Now, as I have not yet given you particulars about the customs of these Idolaters, I will proceed to tell you about them.

You must know that there are among them certain religious recluses who lead a more virtuous life than the rest.  These abstain from all lechery, though they do not indeed regard it as a deadly sin; howbeit if any one sin against nature they condemn him to death.  They have an Ecclesiastical Calendar as we have; and there are five days in the month that they observe particularly; and on these five days they would on no account either slaughter any animal or eat flesh meat.  On those days, moreover, they observe much greater abstinence altogether than on other days.[NOTE 3]

Among these people a man may take thirty wives, more or less, if he can but afford to do so, each having wives in proportion to his wealth and means; but the first wife is always held in highest consideration.  The men endow their wives with cattle, slaves, and money, according to their ability.  And if a man dislikes any one of his wives, he just turns her off and takes another.  They take to wife their cousins and their fathers’ widows (always excepting the man’s own mother), holding to be no sin many things that we think grievous sins, and, in short, they live like beasts.[NOTE 4]

Messer Maffeo and Messer Marco Polo dwelt a whole year in this city when on a mission.[NOTE 5]

Now we will leave this and tell you about other provinces towards the north, for we are going to take you a sixty days’ journey in that direction.

NOTE 1.—­Campichiu is undoubtedly Kanchau, which was at this time, as Pauthier tells us, the chief city of the administration of Kansuh corresponding to Polo’s Tangut. Kansuh itself is a name compounded of the names of the two cities Kan-chau and Suh-chau.

[Kanchau fell under the Tangut dominion in 1208. (Palladius, p. 10.) The Musulmans mentioned by Polo at Shachau and Kanchau probably came from Khotan.—­H.  C.]

The difficulties that have been made about the form of the name Campiciou, etc., in Polo, and the attempts to explain these, are probably alike futile.  Quatremere writes the Persian form of the name after Abdurrazzak as Kamtcheou, but I see that Erdmann writes it after Rashid, I presume on good grounds, as Ckamidschu, i.e. Kamiju or Kamichu.  And that this was the Western pronunciation of the name is shown by the form which Pegolotti uses, Camexu, i.e.  Camechu.  The p in Polo’s spelling is probably only a superfluous letter, as in the occasional old spelling of dampnum, contempnere, hympnus, tirampnus, sompnour, Dampne Deu.  In fact, Marignolli writes Polo’s Quinsai as Campsay.