CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF ZANGHIBAR. A WORD ON INDIA IN GENERAL.
Zanghibar is a great and noble Island, with a compass of some 2000
miles.{1} The people are all Idolaters, and have a king and a language
of their own, and pay tribute to nobody. They are both tall and stout,
but not tall in proportion to their stoutness, for if they were, being
so stout and brawny, they would be absolutely like giants; and they are
so strong that they will carry for four men and eat for five.
They are all black, and go stark naked, with only a little covering
for decency. Their hair is as black as pepper, and so frizzly that
even with water you can scarcely straighten it. And their mouths are
so large, their noses so turned up, their lips so thick, their eyes so
big and bloodshot, that they look like very devils; they are in fact so
hideously ugly that the world has nothing to show more horrible.
Elephants are produced in this country in wonderful profusion. There
are also lions that are black and quite different from ours. And their
sheep and wethers are all exactly alike in colour; the body all white
and the head black; no other kind of sheep is found there, you may rest
assured.{2} They have also many giraffes. This is a beautiful creature,
and I must give you a description of it. Its body is short and somewhat
sloped to the rear, for its hind legs are short whilst the fore-legs
and the neck are both very long, and thus its head stands about three
paces from the ground. The head is small, and the animal is not at all
mischievous. Its colour is all red and white in round spots, and it is
really a beautiful object.{3}
** The women of this Island are the ugliest in the world, with their
great mouths and big eyes and thick noses; their breasts too are four
times bigger than those of any other women; a very disgusting sight.
The people live on rice and flesh and milk and dates; and they make
wine of dates and of rice and of good spices and sugar. There is a
great deal of trade, and many merchants and vessels go thither. But
the staple trade of the Island is in elephants’ teeth, which are very
abundant; and they have also much ambergris, as whales are plentiful.{4}
They have among them excellent and valiant warriors, and have little
fear of death. They have no horses, but fight mounted on camels and
elephants. On the latter they set wooden castles which carry from ten
to sixteen persons, armed with lances, swords, and stones, so that
they fight to great purpose from these castles. They wear no armour,
but carry only a shield of hide, besides their swords and lances, and
so a marvellous number of them fall in battle. When they are going to
take an elephant into battle they ply him well with their wine, so that
he is made half drunk. They do this because the drink makes him more
fierce and bold, and of more service in battle.{5}
As there is no more to say on this subject I will go on to tell you
about the Great Province of ABASH, which constitutes the MIDDLE
INDIA;—but I must first say something about India in general.
You must understand that in speaking of the Indian Islands we have
described only the most noble provinces and kingdoms among them; for no
man on earth could give you a true account of the whole of the Islands
of India. Still, what I have described are the best, and as it were the
Flower of the Indies. For the greater part of the other Indian Islands
that I have omitted are subject to those that I have described. It is
a fact that in this Sea of India there are 12,700 Islands, inhabited
and uninhabited, according to the charts and documents of experienced
mariners who navigate that Indian Sea.{6}
INDIA THE GREATER is that which extends from Maabar to Kesmacoran; and
it contains 13 great kingdoms, of which we have described ten. These
are all on the mainland.
INDIA THE LESSER extends from the Province of Champa to Mutfili, and
contains eight great kingdoms. These are likewise all on the mainland.
And neither of these numbers includes the Islands, among which also
there are very numerous kingdoms, as I have told you.{7}
NOTE 1.—ZANGIBAR, “the Region of the Blacks,” known to the ancients
as _Zingis_ and _Zingium_. The name was applied by the Arabs,
according to De Barros, to the whole stretch of coast from the
Kilimanchi River, which seems to be the Jubb, to Cape Corrientes
beyond the Southern Tropic, _i.e._ as far as Arab traffic extended;
Burton says now from the Jubb to Cape Delgado. According to
Abulfeda, the King of Zinjis dwelt at Mombasa. In recent times the
name is by Europeans almost appropriated to the Island on which
resides the Sultan of the Maskat family, to whom Sir B. Frere
lately went as envoy. Our author’s “Island” has no reference to
this; it is an error simply.
Our traveller’s information is here, I think, certainly at second
hand, though no doubt he had seen the negroes whom he describes
with such disgust, and apparently the sheep and the giraffes.
NOTE 2.—These sheep are common at Aden, whither they are imported
from the opposite African coast. They have hair like smooth goats,
no wool. Varthema also describes them (p. 87). In the Cairo Museum,
among ornaments found in the mummy-pits, there is a little figure
of one of these sheep, the head and neck in some blue stone and the
body in white agate. (_Note by Author of the sketch on next page._)
NOTE 3.—A giraffe—made into a _seraph_ by the Italians—had been
frequently seen in Italy in the early part of the century, there
being one in the train of the Emperor Frederic II. Another was sent
by Bibars to the Imperial Court in 1261, and several to Barka Khan
at Sarai in 1263; whilst the King of Nubia was bound by treaty in
1275 to deliver to the Sultan three elephants, three giraffes, and
five she-panthers. (_Kington_, I. 471; _Makrizi_, I. 216; II. 106,
108.) The giraffe is sometimes wrought in the patterns of mediæval
Saracenic damasks, and in Sicilian ones imitated from the former.
Of these there are examples in the Kensington Collection.
I here omit a passage about the elephant. It recounts an old and
long-persistent fable, exploded by Sir T. Brown, and indeed before
him by the sensible Garcia de Orta.
NOTE 4.—The port of Zanzibar is probably the chief ivory mart in
the world. Ambergris is mentioned by Burton among miscellaneous
exports, but it is not now of any consequence. Owen speaks of it as
brought for sale at Delagoa Bay in the south.
NOTE 5.—Mas’udi more correctly says: “The country abounds with wild
elephants, but you don’t find a single tame one. The Zinjes employ
them neither in war nor otherwise, and if they hunt them ’tis only
to kill them” (III. 7). It is difficult to conceive how Marco could
have got so much false information. The only beast of burden in
Zanzibar, at least north of Mozambique, is the ass. His particulars
seem jumbled from various parts of Africa. The camel-riders suggest
the _Bejas_ of the Red Sea coast, of whom there were in Mas’udi’s
time 30,000 warriors so mounted, and armed with lances and bucklers
(III. 34). The elephant stories may have arisen from the occasional
use of these animals by the Kings of Abyssinia. (See Note 4 to next
chapter.)
[Illustration: Ethiopian Sheep.]
NOTE 6.—An approximation to 12,000 as a round number seems to have
been habitually used in reference to the Indian Islands; John of
Montecorvino says they are many more than 12,000; Jordanus had
heard that there were 10,000 _inhabited_. Linschoten says some
estimated the Maldives at 11,100. And we learn from Pyrard de Laval
that the Sultan of the Maldives called himself Ibrahim Sultan of
Thirteen Atollons (or coral groups) and of 12,000 Islands! This is
probably the origin of the proverbial number. Ibn Batuta, in his
excellent account of the Maldives, estimates them at only about
2000. But Captain Owen, commenting on Pyrard, says that he believes
the actual number of islands to be treble or fourfold of 12,000.
(_P. de Laval_ in _Charton_, IV. 255; _I. B._ IV. 40; _J. R. G. S._
II. 84.)
NOTE 7.—The term “India” became very vague from an early date. In
fact, Alcuin divides the whole world into three parts, Europe,
Africa, and India. Hence it was necessary to discriminate different
Indias, but there is very little agreement among different authors
as to this discrimination.
The earliest use that I can find of the terms India Major and Minor
is in the _Liber Junioris Philosophi_ published by Hudson, and
which is believed to be translated from a lost Greek original of
the middle of the 4th century. 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. 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. 333, 391), and _Sylen_ (Ceylon),
_Java_, three or four kings, _Telenc_ (Polo’s Mutfili), _Maratha_
(Deogir), _Batigala_ (in Canara), and in _Champa_ (apparently put
for all Indo-China) many kings. According to Firishta there were
about a dozen _important_ principalities in India at the time of
the Mahomedan conquest of which he mentions _eleven_, viz.: (1)
_Kanauj_, (2) _Mírat_ (or Delhi), (3) _Mahávan_ (Mathra), (4)
_Lahore_, (5) _Malwa_, (6) _Guzerat_, (7) _Ajmir_, (8) _Gwalior_,
(9) _Kalinjar_, (10) _Multán_, (11) _Ujjain_. (_Ritter_, V.
535.) This omits Bengal, Orissa, and all the Deccan. _Twelve_ is
a round number which constantly occurs in such statements. Ibn
Batuta tells us there were 12 princes in Malabar alone. Chinghiz,
in Sanang-Setzen, speaks of his vow to subdue the _twelve_ kings
of the human race (91). Certain figures in a temple at Anhilwara
in Guzerat are said by local tradition to be the effigies of the
_twelve_ great kings of Europe. (_Todd’s Travels_, p. 107.) The
King of Arakan used to take the title of “Lord of the 12 provinces
of Bengal” (_Reinaud, Inde_, p. 139.)
The _Masálak-al-Absár_ of Shihabuddin Dimishki, written some
forty years after Polo’s book, gives a list of the provinces
(twice twelve in number) into which India was then considered to
be divided. It runs—(1) _Delhi_, (2) _Deogír_, (3) _Multán_, (4)
_Kehran_ (_Kohrám_, in Sirhind Division of Province of Delhi?),
(5) _Sámán_ (Samána, N.W. of Delhi?), (6) _Siwastán_ (Sehwán),
(7) _Ujah_ (Uchh), (8) _Hási_ (Hansi), (9) _Sarsati_ (Sirsa),
(10) _Ma’bar_, (11) _Tiling_, (12) _Gujerat_, (13) _Badáún_,
(14) _Audh_, (15) _Kanauj_, (16) _Laknaoti_ (Upper Bengal), (17)
_Bahár_, (18) _Karráh_ (in the Doáb), (19) _Maláwa_, (Málwa),
(20) _Lahaur_, (21) _Kálánúr_ (in the Bári Doáb, above Lahore),
(22) _Jájnagar_ (according to Elphinstone, Tipura in Bengal),
(23) _Tilinj_ (a repetition or error), (24) _Dursamand_ (Dwara
Samudra, the kingdom of the Belláls in Mysore). Neither Malabar nor
Orissa is accounted for. (See _Not. et Ext._ XIII. 170). Another
list, given by the historian Zíá-uddín Barni some years later,
embraces again only _twelve_ provinces. These are (1) Delhi, (2)
Gujerat, (3) Málwah, (4) Deogír, (5) Tiling, (6) Kampilah (in the
Doáb, between Koil and Farakhábád), (7) Dur Samandar, (8) Ma’bar,
(9) _Tirhut_, (10) Lakhnaoti, (11) _Satgánw_, (12) _Sunárgánw_
(these two last forming the Western and Eastern portions of Lower
Bengal).[1]
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[1] _E. Thomas_, Chronicles of the Pathán Kings of Delhi, p. 203.