A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.53

c6.53

If the Venetian merchant represents one side of the culture-contacts between the West and East, the three monks who visited South India soon after Marco Polo represent another. First among them was the Franciscan friar, John of Monte Corvino, who travelled in 1292-3 by way of India to China to preach the gospel in that vast land of paganism and, what he considered little better, Nestorianism. This lonely monk was out of sympathy with much that met his eye in India, and with him may be said to begin the stream of Christian missionary criticism of Indian life and habits which has not always been either intelligent or charitable. Nearly 30 years later came Friar Odoric of Pordenone who reached India soon after 1321. He travelled along the west coast, visited Ceylon and went up to the shrine of St Thomas in ‘Mailāpūr’. His account of some Hindu customs and practices is obviously that of an eye-witness. Lastly we have Friar Jordanus who may have reached India a little before Odoric. Two of his letters are dated from India in 1321 and 1324; in both, he holds out to his brother friars in Europe the prospect of extensive missionary work in the East. His mention of the Parsis and their mode of exposing the dead is among the earliest notices of this community in India. He was appointed Bishop of Columbum (Quilon) in 1328, but it is not known if he actually took charge of the office. Yet another monk, John of Marignolli, a native of Florence, deserves a passing mention; he went out to China by land, like Marco Polo, as papal legate to the court of the Great Khan; he left China by sea from the celebrated port of Zayton in 1346 and reached Quilon, where he spent some time before setting sail for the Coromandel Coast to visit the shrine of St Thomas. He also spent some time in Ceylon and gives an interesting account of the Buddhist monks of the Island.