So let us go back to Zayton and take up the order of our book from that point.[NOTE 4]

NOTE 1.—­“Several of the (Chinese) gods have horns on the forehead, or wear animals’ heads; some have three eyes....  Some are represented in the Indian manner with a multiplicity of arms.  We saw at Yang-cheu fu a goddess with thirty arms.” (Deguignes, I. 364-366.)

The reference to any particular form of idolatry here is vague.  But in Tibetan Buddhism, with which Marco was familiar, all these extravagances are prominent, though repugnant to the more orthodox Buddhism of the South.

When the Dalai Lama came to visit the Altun Khan, to secure the reconversion of the Mongols in 1577, he appeared as a manifest embodiment of the Bodhisatva Avalokitecvara, with four hands, of which two were always folded across the breast!  The same Bodhisatva is sometimes represented with eleven heads.  Manjushri manifests himself in a golden body with 1000 hands and 1000 Patras or vessels, in each of which were 1000 figures of Sakya visible, etc. (Koeppen, II. 137; Vassilyev, 200.)

NOTE 2.—­Polo seems in this passage to be speaking of the more easterly Islands of the Archipelago, such as the Philippines, the Moluccas, etc., but with vague ideas of their position.

NOTE 3.—­In this passage alone Polo makes use of the now familiar name of CHINA. “Chin” as he says, “in the language of those Isles means Manzi.”  In fact, though the form Chin is more correctly Persian, we do get the exact form China from “the language of those Isles,” i.e. from the Malay. China is also used in Japanese.

What he says about the Ocean and the various names of its parts is nearly a version of a passage in the geographical Poem of Dionysius, ending:—­

  [Greek: 
  Outos Okeanos peridedrome gaian hapasan
  Toios eon kai toia met’ andrasin ounomath’ elkon] (42-3).

So also Abulfeda:  “This is the sea which flows from the Ocean Sea....  This sea takes the names of the countries it washes.  Its eastern extremity is called the Sea of Chin ... the part west of this is called the Sea of India ... then comes the Sea of Fars, the Sea of Berbera, and lastly the Sea of Kolzum” (Red Sea).

NOTE 4.—­The Ramusian here inserts a short chapter, shown by the awkward way in which it comes in to be a very manifest interpolation, though possibly still an interpolation by the Traveller’s hand:—­

“Leaving the port of Zayton you sail westward and something south-westward for 1500 miles, passing a gulf called CHEINAN, having a length of two months’ sail towards the north.  Along the whole of its south-east side it borders on the province of Manzi, and on the other side with Anin and Coloman, and many other provinces formerly spoken of.  Within this Gulf there are innumerable Islands, almost all well-peopled;