The
people are very wild, but they call themselves the subjects of the Great
Kaan. I will tell you a wicked custom of theirs.[NOTE 4]
When one of them is ill they send for their sorcerers, and put the
question to them, whether the sick man shall recover of his sickness or
no. If they say that he will recover, then they let him alone till he gets
better. But if the sorcerers foretell that the sick man is to die, the
friends send for certain judges of theirs to put to death him who has thus
been condemned by the sorcerers to die. These men come, and lay so many
clothes upon the sick man's mouth that they suffocate him. And when he is
dead they have him cooked, and gather together all the dead man's kin, and
eat him. And I assure you they do suck the very bones till not a particle
of marrow remains in them; for they say that if any nourishment remained
in the bones this would breed worms, and then the worms would die for want
of food, and the death of those worms would be laid to the charge of the
deceased man's soul. And so they eat him up stump and rump. And when they
have thus eaten him they collect his bones and put them in fine chests,
and carry them away, and place them in caverns among the mountains where
no beast nor other creature can get at them. And you must know also that
if they take prisoner a man of another country, and he cannot pay a ransom
in coin, they kill him and eat him straightway. It is a very evil custom
and a parlous.[NOTE 5]
Now that I have told you about this kingdom let us leave it, and I will
tell you of Lambri.
NOTE 1. - I have little doubt that in Marco's dictation the name was really
Samatra, and it is possible that we have a trace of this in the
Samarcha (for Samartha) of the Crusca MS.
The Shijarat Malayu has a legend, with a fictitious etymology, of the
foundation of the city and kingdom of Samudra, or SUMATRA, by Marah
Silu, a fisherman near Pasangan, who had acquired great wealth, as wealth
is got in fairy tales. The name is probably the Sanskrit Samudra, "the
sea." Possibly it may have been imitated from Dwara Samudra, at that time
a great state and city of Southern India. [We read in the Malay Annals,
Salalat al Salatin, translated by Mr. J.T. Thomson (Proc.R.G.S.
XX. p. 216): "Mara Silu ascended the eminence, when he saw an ant as big
as a cat; so he caught it, and ate it, and on the place he erected his
residence, which he named Samandara, which means Big Ant (Semut besar in
Malay)." - H.C.] Mara Silu having become King of Samudra was converted to
Islam, and took the name of Malik-al-Salih.
