Marco Polo
translation: Henry Yule, Henri Cordier

THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO
Volume II.
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CHAPTER XXIII.

OF THE COUNTRY CALLED COMARI

Comari is a country belonging to India, and there you can see something of the North Star, which we had not been able to see from the Lesser Java thus far. In order to see it you must go some 30 miles out to sea, and then you see it about a cubit above the water.[NOTE 1]

This is a very wild country, and there are beasts of all kinds there, especially monkeys of such peculiar fashion that you would take them for men! There are also gatpauls[NOTE 2] in wonderful diversity, with bears, lions, and leopards, in abundance.

NOTE 1.—Kumári is in some versions of the Hindu cosmography the most southerly of the nine divisions of Jambodvipa, the Indian world. Polo's Comari can only be the country about Cape COMORIN, the [Greek: komária ákron] of Ptolemy, a name derived from the Sanskrit Kumári, "a Virgin," an appellation of the goddess Durgá. The monthly bathing in her honour, spoken of by the author of the Periplus, is still continued, though now the pilgrims are few. Abulfeda speaks of Rás Kumhari as the limit between Malabar and Ma'bar. Kumari is the Tamul pronunciation of the Sanskrit word and probably Comari was Polo's pronunciation.

At the beginning of the Portuguese era in India we hear of a small Kingdom of COMORI, the prince of which had succeeded to the kingdom of Kaulam. And this, as Dr. Caldwell points out, must have been the state which is now called Travancore. Kumari has been confounded by some of the Arabian Geographers, or their modern commentators, with Kumár, one of the regions supplying aloes-wood, and which was apparently Khmer or Kamboja. (Caldwell's Drav. Grammar, p. 67; Gildem. 185; Ram. I. 333.)

The cut that we give is, as far as I know, the first genuine view of Cape
Comorin ever published.

[Mr. Talboys Wheeler, in his History of India, vol. iii. (p. 386), says of this tract:

"The region derives its name from a temple which was erected there in honour of Kumárí, 'the Virgin'; the infant babe who had been exchanged for Krishna, and ascended to heaven at the approach of Kansa." And in a note:

"Colonel Yule identifies Kumárí with Durgá. This is an error. The temple of Kumárí was erected by Krishna Raja of Narsinga, a zealous patron of the Vaishnavas."

Mr. Wheeler quotes Faria y Souza, who refers the object of worship to what is meant for this story (II. 394), but I presume from Mr. Wheeler's mention of the builder of the temple, which does not occur in the Portuguese history, that he has other information. The application of the Virgin title connected with the name of the place, may probably have varied with the ages, and, as there is no time to obtain other evidence, I have removed the words which identified the existing temple with that of Durgá. But my authority for identifying the object of worship, in whose honour the pilgrims bathe monthly at Cape (...)

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