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India Today
June 11, 2007
The Mughals Revisited
by Gillian Wright
These narratives by priests, merchants and adventurers greatly
influenced western ideas about India
BEYOND THE THREE SEAS: TRAVELLERS' TALES OF MUGHAL INDIA
Edited by Michael H. Fisher
Random House
Price: Rs 350, Pages: 219
Generally I thoroughly approve of recycling - be it paper, glass,
plastic or aluminum. But I am not always sure about literary
recycling. A number of Europeans wrote accounts of their travels in
India during the time of the Great Mughals. These accounts, happily
for publishers, are long out of copyright. The principal
ones - Tavernier, Bernier, Manucci and Monserrate - are still in print
and readily available in Delhi bookshops. So for me it is a bit of a
mystery why Random House India would publish Michael H. Fisher's
abridged versions of these accounts together with those of six other
travellers. I suppose anthologies are always considered a good bet.
The writers in this one - priests, merchants and adventurers from
Italy, Russia, Spain, France and England - did have lively and varied
experiences of different regions of India between the period before
Babur took over and the reign of Shah Jahan. Fisher allows them to
speak for themselves - in fact rather too much for themselves. Apart
from an extended introduction, he does not attempt to contextualise
their stories. Bearing in mind that these writers were unfamiliar
with India and often made mistakes, and the gulf of time between them
and today's reader, explanatory notes would have been worthwhile.
In his introduction Fisher makes a valid point that these narratives
were written with an eye on being published in Europe and furthering
the interests of the writers. They were important because they
greatly influenced western ideas of what India was like. Fisher also
expresses some wonder at the fact that Indian travellers abroad
during this period did not publish accounts of their travels. He
forgets the Mughals never used a printing press. The great Mughals
had libraries but they were hand-written. Who knows what narrative
accounts have been lost to us because they were mere manuscripts.
Fisher's chosen European travellers were certainly bowled over by
Incredible India, while, looking at most of them, few if any Indians
would have realised how important Europe was going to become to
India. Take for example the 16th-Century Russian horse trader Afanasy
Nikitin, who believed in a gookook bird that killed men by perching
on their houses.
His account is brief but stunning.
`The land is overstocked with people,' he sagely remarks before
embarking on a description of the goings on in a bootkhana, which
Fisher wrongly glosses as a place for bhoots or demons. Butkhana
(room for images) is an Urdu word for a temple.
Then there is the merchant Cesare Federici who visits Vijaynagar and
is one of the first Europeans to describe a sati in detail. Friar
Sebastien Manrique (1585-1669) took a short cut from South-east Asia
to Rome by travelling across Bengal and up the Ganga. At a village
halt, one of his companions strangled two tame peacocks and to
conceal the crime they ate them for dinner. They all considered their
Hindu hosts' respect for life ridiculous, but their hosts made sure
that the whole lot of them were thrown in jail and only bribery and
corruption saved the peacock-killer's hand from being chopped off.
The Englishman, William Hawkins, in contrast, spoke Turkish and was
at home in the Mughal court. He accepted emperor Jahangir's offer of
his Armenian ward's hand in marriage, and warned the emperor against
the machinations of the Catholics. A generation earlier, the Jesuit
Father Antonio Monserrate had waited in vain for Akbar to convert to
Christianity ever since he dressed in Portuguese clothes one day.
These travellers were products of their times, and in those days
there was no such concept among European Christians as `multi-faith'.
But they were not simply bigots. Fisher argues that the western
response to India, even then, was nuanced, not monolithic. This
anthology supports his view that there were different kinds of men
with different levels of understanding then, just as there are today.
June 11, 2007
The Mughals Revisited
by Gillian Wright
These narratives by priests, merchants and adventurers greatly
influenced western ideas about India
BEYOND THE THREE SEAS: TRAVELLERS' TALES OF MUGHAL INDIA
Edited by Michael H. Fisher
Random House
Price: Rs 350, Pages: 219
Generally I thoroughly approve of recycling - be it paper, glass,
plastic or aluminum. But I am not always sure about literary
recycling. A number of Europeans wrote accounts of their travels in
India during the time of the Great Mughals. These accounts, happily
for publishers, are long out of copyright. The principal
ones - Tavernier, Bernier, Manucci and Monserrate - are still in print
and readily available in Delhi bookshops. So for me it is a bit of a
mystery why Random House India would publish Michael H. Fisher's
abridged versions of these accounts together with those of six other
travellers. I suppose anthologies are always considered a good bet.
The writers in this one - priests, merchants and adventurers from
Italy, Russia, Spain, France and England - did have lively and varied
experiences of different regions of India between the period before
Babur took over and the reign of Shah Jahan. Fisher allows them to
speak for themselves - in fact rather too much for themselves. Apart
from an extended introduction, he does not attempt to contextualise
their stories. Bearing in mind that these writers were unfamiliar
with India and often made mistakes, and the gulf of time between them
and today's reader, explanatory notes would have been worthwhile.
In his introduction Fisher makes a valid point that these narratives
were written with an eye on being published in Europe and furthering
the interests of the writers. They were important because they
greatly influenced western ideas of what India was like. Fisher also
expresses some wonder at the fact that Indian travellers abroad
during this period did not publish accounts of their travels. He
forgets the Mughals never used a printing press. The great Mughals
had libraries but they were hand-written. Who knows what narrative
accounts have been lost to us because they were mere manuscripts.
Fisher's chosen European travellers were certainly bowled over by
Incredible India, while, looking at most of them, few if any Indians
would have realised how important Europe was going to become to
India. Take for example the 16th-Century Russian horse trader Afanasy
Nikitin, who believed in a gookook bird that killed men by perching
on their houses.
His account is brief but stunning.
`The land is overstocked with people,' he sagely remarks before
embarking on a description of the goings on in a bootkhana, which
Fisher wrongly glosses as a place for bhoots or demons. Butkhana
(room for images) is an Urdu word for a temple.
Then there is the merchant Cesare Federici who visits Vijaynagar and
is one of the first Europeans to describe a sati in detail. Friar
Sebastien Manrique (1585-1669) took a short cut from South-east Asia
to Rome by travelling across Bengal and up the Ganga. At a village
halt, one of his companions strangled two tame peacocks and to
conceal the crime they ate them for dinner. They all considered their
Hindu hosts' respect for life ridiculous, but their hosts made sure
that the whole lot of them were thrown in jail and only bribery and
corruption saved the peacock-killer's hand from being chopped off.
The Englishman, William Hawkins, in contrast, spoke Turkish and was
at home in the Mughal court. He accepted emperor Jahangir's offer of
his Armenian ward's hand in marriage, and warned the emperor against
the machinations of the Catholics. A generation earlier, the Jesuit
Father Antonio Monserrate had waited in vain for Akbar to convert to
Christianity ever since he dressed in Portuguese clothes one day.
These travellers were products of their times, and in those days
there was no such concept among European Christians as `multi-faith'.
But they were not simply bigots. Fisher argues that the western
response to India, even then, was nuanced, not monolithic. This
anthology supports his view that there were different kinds of men
with different levels of understanding then, just as there are today.