Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [155]
MARCO’S VERSION of Buddhism was heavily influenced by the Mongol interpretation of the Buddha as a potent source of magic. But Marco also put a personal slant on the Buddhist traditions he encountered in India, seeking both an idealized father figure who would not abandon him as his own father had done years before, and a cynosure who transcended the carnality and mortality of Kublai Khan. Ever elusive, the Buddha filled this exalted role, and appreciation of Buddhist precepts liberated Marco from his past.
In the realm of the Buddha, nothing was shocking or blasphemous—a change in perspective that marked the first revolution in Marco’s consciousness since his illness in the poppy fields of Afghanistan. This time, his enlightenment was entirely natural, yet bewildering. He verges on confessing that, for once, language is inadequate to explain his expansion of consciousness. In India, his powers of description lag behind his experience. No longer does he relive his adventures for the benefit of his readers, performing the task of imagining for them. Instead, he offers sketches for an uncompleted canvas. He seems to be soul-searching and thinking aloud rather than re-creating his experiences for one and all. All the glorious battles and alluring concubines on which he had lavished attention fade in significance before the spiritual journey unfolding before him and his newest, and greatest, discovery: himself.
IN HIS ACCOUNT of Ceylon, Marco had referred in passing to a steep, inaccessible mountain at whose peak stood a “monument” to Adam, or so he had heard from both Christians and Muslims. But after paying lip service to this traditional interpretation, he immediately moved on to the Buddhists’ interpretation of the “sepulcher.” No matter who was commemorated in this remote location, all faiths agreed that it consisted of the “teeth and the hairs and the bowl”—that is, the food bowl—of a venerable figure. Marco carefully noted that he did not agree with those who insisted Adam’s remains would be found there, “for our scripture of the holy Church says that he is in another part of the world. The decision of this I wish to leave to others.”
In 1281, Kublai Khan learned from Muslims who had visited this mountaintop that the remains of Adam could be found there. “He says therefore to himself that it is necessary for him to have the teeth and the bowl and the hair.” This wish, no matter how unrealistic, was in keeping with Kublai Khan in his dotage. As he did on many other occasions, “he sent an embassy to the king of the island of Ceylon to ask for these things.” It was just the kind of expedition that Marco himself might have been selected to join, if at that point he had not been maneuvering to go home, and he describes it with an insider’s appreciation.
Three years later, the emissaries reached their quarry. As Marco relates, “[They] exerted themselves so much that at last they have the two molar teeth which were very thick and large, and again they had some of the hair and the bowl in which he [the revered person] used to eat. The bowl was of very beautiful green porphyry. When the messengers of the Great Khan had these things of which I have told you, they set themselves on the road and go back to their lord. When they were near to the great town of Cambulac, where the Great Khan was, they made him know that they were coming and bringing the holy things for which he had sent them.” Kublai received the items gratefully, and paid particular attention to the bowl, having heard that if food for just one person was placed in it, “five men would have enough from it.” Seeking proof, he ordered it filled with a portion fit for one, and then declared that it did, indeed, feed five—or so Marco says. He tells the story of the magical bowl with obvious skepticism, although