{"id":1424,"date":"2017-08-25T12:29:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T12:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/?p=1424"},"modified":"2020-04-20T10:29:37","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T10:29:37","slug":"a-mysterious-animal-in-maffeius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/2017\/08\/25\/a-mysterious-animal-in-maffeius\/","title":{"rendered":"A mysterious animal in Maffeius"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A story in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/2017\/08\/11\/globalizing-latin-with-maffeius\/\">Maffeius&#8217;&nbsp;<\/a><em>Indic Histories<\/em> Book 5 concerns a fighter named Noadabegua from&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Malacca\">Malacca <\/a>who fought the Portuguese bravely and died, pierced with dozens of wounds, but the wounds did not bleed until an arm band was removed that contained the bone of a certain local animal. When the arm band was removed all his blood flowed out at once, as if a vase had been shattered.&nbsp;<em>mirum dictu!<\/em> comments Maffeius.&nbsp;The mystery here is the identity of the animal:&nbsp;<em>os animalis cuiusdam Sionii (cabim incolae appellant)<\/em>. In the <a href=\"http:\/\/reader.digitale-sammlungen.de\/de\/fs1\/object\/display\/bsb11197028_00103.html\">book from which this comes<\/a> both Sionii and Cabim are capitalized. Neither word appears in any Latin dictionary I have access to, nor is there anything of use in the very large LLT-A and LLT-B databases of later Latin published by <a href=\"http:\/\/apps.brepolis.net\/BrepolisPortal\/default.aspx\">Brepols<\/a>, and which I have access to at work. Here is the whole passage.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Qua in re illud vel in primis accidit memorabile. Vehebatur quadam e navibus iis Naodabegua Malacensis, unus ex eorum numero qui nuper in Sequeriae exitium conspiraverant. Is in itinere oppressus ab Lusitanis cum egregie dimicans aliquamdiu restitisset, multis demum confossus ictibus ita corruit ut e patulis vulneribus nihil omnino cruoris manaret. Mox inter spoliandum corpus, ut primum detracta eius brachio est aurea armilla (mirum dictu) tamquam vase confracto ita sese cum anima universus repente sanguis effudit. Cuius rei stupore defixi Lusitani cum de captivis causam quaesissent, cognovere inclusum esse in armilla os animalis cuiusdam Sionii (cabim incolae appellant) cuius in sistendo sanguine virtus efficacissima sit. Id ipsum os deinde cum in Lusitaniam devehendum esset una cum pretiosis aliis rebus naufragio periit. Atque in hunc modum barbarus ille concepti in Sequeriam facinoris poenas acerba persolvit morte.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Presumably <em>Sionius<\/em> is an adjective referring to a nearby place or people; I&#8217;m thinking the nominative form of the animal in Latin would be <em>cabis<\/em>. But what is this magical critter whose bone can stop the flow of blood?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A story in Maffeius&#8217;&nbsp;Indic Histories Book 5 concerns a fighter named Noadabegua from&nbsp;Malacca who fought the Portuguese bravely and died, pierced with dozens of wounds, but the wounds did not bleed until an arm band was removed that contained the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/2017\/08\/25\/a-mysterious-animal-in-maffeius\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95822,1],"tags":[153095,95822],"class_list":["post-1424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maffeius","category-uncategorized","tag-historiae-indicae","tag-maffeius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}