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Cosmographies in Roman i an 161

buote here the fragment about the Unicorns brought to Mecca from Ethio-pia (ms. 1-536, f. 72^v).

There are original passages in the section referring to Asia in ms. 1436 that we cannot find in Munster's work, possibly introduced in an East-Euro-pean version of the Western sources. "It is impossible for other kinds of people to live in those places because there is no meadow or river. That is why, only the villain Arabs can live in those desolate and barren lands, like the Tartars in the Crimean plains and the Cossachs in the Dashov plains” (f. 69^v—70). In the copy by Costea Dascalul we can find a strong interest for the country and people of Caucasus (ms. 1436, f. 61^r-v), as well as for the events of Baghdad (f. 51^v—52); several names of Tartar populations are indicated for those li-ving at the Black Sea. “The Tartars existing in Europę, those living West of the river Volga are: Crimean, Cafatian, Bugeachan, Dobrudgean and over, living on the coasts of the Black Sea and in plains up to the Danube. The Tar-tar people are looters and robbers" (f. 61^v). It is obvious that such informa-tion could have been introduced in the text only by someone who was well aware of such realities.

The Slavonic influence is present (among other features) in the suffix of the adjective amazonine (f. 63^v/ll) and in the suffix of the second term of Marea Mediteransca which appears on the margin of the manuscript maybe written by another hand, as Mijlocul lumii (the middle of the World), a word that reminds us of an equivalent existing in Sebastian Munster's book, in the list of conventional signs belonging to one of the maps in his Cosmography (1567 ed., map. 1).

In the Brasov manuscript there is also a word freąuently used in the Italian cosmographies in order to express the Cardinal point North atid the Pole Star, namely the noun Tramontana ³⁰, which in the Romanian text is copied (at least for the 2nd consonant group) with a Greek phonetism: Tramandana (ms. 1436, f. 57^v—58). ^

Names such as Polos Andarticos (f. 57^v— 58) or amphiteatron (written

M    H

a^H0Edmpoo, f. 72/15) point to a Greek cultural influence too; the latter term is explained by “vaulted brick-and-mortar work". It is noteworthy the “etymological" explanation provided in the text for the name A^hodos: "“Those who called it Rhodos thought it came from the Latin rod" (f. 67), whereas the word should be traced to the Greek pó&ov meaning rosę (see A. Bailly, Dictionnaire grec-franęais, Paris, 1950, pp. 1722).

In ms. 1436 the titles of the chapters De Salom&ndra (f. 65^v/20) and De Rodos (f. 67/4) also contain Latin letters besides other graphical signs. Our suggestion is that the form lefcas in the context: “the distance between Ca-licut and Zairon is 260 lefcas, that is short miles" (f. 56) could be close to the Latin leuca =. mile (unit of measure of distances), a term used by Giovanni Antonio Magini, especially in the chapter referring to the description of Eastem India (Geographiae Universae tum veteris tum novae absolutissimum opus, Part II - Yenice, 1596, f. 256-257).

⁸⁰ For the term Tramontana, see for instancć the geographies or the cosmographies «labęrated by G. i*. D’Anania, Giovanni Botero, G. A. Magini, a.s.o.

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