Polo’s knowledge of India, as a whole, is so little exact that it is too indefinite a problem to consider which are the three kingdoms that he has not described.  The ten which he has described appear to be—­(1) Maabar, (2) Coilum, (3) Comari, (4) Eli, (5) Malabar, (6) Guzerat, (7) Tana, (8) Canbaet, (9) Semenat, (10) Kesmacoran.  On the one hand, this distribution in itself contains serious misapprehensions, as we have seen, and on the other there must have been many dozens of kingdoms in India Major instead of 13, if such states as Comari, Hili, and Somnath were to be separately counted.  Probably it was a common saying that there were 12 kings in India, and the fact of his having himself described so many, which he knew did not nearly embrace the whole, may have made Polo convert this into 13.  Jordanus says:  “In this Greater India are 12 idolatrous kings and more;” but his Greater India is much more extensive than Polo’s.  Those which he names are Molebar (probably the kingdom of the Zamorin of Calicut), Singuyli (Cranganor), Columbum (Quilon), Molephatan (on the east coast, uncertain, see above pp. 333, 391), and Sylen (Ceylon), Java, three or four kings, Telenc (Polo’s Mutfili), Maratha (Deogir), Batigala (in Canara), and in Champa (apparently put for all Indo-China) many kings.  According to Firishta there were about a dozen important principalities in India at the time of the Mahomedan conquest of which he mentions eleven, viz.:  (1) Kanauj, (2) Mirat (or Delhi), (3) Mahavan (Mathra), (4) Lahore, (5) Malwa, (6) Guzerat, (7) Ajmir, (8) Gwalior, (9) Kalinjar, (10) Multan, (11) Ujjain. (Ritter, V. 535.) This omits Bengal, Orissa, and all the Deccan. Twelve is a round number which constantly occurs in such statements.  Ibn Batuta tells us there were 12 princes in Malabar alone.  Chinghiz, in Sanang-Setzen, speaks of his vow to subdue the twelve kings of the human race (91).  Certain figures in a temple at Anhilwara in Guzerat are said by local tradition to be the effigies of the twelve great kings of Europe. (Todd’s Travels, p. 107.) The King of Arakan used to take the title of “Lord of the 12 provinces of Bengal” (Reinaud, Inde, p. 139.)

The Masalak-al-Absar of Shihabuddin Dimishki, written some forty years after Polo’s book, gives a list of the provinces (twice twelve in number) into which India was then considered to be divided.  It runs—­(1) Delhi, (2) Deogir, (3) Multan, (4) Kehran (Kohram, in Sirhind Division of Province of Delhi?), (5) Saman (Samana, N.W. of Delhi?), (6) Siwastan (Sehwan), (7) Ujah (Uchh), (8) Hasi (Hansi), (9) Sarsati (Sirsa), (10) Ma’bar, (11) Tiling, (12) Gujerat, (13) Badaun,