The Venetian traveller Nicola di Conti was surprised to find that Burmese women expected their men to enhance their members with metal rings - to satisfy them better.
Early European travellers to and in East Asia provide extraordinary details about what life may have been like in the Middle Ages. ‘May’ have been is the case because some of these writers provide startling details which it would be very useful to have confirmed by the presence of corroborating evidence. In the case of Nicola di Conti of Venice, some details are similar to Marco Polo and other supposed travellers and some are completely different.
Take, for example, the case of penis rings. In the city of Ava, in what is now known as Burma or Myanmar, Nicola writes that men who are about to be married, will visit certain shops selling ‘lascivious’ things – notably the ‘ringers’ – well, the female shop owner will slice the would-be bride groom’s member in up to 12 places along its length and then place (presumably by sliding them along from the tip) metal rings which are then fixed under the skin. The member is said to heal within a few days. Why would anyone want to do this? Nicola assures us that it is because they wish to “satisfy the wantonness of the women: because of these swellings, or tumour, of the member, the women have great pleasure in coitus. The members of some men stretch way down between their legs so that when they walk they ring out and may be heard.” This perhaps gave some status and indeed self-esteem to the men involved. Poor Nicola himself was rather peeved to have his own member described as ‘small’ but, nevertheless, declined to have the treatment himself. Quite how these details were known to the owners of the lascivious items is not made clear. Alas, Nicola is unable to give pleasure to any woman in Upper Burma because of this coyness (or fear, perhaps).
Other details about the life and society of Upper Burma in the sixteenth century ring true and are attested to by the accounts of other travellers, Chinese, Persian and Indian as well as Europeans. The many men on the back of the King’s military elephants, the fruit, the hunting and the ways of religion are all accurate – yet the ‘ringers’ remain missing from many other accounts. Archaeological research reveals evidence across Southeast Asia for the use of penile disfigurement (or enhancement), yet for various reasons this remains only a lightly-explored area.
References and Further Reading
Breazeale, Kennon, “Early Fifteenth Century Travels in the East,” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol.2, No.2 (Autumn, 2004), pp.110-7, translated (in the late sixteenth century) by John Frampton.
John Walsh, Shinawatra University, April 2007
