XXXI. 1347 A.D. JOHN DE MARIGNOLLI

A. Quilon

And sailing on the feast of St. Stephen,[^1] we navigated the Indian sea until Palm Sunday, and then arrived at a very noble city of India called Columbum, where the whole world’s pepper is produced. Now this pepper grows on a kind of vines, which are planted just like in our vineyards. These vines produce clusters which are at first like those of the wild vine, of a green colour, and afterwards are almost like bunches of our grapes, and they have a red wine in them which I have squeezed out on my plate as a condiment. When they have ripened, they are left to dry upon the tree, and when shrivelled by the excessive heat the dry clusters are knocked off with a stick and caught upon linen cloths, and so the harvest is gathered.

These are things that I have seen with mine eyes and handled with my hands during the fourteen months that I stayed there. And there is no roasting of the pepper, as authors have falsely asserted, nor does it grow in forests, but in regular gardens; nor are the Saracens the proprietors but the Christians of St. Thomas. And these latter are the masters of the public steel-yard, from which I derived, as a perquisite of my office as Pope’s legate, every month a hundred gold fan, and a thousand when I left.[^2]

There is a church of St. George there, of the Latin communion, at which I dwelt. And I adorned it with fine paintings, and taught there the holy Law. And after I had been there some time I went beyond the glory of Alexander the Great, when he set up his column (in India). For I erected a stone as my land-mark and memorial, in the corner of the world over against Paradise, and anointed it with oil! In sooth it was a marble pillar with a stone cross upon it, intended to last till the world’s end. And it had the Pope’s arms and my own engraved upon it, with inscriptions both in Indian and Latin characters.[^3]

I consecrated and blessed it in the presence of an infinite multitude of people, and I was carried on the shoulders of the chiefs in a litter or palankin like Solomon’s.

So after a year and four months I took leave of the brethren, and after accomplishing many glorious works I went to see the famous Queen of SABA. By her I was honourably treated, and after some harvest of souls (for there are a few Christians there) I proceeded by sea to Seyllan, a glorious mountain opposite to Paradise.

—Yule, Cathay, iii pp. 216-20.

B. Ceylon: Concerning Adam’s Garden and the Fruits thereof

Plantain: The garden of Adam in Seyllan contains in the first place plantain trees which the natives call figs. But the plantain has more the character of a garden plant than of a tree. It is indeed a tree in thickness, having a stem as thick as an oak, but so soft that a strong man can punch a hole in it with his finger, and from such a hole water will flow. The leaves of those plantain trees are most beautiful, immensely long and broad, and of a bright emerald green; in fact, they use them for table cloths, but serving only for a single dinner. Also new-born children, after being washed and salted, are wrapped up with aloes and roses in these leaves, without any swathing, and so placed in the sand. The leaves are some ten ells in length, more or less, and I do not know to what to compare them (in form) unless it be to elecampane. The tree produces its fruit only from the crown; but on one stem it will bear a good three hundred. At first they are not good to eat, but after they have been kept a while in the house they ripen of themselves, and are then of an excellent odour, and still better taste; and they are about the length of the longest of one’s fingers. And this is a thing that I have seen with mine own eyes, that slice it across where you will, you will find on both sides of the cut the figure of a man crucified, as if one had graven it with a needle point.[^4] And it was of these leaves that Adam and Eve made themselves girdles to cover their nakedness.

Cocoanut: There are also many other trees and wonderful fruits there which we never see in these parts, such as the Nargil. Now the Nargil is the Indian Nut. Its tree has a most delicate bark, and very handsome leaves like those of the date-palm. Of these they make baskets and corn measurers; they use the wood for joists and rafters in roofing houses; of the husk or rind they make cordage; of the nutshell cups and goblets. They make also from the shell spoons which are antidotes to poison. Inside the shell there is a pulp of some two fingers thick, which is excellent eating, and tastes almost like almonds. It burns also, and both oil and sugar can be made from it. Inside of this there is a liquor which bubbles like new milk and turns to an excellent wine.[^5]

Mango: They have also another tree called AMBURAN[^6] having a fruit of excellent fragrance and flavour, somewhat like a peach.

Jack: There is again another wonderful tree called CHAKE-BARUHE,[^7] as big as an oak. Its fruit is produced from the trunk and not from the branches, and is something marvellous to see, being as big as a great lamb, or a child of three years old. It has a hard rind like that of our pine-cones, so that you have to cut it open with an axe; inside it has a pulp of surpassing flavour, with the sweetness of honey and of the best Italian melon; and this also contains some five hundred chestnuts of like flavour, which are capital eating when roasted.

—Ibid. pp. 235-7.

C. On Buddhist Monks of Ceylon

At that place dwell certain men under religious vows, and who are of surpassing cleanliness in their habits; yea of such cleanliness that none of them will abide in a house where anyone may have spit; and to spit themselves (though in good sooth they rarely do such a thing) they will retire a long way, as well as for other occasions.

They eat only once a day, and never oftener; they drink nothing but milk or water; they pray with great propriety of manner; they teach boys to form their letters, first by writing with the finger on sand, and afterwards with an iron style upon leaves of paper, or rather I should say upon leaves of a certain tree.

In their cloister they have certain trees that differ in foliage from all others. These are encircled with crowns of gold and jewels,[^8] and there are lights placed before them, and these trees they worship. And they pretend to have received this right by tradition from Adam, saying that they adore those trees because Adam looked for future salvation to come from wood. And this agrees with that verse of David’s “Dicite in gentibus, quia Dominus regnabit in ligno,” though for a true rendering it would be better to say curabit a ligno.[^9]

These monks, moreover, never keep any food in their house till the morrow. They sleep on the bare ground; they walk barefoot, carrying a staff; and are contented with a frock like that of one of our Minci Friars (but without a hood), and with a mantle cast in folds over the shoulder Ad Modum Apostolorum. They go about in procession every morning begging rice for their day’s dinner. The princes and others go forth to meet them with the greatest reverence, and bestow rice upon them in measure proportioned to their numbers; and this they partake of steeped in water, with coconut milk and plantains. These things I speak of as an eyewitness; and indeed they made me a festa as if I were one of their own order.

—Yule, Cathay, iii pp. 242-44.