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158 C&t&lina Yelculescu, V. Guruianu 6

The part dedicated to Persia, Great Scythia and India in the Poveas-tea fańlor ... Asiei (f. 53^v— 60)¹⁹ reflects a brief variant of a text similar to Marco Polo’s II Milione. It is noteworthy to say that the whole text with Marco Polo’s descriptions was used both by Sebastian Munster — the lover of "fables" and by the lucid, critical and pragmatic Romanian traveller Rico-laus Milescu the Spatharus. Costea Dascalul’s copy reflects a different ver^J sion from both Munster’s and Milescu’s.

The stoiy about Alav "the great Tartar Emperor" who punished the Caliph, "ruler of the town of Susis" who owned a tower fuli of riche? (ms. 1436, p. 53^v), is mentioned by Marco Polo too, but in his version the characters are Ulau Khan (Gengis Khan’s grandson and brother of Kublai Khan) and the famous Caliph of Baghdad²⁰, Erom Marco Polo’s book (1955 ed., pp. 26—28) we become aware of the confusion madę between Stisa (= Su-r sis) and Baudac (= Baghdad) while in ms. 1436 the confusion exists between Susis, Baghdad and Babylon (f. 53).

The tale of the Zailon (= Ceylon) merchants who succeeded in taking out of the country the jewelry "in the utmost secrecy” (ms. 1436, f. 56^Y) resembles Marco Polo’s tale about Maabar (=a district a on the South East coast of India; 1955 ed., pp. 253).

In the fragment dedicated to the description of the island, of Tapro-¹ bana ²¹ and the islet of Eavra (ms. 1436, f. 57^v— 58) we find contaminations from several Marco Polo's paragraphs, and at the same time additions on the Antarctic Pole.

For other islands, the Romanian text brings in very old stories of anthro-pomorphic monsters and ‘‘savage” people. ²²

Costea DascaluTs manuscript contains a statement similar to Marco Polo’s in his description of the journey (1955 ed., pp. 241 and the next), namely, the idea that the inhabitants of some of the Eastern islets "submit themselves to the Great Khan of Scythia because Scythia is near these islets in the sea that is called Ioa ²³ in Greek and the Eastern Sea (Marea Rasari-tului) in Romanian" (ms. 1436, f. 58^v).

The chapter Schitiia cea Marę (The Great Scythia; ms 1436, f. 58^r and the next) begins with a story on the emperor Manghia of Cataagliion

¹⁹    See "Manuscriptum", 1992, no. 1—4, pp. 227—228.

²⁰    For comparison of texts we used Marco Polo, La description du monde, edited un-der the care of Louis Hambis, Paris, 1955 (1955 ed.); see also L. Oschki, L'Asia di Marco Polo...

⁸¹ In ms. 1436: Ceaprobana. See Marie Thóróse Gambin, L’ile Tapróbane: ProbUmes de cartographie dans VOcśan Indien in the collective volurae entitled Geographie du monde au Moyen Age et d la Renaissance edited by Monique Pelletier, Paris, 1989, pp. 191 — 200.

²² The contamination of inforraation on the islands of India cea noao (New India) (which defined at the beginning the group of islands situatedin the South of Asia and later proved to represent in fact the American continent) and the islands of the Northern zonę (ms. 1436, f. 57^v—58) was possible because of the uncertainties of mediaeval geography con-ceming the exact location and characteristics of these islands. See Richard Hennig, Wo lag das Paradies? Rdtselfragen der Kulturgeschichte und Geographie, Berlin, 1950, pg. 241 and 245— 252; Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Form of Islands in Fifteenth, Sixteenth and$eventheenth Cen-tury Cartography in the collective volume Giography du monde... (see notę 21) p. 201 ff.

⁸⁸ In accordance with the Greek term    a, ov = “Eastern", “Oriental". Jn the

map of Asia in Botero's geography (Le relationi universali, Venice, 1599) Oceanus Eous sive Orientalis is the joame given to the Northern part of the present-day Pacific Ocean, which borders the Eastern coasts of Asia. See also, “Manuscriptum", 1991, no. 2—4^ p. 28, notę 9,