The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,335 pages of information about The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2.

The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,335 pages of information about The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2.
it is to be found in W. Hamilton, and in Milburne.  The former says:  “Mutapali, a town situated near the S. extremity of the northern Circars.  A considerable coasting trade is carried on from hence in the craft navigated by natives,” which can come in closer to shore than at other ports on that coast.—­[Cf. Hunter, Gaz.  India, Motupalli, “now only an obscure fishing village.”—­It is marked in Constable’s Hand Atlas of India.—­H.C.]

The proper territory of the Kingdom of Warangol lay inland, but the last reigning prince before Polo’s visit to India, by name Kakateya Pratapa Ganapati Rudra Deva, had made extensive conquests on the coast, including Nellore, and thence northward to the frontier of Orissa.  This prince left no male issue, and his widow, RUDRAMA DEVI, daughter of the Raja of Devagiri, assumed the government and continued to hold it for twenty-eight, or, as another record states, for thirty-eight years, till the son of her daughter had attained majority.  This was in 1292, or by the other account 1295, when she transferred the royal authority to this grandson Pratapa Vira Rudra Deva, the “Luddur Deo” of Firishta, and the last Ganapati of any political moment.  He was taken prisoner by the Delhi forces about 1323.  We have evidently in Rudrama Devi the just and beloved Queen of our Traveller, who thus enables us to attach colour and character to what was an empty name in a dynastic list. (Compare Wilson’s Mackenzie, I. cxxx.; Taylor’s Or.  Hist.  MSS. I. 18; Do.’s Catalogue Raisonne, III. 483.)

Mutfili appears in the Carta Catalana as Butiflis, and is there by some mistake made the site of St. Thomas’s Shrine.  The distance from Maabar is in Ramusio only 500 miles—­a preferable reading.

NOTE 2.—­Some of the Diamond Mines once so famous under the name of Golconda are in the alluvium of the Kistna River, some distance above the Delta, and others in the vicinity of Kadapa and Karnul, both localities being in the territory of the kingdom we have been speaking of.

The strange legend related here is very ancient and widely diffused.  Its earliest known occurrence is in the Treatise of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, concerning the twelve Jewels in the Rationale or Breastplate of the Hebrew High Priest, a work written before the end of the 4th century, wherein the tale is told of the Jacinth.  It is distinctly referred to by Edrisi, who assigns its locality to the land of the Kirkhir (probably Khirghiz) in Upper Asia.  It appears in Kazwini’s Wonders of Creation, and is assigned by him to the Valley of the Moon among the mountains of Serendib.  Sindbad the Sailor relates the story, as is well known, and his version is the closest of all to our author’s. [So Les Merveilles de l’Inde, pp. 128-129.—­H.C.] It is found in the Chinese Narrative of the Campaigns of Hulaku, translated by both Remusat and Pauthier.

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The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.