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. Probably it was a common saying that there were 12 kings in
India, and the fact of his having himself described so many, which he knew
did not nearly embrace the whole, may have made Polo convert this into 13.
Jordanus says: "In this Greater India are 12 idolatrous kings and more;"
but his Greater India is much more extensive than Polo's. Those which he
names are Molebar (probably the kingdom of the Zamorin of Calicut),
Singuyli (Cranganor), Columbum (Quilon), Molephatan (on the east
coast, uncertain, see above pp.
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