Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [160]
Photo Insert 3
Marco Polo’s vivid and occasionally misinterpreted descriptions of his travels inspired this medieval artist to depict dragons in China.
(Granger)
A rendering of the city of Pagan, whose gold and silver towers so impressed Marco Polo
(Imageworks)
Kublai Khan attacks his rival, Nayan.
(AKG)
Kublai Khan’s mighty fleet tried to extend the Mongol Empire with repeated attempts to conquer Korea and Japan, but came to grief.
(Corbis)
Saint Thomas, whose exile fascinated Marco Polo, in a dramatic portrait by Caravaggio (1601–1602)
(Bridgeman)
A European depiction of a Mongolian ship foundering at sea. Marco barely escaped with his life from a shipwreck during his journey home.
(Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
Mongol forces attempt to take Japan in this illustration from the Book of Marvels. Until Marco Polo wrote of the epochal struggle at sea, Europe knew nothing of it.
(Bridgeman)
Marco Polo’s last will. In his careful allocation of resources, he proved to be a diligent merchant until his final hour.
(Bridgeman)
Frontispiece of an early published edition of Marco Polo’s Travels
(Granger)
Frontispiece of an early published edition of Marco Polo’s Travels, Nuremberg, Germany, 1477
(Granger)
Fra Mauro’s renowned map of the world (1459) drew on Marco Polo’s account
(Corbis)
Venice in the eighteenth century, by the prolific artist Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
(Art Resource)
The Ganges was not the longest river in Asia—at fifteen hundred miles, it was surpassed by many others—but from its origins in the Himalayas to its final destination in the Bay of Bengal, it was the most revered, as Marco acknowledged. He probably visited the river during January or February, when the celebrated bathing festival known as the mela took place; during the ceremony of purification, pilgrims from afar immersed themselves in its waters. “Both men and women wash themselves twice a day in the water,” he says, “their whole bodies, that is, morning and evening.” Refusing to wash was tantamount to heresy. He observes with fascination: “Naked they go to the river and take water and throw it over their head, and then they rub one another.”
The obsession with cleanliness took many other forms. “In eating they use only the right hand, nor with the left hand do they touch anything of food. And all clean and beautiful things they do and touch with the right hand, for the office of the left is only about unpleasant and unclean necessities like cleansing the nostrils, anus, and things like these. Again, they drink with cups only, and each with his own; nor would anyone drink with the cup of another. When they drink they do not put the cup to the mouth, nor with those cups would they give to drink to any strangers.”
THE LOCAL SYSTEM of justice struck Marco as equally stringent, but far from illogical. He says that if a debt goes unpaid, and the debtor makes empty promises to fulfill his obligation, “the creditor is able to catch the debtor in such a way that he is able to mark a circle round him, [and] the debtor will not leave that circle unless he shall first have satisfied the creditor or shall make him a proper pledge and bond that he shall be wholly satisfied the same day.” If the debtor attempted to flee without paying, “he would be punished…with death as a transgressor of right and of the justice established by the lord.”
In Marco’s hands, the following tale becomes an intriguing study in commercial conflict: “And this Master Marco saw in the king, being in the kingdom on the way home. For when the king himself was bound to satisfy a certain foreign merchant for certain things had from him, and though many times asked by the merchant had often on account of inconvenience fixed a later date for payment, the merchant, because the delay was hurtful to him on account of his business, being ready one day while the king was riding about the place