reduced
Scale.
Botero says that there were the remains of an immense city to be
seen, and that the town still contained 5000 velvet-weavers (p. 104).
Till
the Mahrattas took Salsette in 1737, the Portuguese had many fine villas
about Thana.
Polo's dislocation of geographical order here has misled Fra Mauro into
placing Tana to the west of Guzerat, though he has a duplicate Tana nearer
the correct position.
NOTE 2. - It has often been erroneously supposed that the frankincense
(olibanum) of commerce, for which Bombay and the ports which preceded it
in Western India have for centuries afforded the chief mart, was an Indian
product. But Marco is not making that mistake; he calls the incense of
Western India brown, evidently in contrast with the white incense or
olibanum, which he afterwards assigns to its true locality (infra. ch.
xxxvii., xxxviii.). Nor is Marsden justified in assuming that the brown
incense of Tana must needs have been Benzoin imported from Sumatra,
though I observe Dr. Birdwood considers that the term Indian
Frankincense which occurs in Dioscorides must have included Benzoin.
Dioscorides describes the so-called Indian Frankincense as blackish; and
Garcia supposes the name merely to refer to the colour, as he says the
Arabs often gave the name of Indian to things of a dark colour.
There seems to be no proof that Benzoin was known even to the older Arab
writers. Western India supplies a variety of aromatic gum-resins, one of
which was probably intended by our traveller:
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