Omptah, and Tamlook; and that the river called the Old Ganges was a part of its course, and received that name while the circumstance of the change was fresh in the memory of the people. The ap-pearance of the country between Satgong and Tamlook countenances such an opinion.” Of the other place, which seems to be Varthema’s Banghella, he says: “In some ancient maps, and books of travel, we meet with a city named Bangella but no traces of such a place now exist. It is described as being near the eastern mouth of the Ganges, and I conceive that the site of it has been
1 Geog. Univ. turn Vet. turn Nova absolutissimum opus, p. 258. 2 It is so placed in several of the old maps belonging to the British Museum. For some further notes on this subject, the reader is referred to the Postscript at the end of this INTRODUCTION.
9
lxxxii INTRODUCTION.
carried away by the river, as in my remembrance a vast tract of land has disappeared thereabouts. Bengalla appears to have been in existence during the early part of the last century.”1
To return from this digression: Varthema repre- sents Banghella as one of the finest cities he had hitherto seen. The Sultan was a Muhammedan, and had a standing army of 20,000 men. Here they found the richest merchants they had ever met; the principal exports were cotton and silk stuffs, which were woven by men and not by women; the country abounded in grain of every kind, sugar, ginger, and cotton, and was, withal, the best place in the world to live in. In this latter particular, our author’s statement is corroborated by the experience of Ibn Batuta nearly two centuries before, who says: “I never saw a country in which provisions were so cheap. I there saw one of the religious of the West, who told me that he had bought provisions for himself and family for a whole year with eight dirhems,”2 or about twenty-four shillings of our money!
At Banghella our adventurers met two Christians from the city of Sarnau in Cathay, a place which I was unable to identify when writing the notes, but for which I have since discovered, what appears to me, a very probable representative in one of the letters of Fra Odorico (A.D. 1318), who, in his account of “Catay,” speaks of Christians inhabiting that
1 Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan, p. 57.
2 LEE'S Translation, p. 194.
INTRODUCTION. lxxxiii
province in consid- erable numbers, and mentions that of the 4,009 doctors who attended on the. the. “Gran Cane,” eight were Christians. He then adds:—"During the win- ter, this lord resides at Cabalec, [Kanbalu—Pekin,] but at the beginning of summer he leaves it to take up his abode in a city called Sanay, situated towards the north, a very cold locality and habitation, and in removing from the one place to the other, he goes in wonderful state.’ This quotation is from the narrative which Fra Guglielmodi Solona professes to have taken down from Fra Odorico’s own lips, at Padua, in the year 1330. In the other account, which is also preserved by Ramusio, and which appears to have been written by the missionary Friar himself, this summer-palace of the Great Khan is called Sandoy but the names of the same places are so differently spelt in the two exemplars as frequently to defy identification without the aid of the accompanying narrative. In this instance, there can be no doubt that Sanay and Sandoy represent one and the same locality and although it is beyond me to decide which is the more correct orthography, I deem it tolerably certain that the place so called was identical with Varthema’s “city of Sarnau.”
There is so much interesting matter in these early travels of Fra Odorico that it is to be hoped some competent hand will prepare an annotated translation of them for the Hakluyt Society. A striking feature in the two narratives, which evidently de-
1 RAMUSIO, vol. ii. p. 251.
g 2
lxxxiv INTRODUCTION.
scribe the same journey, is that one of them, viz., that written by Fra Guglielmo, contains an account of several places on the western coast of India between Thana (Tanna) and Cape Comorin, including Alandrina (Fandaraina—Pandarani?) and Mebor and also of Sumoltra (Sumatra?) and Iana as far a large island in the ocean towards the south about 2,000 miles in circuit, from whence the traveler proceeds to Silam, (Ceylon) then to Dadin, an island one day distant, and next, after a navigation of many days, to Manzi on the frontiers of China whereas, in the other exemplar, most of these intermediate places are omitted, and the writer goes direct from Tana (Tanna) to Nicoverra, and then to Mangi by Diddi. Whence this discrepancy was the additional matter an interpolation of a later date? The subject deserves a thorough investigation.
The two Sarnau Christians whom our travelers encountered at Banghella had evidently come to that part of India for trading purposes, and as Varthema describes them as writing from right to left, they were probably Nestorians. On seeing the branches of coral which Cogiazenor had for sale, they advised him to accompany them to Pegu, as being the most eligible market for such articles and the party accordingly set off together on a voyage of “about one thousand miles,”1 during which they “passed a gulf
1 It is somewhat strange that Varthema should make the dis- tance between his Banghella and Pegu three hundred miles more than he interposes between Tenasserim and Banghella. See pp. 213, 214.
INTRODUCTION. lxxxv
towards the south,” (Martaban) and in due time reached their destination.
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