(1.) “Of these four rivers I have seen three.”—Well versed as
Schiltberger was in the Holy Scriptures, he could not but have been
aware that the Euphrates and Tigris were included among the four rivers
that had their source in Paradise; but he substitutes the Nile and
Rison for the Gihon and Pison.
It is noticed elsewhere, that in the time of the Crusades the Nile and
Euphrates were mistaken for each other, in consequence of the name
by which a part of Cairo was known. When, after a time, the error
was discovered, the Indus was substituted for the Euphrates, partly,
perhaps, because Koush—Ethiopia—was confounded with the country of the
Cossæi, peopled, according to the classic authors, by Ethiopians; and
also because it had formerly been mistaken for Κύσσια χώρα of the
ancients, known to the Hebrews as Eriz Koush, situated to the east
of Babylon (Fürst, _Gesch. des Karäerth._, 102). Thus was it that
Giovanni de’ Marignolli (_Reis. in das Morgenl._, 18) who passed
through China and India soon after Marco Polo, mistook the Gihon of the
Bible for the Indus and the Nile. Even De Lannoy (_Voy. et Ambass._,
88) does not venture to refute the opinion as to the continuity of
these two rivers. Being under the impression that the Nile was a
continuation of the Indus, Schiltberger calls the two rivers, which
he believed were united, the Nile, imagining that they were identical
with the Gihon or Sihon, a name that greatly resembles the Hebrew
denomination of the Nile.
“Rison” could scarcely have been other than the Pison of the Bible,
spelled Phison in the Nuremberg MS. (_Penzel edition_, 123); this
accounts for the statement that gold and precious stones were found in
it, produce for which the territory of Khivila, watered by the Phison,
was celebrated. Schiltberger adds, that the “Rison” traversed India,
whilst he identifies the Indus with the Nile; his fourth river must
therefore have been the Ganges, the Phison of Moses of Chorene, who
states that the river was at the limits of the two peninsulas of India,
although Haythoun, his countryman, believed the Phison to be the Oxus
because it divided Persia into two parts: one containing Samarkand and
Bokhara; the other, the southern cities of Nishapur, Ispahan, etc. Not
satisfied with having reconciled the contradictory opinions of his
predecessors, in identifying the Phison with the Ganges, Giovanni de’
Marignolli unites to these two rivers the Hoang-Ho and even the Volga
(Raumer, _Palæstina_, etc., Appendix, vii), and he represents that,
after irrigating Evilach in India, the Phison passes, not only into
China, where it is called the Karamora (Kara-mouran—Black River—was
the name given by the Mongols to the Yellow River of the Chinese), but
after disappearing in the sands behind Caffa, again shews itself and
forms the Sea of Bakou—Caspian—behind Chana—Tana, now Azoff. We are
bound to admit that Schiltberger is nearer the truth in saying that he
had never seen the “Rison” at all, than was the bishop of Bisignano who
recognised it in too many rivers at one and the same time.—BRUUN.