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This episode, we check in once again with 14th-century traveler Odoric of Pordenone as he takes in the many lands between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, including Sri Lanka, Java, Borneo, Vietnam, and some that remain rather mysterious.This episode, we check in once again with 14th-century traveler Odoric of Pordenone as he takes in the many lands between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, including Sri Lanka, Java, Borneo, Vietnam, and some that remain rather mysterious.

Today’s Texts:

Odoric of Pordenone. “The Eastern Parts of the World, Described.” Cathay and the Way Thither, translated by Henry Yule, vol. 1, Hakluyt Society, 1866, pp. 43-162. Google Books.

Odoricus. “The Voyage of Frier Beatus Ordoricus to Asia Minor, Armenia, Chaldea, Persia, India, China, and Other Remote Parts, &c.” The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, edited and translated by Richard Hakluyt, vol. 4, Macmillan 1904, pp. 371-444. Google Books.

References:

Bressan, L. “Ordoric of Pordenone (1213-1331): His Vision of China and South-East Asia and His Contribution to Relations Between Asia and Europe.” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 70, no. 2 (273), 1997, pp. 1-23. JSTOR, www.jstor.com/stable/41493334.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. Revised ed., Penguin Classics, 1972.

Marrow, Paul. “Grinch Historians Steal Christmas.” Pilipino Express News Magazine, 17 Dec. 2008, www.pilipino-express.com/history-a-culture/in-other-words/189-grinch-historians-steal-christmas.html.

Metcalf, Peter. “Wine of the Corpse: Endocannibalism and the Great Feast of the Dead in Borneo.” Representations, no. 17, Winter 1987, pp. 96-109. JSTOR, www.jstor.com/stable/3043794.

Valtrová, Jana. “Beyond the Horizons of Legends: Traditional Imagery and Direct Experience in Medieval Accounts of Asia.” Numen, vol. 57, no. 2, 2010, pp. 154-185. JSTOR, www.jstor.com/stable/27793840.

Audio Credits:

Image: Detail of the Cynocephali of Nicobar, from a 15th-century manuscript of the Itinerarium (or Livre des Merveilles) of Odoric of Pordenone. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département des Manuscrits, Français 2810, fol. 106.