and Angelus a Sancto, began to labour among them at Basrah; further information was gathered at a somewhat later date by Pietro della Valle and Thevenot, and in the following century by Kaempfer, Chardin, and Niebuhr. In recent times they have been visited by Petermann and Albert Socin, and last of all Liouffi published in 1880 a full and accurate account of the manners and customs of the sect, taken from the lips of a converted Mandaean himself. For our knowledge of their doctrinal system, however,"we must of course still depend chiefly upon the sacred books already mentioned, consisting of fragments of very various antiquity derived from an older literature. Of these the largest and most important is the Sidrâ rabbâ or “Great Book,” known also as Ginzâ (treasure), consisting of two unequal parts, of which the larger is called “yaminâ” (to the right hand) and the smaller “s’mâlâ” (to the left hand), because of the manner in which they are bound together. In Petermanu’s edition the former occupies three hundred and ninety-five large quarto pages and the other only one hundred and thirty-eight. The former is intended for the living; the latter consists chiefly of prayers to be read at the burial of priests. As regards doctrine, the work is exhaustive; but it is characterized throughout by diffuseness, and often by extreme obscurity, •besides being occasionally self-contradictory, as might be expected in a work which consists of a number of unconnected paragraphs of various authorship and date. The last section of the “right-hand” part (the “Book of Kings ”) is one of the older portions, and from its allusion to “the Persian and Arabian kings” may be concluded to date from somewhere between 700 and 900 a.d. Many of the doctrinal portions may in substance well be still older, and date from the time of the Sassanids. None of the MSS., however, are older than the 16th century.

The following sketch represents, as far as can be gathered from these heterogeneous sources, the principal features of the Mandaean system. The ground and origin of all things is Pirâ, or more correctly Pérâ rabbâ, “the great abyss” (either Persian Pir, “old,” or from ∙tys, “to split,” comp, the Gnostic βυθός), associated with whom, and forming a triad with him, are the primal aeons Ayar zivâ rabbâ, “the great shining aether,” and Mânâ rabbâ d’ékârâ, “the great spirit of glory,” usually called simply Mânâ rabbâ. The last-named, the most prominent of the three, is the king of light properly so called, from whom the development of all things begins. From him emanates Yardënâ rabbâ, “the great Jordan,” which, as the higher world soul, permeates the whole aether, the domain of Ayar. Alongside of Mânâ rabbâ frequent mention is made of D’miithâ, his “image,” as a female power; the name “image of the father” arises out of the same conception as that which gives rise to the names of σιγη and l·vvoia among the Greek Gnostics. Mânâ rabbâ called into being the highest of the aeons properly so-called, Hayyé Kadmâyé, “Primal Life,” and then withdrew into deepest secrecy, visible indeed to the highest but not to the lowest aeons (comp. 5oφια and ∏poτrατωp), yet manifesting himself also to the souls of the more pious of the Mandaeans after their separation from the body. Primal Life, who is properly speaking the Mandaean god, has the same predicates as the primal spirit, and every prayer, as well as every section of the sacred books, begins by invoking him. The extremely fantastic delineation of the world of light by which Hayyé Kadmâyé is surrounded (see for example the beginning of Sidrâ rabbâ) corresponds very closely with the Manichaean description of the abode of the “king of the paradise of light.” The king of light “sits in the far north in might and glory.” The Primal Light unfolds himself by five great branches, viz., “the highest purest light, the gentle wind, the harmony of sounds, the voice of all the aeons, and the beauty of their forms,” all these being treated as abstractions and personified. Out of the further development and combination of these primary manifestations arise numerous aeons ('Uthré, “splendours,” from i∏y, “is rich”), of which, the number is often stated to be three hundred and sixty. They are divided into a number of classes (kings, hypostases, forms, &c.); the proper names by which they are invoked are many, and for the most part obscure, borrowed doubtless, to some extent, from the Parsee angelology. From the First Life proceeds as a principal emanation the “Second Life,” Hayyé Tinyâné, generally called Yùshamin. This last name is evidently meant to be Hebrew, “Jehovah of the heavens,” the God of the Jews being of a secondary rank in the usual Gnostic style. The next emanation after Yιishamin is “the messenger of life” (Mandâ d’hayyé, literally γvωσις της ζωής), the most important figure in the entire system, the mediator and redeemer, the λόγος and the Christ of the Mandaeans, from whom, as already stated, they take their name. He is occasionally also called the primal man, Gabrâ Kadmâyâ, as in the Kabbala and by Mani. Yùshamin desired to raise himself above the Primal Light, but failed in the attempt, and was punished by removal out of the pure aetherial world into that of inferior light. The one world is separated from the other by water channels (H’fiké Mayyé). Mandâ on the other hand continues with the First Life and Mânâ rabbâ, and is called his “beloved son,” the “first born, “high priest,” and “word of life.” Mandâ makes his appearance in the visible world in a series of incarnations beginning with the three brothers Hibil, Shithil, and Amish (late Judaeo-Babylonian transformations of the well-known names of the book of Genesis), and ending with John the Baptist. Of the first three the most highly honoured is Hibil, almost invariably referred to as “the brilliant Hibil”; he is the alter ego of Mandâ, his image in this present world, having the same predicates and the same activities, and is the Jesus Christ of the Mandaeans. The Second Life, Yüshamïn, has as the last of three sons Hayyé t’iitâyé, the “Third Life,” the most distinguished of the 'Uthré, hence usually called their father (Abâ d’ 'Uthré, Abâthûr). His usual epithet is “the Ancient” ('Atikâ); and he is also called “the deeply hidden and guarded.” He stands on the borderland between the here and the hereafter, like the mysterious πρεσβύτης τρίτος or senex tertius of Mani, whose becoming visible will betoken the end of the world. Abâthûr sits on the furthest verge of the world of light that lies towards the lower regions, and weighs in his balance the deeds of the departed spirits who ascend to him. Beneath him was originally nothing but a huge void with muddy black water at the bottom, in which his image was reflected, becoming ultimately solidified into P’tâhil, his son, who now partakes of the nature of matter. The demiurge of the Mandaeans, and corresponding to the Ialdabaoth of the Ophites, he at the instance of his father frames the earth and men,—according to some passages in conjunction with the seven bad planetary spirits. He created Adam and Eve, but was unable to make them stand upright, whereupon Hibil, Shithil, and Amish were sent by the First Life to infuse into their forms spirit from Mânâ rabbâ himself. Hibil, at the instance of the supreme God, also taught men about the world of light and the aeons, and especially gave them to know that not P’tahilbut another was their creator and supreme God, who as “the great king of light, without number, without limit,” stands far above him. At the same time he enjoined the protoplasts to marry and people the world. P’tahil had now lost his power over men, and was driven by his father out of the world of light into a place beneath it, whence he shall at the day of judgment be raised, and after receiving baptism be made king of the'Uthré with divine honours.

The underworld is made up of four vestibules and three hells properly so-called. The vestibules have each two rulers, Zartay and Zartanay, Hag and Mag, Gaf and Gafan, Anatan and Kin. In the highest hell rules alone the grisly king Sh’dûm, “the warrior”; in the story immediately beneath is Giv, “the great”; and in the lowest is Kιτin or Karkιim, the oldest and most powerful of all, commonly called “the great mountain of flesh” (Tûrâ rabbâ d’besrâ), but also “the first-born of darkness.” In the vestibules dirty water is still to be met with, but the hells are full of scorching consuming fire, except Kriin’s domain, where is nought but dust, ashes, and vacancy. Into these regions descended Hibil the brilliant, in the power of Mânâ rabbâ, just as in the Manichaean mythology the “primal man,” armed with the elements of the king of light, descends to a contest with the primal devil. Hibil lingers, gradually unfolding his power, in each of the vestibules, and finally passing from hell to hell reaches Karkùm. Hibil allows himself to be half swallowed by the monster, but is unhurt, and compels his antagonist to recognize the superiority of Mânâ rabbâ, the God of light, and to divulge his ρrofoundest secret, the hidden name of darkness. Armed with this he returns through the successive hells, compelling the disclosure of every secret, depriving the rulers of their power, and barring the doors of the several regions. From the fourth vestibule he brought the female devil Rûhâ, daughter of Kin, and set her over the whole four. This Rûhâ, the mother of falsehood and lies, of poisoning and fornication, is an antiChristian parody of the Rûhâ d’Kudshâ (Holy Spirit) of the Syriac Church. She is the mother of Ur, the personified fire of hell, who in anger and pride made a violent onset on the world of light (compare the similar occurrence in the Manichaean mythology), but was mastered by Hibil and thrown in chains down to the “black water,” and imprisoned within seven iron and seven golden walls. By Ur, Rûhâ, while P’tâhil was engaged in his work of creation, became mother of three sets of seven, twelve, and five sons respectively; all were translated by P’tâhil to the heavenly firmament (like the Archons of Mani), the first group forming the planets and the next the signs of the zodiac, while the third is as yet undetermined. Of the names of the planets Estera (Istar, Venus, also called Rûhâ d’Kudshâ, “holy spirit”), Enba (Nebo, Mercury), Sin (moon), Kéwân (Saturn), Bil (Jupiter), and Nirig (Nirgal, Mars) reveal their Babylonian origin; Il or II II, the sun, is also known as Kâdûsh and Adûnay (the Adonai of the Old Testament); as lord of the planetary spirits his place is in the midst of them; they are the source of all temptation and evil amongst men. The houses of the planets, as well as the earth and a second world immediately to the north of it, rest upon anvils laid by Hibil on the belly of Ur.

In the Mandaean representation the sky is an ocean of water, pure and clear, but of more than adamantine solidity, upon which the stars and planets sail. Its transparency allows us to see even to the pole star, who is the central sun around whom all the heavenly bodies move. Wearing a jewelled crown, he stands before Abâthûr’s door at the gate of the world of light; the Mandaeans accordingly invariably pray with their faces turned northward. The earth is conceived of as a round disk, slightly sloping towards the south, surrounded on three sides by the sea but on the north by a fiigh mountain of turquoises; behind this is the abode of the blest, a sort of inferior paradise, inhabited by the Egyptians drowned along with Pharaoh in the Red Sea, whom the Mandaeans look upon as their ancestors, Pharaoh himself having been their first high priest and king. The total duration of the earth they fix at four hundred and eighty thousand years, divided into seven epochs, in each of which one of the planets rules. The Sidra Rabid knows of three total destructions of the human race by fire and water, pestilence and sword, a single pair alone surviving in eaclι case. In the Mandaean view the Old Testament saints are false prophets; such are Abraham, who arose six thousand years after Νύ (Noah) during the reign of the Sun, Mishâ (Moses), in whose time the true religion was professed by the Egyptians, and Shlimûn (Solomon) bar Davith, the lord of the demons. Another false prophet and magician was Yishu M’shihâ, who was in fact a manifestation of the planet Mercury. Forty-two years before his day, under King Pontius Pilate, there had appeared the true prophet Yahyâ or John son of Zechariah, an incarnation of Hibil, of whose birth and childhood fantastic stories are told. Yahyâ by a mistake gave baptism to the false Messiah, who had feigned humility; on the completion of his mission, after undergoing a seeming execution, he returned clothed with light into the kingdom of light. As a contemporary of Yahyâ and the false Messiah HibiΓs younger brother Anûsh 'Uthrâ came down from heaven, caused himself to be baptized by Yahyâ, wrought miracles of healing and of raising the dead, and brought about the crucifixion of the false Messiah. He preached the true religion, destroyed Jerusalem (“Urashlam,” i.e., “the devil finished it”), which had been built by Adûnay, dispersed over the world the Jews who had put Yahyâ to death, and previous to his return into the worlds of light sent forth three hundred and sixty prophets for the diffusion of the true religion. All this speaks of intense hatred alike of Jews and Christians; the fasts, celibacy, and monastic and anchoret life of the latter are peculiarly objectionable to the Mandaeans. Two hundred and forty years after the appearing of the false Messiah there came to the world sixty thousand saints out of Pharaoh’s world to take the place of the Mandaeans, who had been completely extirpated; their high priest had his residence in Damascus. The last false prophet was M’hammad or Ahmat bar Bisbat (Mohammed), but Anûsh, who remained close beside him and his immediate successors, prevented hostilities against the true believers, who claim to have had in Babylonia, under the Abbasides, four hundred places of worship. Subsequent persecutions compelled their withdrawal to 'Ammârah in the neighbourhood of Wâsit, and ultimately to Khüzistân. At the end of the world the devil Ur will swallow up the earth and the other intermediate higher worlds, and thereupon will burst and fall into the abyss of darkness, where, along with all the worlds and powers of darkness, he will ultimately cease to be, so that thenceforward the universe will consist of but one everlasting world of light.

The chief depositaries of these Mandaean mysteries are the priests, who enjoy a high degree of power and social regard. The priesthood has three grades. (1) the Sh’kanda or deacon is generally chosen from episcopal or priestly families, and must be without bodily blemish. The candidate for orders must be at least nineteen years old and have undergone twelve years’ preparation; he is then qualified to assist the priesthood in the ceremonies of religion. (2) The Tarmida (t.e., “Talmidâ,” initiated’’) or priest is ordained by a bishop and two priests or by four priests after a long and extremely painful period of preparation. (3) The Ganzivra (“treasurer'’) or bishop, the highest dignitary, is chosen from the whole body of the Tarmidâs after a variety of tests, and possesses unlimited authority over the clergy. A supreme priestly rank, that of Rish ’ amma, or “head of the people,” is recognized, but only in theory; since the time of Pharaoh this sovereign pontificate has only once been filled. The priestly dress, which is all white, consists of drawers, an upper garment, and a girdle with the so-called taga or “crown”; in all ceremonies the celebrants must be barefoot. By far the most frequent and important of the religious ceremonies is that of baptism (masbûthâ), which is called for in a great variety of cases, not only for children but for adults, where consecration or purification is required, as for example on all Sundays and feast days, after contact with a dead body, after return from abroad, after neglect of any formality on the part of a priest in the discharge of his functions. In all these cases baptism is performed by total immersion in running water, but during the five days’ baptismal festival the rite is observed wholesale by mere sprinkling of large masses of the faithful at once. The Mandaeans observe also with the elements of bread (pehta) and wine (mambιiga, lit. “fountain”) a sort of eucharist, which has a special sanctifying efficacy, and is usually dispensed at festivals, but only to baptized persons of good repute who have never willingly denied the Mandaean faith. In receiving it the communicant must not touch the host with his finger; otherwise it loses its virtue. The hosts are made by the priests from unleavened fine flour. A peculiar act of piety is for a layman under the guidance of the bishop to receive the massektha (“elevation”), and thereby become a sort of ascetic, a shalmâna taba, (“really perfect”). The Mandaean places of worship, being designed only for the priests and their assistants, are excessively small, and very simply furnished; two windows, a door that opens towards the south so that those who enter have their faces turned towards the pole star, a few boards in the corner, and a gabled roof complete the whole structure; there is neither altar nor decoration of any kind. The neighbourhood of running water (for baptisms) is essential. At the consecration of a church the sacrifice of a dove (the bird of Venus) has place among the ceremonies. Besides Sundays there are six great feasts: (1) that of the New Year (Nauniz rabba), on the first day of the first month of winter; (2) Dehwa h’nina, the anniversary of the happy return of Hibil Ziva from the kingdom of darkness into that of light, lasting five days, beginning with the 18th of the first month Of spring; (3) the Marwana, in commemoration of the drowned Egyptians, on the first day of the second month of spring; (4) the great five days’ baptismal festival (pantsha), the chief feast, kept on the five intercalary days at the end of the second month of summer,—during its continuance every Mandaean, male and female, must dress in white and bathe thrice daily; (5) Dehwâ d’daimânâ, in honour of one of the three hundred and sixty 'Uthras, on the first day of the second month of autumn; (6) Kanshe Zahlâ, the preparation feast, held on the last day of the year. There are also fast days called m’battal (Arab.), on which it is forbidden to kill any living thing or eat flesh. The year is solar, and has twelve months of thirty days each, with five intercalary days between the eighth and the ninth month. Of the seven days of the week, next to Sunday (habshabâ) Thursday has a special sacredness as the day of Hibil Ziva. As regards secular occupation, the present Mandaeans are goldsmiths, ironworkers, and house and ship carpenters. They practise polygamy, the Sidrd Rαbbd laying great stress upon the duty of procreation, but few of them are rich enough to maintain more than two wives. In the 17th century, according to the old travellers, they numbered about 20,000 families, but at the present day they hardly number more than 1200 souls. In external appearance the Mandaean is distinguished from the Moslem only by a brown coat and a parti-coloured headcloth with a cord twisted round it. They have some peculiar death-bed rites: a deacon with some attendants waits upon the dying, and as death approaches administers a bath first of warm and afterwards of...

See Fytche, Burma Past and Present, 1878.

The writ has passed into the law of the United States. ’ ‘ There is in the federal judiciary an employment of the writ substantially as the old prerogative writ in the King’s Bench practice, also as a mode of exercising appellate jurisdiction, also as a proceeding ancillary to a judgment previously rendered, in exercise of original jurisdiction, as when a circuit court having rendered a judgment against a county issues a mandamus requiring its officers to levy a tax to provide for the payment of the judgment.” And in the various States mandamus is used under varying regulations, mandate being in some cases substituted aS the name of the proceeding. See Abbott’s Law Dictionary.

The essentials and the terminology of the contract are preserved in most modem systems of law. But in English law mandate, under that name, can hardly be said to exist as a separate form of contract. To some extent the law of mandatum corresponds partly to our law of principal and agent, partly to that of principal and surety. Story, disputing the assertion that “in the laws of England the contract of mandatum is of no use,” points out that “the common law does not indeed comprehend under that appellation all the contracts of mandate according to the civil law, such, for example, as mere naked acts of agency, where there is no bailment of anything to the agent. But for the most part the principles applicable to all the various classes of mandate have a place in our law, although they may be differently named.” The difference, however, is more than one of name. English law in this as in other cases reaches its end by a different method through different principles from those of the civil law, though the end may be the same.

Mandate is retained by Story and others to signify the contract more generally known as gratuitous bailment. It is restricted, as he points out; to personal property, and it implies the delivery of something to the bailee, both of which conditions are unknown in the mandatum of the civil law. Mandate in this later sense is further distinguished from deposit in that the custody of the thing is the principal object of the latter contract, while in the former it is something to be done with respect to the thing, though Story holds that custody and performance concur in both contracts, —this by way of correction of Sir W. Jones’s distinction that mandate consists in feasance and deposit in custody.

Besides his political and philosophical parerga, Mandeville wrote, in 1711, a medical treatise, Of the Hypochoridriack and Hysterick Passions— their symptoms, causes, and cures. The treatise is in the form of a dialogu¾ and is “interspersed with instructive discourses on the real art of physic itself, and entertaining remarks on the modern practice of physicians and apothecaries.” In this, with the same entertaining style and clear and subtle judgment, he protests against and ridicules speculative therapeutics, and pleads for patient diagnosis and careful observation and record of facts. His own theories about the animal spirits and their connexion with “the stomachic ferment” are fanciful enough, but he shows an intimate acquaintance with the scientific methods of Locke, and a warm admiration for Sydenham. The Virgin Unmasked; Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness', An Inquiry into the Causes of the frequent Executions at Tyburn; An Inquiry into the Origin of Honour, and Usefulness of Christianity in JJ r ar —are titles of other works of Mandeville; but all that is characteristic of him as a thinker and humorist may be found in the Fable of the Bees. (w. Μ.)

MANDEVILLE, Jehande, the name claimed by the compiler of a singular-book of travels, written in French, and published between 1357 and 1371. By aid of translations into many other languages it acquired extraordinary popularity, while a few interpolated words in a particular edition of the English version have gained for Mandeville in modern times the spurious credit of being “the father of English prose.”

In his preface the compiler calls himself a knight, and states that he was born and bred in England, of the town of St Albans; had crossed the sea on Michaelnιas Day 1322; had travelled by way of Turkey (Asia Minor), Armenia the little (Cilicia) and the great, Tartary, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt upper and lower, Libya, great part of Ethiopia, Chaldaea, Amazonia, India the less, the greater, and the middle, and many countries about India; had often been to Jerusalem; and had written in Romance as more generally understood than Latin. In the body of the work we hear that he had been at Paris and Constantinople; had served the sultan of Egypt a long time in his wars against the Bedouins, had been freely addressed by him on the corruption of contemporary Christendom, had been vainly offered by him a princely marriage and a great estate on condition of renouncing Christianity, and had left Egypt under Sultan Melech Madabron, i.e., Mugaffar or Mudhaffar (who reigned in 1346-47); had been at Mount Sinai, and had visited the Holy Land with letters under the great seal of the sultan, which gave him extraordinary facilities; had been in Russia, Livonia, Cracow, Lithuania, “en roialme daresten” (? de Daresten or Silistria), and many other parts near Tartary, but not in Tartary itself; had drunk of the well of youth at Polombe (Quilon on the Malabar coast), and still seemed to feel the better; had taken astronomical observations on the way to Lamary (Sumatra), as well as in Brabant, Germany, Bohemia, and still farther north; had been at an isle called Pathen in the Indian Ocean; had been at Cansay (Hangchow-fu) in China, and had served the emperor of China fifteen months against the king of Manzi; had been among rocks of adamant in the Indian Ocean; had been through an haunted valley, which he places near Mille-storach ( = Millescorath, i.e., Malasgird in Armenia); had been at many great feats of arms, but had been incapable of performing any himself; had been driven home against his will in 1357 by arthritic gout (despite the well of youth !); and had written his book as a consolation for his “wretched rest.” The paragraph which states that he had had his book confirmed at Rome by the pope is, however, an interpolation of the English version.

This recital is of itself enough to provoke some little questioning, and on investigating the sources of the book it will presently be obvious that part at least of the personal history of Mandeville is mere invention. Under these circumstances the truth of any part of that history, and even the genuineness of the compiler’s name, become matter for serious doubt. No contemporary corroboration of the existence of such a Jehan de Mandeville seems to be known. Some French MSS., not contemporary, give a Latin letter of presentation from him to Edward III., but this is so hopelessly vague that it might have been penned by any writer on any subject. At Liège, in the abbey of the Guilelmites, now pulled down, there certainly was in the 16th century a tomb of a man in armour said to be Mandeville; but the old French inscription showed no name, and the arms were quite unlike those of the Mandevilles, earls of Essex; while the Latin inscription, stating that the tomb was Mandeville’s, and that -he died at Liège on November 17, 1372, is not only apparently much later in style, but confounds him with a physician called “ad Barbant,” who is said in a printed Latin edition of Mandeville to have met him first at Cairo and again at Liège, and to have persuaded and helped him to write his travels.

Leaving this question, there remains the more complex one whether the book contains, in any measure, facts and knowledge acquired by actual travels and residence in the East. We believe that it may, but only as a small portion of the whole, and that confined entirely to the section of the work which treats of the Holy Land, and of the different ways of getting thither, as well as of Egypt, and in general of what we understand by the Levant.

The prologue indeed points almost exclusively to the Holy Land as the subject of the work. The mention of more distant regions comes in only towards the end of this prologue, and (in a manner) as an afterthought. As regards the writer’s claim to have travelled in those more distant regions, it is somewhat astonishing to find that any modern editor could have regarded this as possibly founded in truth. And the apology sometimes made for the book, as only a compilation of what was regarded as truth in the writer’s age, is not tenable in the face of the frequent assertion (explicit or implicit) that he had himself been in the remotest regions spoken of, and had witnessed some of the most marvellous circumstances that he details. To this we shall recur later, for the bearing of these statements can only be appreciated when the true derivation of the matter about the further East shall have been exhibited.

By far the greater part of these more distant travels, extending in fact from Trebizond to Ormus, India, the Indian Archipelago, and China, and back again to western Asia, has been appropriated from the narrative of Friar Odoric (written in 1330). These passages, as served up by Mandeville, are almost always, indeed, swollen with interpolated particulars, usually of an extravagant kind, whilst in no few cases the writer has failed to understand the passages which he adopts from Odoric and professes to give as his own experiences. Thus (p. 193) in appropriating a passage of Odoric about tortoises of great size, seen in Champa, these are described as “snails” {lymecons, A., limassons, G.) whose shells were as big as cottages.

In another place (p. 209), where Odoric has given a most curious and veracious account of the Chinese custom of employing tame cormorants to catch fish, the cormorants are converted by Mandeville into ‘ ‘ little beasts called loyres (layre, A. ), which are taught to go into the water” (the word loyre being apparently used here for “otter,” lutra, for which the Provençal is luria or loiria). Where Odoric, describing the court of the Great Khan, mentions the genuine Tartar custom which forbade any man in entering to set down his foot on the threshold of the door (an etiquette which P. della Valle found still in force at Ispahan in the 17th century), Mandeville quite fails to understand the point (see p. 220).

At a very early date the coincidence of Mandeville’s stories with those of Odoric was recognized, insomuch that a MS. of Odoric, which is or was in the chapter library at Mainz, begins with the words: Incipit Itinerarius fidelis fratris Odorici socii Militis Men- davil per Indiam; licet hic [read ille^ ∖ prius et alter posterius peregrinationem suam descripsit. At a later day Sir T. Herbert calls Odoric “travelling companion of our Sir John”; and Purchas, with most perverse injustice, whilst calling Mandeville, next to Polo, “if next, . . . the greatest Asian traveller that ever the world had,” insinuates that Odoric’s story was stolen from Mandeville’s. Mandeville himself is crafty enough, at least in one passage, to anticipate criticism by suggesting the probability of his having travelled with Odoric (see p. 282, and below).

Much again of Mandeville’s matter, particularly in Asiatic geography and history, is taken bodily from the book of Hayton, an Armenian of princely family, who became a monk of the Praemon-strant order, and in 1307 dictated this work on the East in the French tongue at Poictiers, out of his own extraordinary acquaintance with Asia and its history in his own time.

It is curious that no passage in Mandeville can be plausibly traced to Marco Polo, with one exception. This is (p. 163) where he states that at 0rmus the people, during the great heat, lie in water,—a circumstance mentioned by Polo, though not by Odoric. We should suppose it most likely that this fact had been interpolated in the copy of Odoric used by Mandeville; for, if he had borrowed it direct from Polo, he would have borrowed more.

A good deal about the manners and customs of the Tartars is demonstrably derived from the famous work of the Franciscan John of Plano Carpini (see Carpini, vol. v. p. 132), though possibly the immediate source for Mandeville may have been some popular compilation. For though the passages in question are all to be found in Carpini, more or less exactly, the expression is condensed and the order changed. For examples compare Mandeville, p. 250, on the tasks done by Tartar women, with Plano Carpini, p. 643; Mandeville, p. 250, on Tartar habits of eating, with Plano Carpini pp. 639-40; Mandeville, p. 231, on the titles borne on the seals of the Great Khan, with Plano Carpini, p. 715, &c.

The account of Prester John, and all the wonders of his court and realm, is taken from the famous Epistle of that imaginary potentate, which was so widely diffused in the 13th century, and created that renown which made it incumbent on every traveller in Asia to assume his existence, and to find some new tale to tell of him. Many fabulous stories again of monsters, such as Cyclopes, sciapodes, hippopodes, monoscelides, anthropophagi, and men whose heads did grow beneath their shoulders, of the phoenix and the weeping crocodile, such as Pliny has collected, are introduced here and there, derived no doubt from the popular versions of Solinus. And interspersed, especially in the chapters about the Levant, are the stories and legends that were retailed to every pilgrim, such as the legend of Seth and the grains of paradise from which grew the wood of the cross, that of the shooting of old Cain by Lamech, that of the castle of the sparrow-hawk (which appears in the tale of Melusina), those of the origin of the balsam plants at Matariya, of the dragon of Cos, of the river Sabbation, &c.

Even in that part of the book which may be admitted with probability to represent some genuine experience, there are distinct traces that another work has been made use of, more or less, as an aid in the compilation, we might almost say as a framework to fill up. This is the itinerary of the German knight William of Boldensele, written in 1336 at the desire of Cardinal Talleyrand de Perigord. A cursory comparison of this with Mandeville leaves no doubt of the fact that the latter has followed its thread, using its suggestions, and on many subjects its expressions, though digressing and expanding on every side, and too often eliminating the singular good sense of the German traveller. After such a comparison we may indicate as examples Boldensele’s account of Cyprus (Mandeville, p. 28, and p. 10), of Tyre and the coast of Palestine (Mandeville, 29, 30, 33, 34), of the journey from Gaza to Egypt (34), passages about Babylon of Egypt (40), about Mecca (42), the general account of Egypt (45), the pyramids (52), some of the particular wonders of Cairo, such as the slave-market, the chicken-hatching stoves, and the apples of paradise, i.e., plantains (49), the Red Sea (57), the convent on Sinai (58, 60), the account of the church of the Holy Sepulchre (74-76), &c. The following may be quoted as a specimen, showing how Mandeville has at once followed Boldensele and deviated from his good sense :— [table]

It will be seen from these indications, and more particularly from the specific analysis given below, that there is only a small residuum of the book to which genuine character, as containing the experiences of the author, can possibly be attributed. Yet, as has been intimated, the borrowed stories are frequently claimed as such experiences. We have already alluded to Mandeville’s claim (p. 4) to have visited distant parts of Asia; to have drunk of the Fountain of Youth, a favourite mediaeval fable which he interpolates in Odoric’s account of Malabar (169); to his assertion that he had visited Lamary (Sumatra), and indeed that he had gone beyond it to 33° 16' of S. lat. (181-82); and that he had been at a certain other island in the Indian Archipelago (190). He alleges also that he had witnessed the curious exhibition of the garden of transmigrated souls (described by Odoric) at Cansay, i.e., Hangchow-fu (211). He and his fellows with their valets had remained fifteen months in service with the emperor of Cathay in his wars against the king of Manzi,—Manzi, or Southern China, having ceased to have any existence as a separate kingdom some seventy years before the time referred to. Similar false statements are found at pp. 219, 235, 248, 271. But the most notable of these passages occurs in his adoption from Odoric of the story of the Valley Perilous (282). This is, in its original form, apparently founded on real experiences of Odoric viewed through a haze of excitement and superstition. Mandeville, whilst swelling the wonders of the tale with a variety of extravagant touches, appears to safeguard himself from the reader’s possible discovery that the tale was stolen by the interpolation: “And some of our fellows accorded to enter, and some not. So there were with us two worthy men, Friars Minor, that were of Lombardy, who said that if any man would enter they would go in with us. And when they had said so, upon the gracious trust of God and of them, we caused mass to be sung, and made every man to be shriven and houselled; and then we entered, fourteen persons; but at our going out we were but nine,” &c.

In referring to this passage it is only fair to recognize that the description (though the suggestion of the greatest part exists in Odoric) displays a good deal of imaginative power; and there is much in the account of Christian’s passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in Bunyan’s famous allegory, which indicates a possibility that John Bunyan may have read and remembered this episode either in Mandeville or in Hakluyt’s Odoric.

Such a passage, however, as that which we recently quoted, and which appears to exist in all the MSS. and versions that have been examined, leaves no room for the rehabilitation of Mandeville’s character as regards conscious mendacity. But it does not necessarily follow that the whole work is borrowed or fictitious. There are other examples in mediaeval works of travel in which fiction has been linked to true experiences. Even the great Moorish traveller Ibn Batuta, accurate and veracious in the main, seems, in one part at least of his narrative, to invent experiences; and in such works as those of John of Hese and Arnold von Harff, we have examples of pilgrims to the Holy Land whose narratives begin apparently in sober truth, and gradually pass into flourishes of fiction and extravagance. So in Mandeville also we find various particulars which we are unable to trace to other writers, and which may therefore be, provisionally at least, assigned to the writer’s own experience, or to knowledge acquired by colloquial intercourse in the East.

It is difficult to decide on the character of his statements as to reçent Egyptian history. In his account of that country (pp. 37, 38) though the series of the Comanian (i.e., of the Bahri Mameluke) sultans is borrowed from Hayton down to the accession of Melechnasser, i.e., El-Malik el-Nâgir Mohammed ibn Kalaùn, who came first to the throne in 1299, Mandeville appears to speak.from his own knowledge when he adds that this “Melechnasser reigned long and governed wisely.” In fact, though twice displaced in the early part of his life, Malik Nasir reigned till 1341, a duration unparalleled in Mohammedan Egypt, whilst we are told that during the last thirty years of his reign Egypt rose to a high pitch of wealth and prosperity. Mandeville, however, then goes on to say that his eldest son Melechcmader was chosen to succeed, but this prince was caused privily to be slain by his brother, who took the kingdom under the name of Melechmadabron. ’ ‘ And he was Soldan when I departed from those countries.” Now Malik Nasir Mohammed was followed in succession by no less than eight of his sons in thirteen years, the first three of whom reigned in aggregate only a few months. The names mentioned by Mandeville appear to represent those of the fourth and sixth of the eight, viz., El-Malik el-galih 'Imddu-d-dln, and El-Malik MMu∑affar Zainu-d-din Hajj; and these the statements of Mandeville do not fit.

Among particulars which seem to suggest personal knowledge may be instanced the very good description of the Bedouins (p. 64), starting from that of Boldensele, but largely and accurately expanded; the use of carrier pigeons in Syria (p. 118); the intimation that the Red Sea was frequented by Venetian merchants trading with India (p. 140). There are some other particulars which the author can hardly have witnessed, but which may possibly have been heard in communication with other travellers (if not borrowed from some untraced source). Such are the practice of polyandry in a certain island (p. 287), and the rite of fraternal adoption between two persons by drinking each other’s blood (195). The mention of Ani in Armenia with its thousand churches (148) is probably derived from some book; the city and its thousand churches are mentioned by William of Rubrouck.

On several occasions the writer indicates some acquaintance with Arabic, though the words are not always recognizable, owing perhaps to the carelessness of copyists in such matters. Thus (p. 142) he gives the Mohammedan confession of faith as La Met Ma Machometh rores alla (Roscl-alla, A.) (La ilaha ilia ’ llah Muhamma-dun rasùlu ’ llah); (p. 50) the Arabic names of the wood, fruit, and sap of the balsam plant; (p. 99) the name of bitumen, “alkatran” (al-Katrdn) ; (p. 131) three titles of the Koran, viz., “Alkoran,” “Meshaf'' (i.e., mislμcf, “written sheets or pages,” “a copy of the Koran”), and Harme (i.e., haram, in the sense of “sacred, inviolable ”); (p. 168) the names of the three different kinds of pepper (long pepper, black pepper, and white pepper) as sorbotin, fulful, and bano or bauo (fulfill is the common Arabic word for pepper, the others we cannot explain with any confidence); (p. 192) the name of the elephant (but in A. this runs: Et apeιle on là les oliphans vaches).

Mandeville again, in some passages (and especially in one which is familiar from its being cited by Dr Johnson in the preface to his dictionary) shows a correct idea of the form of the earth, and of position in latitude ascertained by observation of the pole star; he knows that there are antipodes, and that if ships were sent on voyages of discovery they might sail round the world. And he tells a curious story, which he had heard in his youth, how a worthy man did travel ever eastward until he came to his own country again (p. 183). But on the other hand he repeatedly asserts the old belief that Jerusalem was in the centre of the world (79, 183), whilst he maintains in proof of this that at the equinox a spear planted erect in Jerusalem casts no shadow at noon,— which if true would only show that the city was on the equator.

Brief Analysis.— Prologue. Chaps, i.-iii. The way to Constantinople; the wonders and holy places there; the Greek islands, Greek Church, &c. Chaps, iv.-v. Constantinople and Palestine; Rhodes, Cyprus, coast of Palestine; Egypt and Babylon of Egypt; the Sinai desert and convent (these two chapters on the lines of Boldensele; succession of Ayubite and Mameluke sultans from Hayton). Chaps, v.-x. Palestine and the holy places (the most original part of the work, but based occasionally on Boldensele). Chap. xi. Syria, various routes from Western Europe; description of Tartary (the steppe country about the Volga,— very good, though expressly not from personal experience). Chap. xii. On the Saracens and their religion, Mohammed, <fcc. (partly based on Boldensele). Chap, xiii. Countries of As'a and Africa; journey to the East from Trebizond (this and on to chap. xx. inclusive is all based on Odoric, with interpolations ad libitum). Chap. xxi. The Great Khan; the history of Jenghiz and his successors (from Hayton, with something from Plano Carpini). Chap, xxii. The court and splendour of the khan, his paper-money, &c. (from Odoric). Chap, xxiii. Customs of the Tartars, <tc. (chiefly from Plano Carpini). Chap, xxiv. Countries of Asia shortly described (from Hayton). Chap, xxvi. The lamb-plant (from Odoric), with much added about Alexander and the shut-up nations, griffins, and other monsters. Chap, xxvii. The royal estate of Prester John (chiefly from the “Letter " of Prester John, with something from Hayton); the Old Man of the Mountain (from Odoric). Chap, xxviii. The Valley Perilous (from Odoric, with inventions), followed by a quantity of fabulous geography of mixed and uncertain origin. Chaps, xxix., xxx. Similar hotchpotch continued (from the romance of Alexander, the letter of Prester John, Plinian fables, <fcc.). Chap, xxxi. The return journey from CJthay, <fcc. (from Odoric). The epilogue.

The oldest known MS. of the original is the earl of Ashburnham’s MS. Libri xxiv., dated 1371, but nevertheless very inaccurate in proper names. The English version was made, at least as early as the beginning of the 15th century, from a French MS. defective"between p. 36 1. 7 (“And there”) of Halliwell’s edition andp. 621. 25 (“And that Valey”), and is represented in this state by nearly every known English MS. It was completed and revised by two independent editors, neither of them later than the first quarter of the 15th century. One of these revisions is represented by the British Museum MS. Egerton 1982, and the very badly abbreviated Bodleian MS. e Mus. 116. The other is represented by the British Museum MS. Cotton Titus C. xvi. The first printed edition of the English version is apparently the undated edition of Pynson, which gives the version in its original defective shape. So do Wynkyn de Worde’s edition of 1499 and eleven editions before 1725, except that they insert a paragraph seemingly abbreviated from the revision represented by Cotton Titus C. xvi. This latter revision was, however, followed in full by the editions of 1725 and 1727, and is, in Halliwell’s editions, the text now current. The other revision seems never to have been printed.

That none of the forms of the English version can conceivably be from the same hand which wrote the original work is made patent to any critical reader by their glaring errors of translation, but the form now current asserts in the preface that it was made by Mandeville himself, and this assertion has been taken on trust by almost all modern historians of English literature. The words of the original “je eusse cest livret mis en latin .... mais . . . je l’ay mis en rômant” were mistranslated as if “je eusse” meant “I had” instead of “I should have,” and then (whether of fraudulent intent or by the error of a copyist thinking to supply an accidental omission) the words were added “and translated it ajen out of Frensche into Englyssche.” Schönborn and Mätzner respectively seem to have been the first to show that the current Latin and English texts cannot possibly have been made by Mandeville himself. Dr J. Vogels states the same of unprinted Latin versions which he has discovered in the British Museum, and he has proved it as regards the Italian version.

The terseness, the simplicity, and the quaintness of the English version, together with the curiosity of the subject-matter, will always make it delightfuj reading; but the title “father of English prose,” which in its stricter sense already belonged to King Alfred, must in its looser sense be now transferred to Wickliffe.

See Schönborn’s Bibliographische Untersuchungen über die Reise-Beschreibung des Sir John Mandeville, BreJau, 1840; bV0,tιxιeτ's Altenglische Sprachproben, I. il. pp. 454-55; letters by E. B. Nicholson in The Academy of November 11, 1876, and February 12, 1881; Vogels, “Das Verhältniss der italienischen Version der Reisebeschreibung Mandeville's zur französischen” in a Festschrift, dem Gymnasium zu Moers zur Feier seines 300jährigen Bestehens gewidmet vom Lehrer-Collegium des Crej elder Gymnasiums, Bonn, 1882, and his forthcoming “Handschriftliche Untersuchungen über Mandeville’s Reisebeschreibung,” in Vollmöller’s Romanische Forschungen ; also for the bibliography of editions and translations, up to 1867, Tobler’s Bibliographia geographica Palaestinae. See also Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither (Hakluyt Society), i, 27, 28, on the sources of the book. At least two critical editions are understood to be in preparation—by Vogels (French and English), and by Michelant (French, for the Société de ΓOrient Latin). On a French Lapidaire and other works attributed to Mandeville see Pannier's Lapidaires français du moyen âge, Paris, 1882, pp. 189-204. (E. B. N.—H. Y.)