A Medieval English Description of Java

https://indomedieval.medium.com/a-medieval-english-description-of-java-328747c95b2c




It might surprise you to learn, however, that there is a description of the island of Java in Middle English. It is not an original account, and the writer of it did not travel to Java personally. The name of Java may have been distorted slightly by an earlier scribal error, and the description occurs in a text that contains a lot of fabrication and fantasy. It is nonetheless evidence of the hemispheric reach of knowledge about Java in the Middle Ages.

The English description of Java appears in the account of the fictitious travels of John Mandeville, a supposedly English knight supposedly from St Albans who supposedly travelled around Europe, Africa, and Asia in the fourteenth century (Figure 3). Mandeville was not real; the book that was written under that name is a mix of information drawn from earlier sources and complete falsehood and, while the true authorship is not entirely clear, the earliest versions were written in French (and not English). The account includes descriptions of islands and kingdoms that simply did not exist and which are not documented in any other sources in addition to accurate information gleaned from other earlier texts (incidentally not including the Marco Polo travels).

Now, so: a lot of the Mandeville text is simply fake. Pure invention. Most of the rest, however, comes from the entirely real account of the aforementioned Odoric of Pordenone, who travelled to China by way of India and Southeast Asia in the early fourteenth century, not all that long after Marco Polo. Odoric wrote his account in Latin in around 1330. The original text is difficult to reconstruct because the surviving manuscripts are all rather different from one another, but it was fairly popular and there are quite a few extant manuscripts in several languages, including French. (Annalia Marchisio’s 2016 edition is the best source for Odoric’s texts and its difficulties.) The description of Java in the Mandeville Travels, and thus in Harley MS 3954, is taken wholesale from Odoric; the extract below is in essence a Middle English translation of Odoric rather than ‘Mandeville’, whoever he may have been.

Odoric’s account of Java is interesting for several reasons. Odoric is (almost) alone among medieval European travellers in clearly distinguishing Java from other islands around it. Marco Polo called Java ‘Big Java’ and Sumatra ‘Smaller Java’. (Never mind that Sumatra is much bigger in area than Java.) Niccolò de’ Conti uses a Java-like name for two islands, one probably Java and the other unidentified — possibly Borneo. Odoric conveniently uses ‘Java’ (originally ⟨Iaua⟩) in reference to the island we now call Java.

‘And there is a great isle that is called Jana. And the king of that country has under him seven kings, for he is full mighty. In that isle grow all manner of spices more plenteous than elsewhere — ginger and all other spices. All things are there in plenty but wine.’