The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c17.26

c17.26

Marco Polo has some things to say about the life of the common people of the country. Their manner of dress seems to have amazed him. ‘You must know that in all this province of Ma’bar there is never a tailor to cut a coat or stitch it, seeing that everybody goes naked! For decency only do they wear a scrap of cloth; and so it is with men and women, with rich and poor, aye, and with the King himself. . . . It is a fact that the King goes as bare as the rest.’ The last statement shows that surprise at the novelty of the foreigners' dress blunted the keenness of the traveller's observation. Marco Polo mentions the custom of *sati* as common at the time and refers also to the practice of allowing a condemned criminal who was sentenced to death to sacrifice himself to some God or other of his choice. Many people, according to him, worshipped the ox and ‘would not eat beef for anything in the world.’