“When the Tartars saw those that were turned in flight, they went beating and chasing and killing them so evilly that it was a pity to see, for they were for the most part dead. And the Tartars had the victory.”
MARCO FAULTS the ill-starred king of Mien and Bengal, who should have “waited for them in a wide plain where they would not have been able to bear the charge of the first armed elephants; and then with the two wings of horse and foot he should have surrounded them and destroyed them.” Such an outcome was not to be. The Mongol army came away from the battle with a great prize, more than two hundred elephants. Those elephants were far from the dumb beasts Marco had once taken them for; he now claimed that “the elephant has greater understanding than any other animal that is.”
In the end, Marco pays tribute to the victors, his Mongol masters: “This day’s work was the cause of the Great Khan winning all the lands of the king of Mien and Bengal, and making them subject to his rule.”
Unlike the regions around Cambulac, Karagian was Mongol in name only. Despite the Pax Mongolica imposed on it, the southwestern province remained treacherous, even for the most experienced traveler. Marco had painstakingly mastered his survival skills, but peril awaited him at every turn.
CHAPTER TEN
The General and the Queen
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me….
WHEREVER HE ROAMED in these remote provinces, Marco Polo found examples of the natural order of things overturned: astrologers conjuring up tempests at will; salt employed as money; householders inviting strangers to lie with their wives, sisters, and daughters; deadly serpents yielding life-saving medicine—a dizzying succession of curiosities and paradoxes.
No group better exemplified the region’s topsy-turvy customs than certain inhabitants of “Uncian,” thought to be western Yunnan. The men were lazy, self-important, and mostly useless, or, as Marco puts it, “gentlemen, according to their notions. They have no occupation but warfare, the chase, and falconry. All work is done by women, and by other men whom they have taken captive and keep as slaves.” Yet something about this otherwise disreputable group caught Marco’s attention. Expectant parents practiced couvade (the word derives from the French for “to hatch”). As he describes it, “When the ladies have been confined and have given birth to a child, they wash him and wrap him up in clothes, and the lord of the lady gets into the bed and keeps the infant that is born with him and lies in the bed forty days without getting up except for necessary duties. All the friends and relations come to see him and stay with him and make him great joy and entertainment. They do this because they say that his wife has borne great fatigue in carrying the infant in her womb.”
The new mother, meanwhile, went straight back to work. “As soon as she has given birth to the child, she gets up from the bed and does all the duty of the house and waits on her lord, taking him food and drink at the time he is in bed, as if he himself had borne the child.”
No wonder Marco’s first audiences believed he had made up this custom for the sake of amusement. He described behavior so extreme, so fantastic, that he seemed to be satirizing imaginary heathens just to divert his listeners. But he was not inventing, and couvade as described by Marco Polo has been observed by anthropologists in such diverse places as Africa, Japan, India, and North and South America (among native populations), and among the Basques in Europe. The matter became the subject of medical inquiry in 2002, when two Canadian researchers, Dr. Katherine E. Wynne-Edwards and Dr. Anne Storey, studied saliva and blood drawn from expectant fathers, looking for hormonal changes during their partners’ pregnancies, and noticed changes in the men’s level of the hormone prolactin. This was highly unusual because prolactin is a female hormone involved in milk production. They also found that a form of estrogen, normally present at low levels in men, attained much higher levels in the men studied. The findings suggested that the men’s bodies were subtly imitating the adjustments taking place in their pregnant partners’ bodies—that is, the doctors concluded that “men are experiencing hormonal changes associated with parenthood and that those changes are similar to maternal changes.”
MARCO’S JOURNEY through what is now called Myanmar became more challenging and exotic with every step. In the Travels, he conveys the unnerving sense of passing through a dreamscape that remained solid so long as he was present, and then swiftly returned to the shadows from which he had momentarily rescued it. He writes of journeying for days on end through the jungle, “where there are elephants enough and unicorns enough and many lions and other strange wild beasts. There are no men nor dwellings.”
The unicorn, of course, was a mythical symbol of purity or virginity, resembling a horse with a horn protruding from its forehead. Powder derived from the horn was reputed to have magical curative properties, affording protection from epilepsy, poisoning, and other afflictions. Yet Marco mentions this wonderful creature only in passing, as if it were part of the scenery. And it probably was, for what he meant was the considerably less elegant, yet entirely real Asian rhinoceros, with a horn protruding from its forehead. The horn is made from keratin, the fibrous protein found in hair. The animal’s lack of magical properties, not to mention its ungainliness, may account for Marco’s lack of interest in the sighting.
Refusing to be distracted by myth, Marco preferred to pay strict attention to the practice of poisoning. Inflamed by stories he had heard, he imagined a “stranger” very much like himself, “a handsome man, and gentle,” who “came to lodge in the house of one of these of this province,” where the inhabitants “killed him by night either by poison or by other thing so that he died.” The murder took place “so that the soul of that noble stranger might not leave the house,” and so that the occupants might derive good fortune from it. It is easy to conceive of Marco afraid to sleep, or even to eat, for fear of succumbing to the evil designs of his hosts.
This hideous practice persisted until the coming of the Mongols, who inflicted “great punishment” on those who killed strangers for their souls. Marco attempted to reassure himself that the practice had been eliminated long before his arrival, but he worried that it might resume at any time. He notes that men and women alike, “specially those who purpose to do evil, always carry poison with them so that if by chance anyone is caught after something has been committed for which he ought to be put to torture, before he will bear the pains of the lash he puts poison into his mouth and swallows it, that he may die through it as soon as possible.” The local authorities had prepared a dreadful antidote. Marco says that “dog’s dung is always at the ready so that if anyone after being taken were to swallow poison, one may immediately make him swallow dung in order that he may vomit the poison.” And he assures his skeptical audience that “it is a thing very often tried.”
AFTER PAINTING a picture of the dread he experienced in the hinter-lands, Marco heaps praise on the ancient capital city of Pagan, although it is doubtful that he actually visited it. Nevertheless, he had heard of the opulent burial site of the kingdom’s deceased ruler.
In terms usually reserved for Kublai Khan, Marco describes the ruler as rich and powerful, and “loved by all,” and he repeats a story he had been told about him: “This king, when he approached death, commanded in his will that there should be…a monument like this, that on his tomb should be made two towers, one of gold and one of silver.” One of the towers, Marco explains, was made from “the most beautiful stone” covered with plates fashioned from gold “one finger thick.” Because of the gold exterior, “the tower did not seem to be of anything but gold alone.” The gleaming monument, says Marco, extended “ten paces high.” Atop the column sat a “round ball” containing “gilded bells that sounded every time the wind struck them.” Its mate, the silver tower, was equally impressive, and was topped with silver bells.
By implication, nothing in Europe equaled the towers’ grandeur.
MARCO CONSOLED himself w
ith the thought that the formerly rebellious region had been conquered by Kublai Khan’s forces, and in a highly unusual fashion. It seems that the khan prepared for the incursion by summoning the “jesters and acrobats” of his realm and dispatching them to Mien along with the soldiers. He promised to provide them adequate leadership for the campaign, and they, in turn, would obey his commands.
The Mongol army, accompanied by jesters, quickly conquered the city of Pagan, where they were confronted by the two towers, one gold, the other silver, the mere sight of which diminished their arrogance. “They were all astonished at them,” Marco relates, and “told the Great Khan about the likeness of these towers and how they were beautiful and of very great value; and that if he wished they would take them down and send him the gold and the silver. The Great Khan, who knew that the king had built them for the welfare of his soul, that one might remember him after his death, said that he did not wish that they should be taken down at all, but said that he wished them to stay in such a manner as that king who had made them planned and appointed.”
This show of respect for a fallen enemy impressed Marco, who states that “to this day, the towers are adorned and well guarded,” and makes the questionable assertion that “no Tartar touches a thing of any dead man” because Mongol custom considers it “a very great sin to move anything belonging to the dead.” It was true, however, that Kublai’s deference was of a piece with his policy of encouraging local beliefs in lands conquered by his army. The Mongols realized that if they left intact the indigenous character of regions they overran, the inhabitants were far more likely to cede political control in order to preserve their spiritual identity.
As Marco resumed his travels through Asia, he experienced the once-static culture in a time of rapid transformation, making and unmaking itself as Kublai Khan incorporated one distant kingdom after another into his empire.
SOME LOCAL CUSTOMS proved too extreme for the Mongols to absorb, as Marco found in a province near Bengal. There, he says, “the people all in common, men and women, are painted or pricked with the needle all over their flesh…in a color of blood on their faces and all over their flesh of cranes and eagles, of lions and dragons and birds and of many other likenesses different and strange, so that nothing is seen not drawn upon and not scratched. They are made with the needles very cunningly and in such a way that they never come off by washing or nor by any other way. They also make them on the face and on the neck and on the belly and on the breast and on the arms and on the hands and on the feet, legs, and all over the body in this way.”
Marco must have cringed as he described the tattooing procedure in excruciating detail. It began with the tattoo artist, or “master,” drawing “patterns, so many and such as he shall please…with black over the whole body,” whereupon the subject “will be bound feet and hands, and two or more will hold him, and the master, who practices no other art, will take five needles, four of them tied together in a square, and the fifth placed in the middle, and with these needles he goes pricking him everywhere according to the drawing of the patterns; and when the pricks are made, ink is everywhere immediately drawn over, and then the figure that was drawn appears in those pricks. But the men suffer so much pain in this that it might be thought enough for purgatory.” Not surprisingly, “very many of them die while they are being so painted, for they lose much blood.”
Although Marco participated eagerly in many local customs, there is no indication that he submitted to this ordeal.
VENTURING DEEPER into the jungle, toward what is now Vietnam, Marco found himself among tribes whose “valiant men of arms” wore only skimpy loincloths made from the bark of trees. The region was so alien that the prevalence of paper currency bearing the seal of the Great Khan came as a reassuring reminder to Marco that he was still in the Mongol Empire, and still enjoying the protection of his paiza.
Nothing else offered Marco much comfort in a land where lions were, rarely seen but often heard. It was so dangerous, he says, that no man could dare to sleep at night outside the house “for fear of them, for the lions would eat him immediately.” The lions were so rapacious that merchants (like Marco) were forced to sleep in simple craft on the river, and even then their safety could not be guaranteed, for if they were not far enough from shore, “the lions go to them, jumping into the water and swimming up to the boat.” Once there, “they take a man from it by force and go their way and eat him.” To prevent this horror, the merchants made every effort to “anchor in the middle of the river, which is very broad.”
To defend themselves against lion attacks, Marco explains, the merchants formed a symbiotic partnership with fierce “dogs”—actually wolves—“with the courage and strength to go and attack the lions.” The “dogs” fought in pairs, and they offered serious protection against the king of the jungle. Marco says that a man alone on horseback, armed with a bow and arrow, and with two such “dogs,” could kill a lion: “When it happens that they find a great lion, the dogs, which are brave and strong, as soon as they see the lion, run upon him very bravely, encouraged by the man, one in front and the other behind. And the lion turns toward the dogs, but the dogs are trained so well to protect themselves and so agile that the lion does not touch them; and the lion looks at the men and not the dogs. And so the lion goes flying. But the dogs, as soon as they see that the lion is going off, run behind him barking and howling, and bite him in the legs or in the tail, and the lion turns very fiercely and would kill them, but cannot catch them, because the dogs know well how to protect themselves…. The lion is much frightened by the great noise that the dogs make, and then he sets himself on the road, escaping the noise of the dogs, to go into some thicket, or to find some thick tree against which he can lean his back, to show his face to the dogs so that they cannot worry him from behind…. He goes off step by step—not by any means would herun—because the lion is not held by fear, so great is his pride and the extent of his spirit. While the lion is going off in this way by degrees, the dogs go biting him all the time behind, and the man with the bow shoots at him. When he feels himself bitten, the lion turns this way and that towards the dogs, but the dogs being able to draw back, the lion returns to pass on his way. When one sees this, he lays hand to his boy (for they are very good archers) and gives him some arrows, both one and two and more and so many that the lion is wounded with arrows and weakened by loss of blood that he falls dead before finding a refuge…. [Lions] cannot defend themselves against a man on horseback who has two good dogs.”
IT CAME as a relief to the wayfaring Marco to turn from the strain of lion hunting to the mechanics of harvesting salt, his stock-in-trade as Kublai Khan’s tax assessor. In the city of Cianglu, yet another remote outpost of the Mongol Empire, he observed with a fine appraising eye local miners digging for veins of salt in the earth, and laboriously piling the salt into great mounds. “Over these mounds they throw water in plenty, so much that the water penetrating through them goes to the bottom of the mound of earth, and then they take and collect that and put it in great jars and in great cauldrons of iron, and make it boil. When it is well boiled and purified by the force of the fire, they leave it to cool, and then the water thickens and they take it and salt is made from it—very beautiful and white and fine.”
The locals produced enough salt to sell quantities to other provinces, deriving “great wealth” from the sale. At the same time, Kublai Khan received “much revenue and profit from it,” thanks to the diligent efforts of foreign tax collectors like Marco.
IN THE RECENTLY conquered province of Tundinfu—a place-name sometimes taken to refer to Yen Chau in Vietnam—Marco resumed his investigation of the intimate lives of young women. He found those in the area refreshingly “pure” and “able to keep the virtue of modesty,” in contrast to women of other places who opened their beds, if not their hearts, to travelers. In fact, the women of Tundinfu sound downright severe, for they neither danced nor skipped nor frolicked, nor did they “fly into a passion.” U
nlike other girls he had encountered, these virtuous creatures did not lurk behind windows, staring at passersby, and they abjured “unseemly talk” and “merry-making.” On the rare occasions when they ventured beyond the sanctuary of their homes, they were accompanied by their mothers, and they avoided “staring improperly at people.” Their broad bonnets restricted their field of vision and focused their attention on the road ahead. It went without saying that they paid “no attention to suitors.” So modest were these young women that they refrained from bathing in pairs.
Photo Insert 2
Kublai Khan, emperor of the world’s largest land-based empire
(Granger)
Kublai Khan’s wife Chabi, an influential partner during his reign
(Granger)
Kublai Khan dining, surrounded by wives and barons
(AKG)
One of the many statues arrayed like supernatural sentries along the Marco Polo Bridge
(Courtesy of the author)
The Marco Polo Bridge, leading from Cambulac (Beijing). The Venetian crossed this impressive stone bridge to begin his journey across China in the service of the khan.
(Courtesy of the author)
The city of Quinsai (Hangzhou) as depicted in the fifteenth-century Book of Marvels, based on Marco’s lavish description of what was then the largest city in the world
(AKG)
The Venetian traveler dressed in Mongol finery
(Art Resource)
In this illustration from the Book of Marvels, Kublai Khan looks on as his emissaries conduct business using paper money, an innovation unknown in the West at the time of Marco Polo’s journey.
(Imageworks)
Marco Polo Page 23