171 There is a lot of gold in this kingdom of Siam. It is produced here and is gathered above all in the lands belonging to Pahang, which is beyond Malacca on the way to China, and which has always belonged to this kingdom. It has now rebelled against it and obeys the King of Malacca. There is also another gentile lord who obeys him, and in his country large quantities of excellent tin are gathered and taken to Malacca, where it is used and sold to many places. This country is called Selangor. This King of Siam is an overlord and a gentile, as I have already said. He worships idols and has many temples. He practices many customs which are different to those of the other gentiles. They go naked, covering themselves with cotton cloths below the waist. Some of them wear small silk tunics. Provisions are plentiful in this country: lots of rice and meat from domestic and wild animals; they have many horses and hacks; and many harriers and different dogs, because they are great hunters and horsemen. Heading inland from this country towards China, one comes to a gentile kingdom which obeys the King of Siam. When one of them dies, the relatives or friends of the deceased eat his roasted body, as follows: they build a large bonfire in an open space. They erect three sticks over it, like a gallows and they hang a chain with two iron hooks around the middle of it. They hang the dead body there by the back of the knees. Its children and relatives weep sorely while it roasts, and then once it is well roasted, they take many glasses and cups of wine and start to cut and eat it, drinking and weeping. It is the next of kin who takes thefirst mouthful and they eat it all up there and then, leaving only the bones which they have just eaten, rather, just burned and turned into ashes. They say that they bury their relatives in this way, because they cannot bury theirflesh in a better place than in their own bodies. In the remainder of the Kingdom of Siam, they burn the gentiles, I mean, the corpses, in accordance with the custom of all gentiles, as I have often
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