Taboo and the cultures of Far-East in the "Description of the world" by Marco Polo

This article is focused on the ways of presentation of taboo in the cultures of Far-East that were interpreted from the medieval travel writing, namely the "Description of the World" by Marco Polo. This book is one of the first ones, in which the excerpts of the anthropological description of the cultures of Far-East may be found. Then, this paper shows, how the Venetian traveller positions the cultural prohibitions, which may be connected with the taboo sphere. The analysis is undertaken in a two-fold manner. Firstly, it considers the perspective of the local inhabitants, whose cultures treated some behaviours as taboo. Secondly, Marco Polo presents activities which were admissible in those cultures, but belonged to the taboo sphere in Europe and as such were also perceived by the traveller. Taboo and cultural prohibitions which are subject of analysis in this study are categorised to the sphere of life. Then, the research begins with food prohibitions, continues with physical and sexual ones, and closes with those referring to the problem of death.