EUROPE’S INDIA

Europe’s India
WO R D S , P E O P L E , E M P I R E S , 1 5 0 0 – 1 8 0 0

Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2017
Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer ica

First printing

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, author.
Title: Eu rope’s India : words, people, empires, 1500–1800 /
Sanjay Subrahmanyam.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016036668 | ISBN 9780674972261 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Europe— Civilization— Indic influences. |
India— Civilization—European influences. | India—Foreign public
opinion, European— History. | Europeans— Attitudes— History. |
Orientalism— History.
Classification: LCC DS446 S78 2017 | DDC 303.48/240540903— dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/2016036668
For Jaivir Singh
 CONTENTS

PR EFACE ix

Introduction: Before and Beyond “Orientalism” 1

1
On the Indo-Portuguese Moment 45

2
The Question of “Indian Religion” 103

3
Of Coproduction: The Case of James Fraser, 1730–1750 144

4
The Transition to Colonial Knowledge 211

By Way of Conclusion: On India’s Europe 286

ABBREVIATIONS 327

NOTES 329

INDEX 383
 PREFACE

Kinder statt Inder (“Children in place of Indians”): this enigmatic and

arresting slogan put forward by a conservative politician was much
on people’s minds in the years 2000 and 2001, when I happened to
be visiting and learning German in Berlin. It referred to the per-
ceived threat of a mass invasion by educated Indians, armed with
degrees in computer science and such, who would arrive in Germany
and thereby deprive “real” Germans of their livelihood. Some timid
moves had been made by the German government to give a few visa
concessions to computer scientists, and this was the populist reac-
tion: why not make our own baby computer scientists rather than
importing them from India? At the same time, as part of a small
group of Indians visiting a prestigious academic institution in the
German capital over that year, we were also frequently assured of
how much middle-class Germans “loved” India, not only in the ab-
stract and at a distance, but by visiting it regularly, and even by
bringing a strange dish called Currywurst into their gamut of fast
food, or Imbiss. Allegedly invented after World War II, this dish con-
sisted of pork sausage (or Bratwurst) topped with tomato paste (or
ketchup) and seasoned with some odd form of prefabricated curry
powder, which had apparently been obtained from British troops sta-
tioned in Germany.
Perhaps the Currywurst was my Proustian madeleine; at any rate
it did lead me to the first concrete steps toward this project.1 But a
germ of this book may have existed before then, even if somewhat
unconsciously. A couple of years earlier, in May 1998, I found my-
self in Kozhikode and Kochi (or, if one prefers, Calicut and Cochin)

ix
x P R E FA C E

with a varied cast of characters, for a strange event that was osten-
sibly intended to reflect on the fifth centenary of the arrival of Vasco
da Gama in India, and its long-term implications for Europe-India
dealings. Each of those present—from Amiya Bagchi and Partha
Chatterjee to Kesavan Veluthat and Raghava Varier—brought a dif-
ferent perspective and expertise to bear on the reflection, and I con-
tinued to mull over the enigma of Europe’s relations to India in the
following years. However, a variety of other projects—on historiog-
raphy, on Indo-Persian travel accounts, on go-betweens and “aliens,”
and so on— always took precedence. Eventually, however, I have
managed to clear enough mental space to address this project, and I
hope that the gradual mulling over (a process modeled on the wine-
press, rather than the hot house) has had a positive effect on the end
product.
Some scholars are apparently disciplined enough to organize their
lives sequentially, so that one project follows another in orderly
fashion. Most, I suspect, are not, and I certainly belong to the latter
and quite disorderly category. Since I tend to think about various in-
tellectual projects at once, they sometimes get in the way of one
another, and the conflict can—at worst— even bring the business of
research and writing to a calamitous standstill. The reasonable way
around it is to prioritize, and to decide which projects are “big” and
which ones are “small,” or to place them on front and back burners,
at least for a certain time. External deadlines can at times be useful
in this respect too, so long as one responds well psychologically to
the stimulus of grumpy letters or irate messages from a volume’s ed-
itor or from a press for whom one has a long-overdue project.
All this is by way of an approach to this book, whose central
themes—as I noted above—I may have been thinking about inter-
mittently since at least the late 1990s, when I was also teaching for
an extended duration at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences So-
ciales (Paris). I began addressing some of its questions there, as part
of my weekly seminar at 11 AM on Tuesday mornings in 105 Bou-
levard Raspail, and even spoke casually of the project to one or two
publishers, with whom my conversations never extended beyond a
vague expression of interest to a firm commitment. My interest was
further sparked by co-organizing a two-day conference in early 1998
 P R E FA C E xi

entitled “Doors to Asia,” in which some of the themes in this book

were discussed by a variety of participants; but I was also probably
influenced by some edited volumes that I was given at the time and
which had emerged from the Pa risian milieu, such as L’Inde et
l’Imaginaire (1988) and Rêver l’Asie (1993).2
These reflections eventually led me in turn to think at great length
and more systematically about two impor tant works that had ap-
peared at roughly the same time. The first and lesser-known of these
was Partha Mitter’s Much Maligned Monsters (1977), a dense work of
considerable originality produced under the supervision of Ernst
Gombrich.3 I have read and reread my copy of this book, and will
freely admit that it was in many respects another point of intellectual
departure for this one. I was fortunate at much the same time to
meet and have discussions with Partha Mitter himself on several
occasions, and these meetings became more frequent during the
brief time (from 2002 to 2004) when I taught at Oxford and he was
navigating between Brighton and Oxford. However, my approach,
unlike his, was not primarily from the viewpoint of art history, but
as an archive- and text-based historian who also sometimes used
images. Nevertheless, despite some differences of method and opinion
here or there, it is important for me to note this intellectual debt from
the outset.
The other book was far more celebrated and also controversial,
namely Edward W. Said’s Orientalism (1978). Although this work was
already sometimes discussed in Delhi when I was a doctoral student
in the early 1980s, its impact there only attained important dimen-
sions in the latter half of the 1980s—by which time it had already
been elevated to the status of a cult classic elsewhere. Since Said had
mainly focused in his work on the Arabic-speaking “Orient,” it fell
in the fi rst instance to two Chicago-based scholars to attempt to
“apply” his insights to India. One of these, Bernard Cohn, did so in
a series of essays that was eventually collected as a short book, Colo-
nialism and Its Forms of Knowledge (1996); the other, Ronald Inden,
first published a long and somewhat intemperate essay entitled “Ori-
entalist Constructions of India” in Modern Asian Studies in 1986,
following it up with a book on the same subject four years later, en-
titled Imagining India.4 By about 1990, when the Saïdian strand of
xii P R E FA C E

thought had made a significant impact on Indian historiography via

Subaltern Studies, a counter- current equally emerged, largely ex-
pressed by orthodox Marxist literary critics and historians. These
writers centered their criticisms on what they felt were Said’s own
unjustified attacks on Marx’s writings regarding India and the
“Orient” more generally; but they were also concerned about res-
cuing some “good” Orientalists from being tarred with the same
brush as the others. For example, the Hungarian orientalist Ignác
Goldziher (1850–1921) was described as being free of prejudice in his
writings on Islam and Muslim societies, and thus treated as a direct
ancestor of scientific Marxist historiography.5
The debate has now gone on for a quarter-century, producing a
complex set of refractions, with the Saïdian and Foucauldian inter-
preters of colonial Indian history now being opposed not only by
proponents of orthodox Marxist historiography but by defenders of
the so-called continuity thesis, some of whom have wished to paper
over differences between precolonial and colonial political regimes
and knowledge systems. Adding further complexity to the mix is the
emergence of a strand among intellectual historians of Europe who
yearn to reestablish the innocence and purity of their “heroes’ ” mo-
tives both before and during the Enlightenment. Such historians
(who often unabashedly term themselves “fossils”) would thus see
depictions of India or West Asia in seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century texts as simple and transparent acts of “translation,” un-
connected to questions either of power or of actual and potential
violence; they are indeed strange bedfellows of the orthodox Marx-
ists mentioned above.6 Behind their writings, one can often see a
barely concealed anxiety regarding the identity-politics of con-
temporary Europe, and a desire to affirm their own genealogies as
“knowing subjects.” From my own point of view, while gladly ad-
mitting the force of a certain number of critiques of Orientalism
(which most scholars would now admit is a quite careless and slap-
dash work on a variety of historical matters), I fear that the critics of
the book may at this point be at risk of throwing the baby out with
the bathwater in their eagerness to score trivial points.7 In the first
place, it seems to me that at least some of Said’s critique of Orien-
talist knowledge should be separated from its ostensible anchoring
 P R E FA C E xiii

in Foucault’s more general theory of knowledge / power, which—as

is by now well-known—is neither linked in any particular way to
the study of colonies and empires nor associated with other “exotic”
objects. Indeed, French historians who had closely collaborated with
Foucault, when paying critical tribute to his work in the early 1990s
in works like Michel Foucault: Lire l’œuvre (1992), for the most part
resolutely turned their backs on questions of empire and colony.8
Second, it appears to me perfectly legitimate to ask how the concrete
and institutional conditions within which certain forms of knowledge
were produced affected both the form and the content of the knowl-
edge itself, rather than assuming—in some falsely naïve manner—
that knowledge is by its very nature neutral and innocent, and just
one of those things of which “more is better than less.” If the institu-
tions in question included imperial political formations, then they
too must be taken fully into consideration. But let us make no mistake:
this is very much a post-Saïdian book, rather than an effort to return
to and revive old quarrels, or merely pick at old scabs.
The organ ization of the book then is broadly, but not strictly,
chronological. It opens with a lengthy introduction, which sets out
inter alia the contrasting situations of a series of Frenchmen in
Mughal India, including that of the celebrated philosopher-traveler
François Bernier. The purpose of these juxtaposed vignettes is to un-
derline the varied social positions and intellectual stances that Eu-
ropeans (even those from a single nation) could take in and on India,
even within a limited time frame such as the seventeenth century.
The Introduction also provides a sweeping chronological outline
of the three centuries under examination, as the Europeans gradually
were transformed, albeit in fits and starts, from marginal coastal players
to substantial territorial conquerors. The first chapter then moves
on to a close consideration of the sixteenth century, the extended mo-
ment of Indo-Portuguese interaction. This chapter sets out to show
how the Portuguese adopted two broad modes of understanding, one
more textual and philological (best represented by chroniclers such
as João de Barros), the other more oral and ethnographic, often stem-
ming from their experience as Christian missionaries. It analyzes
how a series of significant topoi emerged in the course of the century,
which then persisted into the subsequent period as durable intellec-
xiv P R E FA C E

tual anchorages, or even lenses through which India was read. No-
table among these was the much-debated term “caste” (from the Por-
tuguese casta), but there were also a number of other concepts which
different writers approached through a variety of perspectives. Even-
tually, by the end of the sixteenth century, we perceive the crystal-
lization of certain stable forms of understanding, with respect to
both the north Indian polities of the time (such as the emergent, and
supposedly “despotic” or “tyrannical,” Mughal empire), and the socie-
ties to be found at the time in peninsular India.
The second chapter considers a series of texts from the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries that describe and analyze the ques-
tion of “Gentile religion” in India. Predominantly produced in penin-
sular and southern India, these texts provided both an empirical
density that had been absent in the sixteenth century (though they too
were rarely based on rigorous procedures of translating Indian mate-
rials), and a contrasting and fragmentary set of images and visions. Yet,
contrary to what might have been expected, by the early eighteenth
century such widely diverse materials were being harnessed in the
ser vice of a set of projects to demonstrate that the Indian “Gentiles”
(or, more rarely, “Hindoos”) all belonged to a single religion, just as
“caste” was understood not as a loose orga nizing principle but as a
rigorous and unitary system.
Even so, attitudes could and did vary, with significant conse-
quences. Chapter 3 thus proceeds on a detailed examination of the
career and context of a single figure, that of the Scotsman James
Fraser (1712–1754). Resident in western India for extended periods
in the 1730s and 1740s, Fraser chose to apprentice himself to a series
of Indian masters, and was thus initiated into a fair level of knowl-
edge concerning the Indo-Persian culture of the time. His knowl-
edge of, and respect for, the “gentiles” (and more particularly the
baniyās of Gujarat) was apparently far more limited. Through a set
of initiations, Fraser was able to collect an important corpus of texts
and describe them clearly for European readers of the time. One way
of approaching a figure such as Fraser could be through a broad con-
cept like “empathy,” but this would probably be both inexact and
unduly sentimental. Rather, it may be said that what we witness with
him is a distinct sense of the value and scholarly integrity of the in-
 P R E FA C E xv

tellectual traditions he found in western India, even if they were not

the same as (or even similar to) those from his own “native” cultural
context. However, we may note that such attitudes were also related
to a particular political context, when Eu ropeans still did not try to
dominate the subcontinent.
Chapter 4 closely follows the vicissitudes of a series of diverse
Europeans—a Frenchman, a Portuguese, a Franco-Swiss, and a
Scotsman—into the latter half of the eighteenth century and the
early nineteenth century. Although some of these figures also
emerged as major collectors of Indian materials— one of them, An-
toine Polier, possibly brought back the first extensive version of the
four Vedas to Europe—their attitudes toward Indian society and cul-
ture had begun to be transformed, at times into a barely concealed
mixture of distrust and contempt and on other occasions to a clear
sense that what they beheld was both exotic and intrinsically infe-
rior to their own culture. At the same time, there is a clearer emer-
gence in this period of a common sense of “Eu ropean” identity
among these same actors, in the face of their extended experience of
alterity.
In sum, readers will be aware that three common trajectories have
been used to represent (or emplot) how Europeans saw India between
about 1500 and 1800. One of these is simply cumulative, as a slow
move from lesser to greater knowledge, mediated by ever-growing
and deeper contacts. A second is a portrayal in which an initial set
of prejudices, often based on deep religious hostility, gave way to a
far more “objective” understanding, largely on account of the secu-
larization of European knowledge-forms, especially as a result of the
Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is given the place of prime
mover in this trajectory, also on account of the assumption that it
encouraged a far more self-critical approach on the part of its
thinkers. The third viewpoint radically rejects the first two and por-
trays the existence of a persistent and stable (or at least homeostatic)
set of misunderstandings, and mistranslations, as characterizing the
relationship between Eu rope and India, sometimes through some
version of the idea of “cultural incommensurability.” In an earlier
work, Courtly Encounters (2012), I dealt at length with this last con-
struct, and I will not repeat my arguments here. Suffice it to say that
xvi P R E FA C E

this book rejects all three of these common portrayals, the first two
as being quite simplistic forms of teleology, and the third as being
for all intents and purposes ahistorical in nature. Dif ferent forms of
knowledge and modes of knowledge-production existed, and some-
times they and their adherents struggled bitterly with one another.
This is the reason a close attention to context is always essential,
and this is also the reason it is no simple matter to provide a stark
outline of this work and its main thrust. I must therefore hope that
the reader will approach this book not through a lecture en diagonale,
but with some attention to the precise construction of each chapter
and its arguments.
This book has been written in a variety of institutional settings,
and thus reflects the outcomes of a number of dif ferent intellectual
conversations. The time afforded me by a John Simon Guggenheim
Foundation Fellowship in 2011–2012 was crucial to getting the project
on its feet. Some of the research was done when I was Kluge Professor
at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in the summer of
2013, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Carolyn
Brown as well as other staff of the Kluge Center for their help and
hospitality. My home institution for the past decade or so, the Depart-
ment of History at UCLA, was where most of the research was done,
thanks in particular to the rich resources of the Charles E. Young
Research Library and the aid of its staff (and despite its notoriously
cranky catalog). Extended periods spent at the Collège de France
in Paris since 2013 have helped me bring a slightly dif ferent per-
spective to this project, and the discerning reader will surely find a
hint of Gallic flavor here or there. In 2016, I delivered a series of six
lectures with the general title “L’Europe et l’Inde: Collections,
représentations, projections, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles,” at the Collège
in which I polished my reflections, even as I was sending this manu-
script to press. Lectures and seminars in several institutions across
the continents have also been helpful in bringing my scattered
thoughts together, and I thank all those who have welcomed me and
commented on this work when it was in progress, whether at Boston
University, the University of Delhi, Vanderbilt University, the Uni-
versity of Arizona, or Northwestern University. By way of individual
names, I shall mention only an essential few: Alaka and Kaushik Basu
 P R E FA C E xvii

(in their Washington, D.C., incarnation), Naindeep Singh Chann,

Partha Chatterjee, Carl Ernst, Jorge Flores, Kathy Fraser, Carlo
Ginzburg, Hal Gladfelder, Grégoire Holtz, Rajeev Kinra, Maria
Augusta Lima Cruz, Giuseppe Marcocci, Claude Markovits, Peter J.
Marshall, Velcheru Narayana Rao, Amina Taha-Hussein Okada,
Kapil Raj, Jonathan Spencer, Frédéric Tinguely, Kesavan Veluthat,
and Ângela Barreto Xavier. As always, I am grateful to my old friend
and intellectual ally Muzaffar Alam for his generosity and unstinting
help. Caroline Ford accompanied the project through its highs and
lows, and across its diverse and sometimes difficult institutional and
archival settings. Bill Nelson was as prompt and efficient as ever with
the maps. To all of them, my thanks, and to many others who are
not mentioned here individually. The book is dedicated to an old
friend and comrade-in-arms (as well as pots and pans), going back
notably to IEG Hostel and the “bad old days” of the Charpai Wars
in Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh.
EUROPE’S INDIA
 INTRODUCTION
Before and Beyond “Orientalism”

For the rest: beware of Mughal women [andare attento con as

mogolie] In Bengal, there is a very large number of Portuguese
who have taken refuge and are ruined, and whose women are
a burden on everyone over there. Almost all the Dutch and the
English have their own [women], but even so they are often
nicely trapped, and not only do they lose their souls, but also
their goods and their bodies. And this even more so if they
begin to drink this bowl-of-punch [ce bouleponge] in quantity,
as well as arrack; whereupon they become incontinent
and rotten with the mal de l’Inde, and at any rate they shake
all over. Good provision must therefore be made for Spanish
wine against the bad air, but taken in full moderation.
—François Bernier, Mémoire (1668)

The “Mal de l’Inde”

Unwary Europeans could come to grief from a variety of causes in

India: fire in the towns, alcoholism, unscrupulous women. Or so it
appeared to the French doctor, philosopher, astronomer and traveler
François Bernier, who found himself in the great western Indian port
city of Surat in late 1667 and early 1668, roughly a decade into the
reign of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb-‘Alamgir (r. 1658–1707),
while seeking a passage home after about ten years spent in India.
At this time, Bernier was in his late forties, and he believed himself
to be generally well-respected among the diverse community of
Eu ropeans resident in the États du Grand Mogol, though he had his
occasional detractors. Complex forms of class resentment seem to
have existed then too, dividing where sentiments of race and religion

1
2 EUROPE’S INDIA

ostensibly united. For these Europeans were often self-made men,

or somewhat more rarely women; in their occupations, they ranged
widely from Catholic priests and artillery experts to translators, jew-
elers, painters, builders, and merchants. A few were aristocrats or
close enough, but many were really in India because it meant the pos-
sibility of social mobility that they could not easily have had access
to in Europe.
Bernier was at neither of the two extremes of this spectrum.
Rather, he was known by other Eu ropeans to possess a superior
formal education: born in Joué (in the region of Anjou), he had spent
time in the 1640s in Paris, studying with the noted philosopher
Pierre Gassendi, professor of mathematics for a time in the Collège
Royal.1 After travels in Germany and Italy, accompanying a well-born
Provençal gentilhomme by the name of François Boysson, Bernier
had returned to France in the early 1650s to become the secretary
of Gassendi, whose work he had by now already defended publicly
and in print against some of his more violent critics. At the same
time, he managed to obtain a medical degree from the Faculty of
Montpellier, and in the process came to be well-acquainted with the
anatomist Jean Pecquet, one of the better-known members of that
faculty at the time. When the sickly Gassendi died in Paris in late
October 1655, it might have been expected that Bernier would have
stayed on in France to help publish and further divulge the works
of his master. Instead he chose—for reasons that are still not en-
tirely clear beyond the stereotypical “desire to see the world” (le
désir de voir le monde)—to leave France on a long voyage. In early
1656, he set sail from Marseille for the eastern Mediterranean, where
he can be found later that year, tending to a plague epidemic among
the expatriate French community at Rashid in Egypt. After spending
nearly two years between Cairo, Jerusalem, and other nearby sites,
Bernier decided to strike out even farther east. A voyage via the ports
of Jiddah and Mokha in the Red Sea in 1658 seems to have brought
him, by the end of that year or perhaps in early 1659, to Surat, the
same port where he found himself again nearly a decade later, in
early 1668.
In the intervening years, we know from Bernier’s own testimony
and some other sources that he managed to find a powerful patron
 INTRODUCTION 3

in the form of the Iranian amīr and intellectual Mulla Muhammad

Shafi‘ Yazdi, who held the title of Danishmand Khan; this noble, who
had probably arrived in India as a trader in the 1640s, had by the
later years of his career attained the post of mīr bakhshī and the ele-
vated mansab rank of 5000/2000.2 Bernier came to be known and
appreciated generally in the Mughal court for his medical skills, and
by Danishmand Khan personally for his knowledge of the classical
tradition in Greek and Latin, and of more contemporary Eu ropean
intellectual developments. In a letter to his erstwhile companion and
patron, François Boysson, Seigneur de Merveilles, ostensibly written
from Delhi in December 1664 (though reasonable doubt can be cast
on this dating), Bernier noted that “my Navab or Agah, Danech-
mend Kan, awaits me in the camp impatiently. He cannot deprive
himself of philosophizing during the entire post-dinner concerning
the books of Gassendy and Descartes, on the globe and the sphere,
or on anatomy, rather than pass the whole morning on the great
affairs of the kingdom in his capacity as Secretary of State for for-
eign affairs, and of Grand Master of the Cavalry.”3
Bernier’s self-presentation here, as on many other occasions, was
deliberately Janus-faced: if, on the one hand, he had apparently
brought the best of European knowledge in its post-Galilean mo-
ment to the Islamic world of the Mughals, he also eventually brought
the reality of the Mughals to a European audience.4 Four works pub-
lished in 1670 and 1671 by the Paris publisher Claude Barbin quickly
consolidated his reputation as the principal interpreter of India
in Europe in his generation: first, the Histoire de la dernière révolution
des Estats du Grand Mogol, and the Evenemens particuliers; and then the
two epistolary collections from 1671, both entitled Suite des Mémoires
du Sieur Bernier. Many of these were quickly translated by the mid-
1670s into English, Italian, Dutch, and German, assuring him an even
larger audience.
But Bernier in Surat, in March 1668, was called upon to play a
rather dif ferent role than the “cosmopolitan” guise in which he usu-
ally presented himself in these published works.5 Rather, he was being
appealed to as a patriotic Frenchman to place his considerable knowl-
edge of the political, cultural, and commercial scene in India at the
disposal of the newly-formed Compagnie royale des Indes Orientales.
4 EUROPE’S INDIA

This chartered trading Company was largely the brainchild of Louis

XIV’s powerful minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and its first ships had
left France for the Indian Ocean in March 1665.6 From an initial base
in Madagascar, a fleet of vessels, under the command of the Com-
pany’s surly and quarrelsome director-general François Caron, even-
tually reached Surat in mid-February  1668 with the intention of
establishing trade factories in the Mughal domains.7 These ships had
already been preceded by a set of envoys, sent overland via Iran to
Agra, who had attempted with limited success to obtain concessions
from the Mughal court. It was in these circumstances that Bernier
penned a Mémoire . . . pour l’établissement du commerce dans les Indes, a
text that he never chose to publish during his lifetime, for reasons
that will become evident.
In this text, Bernier set himself several tasks. First, he described
the strategies of self-presentation that the French should employ, in
comparison to the other Europeans who had preceded them to India,
notably the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, and the Danes.
Second, he laid out the key personages through whom business could
effectively be transacted at the Mughal court and beyond, such as in
the Deccan sultanate of Golkonda. Third, he offered detailed advice
on the proper conventions and practices regarding trade, as well as
more generally what it meant to be a European in India. In short, he
temporarily abandoned the lofty perspective for which he is usually
known for the nitty-gritty of realpolitik, including the calculated use
of what he insistently terms “dissimulation.” Here is how he began
his text:

I have some grounds for suspecting that our rivals have spread
the impression at Court that the French belong to a king who
is very powerful and that we are a warlike, imperious and tur-
bulent nation. Therefore, it seems to me that it would, at the
beginning, be a good thing to try to remove from the mind of
Aurangzeb and the ministers every ground for fearing that we
should one day become too powerful in these regions. For, at
the Court, people remember well what the Portuguese used to
be and already they are beginning to be very jealous of the power
of the Dutch, because they hold, as it were, at their door [of the
 INTRODUCTION 5

Mughal empire], all these fortresses of Ceylon, Paliecatte, and

Cochin, that they sell spices and copper at an excessive price,
dearer than ever did the Portuguese, that they carry out justice
for themselves by force, threatening and capturing their ships
from Moka which carry their Agis [hājīs] or pilgrims there for
Mecca, and return laden with the riches of the goods which they
have taken there with them, and that they attempt by all sorts
of devices to ruin the trade of the people of the country. This
being so, it will be enough, in my opinion, for the present to
speak little of the power and greatness of our King, contenting
ourselves with saying simply that he is one of the great ones of
Frangistan, and not to insist so much as to say that he is greater
than the King of England or of Portugal or of Denmark or of
Holland, for these are the only ones they know; God helping
they will in time learn well enough how matters stand. The time
is not yet.

There is little mistaking the ominous flavor of that last phrase: il n’est
pas encore temps. It obviously suggests that the time will come when
the French nation will be revealed in its full glory and power, but
for now the order of the day must indeed be concealment and dis-
simulation. Bernier then lays out the principal personages at the
Mughal court for the Company’s purposes: on the one hand, the wazīr
Ja‘far Khan ‘Umdat al-Mulk, and his son Namdar Khan (as well as a
certain Mulla Saleh, who was a close member of their circle); on the
other, Diyanat Khan, the sometime head of the dīwān-i buyūtāt and
his son Rustam Khan, “our great friend who speaks Portuguese and
Latin.”8 There was also the ace-in-the-hole, in the form of Danish-
mand Khan himself, but he had to be used with caution, in view of his
difficult relations with Ja‘far Khan. All in all, it seemed to Bernier
that it was the wazīr who had to be brought around, and convinced
that the French were no threat, unlike the aggressive Dutch.

I think it above all necessary to make Jaferkan [ Ja‘far Khan]

thoroughly understand, and this must be done tactfully, the real
reason which the French have had for founding this Company
and for coming to India. Our object must be, as I have said, to
6 EUROPE’S INDIA

disabuse them of all prejudicial suspicion [tout mauvais soubçon]

and to make them thoroughly understand that it is for the good
of Indistan. We must try to make them thoroughly understand
these points; that of all the Frangis the most industrious and the
greatest workers are the French, that it is to France that almost
all the commodities go from foreign countries to be worked up
there, that France is as it were the general karkané [Persian
kārkhāna, workshop] of Frangistan, and as it were the warehouse
to which all the nations of that region come to supply themselves
with manufactures; that in consequence they have need of an
abundance of commodities of all kinds; that they are obliged to
go and seek them out in foreign countries, such as in Italy and
the kingdom of Kondekar or Grand Seigneur and others which
are sold there much dearer than in Indistan; that further they
are obliged to take a great quantity of those commodities which
the Dutch and the English bring from the Indies and to buy
them very dear at the price which they wish, that for these
reasons the merchants of France in a body went to pray their
King to permit them to found a company, like the Dutch and
the English, to come themselves to the Indies to trade, to take
there their scarlet and other wares, and to bring back those which
the Dutch bring back and come and sell them so excessively
dear.

The line that Bernier wishes to sell then is, as he well knows, far from
the truth, since he is well aware that the principal initiative for the
Company comes from the French Crown, and not at all the merchant
class. However, he would rather that this be kept from high Mughal
functionaries; “it would be à propos,” he writes, “not to reveal and per-
haps even to deny that our King has a share in the capital of the
Company.” The formal embassy sent to the Mughal court should also
be a modest affair, rather than one surrounded by too much of a
show. It would be best “if every thing at all times gave the impres-
sion of the merchant, of the stranger newly arrived.”
Further, Bernier was also aware that the French had a certain
number of other skeletons in their closet in Asia. Chief among these
was the case of a corsair by the name of Hubert Hugo, a Dutchman
 INTRODUCTION 7

who had recently operated in the western Indian Ocean in 1661–1662

using French letters- of-marque (issued by Louis XIV’s uncle, the
Duc de Vendôme), and who in his ship Den Swarten Arent had repeat-
edly attacked Mughal and other shipping.9 On this matter, here is
what Bernier writes:

As for the question of Huges, he who came some years ago to

execute that pretty business at Moka, I do not think that they
will reopen it; but in any case if they were to talk about it I should
advise adroit dissimulation on that subject as far as possible, and
then if they insisted, to say that he is not a Frenchman, that he
is a Dutchman, and, if it seems expedient, that they have had
his goods and that they have let him out of prison; that the
French had never been to the Indies and that if he [Hugo] had
brought a few of them, he must have deceived them making
them believe that he was going to take them to the Canaries or
to some other islands. These are things which I have already said
because this business has passed through my hands as I informed
Mr. Carron; I was protecting the honor of my nation and did a
good deed to the Dutch. My advice would be that that man
should not come to Indistan, at least so soon. Our enemies might
well make it an excuse for making us hated and try to make us
pass for pirates, seeing us support a man who passes for a pirate
and for a pirate of Moka, which is the worst of all; all the Mu-
hammadans being very regardful of these vessels, seeing that
they carry their Agis or Pilgrims for Mecca.

Bernier’s sage advice does not seem to have fallen on fertile ground.
The French did not manage— any more than the Portuguese, the
Dutch, or the English—to persuade their Indian interlocutors that
they were a peaceful nation, engrossed solely in commerce. But his
Mémoire does underline some of the fundamental tensions that ex-
isted in Euro-Indian relations in these centuries of “contained con-
flict,” which preceded the formal conquest of India by the English
East India Company. At the heart of the matter was the relationship
between alterity and self-representation. How did the Eu ropeans
perceive India and Indians, and how did these perceptions change
8 EUROPE’S INDIA

over time? How did various European nations present themselves,

and how dif ferent were they supposed to be from one another?
The French faced a par tic u lar problem, because they had come
somewhat late to India, as they did to America. Despite some failed,
and indeed rather amateurish, attempts in the course of the sixteenth
century, they had not managed, even as late as 1620, to establish a
single commercial outpost on the subcontinent.10 In this matter, they
had been outdone by many of the other powers in Western Europe,
a matter of ongoing embarrassment. In January 1624, the merchant
and explorer from Normandy, Augustin de Beaulieu, who was at that
time on official business in Rome, had sought to remedy this state
of affairs.11 Beaulieu had returned to Europe in late 1622 after an ex-
tended sojourn in Southeast Asia, notably in Aceh, where he had ob-
tained some trading concessions from Sultan Iskandar Muda.12 An
inveterate maker of plans and projects, Beaulieu addressed one such
in a letter to an unknown correspondent, undoubtedly someone quite
highly placed in the French state apparatus or nobility. The letter it-
self was personally carried by an unnamed Englishman, who it turned
out had approached Beaulieu five or six months earlier through a
third party with a concrete plan to break into the India trade. The
mysterious go-between had at first left him suspicious, and besides
Beaulieu feared that having an English collaborator would mean
that the Dutch and English would get together against him, as they
had done on an earlier voyage he had made to Banten in 1617.
He then explained his change of heart. “But, the said carrier [of the
letter] having taken the trouble to pass through these lands [Rome]
himself, and having explained to me the voyages he had made, the
places where he had been employed, and the profits that could be
gained from such an enterprise, it awoke in me the desire that I had
always had to help conduct an honorable and profitable voyage which,
following what was proposed to me by my interlocutor, would be to
go to the lands of the Great Mogol, which is the most honorable and
profitable enterprise that the French can carry out in the East In-
dies.” Beaulieu had convinced himself that the French would be
better received at the Mughal court than any other European nation
[que nulle autre nation d’Europe], and that the enterprise in question
would at one and the same time yield profits to the entrepreneurs
 INTRODUCTION 9

involved and be of general utility to France, the more so because it

would mean trading with “the greatest and richest prince in all of
the Indies.” In order to do so, he added, the French would need to
have a large sum of liquid cash [argent comptant], but also “diverse
manufactures, niceties, and the rarities that are made in Paris, con-
cerning which he [the Mughal] is very curious and which he pays for
more liberally than any other prince of the said Indies.” The reputa-
tion for opulence and generosity of the Mughal emperor Nur-ud-Din
Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) was thus at the center of the presentation, as
was the great prosperity of his domains.
But equally important for the success of the project are the per-
sonal qualities and history of the Englishman who had sought Beau-
lieu out. Here is what he says about him:

The carrier [of the letter] . . . has been employed by the English
Company in the court of the said Prince, where he remained
for about two years and came to be very well-known there, even
by the Great Mogol, with whom he had the honor of speaking
several times, and he sold him a great number of precious stones
and rarities which produced most notable profits for the English
Company; and I am well assured that the greatest advances or
profits that the English have made in the East Indies stem from
the very free traffic they have with the said country, as this car-
rier will be able to tell you precisely and carefully, if you do him
the honor of hearing him out; he is English by nation, and has
seen a great deal and made the voyage to the Indies both by sea
and overland, speaks good Persian, and will make an opening
for you in the trade in silks from the said country, which re-
mains an excellent plan [beau dessein] and there is no-one who
can speak of it more pertinently than him; he is married and
even took his wife to the court of the Great Mughal. He has
rendered great ser vice to those of his Company, and I have heard
that he is highly esteemed in the Indies by those of his nation,
who considered him one of the ablest men who had been in the
ser vice of their Company; but because of some unhappiness he
had with it [the Company], he withdrew, and he is not the only
one, for several other Englishmen have been making overtures
10 EUROPE’S INDIA

to me for some time, regarding similar voyages. The said

gentlemen of the English Company, like those of the Company
in this country, are much too keen to turn the screws on people
who have rendered them faithful ser vices.

There are enough concrete elements in this description to help us

get a full sense of the man’s identity: a Persian speaker who had re-
sided for an extended period in the Mughal court, had even taken
his wife there, and was greatly interested in the jewel trade; someone
who had made trips to India from England by the Cape Route as well
as overland through the Ottoman Empire and Iran, but who by the
early 1620s had left the Company’s ser vice. A careful look at the rec-
ords of the English East India Company makes it clear that only
one man fits this profile: Richard Steele, a native of Bristol, who ap-
pears a number of times in the Company’s archives and papers in
the 1610s and 1620s. His first appearance is in 1614, when he and a
certain Richard Newman were sent from Aleppo to Iran in pursuit
of the somewhat infamous and crooked John Midnall (or Milden-
hall), who had embezzled funds from his compatriots and fled over-
land toward India. Midnall had visited India earlier, during the last
years of the reign of the emperor Akbar, and claimed some exper-
tise on the area, but he was no longer alive in the 1620s when Beau-
lieu wrote his proposal. Over the course of the 1610s, Steele then
spent more time in Safavid Iran, and came to be relatively well-
acquainted with the Persian language and culture.13 But rather than
being perceived as an asset, this aspect—as well as his general pen-
chant for self-promotion, and eccentric engineering projects—
brought him into conflict with powerful men, such as the English
ambassador to the Mughal court, Sir Thomas Roe.14 Roe portrayed
Steele and his wife, Frances Webbe, as thorns in his flesh while he
was trying to negotiate at Jahangir’s court. When they all returned
to London in 1619, Steele was accused by the Company of having
“wronged my Lord Embassador by a false and surmised contesta-
tion and arrogating a higher title and place to himself then ever was
intended,” and it was also noted that but he “hath brought home a
great private trade, [and] put the Company to an extraordinarye
charge by a wife and children.”15 One can thus see why Steele was
 INTRODUCTION 11

disgruntled, but so far as we are aware, he was never able to imple-

ment his project with Beaulieu, even though he had apparently even
indicated his willingness to become a subject of the King of France
(Beaulieu writes: “si on prenoit quelque resolution en ladicte entreprise,
il se ferait naturaliser”). Rather, he returned briefly to the ser vice of
the English Company, and after another brief stint in Indonesia in
the years 1626–1628 disappears from view.16
Beaulieu makes it clear, however, that he did not depend on Steele
alone to engage with the Mughals. Among others whom he believed
he could count on at the Mughal court at this time, he mentioned “a
Frenchman named Augustin Guerand . . . who is the most favored
foreigner of the said Prince [ Jahangir],” a garbled reference to the
jeweler from Bordeaux, Augustin Herryard, who had also briefly
been an associate of Mildenhall.17 The unusual career of Herryard
merits some mention here, notably as a foil to that of Bernier. He
first appears in London in 1604, in correspondence with the powerful
politician and spymaster, Sir Robert Cecil, who had apparently en-
gaged him to produce some false gems.18 Then, in around 1609, he
seems to have set off for the Islamic world, as we learn from a handful
of letters that he wrote while at the Mughal court. In one of these,
addressed to the veteran French diplomat, Charles Cauchon de
Maupas, Baron du Tour, from Lahore in April 1625, Herryard ex-
plains how he came to be in Jahangir’s entourage:

Monsieur, The first acquaintance I had with your Lordship was

in London when the King sent you to congratulate King James,
the new King of England, on his arrival from Scotland. I have
since been several times to see you at the Hotel de Venise in the
Faubourg St. Germain, and you have known me as a man of cu-
riosity. Among other things I was expert at counterfeiting pre-
cious stones; but as my age increased my ambition increased
also, and in order to obtain public esteem it was necessary for
me to render some remarkable ser vice to my King and Lord.
The year before Henry the Great [Henri IV] died, I decided to
travel in the Kingdoms of the East; and fi nding nothing in
Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Babylonia or Persia worthy of a
King, I passed on towards this King of the Indies, commonly
12 EUROPE’S INDIA

called the Grand Mogor or Mougoul, here entitled Jangir [ Ja-

hangir], which means Conqueror of the World, the eighth in
descent from the Great Tamerlane, who took prisoner the Grand
Turk, Sultan Bajazet, and carried him away a prisoner in an iron
cage in the year 1397, and he died on the way.19

Herryard had apparently arrived in Agra around 1612, after having

spent some time in Isfahan, where he seems to have made the ac-
quaintance of Englishmen like Robert Sherley. His skill and ingenuity
as a craftsman were quickly recognized at the Mughal court, and he
also came to be on good terms with the Jesuits there. We gather
all this from the letters of the English East India Company’s factors,
but also from a letter from the Frenchman himself, written to his
compatriots in Istanbul in 1620:

I have been in this country eight years. All the Frenchmen I had
brought with me died in the first year, and thereafter I took ser-
vice with this King, the Great Mougoul, who at first gave me 4
crowns a day (120 a month), but now during the last year he has
made me a captain of 200 horse. I made him a royal throne in
which there are several millions of gold and of silver, and sev-
eral other inventions such as cutting a diamond of 100 carats in
ten days. It is impossible to believe the magnificence of this King
and I shall mention only three [aspects] of them; his large dia-
monds; his large balas [rose-tinted] rubies of which he alone has
more than all the men in the world; and when he marches
through his kingdom, he takes with him fifteen hundred thou-
sand [1,500,000] human beings, horsemen, soldiers, officers,
women, and children, with six thousand elephants and much
artillery which serves no purpose but to show his magnificence.
He has given me two elephants and two horses, a house valued
at eight thousand livres, and his likeness in gold to put on my
hat, which is a mark of honor corresponding to the Order of the
Holy Spirit in France. I am married and have a child of two
years. Nonetheless, I have always an itching desire to revisit my
own country [ma patrie]. Some years past I wished to take leave
[lisanso], but the King did not wish to give it to me.
 INTRODUCTION 13

Did Herryard in fact enjoy as much success as he claims he did, to

the point that the Mughals did not wish to let him go? Consider his
claim, while ending one of letters, that he is now entitled “Honare-
mand, which is a name that the King has given me, in Persian it
means an inventor of arts [qui est un nom que le Roy m’a donné en
Persian veut dire inventeur des ars].” Intriguingly enough, this finds con-
firmation in Jahangir’s own memoirs, in a passage from March 1619:

On Thursday the eighth [March 18], I‘timad-ud-Daula invited

me to a kingly party in his quarters, and I honored him by
accepting. . . . Among his offering was an extremely elaborate
and intricate throne of gold and silver. The legs were made in
the shape of lions holding up the throne. It had taken three
years and a lot of work to produce and had cost four hundred
fifty thousand rupees. The throne was made by a Frank named
Hunarmand, who had no equal in the arts of goldsmithery,
carving and other skills. He had made it extremely beautifully,
and I awarded him the title [of Hunarmand].20

In another passage a few days later, Jahangir confirms the gift to

the European craftsman of cash, a horse and an elephant. Herryard
claimed that the emperor had even taken the trouble to give a name
to one of his children, to wit, “Serviteur de Christ,” which we may
take to be a rendering of the Persian ‘Abdul Masih. Married to an
Indian woman who had converted to Christianity, Herryard had at
least one other son, whom he had named Louis in honor of the French
monarch. Yet, as one reads through his letters, one gathers that Her-
ryard had progressively lost contact with the French and France. He
thus uses a pidgin, in which Italianate and Iberian usages substitute
for those in French, as we see from the regular appearance of words
such as autro, lisanso, and throno. It does not seem, however, that he
was tempted to convert to Islam, and his attachment to Christianity
remained strong even in the last of his extant letters, written from
Chaul in the Deccan, in March 1632, while he was on his way to Goa
to help the English Company in its negotiations with the Portuguese
viceroy, the Count of Linhares. In this letter, he regretted the death of
his “well-beloved master” Jahangir, and the succession of Shahjahan,
14 EUROPE’S INDIA

whom he qualified as a tyrant who is “hated by the great and the small
[aie de grans e petits],” and also noted for his cruel behav ior toward
some of his cousins who had converted to Christian ity during the
previous reign.
Bernier and Herryard are thus contrasting figures in many ways:
the one a libertin, the other a believing Christian; the one a man of
letters, the other a craftsman. But the two were also separated by a
somewhat dif ferent attitude to the matter of commerce, even if—as
we have seen above—Bernier had his own clear views on that matter.
The doctor’s distance from the realities of the trading world may be
distinguished from Herryard’s sustained interest in dealing in cu-
rious and exotic objects, be they jewels, artefacts, or even animals.
In the 1610s, Herryard had a marked obsession with elephants, and
he spoke often of sending them to Europe to turn a large profit, or
as sumptuous gifts.21 In October 1614, the English factor at Agra
wrote to Surat, stating that Robert Sherley had recently “departed,
carrying the Frenchman’s [Herryard’s] elephant with him, and swore
to me, he would make him juggle for another.”22 Herryard himself
then wrote in 1620 that “I sent an elephant through Persia with Don
Roberto Charly, father [sic: for brother] of Don Antonio Charly from
here. I intend to ask again next year for leave and to bring with me
another elephant.” A few years later, by the time of his letter to the
Baron du Tour, he had realized that things had not gone well on this
front. In that missive, he noted how he had acquired “two elephants,
of which the King gave me the male and the Prince the female. I
sent one of them with the Englishman Don Roberto Charly, now at
Madrid as Ambassador of the King of Persia; but learning that it had
died nine months into the journey, I sent afterwards a tiger and two
hunting leopards to chase deer and two other animals for coursing
hares, called siagons [siyāh-gosh, lynxes] which are unknown in Eu-
rope; and after nine months’ travel, namely at Espahan, my servant
was imprisoned at the time when the King of Persia took Ormous,
and all my animals died. I also sent a rhinoceros, but as it was savage
[ furieux], they tried to pierce its snout, from which it died.” Even in
the last of his letters, of 1632, Herryard noted his chief possessions
for his projected return to Europe (which he never carried out): “I
 INTRODUCTION 15

have an elephant and several other animals, and a certain large dia-
mond which will enable me to pass the rest of this life.”
It was effectively on account of his reputation as a collector, and a
“man of curiosity [homme curieux],” that Herryard seems to have at-
tracted the attention of the great armchair intellectual and anti-
quarian Nicolas-Fabri de Peiresc. Peiresc sought out the other to
build up a credible picture of Mughal India and its products, most
notably its precious stones (pierres précieuses), and shell formations (co-
quillages de mer). In a letter to Herryard dated July 1630, sent via a
series of New Christian intermediaries, Peiresc asked him to pro-
vide as much information on these subjects as he could, “for the
public good” (pour le bien du public).23 It is unknown whether this
letter ever reached Herryard, nor is there any trace of a response in
Peiresc’s rather extensive collection of papers.24 Nor indeed can we
be entirely certain that Bernier—whose master Gassendi was some-
thing of a disciple of Peiresc—had extensive knowledge of the French
artisan and jeweler who had preceded him by a few decades in the
Mughal court.25
These linked vignettes regarding two Frenchmen in seventeenth-
century Mughal India have been intended to serve as an introduction
to the larger set of problematics that this book seeks to address. They
bring to light the ambiguous nature of relations, on the one hand,
between Eu ropeans and Indians, and on the other hand between
dif ferent groups of Europeans in India. Both Herryard and Bernier
were far more than men of passage; rather, each had extensive deal-
ings in India, and entered into complex systems of patronage and
ser vice in a courtly milieu. Both speak of having affective relations
with their patrons, Herryard with Jahangir, and Bernier with
Danishmand Khan. Yet, they are also capable of putting consider-
able distance between themselves and India, portraying it in a manner
where the exotic and the uncomfortable (des choses étranges, in
Herryard’s words; le mal de l’Inde for Bernier) regularly come to the
fore, so that the reader in Europe is left in no doubt that they are
not in the process of dissolving into the exotic milieu. In this con-
text, the links with other Europeans appear crucial, and an exami-
nation of Herryard’s career, for example, makes it amply clear that he
16 EUROPE’S INDIA

had close relations with several Englishman like Sherley, Steele, and
Midnall on the one hand, and with the Iberians on the other. The
same is true in large measure for Bernier, who regularly mentions
his deals with the Dutch, but also with the other “Franks” who
were to be found at the Mughal court. Then again, when the occasion
arose, rivalries between Eu ropean nations could dominate, as
when the question of the French Compagnie des Indes was broached.
The chapters that follow take a broadly chronological line of de-
velopment, to show how these dif ferent tensions played out between
the time of the discovery of the Cape Route (and the regular estab-
lishment of maritime contacts between Europe and India), and the
Eu ropean conquest of the later eighteenth century. In part, the
narrative is naturally a “cumulative” one, because the number and va-
riety of agents involved in these relations grows more dense and com-
plex with the passage of time. From a sixteenth century dominated
by the Portuguese, with a handful of Italians and Germans on the
fringes, the seventeenth century sees a considerable layering of the
European presence, attracted in part by the emergence in the latter
half of the sixteenth century of a new power on a subcontinental
scale, the “Great Mughal.” Eventually, by the eighteenth century, one
arrives at a varied political economy: on the one hand, the presence
of Europeans in the coastal settlements that they could sometimes
directly control (such as Goa, Cochin, or Madras), on the other hand,
a still vigorous set of “indigenous” polities, in which the European
successors of Herryard and Bernier found a place, but which they
gradually came to subvert. Before examining these processes in
detail through a series of case studies, we may take an extended mo-
ment to consider the entire chronology between 1500 and 1800, by
way of a bird’s-eye view.

A Bird’s-Eye View

Though political, military, and diplomatic contacts between the

spaces denoted as Eu rope and India date back at least to the time of
Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) and the Indo-Greek kingdoms,
and then continued to be maintained at the time when the Roman
Empire was at its zenith, the date 1500 still marks an intensification
 INTRODUCTION 17

in the nature and extent of these dealings. Alexander was of course

a somewhat mythical figure, who was reinvented century after
century, as the nature of relations changed.26 Further, whereas once
the contacts had essentially concerned the Mediterranean fringe of
Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they increasingly
came to center on northwestern Europe, including France, the Low
Countries, and eventually even the British Isles and Scandinavia. It
was not as if the medieval centuries, from about 900 to 1400 CE,
had not seen some travelers and merchants come and go between
southern Europe and India. The most famous of these was undoubt-
edly the Venetian Marco Polo on his way home from China in the
late thirteenth century, but we can add other names to his, whether
of missionaries or others. Nevertheless, at the time of the fi rst di-
rect Portuguese voyages into the Indian Ocean at the end of the
fifteenth century, European knowledge concerning India was rela-
tively meagre.27 Unlike the Arab-speaking world, which had a good
deal of continuous contact with “al-Hind” (as India was termed by
them), the Spanish and Portuguese voyagers of the second half of the
fifteenth century had a somewhat vague notion of the contours of
the Indian Ocean.28 Even the exact geographical dispersion of the
products in which they were interested—which were mainly pepper,
high-value spices, silk, and precious stones—was not entirely known
to them. The years between 1498, when Vasco da Gama’s fleet first
arrived in the port of Calicut on the southwestern coast of India, and
1505, when the first Portuguese viceroy of the Indies, Dom Francisco
de Almeida, was sent out from Portugal, were thus years of rapid
apprenticeship.29
But the process of learning was anything but simple. This was for
a number of reasons, some quite practical and others more concep-
tual or intellectual in nature. The only language of the Indian Ocean
region the Portuguese knew (somewhat) on arriving was Arabic, and
this seems to have served them quite well in the early years. But
they soon discovered that even in order to do simple things like
buying and selling, as well as negotiating the conditions of trade with
courtiers and kings, they needed to go beyond Arabic to Malay-
alam, Malay, and Persian, and then eventually to Swahili, Konkani,
Kannada, and Tamil. In the second half of the 1510s, they came into
18 EUROPE’S INDIA

direct contact with the world of East Asia, in which Chinese was
extensively spoken. So far as we can see, the first Portuguese traders
who learned these tongues— such as Duarte Barbosa, who was in
Kerala and learned Malayalam in the fi rst quarter of the sixteenth
century— did not go much beyond a spoken version of the lan-
guage. They also depended more often than not on fi nding able
intermediaries—frequently converted Jews and Muslims—who would
make the effort of translating other languages into Portuguese for
them.30
But by the second quarter of the same century, it is clear that
the Portuguese had begun to gain a more defi nite sense of the
nature and extent of Asian written materials, both in the context
of diplomatic dealings and of missionary efforts. It became evident
to them that behind each of these languages was a complex culture
and sometimes a very extensive literary tradition. Grappling with
these traditions was necessary, for example, if one wished to have a
better sense of the “religious” beliefs of those whom one encountered
and wanted to convert to Christian ity. Further, by the middle de-
cades of the sixteenth century, India (and Asia more generally) had
become a real object of interest for secular Eu ropean intellectuals.
How could one write a history of India without being able to access
the textual traditions of the Indians themselves? Faced with such
issues, chroniclers like João de Barros (1496–1570) set out to collect
at least some of the relevant materials, whether in Persian or the
Indian languages, in the process of writing texts like the Décadas da
Ásia, the first part of which appeared in print in 1552, followed by a
second and a third part in 1553 and 1563, respectively. Here, Barros
distinguished himself from his contemporaries in Italy such as
Giovanni Battista Ramusio, who though they produced large com-
pendia of written materials on Asia—Ramusio’s Navigationi et Viaggi
(1550) being a recognized classic— did so without much reference to
Asian textual traditions.31
Therefore, we can say that beginning in the sixteenth century, the
process of representing what India was in Europe became linked in
a variety of ways to collecting objects and written materials on that
part of the world. Furthermore, the objects that were collected were
sometimes of sufficient cultural density and complexity that they
 INTRODUCTION 19

had to be interpreted and translated in the sense that a sheaf of cin-

namon or a sack of pepper might not (although other, lesser-known
“drugs and simples” sometimes required a form of translation for a
Eu ropean audience). The entire process can be seen as a multiple
unfolding of dif ferent dimensions of a knowledge complex. It is also
important to underline the fact that the participants in the process
were many and varied; if some of them were Asian traders, intellec-
tuals, and courtiers who spoke to the Portuguese and gave them
knowledge, they also included a whole gamut of social and profes-
sional categories within Portuguese colonial society itself: mission-
aries, trading representatives of the Portuguese Crown (who were
called feitores or “factors”), physicians, mariners in search of sailing
directions, military specialists, and others including painters and
printers.
Two specific examples from the mid-sixteenth century can give
us a sense of the diversity of such actors and their projects. One of
these was the “New Christian” or converted Jewish physician Garcia
da Orta, who was born in Portugal into a family of Jews of Spanish
origin around 1501, and who came to India around 1534 after having
studied medicine in various universities in Spain. Some other mem-
bers of Orta’s family also eventually came to Asia, but they remained
largely discreet. The physician, however, gained some real promi-
nence and was close to a number of important political figures, such
as the governor Martim Afonso de Sousa, who ran the government
of the Portuguese Estado da Índia at Goa between 1542 and 1545. Or-
ta’s activities as a trader and physician eventually took him out of
Goa into the Deccan, and he also appears to have held a property in
the islands around what eventually became the territory of Bombay.32
He certainly knew Arabic quite well before arriving in Asia, and he
added to this some knowledge of Persian, probably while working at
the Muslim courts of the Deccan, which welcomed “Frankish” (that
is to say, Portuguese) physicians as well. This distilled theoretical and
practical knowledge was eventually put by him into an extremely
important work entitled Colóquios dos simples e drogas e coisas medici-
nais da Índia (Colloquies on the Simples, Drugs and Medicinal Prod-
ucts of India), which was printed in Goa in 1563, a few years before
Orta died. Though he was eventually denounced posthumously to
20 EUROPE’S INDIA

the Inquisition for having secretly been a practicing Jew, this work
remained a major reference on Indian plants and other medicinal
products. An illustrated Spanish version appeared in 1578, but the
crucial translation that helped spread Orta’s work was that of Charles
de l’Écluse (or Carolus Clusius), a physician based at Vienna, Frank-
furt, and Leiden, whose Latin version, Aromatum et simplicium, had
already appeared in 1567, very soon after the original was produced
in Goa by the German printer Johannes von Emden.
Even if he does not seem to have directly consulted the extensive
body of Persian treatises on medicine (tibb) that were available at that
time in the Deccan, Garcia da Orta seems to have had access to their
world. A more complicated relationship with Asian knowledge tra-
ditions can be seen in the case of his contemporary, the aristocrat
Dom João de Castro (1500–1548), who was not merely an accom-
plished military commander and navigator, but was also interested
in pursuing theoretical investigations regarding such subjects as
cartography and terrestrial magnetism. Castro was also a good
draftsman, and a number of his maps, sketches, and rutters (mari-
ner’s handbooks, or roteiros) have survived.33 It is possible that they
too built in part on the local knowledge that he gained while navi-
gating the Indian Ocean in ships where the crews were made up in
a large proportion by Indians and other Asians, though this is less
evident than in the case of Orta. At any rate, the influence of the
work of men like Castro was passed on to the great mapmakers of
Portuguese Asia, like the somewhat shadowy figure of Fernão Vaz
Dourado (d. 1580), who produced a set of spectacular representations
of the lands of Asia in his Atlas, which became the basis for later
printed maps in the Netherlands. These representations were impor-
tant for turning the page definitively on the Ptolemaic vision of that
part of the world. Though these maps of India depended, for example,
on knowledge based largely on coastal navigation (so that most of
the place names were located on the coast, rather than in the inte-
rior), they produced an approximate vision of the regions of India
with which the Portuguese had the most dealings: from west to east,
Sind, Gujarat, the Konkan, Kanara, Malabar, the Coromandel coast,
Orissa, and Bengal. They would also serve as the basis for the knowl-
 INTRODUCTION 21

edge of the first Dutch and English merchants who arrived in those
regions at the turn of the seventeenth century.34
Of course, Portuguese curiosity extended much beyond such
“secular” subjects as medicine, botany, navigation, and cartography.
They were also anxious to know as much as they could about the
“religions” that were practiced in India, for which they often used
the word “law” (lei), as was common in Europe at the time. The Por-
tuguese who arrived in Asia in the first half of the sixteenth century
certainly had some notions regarding Islam, or the “law of Mu-
hammad” as they called it, though these were often quite crude. They
had to rediscover the difference between Sunnis and Shi‘is in the
course of their dealings in the Deccan and the Persian Gulf, but
this eventually became an abiding trope in their representation of
political alliances in the Indian Ocean. They saw one network, a
Sunni one, that was oriented toward Istanbul and the Ottoman Em-
pire, and another, a predominantly Shi‘ite one, that drew inspiration
from the newly emergent Safavid dynasty in Iran. Some of the more
perspicacious among them, like the anonymous writer (or writers)
of a text entitled Primor e Honra da Vida Soldadesca no Estado da Índia
(Excellence and Honour of the Soldiering Life in the State of the
Indies), written around 1580, noted that the Shi‘ites had a particular
devotion to the figure of ‘Ali, and also to a succession of leaders
(imāms) that the Sunnis did not revere.35 However, so far as we can
discern, no Portuguese intellectual of the time seems to have gone
to great lengths to collect copies of the Qur’an, let alone Qur’anic
commentaries, or other more obscure texts from any Muslim tradi-
tion.36 However, by the end of the sixteenth century, some European
visitors to Asia— such as the Vecchietti brothers from Florence,
Giovan Battista and Gerolamo—became interested in Judeo-Persian
materials as well as Persian translations of the Gospel.37 The ma-
terials collected by them are among the earliest Indian (or Indo-
Persian) manuscripts to appear in European collections, and which
still survive. They do not have a great deal of bearing, however, on
the study of Islam.
It was the other religious beliefs and practices in India (and South
Asia, more generally speaking) that posed a far greater conceptual
22 EUROPE’S INDIA

problem so far as the Portuguese were concerned. The people

to whom these pertained were classified by the Portuguese as “gen-
tiles” (gentios), and they included what we today might call Hindus,
Buddhists, and Jains. In order to discuss them, Portuguese authors—
both civilian and ecclesiastical—resorted to two complementary
modes of functioning. One was to argue by analogy, suggesting
that there was a correspondence between the “gentile” practices
and those of the Christians; the other was to argue by contrast, op-
posing what the “gentiles” thought and did radically to the beliefs
and practices of the Christians. As regards the former, Portuguese
authors attempted to identify the key places of pilgrimage (romaria)
in India, in order to argue that they were in a sense the “gentile”
equivalent of Rome, Compostela, or Jerusalem. By the late sixteenth
century, this list (which was somewhat variable) included such cen-
ters as Benares, Puri, Tirupati, Kanchipuram, and Ramesvaram.
For example, the Portuguese chronicler António Bocarro wrote in
the 1630s that Tirupati was “a very large city, which is Rome to
them, only for pagodas, which the Gentiles of this whole Orient ar-
range to have made, and the more devout and power ful the person
who has them made is, the larger they are.”38 As regards Buddhist-
dominated areas such as Sri Lanka and Burma, the Portuguese at-
tempted again to argue for equivalences between their shrines
and relics and those with which they were more familiar in Europe.
Again, by the latter half of the sixteenth century, they struggled to
understand what the “sacred books” of the “gentiles” might be, and a
well-informed writer such as the Augustinian soldier-turned-priest
Agostinho de Azevedo (from whom the chronicler Diogo do Couto
borrowed liberally) had understood that such books had names
like veda, śāstra, purāna, and āgama. Couto was to note in one of his
chronicles that “they [the gentiles] have many books in their Latin,
which they called Geredão, which contain all that they are to believe,
and the ceremonies they are to do. These books are divided into
bodies, members and articles, whose originals are the ones which
they call Vedaos, which are divided in four parts, and these in another
fifty-two.”39
But analogies had their limits. Some Portuguese were certainly
aware that by taking such an approach they were running the risk of
 INTRODUCTION 23

making the religion of the “gentiles” appear too close to Christianity,

and thus more acceptable in character than they should. Debates that
emerged by the end of the sixteenth century on the nature of pos-
sible “accommodation” between Christian and “gentile” doctrines
reflect this discomfort. They were possibly less aware that the whole
process also ran the risk of imposing an artificial homogeneity on
the entire body of “gentiles” by attributing to them a single theology,
a single set of holy books, and a single set of common practices such
as pilgrimages. Further, while Sanskrit might be somewhat like
Latin, and Tirupati a bit like Rome, it was also crucial for the Por-
tuguese (as well as the other Europeans who participated in their
material and spiritual enterprise) to stress the radical contrasts that
they saw existing between the truth of their own religion and the
falsity of others’ beliefs. These contrasts were mostly presented using
forms of ethnography, such as when Couto remarked on the alto-
gether strange use to which cow’s urine was put in certain “gentile”
rituals. One of the chief markers of such difference was of course
the satī, or the “gentile” widow who was cruelly cremated or buried
alive along with her dead husband. This scene had already figured
in Eu ropean portrayals of India before 1500, and it came to be re-
peated ad nauseam in the course of the sixteenth century. Practically
every travel account needed to have such a scene of widow-burning,
and travelers vied with each other for improbable descriptions of their
own conversations with such widows while on the way to the funeral
pyre.40 Eventually, European illustrations on India, whether manu-
script or engravings in printed books, also made this a central part of
their representation of the religious life of the “gentiles.”
Unfortunately, the corpus of such illustrations remains quite lim-
ited for the sixteenth century. We do have both manuscript maps
(noted above), and some cityscapes and other sketches made by men
like Dom João de Castro or the maverick chronicler Gaspar Cor-
reia. But the chief printed works by the Portuguese in the sixteenth
century concerning India are remarkably bare when it comes to il-
lustrations. The works of the chroniclers João de Barros, Fernão
Lopes de Castanheda, and Diogo do Couto were all printed without
woodcuts or engravings, and the same was even true of Luís Vaz de
Camões’s Lusíadas. The engraver Jörg Breu the Elder from Augsburg
24 EUROPE’S INDIA

did illustrate the German translation of the travel account of the

Italian voyager Ludovico di Varthema (which appeared in 1515), but
he chose to do so largely in a monstrous vein, pointing to the gro-
tesque and repulsive in the practices of the “gentiles” of India.41 Some
watercolor paintings and tapestries were made in the mid-sixteenth
century, usually to commemorate military events such as the two
sieges of Diu (in 1538 and 1546), but they chose for their part to
present India and Indian (or more broadly Asian) actors in a classi-
cizing vocabulary, as if they were representing the battles between
Alexander and Darius. This is the case of Jerónimo Corte-Real’s
illustrations to the epic poem Sucesso do Segundo Cerco de Diu, for
instance.42
A remarkable exception to this rule is a rather strange work from
the middle years of the sixteenth century generally known as the
Codex Casanatense, from the name of the cardinal in whose library it
came to be deposited in Rome, after having passed through Goa
and Lisbon (where it was in around 1628). Made up of seventy-six
watercolors, with a rather limited amount of explanatory text in Por-
tuguese inscribed on each, this work covers the physical character-
istics, dress, and other habits of the coastal peoples across the gamut
of the Indian Ocean, from the Cape of Good Hope to the South
China Sea.43 Where India is concerned, par tic u lar attention is
devoted to Gujarat and the Konkan, as well as Goa; eastern India
and Bengal are less represented in these illustrations. However, the
Tirumala-Tirupati temple is referred to in at least one illustration
as the “pagoda that is called Tirumala [paguode que chamão Tremel ].”
Circumstantial evidence suggests that the work was produced in the
middle decades of the sixteenth century, during the reign of Sultan
Mahmud of Gujarat (whose portrait atop an elephant may be found
in the album). The style of the illustrations, as well as the use of cer-
tain conventions in the presentation of the human figures, suggest
that these were painted by one or more Indian artists, possibly from
“either Mandu or Gujarat.”44 In other words, a European patron was
involved, and it is probably he who provided the inscriptions in
Portuguese, but the actual execution was not the work of Europeans.
Instead, we are dealing with a highly stylized auto-ethnography. Un-
fortunately, this work does not seem to have been transformed into
Khwaja Safar at the siege of Diu (1546), from Jerónimo Corte-Real, Sucesso
do segundo cerco de Diu, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon,
Coleção Casa de Cadaval no. 31, Canto 2, fl. 17v.
26 EUROPE’S INDIA

engravings, or reached the market for the printed book; it prob-

ably circulated in a limited way among the circles of Catholic
missionaries.
Overall then, the sixteenth century witnesses some significant
changes in the representation of India in Europe, but there are also
obvious limits to the extent of change. Few collectors emerged in
Portugal, Spain, or Italy who actually possessed either manuscripts
or other artistic and antiquarian objects from India. It is probable
that among those who did were João de Barros, who seems to have
owned some Persian manuscripts, and the New Christian traveler
Pedro Teixeira; some such texts seem also to have found their way
to Philip II’s library. Unfortunately, none of these actual manuscripts
have come down to us. On the other hand, despite the existence of
considerable missionary activity in many dif ferent parts of India,
there is no evidence currently that manuscript or palm-leaf works in
Sanskrit from any of the Indian traditions made their way to Europe
at this time. At best, abridged versions of the doctrines of the “gen-
tiles” were produced, sometimes by Jesuits in their missions in Goa
and southern India. Other objects that were collected included
Indian painted textiles, which were traded in growing quantities
in the last quarter of the sixteenth century; some intricate ivories,
and elaborately carved wooden objects (sometimes with ivory or
mother-of-pearl inlay) also made their way into collections. One may
occasionally find such objects listed by the shipboard scribes, on the
vessels that were returning from India via the Cape Route. When
the English captured some of these vessels in the Atlantic in the last
decades of the sixteenth century (such as the celebrated Madre de
Deus), such objects also whetted their appetite, as indeed did the
precious and semiprecious jewels that the Portuguese often used as
a convenient way of repatriating fortunes from India.45

The Emerging Palimpsest

This situation evolved considerably after 1600. Some of the reasons

for the change are evident, namely the successive entry of a number
of other European actors—English, Dutch, Danes, French, and so
on—into the trade of the Cape Route. To be sure, even during the
 INTRODUCTION 27

sixteenth century, the Portuguese enterprise had been somewhat

multinational in character, and a certain number of Spaniards, Ital-
ians, and south Germans were associated with it from the very outset,
whether as traders, officials, or missionaries. Less known, but not
totally insignificant, was the participation of men from towns like
Antwerp and Bruges, at least one of whom wrote an eyewitness
account in Flemish of the second voyage of Vasco da Gama in
1502–1503, which was printed in Antwerp in 1504 under the title
Calcoen (a distortion of “Calicut”).46 In the years up to 1550, the Por-
tuguese maintained a very active trading presence in these cities (in
part through the so-called feitoria de Flandres), so that Indian spices
and other goods were traded in Antwerp and Bruges, and the mer-
chants there kept their fingers on the pulse of the India trade. Later in
the century, the Coutre brothers from Bruges, Jacques and Joseph,
spent a good deal of time as traders in India and Southeast Asia,
eventually returning to Eu rope in the 1620s, and Jacques then
produced a highly entertaining Spanish text of his Vida (or “Life”),
with descriptions of his life in Portuguese Asia and commercial and
diplomatic dealings with a wide variety of interlocutors.47 The names
of others from the same region, including some gunners and artil-
lerymen, appear periodically in the letters and texts of the period.
Since they were very often subjects of the Habsburg crown, the
period from 1580 to 1640—when Portugal was successively under the
rule of three of the Philips—was particularly propitious for the pres-
ence of such men in Portuguese Asia.
While one should not draw too sharp or exaggerated a contrast
between the modes of functioning of the English and Dutch after
1600, and their Portuguese rivals, it is still useful to emphasize some
of the salient points of difference. Clearly the missionary impulse was
much attenuated in the case of the former when compared with the
latter, and this had an influence on how India was seen and repre-
sented. Further, the geographical spread of the presence of both the
English and Dutch before 1660 tended to focus on three regions:
Gujarat, the Coromandel coast of southeast India, and Bengal. But
they also came to have a commercial presence in northern India and
a greater proximity to the great centers of Mughal power— such
as Delhi, Agra, Lahore, and Burhanpur— than the Portuguese
28 EUROPE’S INDIA

had had in the previous half-century. In fact, for their dealings

with the Mughals, the Portuguese often depended on Jesuit media-
tion, and this meant that the lines of communication frequently
focused on religious questions, not simply in Goa but even in northern
India.
An account such as that of the Dutch Company’s factor Wolle-
brant Geleynssen de Jongh (from the fi rst half of the seventeenth
century), reveals some surprising attitudes. Geleynssen knew Gujarat
in particular rather well, and his account begins with a description
of “de stadt Brootchia” or Bharuch, before moving on to a descrip-
tion of other major cities and towns such as Surat and Ahmadabad,
as well as a set of broader reflections. Of Bharuch itself, we gather
that “this town is pretty well-peopled with folk, Moors, Benjans and
also Persians, who are born in this land itself; the said Benjans, who
are here the most populous of the three nations, bring the most busi-
ness into the town, as they control the greater part of the trade.”48
The baniyās directly inspire him in some comparative reflections
(“this is a nation that is not unlike the Chinese in terms of covetous-
ness, though not quite so fraudulent as the former”); but the Dutch
factor is also adept at accumulating a series of small observations of
one or the other sort, regarding the giving of alms and the mainte-
nance of hospitals, and even sprinkles his text from time to time with
an example of what he terms “the common Hindustans proverb.”
Naturally, the text is unable to escape from periodic reflections on
the arbitrary character of the Mughal polity, the oppression of the
poor, and the overall injustice, but Geleynssen does insist that “no
one is hindered or harassed in their beliefs or godly worship, but in-
stead each one lives freely,” a marked contrast to the European situ-
ation of the time. In fact, he is willing to go even further, in his search
for affinities between the Muslims and the religion of the greater part
of the Dutch. Thus, a rather striking passage states:

They [the Mughals] like the Roman or Catholic religion a good

deal less than the Reformed one, and this is because those Pa-
pists make use of images in their churches (which is against
their [Muslim] law), as the Moors do not believe in honouring
or making use of images, and so have no images at all in their
 INTRODUCTION 29

temples, houses or places of worship that are made of wood,

stone or other materials; they prefer a pile of silver or gold that
they can sell, and make jewels or bracelets or such things
with, in which respect too they agree very well with the Re-
formed [Dutch], who prefer silver and gold to stone and wooden
images.49

This relatively favourable view can be quite easily contrasted to

other writers, especially on southern India, with which the Dutch
East India Company (VOC) had contact in these years. One remarks
that many of the Dutch— and especially the Protestants among
them—had a markedly more favourable view of the “Moors” than
of the “gentiles.” We may consider the following passage, for ex-
ample, from the 1677 account by Adolph Bassingh, a Dutch Com-
pany factor resident at the Nayaka court of Tiruchirappalli:

The religion or imagined worship [religie of vermeende godsdienst]

of these people are no less curious as horrible and can also not
be described in particular due both to the various sects among
these people and the fact that they rather not reveal them to
everyone, indeed, not even to the common man of their own
nation. And since there are entire books in our language, which
have been published, on the heathen worship in these and neigh-
bouring lands and Your Honour has resided a considerable
amount of time in these lands where this religion is observed, I
deem it even less necessary to speak of it extensively and will
limit myself to this little in general terms. They recognise an
eternal being from the light of nature and believe there is one
God, consisting of three persons named Wisno, Roetra and
Bramma. These three persons are given the single name of
Ixora. . . . . Notwithstanding the fact that their imagined God
[gewaande God] is omniscient and equally informed of all that
occurs on earth, he deems it below his dignity and too cumber-
some to gather information of every thing himself. They hold
that in the afterlife awaits nothing but continuous, excessive sen-
suality, which they will enjoy with their own or much better
bodies than those with which they died.50
30 EUROPE’S INDIA

Bassingh then goes on to note the temples (or pagoden), which “are
so dark inside that one is forced to use lights in order to see.” Inside
these sinister edifices, there are “curious and horrific figures,” in-
cluding those of animals, often with bodies that are “much de-
formed,” while others are such that “decency prevents [one] from
putting them on paper.” The purpose of all of these structures is
clearly predatory; “these heathen temples and idols annually swallow
up a lot of money.” The Dutch factor then mentions other regular
practices that horrify him, such as possession, self-mortification, and
hook-swinging, and devotees who throw themselves under the wheels
of temple chariots.
Bassingh, like most other commercially-minded Eu ropeans in
India who were his contemporaries, apparently did not learn to read
any Indian language. In southern India, some of the Jesuits did ac-
quire some proficiency in Tamil, as well as Telugu and even Sanskrit.
Their counter parts in Mughal India often acquired Persian, but
this was usually put to use in producing translations into Persian of
Christian texts such as the Gospel, the lives of the saints, and so on,
rather than in collecting and analyzing the intellectual production
of Mughal officials. It is remarkable that Jesuits like Jerónimo Xavier
and Manuel Pinheiro never seem to have considered it of use to ac-
quire the great Mughal texts that were being produced around them,
such as the chronicles of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl and Nizam-ud-Din
Bakhshi.
In contrast, the impulse to collect was far stronger with both the
Dutch and the English. The reasons for this seem to have been com-
plex. Some clearly have to do with the emergence of a new orien-
talism in Western Eu rope in the closing decades of the sixteenth
century, which was in turn partly an offshoot of Biblical scholarship.
Beginning with Joseph Scaliger in the late sixteenth century, the
study of Persian materials to establish a more reliable chronology had
become a preoccupation in Leiden; linguistic explorations comparing
Persian with the European languages were for their part promoted
by Frans van Ravelingen (or Franciscus Raphelengius, 1539–1597), a
Flemish scholar who like Scaliger also eventually taught at Leiden.
Such studies were subsequently consolidated in the early seven-
teenth century by two important figures, Thomas Erpenius, and his
 INTRODUCTION 31

successor Jacob Golius. By the time of his death in 1624, Erpenius

had acquired and begun a study of Mir Khwand’s great Timurid
chronicle, a version of which had been in the possession of João de
Barros. Though his Persian manuscript collection eventually passed
in large measure into the possession of the University of Cambridge,
Erpenius’s work was continued by Golius.51
While some of these scholars, such as the Protestant minister
Louis de Dieu, continued to see the study of Persian and the “Orient”
more generally, primarily through the prism of religion and Chris-
tian polemics, it is clear that others went on to far more secular
subjects: history and politics. Where politics was concerned, the first
half of the seventeenth century saw an upsurge in interest in “mirror
of princes” texts written in Persian. Chief among these were the
Gulistān and Bustān of Shaikh Sa‘di Shirazi (ca. 1210–1292), in which
Golius had a marked interest, and of which a first approximate trans-
lation was produced by the Frenchman André du Ryer.52 A German
student of Golius, Georg Gentz (or Gentius) eventually published
an edition and complete Latin translation of the Gulistān in 1651.
The growing interest in recovering a proper history of dynasties like
the Mughals also led the Dutch Company employee Francisco Pel-
saert, who had spent a good deal of time in northern India, to prepare
both a Kroniek (or chronicle) and a Remonstrantie (or contemporary
description) of the Mughals, which eventually served as key sources
for the Leiden-based geographer and humanist Johannes de Laet,
when he wrote his De Imperio Magni Mogolis (1631). It is possible that
Pelsaert informed himself at least orally of the rough contents of some
of the Mughal chronicles through the translators in the Dutch fac-
tory at Agra, where he worked for some seven years.53
The first half of the seventeenth century thus saw a consolidation
in Western Europe of a milieu of collectors, who were interested in
a variety of objects and cultural products from India: manuscripts,
but also paintings and other precious handicrafts made by the ex-
pert artisans of the subcontinent. Some of these collectors were
clearly royalty and aristocrats, whether based in Prague, Paris, Ma-
drid, or Vienna; others belonged to an emergent bourgeois milieu
and sometimes had substantial investments in the shares of the East
India Companies; still others were scholars based in universities.
32 EUROPE’S INDIA

Some of these objects were acquired in the context of a gift economy,

in that Europeans arriving and seeking trade concessions in India
usually brought with them what the Dutch Company’s factors called
schenkagie goederen: clocks, mirrors, musical instruments, and other
curiosities, including prints and books. In the seventeenth century,
the Mughal chronicler Bhimsen reported, for example, that “news
arrived from the land of the Franks that a supernatural being (dev)
had appeared there, with the head and face of a horse, and the body
of a human being. The Franks had cleverly captured it alive, but in
a few days, it died. However, its portrayal [taswīr] was sent by them
to the [Mughal] emperor.”54
Thus, while European prints and woodcuts made their way regu-
larly to India from the last quarter of the sixteenth century, creating
a real vogue among Mughal artists like Kesu Das for Christian-
themed paintings on subjects such as the nativity, the crucifi xion, or
portraits of the saints, Mughal paintings had become available to Eu-
ropean collectors after about 1610. The embassy of Sir Thomas Roe
to the Mughal court in the 1610s brought some back; in around 1620,
Renold Elstrack—reputedly the most successful English engraver
of the time— produced a portrait engraving entitled “the true
Pourtraicture of the Great and Most Potent Monarch, Padesha
Shassalem called the Great Mogoll of Easterne India,” based on a
somewhat eccentric reading of a Mughal painting of the ruler Jahangir
(r. 1605–1627).55
In the Netherlands, figures like Erpenius, Golius, and De Laet
produced the major impetus behind the drive to collect materials and
eventually enshrine them in Wunderkammers, or antiquarian collec-
tions. It is possible that they even intervened with the directors of
the Dutch East India Company in order to instruct their employees
in India and Iran in this sense. In the case of England in the 1620s, on
the other hand, the impulse came in good measure from figures
like William Laud, the controversial archbishop of Canterbury under
Charles I, himself a friend of Sir Thomas Roe and closely associated
with the University of Oxford.56 Perhaps under Laud’s influence, the
Stuart monarchy began to exert itself somewhat in the direction of
constituting an Indo-Persian collection. In late February  1634,
Charles I wrote to the court of directors of the English East India
 INTRODUCTION 33

Company asking for a supply of Arabic and Persian manuscripts and

the Company’s factors in Iran responded in late November of the
same year, stating that they were making efforts to meet his de-
mands.57 The head of the Company’s Surat establishment, William
Methwold, was also informed of the matter, and he and his council
responded at some length regarding the problems in such an enter-
prise, but assured the monarch they would do their best.58 What hap-
pened to the Methwold manuscripts remains uncertain, but other
manuscripts that were sent by the Company’s servants to England
in this period have been traced. The most celebrated of these, now
in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, is an illustrated one, the so-called
Laud Rāgamāla, containing some thirty paintings and many speci-
mens of calligraphy.59 Another significant manuscript from Laud’s
collection is the Dīwān-i Anwarī of the great twelfth-century poet,
which had once been in the library of the sixteenth-century ruler
of Ahmadnagar, Burhan Nizam Shah I. So, in effect, the archbishop
came to possess a mix of poetry and diverse prose, some of it with a
religious or cosmological content, but his agents did not lay their
hands on any of the great Indo-Persian chronicles of the close of the
sixteenth and the dawn of the seventeenth centuries. As to Charles
I, only one significant Persian manuscript came into his direct pos-
session, a copy of the Gulistān of Shaikh Sa‘di, sent to him directly as
a gift by the Mughal emperor Shahjahan in the late 1630s.60
Over the latter half of the seventeenth century, manuscripts and
objects from India continued to accumulate in dribs and drabs in
various English collections, though none were probably of the quality
of Shahjahan’s Gulistān. Academic figures were often central to this
process, among whom we may count Edward Pococke (1604–1691)
and especially Thomas Hyde (1636–1703), both orientalists based at
Oxford, and in Hyde’s case also playing the role of “eastern inter-
preter” at court.61 Pococke and Hyde had broad horizons, and looked
into materials in Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and Persian, as well as—for
Hyde, at least— Malay and Chinese. Further, Hyde’s interest in
Zoroastrian ideas led him to the study of ancient Persian, and thus
to a quest for authentic manuscripts held by the Parsi communi-
ties in western India, which he used to compose his Historia religi-
onis veterum Persarum (1700). Though he never traveled to India,
34 EUROPE’S INDIA

he had contacts with several Englishmen there, including the free

trader Thomas Bowrey, and the important but somewhat obscure
clergyman George Lewis. Three years before his death in 1729,
Lewis gave over his monumental cabinet made up of a mixture of
coins and other objects to the University of Cambridge, where he had
completed a degree at Queen’s College in 1689, before spending the
years from 1692 to 1714 at Fort St. George in Madras as chaplain and
librarian.62 Profiting from the recent Mughal conquest of the Coro-
mandel region, which until 1686–1687 had mostly been under the
sultanates of Golkonda and Bijapur, Lewis had gone about collecting
a mixture of manuscripts, very largely in Persian. Fifteen years into
his stay in India, Lewis’s knowledge of Persian was thought sufficient
for him to be used to translate secret correspondence in Madras, and
Governor Thomas Pitt even considered sending him as envoy to the
Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah in early 1709.63 Some of Lewis’s man-
uscript acquisitions are predictable for a clergyman, such as a Persian
translation of the Qur’an, or Persian versions of the four Gospels. But
they also include an interesting mixture of other texts and materials,
such as Persian historical works, lexicography, and belles-lettres, as
well as epistolography; he also collected many of the classical poets
of the Persian tradition. Most of these manuscripts were not illus-
trated, but there were some exceptions to this rule.64
Though few paintings from India seem to have come into Britain
in the course of the seventeenth century, this was certainly not true
of continental Europe. The Vatican came to possess at least one cu-
rious and unfinished collection of Mughal portraits that was prob-
ably acquired through Jesuit intercession in the period of Pope Urban
VIII (1623–1644).65 But the most important such flow was undoubt-
edly into the Netherlands, through the good offices of the factors of
the VOC in India. Indeed, over the course of the seventeenth century,
several quite competent Dutch painters had made their way to Asia,
either to pursue that calling or simply as commercial employees of
the Company. In the case of Mughal India, they included Hendrik
Arentsz Vapoer in the 1620s and early 1630s, as well as Isaak Jansz
Koedijk, who was in Surat and Ahmadabad in the 1650s and some of
whose paintings are even today fairly well-known (albeit not on
Indian themes).66 Both Vapoer and Koedijk were in contact with
 INTRODUCTION 35

Mughal courtly and administrative circles, and it is certainly con-

ceivable that they took the opportunity of being in India to study
Mughal paintings and albums.67 Another painter from the midcen-
tury, Philip Angel, actually did collect a set of paintings on the ten
avatāras of Vishnu while in India, but these were not from the Mu-
ghal atelier; his intention appears to have them accompany a text
which he translated into Dutch from a Portuguese original, also
with narratives on the various incarnations of the same god.68 With
the growing interest in Europe on the religious practices of the “gen-
tiles” or “heathens” of India, such illustrations eventually came to
influence European engravings in printed works on the subject, be-
ginning with Philippus Baldaeus’s Naauwkeurige beschryvinge van Mal-
abar en Choromandel (1672), itself based on extensive and unacknowl-
edged borrowings from other sources.
Whether through the intercession of such traveling Dutch painters
or not, Mughal and Deccani paintings also began to appear in the
personal collections of members of the Dutch bourgeoisie by the
middle and later decades of the seventeenth century, and these works
date usually from the reigns of Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. Their
owners included men from leading Amsterdam families such as the
Witsens, Occos, Grils, and Van der Hems. Equally, they came to
attract the attention of some of the leading Dutch artists of the
day. Rembrandt copied a number of such paintings, over twenty in
number, mostly from the court-atelier of Shahjahan. It seems, how-
ever, that his purpose was to use these sketches and drawings as
material toward paintings on themes from antiquity, based on the oft-
used argument that habits of body and gesture from the ancient world
were still preserved intact in the “Orient.” Other painters were more
literal-minded; Hendrik van Schuylenburgh, who was commissioned
in the 1660s by the VOC to make paintings of their factories in
Bengal, appears to have used Mughal paintings as ethnographic
sources to fi ll in the background and context of the factory with
Mughal soldiers, peasants, a satī scene, and even a hook-swinging
episode.
Most extraordinary in this respect was the painter Willem
Schellinks (1623–1678), who had clearly examined some of the very
same paintings as Rembrandt. Clearly fascinated by the court and
36 EUROPE’S INDIA

figure of Shahjahan, and then in the late 1650s and early 1660s by
reports concerning the succession war between that monarch’s four
sons, Schellinks made at least four oil paintings on Mughal themes.69
Two of these represented a somewhat clichéd form of exoticism, one
showing Shahjahan and his sons on horseback during a hawking ex-
pedition, and the other with the monarch watching musicians and
dancers. These are not all that far in conception and spirit from the
Brazilian paintings of Frans Post or Albert Eckhout from the same
broad period. But the other two, which form a pair, were remarkable
for their playfulness and intelligence. They show a fantastic court
scene that draws on conventions in Mughal painting concerning
composite animals, which become the mounts of the four princes,
Dara Shukoh, Shah Shuja‘, Aurangzeb, and Murad Bakhsh. Schellinks
is clearly aware of the outcome of the contest, since he portrays Au-
rangzeb with a bloody dagger in his hand. He also introduces, or
“quotes” from another Mughal convention, namely of having de-
ceased rulers—here the emperors Akbar and Jahangir—present in
apotheosis. These paintings are a remarkable testimony to how Mu-
ghal painting could not merely be viewed, but reused creatively, in
another tradition of representation. If we compare it with its lit-
erary counterpart, namely John Dryden’s play Aureng-zebe (1675),
which in turn draws upon published European travel accounts of the
period, there is clearly much to be said in favor of Schellinks’s way
of representing an exotic reality.70

Toward Conquest

By the early eighteenth century, therefore, several seemingly stable

conventions regarding the representation of India in Eu rope had
been established. It is of course not entirely satisfactory to see these
as mere arbitrary impositions, or the fevered fantasies of Europeans
with a poor knowledge and limited experience of India. Rather, there
was a relationship— albeit a complex one—between collection and
representation, between the accumulation of knowledge and its sche-
matic organization.
The two most important spheres of Indian life that were repre-
sented by the early eighteenth century were undoubtedly those that
 INTRODUCTION 37

may be termed “politics” and “religion.” With regard to the first of

these, the Europeans who arrived in the sixteenth century found a
somewhat fragmented political sphere, where about half a dozen
kingdoms jostled for space. Among these, the most important was
arguably the extensive southern kingdom of Vijayanagara, to which
the Portuguese devoted a great deal of attention, although they did
not neglect either to deal with the Deccan sultanates, Bengal, or Gu-
jarat. Then, in the second half of the century, the rules of the game
changed with the emergence of the Mughals. By the 1570s, the Mu-
ghals had conquered Bengal and Gujarat, and by the 1590s they had
taken Sind. The seventeenth century was thus essentially a balancing
act between the hegemonic Mughals and their smaller rivals, who
impeded or at least slowed down their expansion. This meant that the
principal preoccupation of the most important European travelers to
seventeenth-century India, such as Francisco Pelsaert, François le
Gouz de la Boullaye, François Bernier, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, and
Nicolò Manuzzi, was Mughal rule.71 While some of these writers
argued, like Boullaye, that Mughal rule was essentially “soft” and
accommodative in character, others put forward the notion of the
Mughals as a tyranny or “despotism,” where an overwhelming form
of state power crushed both the subjects at large (peasants, artisans,
and merchants all included) and the “aristocracy” made of rājas and
Mughal-appointed amīrs.
And yet, when centralized Mughal power fell into decline over the
first half of the eighteenth century, with the emergence of powerful
regional dynasties in areas such as Awadh, Bengal, and Hyderabad,
European observers experienced a curious form of nostalgia. The hu-
miliating defeat that the Mughal ruler Muhammad Shah underwent
at the hands of the Iranian monarch Nadir Shah in the late 1730s
was seen by some of them as quite unfortunate.72 Others quickly
grasped that the diminished Mughals were a soft target, and that the
circumstances that had emerged represented a remarkable opportu-
nity. Thus, first in the area around Madras, then in Surat, and eventu-
ally in Bengal in the late 1750s and early 1760s, the English Company
repeatedly intervened in regional politics, until it was able to gain
a substantial foothold in the political system and siphon off a good
part of erstwhile Mughal revenues for its own benefit. The Mughals
38 EUROPE’S INDIA

were still represented as “despots,” but as weak and ineffective ones

who had betrayed their own traditions and were thus clearly unfit
to rule.
East India Company servants in the middle decades of the eigh-
teenth century continued to collect Indian objects, manuscripts, and
paintings, but these collections were amassed under changed circum-
stances and for dif ferent ends. Naked extortion came to play a part
in the constitution of collections. We can see this with one of the
most successful collectors of the late eighteenth century, the unscru-
pulous Richard Johnson (1753–1807), an amateur musicologist who
used his political leverage at Awadh and Hyderabad in the 1780s
to put together an impor tant body of manuscripts, paintings, and
objects.73 His contemporary, the Franco-Swiss mercenary Antoine
Polier— discussed at length in Chapter 4—was equally deft at put-
ting together groups of paintings and objects, often in response to
requests and orders from friends and patrons in Europe.74
Though Johnson and Polier discovered a real market for these ob-
jects in the context of the late eighteenth century, the meanings and
uses of the objects had shifted somewhat. Collection and represen-
tation had come somewhat uncoupled. By 1800, histories written in
Persian were not necessarily seen as key sources for writing a his-
tory of India, though some works—like that of Muhammad Qasim
Firishta— still enjoyed a certain prestige.75 Mughal paintings were
enjoyed as aesthetic objects, but the “real” visual representation of
India was increasingly left to visiting European artists and engravers,
who produced an academic vision of an India of ruins and pictur-
esque landscapes.
The matter of “religion” proved rather more complex.76 As is pro-
posed in Chapter  2, one way to examine this issue is to use as a
sounding board the massive work of Jean-Frédéric Bernard and Ber-
nard Picart, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du
monde, which appeared in multiple volumes in Amsterdam between
1723 and 1737.77 Bernard and Picart belonged to a Huguenot milieu
with Deist inclinations, and they were apparently influenced by the
radical Enlightenment in the manner in which they conceived their
project. In their volume on India, they compiled what they consid-
ered to be the most authoritative accounts available in Europe at that
 INTRODUCTION 39

time, and added to these their own comments and glosses (most of
which were written by Bernard). They also lavishly illustrated the
work, sometimes with their own engravings and sometimes with im-
ages borrowed from other texts.
It is interest ing to see what they kept in and what they left out.
First, Bernard and Picart excluded almost every thing written before
1630, probably considering it to be too archaic and too inflected with
Catholic prejudice. The works they reproduce thus begin with the
writings of Henry Lord, English chaplain at Surat, who wrote an ac-
count of the baniyās and Parsis (or Zoroastrians) in that city in the
1630s.78 They follow it up with a truncated version of an important
work by the Dutch Protestant minister, Abraham Rogerius, on the
“heathendom” of India. Rogerius had been at the Dutch settlement
of Pulicat (just north of Madras) in the 1640s, and he drew much of
his information from a Brahmin by the name of Padmanabha. This
included elements drawn from the Sanskrit works of the great fifth-
century author Bhartrihari.79 Complementing Rogerius’s infinitely
detailed work was another one, which appears as an anonymous text
in Bernard and Picart, but which was probably authored by the
seventeenth-century Jesuit João de Brito. Finally, included in the
work was a shorter text by a French intellectual and traveler La
Créquinière comparing Indian “gentiles” and European Jews, as well
as excerpts from a whole host of other celebrated authors such as
Bernier, Tavernier, and Baldaeus.
Apparent in these works as well as the accompanying commen-
tary is Bernard and Picart’s tendency to see the religion of the In-
dian “gentiles” as monotheistic, with a single god at the veritable
center of the system. However, this was not the more popu lar view
that was held by many Europeans, according to which the Indians
believed in many competing gods, and in fact usually practiced a
form of “idolatry.” The view of Bernard and Picart would eventu-
ally come to be displaced even in intellectual circles by the early
nineteenth century. British authors such as Edward Moor, in his
influential work The Hindu Pantheon (1810), would produce a de-
tailed iconography of the gods and goddesses of India, based on
images that they had collected, or sometimes pilfered, from Indian
temples.
40 EUROPE’S INDIA

Increasingly in the nineteenth century, the term “Hinduism”—

which had never been used as such in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries—would come to denote the entire complex of beliefs of
those denizens of India who were not Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or
Zoroastrian.80 By the mid-1810s, the Bengali intellectual and re-
former Raja Rammohan Roy was using the term, as indeed were a
number of British administrators. Whereas Rogerius’s vision of In-
dian “heathendom” had been of a number of competing and chaotic
groups living cheek-by-jowl, the nineteenth century view of a single
underlying “Hinduism,” with dif ferent concrete manifestations,
would become the basis of a new set of arguments regarding undesir-
able superstition and necessary reform. This view would be carried
through into the twentieth century, and into the self-image of even
some key leaders of the Indian nationalist movement.
The progressive seizure of power in India after 1750 by the En-
glish East India Company was bound to have a major effect both on
the processes of collection and the logics of representation.81 Com-
pany rule, properly speaking, can be thought to have lasted for
roughly a century, from Clive’s victory in Bengal in late June 1757
to August 1858, when—in the immediate aftermath of the great In-
dian Rebellion of 1857—the Crown assumed direct control over its
Indian domains under the Government of India Act. This century
was marked by wave after wave of scandal and corruption, a perfectly
logical outcome of the extremely irregular form of semiprivatized
governance that Company rule represented.82 It saw the rise to prom-
inence of various networks of power and influence, most notably of
the Scots, who had an overwhelming influence over India between
about 1750 and 1830. One of the best-known of such peddlers of
influence was Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville (1742–1811); and it
was precisely from the ranks of such Scotsmen that many of the great
Company-period antiquarians would be drawn; their numbers in-
clude Colin Mackenzie, James Tod, and William Erskine, all of whom
were administrator-scholars, usually with small armies of Indian
servants who were available to do their bidding.
It is impossible to quantify in any precise terms the extent of the
looting that accompanied the Company’s campaigns in India, some of
which fed private collections in Eu rope. Whole libraries were
 INTRODUCTION 41

seized, temples were stripped of friezes, deities were summarily

shipped off, even small Mughal tombs or their trelliswork were taken
away to distant destinations. Some of this was the handiwork of
unscrupulous private individuals, but some was undoubtedly done
with official connivance. Many of the most sumptuous Mughal
manuscripts were thus offered in “tribute” in this context, and they
include such masterpieces as the Pādshāhnāma from the period of
Shahjahan, now in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. These
works now had a real market in Europe and were enjoyed as exotica,
rather than seen as necessarily playing a direct role in the representa-
tion of India. The tension between the logics of collection and repre-
sentation is visible in the functioning of two of the most important
colonial cultural institutions set up in the period, the Asiatic Society
in Bengal and the Survey of India.
The Asiatic Society was founded in early 1784 by Sir William
Jones (1746–1794), a judge and administrator with a somewhat in-
flated view of his own abilities and competence. He and his associates
began publishing the journal Asiatic Researches in the late 1780s,
and this journal ranged far and wide, dealing with every thing from
Indian music, astronomy, and mathematics to gods, ruins, and in-
scriptions. Some of its work was philological, and required the
aid— and sometimes the decisive intervention—of Indian intellec-
tuals; other parts were essentially ethnographic in character, and sup-
posed that the writer and observer was necessarily external to the
culture that was being described.83 These activities again implied
that objects would be collected, or in some instances that images
would be copied. One of those later associated with the Asiatic
Society was the surveyor Sir Colin Mackenzie (1754–1821), most of
whose activities were located in southern India. Mackenzie managed
to put together an enormous collection of texts and objects, with the
view to providing a comprehensive history of the southern part of
the subcontinent. Mackenzie’s Scottish roots served him particularly
well at a time when the Indian administration was dominated by men
like Sir Thomas Munro and Lord Minto.84
These activities on the textual and philological front, which
included Sanskrit as well as the Indian vernacular languages, even-
tually created a form of tension, both in Britain as well as on the
42 EUROPE’S INDIA

European continent. The fi rst Company administrators of the

generation of Henry Vansittart and Warren Hastings had tended to
approach India through Persian, the main language of Mughal ad-
ministration. With the passage of time, however, Persian came to be
somewhat demoted in its role and the academic understanding of
India was to be increasingly associated with Sanskrit, a language
which was thought to be more relevant to the study of ancient
Indian culture. The creation of the prestigious Boden Chair in San-
skrit at Oxford in 1832, first occupied by H. H. Wilson, is one indi-
cation of this change; the Collège de France in Paris had meanwhile
already appointed Antoine-Léonard de Chézy to a chair in Sanskrit
in the mid-1810s. Over the course of the nineteenth century, even
as the mass of Indian texts and materials in Eu ropean collections
grew exponentially, a new attitude can be observed, a simultaneous
glorification of the distant Indian past and a denigration of the
present moment. The Indians, it was thought, had once been great,
at the moment when they had produced the Vedas and the Upa-
nishads, or the early Buddhist corpus, or the great epics like the
Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana. However, they had then fallen into
the clutches of superstition and sloth, a process that had been further
aided by the centuries of Muslim rule after the foundation of the
Sultanate of Delhi in around 1200 CE. British rule would thus bring
progress and enlightenment, stirring the slothful “Hindoo” from
his centuries-long slumber. Perhaps the most celebrated of the
nineteenth-century classical Indologists, the German-born Oxford
professor Max Müller (1823–1900)—while he was apparently sympa-
thetic to India (a country he never visited)—held views that were
not too distant from these. On the other hand, the British politician
Thomas Babington Macaulay was among the most dismissive in his
global judgment on the worth of Indian culture. But many others,
from James Mill to Karl Marx (who famously wrote on India in the
1850s) were no less certain of the lowly status of the Indian culture
they believed they saw before them, and of the historic role that
the British Empire would play in setting Indian society back on the
rails, both metaphorically and literally.
To be sure, other voices were also heard expressing a somewhat
dif ferent opinion. One of these was that of the eccentric French ori-
 INTRODUCTION 43

entalist Garcin de Tassy (1794–1878), who insisted in works like

Histoire de la littérature hindoue e hindoustanie that northern Indian
vernacular culture and literature were vigorous objects eminently
worthy of study.85 This was part of a quarrel, ongoing even today,
on the relative significance of “high” and “low” (or “folk”) elements
in the understanding of Indian culture. Broadly the same line of ar-
gument was carried further by men like the Irish-born George Gri-
erson (1851–1941), who studied oral epics, and other aspects of
northern Indian peasant life, regarding academic orientalism as
overly concerned with the study of “pandit religion.” Further, the
consolidation of a Romantic movement in Europe in the course of
the nineteenth century also saw some intellectuals valorizing at least
a part of Indian culture, as represented in its ancient texts.86
These textual materials were certainly not the only means through
which Europe imagined India in the course of the nineteenth century.
The direct circulation of human beings equally played a very impor-
tant role. Europeans regularly made their way to India as mercenary
soldiers, administrators, and traders and in a variety of professions
during the entire period of Company rule and brought back their
impressions of India, as well as their offspring, who were sometimes
of mixed descent. From the second half of the eighteenth century,
Indian visitors came to Britain and Europe in some numbers, and
this continued through the nineteenth century. Some of these were
men like Mirza Abu Talib Isfahani, who was in Europe between 1799
and 1803, and left quite an impression on many members of high
society.87
The changing technology of transportation was in part respon-
sible for the growing ease of human circulation, with the eventual
opening of the Suez Canal in November 1869 marking a significant
step in the process. Changing technologies were also partly respon-
sible for shifting regimes in the circulation of images. European art-
ists were beginning to appear in India in increasing numbers in the
second half of the eighteenth century. By about 1800, they had pro-
duced a vogue for picturesque works depicting Indian ruins and
vistas, of which the most celebrated can be seen in the aquatints of
Thomas and William Daniell, in their Oriental Scenery. Engravings
and lithographs of Indian scenes and figures continued to appear and
44 EUROPE’S INDIA

find a ready market in the next several decades, both as freestanding

works and accompanied by texts, of which an excellent example is
Louis-Mathieu Langlès’s Monuments anciens et modernes de l’Hindoustan
(1817–1821). While ostensibly realistic in their representational con-
ventions, these works helped consolidate images of an India of ro-
mantic and desolate ruins. Europeans continued to be preoccupied
until the events of 1857–1858 with a certain number of new and
old orientalist topoi—namely, monuments, royal figures and darbārs,
thugs, “suttee,” and “nautch” girls—but a somewhat greater diversity
was now present in the palette of images and representations.
So much then for the “big picture,” and the long chronological
sweep. It is time now to return to the sixteenth century, and the new
beginnings of a European-Indian relationship inaugurated by the
consolidation of the Portuguese-dominated Carreira da Índia, or
Cape Route. The chapters that follow trace the emergence of the
multiple images of India in Eu ropean eyes over three centuries,
through a variety of actors and their perspectives. If some of these
perspectives stress analogy and “sympathy,” others are noted for their
emphasis on the negative, whether in the analysis of political organ-
ization, social structure, or belief-systems. It may also be useful from
the outset to clarify what this book does not intend to achieve. It is
above all not an encyclopedic account of European engagement with
India in the early modern period, an exercise which— even if it were
considered worthy of attempting—would require many volumes and
some thousands of pages. Further, several aspects have been delib-
erately set aside here, sometimes because they have been dealt with
competently elsewhere. The history of Euro-Indian commerce in
this period, for example, is not one of the central themes treated in
a systematic fashion here. Nor will a straightforward political nar-
rative be attempted.88 Rather, we focus on a history of representa-
tions and, in a related vein, on a history of knowledge formation. If
these involve the realm of words above all, the question of images
also figure periodically in our analysis.
 1
ON THE
INDO- PORTUGUESE MOMENT

Ganges, no qual os seus habitadores

Morrem banhados, tendo por certeza
Que, inda que sejam grandes pecadores,
Esta água santa os lava e dá pureza.

The Ganges, where every man of Hind

Washes himself and dies, knowing for sure,
That even if he has greatly sinned,
In that holy water he is rendered pure.
—Luís Vaz de Camões, Lusíadas (1572), 10.121

Introduction

Some three decades into the Portuguese presence in Asia, in the

year 1528, the Portuguese governor of the Estado da Índia, Lopo Vaz
de Sampaio, was somewhat perplexed to receive a letter from Gujarat.
The letter, written in a rather clear scribal hand, addressed him not
in Portuguese or Persian, but in French. This is how its contents ran
(in a more-or-less literal translation).

To the most high and powerful lord [blank space] Governor of

India, under the high power of the very illustrious, invincible
and most victorious King of Portugal.
Thirty-six poor, miserable, Christians of the nation of France,
held in captivity and servitude in the mountain of Chanpaner,
in the hands of the great dog [grant chien] Bahador,1 supplicate
the very high and powerful lord [blank space] Governor of India,
under the high power of the most illustrious and invincible King
of Portugal. We supplicate your high and noble lordship, that it
may please you to take pity, compassion and have mercy and

45
46 EUROPE’S INDIA

grace on [this] desolate company, who have been brought and

conducted to these parts from over there in a ship [nef ] called
La Marie de Bon Secours, also termed Le Grant Engloys, belonging
to the merchants of Rouen; under the charge and direction of a
Portuguese who called himself Estiene Dies [Estêvão Dias], who
was the captain, pilot, merchant, organizer and entrepreneur of
the said voyage, under the permission of the King and of Mon-
seigneur de Bryon, Grand Admiral of France. Which crew was
misled and seduced by the said captain and merchants of the said
ship, and by the master named Jehan Breulhy de Funag, who
gave them to understand that the said ship was only going to
the island of Sainct Thome or to the Magnicongue, and that
if the said captain could not find a lading in the said places, to go
to the land of Brazil in order to find a lading for the said ship,
as is stated in the certificate and contract of the said captain.
Even the contract of the companions and mari ners with the
master of the said ship which was passed before the registry of
Honfleur states the same.2

The claim is thus made that rather than infringing on the mono-
poly of the Indian Ocean trade that the Portuguese claimed by view
of Papal Bulls and the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), the ship’s crew
was under the impression that they were destined on a trading mis-
sion for West Africa, Brazil, or the São Tomé archipelago. Misled
by the Portuguese Dias, and his other partners, they now find them-
selves instead in India, in the hands of Sultan Bahadur of Gujarat
(r. 1526–1537), in his great fortress-capital of Champaner. How could
this turn of events have come about? The letter continues with its
explanation:

Which crew, in all good faith, undertook the said voyage, and
they navigated so far that on the 20th day of November of 1527,
we arrived at the port and haven of Quiloa [Kilwa, in East
Africa], in which place we wintered, remaining there until the
fifth day of the following April, while awaiting favourable
weather; for our said captain gave us to understand that he would
never take us to a place where the Portuguese had dominion or
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 47

trade, while telling us that he wished to go to Dieu [Diu], a port

of Canbaye [Cambay, or Gujarat]; and we had neither acquain-
tance nor knowledge of these places, for none of us had even
heard of them. We raised anchor, and went to sea, and navigated
so far that on the 25th of May we arrived before the city of Dieu.
Then, having anchored in the said place at the roadstead, the
said captain made it known to some foists [small galleys] that
came to speak to us that we were merchants, and that they should
give us an assurance to trade with them, which was granted to
us; but after the assurance had been given, they held back our
said captain on land and took the said ship and merchandise, and
even our own bodies were taken, and held, and placed in per-
petual captivity and servitude.

All this is posed as a sign of the lack of faith and honor on the part
of the Diu authorities, but the context was in fact one where the Gu-
jarat sultan (like his father, Sultan Muzaffar) had faced almost an-
nual attacks by Portuguese fleets off his coast since around 1520. The
arrival of an unknown European ship, ostensibly desiring trade and
amity, was undoubtedly something of a novelty in the context. As
for Estêvão Dias, he seems to have been a rather slippery character
in his own right, as the remaining half of the letter now recounts to
the Portuguese governor.

And therefore, noble Sire, we are miserable, and have no hope

save in God and in your noble lordship, for if your noble will so
desires, your great power can act, for if Your Highness does not
see to it, we are on the route to perdition, for our said captain
[Dias] is negotiating hard with the King to have his own lib-
erty, and in fact the King has granted it to him and he goes
about everywhere with the King, and it is clear that he does not
wish ever to go to [Portuguese] India or negotiate to take us
with him, and if your noble lordship does not remedy this, we
shall be the children of perdition. But whatever happens to us,
or is done to us, we will live and die in the Holy Catholic Faith
of Jesus Christ: for we have been interrogated many times on
which skills and things we know how to practice, for our said
48 EUROPE’S INDIA

captain has entertained the King and the lords who have said that
they will do us many favours and our captain has communi-
cated this to us, to which we, and especially our bombardiers,
have responded that in this land with this rabble [avec ceste que-
naille], we have no desire to be any greater than we [already]
are, for we would prefer to live in poverty with our Christian
brothers rather than to be great lords with the enemies of the
Faith.
May it please Your Highness to turn your sweet countenance
and survey with your pitying and merciful eye these poor Chris-
tians, who ask you for your pardon, and that your noble lord-
ship might be enriched by the gift of pity for, excellent Sire, it
is a virtue that is more divine than human to pardon, for it is
the nature of God the Creator to pardon poor sinners when they
ask him for pardon and mercy, and you should not permit that
so many souls be lost and spent in the hands of these damned
dogs. And therefore, noble Sire, may you be turned towards
mercy and pity towards these poor Christians rather than to the
rigour and severity of justice! By doing so, you will merit the
grace of God, to whom we pray that He grants you a good and
long life, with perpetual triumph and glory.

The interest expressed by the mercantile milieux of Dieppe, Hon-

fleur, and Rouen in the Iberian overseas possession in the 1520s is
quite well-known.3 The main figure involved was the corsair and
entrepreneur Jean Ango, but a number of others—including some
Italians and Portuguese— could be found around him, with ambi-
tions in the Atlantic, but eventually also spilling into the Indian
Ocean.4 Not long after the voyage of the unfortunate letter-writers
cited above, the brothers Jean and Raoul Parmentier set off on an
expedition to Sumatra, never to return; however, materials con-
cerning their travels did survive and were even published.5 In the
middle decades of the sixteenth century, a certain amount of infor-
mation regarding the Indian Ocean came to accumulate in the hands
of those in the ports of Normandy, contributing to the creation over
several decades of the celebrated “Dieppe school” of cartography,
which gave visual expression to the knowledge gathered, among
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 49

others, from men like Estêvão Dias, who led the failed Diu voyage
of 1527–1528. This school was partly based on practical knowledge,
though one cannot underestimate the role played by armchair intel-
lectuals such as Pierre Desceliers, the abbot at Arques-la-Bataille and
something of a pioneer in the matter of making world maps.6
The letter from the anonymous Frenchmen in 1528 brings home
a number of other curious aspects of the early Portuguese presence
in the Indian Ocean. The first is the desire on the part of the Crown,
whether Dom Manuel (r. 1495–1521) or his son and successor Dom
João III (r. 1521–1557) to keep a relatively tight lid on concrete infor-
mation concerning the Indian Ocean and Asia in the first decades
of the sixteenth century. Almost all texts that the Portuguese pro-
duced and circulated in the years before 1530 were rather vague con-
cerning the specifics, even when they were stridently propagandistic
in nature. This certainly had an effect, and we can see that the
Norman mari ners of 1528 were woefully ill-informed. But other
Eu ropeans seem to have been less constrained in their access to
information, whether cartographic or commercial, often using quite
unscrupulous means. A celebrated example of this is the so-called
Cantino planisphere, surreptitiously acquired in Lisbon by Alberto
Cantino, the agent of the Duke of Ferrara in that city in 1502. Equally,
in the fi rst two decades of the sixteenth centuries, some of the
Flemish, Germans, and Italians who sailed to India on board Portu-
guese ships began to put out accounts for audiences elsewhere in
Eu rope. As early as 1504, there appeared in Antwerp an anonymous
printed account in Flemish called Calcoen (a distortion of Calicut),
whose author described his own participation in the second voyage
of Vasco da Gama to India in 1502–1503.7 It begins thus: “This is the
voyage which a man wrote himself, how far he sailed with seventy
ships from the river of Lisbon, in Portugal, to go to Calicut in India,
and this occurred in the year 1501 [sic].” Laconic in the extreme, it
goes on to describe the fleet’s experiences in East Africa, the cele-
brated attack by Gama on a ship carrying returning hājīs from Mecca,
and then offers a mere handful of other details. These include the
Portuguese difficulties with the authorities at Calicut, and their hap-
pier dealings at Cochin, as well as with the so-called St.  Thomas
Christians in the region.
50 EUROPE’S INDIA

On the 2nd day of November we sailed from Calcoen 60 miles

to a kingdom called Cusschaïn [Cochin]; and between these
two towns is a Christian kingdom called Granor [Cranganor,
Kerala], and there are many good Christians; and in this
kingdom live many Jews, and they have a prince there. You un-
derstand that all the Jews of the country are also subjects of the
same prince. And the Christians have nothing to do with any-
body, and they are good Christians. They neither sell nor buy
anything during the consecrated days, and they neither eat nor
drink with anybody but Christians. They willingly came to our
ships with fowls and sheep, and caused us to make good cheer.
They had just sent priests to the pope at Rome to know the true
faith.

Nor is the text particularly prolix in terms of the commercial or

ethnographic details it provides in its remaining pages. One of the
more extended passages runs as follows.

The people of this country have black teeth, because they eat
the leaves of the trees and a white thing like chalk actually with
the leaves, and it comes from it that the teeth become black,
and that is called tombour [Arabic tanbul, betel] and they carry
it always with them wherever they go or are traveling. The
pepper grows as the vine does in our country. There are in
the country cats as big as our foxes, and it is from them that
the musk comes, and it is very dear, for a cat is worth 100
ducats, and the musk grows between his legs, under his tail.
Ginger grows as a reed, and cinnamon as a willow; and every
year they strip the cinnamon from its bark, however thin it is,
and the youngest is the better. The true summer is in December
and January.

A few years later, the South German commercial firm of Welser

sent an agent, a Bavarian merchant named Balthasar Sprenger, to
India along with the entering Captain-Major (and later viceroy) Dom
Francisco de Almeida. On his return in 1506, Sprenger published an
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 51

account that eventually gained a certain level of notoriety and in-

augurated a series of such accounts in German concerning India in
the sixteenth century.8 An aspect of some consequence here was the
presence in Augsburg (where the Welsers based their affairs) of a
number of prominent artists proficient in the art of the woodcut.
One of these, Hans Burgkmair, seems to have drawn on a version
of Sprenger’s account to produce iconic scenes of southern Indian life,
notably one showing the “King of Cochin” (Der Kunig von Gutzin)
being carried in a palanquin.9 Not long after, Burgkmair’s con-
temporary, Jörg Breu, produced illustrations for the 1515 German
translation of the Itinerario of Ludovico di Varthema, a Bolognese
adventurer who had also sojourned in early Portuguese India and
produced a somewhat fanciful account of his experiences.10 Breu’s im-
ages famously underlined the horrific and monstrous aspects of the
gods whom the Indians worshipped, and appear to have become the
prototypes for the representation of a vast spectrum of religiosity
in the non-European world, with “Calicut” coming to stand in for
anything from Africa to Brazil.
Even if the Flemish and Germans appeared to have taken the early
lead in diffusing materials regarding Portuguese encounters and ex-
periences in the Indian Ocean, it was the Italian intervention which
may be said to have truly made the difference. We have already noted
the existence of Varthema’s curious text, initially published in 1510,
but quickly translated from Italian into other languages, notably
Latin in 1511, and the very popu lar Spanish version of 1520. Two
other important documents from the traveler and intellectual An-
drea Corsali then appeared in print in Florence, the Lettera allo il-
lustrissimo Iuliano de Medici venuta dell’India (1516) and the Lettera allo
ill. Laurentio de’ Medici ex India (1518). But such crumbs could only
serve to whet the appetite. The major project—in some respects a
turning point for the reception of India in Europe—was to be that of
the Venetian bureaucrat and intellectual Giovanni Battista Ramusio,
who served as the secretary of the senate in the island republic for
some thirty-seven years, and ended his life as secretary of the Council
of Ten. Though he seems to have traveled very little, Ramusio had
an extensive network of contacts and intellectual interlocutors,
52 EUROPE’S INDIA

The King of Cochin (Der Kunig von Gutzin), engraving after Hans
Burgkmair (1508), British Museum, London, Nr. 1957,0705.55.
© Trustees of the British Museum. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

including some of the best-informed Italians of the day. He was cer-

tainly aware that relatively little regarding the Portuguese Estado
da Índia was freely available in Europe, notwithstanding the exis-
tence of a few projects of compilation such as Fracanzio da Montal-
boddo’s hugely successful Paesi novamente retrovati (1507), and the
Protestant theologian Simon Grynaeus’s Novus orbis regionum ac
insularum veteribus incognitarum (1532). He thus launched into the pro-
duction of his massive Navigationi et Viaggi, which eventually ap-
peared in three volumes (albeit out of order) between 1550 and 1559.11
In the fi rst of these volumes, Ramusio produced versions of well-
known texts, as well as hitherto unknown ones, including abridged
versions of the great narratives of Duarte Barbosa and Tomé Pires.
By the early 1550s, therefore, the European reader could gain access
to an India made up of dif ferent elements, whether in terms of poli-
tics, society, or religion. Had merchants and sailors from Dieppe or
Honfleur decided to depart for Gujarat in 1557, rather than 1527, they
would have had no excuse for not having a decent sense of the com-
mercial and cultural geography of the Indian Ocean world. This
would surely have included a clear notion of powerful Muslim poli-
ties there, notably in the area of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf
as well as western India. They could have gathered easily that even
the Islamic world was divided somewhat between those (like the
Sultans of Aceh in Sumatra) who favored the Sunni Ottomans, and
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 53

Lahore

M U G HA L 0 300 600 mi
Delhi 0 500 1000 km

Agra
N
E M P I R E

Ahmadabad
Cambay BENGAL
G U J A R AT Hughli
Diu Surat AR
Gulf of Pipli AK
Cambay Daman

AN
Bassein
Bombay
Chaul

ARABIAN GOLCONDA
SEA B
Goa Masulipatnam
IJ
A P KANA

NDEL

Honavar B AY O F
U R RA

Bhatkal VIJAYA- BENGAL

NAGARA Pulicat
CO R O MA

Mangalore São Tomé

Cannanore
Calicut
MA

Nagapattinam
Madurai
Cochin
LAB
AR

Kollam SRI LANKA

Tuticorin
(CEYLON)
Cape Comorin

Colombo

INDIAN OCEAN

Eu ropean settlements in Asia before 1600. Map by William L. Nelson.

others—like some of the rulers of the Deccan—who were closely at-

tached to the Shi‘i Safavids. Moreover, they would have known by
then that a large population existed of what the Portuguese termed
gentios (gentiles), peoples who were neither Muslim, nor Christian,
nor Jews. Indeed, the reader of Ramusio could have gained a reason-
able insight into the state of play in the Indian Ocean area in about
1520, and the real difficulty would have been in keeping abreast of
subsequent developments. This would be the task of the Portuguese
chronicles, which eventually took the lead from the Italians as the
sixteenth century wore on.
54 EUROPE’S INDIA

The Iberian Chronicling Tradition

The analysis of the early modern Portuguese chronicling tradition

takes us back to the medieval Islamic past of the Iberian Peninsula.
It is obvious enough that the southern part of Iberia (including what
would later be a good part of the kingdom of Portugal) was heavily
influenced by the Arabic language and its literature for over seven
hundred years, from the early eighth century CE onward. Much has
been written about this period, and the echoes of the lively (and even
violent) polemic that arose between Américo Castro and Claudio
Sánchez-Albornoz on the nature of Islamic influence on medieval
Spanish culture have not entirely died down even today.12 It seems
from the perspective of today that neither was particularly right:
if Castro was too eager to invent and sustain a golden moment of
convivencia between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the medieval
period, Sánchez-Albornoz has been justly criticized for his hyper-
skeptical stance in relation to Arabic sources and his obsession with
an essential “Spanishness”—or hispanidad— among a multitude of
other sins. Leaving aside the broad contours of this debate, a spe-
cific issue was the importance and “reliability” of an Arabic-language
historiography that was produced in the Iberian Peninsula and in
North Africa over several centuries. Curiously, even recent votaries
of a version of convivencia have preferred to shy away from this ques-
tion, instead looking to belles-lettres and mysticism as the main areas
to be explored in the composite culture apparently shared by the ad-
herents of the three Mosaic religions in Iberia at the time.13
This is not to say, of course, that the Arabic historiography pro-
duced in Iberia has been neglected by specialists in the last hundred
years or so—far from it.14 We can turn to the classic work of Éva-
riste Lévi-Provençal and his unfi nished, multivolume Histoire de
l’Espagne musulmane for proof of the contrary with regard to the first
centuries of the Muslim presence in Spain.15 Other philologists and
historians in Spain also participated fully in this work, and among
them we may count such celebrated names as Ambrosio Huici Mi-
randa and his Colección de crónicas árabes de la Reconquista.16 In the
1970s, Pedro Chalmeta Gendrón cast a critical eye on the weaknesses
and philological blind spots of this earlier historiography, and in a
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 55

series of essays proposed a useful scheme to classify the considerable

historiographical production in Arabic of medieval Spain (or perhaps
Iberia, given the ambiguities inherent in the word “España”). To be
sure, Gendrón noted the presence of a vast number of genres, ranging
from biographical dictionaries to mixed “novelistic” works in prose
and verse. But he centered his analysis above all on two distinct types
of historical production: the more primitive and loosely constructed
khabar (plural, akhbār), which he termed “a discontinuous and in-
temporal history,” based largely on an accumulation of episodes and
anecdotes, and with minimal attention paid to causal schemes; and
the more complex tārīkh, a sequenced chronicle-style history with
elaborate notions of causation, which he saw as eventually triumphing
over khabar and overtaking it. This is how he developed the contrast
between the two:

Here [in tārīkh], everything is contrasted to khabar: one no longer

writes for a group but for the State and therefore with self-
censorship with regard to whatever was or might be considered
to be unedifying. This would no longer be spontaneous, popular
and anonymous work, but personal, thought through, worked on;
priding itself in the fact of copying documents and archives,
instead of [spoken] words, with a sense of being “well-read.” It
would be the labour of literati, of cultivated people, of intellec-
tual circles, of those who—with the exception of the desire for
chronological stability—would centre every thing on the State
(which could be global or regional), thus ensuring that the ear-
lier multi-focal viewpoint would to a certain extent disappear.17

Such works of tārīkh, we know, proliferated at the time of the

Caliphate of Córdoba, but they can equally be found in the last
centuries of Muslim Spain, with the Nasrids in the south for ex-
ample.18 They sat side by side with works in Latin and the Iberian
vernaculars, and at times described the same events or processes from
another angle of vision. On some occasions we can even see a histo-
rian in Latin drawing explicitly on works in Arabic as sources; this
is the case, for example, with the Historia Arabum of the archbishop
of Toledo, Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada (1170–1247).19 Furthermore,
56 EUROPE’S INDIA

given the complex and cross-cutting relationship between the Nas-

rids and the Marinids, there is every reason to link the world of Ibe-
rian tārīkh production to the more general historiographical reflec-
tion that one usually associates with Ibn Khaldun, whose family
had long been settled in Seville and who himself spent time in the
1360s at the Nasrid court at Granada.20 It is another matter that
much concrete work remains to be done to establish the precise con-
nections between Ibn Khaldun’s more general philosophical and
sociolog ical reflections and the actual work of writing history at
that time, including his own ventures in that direction.21
It is difficult to say to what extent the southern part of what even-
tually became the kingdom of Portugal was implicated in this world
of Arabic historiography. There is no doubt that few real boundaries
existed for the circulation of literati between the west (al-Gharb al-
Andalus) and the center of the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth
and twelfth centuries.22 A few celebrated intellectuals can certainly
be pointed to whose careers testify to this fact, such as Ibn Bassam
al-Shantarini (d. 1147–1148), the author of a multivolume biograph-
ical dictionary entitled al-Zakhīra fī mahāsin ahl al-Jazīra, who moved
from his native Santarém to Seville.23 A generation later, we have the
instance of Ibn Sahib al-Salah (d. 1198), a native of Beja who both
served and wrote a history of the Almohads entitled al-Mann bi-al-
Imāma.24 However, with the consolidation of the Christian kingdom
of Portugal in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, one
may discern a gradual closing of such possibilities, which are likely
to have been increasingly limited as the Portuguese Reconquista took
its course from the time of the near-legendary Battle of Ourique
(1139), to the eventual capture of the Algarve by the king Dom Afonso
III (1249). Nevertheless, Arabic speakers continued to be found in
the kingdom of Portugal, particularly in the principal urban centers
of the south. Lisbon (formerly al-Ushbuna), for example, continued
to have its “Moorish quarter” (mouraria) until the early sixteenth
century, and we cannot exclude the possibility that a certain number
of Jewish and Christian intellectuals had some exposure to the Ar-
abic literary tradition in other towns that had been prominent in the
time of Muslim rule, such as Mértola (Martula), Évora (Yabura),
Silves (Shilb), and Santarém (Shantarin). However, it has often been
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 57

remarked that in contrast to southern Spain, little or no traces of

manuscript collections have survived in Portugal, and even the
practice of writing Romance languages in Arabic script (aljamia or
aljamiado) remained rather limited to the west. In 1499, some five
thousand Arabic manuscripts were burned publicly in Granada on
the orders of Cardinal Cisneros, but by that time nothing ap-
proaching that number of works even existed in all of Portugal.25 In
other words, one can quite safely state that by the latter half of the
fifteenth century, a quite considerable social amnesia regarding the
Arabic language and its literature (including its historiography) had
come into place in the now consolidated kingdom of Portugal. To
be sure, the Portuguese presence in North Africa—from the con-
quest of Ceuta in 1415 onward— ensured that not all was forgotten
at the oral level.26 Arabic continued to be used for day-to-day con-
tacts in Morocco, as well as in correspondence with sovereigns and
local notables of that area. But in Portugal itself the only groups of
literati who seem to have continued to pursue its use into the six-
teenth century were in the medical profession, as we see from the
case of the visiting Flemish intellectual Clenardus, or Nicolas Cley-
naerts (1495–1542), who attempted to learn Arabic while employed
as a tutor to a Portuguese prince in the 1530s. We learn from his let-
ters that the only solution that he eventually found was to seek out a
Portuguese physician in Évora by the name of António Filipe (An-
tonius Philippus), and to learn the language through books on med-
icine.27 Certainly, the works of Ibn Bassam or Ibn Sahib al-Salah
were not to be found easily by this time in their places of birth. In a
seminal essay from three quarters of a century ago on the teaching
of Arabic in Salamanca during the Renaissance, Marcel Bataillon
wrote: “Renaissance Spain was at one and the same time the country
best suited to become a seedbed of Arabic scholarship and the
country least inclined to play this role.”28 Perhaps Portugal was not
quite as well placed, but it was certainly no more willing to play this
role than Span was by the late fifteenth century.
There was of course a great irony to all this, as indeed to the fact
that at this time Arabic and other “Oriental” languages were far
better represented at the level of both teaching and manuscripts in
Italy than on the Iberian Peninsula.29 For, as we well know, in the
58 EUROPE’S INDIA

later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, two of the most impor tant
Iberian states— Castile and Portugal— set about constructing dis-
persed empires on a world scale, which required them to come into
contact with other peoples and cultures. This was a bloody and com-
plex process, the cultural and political consequences of which are
still with us today. Part of the difficulty lay in the fact that these very
states were also simultaneously in the process of redefining their in-
ternal cultural politics in a rather radical fashion. The same decade
that saw Columbus’s voyages to the continent that he would never
call America, and Vasco da Gama’s arrival on the southwest coast of
India, also witnessed the expulsion of the Jews and the partial ex-
pulsion of Muslims from Spain, and a similar (but somewhat variant)
process, involving a larger dose of conversion in Portugal. Eventu-
ally, on account of the vagaries of the Columbian voyages and the
nature of the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Spaniards were never to have
extensive contact with Muslim populations overseas, save in the
Philippines.30 In the case of the Portuguese, however, the problem
turned out to be quite dif ferent. Already their fifteenth-century ad-
vances into North Africa had brought them into conflict with a se-
ries of Muslim states, a process which many ideologues of the time
tended to see as the resumption (after a hiatus) of the logic of the
Reconquista. Yet, ironically, this was not simply an encounter with
a familiar “enemy,” for all that the same word Moor (or mouro) was
used by Portuguese through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
to designate Muslims wherever they found them. Rather, it was an
enemy who had become strangely unfamiliar because nothing had
been done institutionally to preserve knowledge concerning them.
Part of this process was therefore the rediscovery of Islam, a process
that the missionary orders of the Counter-Reformation would still
be struggling with in the early seventeenth century. A second aspect
was the rediscovery of the history of Muslim peoples, which required
an investment in both old skills that had been unlearned and alto-
gether new ones that a dif ferent context imposed on the Portuguese.
In the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese were thus to rediscover the
world of the tārīkh.
It is well-known that over a century and a half separated the Por-
tuguese “reconquest” of the Algarve from their capture of the North
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 59

African outpost of Ceuta in August 1415, the moment usually taken

to mark the beginning of Portuguese overseas expansion. These in-
termediate years did not see the emergence of a significant chroni-
cling tradition in Portuguese. Rather, it was probably in the later
1410s that we meet the first important Portuguese chronicler, the
chief archivist (or guarda- mor) of the royal document collection (the
Torre do Tombo), Fernão Lopes, who worked under the direct pa-
tronage of the prince Dom Duarte and was eventually made official
chronicler in the 1430s, when that prince assumed the throne. Lopes
was a prolific and respected writer in his time, but is generally thought
to depend on oral and popu lar materials to a somewhat greater
degree than on the archives that were in his charge. He was also
capable of somewhat sustained reflection on the matter of history-
writing itself, rather than simply treating it as something that was
self-evident or a banal and practical matter.31 In his well-known
prologue to the first part of the Crónica d’El Rei Dom João I, for ex-
ample, he argued that the central struggle of the historian was against
“affection” (afeição), or what a recent critic has termed “the problem-
atic, affective impulse that compels history-writers to misrepresent
events in their texts to the advantage of benefactors and homeland.”32
Thus, when describing the contests between Portuguese and Castil-
ians in the late fourteenth century, one might be tempted always to
present things in the best possible light for the Portuguese, but this
temptation should (so Lopes thought) be stoutly resisted. This was
why Lopes himself claimed that he had “with so much care and
diligence seen great volumes of books, and greatly varied languages
and lands [grandes volumes de livros, e desvairadas linguagens, e terras],
and even public writings from many archives [muitos cartórios] and
other places, in which after long vigils and great travails, we could
not have any greater certainty in the content of this work.” Lopes
has already made his position on the matter of the completeness of
knowledge clear in any earlier passage: “for to err is nothing else than
to believe that what has come down to us is the truth, and misleading
oneself through ignorance of ancient writings and varied authors,
one can well state an error.”33
Despite (or then again, perhaps, precisely on account of) this claim
to a dispassionate history that takes account of all possible sources,
60 EUROPE’S INDIA

Fernão Lopes’s work is somewhat overshadowed by that of his suc-

cessor Gomes Eanes de Zurara (or Azurara), a prolific writer who is
best known for his Crónica dos feitos notáveis que se passaram na con-
quista da Guiné por mandado do infante D. Henrique (often abbreviated
as the Crónica da Guiné). This is in large measure a panegyric work
devoted to the praise of the prince Dom Henrique ( brother of Dom
Duarte), who for several decades was largely responsible for the en-
terprise of the Portuguese exploration of the African west coast and
its commercial exploitation. Though partly an autodidact, Zurara
was erudite, and his range of citations and references runs from Ar-
istotle and Avicenna, to Boccaccio. However, the extent to which he
made use of materials coming, as it were, from the “other side,” in
the Crónica da Guiné, was rather limited. In a significant passage in
his invocation (dedicated to the Infante Dom Henrique), he does
show some awareness of the issue:

Other voices [outras vozes] very contrary to these I have re-

counted thus far sounded in my ears, for which I should have
felt great compassion had I not found them to be from outside
our law [ fora de nossa ley]. For countless souls of Moors addressed
me, both on this side and the other [of the Straits of Gibraltar],
of whom many had died by your lance in this most cruel war
you have always waged against them. And others presented
themselves before me loaded with irons, their countenances piti-
able, men who were captured by your ships through the great
strength of the bodies of your vassals; but in these I noticed that
they complained less of their ultimate fate than of their initial
one, that is, of the seductive error in which that false schismatic
Maffamede [Muhammad] left them.34

Here the Muslim “voice” does exist, but only as it is imagined by

Zurara; and this act of imagination can be easily cauterized as it were
by the mere fact that they belong to a rival faith, which is signifi-
cantly not greatly demonized beyond being called “schismatic” (cis-
matico). Interestingly, some years later in 1467, while writing the
Crónica do Conde Dom Duarte de Meneses, about the captain of the for-
tified settlement of Alcácer-Ceguer, he went somewhat further. On
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 61

this occasion, we are told that Zurara “took care to obtain information
from the Moors themselves, both from such as visited Alcácer and
from those he met when accompanying D. Henrique [de Meneses]
to treat of matters with the inhabitants of the neighboring places.”35
However, these contacts seem to have remained within the domain of
the oral. There is, however, one intriguing reference that suggests
Zurara in fact did have some limited access to the written materials
and formal historiography produced in North Africa. This is a pas-
sage in his earliest historical work, the Crónica da tomada de Ceuta
(dating to 1449–1450), in which he discusses the origins of the city.

And it is recounted by Abilabez, who was a man of great learning

[grande doutor] amongst the Moors, that this city was founded
two hundred and thirty-three years after the destruction wrought
by the flood. . . . And he states that the city’s founder was No-
ah’s grandson, and that this was the first city he founded in all
the lands of Africa, and because of this named it Ceuta, which
means “beginning of beauty” in the Chaldean language.36 And
he states that he ordered that some letters be chiseled onto the
first foundation stone. “This is my city of Ceuta which I have
populated above all with people from my lineage [minha geração].
Its citizens will rank above all the nobility of Africa. There will
come a day when the blood of diverse nations will be spilled over
its possession [seu senhorio], and its name will last until the end
of the Last Judgment.”37

What is of interest here is the specific textual reference and invoca-

tion of authority, for it is a nod in the direction of the great saintly
figure of Sidi Abi al-‘Abbas al-Sabti (d. 1204), and may even be drawn
from his hagiography al-Tashawwuf ilá rijāl al-tasawwuf wa-akhbār
Abī al-‘Abbās al- Sabtī. Abi al-‘Abbas (Zurara’s “Abilabez”), as his
demonym “al-Sabti” indicates, was born in Ceuta but then moved to
Marrakesh, where he emerged as a major Sufi figure in the twelfth
century.38 If one had to cite an authoritative Muslim savant, one could
scarcely have done better for that time and place.
But this Arabic reference in Zurara is very much the exception
and not the rule. This situation remained the case for the next
62 EUROPE’S INDIA

half-century or so, even after the Portuguese had rounded the Cape
of Good Hope to enter into the commerce of the Indian Ocean. We
have already noted the role played by the Italians, the Germans, and
the Flemish in these early years. The first completed and published
text that can be said to approximate a chronicle of the Portuguese in
Asia is, paradoxically, a work in Castilian. This is the Conquista de
las Indias de Persia e Arabia que hizo la armada del rey don Manuel de
Portugal, jointly produced by Martín Fernández de Figueroa (who
had been in Asia) and the humanist Juan Agüero de Trasmiera, and
was published in Salamanca in September 1512, a mere thirteen years
after Vasco da Gama’s return to Lisbon from his first voyage.39 In
this work, we are first given a short and somewhat inaccurate account
of the early Portuguese voyages before entering into more interesting
materials dating from 1505, when Figueroa himself arrived in the In-
dian Ocean accompanying the Castilian captain (and native of Sala-
manca) Pedro de Añaya, who was a part of the fleet carry ing the first
Portuguese viceroy of the Indies, Dom Francisco de Almeida. After
Añaya’s death in Sofala in June 1506, Figueroa continued to see vig-
orous action on a number of occasions and the text recounts a series
of military episodes, including Afonso de Albuquerque’s aggressive
moves at Hurmuz in 1508, the combat against a Mamluk fleet at Diu
in 1509, as well as the Portuguese dealings with and capture of Goa
in 1510. Naturally, much of this combat was with Muslims (moros),
to whom the text usually shows consistent hostility but also some
confusion (as on one occasion where we are told that the enemies
were not strictly moros but infi eles, some of whom were actually
gentiles). But the basis for all that is recounted is once again for the
most part essentially oral— and not textual. Agüero, who himself
writes in the first person, treats Figueroa as an informant and pres-
ents him in the third person. The chronicle thus mixes Figueroa’s
personal experiences with hearsay, rumor, and references both to
earlier works on Asia (such as those by Marco Polo and Poggio Brac-
ciolini), and the medieval Iberian romance tradition. This movement
to-and-fro between the chronicling tradition and the travel account
was never quite resolved during the rest of the sixteenth century, as
shown in another celebrated text, the Peregrinação of Fernão Mendes
Pinto.40
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 63

But Pinto’s work, published in 1614, takes us somewhat beyond the

limits of the present exercise, which intends to concentrate on the
great chronicling tradition of the first century or so after Gama’s
arrival in Asian waters. A conventional and well-established his-
tory exists of Portuguese historiography in relation to the Indian
Ocean in the sixteenth century, which— like all conventional
historiographies—is not entirely devoid of virtues.41 It tells us in ef-
fect of four great chroniclers, surrounded by a host of minor ones,
as well as a complex set of relations with historians of Portugal itself
in the same period. These chroniclers are Fernão Lopes de Castan-
heda (1500–1559), João de Barros (1496–1570), Gaspar Correia (ca.
1492–1563), and a clear generation later Diogo do Couto (1542–
1616).42 In the constellation surrounding them are many, many
others, ranging from Brás de Albuquerque, to Leonardo Nunes, An-
tónio de Castilho, António Pinto Pereira, and the anonymous writer
of a valuable early sixteenth-century chronicle which bears a certain
resemblance to the text of Castanheda.43 Further, we have the great
central chroniclers operating out of Portugal in the same period,
who treated the Asian experience as part of a global history of the
Portuguese monarchy; among these, the most important were
Damião de Góis and Jerónimo Osório. The bulk of these writers
produced their chief works in Portuguese, but Osório (1506–1580)
chose to write his De rebus Emmanuelis regis Lusitaniae in Latin,
which seems for a time to have given his chronicle greater circula-
tion and accessibility than some of its competitors (and the approba-
tion of even the skeptical Michel de Montaigne).44
The same conventional historiographical analy sis divides the
four Portuguese chroniclers of Asia in dif ferent ways. One obvious
orga nizing matrix would place Barros and Couto, who were both
officially appointed chroniclers, on the one side of a divide, and
Castanheda and Correia on the other on account of their unofficial
character. But some analysts have objected that this gives too great
importance to structures of patronage in historiographical produc-
tion, while neglecting the content and nature of the texts themselves.
They would point to the deeply conventional nature of Castanheda’s
text, the História do descobrimento e conquista da Índia pelos Portugueses,
its almost obsessive attention to the faithful copying of documents
64 EUROPE’S INDIA

from the royal or vice-regal chanceries into the chronicle, and its
reluctance to say anything that might be seen as at all embar-
rassing to the Portuguese Crown or the upper nobility that led Por-
tuguese actions in Asia. By this light, despite his plainer style and
lack of rhetorical flourish, Castanheda does not appear that far from
Barros, even though he saw the official chronicler as his chief rival.45
One of the chief passages in Castanheda sets out this opposition and
rivalry. Here, he asserts that his authority as a historian derives from
the fact that he has lived through “wild and terrible storms, during
which I saw myself on the point of death and without hope of life”;
further, as a soldier in Asia, he had gone through “a thousand dangers
in frightful battles with countless cannon and musket balls.” This
was a history then that wished to distance itself from claims of eru-
dition: Castanheda made it a point to insist that he “did not learn
[his history] in my house, nor did I send to ask about it in writing
from those who knew it.” The barbs are clearly directed at João de
Barros, the official historian, who had never been in Asia and only
had spent one period on the west coast of Africa. This is the point of
Castanheda’s claim that “the time that I spent in India, and what I
saw there, was of great help to me in order not simply to be satisfied
with what I was told, for if this had not been so, I could easily have
been misled, as one who had never set eyes on that land, nor could
tell whether or not things could be done in the places where they
happened.”46
This precedence given to personal experience and the status of
eyewitness is even more acute in the case of another chronicler of
the time, the somewhat mysterious Gaspar Correia.47 Correia arrived
in Asia at a quite young age, during the governorship of Afonso de
Albuquerque (1509–1515), perhaps in his late teens or around twenty.
In the four decades and more that he spent there, he traveled exten-
sively, above all in the littoral territories of the western Indian Ocean,
but also in the Bay of Bengal, and conceivably even as far as Southeast
Asia. He appears to have held scribal, secretarial, and other minor
bureaucratic offices, and was a fairly accomplished draughtsman who
made both cityscapes and portraits of political actors to illustrate
his own work. His most significant historical work for our purposes
was the Lendas da Índia (“Legends of India”), which had almost cer-
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 65

tainly been completed by about 1550 (or not long thereafter) but
which remained a shadowy text— cited and used by a mere handful
of authors and chroniclers—until its eventual publication in the nine-
teenth century. Prior to that he had also written a history of the kings
of Portugal, of which only a fragment has come down to us.48 Correia
is a prolix and puzzling author, the epistemological status of whose
work remains controversial to this very day. By the nineteenth century
it was surrounded by a certain aura, as a sort of samizdat chronicle,
which had been deliberately suppressed by the Portuguese nobility
(and especially the Gama family) because of its frank and even irrev-
erent contents. Where another chronicler, while recounting the
history of a siege in which the Portuguese managed to outwit their
besiegers, would suggest that they did this through superior infor-
mation, Correia might state in a properly subaltern mode that the
intelligence was gathered by a Portuguese soldier who went to uri-
nate from the ramparts of a fortress and overheard a conversation in
the undergrowth.49 There was also the engaging fact of the high
ethnographic color of the chronicle, and its extensive if improbable
descriptions of life in Asia, from temple festivals in South India to
ostensible exchanges of correspondence between Asian monarchs
transcribed from the Persian into Portuguese. In the twentieth
century, progressive Portuguese historians pointed to his total lack
of subservience to official hierarchies and their demands, and the
fact that his book was not dedicated or contained within a scheme of
captatio benevolentiae. Here was a historian, it was stated, who as a
Spinozian avant la lettre actually wrote history sub specie aeternitatis,
with no imagined audience other than posterity in general.50
But the mammoth edifice of Correia’s chronicling really does not
withstand close scrutiny in this regard.51 To be sure, he— like
Castanheda—is largely untouched by the Counter-Reformation or
even by the earlier demands placed on Portuguese empire-building
by Franciscan or other missionary ideologues. But his chronicle is
constructed around a number of recurring features that would bear
mention and that place him at a great distance from the point of
view espoused by Fernão Lopes. First, it is clear that Correia was
heavily steeped in the tradition of Iberian chivalric fiction, works
like the Libro del caballero Zifar, Amadís de Gaula, and even perhaps
66 EUROPE’S INDIA

Tirant lo Blanc (although this last is less likely).52 In and of itself, this
is not surprising—the Agüero-Figueroa text also contains refer-
ences to Amadís, while the earlier text of Zurara contains its share
of hints in the direction of this literary tradition. But what might be
unnerving for his latter-day admirers is the use that Correia makes
of this tradition. Whole sequences seem to be directly derived from
this chivalric logic, as has been pointed out with regard to his narra-
tive sections concerning the voyage of Paulo and Vasco da Gama to
India in 1497–1499. Further, Correia invents characters (of whom
there is no trace in any other chronicle or archive), giving them arch-
chivalric names such as Lançarote (or Lancelot) and placing them at
the center of action for stretches in his chronicle. A second important
characteristic of Correia’s chronicle is his desire for ecumenical clo-
sure, particularly in relation to the problem of the partial expulsion of
the Jews from Portugal. He manipulates the figure of the Jewish as-
tronomer Abraham Zacut, making him nothing less than the provi-
dential agent of the first Portuguese voyages into Asia when in fact
Zacut almost certainly had no relationship to these expeditions.53
Again, this continues the tradition of Zurara in part—where the
figure of the Infante Dom Henrique is surrounded by an overwhelm-
ingly providentialist odor—but Correia takes matters into far deeper
waters. Third, there is the matter of Correia’s alleged access to mate-
rials in Asian languages such as Persian, Arabic, and Ottoman
Turkish, in particular diplomatic correspondence. These appear par-
ticularly in the sections where he deals with the Sultanate of Gujarat
in the 1530s, in the years immediately preceding and following the
death of Sultan Bahadur Shah in 1537.54 Once again, the materials
that Correia presents are highly implausible and are not confirmed
elsewhere—unlike the diplomatic letters cited by Castanheda, many
of which have close equivalents in the archives.55 From all of these
points, we are obliged to conclude that Correia was producing a text
in an interesting hybrid genre, moving freely between the chronicle
(as it was understood not simply by us, but by his own contempo-
raries), and the romance-cum-travel-narrative. Of Asian languages,
there is a possibility that he may have had some notions of spoken
Malayalam in view of the years he spent in Kerala, but one cannot
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 67

believe that he moved in the world of written texts in languages

other than those of the Iberian Peninsula (and perhaps a little Latin).
This takes us to the most important of the Portuguese chroniclers
for the purposes of this chapter, João de Barros. Because he was
the officially appointed chronicler of the fi rst phase of Portuguese
empire-building in Asia, we know a great deal about Barros.56 He was
not merely a historian but an author in a number of dif ferent areas
and genres, ranging from panegyrics and grammars, to allegorical
and polemical works, and even a curious chivalric romance which he
wrote as a relatively young man in around 1520, the Crónica do em-
perador Clarimundo donde os Reys de Portugal descendem. His chief work,
for our purposes, is Da Ásia (Of Asia), a work which claimed in its
subtitle to deal with the “the deeds [dos feitos] that the Portuguese
did in the discovery and conquest of the seas and lands of the Orient.”
Divided following a classical model, that of Livy, into ten book-long
segments, the work is hence sometimes known as the Décadas da Ásia.
The first three volumes appeared in print during Barros’s lifetime, in
1552, 1553, and 1563; but the fourth was cobbled together posthu-
mously from manuscript fragments and other borrowings by João
Baptista Lavanha, and appeared in 1615. Every thing points to the fact
that Barros, unlike Correia, had a heightened sense of generic distinc-
tions and wished to guard against the possibility of contamination.
He was not alone in this among his contemporaries. For example, the
Castilian chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, slightly older
than Barros, authored a romance entitled Don Claribalte (published
in 1519), in which the action was largely located in exotic England,
though apparently translated by the author from a mysterious Ur-text
with the help of a Tartar.57 Fifteen years later, when writing his own
chronicle of the Spaniards in America, Oviedo hastened to assure his
readers that in this work he was not “telling them nonsense like the
lying books of Amadís and those which depend on them,” while
elsewhere he wrote of his unhappiness with “various and fabulous
treatises, full of lies and based on loves and luxuries and boasting, in
which they recount so many and such great follies [tractados varios e
fabulosos, llenos de mentiras, e fundados en amores e luxuría e fanfarron-
erías, en que se cuentan tantos e tan grandes disparates].”58
68 EUROPE’S INDIA

Since Barros bears the heaviest burden of all the sixteenth-century

Portuguese chroniclers in the matter of defining and defending an
ideology of expansion and empire-building, it is often all too easy to
overlook the complexity of his work and to portray it as one dimen-
sional.59 One cannot doubt that his room for maneuver was severely
limited, when one compares him with Correia or even Castanheda.
His successor, Diogo do Couto, who began the business of official
chronicling after the Habsburg takeover of the Portuguese Crown
in 1580–1581, was also somewhat better located to express his own
idiosyncratic opinions because his work was not foundational but re-
active.60 Barros himself was aware of the fact that he had only one
real predecessor, namely Zurara. In the prologue to the work, ad-
dressed to the king Dom João III, he states

It has been one hundred and twenty years—for it is of this pe-

riod that this work treats—that your arms and victory pillars
have taken possession not only of all the maritime territories of
Africa and Asia, but even of other greater worlds which Alex-
ander might have regretted for he had no word of them; yet there
has been no-one who has anticipated me in my work, only
Gomes Eanes de Zurara, chief chronicler of these kingdoms
[in describing] the affairs of the Infante Dom Henrique, from
whom we confess we have taken the greater part of his founda-
tions, as we do not wish to rob him of his due.61

What are the keys to understanding this chronicler in all his com-
plexity? Here, we must return to a set of interesting suggestions made
by the late savant Charles R. Boxer in one of his later (and briefer)
works, a biography of the chronicler.62 Boxer singles out for attention
a relatively obscure work written by Barros in around 1531, a de cade
after the Crónica do emperador Clarimundo. This is the strangely
titled Rópica Pnefma (or Spiritual Merchandise), an allegorical col-
loquy conducted between Understanding, Will, and Time on the
one hand, and Reason on the other. Eventually banned by the Inqui-
sition in 1581, this was a strongly anticlerical work that was also
marked by the heightened influence of Erasmus and his thought on
Barros. The work is undoubtedly a curious mixture, though Boxer
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 69

(following the pioneering work of I. S. Révah) terms it “one of the

most singular and important works published in Portugal during the
old regime.”63 It has a significant dose of anti-Jewish sentiment in it
as well as virulent criticisms of the Old Testament, and may in part
have been an exhortation to New Christians ( Jewish and Muslim
converts) to leave their faiths behind. But it also shows Barros some-
what at odds with courtly life, railing against the venality of the
priesthood, and—most interest ing for our ends— expressing doubts
about the violent means used in promoting overseas expansion.
Although we might suppose that his authorial voice is most often
expressed through the embodiment of Reason, it is often the other
participants who are given stronger and more convincing arguments.
But it is Reason still which is allowed to argue that Christian ity
has always spread through peaceful means and not by the force of
arms “like the people of Moses did, and the sect of Mohamed, nor
by the favor of princes, as did many heretics past and present, but
only through the fervor of the faith and of the Holy Spirit which
spoke through them.”
Even so, when it eventually came time to write his vast chronicle
Da Ásia, Barros was clear about how he wished to frame the problem
of Portuguese expansion: for him, the struggle against Islam was and
would remain the fundamental issue to be confronted. The very first
chapter of his work is entitled “Of how the Moors came to capture
Spain; and after Portugal was entitled a kingdom, how its Kings
launched themselves overseas, where they went on to conquer, both
in the parts of Africa, and in Asia: and the reason for the title of this
work.” So, in the beginning, to understand why the Portuguese found
themselves in Africa and Asia, one had to return to the Muslim con-
quest of Iberia. Here is Barros on the subject:

There having arisen in the land of Arabia that great Anti-Christ

Mafamede, more or less in the year 593 of Our Redemption, he
so worked the fury of his iron, and the fire of his infernal sect
by means of his captains and caliphs, that in the space of a hun-
dred years they conquered in Asia, all of Arabia, and part of
Syria, and Persia; and in Africa all of Egypt before and beyond
the Nile. And as the Arabs write in their Tarigh, which is a
70 EUROPE’S INDIA

summary of deeds which their caliphs accomplished in the con-

quest of those parts of the Orient, at the same time there arose
from there and advanced great numbers of them in order to
populate these [lands] of the west, which they call Algarb, and
we corrupt into Algarve, beyond the straits; and with the force
of their arms they devastated and laid waste the lands, and made
themselves lords of the greater part of Mauretania Tingitana,
in which is included the kingdoms of Fez and Morocco, though
at this time our Eu rope had not felt the persecution of this
plague. However, with the passage of the time, during which
God wished to pass over the sins of Hispania, awaiting her pen-
itence in regard of the heresies of Arius, Helvidius and Pelagius
on account of which she was most set upon (even if they had
been extirpated by the Holy Councils celebrated there), in place
of penitence, other many more grave and public sins were added
on. And what eventually came to be the last straw towards her
[Hispania’s] condemnation was the force used on the Cava,
daughter of Count Julian [of Ceuta] (even if this was only the
ultimate cause, and accidental in nature, according to certain
writers). On account of which the Justice of God was provoked,
and he used his Divine and ancient judgment which was to casti-
gate public and general sins through the actions of [other] public
and notable sinners, and to permit that one heretic be whipped
by another, thus avenging himself on his enemies in this way
through other, even greater, enemies. And since in that time,
these Arabs were the greatest [enemies] He had, as they had in-
fested the Roman Empire and persecuted His Catholic Church,
before using them to castigate Hispania, he wished first to casti-
gate them in their heresy by setting alight a competitive fire
amongst them regarding who would be seated on the pontificate
of their abomination, with this title of Caliph, which at that time
was the greatest dignity amongst their Sect.64

It is amusing to note here the use by the usually solemn chronicler

of the folklore regarding the “last Visigoth king” Don Rodrigo and
La Cava, a staple of both the Arabic and Spanish literary corpus.65
But Barros now also enters into considerable details regarding the
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 71

travails of the Umayyad Caliphate in Syria, focusing in particular

on the fourth Caliph, Marwan ibn al-Hakam and the Marwanids
(who he terms “Maraunion”). This takes him over the course of some
pages first to discuss the dissensions between Shi‘is and Sunnis, then
the problems between the ‘Abbasids and Umayyads, and eventually
to link the matter up with Iberia, through the figure of ‘Abd al-
Rahman (d. 788), the Umayyad descendant who came to settle in
and consolidate Muslim rule at Córdoba. The notion of fitna seems
to be translated by him loosely using the term fogo de competência. The
chronicler can now proceed rapidly to survey a certain number of
issues regarding the Reconquista, and the personage of Portugal’s
founder-king Dom Afonso Henriques, before giving a schematic
presentation of the overall structure of his work and its logic. Yet,
what is of particular interest is an insistence on the authenticity of
the source materials used: Barros notes that he has constructed his
narrative by “following what the Persians and Arabs write in their
Tarigh . . . which we have in our power in the Persian language.”66
For Barros then, the very nature of crónica demanded an encounter
with tārīkh.

Philological Encounters

In his prologue to the first Década, João de Barros presents an out-

line account of how he came to write the work. He notes that in 1520
he asked the king Dom Manuel to allow him to embark on the
project, showing the king his text on the Emperor Clarimundo as a
sample of his style. The king had approved of the matter, but pro-
gress had been slow. The succeeding ruler, Dom João III—to whom
the prologue is addressed— gave Barros a series of administrative
charges which had complicated matters; but as one of these had to
do with the Casa da Índia, it had also allowed him to have access to
letters and correspondence that were directly relevant to the task
of chronicling. Barros thus seems to have spent the late 1520s and the
bulk of the 1530s preparing this work, of which a first draft (or so he
claimed) was ready in about 1539. The work was explicitly conceived
as one of armchair scholarship, distinct from anything that came
from the pen of a Fernández de Figueroa, a Castanheda, or a Correia.
72 EUROPE’S INDIA

The chronicler intended to bring together five sets of materials:

older histories such as that of Zurara; the letters and papers normally
generated by the Portuguese expeditions to Asia (and to a more lim-
ited extent those of the Spaniards) and their administration there;
oral accounts gathered from those participants who returned alive,
and to whom Barros had privileged access; written accounts in Por-
tuguese, whether of travel or geographical surveys of a sort that were
becoming increasingly common by the 1530s, some of which were
spontaneous in composition and others solicited by Barros himself;
and, finally, written materials in Asian languages. It is the last of these
which particularly distinguishes Barros from Correia and Castan-
heda, and which made him a model for a certain number of later
writers such as Couto. But what was the written Asian corpus on
which he could really depend?
It is obvious that the Portuguese were somewhat unprepared for
the linguistic complexity of the Indian Ocean world in the early six-
teenth century, to which their sole initial access was through Arabic
(save on the odd occasion when they found a Castilian speaker among
the Muslim merchants there). They quickly came to learn of the ex-
istence of Malayalam in their dealings in Kerala, and a few— such
as the celebrated Duarte Barbosa— appear to have quickly applied
themselves to learning the rudiments of that language even though
their initial diplomatic dealings in southwestern India (as in East
Africa) were conducted in Arabic. By the time of the viceroyalty of
Dom Francisco de Almeida (1505–1509), a spectrum of further
languages had come to be dimly defined for them, including Sinhala,
Malay, Tamil, and perhaps Kannada (for their dealings with the Vi-
jayanagara state in southern India). Chinese loomed on the horizon,
though it is unclear whether they had much direct contact with
Chinese speakers before the second decade of the sixteenth century.
But the real discovery for them was the importance of Persian, a lan-
guage with which they had had little reason to be familiar.
Persian was particularly important by 1500 in two respects: diplo-
macy and historiography. The diplomatic aspect came to the fore a
few years into the century, first in Portuguese dealings with the Per-
sian Gulf (and Hurmuz), and then in relation to the Deccan and
Gujarat. While Arabic could be, and was indeed, used at times in
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 73

these dealings—as we see from the earliest letters of the wazīr of

Hurmuz, the Bengal-born eunuch Khwaja ‘Ata Sultani to Afonso de
Albuquerque in 1508—Persian was manifestly the language of pref-
erence in these chanceries and the Portuguese had to adapt to these
realities.67 It is currently unclear who the very fi rst formal inter-
preters used by the Portuguese were for this purpose, but within a
decade or two they were able to get by comfortably using a mixture
of intermediaries: Persian merchants who had acquired elements of
Portuguese;68 the odd Persian-speaking convert to Christianity from
Islam or Judaism; and a number of Portuguese who had a certain
intimacy with the sultanates of India, at times even becoming ren-
egades. In the 1510s, the personalities of some of these interpreters
emerge clearly: Alexandre de Ataíde, a Sephardic Jew who served
Albuquerque in a number of delicate tasks in the Persian Gulf and
elsewhere (and who eventually managed to return to Cairo and to
Judaism); the more slippery Francisco de Albuquerque, also a Sep-
hardic Jew; and a certain Miguel Nunes, a converted Muslim mer-
chant, who served Albuquerque’s successor Lopo Soares de Alber-
garia.69 Earlier, we have the instance of the polyglot Gaspar da Índia,
an Ashkenazi Jew who had been captured by Vasco da Gama on his
first voyage in 1498, who—like his son Baltasar—was both a trans-
lator (língua) and a notoriously prolix but unreliable source of stra-
tegic information.70
Translating letters and conveying messages was one thing. But for
those who ambitiously sought access to the historiographical tra-
ditions of others, matters were immeasurably more complicated.
Barros, for his part, improvised a set of solutions for a variety of
languages, and even acquired a Chinese slave through whom he claims
to have been able to access certain (for us) unidentifiable works in
Chinese that he had acquired, perhaps through his friend Fernão
Peres de Andrade who had visited Canton in 1517 in the course of
one of the earliest direct contacts between the Portuguese and the
Ming Dynasty. What precisely could be found in his library in terms
of texts in Persian and Arabic is also largely unclear, though some
educated guesses can be hazarded. The function that these texts
played in Barros’s work was twofold. First, they allowed him to
pepper his chronicle with erudite digressions on such matters as the
74 EUROPE’S INDIA

history and origins of the game of chess.71 More importantly, on each

occasion that the Portuguese in his narrative encountered a new
polity or came to terms with the geography of a new region on the
littoral of the Indian Ocean, he was able to throw in a chapter or
more regarding the history of the place, using not only materials in
Portuguese but those in an Asian language of relevance as well. Thus
the second book of the Década Segunda begins, for example, with the
departure of Afonso de Albuquerque in 1507 from the island of So-
qotra (off Yemen) for the great port city of Hurmuz in the Persian
Gulf, which Barros claims was “so renowned in the whole world as
the most celebrated emporium and entrepôt (escala) thereof.” But
on the arrival of Albuquerque’s fleet before the port at the end of
September 1507, the chronicler abruptly halts his narrative of war-
fare and raiding to introduce a chapter entitled “Of the site of the
City Ormuz, situated on the island of Gerum; and of its foundation,
and the kings it had since it was founded until the year 1507 when
Afonso de Albuquerque arrived there.” In it, he notes that a good
part of the information is derived, by him, from “the chronicles of
its kings, which were translated for us from the Persian [as Chronicas
dos Reys delle, que nos foram interpretadas de Persico].”72 Recounting the
events of 1510 in the same volume but a good number of pages later,
Barros comes to Albuquerque’s attack on Goa, and in a similar vein
introduces a chapter entitled “How the Moors made themselves
lords of the Deccan kingdom and the state of Goa.” On this occa-
sion, his discussion of sources is somewhat less laconic:

There is a considerable divergence on the [matter of the] entry

of the Moors by arms into India, between the Gentiles and
them, particularly in regard of the concordance of dates;
because the Moors of the Gujarat kingdom write of it in one way,
those of the Deccan kingdom in another, and the chronicles
of the Gentile kings of Bisnaga [Vijayanagara] take another
route; but they all agree on one matter, that the conqueror was
the king of the Delij [Delhi] kingdom. And in this account that
we have made, since we have had all these chronicles and
they were translated for us, we will follow the version now of
the Moors who became lords of the Deccan kingdom of which
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 75

we speak, because they conform closely in the matter of dates

with the General Chronicle of the Persians, which is the Tarigh
of which we made mention in the beginning, which we possess
together with other volumes of history and Persian cosmog-
raphy from those parts.73

Now the Sultanate of Delhi had developed a rather elaborate histo-

riographical tradition, largely in Persian, from the thirteenth century
onward. This dominance of the Persian literary language relegated
Turkish largely to the oral sphere (though a good part of the Sultan-
ate’s elites were in fact ethnic Turks by origin); as for Arabic, it re-
tained its importance but largely in the context of law and Islam
rather than as a language for writing history. The reason for the he-
gemonic position of Persian was related to the fact that the major
cultural influence on the Delhi sultanate came from the Ghaznavids,
who in the tenth and eleventh centuries had emerged as a power ful
political and cultural force in what is today Afghanistan. It was in
their court that major works of Persian historiography such as Abu’l
Fazl Baihaqi’s Tārīkh-i Mas‘ūdī and Abu’l Nasr ‘Utbi’s Tārīkh-i Yamīnī
came to be composed; the great poet Firdausi also had a good many
contacts with them. This tradition was further developed in India,
the fi rst major example of which may be Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani’s
Tabaqāt-i Nāsirī from the mid-thirteenth century. In the fourteenth
century, the considerable work of the historian and theologian Ziya
al-Din Barani further consolidated this historiographical stream; he
was followed in turn by other authors, such as Shams-i Siraj ‘Afif
(writing in the early fifteenth century), Yahya Sirhindi, whose Tārīkh-i
Mubārakshāhī comes to us from about 1450, as well as ‘Ali bin
Mahmud al-Kirmani with his slightly later Ma’āsir-i Mahmūdshāhī.
To these prose works, we may add the more difficult versified texts
that drew inspiration from Firdausi and his Shāhnāma, and which
range from the prolific oeuvre of Amir Khusrau to ‘Isami’s Futūh
al-salātīn, which also concerns the early expeditions of the sultans
into the Deccan.74
Did Barros in fact have access to any of these texts, or to others
which—though we find them referred to in biographical dictionaries
or other sources—have not survived in manuscript to our day? Our
76 EUROPE’S INDIA

difficulty lies in the fact that there are in fact very few extant Per-
sian chronicles dealing with the Bahmani Sultanate of the Deccan,
or with its successor states until the last decades of the sixteenth
century. For Barros’s agents in India to have acquired such texts
sometime between 1510 and 1540 would mean that the works he
consulted may have either been the versified Bahman Nāma of Shaikh
Fakhr al-Din Azari and its continuations (a rather unlikely option),
a shadowy work by Shaikh ‘Ain al-Din Bijapuri, or the chronicles—
once again seemingly lost to us—of Mulla Da’ud Bidari, Tuhfat
al- Salātīn, and Mulla Muhammad Lari, Sirāj al-Tawārīkh.75 What-
ever these texts were, they were poorly interpreted and translated
for the chronicler, as we see from the following sequence.

According to what these Deccanis say, in the years 707 of Ma-

hamed, which is 1300 of Our Redemption, there was in the
kingdom of Delij a Moorish prince called Xá Nosaradim, who
was so powerful in terms of men, and the state of his lands, that
on account of his great power he wanted for the further glory
of his name to conquer India. With that greed, he descended
from those parts of the north which neighbor the sources of
the rivers Ganges and Nile with a great number of people on
horse and on foot, until he had conquered all his neighbors who
were Gentiles, and he reached the kingdom of Canará, which
starts at the river called Gate which is to the north of Chaul [and
runs] to Cape Comorin.76

If we can take the rough date and the broad circumstances to be

correct, the only possible identification of Xá Nosaradim (or Nasir al-
Din Shah) could be with Sultan ‘Ala al-Din Khalji of Delhi (r. 1296–
1316), who did indeed lead a great campaign into the Deccan. Barros
now speaks of how an independent kingdom came gradually to be
founded in the Deccan by one of the captains of this king, a certain
Hábed Xá (who still remained dependent on Delhi), and then by the
latter’s son Mamud Xá, who is said eventually to have thrown off the
yoke of Delhi, founded the city of Bidar, and made it his capital.
Without entering into par tic u lar details regarding further chro-
nology, Barros then rapidly takes us to the fragmentation of the
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 77

Bahmani Sultanate and the emergence thence of states such as Bi-

japur under Yusuf ‘Adil Khan Sawa’i, the very states that the Portu-
guese had to contend with after 1500 in their attempt to take Goa
and other port cities. But even a quick examination of this passage
makes it clear that it could simply not have derived from the Persian
chronicling tradition. The only chronologically plausible monarch
termed Nasir-al Din Shah was Nasir al-Din Mahmud (r. 1246–1266),
son of Sultan Iltutmish, and he could not have been confused with
the later ‘Ala al-Din Khalji and Muhammad Shah Tughluq, the two
sultans of Delhi most closely associated with inroads into the Deccan.
Since Barros does not seem to have been given to inventing sources,
the only explanation for this comes from the suspect philological
basis of the entire exercise: we do not know who Barros’s translators
were, or the extent to which they were really capable of reading what-
ever Persian texts they had before them, and the chronicler himself
had no means of acting as a check on the exercise. Even some de-
cades later, Portuguese archivists were to complain to the king that
there was effectively no one in Portugal who could read the few Per-
sian texts they had on hand, and it was suggested that they simply
be sent back to India.77
It thus appears clear that considerable precautions must equally
extend to other materials from the category of tārīkh that Barros
stated he had consulted. At one point he notes, for example, that
he was well informed regarding “Tamor Lam [Tamerlane], whose life
we have in Persian, and at the time we had composed this history,
we had put a good part of it into our language.”78 Again, toward the
end of the Década Segunda, he enters into an elaborate excursus con-
cerning Shah Isma‘il Safavi of Iran, and writes: “Some authors have
written about him but without true information. Here we will treat
briefly his origin, sect and fortune, in keeping with what we have
come to know from the writings of the Persians themselves, and the
rest concerning his power and state we will leave for our [book on]
Geography. But before we come to him, for a better understanding,
it is useful to treat the birth and sect of Mahamed, and this account
will extend to his death following some Latin authors, but the greater
part according to the Tarigh of the Moors, which is the life of the
caliphs who succeeded him.”79 This is the same text to which Barros
78 EUROPE’S INDIA

has referred on many dif ferent occasions in his work, and it is pos-
sible to identify it as none other than the massive and encyclopedic
work of Mir Muhammad ibn Sayyid Burhan al-Din Khawand Shah
(known by his nom de plume of Mir Khwand), entitled Tārīkh-i Rauzat
al- Safā’ fī Sīrat al-Anbiyā’ wa’l-Mulūk wa’l-Khulafā’. Mir Khwand
lived between 1433 and 1498, ending his life at the Timurid court at
Herat during the reign of Sultan Husain Baiqara.80 Generally known
as the Rauzat al- Safā’ (or Garden of Purity), this work was barely a
generation old when Barros would have come across it. But it pos-
sessed a number of significant advantages besides its encyclopedic
character: it dealt with pre-Islamic Iran, it contained a detailed his-
tory of the prophets (anbiyā’), caliphs (khulafā’), and kingdoms
coming up to the end of the fifteenth century, and it was apparently
quite freely available in manuscript.81 We learn this from the Portu-
guese traveler Pedro Teixeira, who, in the closing years of the six-
teenth century, drew on it extensively and even translated portions
of the text after his own fashion (which is to say loosely and with
numerous asides). Teixeira noted that when in Iran, he asked after
kings and ancients who were referred to by Greek and Latin authors,
but was distressed when no one had heard of them. He continues:

I then became most perplexed, and communicated my desire [to

know more] to some Persians who were knowledgeable men and
of uncommon reading, and after long discussions they advised
me that in order to get rid of my confusion and embarrassment,
and since I wanted to know of their kings, I should follow
what was written in their Chronicles, whose authors as closer
witnesses [como testigos más cercanos] would render things less con-
fused and with greater certitude than other nations, who either
on account of passion or of distance (or at times the two taken
together) allowed themselves to be rather misled in relation to
them. The advice quite agreed with me, and wishing to profit
from it, I made inquiries and learnt that the book that had the
greatest authority for them in history was one that they call
Tarik Mirkond (which is the Chronicle of Mirkond); I looked for
it and obtained it and busying myself with it, though it is very
diffuse and universal with regard to Persia and its dependencies,
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 79

I did not take more than what I offer you here, which is the
number and succession of their kings, from the fi rst to the
one who lives today, which as it is a novelty and has not been
brought to light by anyone else, seemed to me to be worthy of
presentation.82

Teixeira, who was quite well-educated, was aware that he was not the
first Portuguese to make use of the text; “of this chronicler Mirkond,”
he writes, “our Portuguese Juan de Bayrros makes mention in his
Décadas, but since he lacked a translator [por falta de intérprete] he gave
us no more information about him other than his name.” On the
contrary, Barros had drawn to the extent he could on what was
translated to him of Mir Khwand, but he lacked the resources that
Teixeira, residing in Hurmuz, had at his disposal. Teixeira’s work,
including its sections from Mir Khwand and Turan Shah’s history
of Hurmuz eventually appeared in Spanish in Antwerp in 1610. As
in Firdausi’s Shāhnāma, the first Persian king here was Kayumars,
followed by Siyamak, Hushang, Tahmuras, and Jamshid. But there
is cosmogonic comfort here for the Christian (as well as Islamic
and Jewish) viewpoints, for these kings are all made descendants of
Noah. Kayumars is thus presented as the son of Aram, son of Sem (or
Shem), the son of Noah; the ancient Iranians in this view are thus
Semites, and their history is presented as entirely postdiluvian.83
To be sure, what Teixeira produces in relation to the Persian
materials are not faithful translations but loose paraphrases, often
interspersed with his own remarks, long digressions, and interpo-
lations. Nevertheless, these must be taken far more seriously than
what Barros was able to achieve, and we are reluctantly obliged to
abandon Charles Boxer in his claim that “although Barros did not
know any Asian languages, he can be termed a pioneer Orientalist.”84
Nor is it possible wholly to defend the view that his “systematic and
discriminating use of primary Oriental sources was something quite
unprecedented”; unprecedented it may well have been (and quite dis-
tinct from Castanheda or Correia, let alone his predecessors), but
systematic and discriminating are not quite the adjectives that come to
mind.85 What is of interest, however, is the manner in which Barros’s
claims to incorporate the tārīkh tradition and his repeated gesturing
80 EUROPE’S INDIA

in that direction had effects on those who followed him. The effect
is particularly dramatic with Barros’s official successor Diogo do
Couto (1542–1616), a man of far more humble background and lim-
ited erudition than Barros.86 Given the legitimacy that Barros had
lent to the Persian and Arabic chronicle as a source, Couto could not
afford to ignore these either when he took up the Décadas da Ásia
from Década Quarta. But despite his long residence in Goa, it is evi-
dent that Couto simply did not even have the textual resources that
Barros did sitting in distant Lisbon. While he claims time and again
to use Persian and other indigenous chronicles, for instance with re-
gard to the Deccan, Gujarat, and the Mughals, it is amply evident
that Couto based his work almost entirely on oral tradition: conver-
sations with Portuguese mercenaries, visiting ambassadors, and the
odd Muslim prince who could be found in Goa. Yet, to admit that in
this respect he was closer in spirit to the likes of Correia than Barros
would have been intolerable to Couto. He thus had to invent a virtual
library that he cited and claimed was at his disposal, which modern
scholars continue to puzzle over and attempt to disentangle.87
The sixteenth century did not see transformations and adjustments
in the tradition of the crónica alone. The Perso-Arabic tārīkh pro-
duced in the Indian Ocean too was considerably modified, for a va-
riety of reasons. One of these was deceptively simple, namely the
need to write histories that dealt with new elements such as the Por-
tuguese themselves. One of the most celebrated of these new texts,
completed in the late 1570s, is the Arabic text written by a certain
Shaikh Zain al-Din ibn Ahmad Ma‘bari, from a Yemeni family set-
tled in Ponnani in central Kerala, and entitled Tuhfat al- mujāhidīn fī
ba‘z ahwāl al-Burtukāliyyīn (A Gift to the Holy Warriors in [the form
of] Some Accounts of the Portuguese). Commencing with some
theological considerations regarding just war, and the need to con-
duct it against the Portuguese, the work then goes on to detail the
history of the settlement of the Muslims in Kerala, and what are
viewed as the “strange customs” of the infidels (Hindus).88 Somewhat
over half of the work, however, is devoted to detailing the atrocious
acts of the Portuguese newcomers, and a chronological account of
dealings with them. What is of interest for our purposes is the au-
tonomy of this narrative, which does not seem to depend on or re-
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 81

flect Portuguese works in any way. The chronicles of Castanheda and

Barros, once published, surely reached at least a few libraries and per-
sonal collections in Cochin and Goa, but they remained outside the
reach of a Zain al-Din. In a similar vein, the great and prolific sa-
vant of Gujarati origin, Qutb al-Din Muhammad Nahrawali
(d. 1582), does not seem in his Meccan residence to have had access to
Portuguese materials while composing such texts as his celebrated
chronicle al-Barq al-Yamānī fī al-Fath al-‘Usmānī (“The Lightning
of Yemen in the Victory of the Ottomans”).89 Had he done so, he
might have thought twice about suggesting that the great Arab nav-
igator Ahmad ibn Majid was somehow responsible, while inebriated,
for the Portuguese being able to learn the secrets of navigating the
Indian Ocean.
But matters changed as the sixteenth century drew to a close. Even
if they never became quite as well-versed as their Ottoman counter-
parts were with the chronicles of the Spanish Habsburgs regarding
America, Mughal court-savants did begin to gather knowledge re-
garding the Europeans and render it into Persian.90 An example of
this is Tahir Muhammad Sabzwari in his Rauzat al-Tāhirīn, but an
even more significant case is that of ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri.
Sattar was for a time closely associated with the Jesuits resident in
the Mughal court and helped them translate Christian polemical and
other works into Persian.91 In this process, he also acquired a fair un-
derstanding of Latin, which he then employed to write a text enti-
tled Samrat al-Falāsifa (“The Fruits of Philosophers”), very largely
based on paraphrasing the fifteenth-century work of the Dominican
archbishop of Florence, Antonio Pierozzi or Saint Antoninus (1389–
1459), Summa Historialis or Chronicon partibus tribus distincta ab initio
mundi ad 1360. This three-volume work appeared in print between
1474 and 1479, and was reprinted several times thereafter in the late
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; the Jesuits apparently carried
it to the Mughal court as part of their library.92 Whether they gave
Sattar access to other, more recent, materials in Latin (since he ap-
parently did not read Portuguese) remains unclear.
This opening was, however, less dramatic than another significant
shift that took place with regard to the Persian tārīkh, at least in its
Mughal incarnation. This was the project to begin translating
82 EUROPE’S INDIA

“Hindu” materials, whether from Sanskrit or the Indian vernaculars,

into Persian (and to a lesser extent into Arabic). Some of these were
works with a marked theological or philosophical content, and we
might say that here the Mughals revived the old Ghaznavid project
of savants such as Alberuni in the eleventh century.93 But unlike Al-
beruni, who had a hearty contempt for works with historical preten-
sions produced in India, the Mughals also produced “translations” (or
paraphrases) of texts that they understood as historical. This was par-
ticularly gratifying for a class of Hindu scribes who were increas-
ingly being acculturated into the world of Persian letters and who
embraced this new ecumenical horizon with some enthusiasm. By
the end of the sixteenth century, the alarming consequences that this
might have were becoming evident to at least some Muslim intellec-
tuals of the time. Thus Muhammad Qasim Hindushah (known as
“Firishta”), a historian of Iranian origin resident in the Deccan, wrote
in the preface of his own extensive tārīkh:

The infidels (kāfirs) of India like those of China say that Noah’s
tempest did not reach their country, and instead reject it. . . .
They attribute strange and bizarre deeds to Ram, Lakhan et
cetera, which do not correspond to the human condition. . . .
All this is words and sound which has no weight in the scale of
reason. . . . The Hindus say that from the time of Adam more
than 100,000 years have passed. This is totally false, and the fact
is that the country of Hind, like the other countries of the in-
habited quarter of the world, was settled through the descen-
dants of Adam. . . . The oldest son of Ham was Hind, who
reached the country of Hind and settled it in his name. His
brother Sind reached the country of Sind, and settled Thatta
and Multan in the name of his children. Hind had four children:
Purab, Bang, Dakan and Nahrawal, and each settled a kingdom,
which even today are known by those names.94

Firishta seems to have realized that this embrace by the Mughals and
other Muslim dynasties of an alien historiography could plunge them
headlong into rejecting, first the narrative of Noah and the Flood,
and then the very notion of a single Adam from whom all of human-
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 83

kind descended. Over a half-century later, European savants such as

Isaac de la Peyrère would make a move in a similar direction, using
arguments that emanated from the discovery of the New World or
dealings with the Inuit.95 This version of a pre-Adamite argument
was, however, made on an entirely dif ferent basis in Persian histori-
ography, on account of the translation of Hindu materials and the
new legitimacy enjoyed in the late sixteenth century by at least some
Zoroastrian texts.96 There is little doubt that such thoughts would
not have appealed to Barros or Couto, and at any rate could scarcely
have escaped censorship in Counter-Reformation Portugal. Had it
been other wise, the coming together of crónica and tārīkh might have
had far more dramatic consequences than those described here. In
any event, these processes allowed the Iberians to suspend their am-
nesia with regard to their Islamic past and produce their version of
“world-history” in the sixteenth century.

From History to Ethnography

During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Iberians

(as well as those other Europeans who functioned under the broad
carapace of the Estado da Índia), used at least two overlapping modes
to comprehend India. The first of these, which we have focused on
thus far, was broadly historical, and in some measure also philolog-
ical as a consequence. The second approach, more common and also
better known today, was ethnographic in nature. The two best-
known early texts of this latter sort were written by Tomé Pires and
Duarte Barbosa, and both were drawn upon by Ramusio to an ex-
tent in his compendium. These men were middling officials in the
early Estado, and each possessed reasonable scribal skills. During his
Asian sojourn, Pires was largely located in Southeast Asia, especially
in the city of Melaka, which the Portuguese had conquered in 1511,
and his work Suma Oriental thus carried a distinctly Malay geo-
graphical perspective.97 India, and its regions, are thus seen largely
through the prism of their role in the Southeast Asian trade, and the
information on India also seems to have been gathered from the ex-
tensive Indian merchant community in the Malay Peninsula. The
preoccupations of the Suma, a rather telegraphic text, also appear to
84 EUROPE’S INDIA

be largely commercial in nature, and it is primarily intended to con-

vince those in authority in Portugal of the validity of the governor
Afonso de Albuquerque’s ambitious policies. In contrast, Barbosa—
who arrived in India as a young man as early as 1500—remained
largely based in Kerala, where his preferred base was the northern
port of Kannur (Cannanore). A skeptic with regard to Albuquerque
and his ambitious plans, Barbosa was a part of a group of prominent
members that included a Diogo Pereira, nicknamed “the Malabar.”98
With the exception of one brief visit to Portugal, Barbosa, like Pereira,
seems to have been a fi xture on the Indian scene for nearly five
decades, until his death sometime in the late 1540s.99
Though they did hold offices from time to time, Barbosa, Pereira,
and others of their ilk came by the late 1510s to be known by an
emerging designation, that of the casado morador. This meant that one
was settled in one of the centers of the Estado proper, rather than on
its fringes, or in frontier areas such as Bengal, Burma, or Orissa. Al-
buquerque himself had had the idea of promoting this group as a
sort of creole petty bourgeoisie, on which the Estado da Índia could
depend in a variety of ways—fiscal, moral, and commercial. In a pre-
cocious letter to King Dom Manuel, written in October 1512, after
the capture of Goa and Melaka, but before his attempts on Aden and
Hurmuz, Albuquerque argued that “if Your Highness is contented
with the trade between these parts and those Kingdoms [Portugal],
and you set aside the trade here, with the tributes, and homages, and
perquisites of your fleet you can sustain ten thousand men in India;
and if you wish you can raise up four or five powerful men, with great
power and great revenues [homeens grandes de grande mando e grande
renda], who will be enough to control everyone, with the help of Our
Lord.”100 Though groups of casados did gather in Hurmuz, Melaka,
Cochin, and Kannur, the most important center that emerged for
this class after 1530 was undoubtedly Goa. An interesting tax docu-
ment from 1535 counts up some 700 households among the moradores
portugueses living in the city and its suburbs. Those enumerated ex-
cluded the members of the nobility, as well as clergymen, soldiers,
and members of the governor’s entourage, as well as temporary resi-
dents (who would later be designated solteiros).101 The average wealth
was somewhat modest—at 480 pardaus per household—but what
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 85

was already clear was a yawning gap between the richest casados in
the city—men like Galvão Viegas, Pêro Garcia, Francisco Rabelo,
Duarte Pereira, Jerónimo Ferreira, Vasco Fernandes, Manuel de
Vasconcelos, Cristóvão de Figueiredo, and António Correa— and
others with a mere fraction of their means.102
There is little doubt that the casados as a group grew to have a con-
siderable sense of their importance, and even a sense of resentment
against those who came and went from Portugal, while spending
short stints with official positions in Portuguese Asia. A letter from
the casados of Melaka to the King, written in 1525, makes this atti-
tude clear.

The settlers [moradores] of your most populated fortress and

noble city of Mallaca make it known to Your Highness how it is
now fifteen years since the time when the said city was con-
quered through the force of arms, in which seizure most of us
were present, and we married in the said city to render ser vice
to God and Your Highness, and we brought our women who were
infidels [que eram emfieis] to the Holy Catholic Faith, and thus
we indoctrinated them as the Holy Mother Church of Rome
orders us, and in this way we acted to keep peace and friend-
ship with the said people of the land, and thus we aided during
this whole time to sustain [it] and to fight against our enemies
by night and day, on sea and on land, using paraos and manchuas
and lamcharas, suffering many wounds to our own persons with
a great deal of blood that was spilt from them.103

Armed with the virtuous notion that they served the king “well and
loyally so far from our native place [nossa naturaleza], and our per-
petual and eternal patria,” these settlers thus asserted that they were
in a real sense the backbone of the Portuguese presence in Asia.
With the passage of the generations, the sense of corporate rights
based on conquest certainly diminished to an extent. On the other
hand, the idea equally emerged that long and near-permanent resi-
dence in India established another kind of superior right: that based
on knowing the country well. Three of the important Portuguese
chroniclers of the sixteenth century made strenuous assertions along
86 EUROPE’S INDIA

these lines: Castanheda, Correia, and Couto. The latter two clearly
belonged to the category of the casado, even if some parts of Corre-
ia’s life and movements remain rather obscure. Couto has even been
described as the self-appointed “spokesman” (porta-voz) of the casado
class, given his constant gibes at fly-by-night officials from Portugal,
who he claimed came to make a rapid and unscrupulous fortune in
India, and then quickly left.104 But what status does this in fact give
their knowledge, in particular their ethnographic understanding of
India?
It has been plausibly claimed by Joan-Pau Rubiés that “the unpre-
cedented ethnographic analysis displayed in a text like Barbosa’s Book
of what I [sic] saw and heard in the Orient was the intellectual creation
of a colonial elite in formation whose novel horizon was a settled,
prosperous life in India.” In other words, even though Barbosa was
not fundamentally concerned, for example, with the problem of ad-
ministering an Indian society in all its complexity, he wanted those
Portuguese who came to Asia after him to have the benefit of his ex-
periences in dealing with what they would have seen as an exotic
and often hostile environment. It thus requires considerable acro-
batics to then conclude that “Barbosa and Pires share an almost iden-
tical aim, to give a fresh account based on direct experience and
reliable reports of the ethnological realities of the Asian world en-
countered by the Portuguese,” and that access to these “realities” was
really no more than a matter of “decoding indigenous rules” through
appropriate “language-games.”105 Such a claim seems to place a writer
like Barbosa in a role of near-transparent objectivity, and it does so
not by an investigation of his procedures, but on the basis of an a
priori judgment. To bring this out further, let us consider some cru-
cial aspects of Barbosa’s description of society in India, which he ar-
rives at having passed in his description from west to east, rapidly
encompassing East Africa and Ethiopia, Arabia, the Persian Gulf,
and Iran.106
Barbosa enters his description of the “Kingdom of Guzerate,” in-
forming his readers that this is now “the first India,” as distinct from
the region of Sind (or Dewal), which he apparently considers to be
outside India proper. As regards to Sind, he has given few social de-
tails, beyond the fact that while the king is Muslim, “the greater
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 87

part of the folk are Moors with some Gentiles who are wholly sub-
ject to them”; he also notes that the people there speak Persian and
Arabic, as well as “their own tongue.” With regard to Gujarat, he is
far more prolix, given his awareness that the kingdom “is very great
and possesses many towns and cities,” with a large merchant popu-
lation as well as a “great abundance of goods.” In his quite detailed
description, we review not only the individual ports from Kathiawar
to Surat and Daman, but also several of the inland political centers
such as Champaner and Ahmadabad. However, from the very outset,
Barbosa wants to provide us with a sense of the social divisions in
Gujarat. The first category he mentions are thus Rajputs (Resbutos),
followed in turn by Baniyas (Baneanes), then Brahmins (Bramenes),
and fi nally Bhats (Pateles). Descriptions of each of these run as
follows.107
• “Before this kingdom of Guzarate belonged to the Moors,
there were in it some Gentiles whom the Moors called Resbutos,
who at that time were the cavaliers and the defenders of the
land, and made war when it was necessary. They kill and eat
meat and fish, and all other sorts of viands, and even today
many of them live in the mountains, where they have very
great settlements, and they do not obey the king of Cambaia,
but rather make war on him all the time.”
• “There is in this kingdom another sort [outra sorte] of Gentiles
who are called Baneanes, who are very great merchants and
traders; they live among the Moors with whom they conduct
all their trade. These do not eat meat, or fish, or anything that
dies, nor do they kill, nor do they even wish to witness the
killing, for their idolatry forbids it, and they hold to this in
such an extreme way that it is an astonishing thing.”
• “There is also another law [outra lei] of the Gentiles who are
called Bramenes, who among them are priests [sacerdotes],
and the people among them who administer and govern their
houses of prayer and idolatries [casas de orações e idolatrias],
which among them are very great and have many revenues,
and there are also many which are sustained through alms
[esmolas].”
88 EUROPE’S INDIA

• “Among these [Brahmins], there are others who only serve as

messengers, and they are able to travel everywhere safely, with
no-one doing them any harm, even when there is war, or
thieves; they are called Bhats [Pateles].”

What is significant here is that Barbosa is not positing a coherent

social system, merely various categories for which he uses terms such
as “sort” (sorte), or “law” (lei). In closing his discussion of Brahmins,
he does further note the following: “And as they only marry once, if
the husband dies, the woman never marries again even if she is a girl,
and the same for the husband; their sons are their full heirs, also in
status [na dignidade também], because Brahmins must be the sons of
Brahmins.” However, he does not in this discussion extend this rule
regarding heredity to the other sortes or leis of Gujarat. Barbosa then
returns to a discussion of social categories and distinctions in his
account of the kingdom and city of Vijayanagara (“Narsyngua” or
“Bisnagua”), a good number of pages later. The opening passage of
this section runs as follows:

In this kingdom of Narsinga, there are three laws of Gentiles

[três leis de gentios], and each one of them has a very distinct law
unto itself, and besides their customs are very different from one
another, principally those of the kings, great lords, cavaliers and
men of arms, who can marry, as I have said, with as many women
as they want and can maintain. Their children inherit their
goods. The women are obliged, according to a very ancient
custom, when their husbands die, to burn themselves alive with
their corpses which are also burnt, and this is so that they may
be honored.108

This passage, as well as those that follow in Barbosa’s account, has

attracted considerable attention from modern-day analysts. It helped
further enshrine as a topos the figure of the satī, or forcibly cremated
widow, into early Portuguese writing on India; this figure had al-
ready appeared first in classical accounts of India, then in Italian
writings by Marco Polo and Niccolò de’ Conti, and would have an
extended afterlife into the twentieth century.109 But it also both re-
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 89

peats and diverges from his description of social categories in Gu-

jarat. In Vijayanagara, Barbosa devotes the greatest attention to what
he terms the royalty and “cavaliers,” and it is their women on whose
practices he dilates at great length. Less attention is thus devoted
by him to the “other law of Gentiles called Bramenes,” who, as he
writes—repeating nearly verbatim the phrase from his description
of Gujarat—“are priests and governors of their houses of prayers.”
He notes further that they wear “three linen threads over their shoul-
ders as a mark of dignity,” that they have certain privileges (such as
exemption from capital punishment), and that they are both rich and
well-fed (albeit vegetarians, as opposed to the warriors, who eat “meat
and fish and other viands except cow, which their perverse idolatry
forbids”). To complete the picture, Barbosa then mentions the exis-
tence of “another law of people” (outra lei de gente), who are like Brah-
mins, but to whom he does not give a name. The fact that they wear
a stone around their neck that they worship suggests that he refers
here to Virasaivas or Lingayats.
At first sight, it is tempting to draw a parallel between Barbosa’s
tripartite scheme and the late medieval Latin conceptualization of
“three orders”: oratores (those who pray), bellatores (warriors), and lab-
oratores (workers).110 However, while he does seem to have a clear
notion of sacerdotes and cavaleiros, whether in Gujarat or Vijayanagara,
Barbosa’s third lei remains fluid and ill-defined; in Gujarat, there are
thus traders present, but no peasants and artisans worthy of men-
tion; in Vijayanagara, all these categories beyond warriors and priests
prove to be evanescent. It is when he passes in his description to
Kerala, we see that Barbosa in fact has no great schematic principles
in mind at all. Thus: “In this land of Malabar, everyone uses a single
language called Malayalam [maliama]. All the kings are of the same
law and custom [lei e costume], more or less, but that of the people is
very dif ferent, because you must know that in all of Malabar, there
are eighteen laws [leis] of native Gentiles, each one separated from
the other, to the point that one does not touch the other under pain
of death or the loss of goods, so that each one has laws, customs and
idolatries for itself.”111 Barbosa then sets out a description of the most
significant groups (or leis), beginning with the Brahmins, the Nayar
warriors, the Vyaparis (or merchants), the potters, and so on; he
90 EUROPE’S INDIA

proceeds thereafter to a brief description of what he terms “eleven laws

of others who are lower, with whom the others do not mix or touch,
under pain of death.” Clearly, his far longer exposure to Kerala so-
ciety, and his partial knowledge of Malayalam, allowed Barbosa here
to provide a more extensive set of group names than he was able to
do elsewhere in India; he also had a far better-defined conception
here of “laws” that had limited contact with each other to the point
of not touching, of the existence of groups that were higher and lower
in status (thus, phrases like outra lei de gente mais baixa), and also that
they had dif ferent “idols in which they believe.” As a consequence,
the reader is given a sense of a far more diverse society in Kerala than
in Gujarat or Vijayanagara, fi nely divided into a large number of
professions, especially among the laboring classes (as distinct from
priests and warriors). In his summing up of Barbosa’s ethnographic
vision, Rubiés thus aptly remarks: “The word most used by Barbosa
to distinguish these social groups is ‘law’ (lei). The implicit meaning
of this concept, as used in Barbosa’s report, is the formal recogni-
tion of a social regulation which defines a limited group, rather than
the looser idea of accepted and characteristic behaviour, for which
he uses ‘custom’ (costume) or ‘use’ (uso).”112 What is particularly worthy
of note is that the word casta very rarely appears in this account, or
indeed in others by the Portuguese from the first three decades of
the sixteenth century.

The Emergence of “Caste”

In his important and revisionist account of “caste” as a totalizing cat-

egory, the ethnohistorian Nicholas Dirks famously argued that
rather than “some unchanged survival of ancient India,” caste in fact
was “a modern phenomenon, that is, specifically, the product of an
historical encounter between India and Western colonial rule.”113 He
noted further that Duarte Barbosa had “reported some features of a
caste order after extended stays in India, in particular on the basis
of his stay in the great kingdom of Vijayanagara,” but equally em-
phasized that Barbosa “did not mention the varna system of the four
ideal caste groups, nor did he moralize about caste in one way or
another.” Therefore, it was suggested, while it was no doubt to the
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 91

Portuguese that one might turn for “the initial use of the term casta
to refer to the social order in India,” there was little of interest to be
found in their archives. Dirks even claimed that “subsequent Euro-
pean writings about India add little to his [Barbosa’s] account and
frequently comment even less on things like caste,” until the latter
half of the eighteenth century.114
A more recent account, by Sumit Guha, of caste as a key descriptor,
takes a somewhat dif ferent line of argument, while according a
greater significance to conceptions and usages before 1750. Yet his
schematic argument linking the usage of the term casta to “racial
ideologies in the West,” and in particular to Iberian preoccupations
with the “purity of blood” is hardly convincing. Emphasizing that
“casta was initially a collective noun that referred to a pure blood-
line or species,” Guha argues that this was why “it was deployed as a
category by the sixteenth-century Iberian pioneers of globalization
to describe what they perceived as various biologically distinctive
(and ranked) social groups generated by Western expansion in the
Americas and Asia.”115 Yet, at the same time, Guha seems somewhat
aware that casta in fact belonged to a body of related and often inter-
changeable terms such as nação, estirpe, and gente, some of which did
not carry exactly the same connotations with regard to the “purity
of blood.”116 Casta, from an etymological viewpoint, particularly
lent itself to speak of bloodlines for horses or dogs, or varietals (cépage)
in the case of grapes. Most importantly, he wholly ignores the fact
that lei rather than casta was the most important term used by the
Portuguese in India to speak of social distinction and collective iden-
tity before 1530.
A rare pictorial ethnography produced in the middle decades of
the sixteenth century of peoples and customs of Asia also shows the
complex set of usages that still prevailed at that moment. The sev-
enty-six images show a diversity of scenes from the Cape of Good
Hope to East Asia, and a large number of these images are devoted
to life in western India. Recent close analyses of this work—the so-
called Codex Casanatense— suggest that the artist or artists were
themselves from western India, though it is clear that they worked in
collaboration with one or more Eu ropeans, who also provided
brief annotations to the paintings, and who may have both suggested
92 EUROPE’S INDIA

the themes and provided the overall structure to the codex. After
comparing the paintings to other contemporary visual and textual
materials, Jeremiah Losty thus concludes:

There is nothing in the Codex that an Indian artist could not

have produced without setting foot outside his home town.
None of the paintings bar one includes any architectural fea-
tures that indicate that the artist must have been there in order to
see and depict them and the only one that does, the bathing
tank in Ormuz, imposes a peculiarly Indian structure onto the
barren island. The artist, we would suggest, is relying on verbal
descriptions or the most amateurish sketches to guide him in
the depiction of these foreign peoples and relying on his own
knowledge to fill in the blanks. His depictions of foreign cos-
tumes are almost always suspect. His habitual choices of what
appear to be the normal female costume and hairstyle worn by
women in Goa, and the southern Indian sari for depictions of
women from elsewhere, suggests that he was based there when
he painted these pictures, and he would certainly seem to have
seen high ranking Portuguese men and their womenfolk on oc-
casion. Yet even for these representations he could be copying
from pre-existing studio sketches.117

This said, the captions still retain their own interest, including for
the terminology they use. The central category here is gente, already
used to describe the so-called Fartaquis in southern Arabia, and con-
sistently employed thereafter in the context of Iran and India. The
codex often uses simple ethnogeographical designations along with
gente, such as khorāsānī (“coraçones”), shirāzī, and sindī, but also
pathān, rājpūt, navāyat (“naitiás”) and baniyā. The term lei does con-
tinue to appear on occasion, as in the following passage: “ These
people [gente] are called Resbutos; they live in the forests of the
kingdom of Cambaia. They sustain themselves by robbing, and [also]
die thereby. They are very valiant men, and great horsemen and ar-
chers. Their law [sua lei] is of the Gentiles.” The sole occasion when
the term casta appears is the following (against Image XXXV):
“Gentile woman from the caste of the muleteers [casta de almocreves],
who is buried alive with her husband after his death.”118
 Closed carriages to transport elite women of Gujarat. Biblioteca
Casanatense, Rome, Figurae Variae . . . in lingua lusitana, Ms. 1889, 45–46.

Woman of the muleteer (almocreve) caste being buried

alive with her dead husband. Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome,
Figurae Variae . . . in lingua lusitana, Ms. 1889, 63–64.
94 EUROPE’S INDIA

It is therefore only in the second half of the sixteenth century that

casta emerges as the dominant usage to describe social groups and
categories in the context of Portuguese India (and Asia more gener-
ally). It is by no means limited in its usage to “Gentiles”; for example,
in the chronicle of Diogo do Couto, one can find such usages as de
casta abexim (“Abyssinian by caste”), mouro da casta de Mafamede (“A
Moor of Muhammad’s caste,” meaning a Sayyid), or even de casta Ital-
iano (“of Italian caste”), and these suggest that the term was used
in much the same sense as Arabo-Persian terms such as nasl, qaum
(plural, aqwām), or tā’ifa. However, it is only with the growing impor-
tance of Catholic missionary intervention in India from the 1540s on-
ward that this term gained ground, not merely as a loose descriptor—
as lei might have been for Barbosa—but in a systematic and even
systemic way. As a recent analysis of this “Catholic Orientalism”
notes, the Jesuits were at the forefront of such moves after the 1540s,
and “the world of paganism and idolatry was an enigma they came
to solve, all the while working on its total destruction.” Further, it is
aptly noted, “the study of the nature and the origin of idolatry in
vivo and in action, and, most importantly, in the missions beyond
the reach of Portuguese colonial support, forced the missionaries to
reinvent and reformulate categories and distinctions.”119
One of the key texts was produced not by a Jesuit, but by a former
soldier-turned-Augustinian friar by the name of Agostinho de Aze-
vedo. In his text, written in the closing decades of the sixteenth
century, entitled “Of the Opinions, Rites, and Ceremonies of All the
Gentiles of India”, Azevedo laid out a seductive panorama, according
to which the gentiles’ beliefs could be comprehended above all from
access to a textual corpus of knowledge. He presented his work as
containing knowledge that “until now was never written down, nei-
ther by our chroniclers nor by other men of curiosity who seek out
new things.” He continued:

It is to be known that among all the Gentility of the Orient,

there is kept and sustained a single opinion regarding the knowl-
edge of God, and the creation and corruption of beings, which
is a lesson that is taught in their schools by their Brahmins who
are the masters of their religion [sua religião]. On this, they have
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 95

many books, and their Latin, which is called Geredão [Grantham]

which contains every thing which they are to believe, and all the
ceremonies that they are to conduct. These three [sic] books are
divided into bodies, members and articles, the origins of which
are what they call Veados, which are divided in four parts. These
are [divided] in another fifty-two parts, in the following way:
six are called Xastrà, which are the bodies; eighteen are called
Puranà, which are members; and twenty-eight are called Agamon,
which are the articles.120

It has been pointed out that while Azevedo in real ity “knew no
Sanskrit and had no extensive missionary experience, he was able
to put together a compilation of data on Indian classical literary
tradition that was exceptionally well informed for the period.”121
While this may indeed be true, we must still ask ourselves whether
his activities— and those of his other contemporaries— are better
classified as “discovery” or “invention.”122 Rather than pointing
out, as Barbosa had casually done, that the dif ferent leis of gentiles
even in Kerala worshipped many and diverse “idols,” Azevedo and
others who followed would insist not only that the gentiles had a
“religion” (religião), but that they were all of a “single opinion.” A
pressing desire behind this was to characterize both gentile belief,
and society more generally, as possessing a strongly systemic char-
acter. Azevedo’s purpose in putting matters thus is made clear by him
in another passage of his text, this one on the central subject (for him)
of casta.

As for the castes, the greatest impediment there is in the con-

version of the Gentiles is the superstition that they maintain in
their castes, without being able to touch or mix with others who
are not of their profession and of the same caste, whether supe-
rior or inferior, or those of one rite [hum rito] with those of
another; and they are so abominable in this matter that it has
already happened that many have reached the end of their lives
rather than touch the food of another, or their affairs, for
fear of losing caste [perderem a casta] and becoming unclean
[inmundos].123
 Vaidiki Brahmins, from Real Biblioteca del Real Palacio de Madrid,
“Dibujos de la India Oriental,” II / 1612, no. 2. © Patrimonio Nacional.
 Sannyasis, from Real Biblioteca del Real Palacio de Madrid,
“Dibujos de la India Oriental,” II / 1612, No. 38. © Patrimonio Nacional.
98 EUROPE’S INDIA

It is therefore incumbent upon him to make clear to the reader why

this concept is so crucial for Indians, and especially gentiles, and how
it works not as a casual descriptor, but as a coherent totality, and thus
as a formidable barrier. Here is Azevedo again, this time in a lengthy
and crucial passage:

In all of this Orient, there are four castes [quatro castas] which
are the basis of all, according to a book called Jadegual Tutan
[Cātikaḷ Toṭṭam], which is to say the orchard of castes, which is
their book of nobility. The first caste is that of the Rayas, which
is a most noble nation [nação] from which all the Kings of
Canara derive, and they believe themselves to be the most ancient
and famous in the business of arms in these parts, just as the
Goths are in Europe; and they inspire such confidence on ac-
count of the great fidelity with which until now they have served
both in peace and in war, and they serve as the bodyguards of
the kings. They believe that it is better to lose their lives than
lay down their weapons, and so they earn a double salary. They
are men of pleasant conversation, courteous, loyal, and well-
mannered. The second caste is that of the bramenes, though
they would wish to precede the others, both on account of their
priesthood [sacerdocio] and their letters, and on this issue there
are as many divisions among them as among our learned men
regarding whether arms have precedence or letters. The third
caste is that of the chatins, who are merchants rich in gold, silver,
precious stones, silks, cloth and other valuable goods. In all
kingdoms, they are held in high esteem because of the profits
that their revenues produce. The fourth caste is that of the
balalas [veḷāḷar] who are the farmers [lavradores]. These are held
in esteem, and kings can marry their daughters because it is said
that they are the men who provide sustenance to kingdoms.
From these four castes, there derive another one hundred and
ninety-six, and these are also divided into two parts that are
called Valange [valankai] and Talangem [sic: iḍankai], which is
to say those of the right-hand and those of the left, and these
[left-hand castes] as they are inferior to the others, cannot even
pass them in the streets with their processions or marriages; and
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 99

as these caste privileges [privilegios de casta] are ancient, even the

Gentiles themselves can have difficulty in determining of which
caste they are.124

It is clear from a number of elements in this passage—the mysterious

work allegedly entitled Cātikaḷ Toṭṭam, the reference to right- and
left-hand castes—that Azevedo’s key references came from southern
India, and more specifically from the Tamil country. But what was
crucial here was his access to some form of Sanskritic textual knowl-
edge (even if mediated orally through Tamil), which enabled him to
put forward the scheme of four varnas not merely as an abstraction
but as a concrete and systemic reality, which mapped in turn to four
castas: Rayas, Brahmins, Chettis, and Velalas. Equally important was
the fact that Azevedo’s work did not remain confidential—far from
it. Rather, it was plagiarized wholesale and incorporated very rap-
idly into the influential official chronicle of Diogo do Couto, Da Ásia,
Década Quinta, where it appears in chapters 3 and 4 of book 6.125 In
turn, when later writers of dictionaries and glossaries looked to an
authoritative understanding of what casta in fact represented, it was
to Couto they often turned.126 Azevedo’s role was perhaps effaced
in the process, but his understanding remained in place, and was fur-
ther reinforced by his text’s considerable acceptance in both lay and
missionary circles, eventually also influencing such authors such as
Abraham Rogerius (d. 1649), and John Zephaniah Holwell (1711–
1798).127 Side by side with the continued use of casta as a loose and
somewhat casual term to describe ethnicity, whether on its own or
together with other terms such as nação, we can thus witness the
emergence by about 1600 of a far more specific usage, where it could
also be used to unlock the arcane mysteries of the Indian “Gentile”
world as a system.128

Conclusion

Over the course of the sixteenth century, several tens of thousands

of Europeans—largely Portuguese, but also a fair sprinkling of
Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Flemings, and a very small handful of
Frenchmen and Englishmen— reached the Indian Ocean via the
100 EUROPE’S INDIA

Cape of Good Hope. We can by no means be certain of their exact

numbers, let alone how quickly they died, how long they stayed, or
how often they returned to Europe. In around 1540, it was suggested
by Dom João de Castro that there were some six to seven thousand
Portuguese between East Africa and the Far East; three decades
later, Diogo do Couto proposed over double that number. In the 1630s,
there seem to have been at least five thousand Eu ropean casado
settlers in dif ferent establishments of the Estado da Índia, and about
eighteen hundred members of the various Catholic religious orders
spread across Asia.129
Yet only a small minority from among these have left an extended
trace in writing, and even fewer took a proper interest in the Asian
societies that surrounded them. A common enough profile was of the
trader resident in the Portuguese settlements of Goa and Cochin,
who might be well-informed enough about the pepper and spice
trade, or even the political vagaries that impinged on important mar-
kets, but remained woefully ignorant about anything that passed for
social or cultural knowledge regarding India. An example of this was
the Augsburg-born merchant Ferdinand Cron, who passed several
decades in and around South Asia between the 1580s and the 1620s,
but whose knowledge of it seems to have for the most part been
politico-economic in nature.130
The interpretative struggle of the past decades regarding those
who claimed in the period to produce positive social and cultural
knowledge for European consumption has been between three dis-
tinct positions. First, there were those who took these writings at face
value, assuming that they were simply “sources” like any other; this
attitude was common enough until the early twentieth century, even
if the occasional text was disqualified because it was too improbable.
Scholars would often thus validate texts in Arabic, Persian, or the
Indian vernaculars by the extent to which they confirmed or contra-
dicted what was found in Eu ropean accounts.131 A second position,
emerging in the 1970s, tended to view the European materials as
potentially highly distorted, either because a set of overwhelming
prejudices (regarding race, religion, and the like) colored their au-
thors’ lenses, or because their authors simply did not have the com-
petence to produce the kind of knowledge they claimed. The latter
 O N T H E I N D O - P O RT U G U E S E M O M E N T 101

is a concrete claim and as such can be subject to procedures of falsi-

fication. The third position, which has gained a fash ionable place
since the late 1990s, argues that “the main impetus for this [Euro-
pean travel] literature was scientific and instrumental,” and that even
if some forms of ideological distortion might exist, Eu ropeans in
sixteenth-century India could still “decode a cultural system” and
that one need not be particularly skeptical about them, even when
their knowledge claims could not be verified.132
It may thus be worthwhile to close with an interesting example,
that of a Jesuit treatise regarding the Mughal court, written in the
early seventeenth century. This text was produced after some form of
Jesuit presence had existed in that court for over three decades; sev-
eral Jesuits also claimed varying degrees of fluency in Persian, famil-
iarity with well-placed courtiers, and a personal acquaintance with
the Mughal emperor and his family. The text begins, blandly enough,
with an evocation of the grandeur and wealth of this kingdom.

The Great Mughal, King Jahangir [ Jamguir], holds court in the

famous city of Agra, a very celebrated and renowned city because
it is one of the richest of all the Orient. It is also the largest and
most opulent city that this King has in all his Kingdoms. Agra
lies in the midst of them, as the head and princess of all cities.
The King is so fond of its freshness and good air that he elected
it the Lady of all his other cities. The city is advantageous to the
King’s and his children’s health, and thus he made it his seat of
power.133

The text goes on to rehearse a number of Jesuit themes regarding

the Mughals, notably their habit of giving public audience through
a decorated window ( jharoka), as well as their fondness for sports and
entertainment involving animals. The enormous resources that the
ruler possesses, as well as the extravagant praise that he expects and
receives from his subjects and courtiers are stressed. Yet, periodically,
the Jesuit author reminds us that the emperor is given to fits of anger
and jealousy, and to killing his close relatives in those circumstances.
Of one cousin, he notes: “He will have the same fate of his relatives
because this is the end that the majority of the relatives and brothers
102 EUROPE’S INDIA

of Moorish kings eventually meet.” Luxury, greed, and ostentation

thus are the themes that run like red threads through this court, and
the long Jesuit familiarity with names and details (as well as the
occasional administrative term in Persian) hardly affect the framing,
only reinforcing it by giving their account a greater veneer of cred-
ibility for readers. It is thus scarcely a surprise to read the overall
evaluation of the monarch in the text.

One could say that this King is not a Moor, nor Gentile, nor
Christian, because he has no law [ley] in which he believes firmly
like other people; he is a barbarian who lives by fate and for-
tune [vive ao nasibo], follows his appetites, and is full of great
pride and the vainglory of the world. He thinks that he alone
is lord of all, and he is very cruel, and vengeful—with no mercy
at all.134

Here is a view then that is produced neither by a lack of familiarity

with the Mughal court, nor indeed by a lack of favor shown by Jahangir
until that time to the Jesuits, who received a number of grants and
fi nancial subsidies from the emperor. Yet, it was in texts like these
that the seeds were probably laid for a secular denunciation of the
Mughals (as indeed their Muslim neighbors to the north and west)
as “Oriental Despots,” possessed of arbitrary power and incapable of
adhering to any rule-bound system, even that laid down by a proper
adherence to Islam. Was this line of development inevitable then?
Perhaps not. But it is—among other matters—to the posterity of im-
ages like these that we will turn in the following chapters.
 2
THE QUESTION OF
“INDIAN RELIGION”

When I said to them [the Indians] about this, that in the cold
countries it would be impossible to observe their law [on
bathing] during the winter, which was a sign that it was a pure
human invention, they gave me this rather amusing response:
that they did not claim that their law was universal; that God
had made it for them and it was for that reason that they could
not receive a foreigner into their religion; that for the rest,
they did not claim at all that our [religion] was false; and that it
might well be that it was good for us and that God had created
different paths to go to heaven, but that they did not wish to accept
that our [religion] being valid for all of the earth, theirs was
nothing more than a fable and pure invention.
—François Bernier, “Lettre à Monsieur Chapelain” (1667)

Introduction

European perceptions and constructions of India in the early

modern period tended to focus, as noted in Chapter 1, on a number
of recognizable topoi. Among these, the concept of “religion” and
consequently of religious difference, undoubtedly occupied a central
place in European perceptions of India in the early modern period.
As is well known, the first Portuguese voyages to India in the late
fifteenth century suffered in this respect from something of an epis-
temological deficit, for while they were relatively comfortable with
the three categories of Christians, Muslims, and Jews that they knew
from medieval times, they also had a greatly undertheorized cate-
gory of heathens or “gentiles (gentios),” which they only gradually
realized would have a far greater importance in the world of the
Indian Ocean than in the Europe they had left behind. To be sure,
the Iberians had encountered some such fourth category not only in

103
104 EUROPE’S INDIA

the ancient past (as with the Greeks and Romans) but in their
present, fi rst in the Canaries, then in West Africa, and fi nally and
most recently in the Caribbean. But as Joan-Pau Rubiés has rightly
noted, “the gap that separated the ‘gentiles’ from Tenerife or Guinea
from those in Calicut or Vijayanagara was a significant one.”1
The central difficulties were two in number. First, as discussed in
Chapter 1, the practices of these “gentiles” had to be observed and
given content, especially because these were practices that were
clearly linked to textual traditions. Second, and thornier perhaps, was
the move toward portraying these dispersed practices as a coherent, if
wrong-headed, system, a move which an abstract concept like “reli-
gion” demanded.
We need to note at the very outset that perhaps as recently as a
quarter-century ago the simple idea of religious difference under the
umbrella of a common defi nition of “religion” was quite unprob-
lematic to most. There were, to be sure, the three great Mosaic (or
Abrahamic) religions, which stood in some sort of genealogical rela-
tionship to one another, and in a quite clear chronological one. These
three, in particular Christianity and Islam put together, accounted
comfortably for a good part of the world’s population. Then, on the
fringes of this religious core zone, were ostensibly other religions,
as studied and defined in university departments of religion, but also
happily embraced by Weberian sociologists of civilization: Hinduism,
Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, perhaps Shinto, and still more doubt-
fully Confucianism. In 1956, the celebrated British anthropologist
E. E. Evans-Pritchard could quite confidently write of Africa and
produce a work on Nuer Religion, and other research on various sorts
of “primitive religion” was much in the air.2 Even if the well-known
artist Gottardo Piazzoni, when asked “and what is your religion?”
replied ironically “I think it is California,” he was surely an excep-
tion. It was in this context that the anthropologist Clifford Geertz
proposed his celebrated definition (in 1966) of “religion as a cultural
system” wherein he set out a universal collection of criteria as fol-
lows: religion is “(1) a system of symbols which act to (2) establish
powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men
by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 105

(4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that

(5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”3
Though Geertz’s definition—which draws a part of its power of
seduction from the fact that it mentions neither God nor the super-
natural in its core statement—has enjoyed widespread popularity and
continues to form the basis for many courses on the anthropology
of religion, it has also been sharply criticized on various grounds.
The most widely quoted of these critiques comes from the pen of
Talal Asad, who sought (as he stated) not “to advocate a better
anthropological definition of religion than Geertz has done” but
rather to radically “problematize the [very] idea of an anthropolog-
ical definition of religion by assigning that endeavor to a particular
history of knowledge and power (including a particular under-
standing of our legitimate past and future) out of which the modern
world has been constructed.”4 What Asad meant by this, of course,
was that the idea that religion was either universal and present in all
societies, or stable in a given society over time, or even definable,
was highly dubious, and indeed essentialist.5 He thus advocated
that the student and scholar should begin by “unpacking the com-
prehensive concept which he or she translates as ‘religion’ into het-
erogeneous elements according to its historical character.” Besides,
it is quite clear that from Asad’s point of view, the historical process
by which “religion” has come to be seen as a universal grid using
which societies can be analyzed is linked above all to the history of
Christianity from medieval times onward. Though his work con-
siders both Christianity and Islam, it is noticeable that the Islam he
analyses is almost always modern (and post-1800) and has usually
been subordinated in some way to Christianity in an epistemolog-
ical sense. To understand the career of “religion” as a master concept
is, in this view, above all to understand how it was deployed within
Christian discourses of similarity and difference.
In 1988, at the median point between the first and second appear-
ances in print of Asad’s celebrated essay, a work was published in
French that truly had the potential to transform the field that he had
sought to address. This was a joint work, about 250 pages in length,
and conceived in an essay form; its authors were historians with a
106 EUROPE’S INDIA

distinctly anthropological bent of mind, and the work was entitled

De l’idolâtrie (“Of idolatry”). More significant perhaps than its title
was its subtitle: Une archéologie des sciences religieuses, an obvious evo-
cation of a work by Michel Foucault published two decades earlier.6
In De l’idolâtrie, Carmen Bernand and Serge Gruzinski set out to
demonstrate how the religious sciences of today had very largely
emerged in the sixteenth century in the context of the European en-
counter with the Americas. They showed how a vocabulary that had
existed from classical times, in relation to early Christian ity and
its “others,” was redeployed in the context of new dealings with
forms of “idolatry,” but also suggested that the intervention of some
writers in the sixteenth century—notably the celebrated Dominican
friar Bartolomé de la Casas (1484–1566)— significantly changed the
terms in which Mesoamerican cultural practices were analyzed as
forms of idolatrous religion. While this work was certainly read by
authors interested in the problem of the more-or-less contempora-
neous European encounters with India and China, it did not signifi-
cantly enter those discussions. Discussions that have been ongoing
since then regarding the “invention of Hinduism” might well have
profited from this comparative perspective, but they have signifi-
cantly lacked it in point of fact.7
This chapter returns to some of the themes touched upon by Ber-
nand and Gruzinski, using as a sounding board the compilatory work
of the engraver and printer Bernard Picart, Cérémonies et coutumes
religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, which appeared in multiple vol-
umes in Amsterdam between 1723 and 1737. Picart’s massive work,
which he put together with his Huguenot collaborator Jean-Frédéric
Bernard, has attracted a certain amount of attention in the re-
cent past, and the visual aspects of its Indian sections have been
quite carefully analyzed by Paola von Wyss- Giacosa.8 Given its
enormous—indeed universal— scope, one can see that it almost au-
tomatically lends itself to a series of comparative questions.9 It hence
seems useful to return to the Indian sections of the work to ask a
short but complex series of analytical questions. What did Picart in-
clude and what did he exclude from his compilation and why? What
was the broad relationship between texts and illustrations? And fi-
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 107

nally, what was the broad effect or implication of this exercise in epis-
temological terms?
It is possible, of course, to treat Picart’s work within a sequence of
varying strategies for the representation of extra-European cultures,
which move steadily from the unrealistic to the realistic. This is the
broad point of view espoused as a framework by Donald Lach and
his collaborators in the multivolume work Asia in the Making of Eu-
rope. As they write of the early modern centuries leading up to the
Enlightenment, “the number of books about Asia being printed in
Europe, the wide diffusion of these books in all scholarly languages,
and the references in both popular and scholarly writings to these
books and to information about Asia, all enabled seventeenth-century
European readers to obtain a better-informed idea than previously
of the reality of Asia and a clearer image of its dimensions, its peoples,
and its various languages, religions and cultures.”10 There is a studied
tone of neutrality here. What is being dealt with is not “knowledge”
and even less “representation” but simply “information”: the result
is thus that Europeans are over time “better-informed” as informa-
tion accumulates.
Such a view of course ignores a subtle warning that had been
sounded considerably earlier. In an important work on a “history of
European reactions to Indian art” published some three decades ago
(and fifteen years before the work of Lach and his collaborators), the
art historian Partha Mitter had devoted an extensive early chapter
to what he termed “Indian art in traveller’s tales.” Beginning with
Marco Polo and Odoric of Pordenone, Mitter proceeded to survey
both textual and visual depictions of what would later be termed
“Hindu” gods, goddesses, and religious scenes, devoting some atten-
tion to the work of Dutch pastor and plagiarist Philippus Baldaeus,
whose work on the subject appeared in 1672. Mitter eventually turned
briefly to the place of Picart, writing of how in 1723 “the engraver . . .
brought together in his magnificent volumes all that was known in
the West about Indian gods.” He further suggested that the century
between the 1630s and the time of Picart “witnessed the dissolution
of the monster stereotypes and the emergence of authentic images
of Indian gods. The incidental details too, such as the human figure
108 EUROPE’S INDIA

and the dress in these illustrations, had become convincing.” We may

note the vocabulary here: terms such as “authentic” and “convincing”
still belong to the language of representation rather than informa-
tion. Mitter’s clinching argument, which we revisit below, is that
these changes in forms of representation were principally the con-
sequence of “the reproduction in books of Indian miniatures on sec-
ular subjects.”11 In other words, the real meaning of “authentic” and
“convincing” is the recourse by Picart and his sources to Indian forms
of visual representation of Indian themes. Still, the tension between
image and text remains an unresolved issue here. At the end of the
day, the crucial questions when dealing with Picart and his work
are relational, the mise-en-rapport of texts, but also of texts and im-
ages, and above all of different cultural, civilizational, and religious
complexes that others might have preferred to keep distinct and
separate.

The Talented Monsieur Picart

Picart’s extended section on India occupies a part of the work

dealing with the “ceremonies and religious customs of the idola-
trous nations,” which appeared in French in 1723 and in English in
1734. This section followed those on the three “Religions of the
Book”: Judaism, Christian ity, and Islam. The discussion here re-
fers to the English version, which was also the one that eventually
came into the possession of early English colonial administrators
in India such as Warren Hastings.12 India in the third volume of
the work in English, entitled The Ceremonies and Religious Customs
of the Various Nations of the Known World Together with Historical
Annotations and Several Curious Discourses Equally Instructive and
Entertaining, occupies all of 282 pages, some of which are lavishly
illustrated, as the title page of the volume informs us, “with above
One Hundred and Seventy Folio COPPER PLATES, all beautifully
Designed by Mr. BERNARD PICART, And curiously Engraved by most
of the BEST HANDS in EUROPE.” It is, as mentioned above, essentially
a work of compilation, a matter regarding with Jean-Frédéric Ber-
nard was not at all apologetic. In 1741, he wrote with retrospective
self-righteousness:
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 109

Those who have attempted to render it [Cérémonies etc.] con-

temptible in terming it a compilation have probably wished to
ignore that in subjects such as those which are contained in the
collection on ceremonies etc., one cannot do anything else but
compile. If the compilation is done with choice and discernment,
if one only advances on the basis of sound authorities, a judi-
cious reader ought to be content. To invent, to extend, to add
circumstances in order to adorn one’s subject as in a romance,
all this is not appropriate in a work which should consist of a
description of ceremonies destined to bring out the éclat of the
[particular] religious cult, which are often regarded as being es-
sential to it, and of the historical details of their origin, and
their establishment etc. One should be exactly true here. Thus
one can do nothing else than to being together what can be
found dispersed here and there.13

This is a fairly explicit set of claims, as well a statement concerning

a certain form of objectivity. Editorial intervention, it would seem, is
kept to a bare minimum; as Bernard was also to write, “Far from at-
tributing any glory to ourselves on this matter, we renounce that of
being original in the reflections that accompany the descriptions.”14
The first question that hence arises is of the choice of the texts that
were included in the three hundred-odd pages on India. These pages
appear, we may note, after a section dealing with Iberian America,
drawing on such writers as the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
The texts on India do not in fact appear in the chronological order
in which they were originally written or published. This is quite typ-
ical of the Picart-Bernard enterprise. Instead, the first, which in a
way has pride of place, was originally published in 1704, less than
a decade before the French edition of Picart’s opus, and its author is
a somewhat enigmatic figure by the name of La Créquinière.15 The
work had quickly acquired some notoriety and been published in
an English translation (sometimes attributed erroneously to John
Toland) as early as 1705; its title as reproduced in Picart’s volume is
“The Conformity of the Customs of the East Indians with those
of the  Jews, and other Antient Nations.” “Conformity” begins
with the explicit claim that the author has spent a fair amount of
110 EUROPE’S INDIA

time in India, which endows him with some authority to speak on

the subject: “I have liv’d too long in India, not to discourse perti-
nently on certain Matters, which may possibly appear surprizing to
the Reader.”16 This sojourn, which apparently was only of the order
of “three or four years” is never given much specific content, beyond
the periodic mention of experiences at Pondicherry, the principal
factory and fortified center of the French East India Company on
the Coromandel coast of southeastern India. As many as eighty-six
pages of Picart’s work on idolatry are occupied by La Créquinière’s
account, which is organized into some forty sections of unequal
length.17 It is a very curious introduction to the ceremonies and cus-
toms of the idolaters of India, to say the least.
There are two principal problems with La Créquinière’s work,
namely the somewhat obscure identity of the author and its direct
implications, and the nature of the contents. The name implies
that he was a native of Haute Normandie (in the area of Aubevoye),
but for long it was not clear whether the name was simply a pseud-
onym. Though he sometimes appears with “Sieur” before his name, he
does not even possess a recognizable first name in the extant litera-
ture. Was he in fact an employee of the French East India Com-
pany? If so, in what capacity? Certainly it is clear from the tone of
his work that he was not in India as a missionary. Was he a gen-
tleman of leisure, traveling for his own amusement, as he also indi-
rectly suggests? Later Orientalists such as Antoine Polier (discussed
at greater length below) possessed copies of his work in their per-
sonal libraries, but this provides little evidence of his reliability one
way or the other. Fortunately, it has finally been possible to trace a
single letter from him in the archives of the French East India Com-
pany, written from Pondicherry in October 1700.18 In this missive,
probably addressed to the minister Louis Phélypeaux, Comte de
Pontchartrain, La Créquinière asks for the post of lieutenant which
has been refused him despite the fact that he has served for a length
of time (depuis longtemps sans avoir eu le credit). Among the character
witnesses he cites are the well-known François Martin and a certain
M. de Livernan.19
Even with this clue in hand, suggesting that he was a subaltern
military officer, the content of La Créquinière’s work proves diffi-
 Indian snake charmer, engraving by Jacques Harrewyn, from
La Créquinière, Conformité des coutumes des Indiens orientaux avec celles
des Juifs (1704), Plate 11, facing page 152.
112 EUROPE’S INDIA

cult to penetrate.20 After a prolix and somewhat ill-organized intro-

duction on the broad subject of travels and wonders, he states his
principal purpose, which is to compare both the religion (including
the “theology”) of the Indians and their customs, with those of the
ancient Greeks and of the Jews, both ancient and contemporary. His
conclusions are prefigured in an early passage of the work; he states
that while there are some parallels in the customs of the ancient hea-
thens and the Indians of the seventeenth century, “the Theology
of the antient Heathens scarcely agrees with theirs in one single
Par ticular.” In contrast, there is a striking convergence in matter of
both customs and religion between Jews and Indians; indeed, La
Créquinière is inclined to the end of his work to go even further,
averring that besides the “Parallel between the Jews and the Indians
with regard to their Customs, religious and civil, we may also com-
pare them together with respect to Genius and the Prejudices they
have imbibed.”
A remarkable feature of La Créquinière’s writing on India is its
utter banality in purely empirical terms. His first substantive chapter
is on the Mughals (and entitled “The Dominions of the Great
Mogul,” preceding a chapter “Of Circumcision”), and there is
nothing here that a well-read armchair scholar from Eu rope, who
had read the standard works on India that were in print in 1700, could
not have said. In chapter after chapter, this is then the most striking
feature of the work. Manifestly, La Créquinière had no access to
textual sources, whether in Sanskrit or Persian, or in the Indian ver-
nacular languages on the “religion” of India. His description of re-
ligious practices, and what he terms “theology,” is extremely vague
and merely draws upon a series of well-known clichés regarding the
subject. As for his ethnography, the part regarding “customs” is
scarcely much better. No close description of any particular custom
or practice can be easily identified. His remarks, whether regarding
superstition, the consumption of commodities, or temple prosti-
tution, merely partake of a broad received wisdom regarding the
gentiles and idolaters of India. There is no novelty here. And yet,
the thrust of the text is indeed somewhat novel. This is not because of
his desire to produce equivalence between the Indians and the people
of the ancient Mediterranean, in particular the Greeks. This was a
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 113

hoary trope, one that had been repeated many times over in the view
that the Brahmins of India derived their beliefs from the philosophy
of Pythagoras. Rather, the boldness of La Créquinière’s view lay, and
has lain (as many subsequent observers have pointed out), in his drive
to produce a practical and genealogical relationship between the
gentiles of India and one of the “Religions of the Book,” namely
Judaism. This was thus a form of “promotion,” suggesting that the
kind of religion practiced in India was indeed worthy of far more
serious notice than a mere relegation into the inferior category of
superstition.
After a series of rather dull, diverse, and poorly presented remarks,
La Créquinière’s text draws these materials together in its conclu-
sion. It is in these passages too that the editorial remarks in Picart’s
text (though one suspects the voice is that of Bernard, principally)
begin to increase in density. One senses here a quickening of their
interest in the enterprise. For in that final analysis, the central worth
of La Créquinière lay not in his hands-on understanding of India,
but rather in his classical erudition—which he very much wears on
his sleeve. As he writes in his opening section: “The Knowledge of
the Customs of the Indians was not abstractedly of any Use; that the
only Reason for my employing them, was to justify what is related
of the Ancients, and illustrate them upon Occasion; in a Word, that
I had Antiquity only in View.”21 His text is perhaps three-fourths de-
voted to materials that he knows from his classical education, with a
mere fourth coming from his ostensible Indian experience. Here is
how he presents matters by way of conclusion in his thirty-ninth sec-
tion (succeeded by a rather bizarre fortieth and concluding one: “Of
India in general, and the Customs of its Inhabitants.”)
• Indians and Jews, he avers, are both “continual Slaves to
Prepossession, which triumphs so much the more over them,
as they love and adore their Captivity.”
• Both peoples are moreover so hidebound that “it absolutely
prevents their making any Progress in the Sciences.”
• Both people are given to rote learning and “getting by Heart
the several Things which they say that God or the Gods have
done for them.”
114 EUROPE’S INDIA

• Both people are incompetent in war and make war “only by

Starts.”
• Both are obstinate and given to defending their soothsayers
and priests.
• Both of them “look upon other Nations as profane, and refuse
to have any Familiarity with Foreigners.”22

A series of other conclusions follow, largely of a repetitive nature,

such as the following indictment: “They never apply themselves to
any of the Sciences, but such as are of absolute Necessity; looking
upon the rest as Acquisitions, which though they enlarge the human
Faculties, they yet make a Man more unhappy, and usually swell him
with Pride.”
One part of the problem manifestly lies in our author’s almost total
unfamiliarity with what he regards as the “theology” of the gentiles
of India. He scarcely is able to advance from an early statement where
he declares, “I first thought to study only the Religion of the Indians,
and was confirm’d in my Resolution by the first Discoveries I had
made therein, having observ’d a certain Order between their Princi-
ples, and the System of their triple Divinity, viz. Brama, Witsnou,
and Devender, as is not found in the Multitude of Gods ador’d by
the Greeks and Romans.”23 This establishes his primary distinction
between Indians on the one hand, and Greeks and Romans on the
other, which leads him in turn to the comparison with the Jews. Yet,
as we have seen, the comparison with the Jews is not primarily—or
indeed even tangentially—on “theological” terms. Rather it is based
on a curious mix of a reading of ancient Latin texts on the Jews, com-
bined with stereotypical (rather than direct) ethnographical obser-
vation regarding the Indians.
Yet, what is of interest is how La Créquinière becomes, in a sense,
the stalking horse used by Bernard and Picart. His text contains foot-
notes by them throughout its length, but the density and extent of
these notes grows apace as one proceeds. Further, instead of merely
providing information regarding a Biblical citation or an obscure
phrase, these notes also become more and more argumentative and
transform themselves into a veritable dialogue with the text itself.
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 115

By Section XXXIX (with the rather misleading title of “Their chief

Temples”) this quality is quite evident. Remarking on the text’s
claims regarding the “blind Submission” of Indians to the law, Ber-
nard (for we may suppose it was he), states, “This Reflection is in no
ways just. The Wars and Revolutions which happened in the Indies,
are a Proof that those Nations often make a political, of a purely Re-
ligious Affair; and that ’tis the same in Asia as in Europe, where
those who are the most zealous Sticklers for the Deity, are not al-
ways his best Friends.” Further, remarking on the alleged Jewish ne-
glect of the sciences, another note states sarcastically that if “they
neglect the Sciences, and apply themselves to Business only . . . this
they do from Judgment and Reflection, well knowing that there
is nothing to be got by Learning.” Other editorial remarks are more
pointed and devastating still. A starting point may be found at the very
beginning of Section XXXIX, as a riposte to the remark on Indians
and Jews being mere “slaves to prepossession.” Here, the note runs:

We may ask the Author of this Dissertation, what Men are not
Subject to these Prejudices? Might they not be compared on this
Occasion, with all the People, and all the Religions in the World,
not excepting that of the Christians? For we may consider all
such Christians as Slaves, who are not able to give any Reason
for their Belief. There is no Necessity that a Person in low Life
should examine the Particulars of the several articles in the
Creed, but then he ought to be able to give good reasons why
he believes in them. Such as are negligent upon this Head, are
not more acceptable in the Sight of God, than a Brasilian who
lives up to the Rules of Morality, and does not devour his Fellow-
Creatures. Let us therefore conclude, that Mankind in general
may be compared to one another with regard to Genius and
Prejudice.24

We can thus come to a first conclusion regarding the placement

of La Créquinière’s extensive text at the very opening of the section
on India. It cannot be explained either by its publication date or by
the prominence of its author, for in truth he was rather obscure even
116 EUROPE’S INDIA

if his text had received a certain amount of attention. Rather it was

a bridge-building text, one that opened up the possibility of com-
paring the religion of the gentiles of India to more familiar religions,
using the Jews as a point of entry. Once the door to comparison has
been opened, the more pointed remarks can begin to flow in the
footnotes: “We also are guilty of the same Fault.” “The Knowledge
of a numberless Multitude of Christians goes no further than this.”
“The Parallel might justly be drawn with the Christians, to our
Shame be it Spoken.” “Our Clergy act in the same Manner, and the
Wars which they foment are always the most fatal.”25
The ice has, in a manner of speaking, been broken. The remainder
of the compiled texts in the Cérémonies on India can, as it were,
breathe somewhat more freely and assume a somewhat more conven-
tional air of direct description without recourse to constant and
explicit comparison. A second section of about forty pages, after that
devoted to La Créquinière, therefore draws on the rather well-known
work by the Reverend Henry Lord, the English East India Com-
pany’s chaplain resident at Surat in western India in the late 1620s,
and is entitled “A Discovery of the Sect of the Banians containing
their History, Law, Liturgy, Castes, Customs, and Ceremonies.”26
Lord, born in 1563, was a curate from Oxfordshire who had accom-
panied Thomas Kerridge, president of the East India Company’s
Surat factory, to Gujarat, and on his return to England had published
his text in 1630 under the title A Display of Two Forraigne Sects in the
East Indies vizt: The Sect of the Banians the Ancient Natives of India and
the Sect of the Persees the Ancient Inhabitants of Persia Together with the
Religion and Manners of Each Sect. This text had attracted a certain
amount of attention, being one of the earliest published accounts of
India linked to the English Company; it was translated into French
in 1667 by the quite well-known translator Pierre Briot under the
title Histoire de la religion des Banians . . . avec un traité de la religion
des anciens Persans ou Parsis, extrait d’un autre livre écrit en persan, in-
titulé “Zundavastaw” (Paris: Robert de Ninville, 1667). It is the first
part of the work that interested Picart, since the latter section con-
cerned the Parsis or Zoroastrians of western India and thus dealt
with a social category of “fi re-worshippers” that was probably not
central to his conception of the “idolatrous nations.”
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 117

Quite unlike La Créquinière, Lord’s strategy was to make explic-

itly textual claims. The subtitle that appears in Picart announces this
fact, noting that the work was “gathered from their Bramins, Teachers
of that Sect: as the Particulars were compriz’d in the Book of their
Law, call’d, the Shaster.” The matter is further dilated upon by Lord
himself in his introduction or preamble, where he also clarifies that
it was very much at Kerridge’s urging that he undertook the work.
He adds: “I begun my Worke, and essayed to fetch Materials for the
same out of their Manuscripts, and by renewed Accesse, with the
Helpe of Interpreters, make [sic] my Collections out of a Booke of
theirs called the Shaster, which is to them as their Bible, containing
the Grounds of their Religion in a written Word.”
This is a somewhat misleading claim on several accounts. Firstly,
the term śāstra is no more than a generic term for any normative
work; it is thus a broad genre rather than a single book. Second, it
would appear that the type of works to which Lord gained access
(however confusedly) were in fact purānas, a category of narrative
works of varying antiquity and provenance. Further, a certain amount
of editing and excising was done by him, as we see in his admission
that he left out “for the most Part such prodigious Fictions as seeme
independent on [sic] Sense and Reason.” What is left then is a text
which (in Picart’s reproduction) is made up of fifteen short chapters.
These commence with cosmogony and a creation myth that begins
with a single god, an unnamed “Almighty” who “consulted with him-
selfe, about the making of this great Worke, which Men call the
World or Universe.” This God then creates the elements, the Earth
and other celestial bodies and eventually living creatures, including
men and women. The first man is here Pourous and the first woman
Parcoutee, and their four sons are effectively at the origin of the four
principal castes (or varna): Brammon, Cuttery, Shuddery, and Wyse,
each with his own “Constitution” or inherent nature. Succeeding
chapters then detail the adventures of these dif ferent sons, their dis-
persion and eventual mating with a series of women. Eventually, we
learn that the “Divisions and Dissentions” among these sons un-
leashed a great flood which concluded the “first Age of the World.”
Lord obviously did not invent this material, but he certainly fash-
ioned it in order to make the parallels to Biblical materials as close
118 EUROPE’S INDIA

as possible. In a second age, he thus begins with mentions of Brahma,

Vishnu, and Rudra, but terms them “three Persons of greater Per-
fection and Excellency than the other” rather than gods. God, “the
Lord” or “the Almighty” remains singular for him, the sole “Maker”
who is worshipped by these others. It is he who creates the Shaster
and hands it to Brahma, as a work in three parts. The first of these
is a book of “morall Law,” the second of “ceremonial Law,” and the
third concerns “Casts or Tribes.” There are besides eight command-
ments that he lays down, which are of varying importance depending
on one’s caste. These laws were thus established in the Second Age
of the world, which however came to an end in an “Uproare of Un-
godlinesse.” We then pass quickly to the Third Age, dominated by
the figure of Ram, presented once more not as a god or incarnation
but simply as the youngest son of the “Chiefe of the Bramanes,” who
had survived the earlier destruction. The Reverend Lord gives this
age short shrift, eventually moving to the Fourth Age, namely that of
Kystney (Krishna), which is also passed over quickly enough. This
takes him to some general conclusions, notably that the religion of
the Banians is “a composed Fiction, rather than any Thing reall for
Faith to lean on.”27 Yet the religion that he depicts is very much one
that is seen in a Christian mirror, a monotheism with a single cre-
ator and his various agents, rather than a world of many gods. Once
more it suggests the perfect legitimacy of making a comparison with
the Religions of the Book; indeed the only deeply specific feature of
the Indian world as portrayed by Lord is the presence of caste from
an original moment.
But more flagrant contradictions now begin to appear in the edi-
fice of Cérémonies. The following part of Picart’s work moves forward
chronologically, and is once more a text that enjoyed some notoriety
in the seventeenth century. It appears in Picart as “A Dissertation
on the Religion and Manners of the Bramins,” occupies a little over
sixty pages, and was originally authored by Abraham Rogerius (or
Roger), a predikant or Protestant minister attached to the Dutch East
India Company’s fortress and factory at Pulicat, just north of Ma-
dras (today Chennai). The Dutch text by Rogerius was published in
Leiden in 1651, two years after Rogerius’s death, under the title De
Opendeure tot het verborgen heydendom ofte Waerachtigh vertoogh van
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 119

het leven ende zeden, mitsgaders de religie ende Gods-dienst der Bramines
op de cust Chormandel, ende de Landen daar ontrent, but only attained
relative notoriety on account of the French translation by Thomas
de la Grue, which appeared in 1670 and was entitled Le Théâtre de
l’idolâtrie, ou la Porte ouverte pour parvenir à la cognoissance du pagan-
isme caché, et la Vraye représentation de la vie, des mœurs, de la religion
et du service divin des Bramines qui demeurent sur les costes du Chormandel
et aux pays circonvoisins.28 Rogerius’s Dutch text had not been treated
with par tic u lar tenderness by an anonymous editor who took it
through press with an extensive para-text, and who was somewhat
reticent in his preface (which Picart reproduced), noting that Rog-
erius’s “Manner of writing is harsh and uncouth, and encumber’d
with a great Number of useless Remarks.” This editor, who signed
his text A. W., has sometimes been identified as the Unitarian cleric
Andrzej Wiszowaty (or Andreas Wissowatius, 1608–1678).29
Despite the editor’s partial incomprehension, it is worth noting a
certain form of simplicity to Rogerius’s method, which contempo-
raries were aware of. Unlike the Reverend Lord, who claimed all
sorts of native informants but was unable to provide details of even
one, and La Créquinière, whose claims to direct knowledge about
India are thoroughly doubtful, Rogerius did indeed have just one
close informant—a Smarta Brahmin called Padmanabha, with whom
he worked closely in Pulicat. Here is how Rogerius, under suitable
tutelage from Padmanabha, defines the subcaste.

The third sect [of Brahmins] is call’d Smaertas, and was founded
by Sancra Atsjaria. The Smaertas say, that Vitsnou and Eswara
are one and the same God, and worshipp’d only under dif ferent
Representations or Images, and don’t approve of the Disputes
which the two preceding Sects [Vaishnavas and Saivas] have
among themselves about either of these Names. These are not
distinguish’d from one another by any exterior Mark, and have
few Followers among the common People.30

Padmanabha had apparently had some difficulties with his own

natal community and hence had taken refuge with the Dutch in Pu-
licat. In Rogerius he found a close listener, one who was willing to
120 EUROPE’S INDIA

insert matters into his Dutch text which were in all probability en-
tirely incomprehensible to any Dutch reader of the period. Thus, the
Sancra Atsjaria referred to in the passage above is the Sankaracharya,
a major reformist figure of early medieval India, whose nondualist
(or monist, advaita) philosophy was in large measure a late response
to the challenges posed by Buddhism.
In a similar vein, every paragraph of Rogerius’s text—while it may
be a delight to the modern philologist—is largely impenetrable to
the contemporary European reader. But the text is a triumph of a
certain sort of ventriloquism. To be sure, Rogerius inserts his own
sour remarks from time to time, including comments regarding the
Smartas that are scarcely likely to have found favor with Padma-
nabha. But for the most part, what we have is a very detailed account
of sectarian organization, temples, festivals, and the like, in the re-
gion of Madras and Pulicat in the mid-seventeenth century. As it
appears in Picart’s version, the text has two parts regarding the Brah-
mins, the fi rst entitled “Of their Manners and Civil Ceremonies”
(and containing fifteen brief chapters), and the second termed “Of
the Tenets and Religious Customs of the Bramins” (comprising a
further seventeen chapters). For the reader of Picart, some of the
chief implications of this part of the work are worth examining.
Rogerius renders an India that is far more complex than that
depicted by either La Créquinière or Lord. It is also often highly
localized in its references, with a mixed vocabulary drawing on San-
skrit as well as Tamil and Telugu, languages much in use in the
Pulicat region. He begins by referring to the four great castes (varna),
rendering them, unlike Lord, in the usual hierarchical order. He also
notes the existence of the Veda, which he states is “of the same Au-
thority with those People, as the Bible among the Christians, or the
Alcoran among the Mahometans,” also making it clear that the Veda
is the basis for the domination of society by Brahmins. But unlike
the previous authors, Rogerius is careful to note the existence of a
vast variety of other castes ( jātis), as well as a fifth broad category of
untouchables or pariahs. Of these, he writes:

The Perreas are the Refuse of the whole Nation, nor have they
the Honour to be consider’d as a Caste. They are look’d upon
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 121

as unclean, and are not suffer’d to live in the same Street with
the rest, but have a separate Quarter allotted them in every City.
Their Villages are always at a Distance from others; they also
have their Wells apart; and for fear lest any Person should
through Inadvertency go and draw Water out of them, they are
obliged to scatter Bones all around, as a Mark to keep every one
from coming to them. They dare not walk in the Streets, nor
go into those Villages which the Bramins inhabit, nor enter into
the Temples of Visnou and of Eswara, lest their Uncleanness
should infect the Bramins and the Temple.31

This of course opens the possibility that the Pariahs are in fact
not of the same “religion” (Gods-dienst in the original Dutch, a term
which in itself poses a slight conundrum) as the others at all, since
they clearly cannot worship the same gods. Matters are further
confounded when Rogerius begins to write at length of the differ-
ences between even categories of Brahmins, noting that they are “di-
vided into several Sects, whence there results a Difference in Man-
ners.” These “sects” include the Vaishnavas, the Saivas, the Smartas
(referred to briefly above), the Charvakas, the Pasandas, and the
Shaktas, many of which are again further subdivided into more cat-
egories. If the Vaishnavas for their part “acknowledge no other
God than Vistnou,” it turns out that the Saivas “acknowledge Es-
wara for the sovereign God, making him superior to Vistnou.” The
Charvakas are defined by him as “a kind of Epicureans, that don’t
believe in the Immortality of the Soul, and treat every Thing they
hear mention’d concerning a Life to come, as foolish and ridiculous.”
As for the Pasandas, they “look upon every Thing which the three
first maintain as fabulous” and also “abandon themselves to Vice
without the least Restraint, and are so wretchedly dissolute, that they
have no Regard to any Degree of Consanguinity in their Debauch-
eries, but say, that every Woman is their own Wife while they are
enjoying her.”32
Given these enormous differences, one can see that the reader of
Rogerius may have wondered how indeed it was possible to classify
all these groups into a single “religion,” unless some of them were
simply classified as some form of heretics. At a later moment, there
122 EUROPE’S INDIA

are some defensive moves by Bernard and Picart in this very direc-
tion, for example when they write:

In fine, if the Reader will give himself the Trouble to compare

these [other] Explications with the Dissertation on the Manners
and the Religion of the Bramins [by Rogerius], he will meet with
several Things of the same Nature, express’d under dif ferent
Names, and frequently mix’d with such Ideas as have no Manner
of Connection. This Imperfection arises from the Confusion,
which is found in the Indian Theology; and the Obscurity with
which Travellers have clouded it, for want of knowing how to
distinguish the Opinions of the several Sects one from the other.
An Indian, who should write on the Christian Religion, would
make an odd kind of Rhapsody, where he to confound the
various Opinions of Anabaptists, Lutherans, Quakers, Calvin-
ists, and Roman Catholics; and should not only heighten them
with the mystical and allegorical Descriptions of the Divines of
their dif ferent Sects, but interlard his Work with Stories out of
the antient and modern Legends.33

Nevertheless, Rogerius is able to show that most of the Brahmins

do share a certain number of social and ritual practices and even some
beliefs. Yet his emphasis is always on variation, at times subtle, at
times very broad. The “theological” is clearly subordinated in this
part to the ethnographic, and the devil is very much in the details. In
the second part of the text, on the “Tenets and Religious Customs
of the Brahmins,” Rogerius is eventually obliged to narrow his focus
and look far more closely at the Vaishnavas, Saivas, and Smartas, and
their beliefs. A large proportion of this exposition is devoted to
Vishnu and his avatāras, or what are termed his “ten Corporeal
shapes,” which include the Buddha and the fi nal horse-like apoca-
lyptic figure of Kalki. We also have chapters devoted to temple
festivals, places of pilgrimage, and customary practices on eclipses,
and so on. Besides Siva, some mention is also made of a popu lar
goddess, Gangamma, whose cult was popular in the region of Pulicat
itself. As a consequence, we might say that on each occasion when
Rogerius attempts to impose some order or unity on the “hea-
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 123

thendom” that the title of the book claims to open a door to, further
exceptions and complexities emerge.
The anonymous editor, A. W., was clearly somewhat embarrassed
by this confusion. In his preface, he thus attempted to wrestle the
structure back into that of a single godhead, arguing that “idolatry
is one of the ill Effects that flows from the immoderate Grati-
tude which Mankind have paid to illustrious Personages.” Brahma,
Vishnu, and Mahadeva (another name for Siva), he suggested, were
in fact simply “intended to denote, the Almighty Power, the Provi-
dence, and the Justice of God, which they [the Brahmins] might have
express’d after an allegorical manner, and according to the Genius
of the Easterns.” The anonymous editor also claimed in closing the
work that the reader of Herodotus would find it evident enough that
the Brahmins had “sprung from an Egyptian Colony . . . [as] prov’d
by the Conformity of their superstitious Practices with those of that
antient Nation.”34

Reconciling the Irreconcilable

Two thirds of the way into Picart’s and Bernard’s exposition on the
gentiles of India, the reader may well have been seized by a sense of
vertiginous confusion. In many details and even in their broad claims,
the three texts that have been presented so far contradict one an-
other. Rogerius, in par tic u lar, despite the valiant efforts of his
overzealous editor, seems to lead in the direction of an ever-more
confusing vision of confl icting beliefs, multiple gods, and criss-
crossing hierarchies even among the Brahmins, let alone among
the larger group of gentiles. The only illustrations and visual rec-
ords that have been offered thus far are four rather classicizing ones,
depicting what are allegedly Brahmin ascetics performing penances
that correspond to a chapter by Rogerius on “Good Works and Re-
ligious Austerities.” It thus falls on the fourth substantial text to
render some order in this confusion, and it is promisingly entitled
“An Historical Dissertation on the Gods of the East-Indians.” It is
relatively short, at about thirty-five pages, made up of some nineteen
chapters, and ends rather abruptly. It bears no direct attribution in
Picart’s presentation, unlike the previous texts by Lord and Rogerius.
124 EUROPE’S INDIA

But its proximate source turns out to be a text by Charles (or Ga-
briel) Dellon, born in 1649, a French Huguenot physician who had
traveled to Asia and been imprisoned by the Inquisition in Goa.
Dellon wrote at least two travel accounts, besides an account of the
Inquisition that became celebrated and was also drawn upon in its
place by Picart and Bernard. However, in 1709 (and then again in
1711), there appeared a new edition of his works in three volumes,
entitled Voyages de Mr Dellon, avec sa relation de l’Inquisition de Goa,
augmentée de diverses pièces curieuses (Cologne: Héritiers de Pierre
Marteau). In this version we find an addition, namely a section that
is entitled “Histoire des Dieux qu’adorent les Gentils des Indes.”
Dellon recounts how he came upon this addition: it had originally
been written in Portuguese by a very knowledgeable and very pious
Portuguese priest, who had spent an extended period of time in
India. This priest happened to return to Portugal on the same ship
as Dellon and, “on finding himself ill from scurvy, and beyond hope
of any cure, placed his extract on the Religion of the Gentiles in
his hands.” Dellon claimed to have kept this text for a long time
without translating it, but that in the end he had done so with the
simple purpose of bringing out the “mad beliefs of these Indian
idolaters.”35
Here is how the “Historical Dissertation” begins, and we can see
that for the Eu ropean reader it might have been something of a
relief after the deep immersion in Rogerius.

The Indian Idolaters, whom we call Gentiles, unanimously

agree that there is one God; but there is not one among them,
who does not form such Ideas to himself, as are altogether
unworthy [of] the Holiness and Majesty of the Supreme Being.
These mistaken People have certain Books, in which all they
are to believe is contain’d, which are of as great Authority among
them as the holy Scriptures with us. In some Parts of these
Books, God is declared to be a spiritual, an immense, and eternal
Substance; in others we are told, that there is no other God than
the Air we breathe; in others again, that the Sun is God, and
that he only creates, preserves, and destroys all Things. This
last Opinion is one of the most general, insomuch that the
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 125

greatest Part of the Idolaters worship this Planet, prostrating

themselves several Times on the Ground at his Rising and
Setting.36

What is particularly curious about this passage, and the pages that
follow it, is that it appears to be very closely related to a text that had
been set down but not published at the time, by the Venetian trav-
eler Nicolò Manuzzi (1638– c.1720). This is a section of Manuzzi’s
very large and quite ill-organized text that is generally known to
posterity as Storia del Mogol, and is entitled “Breve notizia di quel
che credono e discorrono gli Gentili di quest’India circa l’essenza
di Dio.”37 Manuzzi’s Italian text eventually found its way to the
Marciana Library in Venice, but a French copy was also in the pos-
session of the Jesuit college in Paris with a section entitled “La
Religion des Gentils.”38 It is, however, increasingly clear that Manuzzi
and Dellon had the same source, namely a text written by a third
party or parties, and which can be found in several manuscript re-
censions as “Relation des erreurs qui se trouvent dans la religion des
gentils malabars de coste de Coromandel dans l’Inde.” In turn, this
turns out to be the translation of a work in Portuguese written by
the quite celebrated Jesuit João de Brito (1647–1693).39 Brito, who
joined the Society of Jesus in 1662, worked in the southern Tamil
country intermittently from the early 1670s and was eventually killed
there in a dispute with the Setupati rulers of Ramnad.
At any rate, the text of the “Historical Dissertation” continues to
have a version of the same tone as the first two texts in Picart’s com-
pilation, a tone quite distinct from that of Rogerius. Thus, however
absurd the religion of the gentiles is made out to be, it is neverthe-
less not shorn of key monotheistic features. A single central God is
still presented as the prime mover, under the name of Parama-Bruma,
even if it is asserted that some of the gentiles believe there may be as
many as “three hundred and thirty thousand millions of Gods” of a
subordinate variety. The text then takes us to the existence of a first
woman by name Paraxacti (Sanskrit: parāśaktī), of whom we have al-
ready encountered a version in Henry Lord’s text. She is presented
as being in the first place the mother and then the wife of the trinity
of gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra (or Siva). This then leads us to
126 EUROPE’S INDIA

rehearse what are termed the “adventures” of these three gods, in-
cluding the “incarnations” of Vishnu. Ten of the chapters of the ac-
count are accounted for in this manner, following which we have
views of “Paradise” and “Hell,” as well as of the “human Soul.”
Perhaps the most intriguing of the later chapters are two at the
very end, which reflect on the fact “that most Articles in the Hea-
then Doctrine bear some Affinity to that of the Christians.” These
differ from other versions of the text, and are a manifest attempt at
reconciliation with Christian doctrine to which someone like
Manuzzi was clearly opposed in principle. Manuzzi’s version states,
“It will be seen that their religion is nothing but a confused mixture
of absurdities and coarse imaginings, unworthy even of the rational
man; much less has it the least trace of Divinity as its author.”40 The
text by Brito that Picart prints is far more conciliatory in its tone.
This reconciliation goes rather far at moments in the last chapters,
as in the following claim: “Such as reflect seriously on the principal
Points of the Doctrine of the Heathen Indians, will soon be of
the Opinion, that these Idolaters were formerly acquainted with the
Mysteries of the Christian Religion; and that the Truths which were
undoubtedly deliver’d to them, have been insensibly chang’d for want
of evangelical Preachers, who might continue to explain them to the
People.” We find here a further variant on earlier claims: from the
gentiles of India who derive from the Jews (as in La Créquinière), to
those who are monotheists by instinct (as in Lord), we are now in
the face of a theory where the gentiles of India are lost Christians.
Even Picart and Bernard are somewhat skeptical in the face of
this claim; they write in a footnote that “all this is poorly prov’d in
this Chapter.”41
Still, a version of the same claim continues to be entertained in a
vastly exaggerated fashion in the following brief chapter, comprising
of the reproduction by a letter from Father Jean-Venant Bouchet— a
Jesuit rather better-known for his contributions to cartography and
astronomy—to the rather celebrated bishop of Avranches, Monsei-
gneur Pierre-Daniel Huet.42 Huet sympathized manifestly with the
idea that the Indian gentiles derived their ideas from the Jews, and
Bouchet was happy to confirm to him that at any rate “the Indians
are no ways tainted with the Absurdities of Atheism.”43 In his letter,
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 127

he then proceeds to enter into a wild series of speculations on a loose

argument concerning either linguistic affinities regarding names or
the correspondence of narrative sequences. Thus the Indian Brahma,
it seemed to him, was none other than Abraham; the goddess Saras-
vati for her part was Sarah. Krishna, who was carried across a river
in flood by his father, corresponded to Moses. Mount Meru, sacred
to the Indians, was little else than Mount Sinai. Yet, Bouchet was
not content to leave matters at drawing parallels between Jews and
Indian gentiles. Rather, he made a stronger claim: for him the In-
dians “were formerly Christians, but afterwards, from Time imme-
morial, relaps’d into the Errors of Paganism.” In a slightly more
modest vein he asserted, “I shall not pretend to affirm this Notion
[the Trinity of the Heathens] agrees very exactly with the Christian
System. However, it at least shews they once had a purer Light,
though it has been since clouded by the Difficulties of a Mystery,
which is so far above the Reach of Man’s weak Reason.”
It remained then for Picart and Bernard to draw all of this together
in a final section, entitled “Supplement to the Preceding Disserta-
tions: In Which Several Ceremonies in the Religious Worship of the
East Indians Are Explain’d.” This section occupies some forty pages
and is most lavishly illustrated, unlike those that preceded it. The
gambit is set out at the very start. The manner of making the religion
and the “Religious Worship” of the East Indian gentiles commen-
surable with that of other known religions will be to seek equiva-
lences, first, between gods, and then in the manner in which they
are worshipped. This is a logical extension to the texts that we have
looked at so far in the compilation, many of which sought to make
such genealogical and / or diffusionist arguments, placing the religion
of the Indian gentiles in a relationship with the Jews, the Egyptians,
or the ancient Christians.
The closing text thus begins with the figure of Brahma, a god who
has figured significantly in several of the excerpted accounts. It sum-
marily rejects the attempt to equate him to Pythagoras, or to a se-
ries of Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese gods. Instead, Bernard (for
we may surmise that it was again his hand behind the text) suggests
that Brahma is the “Son of Quivelinga” (meaning the Sivalinga, lit-
erally the sacred phallus of the god Siva), who in turn is “no other
128 EUROPE’S INDIA

than Priapus, or Nature.” There is some affinity here to a part of La

Créquinière’s text, save that here the matter is pushed a step further.
The Supreme Being for the “eastern Idolaters,” it is asserted, is
Nature, and Brahma is hence nothing other than “Providence.” Thus,
from the scheme of the comparison between individual gods, one
moves to a higher level of abstraction: Nature first, then Providence,
as a “Creator [who] is nevertheless dependent, and a created Being.”
Based upon this sort of reasoning, which includes a dash of iconog-
raphy, some narrative, and a creative use of structural positioning, we
can arrive at one further equivalence. Thus, Ixora (or Isvara, meaning
Siva) “is the Matter, which several Philosophers, ancient and modern,
supposed to be infinite and eternal.” We thus have the triad Quivelinga-
Brama-Ixora yielding Nature-Providence-Matter.
Here, the ingenuity of the system of equivalences has run its
course. The sons of Ixora are discussed, but cannot really be decoded.
These include Quenavady (Ganapati or Ganesa), the elephant-headed
god, and also briefly Superbenia (or Subrahmanya), apparently “agree-
able in Ixora’s Eyes . . . because of his Wit.” A long passage similarly
follows on the subject of Vishnu, who it is declared “governs the
World, and resides in the Sea of Sugar” but is nevertheless “inferior
to Ixora.” Picart and Bernard speak at length of his ten avatāras
(which they translate using the deeply charged word “incarnations”),
and this also permits them a lavish set of illustrations, on which more
will be said below. These discussions, and further narrative sections
on Vishnu and Siva, lead at the very end to a set of more ethnographic
chapters, on “Indian Processions,” “Pilgrimages of the Indians,”
“Penances, Austerities, and other Customs,” “The Adoration of the
Indians, and their Religious Dances,” “The Veneration the Indians
pay to Serpents,” a section relating to the building of “Pagods” or
temples, and still others on diverse topics such as ablutions, holy
ashes, feasts, and fasts, with a fi nal section on the “Studies of the
Bramins” with some attention paid to the Sanskrit (or “Hanscrit”
language). All these sections are constructed in a similar fashion.
Some editorial comments are made based on the texts that have been
compiled, but we are also provided with extended quotations from a
series of authoritative travelers and missionaries, who are listed here
in chronological sequence:
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 129

• First of these is the Roman aristocrat Pietro della Valle, who it

is noted “we quote with Pleasure, because of his great Exactness,
and the curious Researches which we meet with in his Voy-
ages.”44 Della Valle had been in India in the early 1620s, but his
travels in the form of letters were only published in the 1650s,
with versions then appearing in English, French, and German.
• A second major source is our old friend, the French traveler
and disciple of Gassendi, François Bernier, who had been
established as an authority on India from the time of the
publication of his Histoire de la dernière révolution des états du
grand Mogol, in 1670. It is with a long series of quotations from
Bernier’s views of the Brahmins of Benares that the section of
the Cérémonies on India in fact draws to a close.45
• A third source was the Dutch missionary Philip Balde, better
known as Baldaeus, whose work on southern India and Sri
Lanka, Naauwkeurige beschryvinge van Malabar en Choromandel,
der zelver aangrenzende ryken, en het machtige eyland Ceylon, had
appeared to much acclaim in Amsterdam in 1672. The section
of it that the Picart volume drew on was entitled Afgoderye der
Oost-Indische Heydenen, and it has been clear now since the early
twentieth century that this text drew extensively on two
previous works, that of a Jesuit Jacobo (or Giacomo) Fenício,
and possibly to a lesser extent on the work of a midcentury
Dutch author and painter who had traveled in India, Philip
Angel.46 As Jarl Charpentier has written of Baldaeus, it is now
“fairly incontrovertible . . . that the work of Baldaeus on Hindu
my thology lacks every ounce of value as an original source,”
adding further that “Baldaeus never in any way deserved the
reputation for being a conscientious and reliable writer in
which he has for long time rejoiced.”47 However, paradoxically,
this may be irrelevant to its place in Picart, precisely because it
appears in a compilation where the originality of authorship
vanishes somewhat from view.
• A fourth significant source is the work of the Augsburg-born
Jesuit Heinrich Roth resident in the Mughal domains, access to
which was gained through the Jesuit polymath Athanasius
130 EUROPE’S INDIA

Kircher, and his work China illustrata, of which a French

translation appeared from Amsterdam in 1670.48 Roth’s expla-
nations of the ten “incarnations” of Vishnu are counterposed
to those extracted from Baldaeus’s text.

To these we can add a number of other sources that are mentioned

in passing, or in a footnote, such as the voyages of John Fryer or the
travels of Charles Dellon. There were also a number of sources for
the illustrations, particularly those in the last section on the “Sup-
plement to the Preceding Dissertations.”
Before turning to that question, we may attempt to draw up a pro-
visional set of conclusions regarding the sources for Picart-Bernard
on India, both those that were included and those that were
excluded.

1. The compilation shows a marked preference for seventeenth-

and early eighteenth-century sources, and systematically sets
aside those from the sixteenth century. None of the chief
Portuguese chroniclers who had been published (and at times
even translated into French or English) are textually cited or
referred to in the notes: João de Barros, Fernão Lopes de
Castanheda, Diogo do Couto (himself a plagiarist of some
talent, as already noted), are all equally absent. Not even
the Dutchman Jan Huyghen van Linschoten and his late
sixteenth-century Itinerario gets a direct mention. There
seems to be a presumption that useful and credible European
knowledge about India and its religion begins in about 1620.
2. There is no particular preference shown for “secular” travelers
over missionaries, or indeed for Protestant missionaries over
their Catholic counterparts. Indeed, when the subject that was
being dealt with was “religion,” it was almost impossible to
imagine the absence of missionary knowledge. However, there
is a marked preference for texts that already exist in a French
version, as opposed to texts that require an extensive invest-
ment in the act of translation.49
3. There is, however, one glaring and interest ing omission in this
respect: the work of François de la Boullaye–le Gouz, an
aristocrat from Anjou who had undertaken extensive travels
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 131

in Eurasia in the 1640s and published his extensive Voyages et

Observations in two editions, one from 1653 and the second
from 1657.50 Boullaye’s work is a remarkable one from several
points of view, and the knowledge on which it drew essen-
tially came from a sojourn in western India. Like other
authors collected by Picart, he claimed that the gentiles of
India believed that “there is one God, Creator of Heaven
and Earth, infi nite, all-powerful and very wise.”51 He referred
to Indian gods such as Rama and Krishna using the term
simulacres, to distinguish them from this all-powerful God,
somewhat as the Dutch authors of the period at times used
the term afgodt as opposed to Godt. Boullaye is further one of
the first published Eu ropean writers to give a specific name to
the gentiles of India; he terms them “les Indou,” further
noting that “India in the Indian language is called Indoustan,
the habitation of the Indous who are the ancient inhabitants
of the Indies.” Further, Boullaye’s text appeared with some
quite interest ing illustrations, which were originally thought
to have been from his own hand, but which we now know
drew on the work of more than one Indian artist from
western India.52

Picturing “Religion”

The matter of the illustrations to Picart’s volume on the gentiles of

India has been extensively dealt with by Von Wyss- Giacosa in her
quite exhaustive 2006 work. Her approach is essentially genealog-
ical, and she deals in turn with the depiction of the gods and that
of the “festivals, processions and rituals.” Effectively, it can be es-
tablished that a very large number of the plates that appeared in
Cérémonies were simple reproductions of plates that had appeared
elsewhere, often in quite celebrated works of the seventeenth century.
Interestingly, of the principal works that Picart and Bernard chose
to use as textual elements in their compilation, none except La
Créquinière came accompanied with readymade illustrations of
any significance. The original frontispieces of Lord’s and Rogeri-
us’s works carried a few poor sketches, and the French version of
132 EUROPE’S INDIA

Rogerius did a little better. The handful of illustrations from La

Créquinière—though not wholly devoid of interest—was probably
judged too simple or schematic to be of use. Thus, the bulk of the
illustrations come packed into the last sections of the work, with the
editorial comments and attempt at synthesis.
Published Portuguese works on India in the sixteenth century
were very rarely illustrated, not even Garcia da Orta’s celebrated text
on drugs and simples. An exception is the treatise that Cristóvão da
Costa derived from it, eventually published in Salamanca.53 The ac-
count of Italian traveler Ludovico di Varthema had appeared in print
in the early sixteenth century with characteristically monstrous im-
ages, which though increasingly implausible were for long decades
never really replaced.54 Portuguese illustrations tended to remain in
the form of tapestries or some rare manuscripts. It is with the second
half of the seventeenth century that more richly illustrated texts start
to appear, of which Le Gouz de la Boullaye’s work seems to be a pio-
neer. Two of the significant works that follow him are that of the
Huguenot jeweler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier and Baldaeus, and the
armchair scholarship of Kircher and Olfert Dapper, whose Asia of
1681 carries many engravings from the hand of Jacob van Meurs.
Two strategies were attempted in these depictions, which we may
broadly term—with tongue only slightly in cheek—as “etic” and
“emic” in character. These engravings from Tavernier, Dapper, and
Kircher were certainly used in quite an extensive fashion by Picart.
The first, “etic” style appears in the engravings that come with
the publication of Linschoten’s text, which seem largely to have been
produced by Jan van Doetechem. These are plainly conceived to be
European-style representations, using a visual vocabulary akin to
that which might have been used for any part of the world, save for
some minor attention to the costumes. We do not know the extent
to which Linschoten participated in this enterprise himself. But what
is certain is that in the muscular, heroic figuring of the individuals
who are seen parading in the bazaars of Goa or on the streets of Java,
there is nothing of the visual vocabulary of representation in use in
those places. To this extent, Linschoten continues the conceptual
language employed in the tapestries celebrating Portuguese victo-
ries in mid-sixteenth century Asia, where the conventions employed
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 133

are not too dif ferent from those of an Italian or Flemish artist of the
period depicting the Persian wars of the Greeks. It may be said that
this continues to be the case with Tavernier, whose family connec-
tions clearly permitted him to have access to a far richer spectrum
of illustrations, which clearly appear to have much enhanced the
value of an other wise rather confusing and ill-organized work; the
trend toward more intensive illustration in the European style may
then be found in a variety of other works of the second half of the
seventeenth century. When Picart put his mind to illustrating scenes
from daily life, such as festivals and rituals, it is to this vocabulary
that he seems to have turned instinctively.
The other solution, the “emic” one, was far more complex to im-
plement. There were both practical problems and conceptual ones.
The chief practical problem was that of gaining access to Indian
images that could serve as a basis for engravings. In the course of the
sixteenth century, it appears that no Portuguese or other European
had thought properly to collect visual representations in India,
whether in the world of the Mughals or further south. Perhaps they
did so, but whatever than may have been did not survive and come
to us. Matters changed in the course of the seventeenth century, in-
deed in a rather substantial fashion. Partha Mitter attempted to
produce a “select synoptic table of major early collections of Indian
art in Europe” some three decades ago, but this list is now somewhat
in need of revision.55 One of the earliest collections of finished and
partially worked Mughal miniatures may be found in the Vatican Li-
brary (the so-called Barberini album), and dates from the period
between the reigns of the Mughal emperors Jahangir and Shahjahan.56
It typified many of the seventeenth- century Eu ropean collections
of Indian art in that it focused largely on the individual portrait, a
feature that has also been noticed in regard to Venetian collections
of Ottoman art in the same period. Collective scenes, or “emic”
representations of an ethnographic nature, do not seem to have
attracted the same attention. One can see this from the largest ac-
cumulations of Indian art in seventeenth-century Europe, which
are those in the Netherlands. By the middle decades of the century,
Rembrandt and those around him were beginning to manifest a cer-
tain curiosity in this art and even collect it through their contacts in
134 EUROPE’S INDIA

Scene of satī, engraving by Jan van Doetechem, from Jan Huyghen

van Linschoten, Itinerario, voyage, ofte schipvaert (1596).

the Dutch East India Company. It has even been argued that one can
find numerous references to Indian paintings and albums in Dutch
dowries, wills, and the like by the late years of the century.57 Yet,
what impact did this have on the world of an engraver like Picart?
Picart certainly had some connections to the world where Indian
art was collected in Europe.58 The chief link was to the celebrated
Giovanni Antonio Baldini (1654–1725), a traveler who amassed a
large collection of Oriental objects and paintings in Piacenza, Italy.
Baldini had traveled to England, the Netherlands, France, and Spain,
and was a correspondent of Newton besides having been admitted
as a member of the Royal Society in 1713 together with his friend,
the astronomer Francesco Bianchini. In Henri Châtelain’s Atlas
Historique, for which Picart was the engraver, we find the following
note: “One is indebted, as are the four following plates, to the Count
Jean Anthoine Baldini, no less to be recommended for his excellent
knowledge than for the particular care which he takes to collect di-
verse pieces that are rare and curious, and are the worthy fruits of
his travels.”59 The plates in question are rather interesting, but equally
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 135

of interest is the larger collection from which Baldini drew. Unfor-

tunately, this collection was dispersed at his death, and only a few
elements of it can be still traced, such as a volume of forty-seven por-
traits from India and Iran now in Paris.60 However, the well-known
scientist Antonio Vallisnieri produced a description of this collection,
which makes it clear that it was one of the largest in Europe at the
time.61 It included two spectacular paintings that formed the basis
of two engravings by Picart: one allegedly depicts the fort in Agra
at the time of the emperor Jahangir (but is in fact based on a Rajput
painting of Udaipur palace), and the other the Battle of Samugarh
during the war of succession in Mughal India in the 1650s.62 Nei-
ther of these is to be found in Cérémonies since their subjects do not
correspond well to the theme of the volume; instead they can be
found in the Atlas Historique. In general, we may imagine that the
problem with Baldini’s collection from Picart’s viewpoint would
have been two-fold: the emphasis (as in most contemporary collec-
tions of “oriental” art) was far too much on portraiture; and further,
themes that could be termed “religious” were not really present. The
two plates in Cérémonies which do seem to derive from the earlier
Atlas Historique (and thence perhaps to Baldini’s collection) where the
composite plates, each with four portrayals of penitents, ascetics, and
jogīs, though two of these clearly have a European conceptual frame-
work rather than an Indian source.
Other collections of Indian art with a content that could be read
as “religious” did exist in western Europe by 1700, but Picart prob-
ably did not have access to them. This includes an album of Indian
rāgamālā paintings from western India, probably acquired through
the English East India Company’s factory in Surat and presented to
Archbishop William Laud, who in turn presented it to the Bodleian
Library in about 1640.63 A further possible source might have been
the engraver Anton Maria Zanetti (1680–1757), who had worked with
Picart after having trained with Niccolò Bambini, Antonio Balestra,
and Sebastiano Ricci in Venice, as well as in Bologna with Giovanni
Maria Viani. A celebrated personage in Venetian artistic life in
the eighteenth century, Zanetti was not only an engraver, but also
a printer, collector, and scholar; it was his son, Antonio Maria
Zanetti the Younger (1706–1778), who prepared a catalogue of the
136 EUROPE’S INDIA

manuscripts in the Biblioteca di San Marco (or Marciana) in Venice,

where a collection of important paintings on Indian religious themes
commissioned by Manuzzi to accompany his version of the text on
the “Gentiles of India” had come to rest in the early 1700s.64 These
included some truly complex ethnographic and satirical drawings on
life- cycle rituals, satī, as well as penitents and ascetics, probably
executed at Manuzzi’s behest by textile painters in the region of
Madras and Pondicherry.
Yet, in the fi nal analy sis, only one truly substantial set of “emic”
representations made the cut with Picart as it were, and even these
had undergone some modification. These were the so- called
daśāvatāra paintings, representing the ten forms or “incarnations”
of Vishnu, which Picart presents in two versions, one apparently
closer to the Indian style taken from Kircher and the other directly
deriving from Coenrat Decker’s engravings for Baldaeus’s text. Yet,
Kircher’s illustrations, which allegedly derived from his contacts with
the Jesuit Heinrich Roth, already bear signs of confusion. The order
of avatāras appears incorrectly as (1) Parasurama; (2) Krishna (in fact
Vamana, the dwarf); (3) Matsya (the Fish); (4) Varaha (the Boar);
(5) Narasimha (the Man-Lion); (6) Rama; (7) Krishna as Jagannatha;
(8) titled Krishna again, but the iconography is of Kurma (the
Tortoise); (9) titled Bhavani, but in fact Buddha; (10) Kalki, the last
apocalyptic avatāra.65 In the sixth avatāra, the multiple arms of Ra-
vana are shown sprouting from the elbow and not from the trunk of
the body, a characteristic European transformation.
In contrast, the engravings in Baldaeus, and following him Picart,
do proceed in the correct order: Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha,
Vamana, Parasurama, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Kalki. Hence, the
exact source for these engravings remains something of a puzzle.
Jarl Charpentier identified a set of ten paintings in the British
Museum that may have accompanied the works of the Jesuit Father
Jacobo Fenicio (1558–1632) and Angel but also had concluded that
“the pictures in Baldæus must have been taken from another set of
drawings.”66 A second daśāvatāra collection that accompanies the
second copy of Angel’s manuscript, which is presently in a monastery
in Belgium, may then be the source for Baldaeus.67 Yet we can see
that while the engravings preserve key elements of iconography, they
 “Troisième incarnation,” or Varāha avatāra of Vishnu, in
Bernard Picart, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du
monde (1723–1743), Vol. 1, Part 1.
138 EUROPE’S INDIA

also considerably transform the visual language in two respects: first,

they introduce perspective in a determined fashion through rolling
(usually hilly) landscapes in the background; second, they somewhat
refigure both the human figures and especially the animals. To
preserve the “emic” as entirely “emic” was thus usually something
that the engraver revolted against, the rare exceptions being Picart’s
fine versions from the Baldini collection.

Conclusion

To conclude, the massive work by Picart on Cérémonies et coutumes

stands as a monument for a number of dif ferent reasons, but above
all on account of its scope and ambition, which far exceeds that of
earlier works in Europe. A comparison with a work such as Alexander
Ross’s Pansebeia: or, A view of all religions in the world (1653) from two
generations earlier strongly confirms this sense.68 Yet, the very scope
of the work posed considerable problems. To put it simply, too much
textual material on India and its “Gentiles” had accumulated in the
years between 1500 and 1700.69 Worse still, in the period after about
1590, rich visual material had been added to the feast, with the
publication of Linschoten’s Itinerario marking a point of departure
that led to a transformation in the course of the seventeenth century,
largely in the Low Countries and France. Suddenly, the feast was too
rich and too difficult to digest, and this explains some of the diffi-
culty we have with Picart (and Bernard) on the question of the gen-
tiles of India. The seventeenth century had seen valiant attempts in
Europe to struggle with Judaism and Islam in manners that went
beyond simple dismissal and expressions of contempt. Yet, there were
sound and relatively straightforward grounds to link the three,
because they participated in a single genealogy of prophecy as well
as a textual tradition. After all, Islam recognized Jesus and Moses as
prophets, even if not as the “seals of prophecy.”
The difficulties presented by the gentiles of India were of quite
another order. Did they in fact possess a “religion”? If they did, how
could one cordon it off from their “civil” practices? Was it to be found
primarily in texts, or in ceremonies and daily practices, or in a com-
bination of the two? These questions had of course troubled Catholic
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 139

missionaries ever since the mid-sixteenth century. By the latter half

of the seventeenth century, a form of common sense united most
Eu ropean writers on this question. There was indeed a “religion,”
although they—with a few exceptions like Le Gouz de la Boullaye—
were yet to give it a single name. There were indeed authoritative
texts like the Vedas or Puranas, even if they were often yet to be fully
identified, let alone translated. Above all, there were gods, and from
the essential qualities of these gods certain abstract principles
about them could be formulated, thus rendering the “religion” of the
gentiles of India comparable to other “religions,” and permitting a
global view of what religion itself might be.
At the outset of this chapter, it was noted that a growing skepticism
emerged in the past half-century concerning the validity and legiti-
macy of this view. Cantwell Smith, for example, opposed the use of
the substantive term “religion,” even if he was willing to admit the
adjective “religious” and hence might not have found the title of
Picart’s work objectionable. Other writers have since gone much fur-
ther, though not necessarily with interesting results.70 The problem
of religion can be posed in two distinct contexts, one where what is
really at issue is “conversion,” and one where conversion is absent. The
first of these dominated missionary thought in India as well as China
in the later sixteenth century and was posed effectively as follows: in
order for a gentile to convert to Christianity, what could he retain
and what did he need to abandon from his unconverted self? Demar-
cating that which had to be abandoned became the key to the defini-
tion of the field of the gentile religion.71 In contrast was a second
strategy, one in which Picart and Bernard participated. Here, the defi-
nitions of religion centered on the problem of the possibility of com-
parison, which preceded a universal, perhaps deist, project.
In this they were, interestingly, not entirely alone. In the middle
years of the seventeenth century, an intellectual in eastern India (but
who had been a great wanderer in his time) wrote an extensive text
entitled Dabistān-i mazāhib, “School of Sects (or Theologies).”72 The
term mazhab, of which mazāhib is the plural, is generously translated
by a standard Persian dictionary as “mode of conduct, doctrine; a
religious opinion; a sect, a religious order; canon, law, rule, institution,
regulation.” Yet looking at the choice of objects in this encyclopedic
140 EUROPE’S INDIA

“Diverses Pagodes et Penitence des Faquirs,” in Picart,

Cérémonies et coutumes, Vol. 2, Part 1.

work, one can see that those that are listed are essentially what
we would term “sects,” “faiths,” or “religions,” including Judaism,
Christianity, the Sikhs, and a vast number of groups who would
today figure under the broad rubric of “Hindu.” Many details are
still lacking regarding the author, a certain Mirza Zu’lfiqar Azar
Sasani, but it has been speculated that he was closely linked to the
prestigious figure of the mystic Azar Kaywan, who migrated from
Iran to India in the late sixteenth century; what is certain at any rate
is that he was himself a sort of Zoroastrian ‘Ishraqi (or Illuminist).73
Was this text an exercise then in the epistemology of empire-building
on its author’s part? Hardly so. Rather, it was an attempt by a rela-
tively marginal intellectual figure to organize a disparate set of tex-
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 141

tual and ethnographic observations into a single, comparative, and

then universal framework. The terrain of observation in this case was
really the Indo-Islamic world, rather than the world at large. In order
to explain what motivated his exercise, the author describes the gen-
eral attitude of the Azar Kaywani mystics in these matters:

When any one, stranger to their own faith [kesh] becomes ac-
quainted with the community of this sect, they do not speak ill
of him, but commend the path of his faith, and accept whatever
he says, omitting nothing by way of respect and courtesy, on ac-
count of their own faith. This is because they believe that God
can be reached through every faith. . . . They do not hold it
proper to hurt anyone without gain. If someone has some work
with them, whether for salvation or for this world, they do all
they can to be with him and assist him. They abstain from all
practices of intolerance, malice, jealousy and hatred or prefer-
ence of one community [millat] over another, and of one faith
[kesh] over another. They consider the learned, the mystics, the
upright ones and God-worshippers of every faith their friends,
and they do not call ordinary people bad, nor denounce the
worldly ones. They say, of him who does not seek faith, of what
use is denouncing the world to him? Such denunciation [they
say] is the act of the envious.74

Certainly, traces of a similar attitude could be found even in cer-

tain intellectuals of the Mughal court, notably the celebrated Shaikh
Abu’l Fazl (1551–1602), and in the later tradition that drew on his work
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.75 But equally striking is
Mirza Zu’lfiqar’s repeated insistence on his own “impartiality,” and
indeed intellectual equidistance from all that he surveys.

Some, who affirm the traditional sharī‘at, which they present in

words outwardly contrary to reason, are famous [mashhūr]; they
are found in five divisions [panj firqa]: Hindus, Jews, Magians,
Christians and Muslims. All five divisions claim that their
sharī‘at is sound, and on the basis of their own sharī‘at, they in-
troduce a text according to their own belief.
142 EUROPE’S INDIA

After fi nishing this book, it became apparent that some

important people have said that [books such as] The Congre-
gations and Cults [Kitāb al- milal wa’l-nihal of Muhammad ibn
‘Abdul Karim Shahristani] and Insight for the Public [Tabsirat
al-‘awāmm of Murtaza Razi], which have presented [various] be-
liefs and religious teachings, are not devoid of partisanship, so
the reality of religion remains concealed. Also, after them many
groups have come together in this demand, and [so the author]
performed the writing of this book. And in this realm of
practice and city of creed [kirdāristān-i ‘aqīda-ābād, i.e., the
Dabistān], whatever has been written of the beliefs of diverse
groups is from the tongue of those who hold that belief and from
their book, and it is established from encountering people in the
present state of every group, even as the followers and devotees
honor its name. This is in order that even the scent of fanat i-
cism and partisanship should not appear, so the author has no
other aim from this encounter save that of the translator.76

Such claims are naturally not to be taken literally, but they are nev-
ertheless significant as forms of self-conscious positioning and sub-
jectivity. A recent analysis of the work notes that Mirza Zu’lfiqar
“was born in 1025/1616 and traveled throughout northern India,
Kashmir, Orissa, and parts of present-day Afghan istan until the
year 1063/1652.”77 These were the circumstances in which he accu-
mulated a mass of “ethnographic” materials in regard to the diverse
“sects” (mazāhib) that were active in his lifetime, and which formed
the basis of the treatise that he wrote in the end of the 1640s and
continued to revise in the years that followed.
Mirza Zu’lfiqar apparently did manage at one time or another to
speak to a vast variety of figures, “influential Mughal officials and
literary men . . . [and] important religious figures—among them [the
Sikh] Guru Har Gobind, Chidrup Gosa’in and Sarmad—as well as
an assortment of Catholic priests, Tibetan lamas, sanyasis, bairagis and
Kashmiri and south Indian Brahmans.”78 He carefully sifted through
materials, and in some cases where he was unsure of his under-
standing had others “check the Persian translation against the orig-
inal text to ensure its accuracy.” Further, as Aditya Behl has rightly
 THE QUESTION OF “INDIAN RELIGION” 143

noted, for Mirza Zu’lfiqar “the term Hindu does not mean a member
of an organized unified religion called Hindusim, in which sense it
is sometimes misunderstood at present. Instead, Hindu seems to have
a geographical valence, that is, the religions and sects of the people
of India (ahl i-Hind), which are innumerable.”79
Though showing an unconscious preference perhaps for “monistic
philosophical systems,” what is striking about this Zoroastrian
author—unlike the great majority of the European writers examined
in this chapter—is his measured distance from an obsessive concern
with the monotheism-polytheism dichotomy. One can only wonder
what Picart and Bernard would have made of this exercise, had they
only known of its existence. It is certainly possible they might have
recognized something of themselves in it, though other parts would
have surely left them perplexed. Perhaps it would have been another
valid reason then for them—and possibly for us too—to reconsider
the obstinate myth of a certain trajectory of European intellectual
exceptionalism.
 3
OF COPRODUCTION
The Case of James Fraser, 1730–1750

Th’ inferior Priestess, at her Altar’s side,

Trembling, begins the sacred Rites of Pride.
Unnumber’d Treasures ope at once, and here
The various Off’rings of the World appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious Toil,
And decks the Goddess with the glitt’ring Spoil.
This Casket India’s glowing Gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder Box.
— Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712)

A Highland Quarrel

In the early 1750s an ugly quarrel with political overtones broke

out in the Scottish shire of Inverness. A memoir directed to James
Ogilvy, 5th Earl of Findlater, reported that one of the residents there
had become unruly and “troublesome” beyond measure and was
posing a serious threat to law and order. What made matters worse
was that the person in question was himself a justice of peace. The
memorialist added: “Your Lordship is best judge whether upon a
proper representation my Lord Chancellor will think it proper to
name a new Commission of the Peace for the county to prevent so
troublesome a man having any power for the future. One thing is
certain that it will have a good effect in the country in generall and
will prevent a great deall of trouble and disturbance which other wise
will happen.”1
The two central figures in this dispute were both linked to the
estate of Lovat, which at the time had been forfeited and then an-
nexed by the Crown on account of the deep involvement of its owner,

144
 OF COPRODUCTION 145

Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, in the failed Jacobite uprising of 1745–

1746. Lord Lovat himself had been publicly executed in London on
April 9, 1747, and his was one of the thirteen significant Highland
estates eventually to be annexed in 1752, and then designated to be
administered by the Barons of the Exchequer through their “factors.”2
Quite predictably then, one of the main protagonists was a certain
James Grant, deputy factor on the Lovat estate. But it was not against
him that the complaint to Lord Findlater was directed. Rather it con-
cerned a certain “James Fraser of Relig,” who it was claimed had
used his office of justice of peace to issue “a most extraordinary war-
rand [sic],” stating his intention “to repell force by force against the
King’s Troops when they went to collect the rent on the Musle Scalp
[mussel beds].” Instead of allowing the rent to be collected, it was
stated, Fraser had “made his constables uplift the rent and kept it to
this day.” The appropriate response to such outrageous conduct
ought to be, so the memorial stated, that Fraser “be scored out of the
List of Justices of Peace.”
At issue here were the rich mussel beds that the Lovat estate had
rights over, notably in the Beauly Firth. But it was also claimed
that this quarrel was only a sign of bigger things to come. “This
Mr Fraser will be very troublesome and will take a great deall
upon him on account of his success in getting James Grant turn’d
oft and upon it a great part of the country will be directed by him
which will be of very bad consequences.” Findlater was sufficiently
alarmed by this report that he sent it on to Sir Charles Erskine,
Lord Justice Clerk at Edinburgh. The latter responded on June 22,
1753, stating that he would “make strict enquiry into the truth of the
facts that have been represented to Your Lordship.” A week or so
later, he reported progress in the matter, noting that he had been
able to obtain a number of documents germane to the affair, in-
cluding “several enquiries and proofs” that he was having copied. He
then added an interest ing note regarding Fraser himself: “The gen-
tleman I never saw but on the circuit at Inverness—where I found
him very useful as a Juryman—neither did I ever hear of him as dis-
affected. He was long in the East Indies, and has the reputation of
being uncommonly skilful in the languages and learning of the East.”3
We are dealing, so it would seem, with an unruly orientalist.
146 EUROPE’S INDIA

The papers that Erskine collected and had copied were quite
extensive and suggest that James Fraser was not a man entirely to be
trifled with. Faced with the accusation that he had impeded Grant
and others in their duties, he gathered together a substantial number
of testimonies, in his turn accusing Grant of significant abuses, the
physical mistreatment of persons on the Lovat estate, and major fi-
nancial and fiscal irregularities. All this was put together in the form
of two “proofs,” leading Grant eventually to have to produce a “proof
of exculpation” on his own behalf.4 Fraser also entered directly into
contact with one of the Barons of the Exchequer, John Maule, a
powerful political actor who had earlier been secretary to the Duke of
Argyll. Realising that one of Maule’s other charges was Trustee for
Encouraging Fisheries and Manufacture in Scotland, Fraser made
an interest ing case for himself as someone who was substantially in-
vested in the matter of promoting projects for economic improve-
ment, while simulta neously presenting Grant as one of those who
stood in the way of such progress:

Honourable Sir:

The only apology I can make for taking this liberty is the as-
surance Mr Grant of Dalvey gave me that whenever I should
address you personally or by a letter it should meet with a fa-
vourable Reception. The little Time I have been in this country
I have chiefly employed in improving my own small Patri-
mony and have used all my Endeavours to excite in my Neigh-
bours a Spirit of Industry by which they not only better their
own Estates but will find employment for numbers of Poor and
Idle People who otherways must beg or go into Foreign Ser vice
and as some of the Gentlemen have already found their advan-
tage in Improveing their Lands and particularly in raising
Lint [flax] others will soon for their own interest fall into the
same methods; a great objection to raising of Lint was the
Trouble of Dressing it afterwards. That Difficulty is obviated
by the Lint Mills one of which I have now near fi nished and
am hopefull that in a very little time we shall be under no ne-
cessity to Import Flax. A spinning school was lately sett up in
 OF COPRODUCTION 147

my neighbourhood and if it had mett with no interruption

would have been of Infi nite Ser vice to this part of the Country
by Teaching many poor girls to spin so as to support Them-
selves comfortably and Bring an Advantage by their Labour to
the Country.5

Several points in this message require comment. The letter opens

with a reference, it would seem, to the prosperous and influential Al-
exander Grant of Dalvey, a Scotsman from somewhat impoverished
roots who had made a great trading fortune in Jamaica and then set-
tled in London in the 1740s, where he became a substantial share-
holder in the East India Company.6 It also makes it clear that Fraser
had returned not long before to Scotland himself from other climes.
But it equally stresses his own spirit of industriousness and entre-
preneurship in regard to one of the impor tant questions of the
day, namely the attempt to promote manufacturing in Scotland,
particularly with respect to the linen industry; as a historian of the
matter has noted, “the growth of the linen industry [in Scotland]
after 1746 was remarkable . . . [and] most of this growth was con-
centrated in two shorter periods, between 1746 to 1753, and 1756 to
1760.”7 Fraser was attempting to ride the first of these waves. How-
ever, it turned out there was a significant fly in the ointment, in the
form of James Grant.

All mine and other Justices of Peace their Endeavours to sup-

port this school have proved ineffectual against the obstinate
oppositions made thereto by one James Grant who stiles him-
self the Things Factor on Lovats Estate. He is a Turbulent ava-
ritious man an oppressor of the Poor Deterrs them constantly
with Threatnings of Removal tho’ there be no just cause, to
come into what Terms his avarice requires, and is constantly
Embroiling himself and others in Quarrels and Disputes and
tho’ he has been guilty of Great Misdeamanners the Justices
were cautious of proceeding against him according to strictness
as he gives out whatever he does is by authority from the Hon-
ourable the Barons. His possessing so many Farms tempts him
frequently to insult his Neighbours and if they comply not with
148 EUROPE’S INDIA

his measures he informs the Sherriff substitute by Letter that

he is apprehensive of being mobbed in the Execution of his of-
fice as Things Factor and Desires he’ll order a party of soldiers
to support him. This he has done twice lately on account of his
own private avarice to the Terror of the poor Country people
who know not whom to apply to for protection from this Ty-
rant who brings armed men to Back him especially as he tells
them he acts by superior authority.

The image is thus of Grant, swaggering through the Lovat estate

with his armed guard of borrowed troops, laying down the law to
his far humbler neighbours. Fraser thus suggests that far from re-
belling, he is merely standing up against a tyrant.

I should not have troubled you with these particulars [he con-
cludes], were I not convinced that I am writting to one who has
the Good of his country sincerely at heart and can apply the
proper Remedy to such abuses. As far as I can judge the poor
people are now obedient well affected and very sencible of the
Lenity and Goodness of the Government we have the happi-
ness to live under.

This last expression of loyalty to the Hanoverian dispensation did

not go entirely amiss. Maule placed this letter and the other papers
before the Court of Exchequer in November 1752, and they ordered
Captain John Forbes, Factor on the Lovat estate, to inquire into
Grant’s character and the accusations that had been made again him.
By mid-December he responded, and to the Court’s surprise found
against Grant and for Fraser, pointing out that the former had
accumulated far too many resources and too much power, and was
indeed harassing his neighbours. Grant now launched a counterat-
tack, having his friends and contacts in London spread the word that
Fraser was little more than a discontented Jacobite, who was effec-
tively resisting the authority of the Barons of Exchequer as well as
the process of annexation. In July 1753, we see Fraser writing in some
panic to a number of well-placed friends in Scotland, asking them
for testimonials to “his character, his affection to His Majesty & the
 OF COPRODUCTION 149

present Happy Constitution.” Some of these letters come down to

us. In one of them, Hugh Rose in Kilraick responds to Fraser: “you
tell me that Your Principles have been grossly misrepresented at
London. This need not alarm you much, if you’ll but consider that
it has been a common practice of late years for any man that hates
another to call him Jacobite.” One of these letters once again refers
to Fraser’s Indian past; the clergyman Robert Thomson testifies to
Fraser’s piety and his diligence in attempting to raise funds to build
a new roof for the church, “tho’ you had pass’d so much of your life
in a hot country.”8
The Grant-Fraser quarrel could have possibly continued for much
longer, as in mid-1753 it showed no signs of abating. But unexpected
circumstances brought it to an abrupt end, as we learn from the fol-
lowing notes by one Samuel Smalbroke, a family friend of Fraser.

January  21st, 1754, Novo Stylo—Died Mr James Fraser at

his own house at Rylick near Inverness in Scotland: he went
out  Writer to ye Factory at Suratt, then after Returning to
England . . . carried his new-married Wife . . . with him to ye
Indies, whither he went as Supercargo. Return’d ye 2d time (after
6 years stay) into England, December 1749, where I saw them
in London in ye beginning of 1750.9

Fraser left behind his wife, Mary, daughter of Edward Satchwell of

Warwickshire, whom he had married in London in late July 1742; with
her he had at least one son, Edward Satchwell Fraser (1751–1835),
who was thus less than three years old when his father died. Edward
Fraser may have fought in the American wars of the 1770s, and he
was certainly active as a slave owner and planter in Berbice (Guyana)
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.10 Several of his
sons, on the other hand, did eventually take up careers in India, and
these include William Fraser—who was shot dead in Delhi near
Kashmiri Gate in 1835—as well as the artist, writer, and traveler
James Baillie Fraser (1783–1856).11
Long considered the preserve of historians of early colonial insti-
tutions in India, who studied the careers of major administrators
of the “high” Company period like Thomas Munro and Colin
150 EUROPE’S INDIA

Mackenzie, there has been a recent and somewhat surprising re-

vival of popular interest in Scottish dealings with late Mughal and
early colonial India.12 The figures that this revival focuses on largely
come from the period 1760 to 1830, and they include some whose
families were already of mixed race (the case of James Skinner), or
who had left Scotland a generation earlier (the case of David Ochter-
lony, who was born in colonial Boston). It has even been implied that
such men had a peculiar genius for cultural accommodation and
synthesis, and to the extent that one can read between the lines of
such accounts, there would seem to have been at least three reasons
for this. The first is a matter of “national characters” and affinities,
a somewhat speculative line of reasoning. The second might be seen
as a matter of political empathies: that the Jacobite victims of the
Battle of Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeat in 1745–1746
could only have sympathized with the fate of other colonized people
in distant parts of the globe. The third is gender-related: that in the
absence of European women, Kirkpatrick, the Frasers, and others
could enter into sexual relations with Indian women, thus facili-
tating a peculiar form of intercultural communication.13 The events
of 1857, the Great Rebellion and its suppression, and above all 1869,
and the opening of a route to India through the Suez Canal would
have allegedly put paid to such dealings between British men and
Indian women.
While drawing to some extent on these earlier writings, this
chapter seeks to address how a Scotsman such as James Fraser, living
in India in the 1730s and 1740s, before the British conquest there
had begun in a serious manner, perceive the Mughal Empire, its cul-
ture and current situation, and its past history. Was his under-
standing appreciably dif ferent from that of the British who came half
a century or a century later? And what did his attitudes have to do
with his intellectual means, that is the forms of knowledge and eru-
dition that he possessed? This may seem at first to be a manner of
revisiting Christopher Bayly’s celebrated “continuity” thesis with re-
gard to the mid-eighteenth century.14 But it also allows us to con-
sider the manner in which one knowledge-formation could or could
not be subsumed into another. Our guide in this will be with the
relatively short career of our unruly orientalist James Fraser of
 OF COPRODUCTION 151

Reelig, who was probably born in 1712, and who died—as we have
seen—at his home in Easter Moniack in January 1754. Fraser was
appointed to a post of writer in the East India Company in about
1730, and served in Mokha on the Red Sea, as well as in Surat and
Khambayat. He returned to Britain after a decade to marry and
found a family, only to have a second stint in India in the 1740s, also
largely in Surat.15
The conventional chronology that dates Scottish interest in the
British Empire, and the consequent expatriation overseas on some
scale of Scotsmen, to 1707 and the union with England, contains an
element of truth in it but also of exaggeration. In point of fact, Scot-
tish interest in India certainly dates back at least to the latter half of
the sixteenth century, as we can discern from the writings of that
irascible humanist intellectual and historian George Buchanan
(1506–1582). Buchanan came by knowledge concerning India in the
course of a sojourn in Portugal, and had occasion to reflect on Eu-
rope’s sixteenth-century discoveries while at Bordeaux, where he
briefly taught Michel de Montaigne. Initially attracted by the world-
wide empire on which the Portuguese monarch Dom João III (1521–
1557) had set his sights, Buchanan eventually grew tired of it, as he
did of many other things, including Catholicism (he converted to
Calvinism in the early 1560s).16 However, he seems to have been un-
able to convince his pupil James VI (later James I of England) to stay
away from meddling in India affairs; James sent at least one ambas-
sador, Sir Thomas Roe, to the Mughal court, and showed a fair in-
terest in the early business of the East India Company.17 At much
the same time as Roe, the Scottish Jesuit George Strachan (from
Kincardine) had made his way via the Mediterranean to Iran, and
may even have visited India. He was able to constitute a fair collec-
tion of Arabic, and some Persian, manuscripts, which came to be de-
posited largely in the Vatican and Naples.18 Strachan certainly had a
fair knowledge of Arabic, and possessed some Ottoman Turkish and
Persian, though it would seem that little of all this percolated back
as far as his native Scotland.
We are aware that Strachan had dealings with some of the early
East India Company employees in Iran, and we can be equally cer-
tain that he was not the only Scotsman to venture into Asia in the
152 EUROPE’S INDIA

seventeenth century. However, no full analysis exists yet of the

employees of the East India Company by place of origin in the
seventeenth century. It is only at the end of the century that some con-
spic uous Scottish figures come to our attention in Asian waters,
usually at the margins of the Company. Perhaps the most famous of
these was the Dundee-born privateer William Kidd (ca. 1645–1701),
who operated in both the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans before
being executed at Wapping after a public trial.19 His slightly younger
contemporary, whose precise origins are uncertain, was Alexander
Hamilton, who arrived in India in around 1688 and spent several de-
cades there as a “country captain,” as well as being commander of
the Bombay Marine for a time. Hamilton authored an illuminating
work on private trade in the Indian Ocean, entitled A New Account of
the East Indies, which he dedicated to James, 5th Duke of Hamilton,
and published from Edinburgh in 1727.20 To these individuals, we
can also add the minor activities of some institutions such as the
Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, which existed
briefly from 1695, even if the bulk of its dealings were in the Atlantic
rather than the Indian Ocean.21
Thus, a trickle of Scotsmen in the Indian Ocean began before
1707, and these numbers then increased over the fi rst half of the
eighteenth century before attaining their apogee in the post-Plassey
period, and especially during the moment when Henry Dundas,
Viscount Melville (1742–1811) played a major role in the affairs of
the East India Company.22 By the early 1770s, it has been estimated
that the ratio of Scotsmen to Englishmen in the Company’s employ in
Bengal was 1:5 (roughly the ratio of the two countries’ populations); of
these some 30 were civil servants, a mere 280 common soldiers, and
as many as 250 were officers. Analyzing these broad trends for the
latter half of the eighteenth century, G. J. Bryant offers this helpful
overview.

Unlike the Scots who went to North America, those going to

the East invariably intended to return to Britain. Also, propor-
tionately more came from the upper classes. Their motives for
going and the way they promoted their careers within the East
India Company cast a revealing light on the social and economic
 OF COPRODUCTION 153

condition of Scotland and the degree of its political and social

integration with England in the eighteenth century. Scots went
to India largely to improve their financial position; the Jacobites
among them also found India an easier place in which to make
their way following the backwash of prejudice they suffered in
Britain after the ‘Forty-five.’23

Once again the question arises of whether this view, drawn largely
from a look at post-1760 migrants, might equally apply to one who
made his way to the world of the Indian Ocean in the 1730s and
1740s, when the “pagoda-tree” was not quite so easily shaken. Those
Scotsmen who arrived in India in the 1760s and thereafter could
count on very dense networks of ethnic solidarity and support, to the
point that others sometimes complained vociferously against them.24
As Henry Dundas wrote rather ruefully to the governor of Madras,
Archibald Campbell, in 1787: “It is said with a Scotchman at the head
of the Board of Control and a Scotchman at the Government of Ma-
dras, all India will soon be in their hands, and that the County of
Argyle will be depopulated by the emigration of Campbells to be
provided for by you at Madras.”25
Even if Dundas deliberately exaggerated, such a sense of collec-
tive movement was certainly not as true of those who crossed the
Cape of Good Hope eastward in the later seventeenth or early eigh-
teenth centuries. Here, the recent analy sis by George McGilvary
proves invaluable in its depiction of the mechanisms of Scottish
penetration into East India Company circles from about 1720. He
argues that it was in Robert Walpole’s government that the first sig-
nificant wave of Scots—as distinct from the odd individual— came
“to fill posts in the Company’s civil, medical and shipping branches,”
as well as taking on the role of free-merchants or country-traders.26
McGilvary carefully demonstrates the central role of the Scottish en-
trepreneur John Drummond of Quarrel (1675–1742), who together
with his brother was first an investor in Company stock and then a
powerful and manipulative director from 1722 to 1733. McGilvary
notes Drummond’s crucial support in shaping the East India careers
of men like Alexander Wedderburn (purser at Surat, and then active
in Madras and Bengal in the 1720s and 1730s), John Haliburton,
154 EUROPE’S INDIA

Alexander Halkett, Hugh Campbell, Peter and Alexander Blair, and

Drummond’s own cousin, George Ramsay. A particular success was
James Macrae, one of Drummond’s protégés, a man of limited edu-
cation and uncertain background, who was first a ship’s commander,
but then rose to the high office of governor of Fort St. George in
Madras from 1725 to 1730, leaving for home with a fortune estimated
at easily over £100,000.27

A Scot in the Indian Ocean World

Was James Fraser then a part of the “Drummond network,” like sev-
eral others of his acquaintance in Surat and Bombay, such as Wed-
derburn, the Carmichael cousins, and Henry Lowther (the last from
a prominent Yorkshire family which Drummond had befriended in
London)? This is plausible but by no means certain. What belonging
to the network really meant is also unclear. McGilvary for his part
notes that “the clannish group of young Scots treasure-hunters sent
out by Drummond in this period . . . had in common Drummond’s
patronage and the urge to make money very quickly and not much
else.”28 In the case of James Fraser, however, one concrete clue links
him to Lowther and Drummond, namely a common interest in the
coffee trade. At any rate, since we are dealing still with relatively
small numbers of men, exceptions seem more frequent than rules.
Fraser had two stints of slightly unequal duration in the Indian
Ocean, one in the 1730s, and the other in the 1740s. When he first
went out as a writer, around 1730, he could not have been much over
seventeen. He possibly had some reasonable degree of education, but
had not been to university; even later, he would complain about how
he was handicapped in his intellectual ambitions by his “want of
Latin.”29 His primary center of operation was the great Mughal port
city of Surat, though he also spent time in Khambayat, Mokha, and
Bombay. The vicissitudes of the port of Surat and its surroundings
in the first half of the eighteenth century have been depicted with
some finesse, first in a series of essays, and then in an important book
from 1979 by Ashin Das Gupta.30 Das Gupta lays out the growing
difficulties of the Mughal administration on the one hand, and of
various Asian merchant groups on the other, ranging from Hindu
 OF COPRODUCTION 155

Delhi
us G an
Ind g utra
map
Brah

es
Lucknow
Agra Kasimbazar
Patna
Plassey
N Benares Murshidabad
Allahabad
(Varanasí) Dacca
Thatta Chinsura/Hugli Mandalay
Chandernagore Chittagong Ava
Ahmadabad Calcutta
Cambay i Balasore Mrauk-U
da ad

Irra
Narba Pipli

an

wadd
Broach

h
Ma
Surat
Cuttack

y
Daman
Diu
Godava
ri Rangoon
Bombay Ahmadnagar
Poona
Bijapur Golconda
Dabhol (Hyderabad)
Krishna A N DA M AN
Masulipatnam B AY O F SEA
Rajapur
Vijayanagara BENGAL
Vengurla
Goa
Karwar Andaman Is.
ARABIAN Anjidiv Pulicat
SEA Arcot Madras
Mangalore Seringapatam São Tomé
Pondicherry
Cannanore Mysore Ft. St. David (Cuddalore)
Laccadives Tellicherry K a ver i Tranquebar
Calicut Tanjore Nagapattinam
Cranganore Trichinopoly
Jaffna Nicobar Is.
Cochin
Tuticorin Trincomalee
Mannar
Anjengo
Kandy Batticaloa
Negombo
Maldives Colombo CEYLON
(SRI LANKA) 0 100 200 300 mi
Galle
0 250 500 km
INDIAN OCEAN

Eu ropean settlements in Asia, 1600–1800. Map by William L. Nelson.

and Jain baniyā traders to Parsis, Bohras, Persians, Arabs, and Turks.
In particular, he points to the period from 1730 to 1732, soon after
Fraser arrived in Surat, as one of a veritable “crisis,” culminating in
the imprisonment and death by poisoning in July 1733 of the prom-
inent merchant Mulla Muhammad ‘Ali, who had embroiled himself
in the city’s politics to a large extent and was perceived as having un-
seemly political ambitions himself.
The ostensible source of the crisis lay in quarrels within the
Mughal elite itself, quite characteristic of the reign of the emperor
156 EUROPE’S INDIA

Muhammad Shah. Central to the matter was the family of Tegh

Beg Khan, the nephew of a former dīwān to the Mughal prince
Bidar Bakht, when he had briefly held the post of sūbadār of Gujarat
in the closing years of Aurangzeb’s reign. Tegh Beg Khan, with the
support of his brothers, made a protracted bid in the late 1720s for
control of Surat Castle, which he eventually managed to win with the
reluctant blessings of the Mughal court, appointing himself mutasaddī
(governor) in place of the earlier incumbent, Sohrab ‘Ali Khan. Tegh
Beg Khan’s death in September 1746 was an occasion for further con-
flict in the city, though his younger brother, Safdar Muhammad
Khan, eventually managed to wrest power from a rival contender, the
bakhshī or paymaster, Sayyid Mu‘in-ud-Din Khan Burhanpuri (popu-
larly known by his nickname of Miyan Achhan), and held until his
death in February 1758.31 This then led to the so-called Castle Revo-
lution of March 1759, when the English East India Company seized
hold of the qil‘adārī (or position of castellan) and definitively gained
the upper hand over the port city, using as a puppet the very same
Sayyid Mu‘in-ud-Din Khan, who had now returned to Surat. The
actions of this Burhanpuri Sayyid ironically confirm a trenchant re-
mark in Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah’s testament: “[it] has been my per-
sonal experience that of all the people of the Deccan, the inhabitants
of Burhanpur and Bijapur are the least trustworthy.”32
During his fi rst stint at Surat, Khambayat, and Mokha in the
1730s, there seems to be little doubt that Fraser would have kept some
track not merely of these events but of the far larger set of political
developments across the breadth of the western Indian Ocean. Times
were somewhat turbulent with respect not only to Gujarat but to the
Mughal Empire more generally. In Iran, Afghan clans from the
northeast had seized the capital of Isfahan in 1722 and set aside the
Safavid ruler Shah Sultan Husain, leading to a protracted period of
succession and dynastic conflicts. In comparison, the Ottoman Em-
pire remained relatively stable, even though Mokha and Yemen
(which Fraser knew at first hand) also witnessed some political—and
hence commercial—instability. Such matters were no doubt reported
on a regular basis in the letters and consultation books of the various
English factories in the area. As a writer or ju nior clerk in the Surat
establishment, Fraser’s tasks would have included some participation
 OF COPRODUCTION 157

in the drafting of such letters, as well as in maintaining the daily rec-

ords of the establishment itself. This did not actually require him to
have any expertise in languages other than English, for each of the
European establishments in Surat would have had its share of trans-
lators and interpreters. From factory records, it appears that these
must have been complex linguistic spaces; besides the chief Euro-
pean language (English, Dutch, or French), they would have been
frequented by brokers and merchants speaking and using Gujarati,
Persian, and some form of Hindustani, while their political and dip-
lomatic dealings (the so-called country correspondence) would
largely have been conducted in Persian or Marathi. Still performing
the role of a lingua franca even as late as 1730 was Portuguese, the
language often preferred by Asian merchants when writing to their
European counterparts.
The internal functioning of the factories, as well as their hierar-
chical organization, had been the object of a thorough-going reform
in the 1660s by Streynsham Master and others, which he had in fact
begun while at Surat. Master had wished to produce a “plaine &
cleare Method” for the keeping of books in place of what he perceived
as the prevailing chaos and incoherence; but he and others were also
keen on the imposition of moral order and discipline in the space of
the factory. The writers were to be taught not merely to draft clearly
and respectfully, but also to avoid obscure local jargon and references
that might not be clear to their readers elsewhere, including in
London. At the level of their daily tasks, they were to perform them
in “a handsome convenient roome, large, light and well scituated,
near the Chiefs and Seconds lodgings, which shall be sett apart for
the office.” Transparency was to be the norm of this world, where
the Anglican religion was to be practised usually, and where quar-
relling, profanity, blasphemy, gambling, violence against servants,
drink, and fornication were notionally frowned upon. Further, as
Miles Ogborn has written, “this idealized Christian moral order was
combined with a strongly hierarchical sense of social order.”33
Fraser, at seventeen or eighteen years of age, would have begun as
it were at the low end of the totem pole; at the other end of it in the
Surat factory was Henry Lowther, who had fi rst arrived in Surat
in 1719, and returned there by the late 1720s after stints in England
158 EUROPE’S INDIA

and Bombay, eventually serving as chief of the Surat factory from

August  1729 to March  1736, when he was discharged and dis-
graced. Lowther was hardly a model of moral probity, and he was
notoriously manipulative both as a Company official and as a private
trader, even though he liked to accuse the chief and council of the
Dutch factory of buying their own cargo “underhand, but at what
price no one knows.”34 There is thus little reason to believe that
the “idealized Christian moral order” of Master in fact resembled
the daily realities of life in the English factory in Surat in the 1730s.
It was in this context that Fraser would have made the acquaintance
of other ju nior Scottish employees of the Company, such as the
aristocratic cousins Charles and George Carmichael, who were sent
by their relatives to work at Surat under the protection of Lowther.
Das Gupta’s studies of Surat give us a clear sense of the town’s
layout in the fi rst half of the eighteenth century. Unlike many
Indian port cities of the time, Surat had a long-standing fort, con-
structed in the middle decades of the sixteenth century by Khu-
dawand Khan Rumi, a powerful figure in the Gujarat sultanate before
the Mughal conquest of the area in 1572–1573. Entering the Tapi River
from the west, ships normally went upstream past a series of fishing
hamlets until they arrived at Swally (Suvali) Hole, the preferred an-
chorage for larger vessels. Smaller ships and barges went past first the
imperial Mughal wharf and then the village of Athwa on the right
bank, where the family of Surat’s most important merchant of the
time, Mulla ‘Abdul Ghafur, had its own wharf. After a few other gar-
dens and wharfs, still on the same bank, the visitor would presently
reach the outer wall (called ‘ālampanāh) and the inner wall (or
shahrpanāh), while the older settlement of Rander (which had played a
prominent role in resisting Portuguese fleets in the sixteenth century)
sat farther up on the opposite, or left, bank. Within the walls, still on
the right bank, was Surat Castle and its moat, followed by the cus-
toms house and the mint. Nearby was the castle green, or maidān,
an important public space for petty mercantile transactions, and be-
yond it the darbār—the residence of the mutasaddī. Das Gupta adds:

Men lived mostly in the inner town which had its attractive
corner in the complex of the castle with its green and the darbār.
 OF COPRODUCTION 159

Beyond the darbār and farther away from the castle, lived the
local Mughal officials in a locality called Sultanpura. As you
faced the darbār and Sultanpura from the castle, the mercantile
city was on your left, the locality by and large being given the
name Saudagarpura. Within Saudagarpura the rich ship-owners
and some aristocrats had built houses in a stretch along the river
which came to be called the Mulla chakla, named almost cer-
tainly after Mulla Abdul Ghafur who lived there. The English
Company had its factory here by the river and they were next
door neighbours to Ghafur. The grandson of Ghafur built a
mosque in 1723 which is still in use by the members of Surat’s
Patni jama‘at. The Turkish family of the Chellabies lived in
the neighbourhood and had their own mosque, which still
stands. The French and the Portuguese lived in the locality,
when they lived at Surat. But the Dutch were tucked away at
a point where Saudagarpura merged, round the maidān, with
Sultanpura.35

In other words, an English Company clerk or factor who lived in

Surat in the 1730s was hardly insulated from the mercantile and po-
litical world of the city at large, and did not have the prospect of the
same distance as his counterpart in Madras or Bombay, both towns
with a far stricter spatial division between communities and races.
Besides, if—as was the rule rather than the exception— one was inter-
ested in private trade, this necessarily meant some proximity with
the Asian traders of the port. Some Company employees may have
seen this as an unpleasant necessity, but others did not. Das Gupta
reminds us, for example, that the Dutch Company factor Jan
Schreuder in the 1740s spent many afternoons in the gaddīs, or com-
mercial establishments of the baniyās in Nanavat (an area of Surat
where they dominated), “collecting information on who had how
much money at Surat.”36 A whole century earlier, another Dutchman,
Wollebrant Geleynssen de Jongh, had been employed largely at
Bharuch and Agra (with shorter stays in Surat and elsewhere), and
his Remonstrantie gives ample evidence that he frequented Asian
merchants—both Hindu and Muslim— socially, and had some un-
derstanding of both Persian and a vernacular Hindustani.37
160 EUROPE’S INDIA

English
Cemetery

Variav
Gate Dutch
Cemetery
To Abdul Delhi Gate
Rander Ghafur
SAYYID
‘Aydarusis
PURA
I RIVER English Factory
Marjan Inner
Shami Outer
Wall (1679) Wall (1715)
Customs
TA P

Mint BEGAM
N
Surat PURA
Castle
Dutch
Factory SALABAT Salabat Gate
PURA
Gopi Talav

RUSTAM
PURA Main Gate
Navsari Gate

Athwa Ja‘far ‘Ali Gate

Gate
0 .5 1 mi
0 .5 1 1.5 km

Map of Surat, 1730. Map by William L. Nelson.

Before examining the connections and acquaintances that Fraser

made in the Asian milieu of Surat and Khambayat, it may be worth-
while to note one of the crucial ties he came to build within the circle
of Company employees. This was with John Cleland (1710–1789),
later notorious as the author of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (or
Fanny Hill), published in London in 1748.38 Cleland was just a couple
of years older than Fraser, and arrived in Bombay in August 1728 as
a soldier, again a couple of years before Fraser made his own way to
Surat. His father, William Cleland, was Scottish, born in Edinburgh,
but had left Scotland in 1697 to travel extensively in Eu rope and
claimed in the process he was capable of “speaking Most of the Lan-
guages in Europe”; he then served in wars in Spain, before settling
in Surrey, where his oldest son John was born.39 Like many wan-
 OF COPRODUCTION 161

dering Scotsmen of his generation, William Cleland had friends on

both sides of the political divide of the time: he was close to John
Erskine Mar, leader of the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, but also had
Whig and Hanoverian friends, who protected him in the context of
the political transition of 1714–1715, allowing him to retain a posi-
tion in the civil ser vice (in the area of tax and customs-collection).
One of these friends was the poet Alexander Pope, who eventually
became a friend of John Cleland, and who James Fraser in turn came
to know through Cleland.
The initial phase of John Cleland’s Indian career was smooth,
possibly helped by his father’s connections. One of his modern bi-
ographers has noted that though he arrived as a mere soldier, “his
progression into and through the Bombay civilian bureaucracy had
been rapid and consistent.” He began as a noncommissioned soldier,
and then was promoted to the gunroom as a “montross” (or gunners’
assistant). But on account of his knowledge of bookkeeping, writing
and languages, by August 1730, he had been made an attorney at the
Mayor’s Court. By early 1731, he was then taken on as a writer in
Company ser vice, but began this new position only in January 1732,
as he was absent on a trip to Bengal for about nine months. In
September 1733, he seems to have been serving in Surat; the next
year, he was back in Bombay, and by November 1734, he had risen
to the post of factor.40
At this point, Cleland’s impetuousness and somewhat quixotic na-
ture asserted itself. He took it upon himself to act as attorney for a
Khatri merchant from Surat, Lala Shivshankar Bholanath Vasantrai,
in a complaint he had filed in the Bombay Mayor’s Court against the
English chief at Surat, the notorious Henry Lowther. The gist of the
complaint was that Lowther had borrowed about Rs. 40,000 from
Shivshankar, had refused to pay it back in full, and was now using
his power as head of the Surat factory to deny the Indian merchant
his due. Lowther’s defense was disingenuous, and consisted of stating
that since Lala Shivshankar was “an Alien born & under the obedi-
ence of the Great Mogull,” he could not take recourse to the Mayor’s
Court. Cleland mounted a swingeing attack on Lowther, whom he
had served under briefly at the Surat factory, but in the process
also attacked a number of other power ful members of the Bombay
162 EUROPE’S INDIA

administration, accusing them more or less openly of resorting to

extortion in their dealings with the Surat mutasaddī. The matter
very nearly brought Cleland’s career to a grinding halt, but fortu-
nately for him the authorities in both Bombay and London even-
tually found it impossible to defend Lowther’s combination of fl a-
grant corruption and inefficiency. In February 1736, John Braddyll
of the Bombay Council was sent out to Surat, accompanied by Cle-
land, James Hope, and John Williamson, in order “to enquire into
Mr. Lowther’s Conduct,” precipitating a major crisis in the English
factory there.
Extensive documentation regarding what transpired in Surat in
February and March 1736 is available to us from a work that Brad-
dyll published at private expense in London in 1746, entitled The Vin-
dication of Mr. John Braddyll against Mr. Henry Lowther.41 This work
was apparently meant to respond to an earlier text that Lowther had
been circulating, denying the charges against him and making various
counteraccusations regarding Braddyll going back to the time when
he had been chief of the English factory at Tellicherry (in Kerala).
The gist of Braddyll’s charges was that Lowther, with the conniv-
ance of his patron, Robert Cowan, governor of Bombay from 1729
to 1734 and a leading part of the “Drummond network,” had trans-
formed the Surat factory into a center of illegal trade and mischief.
Closely aiding and abetting him in this was his relative, the steward
William Lowther, as well as John Robinson and James Ramsden,
both of whom helped him systematically cook the books.42 The last-
named of these, the son of Lady Ramsden of Byram, had been sent
out to India in 1724 on Drummond’s intervention, and he was to play
a quite prominent part in the quarrels of 1736. Lowther’s immediate
reaction, when Braddyll’s party arrived in Surat, was to resist vigor-
ously, to the point of physically evicting Cleland and the others from
the factory premises. But he was then obliged to cede ground little by
little, and the investigation began to turn up incriminating materials,
some from the various Indian merchants and brokers with whom the
factory had dealings. Eventually, in March 1736, Lowther fled the
factory and then Surat itself aboard either a French ship, or one of
Robert Cowan’s private vessels.43 Holden Furber has summed up
his functioning as follows:
 OF COPRODUCTION 163

His [Lowther’s] method was to place large sums of the Com-

pany’s money in the names of Indian brokers on the Company’s
books, speculate with the money himself for months gaining 9
per cent interest on it and then repay sufficiently frequently to
avoid suspicion. Between 1724 and 1735 he never had less than
a lakh [100,000] of rupees on the books in Indian brokers’ names,
and thus defrauded the Company of more than £120,000 until
he was found out.44

It is an interest ing fact that nowhere in the extensive papers that

Braddyll collected and printed concerning Lowther and his associ-
ates does the name of James Fraser appear, though we know that he
was a part of the Surat establishment at the time. Was he simply con-
sidered too lowly to be noticed? This is possible, but another more
pressing explanation also presents itself, namely Fraser’s friendship
from this time on with John Cleland, whom he surely knew already
from 1733. Hence, whatever his earlier connections with Lowther,
he clearly made it a point to align himself with the dominant ele-
ments in 1736. Much later, in 1760, Cleland was to recall how Fraser
at this time gave him a “book, containing a set of miniature-portraits
of the successive sovereigns of Indostan for several ages back,” which
he in turn claimed to have received from the mutasaddī of Surat, Tegh
Beg Khan. But Cleland also suggested the chain extended further,
for Tegh Beg Khan had apparently received the portrait album from
“one of the Mogul’s generals [who] was with an army incamped be-
fore the town of Surat,” and to whom he had sent a large present in
cash. Cleland then adds, “Mr. Frazer having parted with this set of
portraits to me, I sent it to Mr. [Alexander] Pope, with whom I was
then in correspondence, and who wrote me that, judging it too great
a curiosity for his private study, he had done it the honor of pre-
senting it to the Bodleian Library.”45 This must have occurred be-
tween 1736 and 1737, for the album has a note on its flyleaf in Pope’s
own hand, stating that the gift to the Bodleian was made in 1737.
Although both Cleland and Pope greatly overestimated the value
of this album, which modern art historians tend to see as being a
rather poor version from Rajasthan of Mughal (and earlier) portraits
rather than “a great rarity,” this object points us in an interest ing
Portrait of Emperor Muhammad Shah, engraving by James Hulett,
frontispiece from James Fraser, History of Nadir Shah (1742).
Seated portrait of Timur, from the Bodleian Libraries, the
University of Oxford, MS. Ind. Misc. d.3, fl. 157.
166 EUROPE’S INDIA

direction, for clearly by 1736, James Fraser had begun to collect

textual and related materials in India.46 Very few of the texts he col-
lected were in fact illustrated. But they showed that unlike many of
his contemporaries in Company ser vice, Fraser had a genuine taste
for the Indo-Persian culture of Surat and its neighborhood. In this
he differed, for example, from Cleland, who had immersed himself
in the Luso-Asian milieu of Bombay and learned to speak fluent
Portuguese. In his altercation with Lowther in Bombay, one of the
Lowther’s partisans had even accused Cleland of being “caught in
attempting to make his escape in disguise, with his face black’d over,
to the Portugueze territories (and with an intention, as it has been
publickly talk’d) there to have renounced, at once his religion and
country.”47 In fact, on his return from Surat to Bombay (after the
Lowther investigation had been conducted), Cleland would be named
“Secretary for the Portugeze Affairs” in view of the fact that he had
already been found “well versed in the Portugeze Language & other-
wise well qualified for the Employ.”48 From there, he was quickly
promoted to ju nior merchant and then to secretary of the Bombay
Council, and his star seemed to be distinctly on the rise. However,
in September 1740, Cleland abruptly left for home, probably sum-
moned back by his ailing father. In August  1741, he was back in
London and would never return to India, although he continued to
take an interest in Indian matters, writing a short secret memoir soon
after to the Portuguese government to help found a new Portuguese
East India Company.49
Fraser too returned to Europe at much the same time, in 1740 or
1741. A letter written by him to Cleland from about this time sur-
vives, in which he asks for Cleland’s help in selling some of the
manuscripts he has collected in India to the latter’s friends.50 We
know that on February 21, 1742, he married Mary Satchwell while
in London. But it would seem that by this time, he had already
begun to contemplate returning to India. His petition to the court of
directors of the company (undated, but from mid-1742) runs as
follows.

That your petitioner having resided above eleven years in Your

Honours’ settlements abroad, particularly at Surat, Cambay and
 OF COPRODUCTION 167

Mocha, and having in that time acquir’d a thorough knowledge

of the Trade & Customs of those places, & perfected himself in
the several languages that are current there: he is desirous of
serving Your Honours abroad, and therefore humbly prays you
will be pleased to entertain him in such a station as Your Hon-
ours shall judge he can be most ser viceable to the Honourable
Company. In which, or any other he may afterward acquire in
your ser vice, he will be careful to behave with the utmost Dil-
ligence, Fidelity & Obedience: And is ready to give such secu-
rity as Your Honours shall require.51

The Company responded positively by early November the same

year. It was agreed that “Mr. James Fraser be Entertained a Factor
on the Bombay Establishment, that he be stationed next under
Mr. Lambe and Reside at Surrat, that as he understands the Language
he attends on all Impor tant Affairs at the Durbar with the Vackeel
in order to see that he makes a Faithful Report.” Further, in view of
his special qualifications, Fraser was to receive a payment of Rs. 500
a year over the normal salary and allowances. And finally, while on
his way out to Surat on the ship Montague, Fraser was instructed to
stop at Mokha (where he had already been on his first stint), in order
to negotiate a coffee purchase, on which he was allowed a 2.5 percent
commission.52 In contrast to his lowly status as writer in 1730, the
Fraser who returned to Surat in 1743 was thus a man of some im-
portance, and he owed this largely to his claims to “understand the
Language,” which in this instance meant less Hindustani than Per-
sian, the official language used by agents (or wakīls) in the Surat
darbār. In December 1739, before his departure from Surat, Fraser—
described as being “well versed in the Persian language”—was being
asked to produce a translation of a Mughal imperial farmān (or de-
cree) for the Surat factory.53
In order to understand how such a claim was not merely made but
sustained for a time to build a career, we must also turn to Fraser’s
activities in England during his brief return there. As noted, he mar-
ried in early 1742, and indeed his wife would accompany him to
Surat on his second stint. He also made a number of useful contacts
in London society, in part through John Cleland and his network.
168 EUROPE’S INDIA

The most significant of these was the powerful physician Richard

Mead (1673–1754), who attended on kings and aristocracy, but also
on men like Alexander Pope. Mead was himself a collector and had
a large set of objects of antiquarian interest as well as a sizeable li-
brary, which—though not on the same scale as that of his friend, the
Irish physician Hans Sloane—was still remarked by most of his con-
temporaries, and considered in some respects superior to that of
Sloane.54 Mead was also the author of a number of treatises such as
A Discourse on the Plague (1744), and De variolis et morbillis liber (1747),
and in these writings he makes reference both to older Arabo-Persian
knowledge and occasionally to ethnographic observations on the
current habits and hygiene of Arabs, Indians, and Iranians. For his
1747 treatise, for example, he commissioned the orientalist Thomas
Hunt to prepare a translation of the Kitāb fī al- jadarī wa al-hasaba of
Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi (or “Rhazes,” ca. 865–925).
It is to Mead—“as a grateful Acknowledg ment of the Favours
received”—that James Fraser dedicates his only published work, His-
tory of Nadir Shah, which appeared in London in 1742. It was an
opportune work, since curiosity in Europe concerning Nadir Shah
Afshar (or Tahmasp Quli Khan) and his conquests was very high in-
deed at the time.55 The French mercenary Joseph de Voulton had
sent a work to Rome, that was eventually translated into Portuguese
and published in Lisbon in 1740 under the title Verdadeira, e exacta
notícia dos progressos de Thamas Kouli Khan Schach da Persia no Império
do Gram Mogôr; a Spanish translation of the same work appeared later
in the same year.56 De Voulton claimed an intimate knowledge of the
inner workings of the Mughal court on account of frequenting it,
something that Fraser clearly could not do. However, Fraser could
and did claim an extensive knowledge of the relevant background
texts in Persian, which he termed “Eastern Histories.” To this were
added the following elements: an unnamed Persian manuscript text
with an “Account of the State of Affairs in the Moghol Empire be-
fore the Persian Invasion,” that Richard Mead had received from
Humphrey Cole, head of the English factory at Patna; an account of
Nadir Shah’s origins and early years, received by Fraser from an
Englishman—probably a certain William Cockell—who had lived
in Iran and known Nadir Shah well, having been “frequently in
 OF COPRODUCTION 169

Company with that Conqueror”; and various letters and accounts

sent from Delhi to Ahmedabad by the secretary of Sarbuland Khan
to a certain Mirza Mughal, son of the dīwān ‘Ali Muhammad Khan
(author of the Mirāt-i Ahmadī).
Since Nadir Shah’s itinerary had only brought him into northern
India and not to Gujarat, Fraser thus was not about to claim authority
as an eyewitness to his actions. Rather, it was as a scholar and con-
noisseur of textual materials that he chose to present himself. He
began by noting that he had in his personal possession many “Ori-
ental Manuscripts, of which I have annexed a Catalogue at the End
of these Sheets, have been collected from the Year 1730 to 1740,
and purchased with no small Labour and Expence, at Surat, Cambay,
and Ahmedabad in the East-Indies; excepting a few which I bought at
Mocha in Arabia, from some Persians who passed that Way on their
Pilgrimage to Mecca.” But the simple possession of such textual ma-
terials was clearly not enough; one had to read and interpret them.
This then is how Fraser describes his education during nearly ten
years spent at Surat and Khambayat, which qualify him uniquely to
be the historian of Nadir Shah:

The fi rst Master under whom I studied the Persic, was a Parsi
(or one of the Race of the ancient Persians) now at Surat. The
second was a Mullah of one of the Mosques there, whose
name is Fakhr o’dîn. When I was at Cambay, I studied under
Shekh Mahommed Morad, a Man famous in those Parts for his
Knowledge of the Mahommedan Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws.
During my Stay in that Place, I employed three Hours each Day
with one Srî Nât Veaz, a learned Brahmin, whom I allowed a
Sallary on that Account; it was by his Means I procured my San-
skerrit Manuscripts, which (I believe) is the first Collection of
that Kind ever brought into Europe.57

The Parsi master thus remains unnamed, and it is difficult to

gather a clear understanding of who Mulla Fakhr-ud-Din in fact was.
The two other teachers are more accessible to us, the Brahmin Srinath
Vyas, and particularly Shaikh Muhammad Murad of Khambayat.
In the latter case, this is because Fraser’s collection of manuscripts
170 EUROPE’S INDIA

included a text written precisely by one Shaikh Muhammad Murad

ibn Shaikh Shihab-ud-Din, who traced his genealogy back several
generations (and in several ways) to the well-known saintly figure of
Shaikh Muhammad Chishti Gujarati (1549–1630).58 This was not a
text on fiqh, as Fraser’s reference to “Mahommedan Civil and Ec-
clesiastical Laws” might have led us to believe; rather it was a his-
tory of Aurangzeb and his successors up to 1738/1151 H., and written
at the request of the “Englishman Master James Fraser” (Mastar Jīms
Frīzar Angrīz). Extending to some two hundred folios, and written
in the Shaikh’s own hand, this text was undoubtedly significant in
helping Fraser with the historical introduction to his work on Nadir
Shah. Fraser would also claim in the preface to his history that he
used a few other Persian texts intensively: namely the sixth volume
of Mir Khwand’s famous late fi fteenth- century history Rauzat
al- Safā’; the Wāqi‘āt-i Bāburī or the Persian translation of Babur’s
memoirs by ‘Abdur Rahim Khan-i Khanan; the Ma’āsir-i Jahāngīrī
by Kamgar Husaini; ‘Abdul Hamid Lahori’s Pādshāh nāma; and Mu-
hammad Kazim’s Tārīkh-i ‘Ālamgīrī. But these formed a mere fraction
of his large collection of manuscripts, to which we may now turn
our attention.

The Matter of Collection

For obvious reasons, Britain was somewhat late in the business of col-
lecting Persian manuscripts, just as she was relatively late in coming
to Asian trade. So far as we are aware, nothing of any significance
was collected in either England or Scotland in the course of the
sixteenth century, when the Portuguese and other southern Euro-
peans (such as the Italians) largely dominated knowledge production
concerning India and the Indo-Persian world. None of George Stra-
chan’s quite elaborate collections of Persian and Arabic materials in
the early seventeenth century seem to have been brought to Britain
during his lifetime; indeed, they largely came to be deposited instead
in Italy.59
One of the earliest collections of Persian (and Indo-Persian) man-
uscripts to be constituted in Britain was therefore that of William
Laud (1573–1645), archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of
 OF COPRODUCTION 171

Oxford under Charles I. Laud, a controversial and polarizing figure

even in a century when Britain did not lack in them, was described
rather acerbically by his modern biographer Hugh Trevor-Roper
as possessing “a crude, narrow mind,” which regularly “oversimplified
the problems of humanity.”60 It is, however, generally noted that
despite this, he did have a particular interest in “matters oriental,”
perhaps influenced by Sir Thomas Roe, who had been ambassador to
the Mughal and Ottoman courts, and in the latter context had col-
lected some significant Greek manuscripts that he had gifted to Laud
in the 1620s. At any rate, probably on account of the idea that
Biblical-related materials could be found in them, the archbishop had
begun by the early 1630s at least to collect texts in Arabic and Persian,
besides supporting the creation of a permanent position to teach Ar-
abic in Oxford, held by one Edward Pococke from 1636. Pococke had
learned Arabic with Matthias Pasor and William Bedwell, who had
intermittently taught the language from the mid-1620s in Oxford. In
1630 Pococke took up employment for a time with the Levant Com-
pany, as chaplain in Aleppo. It was partly through Pococke, and then
more significantly via the geometrician and linguist John Greaves,
who between attempts at measuring such ancient monuments as the
pyramids, procured texts for Laud in the bazaars and elite households
of the eastern Mediterranean, that one part of Laud’s collection was
thus constituted and then gifted by the archbishop to the Bodleian
Library.61
Seemingly under Laud’s influence, even Charles I began to exert
himself somewhat in this direction. In late February 1634, he wrote
to the court of directors of the East India Company asking for a
supply of Arabic and Persian manuscripts; the Company’s factors in
Iran responded in late November of the same year: “Our Soveraignes
requiries of your worships to furnish him with some varyties of Per-
sian and Arabian manuscripts we shall have regard to.”62 The head
of the Company’s Surat establishment, William Methwold, was also
apprised of the matter, and he and his council responded at some
length regarding the problems in such an enterprise:

Wee are exceedingly greived that we cannot in all points accom-

plish His Majesties royall pleasure. Heere is no want of Persian
172 EUROPE’S INDIA

bookes of all sorts, most men of quality in this citty and king-
dome being either Persians borne, discended from them, or
educated in the knowledge of that language; so that Persian
bookes are plentifully to be had, and we have sent 10 such, of
severall subjects, although we doe beleive that there are few in
England that will understand them; for howsoever the character
resembles the Arabique (every letter carryeing the same denom-
ination and pronunciation) yet for want of those pricks, both
above and below, which point out the vowells, and are alwaies
used in the Arabian character, the Persian is very difficultly read
and understood but by them which are conversant therein. But
we will hope that some industrious young man will make use of
the opportunity he may injoy, and attayne to so much perfec-
tion as to give some light at least to direct more able linguists.63

We can certainly trace some of the manuscripts that were sent

by the Company’s servants to England in this period. The most
celebrated of these, now in the Bodleian Library, is an illustrated one,
the so-called Laud Rāgamālā, containing some eighteen rāga paint-
ings and a dozen other miniatures, as well as examples of calligraphy.
This album was certainly in Laud’s possession by the 1630s, and it is
now clear that its paintings were produced in the Deccan atelier of the
great Mughal aristocrat, general, and patron ‘Abdur Rahim Khan-
i-Khanan (1556–1627), who resided for an extended period of time
in the town of Burhanpur.64 Another significant manuscript from
Laud’s collection is the Dīwān-i Anwarī of the great twelfth-century
poet, which had once been in the library of the sixteenth-century
ruler of Ahmadnagar, Burhan Nizam Shah I (r. 1510–1553). This once
again suggests that the Company’s agents procured manuscripts in
at least two Indian locations, namely Gujarat and the Deccan. A
striking feature of the relatively small collection of Persian manu-
scripts that Laud gifted to the Bodleian was its haphazard nature;
not only are they an odd bunch, but there are as many as three
copies of a single text, ‘Abdullah Hatifi’s sixteenth-century verse
account, the Tīmūr nāma. While this work, produced by the nephew
of the great poet Jami, was certainly respectable enough to be found
in many manuscript copies (and also to be illustrated in at least some
 OF COPRODUCTION 173

instances), there was little reason for it to occupy such a prominent

place in Laud’s collection, unless those who procured materials for
him were doing so in a more-or-less disorganized manner.
Other Persian materials that came into Laud’s possession in the
same period included the Dīwān-i Mukhtarī of a fairly prominent
Ghaznavid poet, a paraphrase of Qazwini’s ‘Ajā’ib al- makhlūqāt,
and—more predictably perhaps—the Dāstān-i Ahwāl-i Hawāriyān,
a Christian-themed text of the lives of saints produced by the Jesuit
Jerónimo Xavier and ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri at Jahangir’s
court. What this meant in effect was that the archbishop came to
possess a mix of poetry and diverse prose, some of it with a religious
or cosmological content. But his agents did not lay their hands on
any of the great Indo-Persian chronicles of the close of the sixteenth
and the dawn of the seventeenth centuries, the works of Shaikh
Abu’l Fazl, Nizam-ud-Din Ahmad Bakhshi or Muhammad Qasim
“Firishta,” for example, nor great classics of Timurid historiography
from the fifteenth century like Mir Khwand’s Rauzat al-Safā’. As re-
gards Charles I, we are aware of only one significant Persian manu-
script that came into his direct possession; this was a copy of the
Gulistān of Shaikh Sa‘di, sent to him directly as a gift by Shahjahan
with an autograph inscription stating that “on the 17th of the month
of Safar of the [regnal] year 11, corresponding to the year 1048 of
the Hijra, this exquisite Gulistān, resembling the Garden of Eden,
and in the writing of the master of the time, Maulana Hakim Rukna,
I have sent as a gift to the seat of the emperor of the kingdom of
England ( jā’igāh-i pādshāh-i mamālik-i Inglistān). Written by Shihab-
ud-Din Muhammad Shahjahan Padshah ibn Nur-ud-Din Jahangir
Padshah ibn Jalal-ud-Din Akbar Padshah.”65
The choice of the Gulistān was obviously no accident, as few Per-
sian texts elicited as much interest as this one in seventeenth-century
Europe.66 In 1634, André du Ryer, who had spent a fair amount of
time in the Ottoman Empire, had published an adaptation of it into
French under the title Gulistan, ou l’empire des roses. In his preface to
the work, he explained his choice as follows:

The long period that I have served my King and my patria in

foreign lands has given me the means to learn their mores and
174 EUROPE’S INDIA

customs, along with the language of the Turks, Persians and

Arabs. On going through the libraries of the most curious
among them in Egypt, in Great Cairo and in Constantinople, I
found that the book entitled Gulistan, which is to say the Em-
pire of the Roses, is greatly prized amongst them on account of
the subtlety of its responses, for the solidity of its discourse, the
sweetness of its poetry, and the gravity of its sentences. It is that
which led me on my return to employ some of my hours of lei-
sure towards this version, dressing it in the French manner [à
la françoise].67

Du Ryer’s version formed the basis for subsequent translations that

followed soon after, until the early 1650s, when the Lutheran Ori-
entalist Georg Gentze, or Gentius (1618–1657) went on to produce a
full bilingual edition, with the Persian text facing a Latin transla-
tion. This text, now significantly entitled Rosarium politicum, was
published in Amsterdam in 1651 and dedicated to the Elector of
Saxony, Johann Georg. Gentze was, if anything, even clearer than
Du Ryer in asserting that the work was a speculum regum et principum,
“a mirror for kings and princes,” and as such could be treated as a
common patrimony, transcending religiopolitical boundaries, not an
insignificant matter at a time when the Thirty Years’ War had just
drawn to a close.
A tension may thus be seen to exist in regard to the motives of
those who collected Persian (and Indo-Persian) materials, and this
had an impact on the nature of the manuscripts collected as well. If,
on the one hand, an impulse came from those, such as Laud, con-
cerned with Biblical studies, others were far more interested in the
“secular” content of Persian literature, from an aesthetic as well as
from a political viewpoint. We may see this in the constitution of the
rival collection to that of the Bodleian, namely that of the Cambridge
library. The initial kernel of the Cambridge Persian collection ap-
pears to have come when the family of the Duke of Buckingham
gifted the library with a part of the extensive collection of the Dutch
orientalist Thomas van Erpe, or Erpenius (1584–1624).68 The gift,
made in 1632, was far stronger in Arabic than in Persian materials,
reflecting Erpenius’s own inclinations, and to the extent that we can
 OF COPRODUCTION 175

discern none of its materials were acquired in the Indian subconti-

nent. Of the Persian materials, most relate to religious matters, in
this instance Qur’anic studies. The one major exception is a copy of
Mir Khwand’s Rauzat al- Safā’, of which Erpenius possessed a copy
in two parts, one of great value possibly produced under the author’s
own supervision and the other copied by a scribe in Tabriz in 980
H / 1572. Other Persian manuscript materials then accumulated grad-
ually in Cambridge over the next century, again largely relating to
the study of the Bible, the Qur’an, or grammar and vocabulary.
A major intervention in the Cambridge Persian collection came
from the important but somewhat obscure figure of George Lewis,
who ended his life as archdeacon of Meath. Three years before his
death in 1729, Lewis gave over his monumental cabinet made up of
a mixture of coins, objects, and some seventy-six manuscripts to
Cambridge, where he had completed a degree at Queen’s College in
1689 before spending the years from 1692 to 1714 at Fort Saint
George in Madras as chaplain and librarian.69 Profiting from the re-
cent Mughal conquest of the Coromandel region, which until 1686–
1687 had mostly been under the sultanates of Golkonda and Bijapur,
Lewis went about collecting a mixture of manuscripts, most in
Persian. Fifteen years into his stay in India, Lewis’s knowledge of
Persian was thought sufficient for him to be used to translate secret
correspondence in Madras, and in early 1709 Governor Thomas Pitt
even considered sending him as envoy to the Mughal emperor Ba-
hadur Shah, noting that he was “a very worthy, sober, Ingeneous
man, and understands the Persian language very well, as also the
Customs of the Country.”70 Some of Lewis’s manuscript acquisitions
are predictable for a clergyman, such as a Persian translation of the
Qur’an, or Persian versions of the four Gospels (Kitāb-i Injīl). But
we may also note an interest ing mixture of other texts. Among his-
torical works, we find several extensive sections (rather inevitably)
of Mir Khwand’s Rauzat al- Safā’ in several manuscript volumes, a
part of Khwandmir’s Habīb al-Siyār, but also other texts ranging from
a part of ‘Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi’s Matla‘ al- Sa‘dain to Sayyid ‘Ali
Tabataba’i’s late sixteenth-century chronicle of the Deccan, Burhān-i
Ma’āsir, to parts of the great Mughal and Safavid official chronicles
of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl and Iskandar Beg Munshi. Other impor tant
176 EUROPE’S INDIA

works include some of the great titles in lexicography like the Far-
hang-i Jahāngīrī and the Burhān-i Qāti‘, the letters (inshā’) of Abu’l
Fazl, and works of many of the classic poets of the Persian tradition:
Nizami, Rumi, Sa‘di, Shaikh ‘Attar, Hafiz, Jami, Hatifi and ‘Urfi
Shirazi. Further, we fi nd such popu lar and exemplary works of
“practical wisdom” as the Tūtī Nāma, Anwār-i Suhailī, and the ‘Iyār-i
Dānish. Finally, of particular interest is the fact that Lewis was able
to acquire an illustrated copy from the late sixteenth or early seven-
teenth century of Nizami’s Khusrau wa Shīrīn, no easy matter in view
of the relative inaccessibility of such materials at the time on the
“market.”71
Lewis’s collection, constituted some thirty years before that of
Fraser, thus sets a useful baseline for comparison. The constraints
facing the two were surely somewhat similar, namely the limited
availability of manuscripts for purchase by a European, the tastes of
the collector, and his knowledge of the tradition in which he was
collecting. As regards the first of these, it may be that Fraser had a
slight advantage over Lewis in view of their relative locations. It was
only since the 1640s that Persian had been present on a regular basis
in the Madras region as an administrative language, and it would
seem that Lewis would have had to depend for his purchases largely
on the personal libraries of Mughal notables and scribes who had
been part of the empire’s expansion into the region after the late
1680s. Fraser, on the other hand, could count on the continued ex-
istence in Surat and Khambayat of Persian-speaking literati and their
collections for several centuries. Further, our knowledge of how the
two entered into the world of Indo-Persian is not the same: in the
case of Lewis, we have no sense of his teachers and interlocutors in
the Madras region, whereas Fraser leaves us with a far clearer notion
of who his were. It is clearly as a reflection of these dealings with the
intellectual conception of men like Mulla Fakhr-ud-Din and Shaikh
Muhammad Murad that he goes about presenting his collection of
manuscripts to his readers. The seven rubrics he chooses are
as follows, and seem largely to derive from traditional categories:
(1) history, (2) poetry, (3) ethics, politics, and novels, (4) the arts, sci-
ences, and so on, (5) dictionaries, vocabularies, and so forth, (6) letters,
forms of writing, and the like, and (7) divinity. These appear to
 OF COPRODUCTION 177

correspond to the received categories of classification: tārīkh; nazm;

akhlāq wa dāstān; ‘ulūm-o-funūn; lughat; inshā’; and ‘aqā’id.
A very high proportion of the manuscripts listed in Fraser’s 1742
catalogue may still be found in the Bodleian Library’s collections
under his name, and this is an invaluable help, for it allows us to com-
pare his summary descriptions with the actual contents of these
works.72 We may thus follow him through the list of his first section
on “history,” made up of twenty-six items. In his order of listing, this
is how they appear, with the current manuscript references in
brackets. Pride of place is taken as usual by Mir Khwand’s volumi-
nous history Tārīkh-i Rauzat al- Safā’ (corresponding to Fraser 126,
127; and also Fraser 128, 129), which we have encountered in Lewis’s
collection, as well as that of Erpenius.73 It is then followed by a sum-
mary Persian version of the classic Arabic history, the Tārīkh-i Tabarī
(Persian summary: Fraser 165; Fraser 131). Fraser then continues his
list with a text he terms Tārīkh-i Pādshāhān-i Hind, which he claims
dates to the reign of Akbar; this would appear to correspond to some-
thing like ‘Abdul Haqq Muhaddis Dehlawi’s Tārīkh-i Haqqī (Fraser
132, 133), rather than the great chronicle of Firishta which Fraser’s
collection does not include.74 Out of proper chronological order, we
then find Abu Sulaiman Da’ud Banakati’s Rauzat al-albāb or Tārīkh-i
Banākatī (Fraser 119). This is followed by a sequence of major Mu-
ghal histories: Shaikh Abu’l Fazl’s Akbar nāma (Fraser 135); Khwaja
Nizam-ud-Din Ahmad’s Tabaqāt-i Akbar Shāhī (Fraser 136); ‘Abdul
Hamid Lahori’s Pādshāh nāma (Fraser 137, 138); Kamgar Husaini’s
Ma’āsir-i Jahāngīrī (Fraser 139); the Persian version of Babur’s
memoir entitled Wāqi‘āt-i Bāburī (Fraser 140); his great-grandson
Jahangir’s memoir, here given the title of Wāqi‘āt-i Jahāngīrī (Fraser
141); and Munshi Muhammad Kazim’s ‘Ālamgīr nāma (Fraser 142),
covering the first part of Aurangzeb’s reign. Many of these texts, we
may note, were appearing for the first time in a European collection,
as they had escaped not only Lewis’s attention but that of other con-
temporary collectors of Persian materials in the Netherlands and
elsewhere in Europe.
The catalogue then presents a more heterogeneous set of mate-
rials, some regional histories, some relating to Iran, and still others
to the distant past. They include Hasan ibn ‘Ali Kashmiri’s Tārīkh-i
178 EUROPE’S INDIA

Kashmīr (Fraser 160); Sikandar ibn Manjhu’s chronicle of Gujarat,

the Mirāt-i Sikandarī (Fraser 161); Iskandar Beg Munshi’s great work
on the Safavids, the Tārīkh-i ‘Ālamārā-yi ‘Abbāsī (Fraser 144, 145,
147); and a work that Fraser patently misidentifies as Tārīkh-i Shāh
Isma‘īl by Sharaf-ud-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, but which appears in fact to have
been that author’s rather famous text the Zafar nāma (Fraser 121).
Here, as elsewhere, Fraser shows occasional signs of carelessness or
haste, an aspect of his approach to these materials evidenced on a few
more occasions. Continuing to the end of his listings of histories
then, we encounter a text that he simply terms Tārīkh-i Mukhtasar,
“containing a short History of the Great Moghols, from Auring-
zebe’s Death, to the third Year of the present Emperor Mahommed
Shah’s Reign,” and which perhaps corresponds to the text prepared
for him by Shaikh Muhammad Murad (Fraser 122);75 it is followed by
two well-known works, namely Qazwini’s Athar al-bilād wa akhbār
al-‘ibād (Fraser 149) and Yahya Sirhindi’s Tārīkh-i Mubārak Shāhī
(Fraser 150).
At this point in the list, we find a rather odd inclusion, in the form
of the seventeenth-century Sufi ‘Abdur Rahman Chishti’s work Mirāt
al-Makhlūqāt (Fraser 179), a text that would normally not have been
classified under history, as it purports to reconcile the Indic and Is-
lamic traditions with regard to cosmogony through a complex nar-
rative; Fraser’s own notation states that it “is an Explanation of a
small Book, in the Brahmin’s Language; composed, at first, in the
Time of the Genii, which he [‘Abdur Rahman], by great Chance
found; containing a Prediction in regard to the Creation of Adam
and Eve, peopling the Earth with Mankind, and foretelling Mahom-
med’s Mission.”76 This is then followed by the late fifteenth-century
life of the Prophet by Mu‘in-ud-Din Miskin Herawi, entitled Ma’arij
al-Nubuwwa (Fraser 151, 152, 153, 164); Juwaini’s Tārīkh-i Jahāngushā
(Fraser 154); and a text that seems to be a partial version of Natan-
zi’s Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh (Fraser 155).
In closing this list, Fraser once more shows some signs of care-
lessness. He lists Badayuni’s Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh (Fraser 159), but
summarizes its contents by stating that it was “composed by Ab-
dulcadr Muloukshah Bedauvni, in the Year 999, at the Command of
the Great Moghol Jilal o’din Mahommed Akbar,” thus transforming
 OF COPRODUCTION 179

this sharply critical and unofficial work into an official history. The
last three works listed in this section are, respectively, Qazwini’s
Tārīkh-i Guzīda (Fraser 156), the collection of Aurangzeb’s letters
and orders entitled Kalimāt-i Tayyibāt (Fraser 157; another fragment
in Fraser 158), and finally Shaikh Abu’l Fazl’s celebrated Ā’īn-i Akbarī
(Fraser 163).
While this may not be an overwhelming list from the perspective
of 1800, it is certainly a striking one viewed from the vantage point
of 1740. Charles Stewart’s cata logue of Tipu Sultan’s library pub-
lished in 1809 manages only by taking an extremely broad view of
what constitutes “history” to identify fifty-two works, roughly half
of which have to do with India.77 Tipu’s library, for rather obvious
reasons, contained a greater number of works on the Deccan, while
these were rather poorly represented in Fraser’s selection; further,
the Mysore ruler had, by dint of raiding the libraries of neighboring
potentates who were linked to the Mughals, managed to acquire a
formidable selection of Mughal chronicles of the sixteenth century,
including the multi-authored Tārīkh-i Alfī and Tahir Muhammad
Sabzwari’s encyclopedic Rauzat- ul-Tāhirīn. Yet, what sense can it
possibly make to compare the capacities of a ruler with that of a
merchant in the matter of constituting a library? Bearing in mind
Fraser’s limited resources and uncertain education, it is certainly
revealing to see where the tastes of his teachers guided him; in the
matter of poetry, they took him inevitably to authors such as Firdausi,
Rumi, Sa‘di, Shaikh ‘Attar, Nizami, Anwari, and Jami, whose works
are still extant in the Bodleian’s Fraser manuscripts. Other works of
poetry that he lists in his 1742 catalogue have disappeared; these in-
clude four volumes of a dīwān of Amir Khusrau (which he notes are
“generally sung to Musick”), as well as a dīwān of Hafiz. But Fraser’s
collection also departs in some respects from those of others that we
have listed so far; it contains extensive parts of the works of the
twelfth-century poet Khaqani, including his kulliyāt, a commentary
(sharh), and a separate and well-decorated manuscript of the Tuhfat
al-‘Irāqain (Fraser 62). If Fraser’s tastes are reflected in his purchase
of Maulana Zuhuri’s Sāqī nāma (Fraser 84), and several works of
Ghazali Mashhadi, his collection at times seems directly to reflect
the milieu of his western Indian teachers, since it also contains such
180 EUROPE’S INDIA

lesser-known works such as those of the sixteenth-century poet

Miram Siyah (Fraser 70), or the mid seventeenth-century poet Mau-
lana Hafiz Muhammad Fazil Surati’s Natījat-i altaba‘ (Fraser 83).78
A full discussion of the seven sections of the catalogue and their
contents would be excessive here. But some remarks are certainly
in order with regard to a few of the other texts, including those
under the heading of what Fraser terms “Ethics, Politics, Novels,”
since they may in turn relate to his conception of politics as practiced
in the “East.” Though he lists them in his catalogue, Fraser’s manu-
scripts of the Akhlāq-i Nāsirī and Khwandamir’s Dastūr al- wuzarā’
are no longer extant, unless he confused the latter title with the
extant Āsār al- wuzarā’ (Fraser 115). But we do find a copy of the late
fifteenth-century Akhlāq-i Muhsinī (Fraser 252), as well as two copies
of another well-known text of Nasirean ethics from the same period
by Jalal-ud-Din Dawwani entitled Lawāmi‘ al-ishrāq fī makārim al-
akhlāq or Akhlāq-i Jalālī (Fraser 251, 251bis). In addition, we also note
the marked presence in the collection of narrative texts featuring the
use of exempla from the Arabo-Persian moral and ethical tradition,
such as Abu’l Fazl’s ‘Iyār-i Dānish (Fraser 98), Anwār-i Suhailī (Fraser
99), Kalīla wa Dimna (Fraser 100), Tūtī nāma (Fraser 102), and the
Qissa-yi Duzd-o- Qāzī (Fraser 103). Also of considerable significance
is the Inshā’-yi Abu’l Fazl or Mukātabāt-i ‘Allāmī, of which Fraser
remarks that “they are reckoned the best writ of any Thing in that
Language” (Fraser 117). In the same genre, we note that by 1742,
Fraser had copies of the Inshā’-yi Yūsufī or Badā’i‘ al-inshā’ (Fraser 56),
of the notable inshā’ collections by Harkaran Das Kamboh and Chan-
drabhan “Brahman” (Fraser 52, 53), as well as of the earlier Wa‘iz-i
Kashifi’s Sahīfa-i Shāhī (Fraser 50).
All these materials taken together are quite helpful in indicating
the sort of education that Fraser sought and received in Surat and
Khambayat. It is the familiar one made available to the emerging
munshī class of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
stressing a vision of politics and ethics that had been refined since
the late sixteenth century, and willing to be inclusive toward non-
Muslim elements such as Brahmins, Kayasthas, and Khattris.79 It
is not surprising, then, to find that Fraser possessed a copy of both the
Mu’nis al-arwāh, princess Jahanara’s work on Khwaja Mu‘in-ud-Din
 OF COPRODUCTION 181

Chishti (Fraser 229), and of Dara Shikoh’s Majma‘ al- bahrain

(Fraser 260). We have already remarked his acquisition of an impor-
tant work by ‘Abdur Rahman Chishti, and to this we may also add a
short treatise by the celebrated Chishti Sufi Sayyid Muhammad al-
Husaini “Gesudaraz” (Fraser 176), as well as two copies of an early
seventeenth-century work by Sharif Qutbjahani purporting to effect
a reconciliation between Indic and Islamic mystical traditions, enti-
tled Atwār dar hall-i asrār (Fraser 247, 263). In other words, the ef-
fects of closely frequenting a Chishti Sufi milieu in Gujarat on James
Fraser are quite visible on his collection, even if he also ranged far
and wide over other subjects ranging from medicine, astronomy, and
measurement, to lexicography and jurisprudence ( fiqh).80

The Bitter Return

Fraser’s short visit to England in the early 1740s must be counted a

success using any one of several measures. He had returned from
India a relative unknown, but in 1743 he was on his way back to India
with a reputation as a savant, a collector, and a published author on
a subject of pressing public interest, and in possession of a very good
set of financial terms offered to him by the Company. He had con-
tracted an advantageous marriage and had the means to bring his
wife to India with him. In late October 1743, the Surat Council wrote
to the directors, noting: “Mr James Fraser is entertain’d here in the
station to which Your Honours have been pleas’d to appoint him; and
in which we hope he will exert himself so as to answer your expec-
tations.”81 By December that year, Fraser was in the thick of deal-
ings with the darbār, and both Tegh Beg Khan and his younger
brother Safdar Muhammad Khan seem to have treated him with a
certain familiarity. His name appears on the consultations of the
factory, along with its chief James Hope and three others: George
Hamilton, James Lambe, and William Johnson.82 Because of his
ability with regard to Persian Fraser was called on to translate docu-
ments from the court, especially since some of the documents were
deemed to be forgeries. Equally, he seems to have reestablished
close contact with the merchant milieu at Surat that he already knew
quite well.
182 EUROPE’S INDIA

But four years later, every thing had turned to vinegar. We gather
this from a long letter of complaint from Fraser in Surat, to the Court
of Directors of the Company, dated November 1747. In this, Fraser
begins by noting that “the uncommon Resentment with which I have
been persecuted of late by the Governour of Bombay, for opposing
the Measures he pursued contrary to the Interest of the Hon’ble
Company, and the Unjust Censure laid on me by him and some of
his Council for persisting in my Duty; obliges me now to trouble
Your Honours with this address.”83 The governor in question was
William Wake, who remained in that office for almost eight years
beginning in November 1742. Wake was undoubtedly a rather slip-
pery character. He had come out to India in the early 1720s, and then
spent several years as a free merchant and country captain around
Bombay before being appointed chief of the Anjengo factory in 1732.
After that, his rise through the Company hierarchy was rapid, cul-
minating in his promotion to governor at the end of ten years. But
he simply could not let go of his heavy investment in private trade.
Even as governor, Wake continued to have secret private dealings
with the Dutch Company official Jacob Mossel, and eventually came
to be entangled in a complex and murky affair involving the Portu-
guese and French in 1747–1748, when one of his ships, named Fakhr
al- marākib, was seized by the French.84 In this affair, it also turned
out that Wake had close dealings with one of the prominent mer-
chants of Surat, Mulla Fakhr-ud-Din, son of the deceased Mulla
Muhammad ‘Ali.
However, if Fraser may be believed, Wake’s Surat affairs were for
the most part carried out through a favored agent, a baniyā named
Jagannathdas Laldas Parekh, himself from the third generation of a
family that had long had connections with the English Company.
Ashin Das Gupta notes that Jagannathdas’s father, Laldas Vitthaldas
“had managed the personal trade of Robert Cowan, the governor
of Bombay, and Henry Lowther, Chief of Surat, more or less as a
partner, till his death in 1732.”85 Laldas was the nephew of Bhimji
Parekh, the fi rst of his family to be appointed officially as the
Company’s broker (or wakīl) in 1662. On his death in 1686, first his
brothers and then his sons took over the broker’s post, until one of
them— a certain Vanmalidas (or Banwalidas)— entered into disputes
 OF COPRODUCTION 183

with the Company and was ruined. Laldas had then managed to re-
vive the relationship with the Company in the late 1710s, wresting
the post of broker from the great Parsi merchant family of Rustamji
Manakji, which had meanwhile come to occupy it. From this time,
a bitter rivalry had existed, to the point that one English observer in
1742 termed it “the long implacable enmity subsisting between the
Rustom and Parrack families, which may have prompted them to
very extraordinary steps of malice.”86 The fall of Henry Lowther in
1736, and John Lambton’s assumption of the post of head of the Surat
factory, had been disastrous for the Parekhs. In March 1737, they
again lost the brokerage, and Jagannathdas was arrested not long
after, while visiting Bombay. However, he fled by squeezing himself
through the porthole of an English ship near Surat and was given
Maratha protection; he then gradually rehabilitated himself in the
early 1740s, when John Horne was succeeded as governor in Bombay
by William Wake.87 In this ongoing dispute, it is clear that Fraser
saw himself as on the side of the Parsis—who he perceived as being
unfairly persecuted—while presenting Jagannathdas as little more
than a vile creature of Governor Wake. He writes:

[ Jagannathdas is] a Person quite uncapable [sic] of any Business;

Extremely Slothfull and Idle, and possessed with an inveterate
antipathy to all the substantiall & creditable Merchants who
used to frequent the Factory; he professes himself openly a
Bankrupt, has constantly a number of Dunns about him, and
neither his Word or his Bond will pass in the Bazaar or with any
Merchant even for Ten Rupees— and Yet this is the Person who
is to manage the English affairs at the Durbar. If this was done
to repay any obligation the Governour might have been under
formerly to Laldass, it was very unreasonable the Hon’ble Com-
pany or the Private Traders should pay that Debt of Gratitude,
for as everybody ought (according to an old saying) to be just
before he is generous, neither that nor any Private Recommen-
dations whatsoever can justify such a step. It is well known
what pains Jaggernaut took the years 1737 and 1738 to hurt the
Company’s Business at this place, to get their goods seized and
if possible to drive them entirely out of their settlements on
184 EUROPE’S INDIA

this side; and Governour Wake himself knows that he is no

well-wisher to their interest.88

It soon becomes clear however that Fraser has a personal axe to

grind as well. He resentfully notes that “none but Jaggernaut is now
permitted to go to the Durbar, and tho’ in the general letter it is said
that he is only to be employed on such occasions as do not require
my going, yet I am convinced the chief’s private Instructions are in
another strain.” Thus, whereas in late 1743, Fraser’s dealings at the
darbār suggest close contact with Tegh Beg Khan and his brother,
by late 1747—when the disputes on the death of that mutasaddī in
the previous year had played themselves out—Fraser was no longer
in a position to mediate between the English factory and the Mu-
ghal administration. It is not impossible that Fraser’s hostility to Ja-
gannathdas stemmed from his first stint at Surat in the 1730s, but
what is clear is that by the mid-1740s, it had reached unprecedented
heights. His contempt for the baniyā merchant is patent in passages
like the following one.

Notwithstanding Governor Wake has dignified him [ Jagan-

nathdas] with a Colonell’s Commission having made him
Commander in Chief over all the Turks, Arabs and Moors that
had been levied here last season for the Bombay Ser vice, a
Ridicu lous Mistake that could be committed by none but a
Person who had never known the Customs of India, or who had
lived so long in it that he had forgot them all. These people
would never have fought (had an occasioned [sic] offered) under
the Command of a Paultry Banian whom they are always ac-
customed and bred up to look on with contempt and pity.89

Here, Fraser effectively takes on the posture and attitudes of a

well-born Surati Muslim himself, clearly sharing in their disdain for
the “Paultry Banian.” To him, the attitude of Wake and his council
is thus additionally an insult to his own status relative to Jagan-
nathdas: “The Governour and some of his Council say I have no
Business to interfere in those Affairs, and seem to hint as if I was
only intended to be a Lacquey to his new Vackeel, who had hardly
 OF COPRODUCTION 185

sense enough to deliver a common message in proper terms. The

Mogol Governor despises him and seldom or ever will speak to him.”
Here, the critique seems to extend to Jagannathdas’s lack of etiquette
and command of courtly Persian, in contrast not only to Fraser
himself but to the Parsi entrepreneurs Naushirvanji Bomanji and
Manuchihrji (or Mancherji) Khurshedji, “the most creditable and
substantial merchants who dealt with the English.” 90 Further, in
contrast to his awkward relations with the Mughal officials, it is
suggested— quite plausibly—that Jagannathdas has close relations
with the Maratha warlords (or “ganeems,” meaning ghanīm or plun-
derer) in the area, to the point that Fraser accuses him of having had
a rival “contractor” called Lacchmidas Nagar seized by the Marathas
while on his way from Surat to Bombay.91 By the close of his letter,
Fraser thus expressly states that he has come to the end of his tether,
and he has therefore “requested of the Governour that he would give
me leave to go home overland with Mr Munro and some other
Gentlemen, who only wait for a conveyance to Bussorah.”
But Fraser’s stay in Surat would end, in reality, in far more igno-
minious circumstances. The Bombay Council held extensive delib-
erations on how to deal with him in January 1748, accusing him in
no uncertain terms of “arrogant Behaviour on many occasions to the
late chief of Surat [Hope] his superior,” as well as “contemptuous Be-
haviour and injurious Reflections on us, the President and Council.”
The view that the council put forward was that Fraser had a number
of personal prejudices, as well as private interests that impeded his
proper functioning as a Company employee. As regards the former,
the council claimed his actions showed a consistent bias against Jag-
annathdas, as well as two other baniyā merchants, Shambhudas and
Vitthal; in contrast, he always tended to favor the Parsi merchants,
Mancherji Khurshedji and Manakji Nauroji. The document con-
tinues to set out what were seen as Fraser’s deeper motivations:

And here it may not be improper to observe that Mr Fraser in-

stead of answering the good intention of the Honourable Com-
pany in sending him out for conducting their affairs at the
Durbar, has on the contrary (as it appears to us by undoubted
Information) made an ill use of that very employ to carry on
186 EUROPE’S INDIA

with Munchur, an unwarrantable intimacy with Manackchund

Duan (or the Person who transacts all public Business for the
Governor) who for his cruel oppressions in Surat has been thrice
stoned by the People of that City. And we are well assured that
those three, viz. Mr Fraser, Munchur and Monack Chund have
bought in partnership together goods belonging to the English
Merchants at such low prices as they could not possibly have
been sold at, had not other Town Merchants been intimidated
by said Duan to bid for the same.92

The conclusion of these and related reflections was that Fraser was
nothing short of a “manifest obstruction to the currency of the Hon-
ourable Company’s affairs at Surat,” since every thing he did was
“notoriously calculated to serve his own private purposes without re-
gard to Truth or the true Interest of his Employers.” It was there-
fore decided that Fraser would be suspended from his post at Surat
and ordered to Bombay “by the first opportunity.”
This version of secret motivations and private commercial cote-
ries is entirely at odds with Fraser’s own view of the matter. We learn
the details of his perspective from a “humble memorial” that he sub-
mitted to the Court of Directors of the Company after his return to
London, and which was eventually read and discussed by that body
in January 1749.93 In it, his attack widens from Wake—whom he con-
tinues to characterize as the central author of his troubles—to in-
clude Thomas Marsh, who had succeeded James Hope as head of the
Surat factory in August 1747, and who held that position until his
sudden death in early October 1748. Marsh, in Fraser’s version, was
nothing more than a “sordidly avaricious” man, whose chief concern
was that Fraser himself was making far too much money, albeit le-
gitimately, through commissions on the private trade of other Com-
pany servants. In other words, two sets of private trading networks
had come into collision, the one headed by Wake with Marsh as
its Surat-based agent, the other that of Fraser and his friends. “I
was scarcely two years settled at Surat,” writes Fraser boastfully,
“when I had the commissions from Bengall, Bombay & Madras al-
most solely in my own hands.” 94 This was too much for Marsh, a
man “whose character is too infamous to be noticed here,” the more
 OF COPRODUCTION 187

so since he and Wake had intended to establish a monopoly in cer-

tain goods like raw silk. Their response was to draw the net ever
closer around Fraser, until they eventually managed to have him sus-
pended from his position in Surat, a procedure made easy since
Wake had meanwhile managed to substitute all independently minded
men with “such as entirely depended on him.” Fraser plays upon the
pathos of his situation, claiming that after he was suspended, “the
Governor’s Resentment ran so high against him that he could not ob-
tain the least time for settling his accounts and Transactions (which
were very considerable) with the Natives, tho’ the concerns entrusted
to him by other gentlemen, and his own effects lay scattered in dif-
ferent hands.”
In the picture painted by Fraser in his memorial, the situation in
Surat was chaotic enough in these years; he speaks of it as “a Period
the most Perillous, being at a time of War and Confusion.” The ref-
erence is to the aftermath of the death of Tegh Beg Khan in Sep-
tember 1746, and the consequent struggle for the post of mutasaddī
between his brother Safdar Muhammad Khan and the bakhshī Sayyid
Mu‘in-ud-Din (or Miyan Achhan) referred to above. Miyan Achhan
had married one of the daughters of Tegh Beg Khan, and thus had a
certain degree of support from within the family; to this, he could
add the distant but significant encouragement of Nizam-ul-Mulk
Asaf Jah, and the more proximate help of Damaji Gaikwad, to whom
he agreed to give a portion of the revenues of Surat. By early 1748,
when Fraser was preparing to leave Surat in a hurry, Miyan Achhan
had thus managed with a show of force to expel Safdar Muhammad
Khan and his son Waqar Muhammad Khan, who held the qil‘adārī,
and thus gained control of the city and fort, which he was to retain
for the space of three years.
His success was partly predicated, however— and here we return
to Fraser and his troubles—on the maritime support of the chief of
the English Surat factory, and beyond him of Governor Wake. Here
is how Fraser describes matters in his “memorial” of 1748–1749.

As to the affairs of Surat, the Memorialist begs leave to repre-

sent that Mr Wake’s officiously engaging Your Honour’s Forces
in behalf of an usurper against the King of Indostan’s lawful
188 EUROPE’S INDIA

governour, by whom the English were always well and kindly

treated, has subjected the Hon’ble Company’s dear bought priv-
iledges to the Danger of Forfeiture which will require a good
deal of Skill and Prudence to prevent. And not satisfied with the
dangerous experiment in Politicks, his Emissarys have also
endeavoured to instigate the Natives to destroy the Dutch who
were prudent enough to keep entirely neuter standing only upon
their own Defence during the Troubles at Surat.95

Fraser’s political language is loaded here: for him, Mughal power and
sovereignty are entirely legitimate, and therefore only Safdar Mu-
hammad Khan can be considered to be “lawful” in his functions.
Miyan Achhan, on the other hand, is nothing but a “usurper,” who
was moreover engaged in the most sinister sort of dealings with Wake
and Marsh. These included actions directed at Fraser himself, since
his “principal Broker who transacted all his affairs, was by means of
the Governour’s Emissaries taken up and clapt into Prison by the
Usurper whom Mr Wake had assisted with the Hon’ble Company’s
Forces to turn out the Lawful Governour of Surat.” Since Fraser and
his wife—both of whom were “very ill of an Epidemic Fever that
raged in Surat”—were ejected from their residence and sent on board
a Company ship to Bombay, all of this had allegedly cost him a minor
fortune, “upwards of Four Thousand Pounds.” To this sum, Fraser
would later add a claim of £800, for “the Extraordinary Expence I
was put to in removing from Surat, living at Bombay for above eight
months without any allowance.” He would also imply more than once
in his writings that Wake’s government in Bombay was, if anything,
more tyrannical than that of any Indian ruler, citing the examples
of some Khatri merchants who had preferred to settle in Bassein
under the Marathas rather than go to Bombay, or that of a certain
Surat merchant called Muhammad Ja‘farbhai, who had decided to
avoid dealings in Bombay on account of the governor’s absolute and
arbitrary powers. Wake, Fraser concludes, has ruined “the Island of
Bombay by oppressing the Traders settled there, insomuch that sev-
eral wealthy merchants who wanted a place of security chose rather
to put themselves and their effects under the protection of the
Marattas, than that of the English at Bombay.”96
 OF COPRODUCTION 189

So far as we can gather, however, this was a battle that Fraser

eventually could not win. Wake was simply too power ful and
well- connected, and so he continued as governor of Bombay until
November 1750; it does not seem that the Court of Directors acceded
to Fraser’s request to “appoint a Committee to examine into [Wake’s]
affairs,” and their tentative conclusion by March 1749 was that the
twelve charges laid by Fraser against Wake were not proven.97 Wake
eventually appears to have died on his return voyage from India, but
his daughter Margaret inherited considerable wealth from him and
made a successful society marriage.98 Again, it is unclear whether
Fraser was able to obtain any real “Relief and Redress for having suf-
fered so considerably in his Fortune & Character,” as he requested.
In early 1750, he met Samuel Smalbroke in London, and showed him
several items from his collection of manuscripts; he also expressed
his intention to return to Scotland, and to send his goods and man-
uscripts separately there by sea. He clearly carried out his intention
shortly thereafter, settling at Easter Moniack and constructing a
“very pretty box” on his family lands there. So far as we know, em-
broiled as he came to be in quarrels on the Lovat estate, he was never
able to complete the remaining intellectual projects he outlined
to Smalbroke: the compilation of “an Antient-Persick Lexicon,” “to
Translate the Zund of Zerdusht from ye original,” and “likewise to
Translate the Væd of the Brahmans.”99 To bibliographers, he would
simply remain the author of The History of Nadir Shah.

Fraser and Nadir Shah

So what, finally, did James Fraser know of Mughal India, and its po-
litical culture, and more importantly what did he make of it? A key
element in providing an answer to this question is undoubtedly his
published text of 1742, The History of Nadir Shah. It is a hybrid work
by its author’s own admission, and includes substantial materials pro-
vided to him by other contemporaries, as well as extensive transla-
tions and copies of contemporary documents. Fraser at times just
contents himself with providing explanatory footnotes to these ma-
terials rather than intervening directly in the text, though there are
other moments when his authorial opinions appear clearly enough.
190 EUROPE’S INDIA

The work can be divided into the following sections, excluding the
appendix listing Fraser’s manuscript collection, which appears at the
end with a separate pagination.

1. “A Short History of the Hindostan Emperors of the Moghol

Race, beginning with Temur” (pages 1–62), a digest apparently
produced by Fraser himself.
2. “The State of Affairs in India before the Persian Invasion,
with the Motives that induced Nadir Shah to undertake that
Expedition” (pages 63–70); this short section was based on a
Persian text that came to Fraser from Humphrey Cole, chief of
the English factory at Patna, through the mediation of
Richard Mead.
3. “The History of Nadir Shah” (pages 71–151); this long section
apparently derives from William Cockell, not named as such
in the text but described by Fraser in his preface as “a Gen-
tleman now in England, who resided several Years in Persia,
[and] speaks that Language.”100
4. “A Journal of Nadir Shah’s Transactions in India, translated
from the Original Copy, wrote at Dehli [sic], by Mirza Zuman,
Secretary to Sirbullind Khan” (pages 152–226).
5. “A Personal Description and Character of Nadir Shah, which
I had from the Gentleman [Cockell] who favoured me with
the Account of his Exploits before his Expedition to India”
(pages 227–34).

Each one of these sections has a certain interest attached to it, and
taken as a whole they can also fruitfully be read together with the
sizeable body of materials regarding Nadir Shah’s career and expe-
dition to India. These materials included several more-or-less “of-
ficial” Persian chronicles written in the eighteenth century, such as
Mirza Muhammad Mahdi Astarabadi’s Tārīkh-i Jahāngushā-yi Nādirī
(or Tārīkh-i Nādirī) and Muhammad Kazim’s Nāma-yi ‘Ālam-ārā-yi
Nādirī, or the works of a number of other contemporary authors who
were far more critical of Nadir Shah, such as the Delhi-based Kh-
waja ‘Abdul Karim Kashmiri’s Bayān-i Wāqi‘. Partial translations of
at least two of these works had appeared already in the eighteenth
century; William Jones produced a version of Mirza Mahdi’s text in
 OF COPRODUCTION 191

French in 1770, and Francis Gladwin partially rendered Khwaja

‘Abdul Karim’s work into English in 1798.101
These translations reflect an ongoing fascination with the figure
of Nadir Shah and his meteor-like career even in the last quarter of
the eighteenth century, several decades after his death. However,
when Fraser published his work in 1742, this was not what consti-
tuted the field of competition for him. Rather, only a handful of
works existed in print, available to European readers. Among these
was Joseph de Voulton’s Notícia, which had appeared in a Portuguese
version of its French original in 1740; in the same year, there ap-
peared an anonymous text in two volumes from Amsterdam, enti-
tled Histoire de Thamas Kouli-Kan Sophi de Perse. The first volume of
this Histoire was immediately translated into English as well as Italian
(both translations appeared in London), and more complete transla-
tions appeared in both English and Spanish in 1742.102
In 1741, the printing fi rm of J. Watts near Lincoln’s Inn Fields
produced a work entitled A Genuine History of Nadir- Cha, Present
Shah or Emperor of Persia, formerly called Thamas Kouli-Kan. The work
was dedicated to Sir Matthew Decker by its editor, a certain “JM.”
Decker (1679–1749) was a director of the East India Company, a suc-
cessful merchant in his own right, as well as a writer of tracts in
defense of a form of free trade, and it would seem that the initiative
for the publication of the Genuine History came from him. The ed-
itor thus notes in his preface that “the following curious Piece of His-
tory was entrusted to my Care through Your Recommendation.”103
It was divided into two sections. The first part, for which the editor
was apparently largely responsible, was made up of a set of introduc-
tory remarks regarding the geography of Persia and India, and ge-
nealogies of the Persian and Indian (Mughal) royal families. The
second part, which dealt directly with Nadir Shah and more partic-
ularly with his invasion of India, was derived from a Dutch account
produced for Jan Albert Sichterman, the head of the Dutch East India
Company’s Bengal establishment between 1734 and 1744, and enti-
tled Verhaal wegens den Inval van den Persiaanschen Schach Nadir (which
had appeared in Amsterdam in 1740). Sichterman was an influential
man with a large network, which linked him in private trade to men
like Joseph-François Dupleix of the French Company.104 At the same
192 EUROPE’S INDIA

time, Decker had his own connections with the Netherlands, which
may be how he came by Genuine History, which he passed on to be
prepared for publication in English. Its broad narrative was a straight-
forward one, suggesting that the Mughal court had become enfee-
bled and thus vulnerable to attack on account of “a general Luxury
and Effeminacy,” as well as a certain laxity in the military arts. Symp-
tomatic of it all was the character of the Mughal ruler Muhammad
Shah, concerning whom the Genuine History has this to say:

Mamet-Cha ascended the Throne in his Infancy; upon the De-

cease of his Predecessor King Reffi-Ulkedder [sic]: The Women
in the Seraglio, among whom he was brought up, had greatly
debauched his Youth, and made him effeminate and slothful: he
was nevertheless Master of many Virtues, and his good Nature
carried him so far, that he condemned even the Guilty with Re-
luctance. He was no great Proficient in Politicks, being one of
too weak a Mind to manage the Reins of so vast a Monarchy;
accordingly every Thing ran into Confusion, and the several
Princes of the Empire acted tyranically, and without the least
Controul.105

The text of the Genuine History also contains several documents

that it claims were translations from Persian originals: letters from
Nadir Shah to two of his sons, letters exchanged between Muhammad
Shah and Nadir Shah, and so on. These were based on Dutch trans-
lations prepared for Sichterman in Bengal, but the editor made it a
point to insist that they were “genuine Letters . . . between the great
Personages, who are the Subject of the History,” and “rendered al-
most Word for Word” while retaining the “Peculiarity of the Stile”
(in Persian). The strategy was thus the familiar one of combining the
“objective” voice of the external (European) observer with the “sub-
jective” authenticity of the indigenous voice, namely of materials in
Persian.
At the same time, at least some of the readers of the Genuine His-
tory would have been aware of the multiple levels of mediation be-
tween the Persian original and the English rendering, which would
have included the production of a Dutch draft at Hughli or Patna,
 OF COPRODUCTION 193

its polishing, and its subsequent rendering into English. As a recent

analyst of the Verhaal notes, a close reading of its text suggests that
the explicitly translated Persian letters merely serve as a “prop,”
whereas the “primary source to the Verhaal is instead to be found
in the archives of the VOC in a stream of correspondence that
the Dutch factory in Hoogly received between October 1738 and
September 1739”; this correspondence, it is argued, was “written by
miscellaneous authors residing in various parts of Mughal India,”
notably a certain Sampat Ram in Delhi, as well as the rather well-
known Raja Jugal Kishor.106
The Genuine History, like the Dutch Verhaal, is not particularly
sympathetic to the Mughals, but it is not positive toward Nadir Shah
either. If the Mughals are weak and incapable, Nadir Shah for his
part is shown to be rapacious and murderous. The text proper ends
with the following passage, wherein Nadir Shah is shown departing
India for Iran (what then follows are a series of translated Persian
raqams, or letters, mostly dating from the month of Zi-Qa‘da 1151
H., or February 1739):

Every thing being thus made ready for his March, the trium-
phant Monarch took the Road to Persia, by the way of the
Province of Lahor, leaving everywhere sad Monuments of his
Cruelty and Rapine, and giving fatal Cause to the poor pil-
laged Inhabitants of that Country to think of his Name with
Terror and Abhorrence. The last News, concerning his Return,
informs us that he was actually employed in building Bridges
over the Indus, and would soon pass that River, and that thus
this Scourge of the Mogul’s Monarchy was at last to take leave
of the Indostan Empire.107

It is of some significance that Fraser’s own narrative departs from

this received wisdom in at least some notable respects. His chron-
icle of the Mughals begins, as does that in the Genuine History, with
Timur, but Fraser makes it a point to note pedantically that the great
conqueror was born in Shahr-i sabz and not Samarqand. Using his
access to the Persian histories that he has mentioned— such as
Mir Khwand’s Rauzat al- Safā’, the Wāqi‘āt-i Bāburī, the Ma’āsir-i
194 EUROPE’S INDIA

Jahāngīrī, and so on—he then proceeds to take us soberly and rap-

idly through the successive Mughal rulers, refraining from the gos-
sipy versions that the Genuine History often seems to prefer. Arriving
at Akbar, he pauses to state the following: “He was reckon’d a great
and good Prince, and was very fortunate, having in his Reign made
several Conquests, and reduced almost all India to Obedience. The
Particulars of which are to be seen in Akbarnama, a History compos’d
by his secretary and Vizir Abul Fazl, and in the Tebcat Akbar Shahi, and
Montekheb Tuarikh Bedauvni. As he was professedly fixed to no Reli-
gion himself, so he was persecutor of none.”108 In contrast, the Genuine
History, after having made an initial error on the date of Akbar’s acces-
sion (which it states was 1552), contents itself by noting that he “bears
a very high Character in History.” It goes on to mention his conquests
in Gujarat and the Deccan, as well as his building projects, but con-
cludes in its usual gossipy manner that “this Prince was killed by some
poisonous Drugs he had taken by mistake.”109 Fraser for his part makes
a point to add a note on the question of Shaikh Abu’l Fazl, whom he
had obviously been taught to venerate by his masters in Gujarat: “Abul
Fazl was the Title given to this Great Man, and signifies the Father of
Excellence. His Writings testify him to be the most learned, and the
best Writer then in the East. He was murdered by Order of Sultan
Selim, on Suspicion of being the Occasion of a Misunderstanding that
was betwixt him and the Emperor his Father. Akbar greatly lamented
his Death, and so did all who had any Regard for Letters; he having
left several Things unfinish’d. His History of the Moghol Emperors, he
carried on to the 38th Year of Akbar’s Reign.”
But Fraser was not quite done with Abu’l Fazl and Akbar. Instead,
he enters into a long detour in his text, regarding the letter drafted
by Abu’l Fazl on behalf of Akbar in 1582, and addressed either to the
“ruler of the Franks” (Farmānrawā-yi Firang) as Fraser would have
it, or to the “Frankish scholars” (dānāyān-i Firang), as some other ver-
sions of the text have it. “As I thought the Letter would not be dis-
agreeable to some of the Readers,” writes Fraser, “I have inserted a
Translation of it, in which I have kept as close to the Original as pos-
sible.” Taken, as he further notes, from “Abul Fazl’s Collection of
Letters,” this early translation of a celebrated text has passed largely
 OF COPRODUCTION 195

unnoticed by later scholars. It is a particularly polished example not

only of Abu’l Fazl’s formidable rhetorical skills, but also of a certain
type of universalistic discourse that Akbar’s court was capable of pro-
ducing in order to paper over the potentially damaging differences
between Muslims and Christians. The Hungarian orientalist Edward
Rehatsek, who published what is usually regarded as the standard
translation of this text into English in the 1880s, remarked that it
was permeated with “that spirit of enlightenment and philan-
thropy, with permeated every document issued by the great and good
Akbar,” but here he was surely making the characteristic mistake of
confounding Akbar’s somewhat malleable political stances with the
more stable intellectual position of Abu’l Fazl.110
In the course of the seventeenth century, the stature of the mīr
munshī, as Abu’l Fazl was often called, grew enormously in cer-
tain circles. The group of Kayastha and Khatri scribes in Mughal
service— men like Sujan Rai Bhandari or Nek Rai— looked up to
him not only as the ideal stylist to be followed, but as the paragon
in matters of religious balance. The early eighteenth-century chroni-
cler of the Arcot regime in southern India, Jaswant Rai “Munshi,”
lavished praise on Abu’l Fazl as “the unparalleled mole on the face
of the word and poetry, the fragrance of amber on the brow of mean-
ings new and old, the sugar-crunching parrot of the Garden of Rev-
elation, [and] the singing nightingale of the Garden of Wisdom.”111
There was equally an attempt on the part of certain sections of the
Chishti order of Sufis to appropriate him, and it is more than likely
that Fraser’s own Persian masters in Khambayat and Surat in the
1730s nudged him in this direction, suggesting a convergence be-
tween Shaikh Abu’l Fazl’s own brand of ecumenical universalism
and their preferred mode of wahdat al- wujūd, or “Unity of Being.”
We may compare two passages here on Fraser’s translation of
the 1582 letter to that produced by Rehatsek a century and a half
after Fraser.112 This will allow us to gain a better sense of Fraser’s
capacity to master and render the higher-flown end of Indo-Persian
rhetoric. It turns out that while some of the complex nuances are
rendered better by Rehatsek, Fraser does not acquit himself all that
poorly.
196 EUROPE’S INDIA
Fraser
It is well known that (with those
who have stored themselves with
Knowledge and studied Nature)
nothing in this lower World, which
is a Mirror of the spiritual one, is
preferable to Love, or more sacred
than Friendship. In that they ascribe
the Oeconomy and right Disposi-
tion of the World to Affection and
Harmony. For whatever Heart the
Sun of Love shines on, it clears the
whole Soul from the Darkness of
Mortality; and how much more is
this requisite in Princes, the good
Correspondence of whom is the
Cause of Happiness to the World
and the People therein.
And as most People being enchained
by the Bonds of Constraint and
Fashion, and regarding the Customs
of their Ancestors, Relations and
Acquaintances, without examining
the Arguments or Reasons for it,
give an implicit Faith to that
Religion, in which they have been
bred up, and remain deprived of the
Excellency of Truth, the finding of
which is the proper End of Reason;
therefore at Times, I converse with
the Learned of all Religions, and
Profit by the Discourses of each.
Rehatsek
It is not concealed and veiled from
the minds of intelligent people, who
have received the light of divine aid
and are illuminated by the rays of
wisdom and knowledge, that in this
terrestrial world, which is the
mirror of the celestial, there is
nothing that excels love and no
propensity so worthy of cultivation
as philanthropy, because the peace
of the world and the harmony of
existence are based upon friendship
and association, and in each heart
illuminated by the rays of the sun of
love, the world of the soul, or the
faculties of the mind are by them
purged of human darkness; and
much more is this case, when they
subsist between monarchs, peace
among whom implies the peace of
the world and of the denizens
thereof.
As most men are fettered by the
bonds of tradition, and by imitating
the ways followed by their fathers,
ancestors, relatives and acquain-
tances, every one continues, without
investigating the arguments and
reasons, to follow the religion in
which he was born and educated,
thus excluding himself from the
possibility of ascertaining the truth,
which is the noblest aim of the
human intellect. Therefore we
associate at convenient seasons with
learned men of all religions, and
thus derive profit from their
exquisite discourses and exalted
aspirations.
 OF COPRODUCTION 197

The next two reigns after that of Akbar, those of Jahangir and
Shahjahan, are given relatively short shrift by Fraser. He concedes
that until his imprisonment late in his period of rule, Shahjahan had
had a “successful and, till then, happy Reign,” and that “the Empire
flourished exceedingly in his Time.” In contrast, Fraser remains con-
sistently hostile to Jahangir, whom he sees as “a weak Prince, and
too much over-ruled by the beautiful Nour Jehan (or Nour Mahl),”
who had “persuaded the Emperor to break thro’ all Rules, in Order
to advance her Father, Brother, and other Relatives to the highest
Employments.” He also recounts in a footnote the underhanded
manner in which Jahangir disposed of her fi rst husband, “who was
esteemed the bravest Man in the Ser vice.”113 The rule of Aurangzeb,
on the other hand, is presented in a quite neutral manner, with the
comment that “during his Reign, which was about 50 Lunar Years,
he was constantly in the Field,” and that “the Revenues of the Em-
pire were greatly increased in his Time.” Fraser also reproduces a
translation of “Auringzebe’s last Will” or wasīyyat nāma, and merely
mentions in a note that “this Prince was very zealous, or at least pre-
tended to be so, for Mahommedanism.”114
In contrast, the editor of the Genuine History presents Aurangzeb
as an inveterate schemer and hypocrite, who first pretended to be “so
entirely devoted to Religion, as to look down with Contempt on all
secular Grandeur,” but then got rid of his rivals in the most violent
manner. He then concludes rather oddly that “by such Bloodshed,
Fraud and enormous Practices, did Aurangzebe obtain the Throne
of Indostan; when some time after, reflecting on the Methods he had
practised for the compassing his Ends, he voluntarily imposed on
himself a rigorous Abstinence, upon which he ceased to be as bloody
as before, and became mild and merciful to an excess.”115 There is
thus some reason to conjecture that the roots of the common colo-
nial and postcolonial portrayal of Aurangzeb as part fanatic and part
hypocrite can be found in such texts as the Genuine History, which
in turn derive from Eu ropean accounts of the War of Succession
of the 1650s. Fraser, on the other hand, remains faithful to the
dominant trend in the received Mughal chronicling tradition, and
sees the period of Aurangzeb as the continuation of a period of
expansion and prosperity, when the revenues of the empire went
198 EUROPE’S INDIA

from £27,500,000 at their height under Shahjahan to 12,071,876,840

dāms or £37,724,615, with the addition of Bijapur and Hyderabad
more than compensating for the loss of Balkh, Qandahar, and
Badakhshan.116
Does Fraser’s text have a view or theory then of “Mughal decline”?
To the extent that we can discern, the fi rst elements of this can be
found in his account of the reign of Jahandar Shah in the early 1710s.
To begin with, there was the matter of the monarch’s excessive
dependence on the Ira nian powerbroker Zu’lfiqar Khan, whose
support had brought him to the throne against his brothers. But
Fraser’s condemnation of Jahandar Shah in fact again follows a
well-defined strand in Mughal historiography. Thus, he writes: “He
was a weak Prince, and so foolishly fond of one of his Wives, called
Lal Koar, who was of an obscure mean Parentage, and a Singer by
profession, that he endeavoured to fill the Places of the greatest Trust
and Honour in the Empire with her base Relations.” This then led
the Barha Sayyid brothers to rise up against him, and to place Far-
rukhsiyar instead on the throne. Muzaffar Alam has shown how
the episode of Jahandar Shah’s relationship with La‘l Kunwari (or
Imtiyaz Mahal) was one that was seized upon by a certain type of
Mughal chronicler, such as Mubarakullah “Wazih” in the early
eighteenth century, in order to argue that a new— and highly
undesirable—form of social mobility had begun to manifest itself in
the empire.117 In this view, the decline of the empire was both a so-
cial and political phenomenon, for as the newly emergent élites at-
tempted to assert themselves, some of the older groups— such as the
Barha Sayyids, or Turani and Iranian families that had a long tradi-
tion of ser vice for the Mughals— saw the occasion as a chance to de-
fine a far looser structure of governance, where the provinces would
mark out their autonomy from the imperial center. In Fraser’s own
conception, the reign of Jahandar Shah in 1712–1713 thus marks a
turning point, for thereafter no Mughal ruler could be strong and
assertive. Farrukhsiyar is described as being emperor “only . . . by
name,” with all effective power in the hands of the Sayyids; Fraser
points out that after a reign of seven (in fact, six) years, Farrukhsiyar
was not merely blinded but killed (in late April 1719) after suffering
 OF COPRODUCTION 199

“a Thousand Indignities and Insults.” As for the Mughal ruler at

the time of Nadir Shah’s invasion, Muhammad Shah, he too “had
nothing, except the Name of Emperor.”
Among Fraser’s other interests was the collection of Mughal doc-
uments having to do with the East India Company. It is from one of
these that he extracts and translates the celebrated farmān granted
by Farrukhsiyar to the Company, as represented by John Surman and
Khoja Sarhad, in January 1717.118 Did he mean to link the extensive
concessions given to the Company in this text with the weakness of
Mughal rule by this time? This may be forcing the interpretation
too far. Rather, Fraser’s main preoccupation is to show how the de-
cline of the Mughal center led to the rise of the principal nefarious
actor in the scenario of the 1730s and early 1740s, namely Nizam-
ul-Mulk Asaf Jah. In his account of Farrukhsiyar’s reign, he points
out that this was in fact the elevated title given to a noble earlier called
Chin Qilij Khan, the son of the old Turani amīr Ghazi-ud-Din Khan.
In the late 1710s, Nizam-ul-Mulk had had great difficulties with the
ascendant power of the Barha Sayyids, but had then managed by the
early years of the reign of Muhammad Shah to outmaneuver them.
Further, though he had been offered the post of wazīr, he had re-
fused it, claiming—according to Fraser—that he was “a Derveish, and
not ambitious of so high a Station,” and preferring instead to remain
in the Deccan. Fraser adds:

Nizam continued at Deccan, as Soubadar of Vijapore, Hyder-

abad, Auringabad, &c. and tho’ he acknowledged himself a Sub-
ject, yet made no Remittances to Court, but appropriated the
Revenues to the maintaining of an Army, which he said was to
keep in aw the Mahrattas or Ganims, the Sahou Rajah’s Subjects
in Deccan; whom notwithstanding he permitted to plunder
and lay waste several of the King’s Provinces. They imposed
a Tribute of one quarter Part of the Revenues, which they call
Chot, in many Places, and some Parts they have taken entirely
to themselves. He well knew, that with the Mahrattas Assistance,
he could defy any Attempts that could be made against him from
Court.119
200 EUROPE’S INDIA

Fraser’s marked antipathy to Nizam-ul-Mulk possibly had more

than one source. We have already noted the great Turani amīr’s pro-
clivity to interfere in the affairs of Gujarat, and Surat more particu-
larly, which was possibly the cause of resentment in the Mughal elite
circles of Surat to which Fraser was attached. But it is also clear that
a number of the other texts that he used in his History of Nadir Shah
equally shared the same perspective. Thus the anonymous Persian
text that he acquired from Humphrey Cole notes the great rivalry
between Nizam-ul-Mulk and the court favorite Samsam-ud-Daula
Khan-i Dauran in the 1720s and 1730s, as well as the growing
contempt with which the former saw the court at Delhi, as a place
where the emperor and his chief courtiers for the most part “em-
ployed their Time in the Company of loose Women and Buffoons.”
The accusation is repeated that he frequently “entered into a Con-
cert with Rajah Sahou,” and encouraged the Marathas to attack
and plunder Malwa, Gujarat, and Gwalior.120 By the late 1730s, it is
claimed, Nizam-ul-Mulk’s sentiment against the Mughal center had
reached such a pitch that “he was resolved to revenge himself by dis-
tressing the Empire, and destroying Khandoran and his Creatures.”
He is thus alleged to have first promoted a “plot” with Qamar-ud-Din
Khan, the wazīr, and when that failed with Sa‘adat Khan Burhan-
ul-Mulk, the sūbadār of Awadh. The purpose of this plot was, so it is
claimed by Fraser, to enter into a “treacherous Correspondence” with
Nadir Shah, the relatively new and im mensely powerful Afsharid
ruler of Iran, to persuade him to become “the Instrument to dis-
tress the [Mughal] Emperor, and remove Khandoran from amongst
them.”121
Despite the portrait in profile of a seated Muhammad Shah that
adorns the frontispiece of Fraser’s History of Nadir Shah, the two
central personages in the text are Nadir Shah and Nizam-ul-Mulk. To
the former is given the role of a sort of deux ex machina; to the latter
that of inveterate schemer and fomenter of troubles for his own sin-
ister ends. The partisans of Khan-i Dauran certainly propagated this
view, as we see in texts like Muhammad Muhsin’s Jauhar-i Samsām.122
But the Persian sources used by Fraser were not entirely coherent,
nor did they emerge from a single group or faction in the Mughal
court. Fraser’s view of Nadir Shah was actually rather positive,
 Portrait of Shahjahan, from the Bodleian Libraries,
the University of Oxford, MS. Ind. Misc. d.3, fl. 177.
202 EUROPE’S INDIA

derived in good measure from the judgment of William Cockell.

No bloodthirsty tyrant or marauder, Fraser’s Nadir Shah only re-
sorts to great violence when he is himself under extreme provoca-
tion. Further, at least one of the narrative accounts that Fraser uses
emanated from the household of a former sūbadār of Gujarat in the
1720s, Mubariz-ul-Mulk Sarbuland Khan. Here was a disaffected
Iranian amīr at the end of his career, who had held posts of great im-
portance across the empire—including several major governorships—
since the time of Farrukhsiyar, but in the early 1730s had fallen out
with Khan-i Dauran and been disgraced for a time.123 The “Journal
of Nadir Shah’s Transactions in India,” which occupies a good part of
Fraser’s text, is thus anxious to contrast the disinterested wisdom
of Sarbuland Khan with the petty machinations of all other umarā’ at
the Mughal court.
The narrative of Nadir Shah’s advance into northern India and his
conquest of Delhi begins in 1738 when the Ira nian ruler was be-
sieging the fortress of Qandahar, which had put up considerable re-
sistance for over a year. As this affair was being concluded, “letters
came [for Nadir Shah] from Nizam al Muluck and Saadit Khan, in-
viting him to march towards Hindostan.” Nadir Shah expressed re-
luctance, because of the difficult terrain and river crossings, and the
considerable opposition to be expected, first from the Afghans, then
from the provincial armies at Kabul and Lahore, and finally from
the “power ful Imperial Army” itself. The conspirators managed,
however, to reassure him, and he set out with an army made up
essentially of 125,000 horsemen. As it turned out, only the Kabul gar-
rison and its commander offered him substantial resistance, which
he was able to overcome, marching on to Peshawar, which he took
after a battle with the regional governor. The Mughal court finally
showed some signs of alarm at this, but was unable to formulate a
coherent policy. An initial plan to send an army as far as Lahore was
abandoned, and instead, in early 1739 a sizeable force left the court
for “the Plains of Karnal,” where it was apparently joined by the em-
peror Muhammad Shah in the beginning of February 1739. Fraser’s
narrative includes translations of diplomatic correspondence, as well
as letters and reports sent by Sarbuland Khan to correspondents in
Gujarat. A letter addressed by Nadir Shah to the Mughal emperor,
 OF COPRODUCTION 203

and received in August 1738 (or Jumada I 1151 H.), states for example
that he may send an army to help the Mughals against the Marathas,
“the Wretches of Deccan”; but later letters demand a substantial
tribute as well as the cession of frontier provinces.124
The battle at Karnal itself, which Fraser wrongly dates to Feb-
ruary 15 (instead of February 24) 1739, is presented in two versions,
one considerably shorter than the other.125 The longer narrative has
it that the engagement began with a skirmish between some of the
Iranian vanguard and Burhan-ul-Mulk’s men. Nadir Shah is said to
have held back the bulk of his forces, only sending out a small con-
tingent of 4,000 horsemen (of whom a thousand were “harque-
busers”), and then joining them himself with another thousand elite
horsemen “to encourage and direct these Men.” In this version, then,
a mere four or five thousand horsemen inflicted considerable damage
on the massive Mughal forces, bringing them to total panic and
causing a general rout. Of the major Mughal actors, Khan-i Dauran
is said to have received “several mortal Wounds [and] was carried
back to his Quarters,” only to die a couple of days later. A second
version in Fraser’s work, based on a letter sent from the Mughal camp
(and included by Fraser in a footnote), claimed that Nadir Shah
had used as many as 50,000 horsemen, of which 2,500 were killed and
twice that number wounded. At any rate, the Mughals were forced
very quickly to sue for peace, and emissaries were sent out to deal
with Nadir Shah before Muhammad Shah himself went to see him
some days after the battle. The complex negotiations, often shrouded
in secrecy, are laid out at some length by Fraser; eventually on
March 20 (Fraser has March 8), the two rulers entered Delhi, where
Nadir Shah was formally received by the Mughal ruler in the fort.
Fraser stresses that Nadir Shah had “issued out Orders in the most
peremptory Manner to prevent the Soldiers wronging or insulting
any of the Inhabitants”; his main concern seems to have been the
expeditious collection of a tribute (or peshkash), to which end Sarbu-
land Khan was one of those engaged.
The text now takes us through the celebrated episode of the “gen-
eral massacre” (qatl-i ‘āmm) carried out by the Ira nian soldiers at
Delhi. The whole business began around noon on the tenth of Zi-
Hijja, if Fraser’s received narrative may be believed, at the grain
204 EUROPE’S INDIA

market in Delhi’s Pahar Ganj quarter.126 Here, Nadir Shah’s elite

troopers (the so-called nasaqchīs) were attempting to enforce a rela-
tively low price of ten sers of wheat for a rupee. The grain sellers ap-
parently became rather unhappy, to the point that they “assembled
the Mob, and a great many disaffected People joining them,” so that
a murderous attack was soon mounted in which a number of Iranian
soldiers were killed. The Iranians retreated hastily toward the sandy
area, or retī, between the fort and the river, but “the Mob and Tu-
mult exceeded all Bounds,” especially on account of wild rumors that
Nadir Shah himself had either been killed or taken prisoner. The vio-
lence continued all night, and early the next morning Nadir Shah
emerged from the fort on horseback, hoping to settle the matter by
imposing his presence. Fraser’s narrative still has him in a reason-
able mood, instructing his men to proceed with as little violence as
possible. He thus arrived at Raushan-ud-Daula’s mosque in the area
of the kotwālī (or city warden’s post) where he mounted a terrace to
survey the scene.
Here, matters literally exploded, when he and his companions were
not only stoned, but shot at with muskets, so that one shot “missing
him, killed one of his Officers who stood next him.” Fraser recounts
that, provoked to the extreme, Nadir Shah now ordered “a general
Slaughter to be commenced from that very Place.” Several hours of
unremitting bloodshed ensued in which “whomsoever they found in
the Wards and Houses, Streets, Allies and Shops, Great and Small,
Men and Women, they put to the Sword, even the Brute Creatures
did not escape their Fury.” Apparently, Sarbuland Khan was among
those rare notables who was able to persuade the Iranians to spare
the people in the quarter where he lived, in exchange for a cash in-
demnity. This “general slaughter,” in Fraser’s account, lasted “from
eight in the Morning till three in the Afternoon,” and it is estimated
by him that besides 400 dead Iranian soldiers, between 120,000 and
150,000 of the inhabitants of Delhi perished.127 After these hours of
intensive killing, “the Soldiers were ordered to desist, and it was pro-
claimed by Beat of Drum, that none of the Inhabitants should be
any longer molested.”
While Fraser’s account makes it clear that the violence was on a
massive scale, it is significant that he makes out that Nadir Shah only
 OF COPRODUCTION 205

acted under considerable duress. The extreme discipline of the Ira-

nian troops, who ceased the killing as soon as they were ordered, is
also stressed. Fraser’s text does not deny that “the great Number of
dead Bodies that lay about the Castle, and in the Bazars, and other
Places, caused a very offensive Stench.” But he suggests that dra-
conian clean-up operations, including mass cremations and the
dumping of bodies into the river, had been orga nized by around
March 25. Nadir Shah was now in a hurry to leave, and only con-
cerned that the principal Mughal umarā’ were dragging their feet in
rendering him the massive amounts of tribute he required. The text
suggests that there were vocal disagreements among them, with Sar-
buland Khan telling Nizam-ul-Mulk, for example, that all of this
could have been avoided if Nadir Shah had simply been paid a proper
peshkash (or tribute) at the frontier. As the weeks wore on, and the
occupying Iranian troops in Delhi grew surlier in the face of the slow
pace at which the tribute accumulated, even Fraser’s text (or that of
Mirza Zaman that he paraphrases) suggests that the complexion of
affairs turned rather ugly. While festivities were organized to mark
the marriage of Nadir Shah’s son, Nasrullah Mirza, to a Mughal
princess in early April, including “Illuminations on the Banks of the
River, and Fireworks,” anxious notables sought means to pay for the
heavy tribute that was being levied on each of their households. Some
of them, it is claimed, “left their Effects and Families behind, and
made their Escape out of the City in the best Manner they could”;
but others, less fortunate, were “very hard pressed for their Quotas
of the Peishcush, insomuch that several, to save their Credit and Rep-
utation, killed themselves.” Still others were “violently beat on the
Back and Sides,” or beaten till “Blood flowed out about their Faces
and other Parts,” or even had their ears cut off in public.128 By these
and other means, Nadir Shah and his entourage had managed by
their time of their departure from Delhi in the middle of May 1739
to collect a massive tribute in cash and kind.
And yet, what had the Mughal court learned from all this? Nadir
Shah’s departing advice to Muhammad Shah, if Fraser’s text may be
believed, was two-fold: to seize the jāgīrs (or prebendal assignmants)
of the umarā’, and instead pay them directly in cash from the cen-
tral treasury; and further, “to beware of Nizam al Muluck, whom,
206 EUROPE’S INDIA

by his Conduct, I find to be full of Cunning, and Self-Interested, and

more ambitious than becomes a Subject.” Mirza Zaman, the munshī
whose text Fraser uses and paraphrases, naturally twists all this in
favor of his own master, Sarbuland Khan. He writes that “the In-
habitants [of Delhi], from the Terror of this Calamity, like People
Possess’d, and in Fits, are quite stupified, and not yet come to them-
selves, and what is still more strange . . . seemed sorry for his [Nadir
Shah’s] going away, except Sirbullind Khan, who three Years ago,
foresaw this Calamity, and retired from public Business, dreading the
Consequence of Affairs being managed by such Omras [umarā’] as
then bore sway.”129
The reader of Fraser’s text, and its narrative sequence to the point
of Nadir Shah’s departure from Delhi in early May 1739 (a mere
three years before the text’s publication in London), might still
have entertained some ambivalent feelings about a conqueror whose
methods of extracting tribute were clearly far from tender. However,
the closing section of The History of Nadir Shah, entitled “a Personal
Description and Character of Nadir Shah,” authored by William
Cockell, is calculated to lay to rest all the reader’s doubts. For here
the author (not named by Fraser, as it happens) describes Nadir Shah
as “one of the most comely Men I ever beheld,” who is “upward of
six Foot high, well-proportion’d, of a very robust Make and Consti-
tution.” His complexion is manly, and his voice loud and com-
manding; he drinks wine in moderation, and though excessively
fond of women “yet never neglects his Business on their Account.”
His numerous other virtues are then set out one after the other.
His diet is simple and frugal; he is extremely careful with regard to his
accounts, but at the same time very generous to his soldiers; he is
“severe and strict in his Discipline,” but also merciful to minor
offenders. A gifted commander, he is never so happy as when on the
march, being possessed of a notoriously hardy constitution. Nadir
Shah, in this account, is all business during the day, but behaves
after hours in the “freest and most facetious Manner”; however, his
drinking companions are never permitted to assume the same inti-
macy during the day. Cockell goes on to praise Nadir Shah’s extraor-
dinary memory, and administrative capacities, as well as his capabili-
ties as an intrepid field general, despite which “he never received the
 OF COPRODUCTION 207

least Wound or Scar, and yet several Horses have been shot under
him.” His text, and The History of Nadir Shah itself, concludes then
with the following ringing endorsement:

I could relate many other remarkable Things that I have seen

and heard of this great Hero, whose Actions already are suffi-
cient to convince the World, that few Ages have produced his
Equal. As he has performed such Wonders when he had hardly
Money or Men, what may we not expect from him now he is
possess’d of so immense a Treasure? ‘Tis probable he may live
thirty Years longer; and in that Space of Time, if his Designs
are attended with the same Success he has hitherto met with,
to what Pitch of Grandeur may not a Man of his unbounded
Ambition and Courage arrive at?130

Nadir Shah was assassinated by members of his own entourage in

late June 1747 in Khurasan, some five years after this text was pub-
lished. The news would surely have reached James Fraser while he
was still at Surat, embroiled in his dispute with the Bombay
government.

Conclusion

Some seven years after the death of James Fraser, the up-and-coming
French orientalist and traveler Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-
Duperron found himself in Portsmouth in November  1761, while
on his return from a long voyage to India, where he had lived since
August 1755.131 Arriving on an English vessel, the Bristol, Anquetil
was somewhat disagreeably surprised to find himself a prisoner in
the context of the Seven Years’ War, despite the fact that he carried
letters of accreditation from the English Company’s Bombay
Council, which—he now noted sourly—“had no worth in England.”
A trunk containing precious books and manuscripts he had acquired
in India for the Bibliothèque du Roi was seized at Portsmouth cus-
toms, but Anquetil eventually was able to move to Wickham under
a rather loose form of arrest. Within some weeks, after he had ex-
erted influence through his connections, an order arrived ordering
208 EUROPE’S INDIA

his release. But Anquetil was determined, he states, “not to quit

England without having seen Oxford.” Arriving there via Winchester
on January 17, 1762, he made his way to the Bodleian Library, where
he was keen to consult the celebrated Zoroastrian manuscript, the
Vendidad Sadé. Once he had done so, he communicated to John
Swinton, one of his hosts, his desire “to see the manuscripts of Mr
Hyde and Mr Fraser.” He had apparently not mentioned to his hosts
that he had long followed the activities of James Fraser as a collector
in Surat. Anquetil writes that he had come to know that “a coun-
cillor at Bombay [sic], Mr Frazer, a Scotsman, known for the life that
he produced of Tamaskoulikhan, had in Surat gone in search of what
he believed he could recover of works attributed to Zoroaster. His
project succeeded in so far as he purchased two zend books, the Iz-
eschné [Yasna] and the Ieschts [Yasht], and several other Indian and
Persian manuscripts. But he could not get the priests to teach him
either zend or pehlvi, or to give him the key to the Zend-Avesta, so
that, dissatisfied with his voyage, he returned to England where he
died thereafter.”132 Anquetil for his part had been in Surat twice on
his own voyage, between mid-1758 and early 1761. In late 1758, he
was apparently told by some of the Zoroastrian dastūrs (or priests) in
the port “of the considerable sums that Mr Fraser had offered them
to get hold of pehlvi manuscripts.” He notes, however, that “the destour
Sapour [Shapur] informed me of these particularities in Surat, while
assuring me that this Englishman knew neither zend nor pehlvi, and
that he could only speak a little modern Persian.”
His hosts in Oxford seem to have brought out the worst in
Anquetil-Duperron’s competitive instincts. Introduced to Thomas
Hunt, a well-known Arabist and the Regius Professor of Hebrew, the
French orientalist seems to have made considerable efforts to show
the other how “his science was defective,” by asking him to read some
manuscript pages he had in his possession. Nevertheless, Hunt agreed
to allow him to examine a certain number of Fraser’s manuscripts at
his leisure. Anquetil writes:

The tea that we were served interrupted our conversation briefly,

and after that I went to see the manuscripts of Mr Fraser that
Doctor Hunt had placed in a large room. Even if it was light, it
 OF COPRODUCTION 209

was getting late, and I could not examine them all in detail.
Doctor Hunt showed me the principal ones, which were five
parts of the Rozot eussafa, the Schah namah with its dictionary,
the Tarikh Ttabari, the Tarikh Kaschmiri (from the most ancient
times to the conquest of that kingdom by Akbar), written by
Hossein Ben Aali of Kaschmire, the Akbar namah, the Mirat
Sekanderi containing the history of Gujarat until the conquest
of the kingdom by Akbar, a short version of the Barsour namah,
some Divans, the Zitch of Oulough Beigue, some Indian Por-
anas, a small Nammala, and three incomplete volumes of the
Mahabharat, but I saw no pehlvi book in this collection, which
might amount in all to two hundred and fifty volumes.133

Though Anquetil does not admit it, Fraser’s manuscript collection

compares quite favorably with most others that had been constituted
until that date—including Anquetil’s own. It was only on account of
the vastly transformed political conditions in India of the last third
of the eighteenth century that men like Antoine Polier and Richard
Johnson would be able to produce still more sizeable and diverse col-
lections of materials that would be lodged in the great libraries of
Britain and France.134 The framework within which they would go
on to interpret these collected materials, as well as the history of
India in general, would equally undergo substantial modifications.
A long and contentious debate has gone on now on how to eval-
uate the Enlightenment as an intellectual trend, and what it brought
to the Eu ropean comprehension of the world beyond Eu rope.135
Though a man of modest education, and imperfectly connected into
the world of high intellectual discourse of his lifetime, James Fraser
can certainly be brought into conversation with this debate. As a
collector, he sought out materials with which to study both ancient
cultures and more recent (but still geographically distant) ones; as a
writer, he attempted to portray the clash between political regimes
in the Muslim world, but without resorting—to the extent that we
can discern—to formulations such as “oriental despotism”; as an
actor in Surat, he even sought to argue for the legitimacy of Mughal
government against the illegitimate nature of the East India Com-
pany’s ambitions. If he was connected to “great men” like Alexander
210 EUROPE’S INDIA

Pope and Richard Mead, in an effort to further his fortunes and con-
solidate his estate, he also swam against the stream to an extent.
A fuller examination of the spectrum of such “minor” figures, and
not merely the somewhat inflated personages of a Montesquieu, an
Anquetil-Duperron, or a William Jones, may take us closer to a sense
of how, and in what terms precisely, Europeans experienced and com-
prehended India and the “Orient” before the age of their empire.
 4
THE TRANSITION TO COLONIAL
KNOWLEDGE

And they [the Indians] mock us, and it seems to me that they
are superior in an infi nite number of things, except with arms
in hand, to which they cannot offer resistance; nor will they
have any commerce with us, except through force.
—Florentine merchant Piero Strozzi, in Goa, to his father,
December 1510

Introduction

The world of James Fraser was one where the English East India
Company was certainly a presence, but scarcely a real power yet in
South Asia. His comportment, it may be argued, was perfectly con-
sonant with that situation, and reflected an openness to other epis-
temologies that was eminently possible when relations were not those
between conquerors and conquered. The half century after Fraser’s
death in 1754, on the other hand, witnessed a series of dramatic
changes, so that by 1800, the Company had seized control of major
territories in eastern and southern India, and was poised to make in-
roads into northern and western India as well. This chapter focuses
on the transition to colonial rule in India between the mid-eighteenth
and the early nineteenth centuries through an examination of four
contrasting European figures who were present in those times. The
method used is a variant of that in Chapter 3, and it swims against
the currents both of the fashionable distaste for “biography” as a pur-
suit of the historian, as well as the idea that the colonial (or would-
be colonial) elites are not really worthy of the historian’s attention.1
There is also some novelty to recommend the choice of figures, a
French entrepreneur and military commander, a Portuguese eccle-
siastic and inveterate maker of unfinished projects, a Franco-Swiss

211
212 EUROPE’S INDIA

adventurer who was also an avid collector of things South Asian, and
finally a Scotsman who eventually participated as an East India Com-
pany administrator in South India and Gujarat. It is not only the
career trajectories of the personages that interests us but also their
opinions, as expressed in some of these cases through quite volumi-
nous writings. Yet, none of the men concerned was a “thinker” or
theoretician of empire in the proper sense of the term; rather, all of
them were political actors and men of action, who wrote and reflected
on their actions as well as on what they saw around them. None
are quite the equivalent of an Anquetil-Duperron, an Edmund Burke,
or a James Mill, but they represent points of view that are much
more constructed in the thick of action, often somewhat incoherent,
but nonetheless interest ing.
These examples return us to the question, set out in the introduc-
tion, of whether there was any common “European” basis for un-
derstanding South Asian society in this time, or whether national
or personal understandings were sufficiently different so that it is im-
possible to speak in such terms. In other words, is it at all justified to
lump together a Scotsman, a Frenchman, a Portuguese, and a Franco-
Swiss under the common category of a “European” understanding,
or is it necessary to speak of a varied and fragmented view, mediated
by personal experience and trajectory and a whole host of other more
specific factors, whether cultural or not? What renders each of our
actors and writers the more complex is the fact that they all conceived
India not in some purely predetermined terms, but through their
dealings with local interlocutors, who were at least “native informants”
but frequently far more significant than that somewhat dismissive
category.
The balance between empirical experience and schematic con-
ceptualization in determining such views has been much debated,
with the canonical view having gone through some rather violent
oscillations in the process. The view that had come to be accepted in
the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to such works as Donald Lach’s massive
and encyclopedic, but rather naïve, opus, Asia in the Making of Europe,
was that Europeans were relatively ignorant about India in about
1500, or at any rate that they possessed forms of knowledge that
were wrapped in layers of medieval mystification. The centuries of
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 213

intensive empirical contact that followed 1500 were supposed, in this

view, not only to have peeled away the mystification and obfuscation
(thus, the inaccurate map of India presented in about 1500 in say, the
Cantino planisphere, being replaced successively by more and more
accurate representations, to take but one example), but also to have
led to the accumulation of reliable data.2 Lach (and his collabo-
rator Edwin Van Kley) thus end the first part of their third volume
(significantly subtitled “A Century of Advance”) with a claim (noted
in Chapter 2) that European activities overseas and their scholarly
production “enabled seventeenth-century European readers to obtain
a better-informed idea than previously of the real ity of Asia.”3 If
this were true of armchair thinkers in Eu rope, we must imagine
that it could only have been even truer for Eu ropeans who actually
ventured as far as India: they too must have had ever “better-informed
ideas” and “clearer images” with the passage of time, as the mists of
disinformation and misinformation cleared.
Such a Whiggish view of the articulation between information and
knowledge came under severe attack, as is well-known, in the course
of the late 1970s and 1980s, in a number of works of both a general
and specific nature. One can sense the first hesitant stirrings as early
as 1950 in the writings of Raymond Schwab, followed by such works
of the late 1970s as Mitter’s Much Maligned Monsters, with its wish
“not only to trace misrepresentations of Hindu art throughout his-
tory but, more importantly, to challenge the validity of applying
Western classical norms for appreciating Indian art.”4 Though the
best-known of such critiques is undoubtedly Edward Said’s highly
polemical work, the context of the debate can only be understood
if one absorbs the critiques that were simulta neously produced of
studies of comparative religion, ethnography, and cartography. These
critiques demonstrated that the notion that Eu ropeans in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries were innocent gatherers of infor-
mation in the world at large could simply not be sustained.
Still, in more recent times, the pendulum has swung back, as
shown by a stream of influential publications seeking, as it were, to
remake the virginity of the early modern European observer abroad,
a concession that is at times extended as far as the early colonial ad-
ministration.5 These newer writings represent the alliance of two
214 EUROPE’S INDIA

quite distinct tendencies. On the one hand, historians of colonial

India wish to defend the validity of their stock-in-trade, which is to
say the colonial archives and their contents, and hence are desirous
of pointing to the excesses of views that focus solely on the pro-
cesses by which such archives were produced. On the other hand,
historians of European ideas have over the years become naturally
somewhat anxious concerning the status of their heroes, the omni-
scient Eu ropean subjects who master the world through a series of
ever more refined tools over the early modern and modern periods.
This has naturally led to situations in which these historians argue
that the works of the second historiographical phase have led to
an unnecessary and unjustifiable denigration of positive Eu ropean
knowledge.
In order to advance in this direction, three dif ferent rhetorical
strategies have been employed in combination. The first is that of
exaggeration, and suggests that opponents of the positive view of
European knowledge of the world at large represent a defense of “rad-
ical incommensurability,” that is, the view that cultures are funda-
mentally untranslatable. Thus, any historical evidence of processes
of translation and mutual intelligibility must automatically be taken
as dealing a mortal blow to the skeptical view. A second strategy is
that of banalization, namely to argue that the relation between any
observer and social object can be thought to raise the same set of
problems of perception—why then single out the Eu ropeans and
India, if the account of a Portuguese traveler to Italy, or an Arab trav-
eler to Iran suffers from the same notional set of problem? This
view is taken to its logical conclusion in the Indian case, for example,
by arguing that even if a critique can be mounted of “European stan-
dards of historical coherence” in the sixteenth century, “Muslim
historians of India” were at least as guilty of the sins of “orientalism”
(and probably even more so) than their European counterparts. In
the view of a recent analyst of travel literature within a tradition of
a European history of ideas, whose familiarity with “Muslim” texts
is ironically entirely mediated by somewhat dated translations pro-
duced by western Orientalists, “it has . . . become obvious that there
were equally ideological biases in ‘Oriental’ Muslim views of other
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 215

oriental peoples,” with the necessary corollary being that an un-

called-for fuss has been made regarding European views of India.6
A third strategy, somewhat dif ferent in nature, consists of using the
affective argument. Many Europeans, it is argued, had an affective
relationship to non-European cultures, and even to individuals
(whether within a sexual relationship or outside of it). This affective
bond must be treated as dissolving (or at least rendering secondary)
the problem of perception mediated by, or even related to, the exer-
cise of power in all its complexity.
It is clear that a limpid explication of the relationship between per-
ception (and knowledge) and power is a difficult task, whether in the
South Asian case or elsewhere. In its simplest versions, the theorists
of a relationship between knowledge and power would posit a causal
relationship in one or the other direction: either a change in the form
and manner in which power was exercised would cause a corre-
sponding shift in the nature of the knowledge thereby produced, or
the shift in forms of knowledge would precede and somehow facili-
tate the exercise of power. Where the colonial relationship is con-
cerned, historians have tended to favor the former version, seeing
colonial conquest as producing a series of institutions (surveys, cen-
suses, the colonial police, and so on) that determine the nature of
colonial knowledge. This knowledge might in turn have an impact
on the changing nature of the institutions, but the assumption is
largely of a prior shift in the forms of the exercise of power that sets
the whole process in motion. It is of course possible to argue, and a
minority of authors have done so, that a long-term stability exists in
the terms of the production of European knowledge on India, going
back at least to the medieval period; this would be a sort of “Euro-
pean essence” in terms of the will-to-knowledge, which suffers only
minor modifications with the move from a situation of relative po-
litical parity in, say, 1700, to one of a rather unequal relationship
a  century later. In this highly contested historiography, the four
careers at hand thus help us to unravel some of threads in the larger
argument, while at the same time permitting a closer look at the
historical processes of the translation itself.
216 EUROPE’S INDIA

A Bishop “In Partibus Infidelium”

The first of the characters consider here is a Dom António José de

Noronha, whose career has hitherto remained rather obscure, de-
spite some attention devoted to it by historians of Portuguese India.7
Noronha was of Portuguese descent, born in July 1720 (probably in
Goa) to D. Francisco de Noronha and Dona Cecília Ana de Men-
eses, both sides of the family having considerable histories of ser vice
in Portuguese India. With the early death of his father in a shipwreck,
followed shortly thereafter by the death of his mother, Noronha
was placed in charge of his paternal grandmother, who entrusted
him to the Franciscans for his education. At the age of sixteen, he
received religious orders, and under the name of Frei António da
Purificação was sent to the Portuguese settlement of Mylapore (or
São Tomé), today a part of Chennai (Madras), but at that time still
independent of English control.
During the next decade and a half, Noronha was able to display his
considerable political and diplomatic skills. Though initially no more
than the vicar of the church of Nossa Senhora da Luz in Mylapore, he
began gradually to build links with the French in Pondicherry, using
the mediation of the Luso-Indian wife of the French governor Du-
pleix, Dona Joana de Castro. His activities in the Dupleix household
made him the object of considerable suspicion, both from secular Eu-
ropeans and other Catholic priests, who repeatedly demanded that
his affairs be looked into. His rise in the hierarchy, as “Visitor to the
Catholic Missions of Coromandel and Pegu” in 1747, combined with
a growing personal fortune, eventually reached an apogee in 1748.
In the context of the succession crisis in the Arcot nawwābī in the
1740s, Noronha managed to obtain an extensive parwāna (or decree)
from Chanda Sahib (one of the contestants for succession to the title
of nawwāb of Arcot) for the territories around Mylapore, and was
even named by the Portuguese Estado da Índia to the position of gov-
ernor of the city of Mylapore and its dependent villages, as well as
“director and agent of the Portuguese nation on the coast of Coro-
mandel.” This change in the status of both Noronha and Mylapore
in the latter half of 1749 called for a swift response on the part of
the English East India Company. Mylapore was attacked by an En-
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 217

glish force on the night of October 14, 1749, and after some brief
resistance, Noronha was seized and transferred as a prisoner to Ma-
dras. Despite Portuguese official protests, he was then transferred
(still a prisoner) on an English vessel to Portsmouth, and eventually
made his way to London, after being freed.
Noronha refused some offers of compensation made to him by the
English, and proceeded instead to Paris, where he was received in
the court of Louis XV and given a number of honors. Eventually
named in 1751 to the post of bishop of Halicarnassus (a notional bish-
opric that did not a fact require a residence on the part of its holder),
Noronha returned to Pondicherry in 1751 through the intercession
of the French Company, and on one of its vessels.8 But a taste for the
military life had left a mark on him after the unsuccessful defense of
Mylapore, in which he had in fact been wounded. We thus find him
not only in the role of a diplomat but an active if minor commander
allied to the French, and episodically to the Marathas as well as
Haidar ‘Ali Khan in Mysore, in the course of the late 1750s. Indeed,
after the fall of Pondicherry in January 1761, Noronha even spent a
certain period in the company of Haidar as an auxiliary commander,
receiving from him the title of Shamsher Dilawar Jang Bahadur. But
after a brief period as a free-wheeling captain, Noronha eventually
decided to return to the Portuguese territories, where he engaged in
various guerrilla campaigns in the Ponda region against the Marathas
in 1763, during the viceroyalty of D. Manuel de Saldanha, Conde da
Ega. Here is how we fi nd him described by the viceroy himself in a
letter of the period, in the context of a military campaign:

The bishop-elect of Halicarnassus was the first who passed to

those lands of Ponda, commanding the body of Sipais of the
State in order to effect the operations as I had decided from the
start, without the Estado itself being revealed in its true colours,
an action that he carried out with great freedom. His character
is more that of a soldier than of an ecclesiastic: he has a pretty
good knowledge of Asian customs and habits, he speaks the
Moorish and Maratha languages, and with the title of Nababo
added to his well-known valour, he is feared and respected all
over the Concão.9
218 EUROPE’S INDIA

Map of the settlement of São Tomé de Meliapor (1749),

by António José de Noronha, Biblioteca Pública de Évora,
Coleção Manizola, Codex 408b, 174–75.

In 1765, Noronha was named chief brigadier of the Legion of

Royal Volunteers of Ponda and general intendant of the provinces
of Ponda, Zambaulim, and Canacona. But this second hour of glory
was not destined to last much longer than that in Mylapore. Matters
took a turn for the worse with the imprisonment of the viceroy Conde
da Ega on his return to Lisbon in December 1766. A number of stri-
dent voices began to be heard in the Portuguese colony against the
strange figure of Noronha, as we see from a letter of February 1770
written to Lisbon by D. João José de Melo, member of the governing
council of Goa at that time, justifying the fact that Noronha had
been held prisoner in Fort Aguada from December 1769, in order to
prevent him from disappearing into the “most remote regions of
India.” Melo wrote: “This man is an ecclesiastic in appearance and
in his customs he is slipshod [relaxado]. His religion did not prevent
him from becoming a Nababo, in which form or disguise he has gone
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 219

about with the title of Dilavargenga, and his qualities are those of a
great lack of truthfulness and those of an incomparable aptitude for
every thing that is an intrigue, and with such qualities one usually
has a great following in this land.”10
By 1770, it had hence been decided to send Noronha back to Por-
tugal as a prisoner; on his return there, he remained some eighteen
months in prison, before being freed in April 1772. But Noronha was
not about to suffer such treatment without an adequate response.
Thus, he organized a series of petitions to the all-powerful Marquis
of Pombal while in prison, and was restored to grace and en route to
India in 1773. On his arrival in Goa in January 1774, he recovered a
good part of the lands and territories that he had disposed of before
his imprisonment, as well as his earlier position in the Legion of
Royal Volunteers. His sudden death in Goa in February 1776 brought
an end to this eighteenth-century career, of a man who it was claimed
“could manage to understand and speak seven Asian languages and
six from Eu rope, and on thirty-seven occasions had been Ambas-
sador to various Asian courts.”11
But Noronha was not merely an ecclesiastic turned man-of-action
or a mercenary captain. He was also a prolific writer, with an almost
fanatical attachment to the written word that can be seen, for example,
in such minor texts as the “Diary of the events on the voyage that
Dom António José de Noronha, Bishop of Halicarnassus, made
from the Kingdom of Portugal to the City of Goa, begun on 21st
April 1773.”12 The central part of his written work must, however, be
taken to be political, and concerns the situation in the Deccan and
southern India in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, par-
ticularly in relation to the strategic interests of the Portuguese Estado
da Índia. The three principal entities with which Noronha is con-
cerned are the Marathas, Mysore under Haidar ‘Ali, and the English
East India Company, even if a number of other actors also feature
periodically in his vision of things, notably the French Company.
Now, the position of the Estado between the 1730s and the 1760s
was undoubtedly a difficult one. After substantial losses during the
years from 1610 to 1660, the Portuguese had managed in the last de-
cades of the seventeenth century to consolidate their territories on
the west coast of India, thanks to the complex relationship between
220 EUROPE’S INDIA

the Mughals and the Marathas, which afforded them some room to
maneuver.13 However, the 1730s saw a resurgence of Maratha attacks,
culminating in the major loss of a good part of the Província do Norte
in the closing years of the decade. The response of the Estado was
somewhat slow, but consisted in building a contiguous territory
around the core of Goa between 1746 and 1784, replacing the dis-
persed and rather more strategically fragile disposition that had
existed earlier. This was what eventually led to the creation of the
so-called New Conquests, which were gained largely at the expense
of a number of Maratha chieftains in the immediate neighborhood
of Goa, and which more than trebled the area of the territory.14
Noronha’s own actions in the 1760s formed a part of this process
of consolidation, but he—like a number of other contemporaries—
undoubtedly believed that the key to containing the Maratha threat
lay in the Mysore state of Haidar ‘Ali. This is why he penned a me-
morial on Haidar ‘Ali in 1764, which he then submitted to the Conde
da Ega, entitling it a “Historical Memoir of the life of the Prince
called Aydar Aly Naique, his birth, his maxims and policies, and
the forts that he has captured, their names, of the rivers and lands
that he has conquered, of their chiefs, their customs and the reasons
for their disgrace.”15
The strategic character and information contained in this succinct
text need not detain us, since it has already been studied in some
detail by the late Narendra Krishna Sinha;16 rather, what is of interest
is the perspective that Noronha brings to bear on a subject such as
this. The text is a dense one, full of the names of princes and war-
lords of the epoch, as well as the characteristic politico-administrative
terminology which was by then shared by Mughals, Marathas, and
the rulers of Mysore. It informs us that Haidar’s parents were of
humble birth and migrant stock, but born in Kolar (just east of Ben-
galuru), and that his father died fighting for the sūbadār of Sira against
the forces of Mysore. Noronha then briefly reviews Haidar’s early
military career in Mysore, before plunging directly into a series of
details concerning the siege of Tiruchirappalli, in which Noronha
himself appears in the third person, as an actor who was at the time
very close to the Marquis of Dupleix. In the rest of the text, Noronha
makes a number of further appearances, always in the third person,
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 221

and the text consistently prefers the objective tone of the chronicler
to the seductive voice of the eyewitness. A series of descriptions of
campaigns eventually leads to a brief physical description of Haidar
(“of a good stature and full bodied, with a proud air, and a brown
complexion, thick lips, large and sparkling eyes, he does not laugh
easily, and walks with slow and affected steps, he does not trust
anyone”). We also learn that Haidar does not know to read or write
but that he has a good memory, that he has no other major vices than
wine, and that he is an enemy of the Brahmins even though he em-
ploys them in large numbers as accountants and scribes. The text
concludes that “he is very untrustworthy in regard to promises, as
has been seen, [and] he is most lascivious, for the complete satis-
faction of which he can become a tyrant, for which God will make
him pay.”
Here, as on some other occasions, Noronha’s religious inclinations
emerge to the fore, but what is of interest are the absences in the text,
especially in comparison to the title. Little that is systematic in terms
of political geography or even the fiscal resources at Haidar’s disposal
may be found here, of a sort that can easily be found in Robert Orme’s
papers under such heads as “An Account of the Revenues which
Hyder Ally received in 1767 from the different parts of his Domin-
ions into his Treasury clear of all charges of collecting.”17 It would
seem that Noronha was caught here between his natural indiscre-
tion and his political cunning,. Obviously he knew a great deal more
about Haidar ‘Ali than he could reveal in the text, on account of the
close proximity that he had enjoyed over an extended period, but
he may have felt that to say more would be to compromise his own
position. Thus having chosen the relatively dry third-person narra-
tive, he was forced into a form that he was not in fact equipped to deal
with, not possessing access to the “objective” data, whether ethno-
graphic, geographical, or statistical, that one would expect in such a
memoir.
It may be unfair to judge Noronha’s capacities from this minor text
alone. Rather, we must grapple with what is in many respects his
magnum opus, the work entitled Sistema Marcial Asiático (The Asi-
atic Martial System), dated to 1772 (when Noronha was in Lisbon),
and dedicated to the governor who had just been named to the
222 EUROPE’S INDIA

Estado da Índia, Dom José Pedro da Câmara. This work is divided

into two books and preceded by an erudite and rather obscure dedi-
cation, as well as a prologue, in which Noronha refers to the need to
attend to the “ills of a moribund and suffering Mother, who is the
sweet Pátria [Portugal],” thus suggesting that his book is a reform
tract of a sort. “Here,” he tells the reader, “you will see the system
of the Asiatics as well as the progress of arms, as much those of the
Portuguese, as of the Agarenes [those from Agra?], Maratas, and all
the other nations who inhabit that extensive Empire. In the Second
Book, I hope to invite you to continue with the same matter, where
I will show you the more modern progress that has been practised
by the same nations.”
The first book then embarks on the first of its seven chapters, a
“Brief Notice of East India, and a particular relation of the capital
of Goa, its situation, forts and fortifications,” accompanied by a set
of sketches in color showing Goa as well as some of its neighboring
fortresses. A second chapter is an account of the decline of Goa, and
a third an account of the military forces there. The fourth and fifth
chapters deal respectively with the Marathas, both the rulers of
Satara and the Peshwas, and the so-called “Prince of the Deccan,”
which is to say the Nizam. The sixth chapter deals with a line of the
Bhonsles (“Dessay Guem Saunt Bounsuló”) who rule over the area
immediately north of Goa, while the last chapter returns to deal with
Haidar ‘Ali Khan Bahadur, a veritable obsession with Noronha, as
we shall see.
The second book, which is of roughly the same length, is divided
into a mere three chapters, of which the first recounts a series of suc-
cessful campaigns that the Portuguese have carried out in India in
recent times. It is followed by a description of some of the more
impor tant ports in Asia (including Manila, but excluding Macao),
where the Portuguese currently trade. A closing section takes the
form of a synopsis, pointing to the major campaigns that have taken
place in the 1760s between the British, Marathas, Mughals, and
Haidar ‘Ali Khan, concluding in 1769, the year Noronha was arrested
prior to being sent to Portugal. The text concludes: “These were the
progress of Asiatic and English arms until the year 1769. If God gives
me life and health, I will continue the third volume for the better
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 223

instruction of the curious, which will treat of the same progress along
with the revolutions that have taken place amongst the Potentates
of Asia, which may be favourable to the State of Goa and to the es-
tablishment of its commerce.”
From this passage and others, we can see that despite its rather
curious title, the book was in fact principally intended to be a chron-
icle, with some elements of geographical description thrown in to
illustrate the places where the Portuguese resided, or where some of
the principal actions described in the text took place. The claims to
offer more information on the state of the military balance are for
the most part misleading. The fourth chapter of the first book claims
in its title to describe (among other things) “the terrestrial forces of
the Maratas, [and] the naval forces of the Maratas,” but on the latter
we hear practically nothing and, on the former, a mix of odd anec-
dotes and a description of three types of cavalry, followed by an ex-
tended excursus on the Pindaris. Noronha also insists that it was
only in the last twenty years—that is after about 1750—that some of
the Marathas had begun to carry firearms; besides “they fight without
form, and the greater part of the shots they fire are useless because
the arms are pointed in the air.”
All in all, then, most of the military forces to be found in the
Deccan can hardly be taken seriously if one is to follow Noronha’s
account, and one scarcely knows whether their military practices or
their idolatries and superstitions are more ridiculous. To the latter
he returns time and again, but most notably in a section that forms
the closing part of the chapter on the Marathas, which is entitled
“Origins of their Brahmins and some of their superstitions.” Noronha
writes:

All idolaters and principally the Brahmins observe superstitious

rites, so irrefragable are they in their inveterate customs and lu-
dicrous sect in which they live engulfed that, in order not to
deviate an iota from the law that they profess, they often lose
the chance to gain great victories and greater felicities. One of
their superstitions, and in truth the most ridiculous of all, is that
if on coming out of one of their houses or tents, someone
who is in the entourage happens to sneeze, at once, without a
224 EUROPE’S INDIA

moment’s hesitation, they turn back fearing the augury of the

misfortune that they believe will infallibly occur if they go on
with the task for which they had set out.18

Other such superstitions are noted, relating to birds or animals of

ill omen, and Noronha concludes that in general the Brahmins
are characterized by a lack of courage, which can be seen by their
conduct “in the field of battle or in the escalade of a fortress.” How-
ever, they are cunning and unprincipled negotiators and it is by this
means, rather than through their courage or military tactics, that
they have managed to advance in their political enterprises.
Noronha claims to know these political Brahmins very well, so
much so that “if I were to relate all that I have seen and heard of this
nation, it would make a substantial volume.” As for their origins, he
assures us on the basis of textual authority that they are of Jewish
descent (in fact, “many believe that they descend from the tribe of
Levi”), and that they had long resided in the Caucasus Mountains,
where they had been exiled.19 Initially prevented from attaining India
by Alexander the Great, they managed on the death of that monarch
to arrive there, and took up the pen in order to emerge as scribes
and accountants.
If Noronha’s views of the Brahmins are negative, his notion of
Islam is even blacker, as evidenced by the curious and garbled his-
tory he presents of Vijayanagara. The central figure in his account
is Ramraza, “the most powerful Emperor who has ever been seen in
that part of the world, so it is affirmed by Pedro Barreto de Resende
and Damião de Goes, in the Chrónica de El-Rey Dom Manuel.”
Noronha’s invocations of great authors are to be taken no more
literally here than elsewhere, but it is interest ing to note that his li-
brary consists largely of Portuguese authors from the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Now, it turns out that this Ramraza (based
loosely on the figure of the Vijayanagara regent Aravidu Ramaraya)
is actually descended from Indó, a descendant in the eighth genera-
tion of Adam, who had been sent to India by Noah and who remained
there as the fi rst settler; Ramraza was his direct descendant, and
ruled over the city of “Vizapur” until he was defeated by the people
of the “damned sect of Mahomed” in a battle in 1563 (or perhaps
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 225

1566, a point on which Noronha hesitates). As for Islam itself, it was

founded in the year 676, writes Noronha, at the time of the empire
of Heraclitus in a place called Sarato in Arabia, and was brought to
India by a heretical Nestorian monk called Sergio and two of his
Jewish companions, all disguised as merchants. Since they arrived
in Gujarat, “the first to be infected by this abominable and conta-
gious plague were the Gujaratis, people of Cambay.” The first great
Muslim conqueror, Giat Nosorandy, went on to found the city of
Delhi, while Ramraza was busy in his other wars. In the course of
time, Ramraza was captured by his former vassal, Nizamxa, who
went on to cut off the head of the 96-year-old monarch “without
paying attention to the reverence and respect he owed him, and for-
getting the esteem with which he had always been treated.”20
Noronha’s attempts at providing a coherent history of peninsular
India in the eighteenth century, as well as in the centuries leading
up to the establishment of the power of the Mughals and the Marathas,
must be counted, all in all, as of limited interest. If his purpose in
putting all this down on paper was to influence Portuguese policies
with respect to India (as has sometimes been suggested), one can
only wonder what readers in Lisbon made of these texts, with their
mixture of exotic place names, Old Testament references, and gar-
bled chronology. Thus, we have the fairly long account of the first
Nizam of Hyderabad, where it is claimed he died in 1743 at the age
of 107 years, and that he was an illegitimate son of one of the Mu-
ghal princes. This section of the text is one of the few where Noronha
explicitly claims to have had access to written materials in India; his
account of the battle for succession after the death of Aurangzeb (“o
Imperador Alemguir Gassy”), is, he states, based on the “chronicles
of the Mogor emperors in the Hindustani language [lingoa industana]
that I read,” among which he counts one by a certain “Saed Efandy.”21
It is thus tempting to treat Noronha as a throwback, as it were, to
an earlier epoch, an impression that is reinforced when one examines
his collection of maps and plans (he has a number of these, in-
cluding several of Mylapore alone), which do not diverge in their con-
ception from what had been executed in the 1630s by Pedro Barreto
de Resende, one of his textual references. In his use of the chronicle
form too, his real references seem to be to authors of the sixteenth
226 EUROPE’S INDIA

and seventeenth centuries such as Diogo do Couto or João de Barros,

to whom he refers time and again. As for his limited excursions into
the “ethnography” of India or into dimensions of religion, he
seems to come up constantly against his own religious training,
his desire to bring every thing back into a framework rather strictly
defi ned by the Old Testament, and his fervent and clearly expressed
dislike for both Muslims and Brahmins. In this respect, it also
easy enough to develop a contrast between Noronha and a slightly
younger writer in Portuguese, the Turin-born Carlos Julião (1740–
1811), who spent some six years in India as part of an elaborate mis-
sion on behalf of the Portuguese secretary of state, Martinho de Melo,
which took him to Brazil and China.22 Julião produced a text entitled
“Summary notice of the Gentilism in Asia,” in 107 short chapters,
containing some Sanskrit shlokas in transliteration and with a transla-
tion, a summary of the Mahābhārata and of the ten avatāras of Vishnu
(each with an accompanying colored illustration), thus continuing a
tradition of religious ethnography that can be traced back at least to
the sixteenth century, and in which the Jesuits and other religious
orders played a role of some significance. But Julião did not pertain
to this religious context, and was instead an artillery captain, with
some interest in military engineering.
Returning to Noronha, it is evident that be took himself fairly se-
riously as an historian, attempting to engage in a polemic with two
of the best-known historians of the English Company in the eigh-
teenth century, Richard Owen Cambridge and Robert Orme. In two
texts, the “Chronological Deduction” (dedicated to the Marquis of
Pombal) and the “Apologetic and Critical Manifesto,” Noronha
attempts to demonstrate how the two historians have defamed him,
and have produced a distorted view of history that is essentially de-
signed to defend English interests.23 Much of the debate centers on
the incidents in Mylapore in 1749, and the events that transpired
thereafter, and Noronha presents himself both as actor and eyewit-
ness, and as an objective historian. Neither Cambridge nor Orme
seem to have responded, and Pombal does not seem to have been
overly concerned with the anti-English views of Noronha. Certainly
by 1770, it would have been foolhardy for the Portuguese to attempt
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 227

any open opposition to the English Company in India, and Noronha’s

articulation of history with its moral condemnation of English hy-
pocrisy has had to wait over two centuries before seeing print.
Nevertheless, the case of Noronha is interest ing one for two rea-
sons. First, as distinct from the traveler or the armchair analyst, a
military and political actor such as Noronha, who was close to the
centers of power in and outside Goa, had a view of India that com-
bined a sense of realpolitik and of alliances, with a set of strongly ar-
ticulated prejudices with respect to almost all the Indian actors with
whom he was in contact. These prejudices included the notion that
most Indian armies were fundamentally incompetent, that Indians
gained ground through devious negotiations rather than on the bat-
tlefield, and that most treaties were not worth the paper they were
signed on. Yet, all this also comes inserted in a moral discourse, for
Noronha is outraged when the English behave in this fashion, sug-
gesting that he holds them to a higher standard than he does the
peshwā (Maratha prime minister) or Haidar ‘Ali. A second aspect is
Noronha’s clear desire to link the state of southern India in the
eighteenth century to a set of religious and Biblical themes of de-
generation, the terms in which he analyses Muslims and gentiles.
Here, his training as a Franciscan may have had a role to play, but as
has been remarked, some of these views were also shared by other
Europeans in eighteenth-century India. All of this, we must recall,
was written from the perspective of restoring some degree of re-
spectability to the Estado da Índia, which by the mid- eighteenth
century had been reduced to a second- or even third-rate power in
the politics of southern India.

The Vision of Monsieur Bussy

One of the concrete projects dealt with in the second part of

Noronha’s Sistema Marcial is a plan to bring together a strike force
of 1,500 Europeans in Goa, with the ultimate aim of recovering the
Northern Province, particularly Chaul and Bassein (Vasai). With the
possibility of an alliance with the one or the other side in a confl ict
between the Marathas and Haidar ‘Ali, Noronha expresses his
228 EUROPE’S INDIA

confidence that major gains can be made. His argument is pushed

along by way of analogies with other notable successes of the eigh-
teenth century, namely those of the English and French. He thus
writes:

What power does Industão have to resist 1500 Europeans in the

Portuguese camp, commanded by a perfectly experienced chief,
when with only 400 French [Charles de] Bussy laid down the
law in Deccan, and with as many Englishmen we saw Clives
[Robert Clive] conquer all Arcot and Bengal? And I do not even
have to speak of the ancient prowess that was shown by the Por-
tuguese Nation in the Orient, for it is so well-known that one
can do without narrating it again.24

Noronha was of course no particular admirer of Clive, in view of his

generalized Anglophobia, but Bussy is mentioned admiringly several
times in his diverse works. Thus, earlier in the same chapter of the
Sistema Marcial, he informs us that Bussy possesses two indispens-
able qualities, “prudence and knowledge of the lands,” and that these
qualities were in evidence “during a period of nine years when he held
a command in the Deccan, at a month’s distance from Pondicherry.”
Now the name of Bussy, together with that of Dupleix, is all-too-
familiar in the annals of French imperial historiography, where the
two represent a lost occasion when all of India might have fallen
under the tricolor rather than the Union Jack. But what concerns
us here are not Bussy’s exploits but his attitudes. How did this
mid- eighteenth century adventurer see the part of the world where
he acted on behalf of the French Company? A brief summary of
the principal stages of Bussy’s career may not be entirely out of place
here to set the stage.25 Born in February  1720, and thus some five
months before Noronha, in the village of Bucy-le-Long (not far from
Compiègne), Charles de Bussy also belonged to a family with a mili-
tary tradition, his father having been a lieutenant-colonel in the
infantry. At the age of thirteen, Bussy entered the military and served
briefly under the command of his father, until the latter’s death in
1735. Through the intercession of a powerful patron, the Comptroller-
General Philibert Orry, Bussy was enrolled in the army of the
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 229

French East India Company and departed soon after for the Indian
Ocean islands under French control. In 1741, he arrived in India it-
self, first (so it would appear) at the French factory in Mahé, and the
next year in Pondicherry. Later in the same decade, he appears to
have taken part in the Anglo-French hostilities, and he is mentioned
among those who defended Pondicherry against the English forces
in 1748. In August 1749, at the Battle of Ambur, in which the French
supported Chanda Sahib against Anwar-ud-Din Khan, the newly
nominated nawwāb of Arcot, Bussy played a role of some significance,
leading to the retreat of the Arcot forces and the eventual death of
the nawwāb. This battle, and the successful attack a year later on the
massive fort of Senji (captured by the French in September 1750),
seem to have made Bussy’s reputation and led to his nomination as
head of a French expeditionary force to the Deccan in January 1751.
The complexities of the politics of the Hyderabad state in these
years have been dealt with by a number of historians, and need not
detain us too long here. After the death of the celebrated Nizam-ul-
Mulk Asaf Jah in 1748, his successor Nasir Jang managed to reign
for only two years before being assassinated in December  1750.
Bussy’s task was thus initially to accompany a rival claimant to the
Nizamat, a certain Muzaffar Jang, with whom the French Company
had formed an alliance in 1749, in order to protect him and assure
the stability of his rule in Hyderabad. But shortly after their depar-
ture from Pondicherry for Hyderabad, Muzaffar Jang was killed in
a rebellion; Bussy then seized the occasion to nominate one of the
dead man’s brothers—Salabat Jang—sūbadār of Hyderabad. This was
undoubtedly a bold and unprecedented move, since it was normal to
await a sign from the imperial court at Delhi before making such a
claim. But emboldened by the lack of a clear reaction, Bussy went
even further, entering first Hyderabad and then Aurangabad, where
he and his entourage began to see themselves in the role of veritable
conquistadores.
A series of complex negotiations, battles and campaigns followed
over the next few years, with Bussy at times advising that the French
“pull out of this labyrinth,” but at other moments presenting strong
arguments for the need to maintain a presence in the Deccan. At
times allied with the Marathas, but at times equally engaged in
230 EUROPE’S INDIA

struggle with the peshwā, Bussy continued his actions in the Deccan
and the so-called Northern Circars (or coastal Andhra north of
Masulipatnam) even after the replacement of his superior and pro-
tector, Dupleix, who was recalled to France in 1754. By 1758, how-
ever, Bussy’s hour of glory was clearly over. Confl icts with the new
head of French military operations in India, the Franco-Irish Count
of Lally-Tollendal, made his situation ever more fragile.26 Eventu-
ally, in January 1760, in a disastrous battle at Vandavasi, Bussy was
captured by the English, who treated him, however, with much
respect.
Once the rose-colored spectacles of French imperial historiog-
raphy are taken off, it is clear that Bussy in these years was a formi-
dable warlord, but one who only tenuously felt the control of his
superiors in Pondicherry through the fi rst half of the 1750s.27 His
fi nances were assured by links to local fi nanciers or sāhukārs (as he
asserts on more than one occasion in his letters), and by the exten-
sive fi nancial network of Dupleix, who was himself no mean private
trader and entrepreneur.28 Bussy’s fi nancial shrewdness extended
to revenue farming and political negotiation, where his loyalty in
one situation or another was often available to the highest bidder.
Most remarkable is the fact that after his repatriation to France, he
managed to defend himself against the fi nancial charges that sul-
lied Dupleix’s reputation, as well as to protect himself from the
more serious charges of treason that cost Lally his life in 1766.29
This was no easy affair, as we see from a number of pamphlets that
Bussy had published in the 1760s;30 but in the same period, his so-
cial ascension came to be assured through his marriage (with the
aristocratic and politically well- connected Artémise de Choiseul
in May 1761), and his acquisition of a title, that of the Marquis of
Bussy- Castelnau.
After an absence of two decades, in the early 1780s, Bussy decided
to return to active ser vice, and was hence sent to India in order to
look to the situation there, by now reduced to far more modest di-
mensions where the French Company was concerned. Arriving in
Porto Novo in March 1783, Bussy was unable to make much of an
impression on the state of military affairs. Between 1783, and his
death in Pondicherry in early January  1785, his papers are largely
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 231

concerned with opinions on diverse projects that were proposed for

alliances with a number of powers (including—as was natural in the
epoch—the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan); in terms of concrete ac-
tion, only the expedition to Trincomalee in Sri Lanka stands out.
Like Noronha, Bussy was fundamentally a political actor, and like
the bishop he could manipulate the pen as well as the sword. Also
like his Portuguese contemporary, he held views that were not simply
the theories of a political thinker or the reflections of a traveler at
the end of a voyage; they were the concrete notions of an actor, who
also lived to a large extent by his theories. It is necessary in this con-
text to set aside a somewhat romantic construct that opposes a posi-
tive French conception of eighteenth-century India to a negative
British view;31 this opposition, which is sometimes symbolically cen-
tered on that between Anquetil-Duperron and William Jones, is in
reality hard to sustain. French travelers in seventeenth-century India,
and most notably François Bernier, could write with subtlety and
conviction of Mughal politics and social organ ization, and one is
tempted to generalize from these examples. But the world of Bussy
derived in the first place from that of Dupleix, and secondly from
his own negotiations in the Deccan; and as such these views were as
brutal as they were frank. Some months after Bussy’s departure from
Pondicherry to the Deccan, Dupleix advised him in no uncertain
terms: “You know perfectly what sort of race it is that you are dealing
with. A well-managed firmness mixed with some affability will get
you where you want.”32 But what sort of “race” was it indeed? One of
Dupleix’s preferred words to characterize his Asian interlocutors was
fourbe, meaning a perfidious or untrustworthy sort. But his views can
be found in a number of other passages. To take but one example, in
a letter to Bussy of August 22, 1752, Dupleix wrote:

The Asiatic once he has been seized by an idea, acts without the
slightest provision, but he is also dissuaded with the greatest fa-
cility and does not know how to take care of those things which
his limited intelligence has not allowed him to foresee. You
know this rabble [canaille] better than I, and you have seen how
frightened they were faced with these Marathas vagabonds.
How wonderful it will be, my dear Bussy, when you will have
232 EUROPE’S INDIA

been joined by reinforcements, and you can lay down the law to
all these races who are damned by God.33

Bussy for his part was of much the same opinion, as we see from a
letter he wrote to Dupleix, comparing the Mughals and the Marathas.
Written in late November 1751, when Bussy had somewhat recov-
ered from the astonishment that his own success had produced, he
asserted in this missive:

The long commerce that I have had with the people of the
country has taught me to know them; I could protest to you that
nothing can be based on them [viz. their trust]; perfidy and
duplicity come naturally to them, and we shall always be the
dupes in the dealings we have with them. I believe that I have
still remarked some vestiges of probity and good faith amongst
the Marates, and if one had to choose, I would trust them a little
more than the Mogols; but the surest way of all is not to trust
either the one or the other, and not get mixed up in their af-
fairs; these nations have no control, they are always willing to
sacrifice the most inviolable engagements at the altar of their
interests.34

This view, that it was best to “not get mixed up in their affairs,” was
temporary; Bussy had shifted by the next year. But while in this
mood, Bussy could declare self-righteously that “these people . . .
have no idea of the admirable subordination that reigns in the States
of Europe,” comparing this with the lack of discipline he claimed was
the rule in the political formations with which he was confronted
in the Deccan. Despite having left France at a relatively tender age,
then, Bussy believed himself to be a patriot to the hilt, and—what
is impor tant—not merely a Frenchman but a Eu ropean, as distinct
from his counterpart, the perfidious Asiatic. Thus, writing once more
to Dupleix, this time in an extensive memoir on the situation in the
Deccan in July 1753:

[To be] a man of the patria and the nation, all these words that
are so sacred amongst all other peoples, mean nothing to the
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 233

Moors compared to their private interest and the hope of per-

sonal advantage. Also all these great ideas of the honour of the
nation, of public interest, which link all the members of a state
to their sovereign and bring them together for a common cause,
all are chimeras in this land, where each individual thinks only
of himself, and only strives to extract something from the trou-
bles and revolutions that take place.35

Or again, here is what he writes in a letter dated May 20, 1754:

The intrigues that follow one another without interruption are,

so to speak, the very alimentation of the Asiatic; those which
have occupied me in these last times being no more than baga-
telles compared to the labyrinth of cabals and secret dealings
which had to be sorted out and discussed in order to establish
Salabat Jang [on the throne] and to keep him in the place that
he occupies.

In this respect, the term “Asiatic,” which also appears in the title of
Noronha’s major work, has become more significant than it had been
before, but also somewhat reduced in its coverage. Its advantage is
that it covers both “Moors” and “Gentiles” that one finds in India,
even though the former may in fact be Turkoman or Persian in
origin; but it is clearly not meant to extend to peoples elsewhere in
Asia, say in China or Japan. Once identified, the diagnostic features
of the Asiatic can be developed and dilated on, and most importantly
can form the basis of a style of politics, which is particular to India,
and certainly not that which one would use in a European context.
Thus Bussy elaborates on his notions of la politique à l’asiatique in a
letter of June 20, 1754:

Experience shows sufficiently that the Asiatic does not search

an alliance save to the extent that he sees his own advantage in
it or when he fears that this ally will become an enemy; it is
through this double viewpoint that I envisage our own [alliance],
being certain that so long as we are considered in this way,
nothing can break or even shake it. The alliance with the Raja
234 EUROPE’S INDIA

of Maïssour, who is of a rank that is clearly inferior to that of

the governor [soubab] of the Deccan, should be considered purely
on account of the interest of the sums that we claim.

We are thus pushed along by this logic into the next series of
claims, namely that this style of politics is determining, and the Eu-
ropean actor can do nothing other than simply adapt to it. For Bussy,
this is in the first place a matter of survival, for he considers himself
to be under constant threat, both on the political plane and on a more
concrete day-to-day level. This is thus a sort of “Survival Guide to
India,” rather than a sanitized artifact to read before the academies
or in the salons of Europe. A letter from Bussy in the same year, 1754,
while still in the Deccan, hence declares:

I find myself in the midst of traitors of assassins, all of whom

affect the most sincere friendship on the outside; one should al-
ways be on guard against intrigues and cabals, without letting
it be known however that one is not trusting, which would in-
dispose their spirits and render difficult any opening up on their
part. The traps that the Asiatic holds out are all the more dif-
ficult to perceive and to avoid, since they are covered by a veil,
and he claims ardently to uphold your interest when in fact he
seeks your ruin; not having anything in common, each one looks
to his own interest, and tries to rise up through struggles, through
factions, and through treason.36

A certain number of such political assassinations did work in

Bussy’s own favor of course, notably that of Salabat Jang’s inconve-
nient brother and rival, Ghazi-ud-Din, in October 1752. But what is
of interest is that Bussy’s view has neither much ethnographic depth
nor much by way of detail in terms of political economy. The view
of India is thus largely pragmatic, and the most one learns from
looking into the letters and their enclosures are the details of the rev-
enue capacity and resources of this or that area, of a sort that Léon
Moracin was able to produce, for example, for the Masulipatnam
area.37 But of the usual topoi that characterize the traveler’s account,
Bussy—as much as Noronha—has nothing to say. No scenes of satī
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 235

punctuate his letters, and the word “caste” scarcely appears. Instead,
the letters repeat a simple opposition, that between Europeans and
Asiatics, each group with its own characteristics and its own ways of
conducting itself in the political sphere.
Bussy also has another idea, this one rather fundamental, which is
simply expressed and sums up much not only of his own world but
that of the servants of the English East India Company who, a few
years later, would be engaged in amassing fortunes in Bengal and
elsewhere. In a letter to Moracin, soon after the latter had taken stock
of the situation in Masulipatnam and its environs, he expounded his
viewpoint as follows (the letter is dated November 28, 1753):

It is not to the Director and Commandant of the French colony

that I address myself but to Monsieur Moracin, an old friend,
with whom I deal in all frankness and cordiality; I pray him
[you] in both capacities to follow what I say exactly; he will see
as well as I do that I am guided by good intentions. . . . We must
set aside European usages in order to conform to those of this
land. . . . As to the surplus that good government might pro-
duce, as well as all the presents or nazers that will be made to
you, both after and during the moment when you take posses-
sion, as well as all that will be offered to you for the positions
that you can grant, and which you should not hesitate even one
instant to receive, we will divide them half and half, you and I.
I have similarly agreed with Ibrahim Khan that all that he re-
ceives by way of nazer, as well as all that exceeds the current
revenue of the province in which you will place him, will be di-
vided in three, a third for you, a third for me, and a third for
him. You should not hesitate to consider these provinces as per-
taining to me. I have explained it all to Monsieur le Marquis
Dupleix. They have been given to me, and if we do other wise,
how could I recover the considerable sums for which I am debt,
as well as those that M. Dupleix has given me?

The letter concludes “Once again, my dear friend, follow the usages
of the land, caress some, threaten occasionally, and allow everyone
to entertain hopes.”38
236 EUROPE’S INDIA

In a sense, this was the development of an earlier letter, also ad-

dressed to Moracin, in which Bussy had stated: “In the midst of as
perfidious [ fourbe] a nation as this one with which we have to deal,
if one always behaves with honesty and probity, I think one will be
duped as we will inevitably be by this race, unless we conform a
little to the usage of the country.”39 To this he had added, quoting
a verse attributed to Hanno of Carthage: “Parmi ce peuple faux, à qui
garder ma foi? C’est aux événements à disposer de moi. [Among this false
people, for whom shall I keep my faith? I’m but a victim of events.]”40
So once again we see a curious tension—the European, while keeping
his own identity intact, must nevertheless be prepared to do in India
as the Indians do.
The letter to Moracin of November 1753 was to embarrass Bussy
somewhat when it was produced in Paris in the 1760s when he was
embroiled in litigation with other parties, for it suggested a blurring
of the distinctions between the public and the private which—at least
in principle—were upheld in France in the period. But Bussy did
manage to survive unscathed, a fact that is not devoid of significance,
suggesting that the idea of ethnopolitics (where one adapted to local
circumstances, while knowing all the while who one really was) did
manage to find its partisans. As for Bussy, the European, he also in-
sisted time and again on this aspect of his identity, as much as on
the fact that he had no intention whatsoever of “dissolving” into the
place where he resided. Thus, a particularly telling example is a letter
he wrote in December 1753, while already considerably embroiled
in the affairs of the Deccan, to his friend Marion du Mersan:

As for me, if I were to follow my own inclinations and the natural

penchant that draws me towards my patria and my family, I
would be very glad to have orders from the Company to with-
draw all the troops to their factories. Even if I am decorated with
all the titles and marks of honour that the [Mughal] Emperor
can grant to the grandees of his empire, generalissimo of the
armies of the Deccan, referee between the Mogols and the
Marates, and even the title of ‘Maymarath’,41 all this means very
little to me. How much I would prefer a promenade in the Palais
Royal or the Tuileries, and a supper with two or three friends
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 237

like you, to all the vain pomp of Asiatic grandeur, of which I

have had too much, and the grave and magnificent person that
I am obliged to play and concerning which we have laughed on
occasions when we were tête-à-tête. The honour of the nation
and the interests of the Company have so far been, opposed to
my being able to enjoy such happiness, which I have so far only
been able to do in my own mind. Had I so far been less con-
cerned with the gains of the Company, I would be less sensitive
to their loss. I would only see it with the pain of a citizen who
sees his patria blind to her own interests, and willing to abandon
to others, treasures that she refuses only because she does not
know them.42

Reading Bussy then, it is clear that he is hardly the image of the

Eu ropean savant, reflecting on the difference between “Self” and
“Other”; yet he is not the pragmatic administrator either, for the few
years he spent in the Deccan were not enough for any stable form of
administration to emerge. Taking his letter together with reports
such as that of Moracin, one emerges with the impression that the
degree of French control over the areas that they had notionally been
granted by first Muzaffar Jang (after the Battle of Ambur) and then
Salabat Jang, was in fact highly superficial, no more than a sort of
glorified revenue farm. Nevertheless, the revenues were substan-
tial, as the figures for the early 1750s show, and the possibilities of
skimming money off the top were equally so.43 In 1752, for example,
French revenues in coastal Andhra amounted to Rs. 378,425, with
the Masulipatnam area accounting for the lion’s share; the next year,
1753, the total had expanded to Rs. 994,896, largely because the
district of Kondavidu had also been brought under their control.
In any event, the limited knowledge that Bussy had was enough
for him to participate in such a system, and we imagine this must
have been the case for some of his contemporaries, such as Paul Ben-
field and Robert Clive, as well.44 Certainly Bussy may have had a
smattering of spoken Persian but little else by way of textual knowl-
edge on India; the debates that so animated “intellectuals” such as
Desvaulx, Coeurdoux, or Duperron seem not to have interested him
in the least.45 To conquer India in the eighteenth century was in any
238 EUROPE’S INDIA

event no epistemological feat; but holding together the conquest was

another matter.
An interest ing summing up of Bussy, his conduct, and his proj-
ects, comes to us from a curious contemporary source: the Istanbul-
born Haji Mustafa, who arrived in India in French Company ser vice
as Dominique Lhomaca, but then converted to Islam and immersed
himself to a fair extent in Mughal culture.46 Reflecting in a compara-
tive vein on Bussy and Clive as actors, he wrote that “Mr. de Bussy
came to India, like so many others, with no fortune at all, no em-
ployment determined, no other scheme, but an undetermined desire
of raising a fortune some way or other.” He then traced Bussy’s mil-
itary career, describing him as a “superior genius” in strategic af-
fairs, who “penetrated into the latent weakness of the military and
political Government of the Moghols.” This allowed Bussy to create
nothing short of an “éclatant revolution,” as a consequence of which
“he reaped far beyond his expectation.” Bussy can moreover be ef-
fectively contrasted in his qualities to Clive, often but not always
to the advantage of the latter: “there is more nimbleness in the
Frenchman, more firmness in the Englishman, or even some stiff-
ness.” This following extended passage then more or less sums up
Mustafa’s understanding of Bussy in India, noting in passing that he
“was ever involved in a cloud of continual intrigues.”

Mr. de Bussy is a handsome tall man, looking amiable and above

the common, his whole habit bespeaks good-will and consider-
ation. The public, jealous of his prodigious prosperity, hath
taken a full revenge on him, by denying him any valor, a fun-
damental qualification in a military [man], which they expressly
omitted, in the enumeration of so many others, to which they
acknowledged his right; the private soldier, impartial judge
on that matter, and a competent observer also, his mind never
offusqued [offended, from the French offusqué] by that pre-
occupation, which men of higher ranks are liable to, renders
him justice as to the valor; for my part I admire Mr. de Bussy’s
person, without being fond of his conduct. He is possessed of
great qualities, but these are not to be confounded with great
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 239

virtues. A handsome man, a great man, and an extraordinary

genius, he is, but a very equivocal citizen.47

In short, the very qualities that Bussy usually liked to attribute to

the Indian political system, were precisely those that others attrib-
uted to him.

The Vicissitudes of Colonel Polier

We now turn to the third of our figures, Colonel Antoine-Louis-

Henri Polier, who is somewhat known to afi cionados of the early
Eu ropean manuscript collections in the West, as well as to diligent
intellectual historians of the more obscure aspects of the relationship
between the Enlightenment and Indology on the Continent.48 The
extensive Persian letter-book entitled I‘jāz-i-Arsalānī (preserved in
the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris), which Polier (together
with his amanuensis, or munshī, Kishan Sahay) produced during his
long stay in India, has been published in an abridged translation by
Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi.49 More deeply embedded within
a South Asian social and intellectual context than either Noronha
or Bussy, Polier had a rather extraordinary career, in a fascinating
milieu, which opens up a distinct set of lines of inquiry.50
The Polier family records suggest a lineage with origins dating
back to medieval times. In the twelfth century, for example, they may
be found in military engagements against the English, and a Polier
was associated with King Louis IX (St. Louis). The establishment
of one part of the Polier family in Switzerland dates, however, to the
mid-sixteenth century, and we find traces of a Jehan (Jean) Polier,
“from Ville Franche” (Rouergue) among the list of supplicants be-
fore the Syndics and Council of Geneva, on December 5, 1553.51 The
next year, 1554, Jean Polier married Catherine de la Boutière, from
Cluny-en-Maconnais.
There are two versions of Polier’s arrival in Switzerland. The one,
less probable, has it that he left France to escape religious persecution
during the last decades of the Valois monarchy. Another version,
generally deemed more probable, would have it that Polier arrived
240 EUROPE’S INDIA

Mihr Chand, “Colonel Polier watching a nautch” (1773–74), Collection of

Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan, Geneva (M160).

in Switzerland as interpreter and secretary of a French embassy to

the Swiss League.52 Soon after his marriage (and perhaps his con-
version to Protestantism), Polier left Geneva to offer his ser vices to
the Elector of the Palatinate, where in 1557 he rose to be state coun-
cilor. He seems later to have returned to Geneva, while remaining
on good terms with the French monarchy (which would clearly not
have been the case had he fled France from persecution). However,
the aftermath of the celebrated St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of
August 24, 1572 in Paris, when many Huguenots (and most promi-
nently Admiral Gaspard de Coligny) were killed with the conniv-
ance of Charles IX, seems to have changed the nature of Polier’s
relations with France. We find “Monsieur Polier, secrétaire du Roy,”
listed on May 3, 1574, among the French and foreigners who had
asked for refuge in Lausanne “on account of the massacres and per-
secutions for the Christian religion,” and in April of the following
year he was granted the status of burgher (bourgeois) in that city, where
he remained until his death in 1602.53
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 241

Jean Polier had five children, of whom the second, Jacques Po-
lier (d. 1623), in turn founded a branch of the family that is usually
called the “Bottens branch.” His son, Jean-Pierre Polier (d. 1677)
held a number of significant offices, such as lieutenant-colonel of
the militia in the Vaud region, and rose in 1655 to the position of
burgomaster of Lausanne. He equally displayed a certain literary
talent, which when combined with a mystical inclination helps to
explain the nature of his principal works on such subjects as the
Apocalypse, the Jewish notion of the imminent arrival of the Mes-
siah, and the fall of Babylon. Of the children of Jean-Pierre Polier, it
was the older son, also Jean-Pierre Polier (1670–1747), who continued
the line at Bottens. He served at Vaud, and in Prussia, and played a
role in the Swiss cantonal wars of 1712 at Villmergen, fighting for the
evangelical cantons against the Catholic ones. From his single mar-
riage with Salomé Quisard, he is reputed to have had as many as
twenty-five children, of whom some twelve are known to posterity.
Besides these children, he also left behind an unfinished set of mem-
oirs, preserved in manuscript at the Lausanne Library. His oldest
son, Jacques-Henri-Étienne Polier (b. 1700), succeeded him, and
from Jacques’s marriage with Françoise Moreau (solemnized in 1721)
was born Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier (1741–1795), who is our pri-
mary concern here.
The family of Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier may thus be charac-
terized by two tendencies. A number of members served in wars
in Eu rope, fighting in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and the Low
Countries. There was thus a fairly lively military and mercenary
heritage, even before his paternal uncle, Paul-Philippe Polier (1711–
1759), went off to serve the English East India Company in India.
At the same time, however, there was equally an intellectual heri-
tage, as we see from the case of the grandfather, and the great-grand-
father; a particularly noted intellectual was a great-uncle, Georges
Polier (1675–1759), who was a professor of Greek and moral philos-
ophy at the Lausanne Academy, later a professor of Hebrew, and
the author of a number of works of a religious nature. Of still
greater significance is a paternal uncle, Jean-Antoine-Noé Polier
(1713–1783), the brother of Paul-Philippe, who was noted as a Prot-
estant pastor, but equally as a correspondent of Voltaire and of the
242 EUROPE’S INDIA

Encyclopaedists.54 Educated at Leiden, where he defended a thesis

in 1739 comparing the purity of Arabic and Hebrew, Antoine-Noé
Polier (as he is usually known) displayed the same sustained interest
in Hebrew that had characterized earlier generations of his family.
While his relations with Voltaire were at times uncertain (Voltaire
treated him with ostensible respect, mixed with a secret contempt),
Polier’s essay on the Messiah did find a place in Voltaire’s Philosoph-
ical Dictionary, with the following quite complimentary introductory
remark (in which we may nevertheless discern a sarcastic undertone):
“This article is by Monsieur Polier of Bottens. He is the principal
pastor at Lausanne. His science equals his piety. He composed this
article for the great Encyclopaedic Dictionary, in which it was inserted.
Only a few portions were suppressed, where the examiners believed
that Catholics who were less knowledgeable and less pious than the
author could misuse them. It was received with the applause of all
wise men.”55
The most important single document that has come down to us
from Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier, of a comprehensive biographical
nature, is the personal notice that he dictated to his cousin, and which
he is said himself to have revised and corrected.56 This text was then
published by the same cousin, Marie-Élisabeth Polier (or the Cha-
noinesse de Polier, as she is usually known), in the preface to the
posthumously published text by Polier entitled Mythologie des Indous,
containing paraphrases of the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavata Purāna,
among other texts.57 A brief introduction is needed to the life and
work of the Chanoinesse in this context. Born in 1742 (and thus a
mere year younger than Polier himself), she was the daughter of his
paternal uncle Georges Polier, a colonel in the ser vice of Hanover.
Marie-Élisabeth, like her sister Jeanne-Louise-Antoinette (or
Eléonore) had literary ambitions, despite the fact that she had a re-
ligious vocation as well, as the Chanoinesse of the Reformed Order
of the Holy Sepulchre in Prussia. Bilingual in German and French,
she is noted for having published a number of translations from the
former to the latter, besides participating in a number of literary re-
views, most notably the Journal littéraire de Lausanne, which she
edited from 1793 to 1800. Named Dame of Honour at the court of
Saxe-Meiningen, she eventually died in Roudolstadt in 1817.
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 243

We are thus dealing with more than a mere scribe here, and the
suspicion may remain that Marie-Élisabeth Polier put her own lit-
erary talents to use in “improving” Polier’s text. This may explain
some of the curious inconsistencies that we find there from the very
start, where Paul-Philippe Polier is described not as commander of
the garrison at Fort St. David in Cuddalore, but of Fort William in
Calcutta.58 Thus, to take the text from its very beginning, Antoine
Polier writes:

Born at Lausanne in the Vaud country, of a family of French

origin but established and naturalised in Switzerland, I had from
my infancy conceived the desire to see Asia, and there rejoin my
uncle, who in English ser vice, was commandant of Calcutta.
Though my education had been rather neglected, I was at the
age of fifteen years quite advanced in mathematics, and besides,
I had my head full of a prodigious reading that I had undertaken,
without direction, choice, or sequence; for I had emptied shelf
after shelf from the reading cabinets established at Lausanne and
at Neufchatel, where I had been sent on a pension to the insti-
tute of Professor de Montmollin. I left it, in the year 1756, in
order to profit from an opportunity that presented itself to go
to England, from where I embarked in the year 1757 for India,
and I arrived in this land [India] in the month of June 1758, aged
seventeen years. It was in the peninsula below the Ganges, the-
atre of the war which at that time was going on between the two
rival European nations that I disembarked. Calcutta had been
besieged by the French, and the uncle whom I had the inten-
tion of joining had been killed shortly before my arrival, while
defending that place.59

This seems a rather curious view of events, for Calcutta in 1758,

after the Battle of Plassey, was not being besieged by the French;
on the other hand, Fort St. George in Madras was at this time the
center of a protracted confl ict. It appears that Marie-Élisabeth Po-
lier has introduced her own notions of India’s geography into the
text here.
The memoir then continues, rather more accurately:
244 EUROPE’S INDIA

Absolutely isolated by this event, I entered as a simple cadet in

the ser vice of the English Company, and I began my career
against the French on the coast of Orissa [Orixa], from where
we marched into Bengal to combat the Indians. These diverse
campaigns having come to a close, we returned to Patna at the
end of 1760. But the English being at war with the Schasada
[Shahzada], I was appointed as engineer in the body of the army
that was marching against the Nabab. On our return from the
campaign, I was employed as inspector of the works in which
the inactive troops were engaged, and soon after I was called
to Calcutta to fi ll the post there of assistant engineer [ingé-
nieur en second]. On arriving in that town, I was given the
general charge of all the works of fortification and, in Sep-
tember  1762, I was named Chief Engineer with the rank of
Captain. An advancement as considerable as this at the age of
twenty-one years augmented my zeal for ser vice, and filled me
with hope concerning my military career. However, at the end
of two years, a newly-arrived English officer was named to the
post that I occupied; but my superiors, while informing me of
the orders that they had received, gave such positive testimo-
nies of their satisfaction with my conduct, and the prospects
that the campaign which was about to begin against Shuja‘-ud-
Daula and the Marathas gave me such pleasure, that I little re-
gretted the post that was being taken away from me, all the
more so for I was allowed to keep my title and my rank of Engi-
neer and Captain. I thus joined the army in these two ca-
pacities. When the campaign was over, I returned to Calcutta,
where I found Milord Cleves [Lord Clive] who was preparing
his famous expedition. Promoted to the rank of Major, I joined
his army, and he gave me the command of the Cypayes, the body
of Indian troops who were a part of the second brigade; and as
he had particularly attached me to his own person and since
he honoured me with his confidence, he gave me the charge
of looking to those of the officers of his army who, unhappy
with his operations, conceived of dangerous plots to undermine
them.60
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 245

The reference is presumably to the Buxar campaign of 1764 and the

celebrated “White Mutiny” of that time; and here Polier makes a
clear reference to the first of his English patrons (of whom there were
to be a succession), namely Robert Clive. He then continues:

I had the happiness of unmaking their intrigues. The brilliant

success that this expedition had is known in Europe. In my own
case, I was so content with my position that without an express
order from the Government, I would not have changed it. But
the government, unhappy with the Chief Engineer who had re-
placed me in Calcutta, recalled me to that town and, besides
handing me back the post that I had occupied, added to it that of
the commander of the troops who formed the garrison of that
place. Being sensitive to this flattering mark of the contentment
that the military administration manifested with regard to my
ser vices, I quit the army and settled down in Calcutta, where
I awaited with confidence the brevet of Lieutenant- Colonel,
which I knew that London was ready to send me, when—instead
of receiving it—there arrived an order from the Directors of the
East India Company which held back my advancement on the
pretext that I was not born English [que je n’étais pas né anglais].
Despite the slight softening that was brought to this injustice
in allowing me to retain the posts that I was occupying, I felt it
deeply; and once the Bengal Council had unsuccessfully made
the strongest representations in my favour in order to obtain for
me the redressal of this wrong, I hesitated no more to profit
from the goodwill of Mr. Hastings, and from the credit that he
had with the Nababs, who had become the allies of the English.

Polier’s view of his own situation is thus somewhat ambiguous. He

insists that a form of xenophobia reigned at the time, not in Bengal,
but among the directors in London, who denied him his due because
“I was not born English [que je n’étais pas né anglais].” It is of minor
significance that he prefers the term “English” to “British” (britan-
nique), the latter allowing the explicit possibility of including the
Scots as well among the privileged. It seems, however, that Polier
246 EUROPE’S INDIA

does not insist overmuch here on his French origins as the reason
for his exclusion, merely his foreign birth. In the 1760s and 1770s, a
number of battles and intrigues were carried on within the English
Company over similar questions. A prominent case is that of William
Bolts, author of the celebrated Considerations on India Affairs, who
was born in Amsterdam of mixed English and German parentage.61
Ironically, at least some of Bolts’s opponents, men who accused him
with of a lack of “patriotism,” were themselves of Dutch descent, as
was the case with his archenemy Harry Verelst, as also Henry Vansit-
tart. In the case of Polier, while being a Huguenot of French origin,
we have seen that his family was very closely involved with German
courtly life in the period, not least of all in Hanover, the place of
origin of the ruling monarchs of England at the time. Nevertheless,
the “pretext,” as he himself puts it, of foreign origins was available to
be used against him.
Polier’s situation may also have been rather more complex in this
regard than he lets on in his autobiographical narrative. The Comte
du Modave, in his account of this period, does mention him in the
context of a curious episode, about a French Company official, Jean-
Baptiste Chevalier, who managed to get hold of confidential plans
detailing the defenses of Fort William in Calcutta. As Modave notes:

Here is the manner in which Monsieur Chevalier procured an

exact plan of this place [Calcutta]. There was in the ser vice of
the English Company a Swiss officer called Major Polier. He is
a man of merit, full of honour and probity, and who has some
knowledge of geometry and fortifications. He was at that time
at the fort of Calcuta, with the charge of making up its plans
and elevations. Major Polier likes good company and all honest
men are well-received at his home. Monsieur Chevalier availed,
or rather abused, of this facility and, by means of a Frenchman
who frequented the house of Major Polier, he corrupted a mes-
tizo who was copying these plans and these elevations under the
direction of the Major. A small sum of money was enough to
settle the matter. The wretch betrayed his master and his duty,
and handed over all the papers that were in his charge to Mon-
sieur Chevalier. The governor of Chandernagore applauded this
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 247

action like a victory, without thinking that those who engage

others to commit a perfidious act share the shame that is at-
tached to such a dishonest act, in the view of honest men.62

Chevalier’s path was to cross that of Polier on more than one oc-
casion. Somewhat earlier, between April and November 1763, the
French Company official (and future governor of Chandernagore)
had found himself in contact with the same personages who were to
play a major role in Polier’s life in north India, while paying a visit
to Faizabad, Agra, and Allahabad. Chevalier has left behind a brief
account of these dealings in his memoirs, though he unfortunately
does not mention Polier.63 Other Frenchmen, notably René Madec
and Jean-Baptiste Gentil, were present in Hindustan in these years,
and were engaged in complex dealings with the successors to the
Mughals, as well as the Mughal court itself.64 All these men have
left behind more or less elaborate accounts, and in a number of cases
we are aware of contacts, and rivalries between them, as well as that
between Polier and his French contemporaries.
Perhaps the most celebrated of those who visited India in these
years, and who left behind an account thereof, was a personage of
a rather dif ferent order, a voyager and intellectual, rather than
an administrator, a mercenary, or a practical man (as were Gentil,
Madec, and Chevalier). This was the famous Abraham Hyacinthe
Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805), born the son of a grocer in Paris,
but then able to become a student of Paris University, and a sometime
disciple of the Jansenists. In February  1755 (shortly before Polier),
Anquetil departed Europe for India, with the express intention of
mounting an antiquarian expedition in search of ancient manuscripts,
which he hoped to translate by learning the relevant languages in
India. In early August 1755, he arrived at Pondicherry, and the fol-
lowing year made his way to Bengal. Forced to leave Chandernagore
when the place was taken by the English Company on March 23,
1757, he then returned south, making his way first to Mahé, then to
Goa, and eventually to Surat, in early May 1758. Here he remained
until March 1761, in close contact with the Parsis there, during a pe-
riod of some political turmoil for the French, with Pondicherry it-
self falling to the English Company on January 18, 1761. He was then
248 EUROPE’S INDIA

taken back to England with a number of French prisoners, and after

a brief visit to Oxford (where he made it a point to challenge the pro-
fessors on their knowledge of ancient and modern Persian), An-
quetil returned to Paris in March 1762.65
Anquetil is, curiously enough, the key to at least some aspects of
how Polier’s late career as an Orientalist must be read, precisely
because he is so largely absent from Polier’s narrative. Unlike Gentil,
who maintained very close contacts with Anquetil (and to an extent
with the Comte de Buffon), Polier preferred— despite the fact of his
having been, in his own view, unjustly treated by the directors of the
East India Company—to work through a series of English patrons,
among them Clive and then Hastings. Gentil (1726–1799) had left
France in 1752, to serve as an infantry ensign in Pondicherry, and
returned to his motherland only in August 1777. When he did so,
he at once addressed Anquetil, asking him to intervene in order to
obtain a pension to allow himself and his family to subsist. Earlier,
while spending twelve years at Faizabad (under the patronage of
Nawwab Shuja‘-ud-Daula), he had been encouraged by Anquetil to
search out manuscripts of Indian texts, including the Upanishads, of
which Anquetil was to publish a Latin translation at Strasbourg in
1801.66 In fact, Gentil had sought out the Persian translation (enti-
tled Sirr-i-Akbar) made of the Upanishad by the Mughal prince Dara
Shukoh in the seventeenth century, for his patron’s use.
Until his departure for Chandernagore on February  27, 1775,
Gentil represented French interests in Faizabad, and at the Mughal
court, and was, from 1770 to 1771, a captain in the French ser vice as
well as a holder of the Cross of St. Louis. Like Polier, he had a title
from Shuja‘-ud-Daula, namely that of Mudabbir- ul- mulk Rafi‘- ud-
Daula Gentil Bahādur Nāzim-i-Jang, as well as revenues amounting
to 50,000 livres in the form of a jāgīr (or revenue assignment). The
complicity between men like Gentil and Polier (and somewhat later,
Polier and Claude Martin), ostensibly representing rival powers, but
held together by networks of sociability and the transmission of
knowledge is altogether fascinating. Both were substantially inter-
ested not only in manuscript and miniature collection, but equally
in cartography and in accumulating gazetteer-like information on
the Gangetic plain that had a strategic significance in the epoch. As
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 249

early as 1770, Gentil had supervised the production of a manuscript

atlas of the chief provinces of the Mughal empire in north India,
using information drawn in part from Abu’l Fazl’s Ā’īn-i-Akbarī.67
On his return to France, he wrote his Mémoires sur l’Indoustan, which
were published much later (in 1822) after having been reworked by
his son. But, far earlier, in 1778, on the occasion of his audience with
Louis XVI at Versailles, Gentil presented to the monarch a summary
history of India (the Abrégé historique des souverains de l’Indoustan),
based in large measure on the early seventeenth-century Persian
chronicle of Muhammad Qasim Hindushah, called “Firishta.” At the
level of their life-styles, however, some apparent differences existed
between the two. The Catholic Gentil, born at Bagnols-sur-Cèze,
married a Luso-Indian named Teresa Velho (the great-niece of the
celebrated Dona Juliana Dias de Castro), and returned with her,
his brother-in-law, and his mother-in-law, Lucia Mendes Velho to
France.
Polier, as we know, chose a rather dif ferent route. We have left
his narrative while he was still in Calcutta; he now goes on to detail
his arrival in Awadh, and his growing closeness to the nawwābs there,
as well as his dealings with the powerful figure of the warlord, Najaf
Khan. Here is how he describes his entry into Awadh:

Thus, I accepted a post of architect and engineer that he [Hast-

ings] procured for me with Soujah Aldowla [Shuja‘-ud-Daula],
who was looking for an Eu ropean who was capable of taking
charge of the buildings and fortifications that he was proposing
to make in his states. I thus quit Calcutta, to go to Feizabad, resi-
dence of this Nabab and, on establishing myself there, I took
on the customs and the usages of the Indians with whom I
lived.68

Having ostensibly “gone native” then, Polier found himself em-

ployed in the wars and skirmishes that occupied North India at that
time, in which the Jats, the Sikhs, the Afghans, as well as the Mu-
ghals were all involved. These were troubles that considerably inter-
ested the English in Calcutta as well, and we know that they were
supplied considerable information on these questions by the Jesuit
Page from a Polier album, showing an unknown Mughal dignitary. Musée
National des Arts Asiatiques, 13-510863 / MA 12498. Photo © RMN-Grand
Palais (Musée Guimet, Paris) / Thierry Ollivier.
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 251

François-Xavier Wendel, who in the late 1760s wrote a series of

confidential memoirs on the Jats, the Sikhs, and the Pathans for
Brigadier- General Richard Smith in Calcutta.69 But, once more,
Polier rather simplifies a complex situation. In fact, Hastings sent
Polier to Awadh in 1773 (in the former’s own words) notionally “to
direct the construction of some Buildings and compleat the works
of his [Shuja‘-ud-Daula’s] new Town of Fyzabad,” but also to act as
surveyor there, within the ambit of the project that the Surveyor-
General James Rennell had begun in Awadh that year.70 It is another
matter, as a recent historian puts it, that “Polier disappointed both
Hastings and Rennell” in this matter, and that two years after his
arrival in Awadh he had still not sent the reports he had promised,
nor done much more than help prepare the “Skeleton” of a map of
the area.71 We know that Rennell had finished his map of Bihar and
Bengal by 1776, and extended it up to Delhi by the following year.
The extent to which Polier contributed to the published map of India
that Rennell produced in 1782, on his return to London, remains
open to question at present.72

Polier, Adventurer, and Collector

It may be suspected that Polier had lost enthusiasm in these years

for Company ser vice and was more interested in building his own
fortune. As he put it in a statement to the Bengal Council (of Feb-
ruary 1775), “I set off [for Awadh] with the pleasing conceit . . . that
the few years I had to spend in this Country would pass in Tran-
quillity of mind and that I had at last a Chance of revisiting Eu rope
with a Competent Mediocrity [of money].”73 But one of the other
reasons for Polier’s inability to be as active a collaborator as Rennell
might have wanted was his activity as military commander. Here
then is how Polier describes his own involvement in the events that
followed:

The warrior temper of the prince in whose ser vice I had entered
did not permit him to remain tranquil for any length of time in
his own country. He thus took me along with him on an ex-
pedition that he was conducting against other Indian princes.
252 EUROPE’S INDIA

A short while afterwards, since Najafs Kan [Najaf Khan], his

ally, to whom he had given troops in order to conquer the city
of Agra, sent him word that the siege was being dragged out for
lack of officers of genius, he ordered me to go there. When I
arrived on the spot, Najafs Kan handed me the command of the
besieging troops, and I pressed on the works with such vigour
that at the end of twenty days the town surrendered; after which,
I rejoined my Nabab and continued the campaign with him.74

The lack of modesty aside, this passage is significant as the first in-
stance of Polier’s participation in the up-country wars, for a party
other than the European Companies. But he then goes on to note
his divided loyalties at this time:

Even though I was in his [Shuja‘-ud-Daula’s] ser vice, I still was

in that of the Company too, and the confidence that Soujah Al-
dowla reposed in me excited the jealousy of an English com-
mander who, believing that I had more credit with that prince
than I in fact did, intrigued in such a fashion with the Governor-
General of India that he sent me an order to quit the army of
the Nabab and to return to Feizabad.75 I obeyed. Once the cam-
paign was over, the Nabab returned as well to his residence,
attained by the malady that was to claim his life two months
later [ January 1775]. However, that event brought no change in
my fortunes, for his son and successor Azeph Aldowla [Asaf-ud-
Daula] confirmed me in my employment. I was enjoying my
position with security and tranquillity when the renewal of the
General Council of Administration once more brought changes
to it. The greater part of the new members were strongly against
Mr. Hasting, I owed him the posts that I held, and since they
believed that I was entirely devoted to his interests, they took
such umbrage at the position that I occupied that, by a majority
of votes, they recalled me to Calcutta without even according
me the time that was needed for the arrangement of my affairs
in such a move. It was necessary to obey, but on arriving in
Calcutta and seeing that after ten years of ser vice I could
obtain neither favour nor justice from these Gentlemen, I re-
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 253

signed from the ser vice of the Company in the month of

November  1775. Free from my responsibilities, I returned to
my home in Feizabad, where I was now solely concerned with
my own affairs, for the Nabab Azeph Aldowla, under the influ-
ence of the agents of the General Council, had deprived me of
my posts; and soon after the said Council, abusing its power,
went on to force him to send me an order asking me to quit
his Estates.76

This brings us to the period when Polier quits Awadh for Delhi
and the direct ser vice of the Mughal court, which is not the central
concern of the Persian letters in the I‘jāz-i-Arsalānī. Nevertheless, it
may be worthwhile to pursue his account to its close, in order to
render his career and its multiple phases rather more coherent. We
have seen the young military engineer in the English Company’s
campaigns in Orissa, Bihar, and Bengal at the side of Clive; we have
seen the “Indianized Polier,” acting in part at the behest of Hastings
and Rennell, but also on his own account, in Awadh and Agra. The
next phase of his career takes him to seek the patronage of General
Sir Eyre Coote (1726–1783), for whom he puts together a form of
“military ethnography,” relating to the major powers in north India
in the very end of the 1770s.77 Then, at last, after the arrival of Wil-
liam Jones in Calcutta in 1783, he would turn his talents to becoming
an “Orientalist,” before returning to Europe. His account of his tran-
sition to direct Mughal ser vice thus resumes as follows:

Pursued thus by the majority of this iniquitous administration

[at Calcutta], several reasons that it would be pointless to detail
caused me to seek refuge in Delhi. I was already known to the
Emperor since the year 1761. I offered him my ser vices, and I
not only received the most flattering welcome from His Maj-
esty, but he placed me at the head of a corps of 7,000 men with
the rank and title of Omrah, adding to this favour the gift and
property of the district of Khair, a considerable fief which,
compensating for the losses that I had incurred on account of
my precipitate departure from Faizabad, even allowed me to
establish myself at Dehly in an agreeable fashion. Since my
254 EUROPE’S INDIA

employment attached me to the court, and to the suite of the

Emperor, I accompanied him on several expeditions that he
conducted against his rebel subjects; they had happy out-
comes, and His Majesty on his return to Dehly wishing to rec-
ognise my ser vices and compensate me for the expenses that
had been occasioned on these diverse campaigns, granted me a
second jaghuir, or fief, belonging to the Crown and very con-
siderable both by the extent of its territories and the number of
vassals therein; but since they did not wish to recognise my au-
thority, I was obliged to make war on them on my own account
and I sent a large detachment of the troops under my orders on
this expedition. Either on account of his incapacity or his ill-
luck, the officer who commanded them—far from having the
success of which he had been certain—was forced back, his body
of troops defeated, and he himself lost his life in this unhappy
affair. I still made some attempts to force the insurgents to
submit, but I came up against so many obstacles, and each new
enterprise brought forth such expense, that finding such a pre-
carious possession not worthwhile, I abandoned it, and content
with those that I already had, I continued in my ser vice with the
Emperor.78

Polier’s transition from Awadh to Delhi is confirmed by the Comte

du Modave, at that time present in northern India. In any entry for
the months of March to April 1776, Modave notes the passage of
Major Polier through Agra, en route to Delhi, and adds a brief, rather
complimentary biographical sketch:

He is an officer of merit, and a truly sound man [ fort homme de

bien]. He comes from a family that originates from Poitou, but
that has been long settled at Lausanne. He had been sent to Fez-
abad to reside with Sujah-daulat, whose affection and confi-
dence he had gained. The changes that occurred in the English
administration of Bengal were not favourable to Major Polier.
General Claverings sent him an order to return to Calcutta. It
was only with infinite pains that he was able to obtain permis-
sion to return to Fez-abad to put his affairs in order. He was
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 255

obliged to pass so many travails and unpleasantness that he

decided to enter into Indoustan [il prit le parti de passer dans
l’Indoustan], having decided to remain there until the represen-
tations that had been made in England concerning the conduct
of General Claverings had re-established the old order in the
administration of Bengal. This officer had acquired a consider-
able fortune from the advantages that Sujah-daulat had afforded
him; but he had equally gone on spending it, so that he was
in some difficulties to survive. He was very well received by the
Emperor, to whom he was known from long date. All the ca-
resses that were possible were made to him, but he could push
matters no further, and was obliged to sell the jewels and rarities
that he had gathered together in the times of his good fortune at
Fez-abad one after the other. The Padcha [at last] sent him a
paravana for the possession of a jaguir that he ceded to him.79

Modave goes on to note that Najaf Khan had then impeded Polier
from acceding to his jāgīr, mainly because he was piqued at the fact
that Polier had approached the emperor without passing first through
him. He also lavishes further compliments on Polier, who he claims
helped him a good deal while he was at Delhi (unlike René Madec,
to whom Modave is largely hostile in his account).
Polier’s presence in these years at the court of Shah ‘Alam II would
permit him to act as a precious source of information in the years
that were to follow. His remarks on the Mughal emperor in this
memoir are short, and predictably dismissive:

This prince, good[-hearted] to the point of weakness, had a

Prime Minister so avid for authority and riches, and who used
his influence on the spirit of Scha Alow for the sole purpose of
distancing him from the servants who were truly attached to
him, and instead surrounded him with his own creatures. The
irritation that this conduct inspired in all the Nababs who
were to be found at the court, and particularly in Najafs Kan,
the most important from amongst them, occasioned so many
cabals and intrigues that it was easy to predict the events that
were to result from it.
256 EUROPE’S INDIA

Meanwhile, Polier had not forgotten his earlier attachment to the

Company, and obviously kept his ear to the ground for news from
Calcutta and London. It was with some relief that he heard that the
star of Hastings was once more on the ascendant, after the gloomy
phase that he described earlier:

I had learnt that the General Council of Administration, in its

latest renewal, was now composed in the majority of its mem-
bers of individuals who were as well disposed to Mr. Hasting as
those of the preceding Council had been against him; a circum-
stance that made me hope that I could, on entering once more
into the dependence of the Company, manage to terminate
those private affairs that I had left at Faizabad. I occupied my-
self with the requisite steps towards my intention, when the
arrival in India of General Cootes facilitated it. This worthy
officer had known me for a long time, and I had communicated
several historical memoirs concerning the diverse provinces of
North-West India to him. He honoured me with his concern,
occupied himself with my interests, and the English Company
could not refuse him my recall. I obtained permission from the
Emperor to accompany this general to Benares, where I stayed
with him during the entire period of his sojourn in those prov-
inces, and by his intercession, I found myself reintegrated with
the Nabab Azeph Aldowla in the posts that the mistrust of the
Company had caused me to lose.80

We thus have the third in the series of patrons that Polier chooses
to reveal to us, all of them prominent men in the administration and
military hierarchy of the Company in northern India. Polier is again
a little disingenuous here, for he does not tell us that he had hedged
his bets and maintained contacts (possibly through his friend Claude
Martin) with Sir Philip Francis, the chief rival of Warren Hastings
in the Bengal Council between 1774 and 1780. It was thus Francis
who, before his departure from India in 1780 (the year when he
fought his celebrated duel with Hastings), arranged for permission
to be given for Polier to return to Awadh as architect and engineer
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 257

to the nawwāb; and Polier, for his part, purchased miniatures of the
Mughal rulers for Francis’s personal collection.81 But since Warren
Hastings remained governor general until 1785, Polier continued to
entertain close contacts with him as well, the more so since Hast-
ings became the inadvertent cause of a new set of problems that
Polier came to face. This resulted in part from changes at the Mughal
court, related in part to the growing dominance of Najaf Khan there.
As Polier puts it:

While I was felicitating myself for this reversal in fortune, there

was an insurrection at Dehly, occasioned by the false and dan-
gerous counsels that Sha-Allow had been receiving from his per-
fidious minister, and this crisis allowed Najafs Kan to open the
eyes of the Emperor, who had begun to suspect treason. This
prince ordered the arrest and imprisonment of the guilty one,
and placed the authority in the hands of Najafs Kan. But this
Nabab, despite the essential ser vice that I had rendered him at
the siege of Agra and on a number of other occasions, profited
from the power that the fall of the Prime Minister had given
him, to take over by naked force the fief that I had received from
the Emperor. I had just received this unhappy news when, on ac-
count of the new arrangements that were put into place between
Mr. Hasting and the Nabab Azaph Aldowla, the posts that I oc-
cupied with this [latter] prince were abolished, which meant that
from the most brilliant heights of fortune I was reduced to nearly
nothing. For not only was all that I had acquired during my stay
in India now in the hands of this Nabab, but he owed me consid-
erable arrears besides, for which I could not obtain the payment.

The reference to “new arragements” is to the General Order for

the  expulsion of Eu ropeans from Awadh, issued by Hastings on
November 8, 1781, against which both Polier and Martin duly pro-
tested, Polier because he was reputedly owed as much as Rs. 2.7 million
by Asaf-ud-Daula. The pendulum swung back once more, though, this
time because Hastings intervened again in the matter, granting
Polier his exemption in February 1782:
258 EUROPE’S INDIA

As the innocent cause of this last disgrace, Mr. Hasting felt that

justice required some compensation. He obtained the brevet of
Lieutenant-Colonel for me from the Bengal Council, as well as
exemption from ser vice and the right to reside at Laknau [Luc-
know], in order to work there towards the arrangement of my
affairs and the recovery of my funds. I formed a third establish-
ment there, and it was there that I used my leisure to write
down and augment the historical memoirs that I had composed
for the benefit of General Cootes, and above all those relating
to the history of the Sikhs.82

We now move to the last phase of Polier’s Indian career, a phase

which is notable for its changed orientation, possibly as a consequence
of the new intellectual currents that were beginning to establish
themselves in Calcutta, through the intervention of such men as
William Jones. Jones, born in 1746, already enjoyed a considerable
intellectual reputation on his arrival in India in 1783 as ju nior judge
of the Calcutta supreme court. This reputation was owing, after his
Oxford education, to such enterprises as his translation of the Per-
sian history of Nadir Shah by Mirza Muhammad Mahdi, Tārīkh-i-
Jahāngushā-yi-Nādirī, into French and then English in the early 1770s,
as well as his fiery denunciation of Anquetil-Duperron, whose own
disdain for Oxford scholarship we have already noted.83 The Jones-
Anquetil debate has been read and reread in the decades and centuries
that have followed, with the pendulum of scholarly approval swinging
from the one to the other, but this is scarcely the point at issue.
A study by Lucette Valensi points to the fact that a certain roman-
ticism prevails in the heroic construction of Anquetil, as the man
who opposed the notion of Oriental despotism in Montesquieu’s De
l’esprit des lois (1748) with his own construction of a “rational” East
in Législation orientale (1778).84 Despite the praise lavished on him by
Raymond Schwab (as well as Edward Said), it turns out that Anquetil
is no particular defender of the oppressed and downtrodden, no great
theorist of universal human rights. Instead, as late as 1798 his hos-
tility for England led Anquetil to propose a French project for the
conquest of India, to be conducted by the merchant, the soldier, and
the linguist. Soft India, inhabited by a lazy and torpid people, who
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 259

are condemned to despotism by their climate, is a theme in Anquetil

as much as in those who are often considered to be his ideological
opponents.
There is thus little point to seeing the couple Jones-Anquetil in
Manichaean terms, yet there is some sense to noting differences in
their methods and intellectual standpoints. In this context, it is worth
noting that when Polier decided to reinvent himself in his last years
in India as an Orientalist, it was in part the Jonesian model that he
chose. This required him, as is apparent in his Persian letters, to in-
vert many of his earlier priorities, and to see India through new eyes
and categories. Here then is Polier, speaking of himself, but also of
all other European savants in India:

As the course of my researches on this matter [viz. on the Sikhs,

etc.] brought me in due time to the Indous [Hindus], and to the
religion of this people that is indigenous to India, I found my-
self embarrassed on a great number of points, and greatly as-
tonished that after such a long stay in India (where I had spent
more time with the natives of the land than with the Europeans),
I still knew so little, and so poorly, the basis of their primitive
my thology. However, nothing is as common as this ignorance.
First, because on arriving in India, we bring to it ideas that
are taken from travellers’ accounts which, with a few excep-
tions, merit little faith for, since most of them have neither the
time nor the desire to make a profound study of this system, the
little that they have seized upon is so muddled, and a mix of
the true and the false, that one can hardly find the thread. Second,
because the Indians who are educated and in a position clearly
to set out the prodigious chaos of this my thology are such rare
beings, that one is easily discouraged. When one begins such a
study without the advantage of possessing the Samscrite [San-
skrit], or sacred, tongue of the Indous, which the Pundits or sa-
vants so constantly draw upon in their usual discourse that it is
difficult for me to follow them in their conversation, even though
I have a deep knowledge [ je possède à fond] of the common tongue
of India, called Moors by the English, and Ourdouzebain by the
natives of the land.
260 EUROPE’S INDIA

Polier now continues, pointing to the importance of finding the ap-

propriate “native” interlocutor:

A happy chance presented me with a man who brought together

in himself the qualities necessary to make up for my ignorance
of Samscrit, and to meet the desire I had to be instructed in
depth on the mythological, primitive and fundamental opinions
on the Indous. This man, called Ramtchund, had been the in-
structor of the celebrated Sir [William] Jones, my friend. He
lived in Sultanpour, near Lahore, he had voyaged a good deal
and had traversed all the provinces of northern and western
India. He was Sikh by religion and from the noble tribe of the
Kattris; and even if, unlike the Bramines, he did not have the
exclusive access to public instruction, he had like all Kattris
the right to hear the sacred books read out. Being gifted be-
sides with a prodigious memory, with a great deal of intelligence,
of order, of clarity of mind, and being well-versed in the poetic
texts and the Pouram [purānas] that contain the mythological
system, Ramtchund also had two Bramines who were constantly
attached to his entourage, whom he consulted on difficult points
and who, through their explanations, allowed him to respond
to all my questions and to instruct me in depth, not only on the
religion and the history of the Sikhs, but even on the my thology
of the Indous, who are linked to this people [the Sikhs] by so
many ties.85

Here then is an essential part of the strategy of authority invoked by

Polier. He has a Sikh instructor, but at the same time has access to
the deep knowledge of two Brahmins. Besides, Ramchand Khattri
is not just any Sikh, but someone who basks in the reflected glory of
the celebrated Sir William Jones, no less. To conclude the account
then:

Satisfied by the idea of having an instructor who was capable of

aiding me in the diverse researches on which I was embarked, I
had Ramtchund stay at my home. He never left me, and I began
to work, and I wrote down under his dictation the historical
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 261

précis of three epic poems, the Marconday, the Ramein Purby,

the Mahabarat and that of the avatars or incarnations of Vi-
chnou, the history of Chrisnen, and all the fables and legends
concerning the Deiotas or intermediate beings, the Bhagts or
saints, and the famous personages from their my thology, in a
word the entire system such as it was at its origin, such as it was
in its variants, and which when seen from its true vantage point,
differs greatly from that by which I had considered it before
having an in-depth knowledge thereof, and [also differs] from
the ideas that have been formed thereof in Europe. Once our
work was done, I submitted it to the revision of the Bramines
and doctors of my acquaintance, or to my friends. They unani-
mously confirmed the exactitude and the fidelity of the teach-
ings of Ramtchund, from whom I was never separated until the
moment when, having managed to recover a great part of the
money that was due to me in India, I embarked on the vessel
that brought me back to Europe, where I arrived in July 1788,
after thirty-two years of absence, of which I had passed thirty
in India.

The neophyte Sanskritist Polier had still one more card to play
though, this in his capacity as tireless procurer of manuscripts.86 It
turned out that he had managed to obtain a series of valuable San-
skrit manuscripts in Jaipur, through the mediation of his friend Pedro
da Silva Leitão (titled Khiradmand Khan), physician at the court of
Raja Pratap Singh; he had sent at least one to Sir William Jones, and
another to Sir Joseph Banks at the British Museum, while visiting
London in May 1789.87 Polier’s submission before Jones, and British
knowledge, appears total at this point. He writes: “Since the English
by their conquests and situation have become better acquainted
with India, and its aborigines—the Hindous—the men of science
throughout Europe have been very anxious of learning something
certain, of those Sacred books, which are the basis of the Hindou
religion, and are known in India and elsewhere, under the name of
the Baids [Vedas].” Various earlier attempts, on the Coromandel
coast, Bengal, and Benares, to obtain these works had failed. Polier
himself, while resident in “the upper provinces of Hindostan” had
262 EUROPE’S INDIA

himself made repeated enquiries after them, only to fail. Finally, he

thought of making enquiries in Jaipur, because it was (in his view)
one of the few areas that had “escaped, if not entirely, at least a great
part of the persecution which levelled to the ground all the Hindou
places of worship in the upper provinces, and caused the destruction
of all the religious books which could be found belonging to the Hin-
dous”; this destruction had apparently begun “in the twelfth year of
the reign of Aurangzeb.” It is interest ing to see Polier, the erstwhile
Indo-Persian gentleman, now trimming his sails to the British wind.
He notes that in order to be permitted a copy of the Vedas in
Jaipur, he needed the explicit permission of the Maharaja Sawai
Pratap Singh (r. 1778–1803): “having a small knowledge of the Rajah
whom I had seen a few years before, when he paid his court to Sha
Alum, then encamped in the neighbourhood of Jaypour, I hesitated
not in applying to him by letter.” The passage that follows is worth
quoting at some length:

[M]y friend Don Pedro da Silva, a worthy Portuguese Physician

in the ser vice of the Rajah, undertook to deliver it [the letter],
and to forward the application with his solicitations if necessary.
Pertabsing on reading the letter, smiling, asked Don Pedro—
what use we Eu ropeans could make of their holy books; on
which he represented that it was usual with us to collect and con-
sult all kinds of valuable books, of which we formed in Europe
public Libraries; and that the Baids, tho’ much sought after,
could not be met with anywhere else, and that without his per-
mission the Brehmans refused to give a Copy. On this, the Rajah
immediately issued an order, such as we wanted— and in the
course of a Year, paying the Brehman transcribers at a certain
rate per every hundred Ashtok or Stanza, I obtained the Books
which form the subject of this address, and which I had so long
wished to possess.88

The work then had to be authenticated, and organized into sepa-

rate volumes, which Polier managed to get done through the offices
of a certain Raja Anandram in Lucknow. He declares therefore that
he is handing a copy of the books over to the British Museum as “a
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 263

small token and tribute of respect and admiration from one, who
though not born a natural Subject, yet having spent the best part of
his life in the ser vice of this Country, is really unacquainted with any
other.” As for William Jones, Polier commends Banks to address
himself directly to him for any further information on the matter,
and notes: “I soon after sent them to Sir William Jones, the only Eu-
ropean then in India, I believe, who could read and expound any part
of them. From that learned Gentleman whose knowledge and merits
are far far above my praise, we may expect to learn in the future
Memoirs of the Asiatic Society what are his opinion relative to them,”
particularly in relation to the Atharva Veda, reputedly of doubtful
authenticity.
Much work remains to be done on the history of Eu ropean Ori-
entalism before the nineteenth century, particularly in relation to
India. This is particularly true of the Continental tradition, the En-
glish and Scottish tradition being better known in this respect thanks
to a series of works by Peter J. Marshall and Thomas R. Trautmann,
among others.89 We may trace some elements of the European image
of India back to early medieval times, or even earlier in some cases,
to the contacts between Greece and Rome and ancient India. It is
nevertheless clear that from the late fifteenth century onward, some
fundamentally new processes begin, which are linked both to
changing material conditions and intellectual trajectories in Eu rope
and India, and to the considerably intensified human contacts be-
tween the two. By the latter half of the sixteenth century, a growing
corpus of materials on India circulated in Eu rope, whether in the
form of manuscripts or, more rarely, as printed books. These were
accompanied from at least the mid-sixteenth century by visual im-
ages, watercolors as well as woodcuts, which helped define the In-
dian landscape for a European audience.90
One of the key groups that defi ned the form and content of this
early proto- Orientalism were the Fathers of the Society of Jesus,
founded in Europe as part of the Counter-Reformation in the middle
decades of the sixteenth century.91 The Jesuits continued to play an
impor tant role until the last quarter of the eighteenth century and
were the target of major attacks from, for example, the Jansenists,
who had a formative influence on Anquetil-Duperron. Though the
264 EUROPE’S INDIA

Jesuit presence in India was never monolithic (as the debates around
the missionary methods of Roberto de Nobili show), the Jesuits were
perceived their rivals as such.92 This did not prevent these rivals,
who in the case of eighteenth-century France included the Acade-
micians and the Encyclopaedists, from making use of the “raw ma-
terials” provided by the Jesuits for their own ends. This is the case,
for example, with Voltaire, who displayed a quite keen interest in
India, without ever having been there.93 Voltaire, like Diderot, joined
William Jones in pouring derision on Anquetil, and even denied the
existence of Zoroaster, besides casting doubt on the age and authen-
ticity of the Zend-Avesta. If the chief protagonists of the French En-
lightenment had a periodic tendency to use India and its customs to
proffer a critique of Old Régime Europe (in a time-honored tactic,
dating back to Montaigne’s essay on the cannibals), it has been noted
equally that certain Jesuits of the same period turned the critique
around and used the anticlerical rhetoric of the Philosophers to build
an argument against the Brahmins of India.94 The bulk of the French
Jesuits, as much as those who turned their arguments against them,
remained in general heavily oriented toward Sanskrit and the southern
Indian languages, creating important collections even in the first half
of the eighteenth century.95
Much of this debate centered, it is clear, on the content of the
socio-religious complex that would be identified little by little under
the name of “Hinduism.” Indian Islam was of little interest in this
context, and even if Anquetil (who learned Persian) produced a Vie
de Mahomet, it is among the most obscure of his works, suggesting a
certain indifference to this matter on the part of his readers. In gen-
eral, those who were interested in Islam sought their information
elsewhere than in India, and the epistemological status of the Indo-
Persian tradition remained problematic in this regard, viewed from
the perspective of the “High Orientalism” of the European salons
and academies. In northern India, matters were somewhat dif ferent.
Even the Jesuits who were present there at the time of Anquetil, such
as J. Tieffenthaler in Agra, or F.-X. Wendel (d. 1803) at Bharatpur,
Agra, and Lucknow, were open to the possibilities presented by
Indo-Persian culture in the domain of knowledge. Indeed, the
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 265

German-born Jesuit Wendel, though an agent of the English, also

supplied Anquetil with information in the mid-1760s. We have al-
ready noted the efforts of Gentil in this direction, both in respect to
the collection of manuscripts and the attempt to transform Mughal
administrative information into a form (and a type of cartographic
representation) that would render it more accessible to the Eu ro-
pean audience of the epoch.
It is just in this trajectory that it seems best to pose the evolving
activities of Polier in north India. Coming as he did from a Protestant
family with a marked penchant for Hebrew (and later Arabic), Polier
in the years before his departure for India may well have imbibed
some of this Mosaic conception, as well as reflections of the ferment
that had emerged around the Encyclopaedists. Once in India, he
appears to have passed from a fi rst phase of military activity (in
which he no doubt learned the fi rst rudiments of zabān-i- urdū) to
a form of cohabitation with a particular stratum of Indian society,
namely that which was particularly influenced by Perso-Islamic
culture. He kept company not only with high-born Iranians and
Afghans, but Indian converts, Kayasthas, Khattris, and others, all
of whom had been formed in the crucible first of Sultanate and then
of Mughal-period acculturation. Into this world, Polier slipped
without too much difficulty, accepting its idiom, and thus espousing
an entirely dif ferent view of India than that of, say, the Jesuits of
Pondicherry. He conspicuously patronized Indian painting, music,
and dance, and was willing, for example, to traffic in young Indian
women without any scruples.96
Matters seem to have changed somewhat in the early 1780s, after
Polier’s return to Awadh. These were the years, it is well-known, of
the last serious attempt by the French to reflect in terms of an Indian
project, and it all came to naught in the years 1782–1784. With the
Jesuits in disarray from the 1760s on, a major conduit through which
information on India had passed into France, and Europe more gener-
ally, was no longer open. The expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal,
then France, then Spain, and eventually the temporary suppression of
the society by the Papal Bulls of 1773 and 1774, meant that by the late
1770s no more than a handful of former Jesuits remained in India.
266 EUROPE’S INDIA

“Gardens in a river landscape,” 1785. Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin

(SMB), 16-523630 / 15005 fol. 10. Photo © BPK, Berlin, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Image BPK.

Between this process, and the growing political domination of

the English in Bengal and southern India, the stage was set for
a change in the overall Eu ropean perception of India in the 1780s.
One of the key agents in this matter was William Jones, but the
entire apparatus set up around the Asiatic Society in Calcutta was
aimed at reordering the relative status of the Sanskrit and Indo-
Persian traditions, which had earlier coexisted (the latter dominating
Eu ropean views of northern India, and the former those of southern
India).97 Jones himself, a belated convert to the joys of Sanskrit
from his initial training in Arabic and Persian, led the charge. Po-
lier followed, abandoning in the process the implicit and explicit
vision that he had expressed through Kishan Sahay in the letters of
the I‘jāz-i-Arsalānī. The India that he now proposed was to a new
audience, a Eu ropean one, and it was in the vocabulary that was
being refi ned in those years in the memoirs of the Asiatic Society
at Calcutta.
Polier’s last years in Europe saw the consolidation of his fortune
by his marriage to Anne-Rose-Louise Berthoud, the daughter of
Jacob, Baron van Berchem, in January 1791. He also began selling
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 267

Page from a Polier album, showing the notable ‘Imad-ul-Mulk

in the mansion of Samsam-ud-Daula. Musée National des Arts
Asiatiques, 14-534390 / MA 12553. Photo © RMN-Grand
Palais (Musée Guimet, Paris) / Thierry Ollivier.

off his vast collections of albums, many of them to William Thomas

Beckford (1760–1844), heir to a great sugar and slave fortune from
the Caribbean.98 Eventually, reassured that the French Revolution
promised a new era of tolerance toward Protestants, Polier moved
with his in-laws to France, where he set up the last of his establish-
ments near Avignon, at which he was eventually killed by brigands
in 1795. His death, linked by some to his alleged pro-Robespierre
leanings, perhaps had a more complex set of causes, though the fan-
ciful account of it by the Chanoinesse de Polier must be taken with
a large grain of salt.99 In his last years, at first in Lausanne and then
in Avignon, Polier consolidated the change he had been undergoing
in the last years of his stay in India. He abandoned his Indian wives,
Zinat and Jugnu, as part of his turning away from Indo-Persian cul-
ture; he shaved off his moustache, and appears much more as the
268 EUROPE’S INDIA

quintessential European savant than the Conradesque “adventurer”

in the portraits of the last years (even though he never managed to
shake off the nickname the “Rajah”). His return to France, motivated
no doubt in some part by the Revolution, also seems to be an attempt
to relocate himself in the intellectual map of Eu rope. In the new
French Orientalism of the closing decades of the eighteenth century,
the ascendancy of the English and Scottish tradition would be briefly
guaranteed, and it was only in 1833 that the efforts of Eugène Burnouf
(1801–1852) eventually restored some respectability to Anquetil-
Duperron and those who had supported him against William Jones.
The posthumous publication in 1809 of Mythologie des Indous thus
presents not the Polier of the I‘jāz-i Arsalānī, but another far more
Anglophile Polier. In turn, in later decades, Mythologie too would fall
into discredit, as exaggerated rumors began to abound that the text
had been tampered with in the process of publication by the Cha-
noinesse de Polier.100

Walker, and “Corrupting the Native Ardour”

This takes us to the fourth and final of the transitional personages

that this chapter considers, namely the Scotsman Alexander Walker
(1764–1831). Walker was a clear generation younger than Noronha,
Bussy, or even Polier, but figures of such “adventurers” were still
familiar in his time. Walker’s own close friend and contemporary,
Edward Moor, in a work devoted to a completely unrelated sub-
ject, reflected in a curious passage on the phenomenon of mulkgirī,
“meaning plundering or levying contribution,” and mentioned in this
context not only a certain Neapolitan called Colonel Giambattista
Filosa (“in the ser vice of Dowlat Rao Sindea”), but a personage of
his own acquaintance, “Mr. Boyd, an American gentleman, now a
Colonel of militia, and a member of Congress in the United States,”
who had at one time been in the pay of Tukkoji Holkar, and very
nearly obliged to resort to this form of generalized plunder when “out
of employment at Poona.”101 Unfortunately, John Parker Boyd has left
behind no major collection of papers, though we do have a letter from
the late 1790s describing his ser vices in India, but even if he had done
so, it is not necessarily the case that his own portrayal of how matters
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 269

functioned between the Peshwa, Holkar, and Sindhia would have

gone much beyond a concern for strategic and military affairs.102 But
Alexander Walker is quite another matter.
Despite his rather distinguished career, which took him at its end,
in the 1820s, to the post of governor of St. Helena, Alexander Walker
is today rescued from obscurity largely by the extraordinary collec-
tion of papers that he put together, some of which (those in Indian
languages) are held in the Bodleian Library, with the vast majority
being in the National Library of Scotland at Edinburgh. The oldest
of five children, Walker lost his father when he was seven, and some-
what like our other three figures he had to find his career in Asia
from an early age. But before joining the East India Company in
1780 as a cadet, he did have the time to obtain an education at St. An-
drew’s Grammar School and St.  Andrew’s University. His career
until his nomination to St. Helena was largely Indian, with the ex-
ception of an expedition he made to the northwest coast of America
(the region of Vancouver Island) along with James Charles Stuart
Strange in 1785.103 Strange, while returning from Britain to India
(where he had served earlier from about 1773 to 1780), decided to ex-
plore the Pacific as a consequence of reading the account of Cook’s
third voyage and Walker was among those who accompanied him,
producing a quite elaborate account of the expedition. But leaving
aside this interlude, Walker’s Indian career can be divided in two
broad phases, a first largely concerned with southern India, and es-
pecially Kerala in the late eighteenth century, and a second phase in
the first decade of the nineteenth century, when he was deputed to
Gujarat, in particular to Baroda where he was political resident in
the court of the Gaikwads. It is in this latter phase that Walker can
claim a moment of glory in the colonial annals, as having helped
“suppress” the practice of female infanticide, especially among the
Jadeja Rajputs in Kathiawad.104 This is what led his friend Edward
Moor to dedicate his work Hindu Infanticide (dated 1811, and in-
cluding a report from Walker himself written at Baroda in March 1808)
to him, noting that the two were drawn together by “a congeniality
of disposition in the promotion of public and private good, that so
cordially subsists between our common and highly respected friend
Mr. [ Jonathan] Duncan and you.”105
270 EUROPE’S INDIA

In the course of his three-decade Indian career, Walker accom-

panied a major transformation in the fortunes of the East India
Company. In 1780, the Company still faced a number of formidable
adversaries, notably the state of Mysore, with which Walker himself
had an uncomfortably intimate relationship. Three decades later,
Mysore had been crushed, British dominance over Malabar had been
assured, and the Company’s ascendancy over western India too had
become clearer even if the coup de grâce had yet to be delivered to the
Marathas. As for eastern India, the “bridgehead” of the Company
(in the phrase of Peter Marshall), the introduction of the Permanent
Settlement had helped bring an end to a long period of fiscal experi-
mentation. It is thus natural enough that the historiography, on the
few occasions that it refers to Walker, does see him as an in-between
personage. As one of the most recent discussions puts it, “Alexander
Walker was a transitional figure between the men under Lord
Cornwallis, who had reformed the administration of the East India
Company during the late 1780s and early 1790s, and the succeeding
generation of ‘Romantics’ associated with Marquis Wellesley.”106
While this was perhaps true, Walker was also a part of a long Scot-
tish tradition of engagement with India, of which more prominent
examples are his contemporary administrators Thomas Munro and
Colin Mackenzie, as well as Sanskritists such as Alexander Ham-
ilton.107 We have already dealt extensively with figures such as James
Fraser, author of a history of Nadir Shah, who—like Walker—was
an inveterate collector of manuscripts in Persian, Arabic, and San-
skrit, which he largely purchased in Surat and Cambay in the 1730s.108
Walker’s own collection of “Oriental” manuscripts, presented to the
Bodleian Library by his son Sir William Walker in 1845, run to some
265 works (from an original collection in 1810, on Walker’s return
to Britain, which may have had as many as 650 pieces), with about
120 in Persian, a few in Arabic, and the rest in Sanskrit, Hindi, and
Gujarati.109 These manuscripts are deserving of a full study in their
own right, which must await another occasion. The materials of more
direct concern for the purposes of the present consideration are
Walker’s own manuscripts in English, held today in the Walker of
Bowland Collection of the National Library of Scotland in Edin-
burgh. There are nearly six hundred of these, which touch on a vast
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 271

diversity of subjects, mostly Indian. They also shed considerable light

on Walker himself.
A number of the volumes were reworked or reorganized by Walker
in his years at St. Helena, when he was manifestly underemployed.
Here is how he presents his own motivation and circumstances in
the preface to one of these works, the two-volume Arbores et Herbae
Malabaricae.

In the remote regions of India I was frequently in situations

where the Natives were my only society. I found their conver-
sation amusing and interest ing. I was instructed in their man-
ners and habits. In the progress of communication they threw
off that reserve which they commonly shew in their intercourse
with Europeans, and with strangers in general: it was no diffi-
cult matter to acquire their confidence. It was only necessary to
convince them that I had their good at heart. They were good
humoured and easy to please. It was this disposition under these
circumstances doubtless that made them do many things that
were agreeable to me, and which they perceived I was desirous
of. I speak of men of rank, of Education, or of Property, whose
temper and minds were not yet corrupted from their native ar-
dour by the humiliation of long subjection.110

This last sentence may seem an odd reflection on the part of a colo-
nial official, who was thus himself part of the process of “subjection”
that is being criticized. But such ambiguities run through Walker’s
volumes, where the language of affective relations helps sustain the
tension. Even in the brief passage cited above we can note several
features that relate to this: the idea that by demonstrating that he
had “their good at heart,” he could gain the confidence of the na-
tives, linked at the same time to the insistence that he did not
consort with untrustworthy riff-raff in India, but with men of rank,
education, and property. This is the idea of creating a colonial civility
(to borrow and modify the terms of Steven Shapin) which would un-
derpin the process of translation that Walker had mind.111 For only
in conditions of trust could the individual Walker envisage this pro-
cess; the more institutionalized process by which Mackenzie would
272 EUROPE’S INDIA

collect the mass of materials that today bears his name (“The Mack-
enzie Manuscripts”) sought to resolve the problem by other, but still
closely related, means. It is clear that we have moved a step from the
world of Bussy, where such “trust” was virtually impossible, because
the relationship was fundamentally an adversarial one, where each
side donned one disguise after another in order never to let the other
side know what their true view really was.
To return to Walker, there is no doubt that the process of con-
quest of which he was a part did leave him troubled. In a volume of
notes for an account of the castes in Malabar, he thus reflects:

The influence of the English in changing the sentiments of the

Hindus has been considerable but the changes we have effected
are cold and philosophical. They are however honourable. We
have taught the natives useful arts and improved them in others.
We have instilled into them a more rational use of money by
enabling them to spend it in security and by making them better
acquainted with the elegancies and conveniences of life.112

But then again, a note of doubt is sounded (in what appears to be a

somewhat Burkean mode): “There is reason to suspect that the form
of the Company’s government is unfavourable to the preservation of
their Dominion. It has never been found that a free Government was
adapted to maintain Conquered Territories. The free-est (sic) na-
tions have therefore been obliged to invest their Generals and Gov-
ernors abroad with much despotic power.”113 To these doubts and
equivocations, one can add another theme which (as we shall see
presently) is very dear to Walker, namely the fact that by the Com-
pany’s intervention “Hindoos” have at least been freed from the
yoke of Muslim tyranny, of which the archetype is Tipu Sultan. But
Walker remains uncertain as to whether colonial rule (which he terms
“English” rather than “British”) will in the long run produce any posi-
tive results. He writes:

In short man is everywhere an animal of imitation. This imita-

tion as far as it relates to India will extend only to objects of
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 273

necessity, of obvious utility and conveniency. The English govern

without forming any part of the society of Hindostan. It is im-
possible that the natives can learn what we neglect or disdain to
teach, and if taught would be of no use, because we have no other
intercourse with them than that which subsists between a master
and a servant.114

It is very easy to idealize such remarks, and rush to claim that this
forms part of a history of “anti-Orientalism,” of untrammeled Eu-
ropean sympathy for Asian cultures, even for the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.115 Such claims make sense in any event, only
within the framework in which they are posed, in which on the one
hand “Orientalism” is to be identified with “ethnocentrism and prej-
udice,” while “anti-Orientalism” is associated with “European sym-
pathy for Asian cultures.” Rather, the problem is precisely that for
the most part colonial Orientalism (unlike the views of Bussy or
Noronha) came framed within an overall construct of sympathy, af-
fection, and having “their good at heart.” Indeed, for Walker, the
business of collecting the materials that he amassed in his hundreds
of volumes is presented above all as pleasurable, as he writes in an-
other of his prefaces, this one to the vast and eccentric six-volume
series entitled “Miscellaneous Notices of Various Customs, Manners
and Practices of India,” and which includes relatively short notices
on various subjects that strike his fancy, from “Gunputtee Cha-
toorthee” to “Sackcloth and Ashes,” “Ashwamed,” “Concealed trea-
sure,” “Names of Tippoo,” and “Topee,” to “Sir Thomas Rowe.”

The following Notices of Hindoo Institutions and ceremonies

were chiefly collected in the course of my official transactions
with the People. The subjects were often connected with my
public duties, and I had occasion to observe that by uniting them
together discussions on business became more palatable, and
were made much more agreeable. I fell into the habit of making
Memorandums of such circumstances as appeared to me to be
in any way remarkable, or to relate to the manner and religion
of the Inhabitants.116
274 EUROPE’S INDIA

To this he adds, again stressing the ludic and pleasurable aspect of

the whole enterprise (which one can fi nd again in neither Bussy nor
Noronha),

It may be idle to add that these enquiries were intended origi-

nally solely for my private amusement and information. But this
I may say with safety, that had it not been for some leisure in
the decline of life, they would never have been disengaged from
the chaotic state in which they were at first written. The com-
position and language has undergone little alternation. I shall
only further premise that I do not hold myself answerable for
the absurdity and nonsense which many of the following mem-
oranda will be found to contain.117

So, on the one hand, we find the claim to being a faithful translator
of native thought, but on the other a disclaimer with respect to the
contents. But it is clear that if at times the notices closely follow an
infor mant or a text—the description of the relations between the
Rajas of Jaipur and the Minas being taken, for example, from “a paper
from Navab Nizam ul dein Khan”—on other occasions, they repre-
sent Walker’s own views and comparative considerations. This is ob-
viously the case with the notice entitled “The Natives of India, and
the Southern Nations of Europe,” which runs as follows:

In many respect the habits of the Natives of India are similar to

those of the Southern Nations of Europe. Whether this is the
effect of similarity of climate, or a remnant of Asiatic manners
left by the Arabs, who formerly held those parts of Europe in
subjection, or of both these causes combined, may be a subject
of enquiry, but their food, the use of spices, their dress, treat-
ment of their women, and siestas or afternoon naps, are circum-
stances of common resemblance.118

The influence of climate on habits, customs, and character, is of

course a common enough reflection in the epoch, to which Walker
was certainly not immune, though he brought his own nuances to
it. We can see this from a remark of his, in which he notes that “the
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 275

Parsees of India afford a remarkable example of a People preserving

unimpaired their primitive powers, mental and physical, for Ages.
By abstaining from intermarriages, the climate does not appear to
have had any operation either on their Minds, or Bodies.”119
These miscellaneous notices apart, it is clear that several threads
run through the rest of the collection, rendering it coherent. Walker
thus clearly has well-defined if vast interests, and in the recent past
it has been claimed that “the surviving Walker papers offer volumi-
nous testimony to his eclectic approach to scholarship, including
collected materials on history, ethnohistory, anthropology, linguistics,
art and religion.”120 These were certainly not the categories that
Walker himself would have used; rather his own classification pre-
fers such headings as “deities,” “manners, practices and customs,” and
“castes and professions,” at times accompanied by drawings and fig-
ures, either made by Walker or commissioned by him from Indian
artists. Some of these drawings certainly reflect a highly ethno-
graphic bent of mind, for instance those that depict the “Manner of
executing criminals on the karoo, or impaling,” or “gestures and sal-
utations to superiors,” or a series of representations of board games
and square games, including Indian chess and “the game of fifteen
dogs and three tigers.” Again, we have drawings of the act of plowing,
of a ceremony of exorcism, of rope dancing, of juggling, and of dif-
ferent types of forehead marks.121
These drawings would clearly bear comparison with those which
Colin Mackenzie had prepared, and which Nicholas Dirks has noted
derived “from several sources, including both his own drawings and
those sketched by his surveyors while on tour.”122 But the differences
between the two enterprises are also worth noting: Mackenzie’s was
a relatively large and systematic affair which formed a part of the
operations of the early colonial state, while Walker’s was an indi-
vidual initiative, though framed within the functioning of the same
state system. Paradoxically, on occasion, it was Walker whose legacy
in this sphere was better assured; this is the case of the drawings that
he brought together in the volume entitled “An Account of various
Hindoo Deities,” in which thirty-six of the eighty-eight listed
“deities” come accompanied by illustrations obviously made by an
Indian artist (the notations on the drawings are in Nagari and
276 EUROPE’S INDIA

English).123 These drawings seem to have served as an inspiration

for the work of Edward Moor, Walker’s close friend, when he com-
piled his much larger work called The Hindu Pantheon in 1810.124
Many of Walker’s other foci of interest are predictable. There is
an extensive discussion of satī, for example, drawing on materials
from Rajasthan and Gujarat, which together with female infanticide
obviously represents an aspect of the “Hindoo religion” that Walker
found less than palatable. In general, however, he is very positive
toward it, and this contrasts with a more or less consistent hostility
to Islam. His introductory chapter, claiming to provide “a general
view of the Hindoo Religion,” thus states:

The Hindoo Religion is distinguished by its antiquity and long

continuance. It has withstood every change of Government. It
has remained unshaken either by violence or argument. Whether
we ascribe this to the obstinacy or constancy of its followers,
the effect is equally surprising. In a long series of ages those who
have been converted to the Christian and Mohammedan reli-
gions, or those who have withdrawn from its Doctrines and have
adopted any other system, will be found to be extremely few,
and inconsiderable, when compared to the great mass who have
adhered to the original superstition. It is another remarkable
feature of this Religion, that so far from seeking for converts, it
will not receive them. They never disturb those of a dif ferent
religion. They think every religion should be protected. They
have neither hatred nor jealousy for those who profess a different
faith from themselves. They imagine that the divine Being
cannot be displeased with various modes of worship, other wise
he would not suffer them, and that the exercise of piety in what-
ever shape it is manifested, is acceptable to him. They believe
indeed that God for his own purposes has not only tolerated,
but has revealed a mode of worship suited to the People, and the
climate they inhabit.125

Walker makes it clear that this information was brought together by

him while at Baroda in 1806, on the basis of conversations with “a
learned Braman,” as well as “notes extracted from their sacred books.”
Drawing of Brahma. Reproduced by permission of the National
Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Walker of Bowlands Papers,
Ms. 13903, “An Account of various Hindoo Deities,” 471.
Drawing of Devi. Reproduced by permission of the National
Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Walker of Bowlands Papers,
Ms. 13903, “An Account of various Hindoo Deities,” 371.
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 279

How these notes were extracted is not clear, for like Moor, Walker
too does not seem to have known Sanskrit; his knowledge of other
Indian languages too is not entirely certain. It is likely that the
Brahmin in question was Gangadhar Patwardhan Sastri, to whom
one finds scattered references in Walker’s papers.
Other themes that Walker deals with, and which have an air of
the inevitable about them, include caste, though again he is capable
here too of resisting the most facile generalizations of the period.
Thus, he remarks in regard to caste that “it is a mistaken notion that
these establishments in India are perpetual and immutable. The
minute divisions and subdivisions and distinctions of casts it is evi-
dent have followed the progress of society”; and adds, “They are
plainly civil or religious institutions to answer the wants of man in
a collective state and to administer to his necessities as he advanced
in civilization.” The general nature of caste is stressed too in two pas-
sages, one of which (the longer of two) runs:

After all are we not more surprised at the distinction of casts

in  India than the circumstances warrants? In every society
advanced a step beyond the state of nature there exists an in-
equality. The Jewish tribes, the division of the citizens into
classes in Greece and at Rome, resemble the sacred or religious
part of the Indian institution of cast.

A last mischievous remark closes his discussion: “May we not apply

some of these observations to the state of professions in England?” But
then, the detailed content of the account itself is scarcely of a piece
with these remarks. Sixty-five castes are enumerated and described.
And the method that is used is stated clearly, namely a compilation
fundamentally deriving from a series of textual authorities.

The following account of the Casts in Malabar has been ob-

tained from several authentic sources. The Sasters called Astah
disha Pooranum [asta- dasa-purāna] a work of 18 volumes have
been consulted for their origin. This work contains a History
of all created things; it treats of the Heavens, of the Earth, of
man and animals, of trees and vegetables, of insects and every
280 EUROPE’S INDIA

living creature. It is a History of Nature. This work was com-

posed in the Kreda Yogum [krta yuga]. It was the joint labour of
Gods and Sages. From the Astah disha Pooranum what relates
to the origin of each tribe is extracted and translated but not
literally as that required an acquaintance with the original lan-
guage which this writer is not possessed of the Kerala Olputty
Moolum [Keralolpatti mūlam], a more modern Malabar work
contains the origin of several of the casts and that has been oc-
casionally referred to.126

In contrast, the text on plants and trees is based on a rather dif-

ferent method, namely a substantial dependence on “long and fre-
quent conversation” with the natives, supplemented by “written notes
which were generally brought to my House daily.” Textual authority
is invoked sparingly, for example “the Grandum Saster called As-
tangumarudayam or Ashtangardewum,” with the “medical uses of
dif ferent trees,” written by a “Brahman named Vayadaacharian” or
the “Amarasirnhum or Ahmavasum composed by a person of the
Chitty Cast called Amavasemuen.”127 But Walker does let his sense
of unease show in respect of this method, and concludes that “it
would be endless and of no use to relate all the legends and fictions
which these people credit on almost every subject. But in the midst
of credulity and ignorance we may discover sound knowledge and
the sources of genuine science.” It may seem then that we have moved
a good distance from the world of Noronha and Bussy, to one where
“science,” and even the “progress of society” is invoked.
But this would be to ignore a vast part of Walker’s collection, cen-
tering on what obviously constituted a veritable obsession for him:
namely, Tipu Sultan.128 The sources for this are not hard to find, and
may relate to the early part of Walker’s own career, and his links to
the ill-fated expedition of General Richard Mathews to Mangalore
in 1782–1783, which ended with Tipu’s capture of that fortress.129
Mathews’s death in captivity rankled with Walker, and he may also
have harbored some personal animosity against the army of Mysore.
As he wrote in 1800, a year after Tipu’s death, “the cruelty of Tippoo
is a more serious stain on his memory. The fate of the English Pris-
oners in 1783 is now well-known. It is ascertained that General
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 281

Mathews was strangled in a small House opposite to the Place of

Seringapatam. His body was afterwards thrown into the River close
to the Laul Baug.” The broader theme that is developed can vary,
but some consistent features can still be found. One of these is Walk-
er’s tendency to contrast the tyrannous Tipu with a rather more
positive portrayal of his father Haidar, as when he says Tipu “wants
both the liberality and the open manly appearance and address which
distinguished Hyder.”130 A second feature was to insist on the image
of Tipu as a religious fanatic, both with regard to Hindus and Chris-
tians. The latter aspect, it is interest ing to note, grew more pro-
nounced in Walker’s views in the 1790s. As late as 1789, he could
write that “he [Tipu] is in general disliked by the Moormen of Rank
in his ser vice, not being sufficiently liberal in his encouragement to
them and appears himself to have more confidence in Bramins and
Rajpoots, who hold the places of first trust in his court.”
But, by 1800, and the death of Tipu, the image has considerably
changed. Walker writes by then not only of “his restless mind, his
continual projects, his vindictive temper, and his system of cruelty,”
but also of “his childish superstition and a blind zeal for the faith of
Mahomed.” True, he noted, he still depended on Brahmins, but this
was because he thought “they had the means of deriving knowledge
from the Devil, and it was as demoniacs that he consulted them.”131
The same drive to measure the havoc wreaked by Tipu on life in
South India also led Walker to propose a population estimate of the
Tanjavur region in the 1780s, in order to demonstrate the enormous
fall in the number of houses and habitants that had accompanied the
invasion by the Mysore forces.132 All in all, Walker’s obituary of Tipu
is thus severe.

It is impossible to speak of the conduct of this Man without

being convinced that he laboured under a species of Madness.
At one period he announced himself a person commissioned by
Mahomet to convert mankind, and that he was invested with a
prophetical mission. He had read, or he had been told, of an
Arabian Prince, who by his eloquence or by his example, had
brought over to the faith some unbelieving Tribes. In Emulation
of this achievement Tippoo collected a multitude of Hindoos
282 EUROPE’S INDIA

and Christians from all parts of his dominions. In one day, he

caused the assembly to be circumcised and boastingly com-
pared himself among his officers to the Arabian Prince. This
religious frenzy discovered itself in the early period to Tippoo’s
life, but it was remarked that it had considerably abated in his
later years. It had yielded to political passions.133

But even this reduced religious frenzy was a matter of major con-
cern, if Walker may be credited. In contrast to the earlier vision,
where it is the well-born Muslims who are resentful because the
Brahmins and Rajputs rule the roost at the court, here is how rela-
tions between the communities now appear:

The Hindoos were the daily objects of Tippoo’s persecuting

spirit and his conduct to them a constant source of uneasiness
of Hyder. Tippoo was perpetually playing them when a youth
mischievous tricks. He apprehended some Brahmans privately
and circumcised them as he did the Englishmen. It was his chief
delight to defi le the Pagodas and he thought it a meritorious
deed to sprinkle them with Bullocks blood. Tippoo was an ex-
cellent Horseman and an adept at the exercise of the spear. It
was his favourite amusement to hunt the sightly and fat Bulls
belonging to the Swamy Temples. This behaviour brought a
thousand complaints to Hyder who frequently expressed the
deepest regret and resentment. But neither the force of reason,
nor of punishment, could correct these symptoms of vice and
folly in his successor. The admonition of his Father Tippoo
turned into ridicule, and spoke in public contumaciously of his
Government.

This same hostility is carried over by Walker into descriptions of

other groups of Muslims, equally considered by him to be fanatical,
such as the Mappilas in Malabar. In the part of his papers relating to
that region, we find mention of Tipu’s agents there, such as Kutti
Husain Mappila (allegedly a Tiyya convert to Islam), who is reported
to have risen in Tipu’s esteem (and the fiscal hierarchy) on account
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 283

of the large number of Nayars he had circumcised.134 It also tinges

his description of Muharram festivities in western India, in which
he notes “from the tolerating principles of the Hindoos, and their
love for processions, this Festival is celebrated in many places by the
followers of Brama in common with those of Mahomet.” However,
the Muslims in these processions are marked by their “infuriated
zeal” and “dangerous excesses,” which is in marked contrast to the
“complimentary and practical attention of the Hindoos to the Mus-
selman ceremonies.”135 At such moments, one senses that one is not
that distant after all from the world of the bishop of Halicarnassus.

Conclusion

The vast and rapidly growing literature on “encounters” within a co-

lonial or near-colonial context has implicitly or explicitly formed
the backdrop to the problem discussed here. This literature has fo-
cused largely on the linked issues of communication, translation,
knowledge, and power, and in this process a series of convenient
straw men have emerged. If it can be demonstrated that besides being
ethnocentric, Europeans in India also periodically “used the Other
to criticize their own culture,” the facile conclusion is that the issue
of power relations in the formation of colonial knowledge systems
has been banished. Again, the fact that the categories and prejudices
of their “native informants” informed colonial census takers or eth-
nographers is easily assumed to be evidence of a “dialogue” between
all parties in the operation. We have noted recent attempts to reha-
bilitate the image of the omniscient European traveler of the early
modern period without adequately investigating the concrete pro-
cedures by which such knowledge was made, and how they reflect
similar constructions, as if demonstrating the very possibility of
“translation” itself is a triumph.136 Now the examination of the prag-
matics of functioning in a foreign society in any context, even a
colonial one, makes it evident that some form of translation is always
possible, and to demonstrate it time and again is trivial. But what
does one translate? To what end, and using what means? The exami-
nation of the four careers at hand suggests clearly that no matter
284 EUROPE’S INDIA

what the national or regional differences between Europeans in India

might have been, by the middle years of the eighteenth century a
sense of commonness as well as a clear sense of distinctness from the
“Asiatics” existed. This sense of a common identity is articulated by
the actors too, but above all is demonstrated in action by the webs of
sociability that held them together— and not only in moments of
crisis.
Perhaps most clearly articulated by Noronha, the same sense cer-
tainly informed most other actors in the enterprise of colonial con-
quest, and formed part of their undoubted will to power. That such
an identity existed in earlier centuries is not quite so clear, though
the issue would bear further investigation. If the colonial wars of the
eighteenth century divided European nations, and strengthened na-
tional identities, it does not necessarily follow that at the same time a
collective Eu ropean identity could not have emerged.137 In a sense,
therefore, the argument in the present chapter has centered on the
development of a paradox. We have seen that in the middle decades
of the eighteenth century, in a situation where the relations of power
between Indians and various Europeans in South India were highly
contested, the actors who were at the center of the contest were often
severely constrained. Their accumulation of knowledge was rather
limited, and their bias was largely geared to the hoarding of prag-
matic information, which was located in a system of stereotypes
and underpinned by a theory of “disguise.” But once the question
of power had been more or less resolved, once the conquest by the
Company had been placed on a fi rm and defi nitive footing, a real
“colonial civility” could be established, within which new forms of
knowledge would be produced by Europeans about India and even
by Indians about Eu rope.138 For Eu ropeans, even the luxury of
self-doubt was increasingly possible, and self-criticism too became
an acknowledged (if necessarily minority) form of expression. This
is what the transition we have observed represents, and this is why
the colonial archives of the nineteenth century are undoubtedly
quantitatively richer— and perhaps qualitatively simpler—than the
dispersed archives of the preceding one, at least so far as the social
and cultural historian is concerned. This is also why Alexander
 T H E T R A N S I T I O N TO C O L O N I A L K N OW L E D G E 285

Walker’s papers— a brilliant if rather eccentric exercise in what we

may term “colonial translation”—probably could not have been put
together in, say, 1700. Between the time of two Scotsmen— Fraser
and Walker— much water had indeed flowed under the bridge of
history.
 BY WAY OF CONCLUSION
On India’s Europe

In truth, the Franks would be a great people but for their having
three most evil characteristics: first, they are Cafares (that is,
an infidel people); secondly, they eat pork; and thirdly, they do
not wash those parts from which replete Nature expels the
superfluous from the belly of the body.
— Attributed to the Emperor Shahjahan (r. 1628–1657)

The Problem

The year 1632 marked a watershed of sorts in European relations

with India. In late June of that year, Mughal forces under the overall
command of the provincial governor of Bengal, Qasim Khan, began
the siege of the Portuguese settlement of Hughli (or Porto Pequeno).
Proceeding with some difficulty on account of the onset of the mon-
soon, they eventually managed some three months later to blow a
substantial hole in one of the city’s fortified walls and entered it,
carry ing a good number of Portuguese residents and their slaves off
to Agra. Even if the Portuguese eventually returned to western
Bengal and resumed some form of trade there later in the seventeenth
century, the form and intensity of the hostilities were quite unpre-
cedented. The Mughal campaign in Bengal preceded by nearly seven
decades another significant Euro-Indian conflict, namely the siege
of the English settlement of Bombay in 1689–1690 by the Mughal
auxiliary Sidi Ya‘qut Khan.1 But whereas that siege ended with some-
what ambiguous results, and (in the words of recent historians) may
even have “steeled the Company’s resolve,” and thus set it on the path

286
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 287

to emerging as a regional power, the winners and losers in 1632 were

far clearer.
However, contemporaries did not entirely agree as to why the con-
flict over Hughli occurred. The official Mughal chronicler ‘Abdul
Hamid Lahori devotes some pages of his chronicle, Pādshāh Nāma,
to the affair, and presents it as a fairly typical case of Frankish chi-
canery.2 To begin with, he states, before the Mughal conquest of the
region and when the Bengal sultans ruled (dar ‘ahd-i bangāliyān), the
Portuguese traders (bāzargānān-i firang) coming from Sandwip had
merely occupied some land in order to carry out their commerce; but
over time they began to build sizeable edifices, and fortify them with
cannon, muskets, and other war-materials (tūp- o-tufang wa dīgar
adwāt-i jang). This had negative consequences at various levels. The
other ports under Mughal control in the region suffered, as trade was
diverted away from them. Moreover, the Portuguese took increas-
ingly to the slave trade and to converting local people forcibly to
Christianity. Since Shahjahan, as a prince-in-exile, had visited Bengal
in the 1620s, Lahori claims that he was already well aware of these
nefarious activities. This was why, within a short period of ascending
the throne, he sent forces against Hughli, “to set about the extermi-
nation of the pernicious intruders.” The outcome of the operation
was, for him, never in doubt, even though “sometimes the infidels
fought, sometimes they made overtures of peace, protracting the
time in hope of succour from their countrymen.” Eventually, how-
ever, the wall was breached, and a large number of fatalities ensued,
besides the many Christians who were carried off by the Mughals
to Shahjahan’s court.
The eventual arrival of these prisoners in Agra in July 1633 is again
described by Lahori in his chronicle, as it is by some Catholic mis-
sionary sources. He recounts the arrival in court of Qasim Khan with
suitable gifts and tributes.

Of the Frankish prisoners, four hundred men and women, young

and old, along with the idols [asnām] of those erroneous infidels,
were brought before the Islam-nourishing Padshah. The Khaqan,
who supports the faith [dīn nawāz] and destroys infidelity [kufr
The Capture of Port Hoogly in 1632, illustration from the Pādshāhnāma,
c. 1630–57 / The Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II, 2016 / Bridgeman Images.
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 289

gudāz], then ordered the masters of the legal tradition [arbāb-i

sharī‘at] to first invite that miserable group on to the straight
path of the community of Muhammadans [millat-i Muhammadī]
and the highway of the faith of Ahmad [dīn-i Ahmadī], and
inculcate in them the precepts of Islam. Some who found it
worthwhile to be thus ennobled by accepting the correct faith
were shown imperial favor. Most of them, out of implacable
ignorance and erroneousness, turned their heads away from at-
taining this good fortune. They were divided among the amīrs,
and it was ordered that this miserable group be held in prison
and tortured. Any who inclined to Islam were to be reported to
the Emperor, and any who failed to accept the honour were to
be kept in prison. Most of them perished in prison.3

Interestingly enough, the Portuguese viceroy at Goa, the Count

of Linhares, while regretting the loss of Hughli, tended to blame the
settlers there for what had happened. In his view, when Shahjahan
was a prince, he had rebelled and fled to Bengal, where he asked the
Hughli residents for their aid. Not only did they refuse this, they
then “took some of his women who it is said were mistreated. With
this sentiment which he carried away concealed in his breast, he took
revenge, ordering that all those who were living in that port where
they had insulted him should be killed or captured.”4 Others, notably
the Augustinians, who had a conspicuous presence in Bengal by the
1630s, tended to view the loss of Hughli in far more cataclysmic
terms. The friar Sebastião Manrique, a native of Oporto, is one of
those who produced the most dramatic accounts of the “Babylonian”
captivity of the Portuguese at the hands of the Mughals, a narrative
of defeat that inverted the more common and triumphal tales of
“discovery and conquest” to which the chroniclers had accustomed
readers.5 Yet, as the seventeenth century wore on, even the defeat at
Hughli became the foundation narrative for a series of other in-
triguing legends concerning men and women of more-or-less Ibe-
rian origin, claiming a foothold both in Portuguese India and in
Mughal court culture.6
Every encounter obviously requires at least two parties. Yet, there
can be no assurance that the two will be equally present at the
290 EUROPE’S INDIA

meetings, or that their voices can be equally heard or recovered by

later investigators. This is a central issue in dealing with the Euro-
pean presence in the early modern period in the extra-European
world, whether it be in Australia, the Amer icas, Africa, or Asia.7
Still, it remains essential for us not to imagine as a simple matter of
habit that the encounters on a global scale that occurred in the early
modern period between Europeans and non-Europeans were those
between a people with history on the one hand, and peoples without
a historical consciousness on the other.8 To bring our analysis to a
close, it may be time briefly to turn the looking glass as it were, to ask
what the notions of Europe were that circulated in India between
the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and to ask in turn how they
emerged.
The problem is by no means amenable to easy resolution, largely
on account of a variety of regnant prejudices. For example, a Euro-
pean scholar studying Safavid Iran has argued that during the greater
part of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, “the available evi-
dence for the Safavid perception of Westerners derives for the most
part from sources written by the same Westerners.” There was an
underlying fascination, he argues, for things Western, but it was
“as yet unable to break through the carapace of formulaic religious
dogma, ingrained and as yet untested notions of cultural and even
military superiority, and the sheer physical distance from Europe.”9
The same scholar, in another essay, draws a bald contrast between
Persian sources themselves, which he sees as clichéd, repetitive, and
hidebound, “annalistic rather than analytic,” and European accounts
from the seventeenth century, which he depicts as “alternatively en-
gaged and dispassionate, [and which] paint a vibrant, dynamic society
for us, a society filled with color, movement, and diversity.”10 Predict-
ably preoccupied with what he sees as the unjustifiable delegitimiza-
tion of early modern European accounts of the non-European world
under the influence of Edward Said and the Saïdians, he argues that
with regard to Iran, “to observe and analyze it without prejudice
became the self-appointed task of the best of these travelers.” To be
sure, in the sixteenth century, religious prejudices among Catho-
lics might have produced a certain distortion, but this could no
longer be the case once there had been a transition from an “essen-
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 291

tially theological language towards a fully secular understanding of

nature and history.”11
As already noted, the first part of these claims can be set aside, and
in the Indian case at least, we do not in fact need to derive our pic-
ture of how Indians thought about the West “for the most part” from
Western sources. Rather, a far richer body of materials on the ques-
tion existed in South Asian languages, including Persian, than has
often been suspected. These textual materials could of course be
expanded using a variety of other means, including bodies of oral nar-
ratives, songs, and so on, which are concerned with the deeds (or mis-
deeds) of Europeans in a variety of contexts, whether in the islands
of the Ganges delta, or the coastal plain and backwaters of Kerala.
Now, we cannot say with any degree of certainty when the first
Indian went to Europe. But we are certain that in 1499, when Vasco
da Gama’s fleet returned to Portugal, there were at least some In-
dians on it. Some of these were probably simple seamen from Kerala
who had been more or less “shanghaied” by the Portuguese, as is sug-
gested by the appendix to the anonymous account of the voyage,
which includes a glossary of basic Malayalam words that its author
had gleaned, including words for “rope,” “ship,” “boat,” “mast,” “fish,”
and so on, but also “cap” or “hat” (which appears as tupy).12 But it
would also seem that other more elite infor mants returned with
them, including the Jewish trader and spy who was later known as
Gaspar da Gama, as well as a Muslim pilot (probably from Gujarat),
who has long been misidentified as the Arab navigator Ahmad ibn
Majid. Some of these men may have eventually returned to India,
and it is also certain that almost every returning Portuguese ship in
the years that followed brought back men to Europe, some like the
celebrated Joseph of Cranganore, others more obscure and even
sometimes totally unknown in terms of their name and social ori-
gins. The problem is that none of these Indian visitors to Europe in
the first decades of the sixteenth century left behind any usable ac-
count of their experiences.
Joseph’s is an interest ing case, but a somewhat frustrating one. He
had already visited Mesopotamia in 1490, where he was ordained as
a priest by the Catholicos of the Eastern Church in Gazarta Bet
Zabdai. In 1501, he and another priest decided to embark with the
292 EUROPE’S INDIA

returning Portuguese fleet from Kerala with the intention of visiting

Europe. The other priest died, but Joseph went on not only to Por-
tugal (where he arrived in June 1501), but to Rome, Venice, and Pal-
estine, before returning to India, where he continued to serve as a
priest in Cranganore until at least 1518. But, as it happens, the only
materials we have from Joseph are those in which he recounts the
situation in India (and Asia more generally) to his European interlocu-
tors. This was the text that was eventually published by Motalboddo
in his Paesi novamente retrovati. In it, Joseph is described as “forty
years old, slim, of a brownish colour, and of common stature,” but
also as “an intelligent man, veracious and of the greatest integrity.”13
Yet, this man of “an exemplary life” and “of very great faith” did
not choose to pick up the pen to inform others in Kerala at large,
or even in his own Syrian Christian community, of what he had
experienced while in Europe and Palestine, even though this could
have been of great strategic importance to the Syrian Church in its
dealings with Rome during the sixteenth century.
As the sixteenth century wore on, awareness of Europe certainly
increased in India.14 But this Europe is not a physical place for the
most part; instead it is a vague site from which the Franks ( firangīs)
or Hat-Wearers (kulah- poshān) come. As early as 1502–1503, the
Hadrami chronicles from South Arabia explicitly mention the Por-
tuguese in the Indian Ocean, and their nefarious activities in at-
tacking shipping between the Red Sea and the Indian west coast.15
But they were never seriously concerned to explain to their readers
where these Franks actually came from, or how they were organized.
The same was true of early Syrian Christian authors resident in
Kerala. The celebrated letter written by bishops Mar Jaballaha, Mar
Thomas, Mar Denha, and Mar Jacob to the Catholicos Mar Simeon
in 1504, announcing the arrival of the Portuguese in India, has only
the vaguest geographical indications. It states that “from the Occi-
dent powerful ships have been sent to these countries of India by the
king of the Christians, who are our brethren the Franks. Their
voyage took them a whole year, and they sailed fi rst towards the
South and circumnavigated Kush, which is called Habesh. From
there they came to this country of India, purchased pepper and other
merchandises and returned to their land” Toward the close of the
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 293

letter, they add that “the country of these Franks is called Portkal,
one of the countries of the Franks, and their king is called Em-
manuel.”16 What this country looks like, or what context it is
embedded in, is however of no apparent concern or interest to the
four bishops.

On Europeans without Europe

The reader may hope for more from a later sixteenth-century text
that announces in its title that it will deal with the Portuguese,
namely Shaikh Zain-ud-Din Ma‘bari’s Tuhfat al-Mujāhidīn fī ba‘z
Ahwāl al-Burtukāliyyin (“Gift to the Holy Warriors in [the form of]
some tales of the Portuguese”). The work was part of a larger corpus
of works in Arabic, some authored by members of the same family,
as well as others that expressed a quite distinct political viewpoint.17
The Tuhfat is divided in four parts: the first deals with some precepts
regarding the conduct of jihād, the second with the establishment of
Islam in Kerala, the third with some “strange customs of the infi-
dels of Malabar” (‘adat kufrat malībār al-gharībat), and the fourth with
“the arrival of the Franks in Malabar, and some of their violent acts
against the Muslims.” Yet, on turning to the fourth section (which
is also the most extensive one), we in fact learn almost nothing about
the Portuguese as a group, or Portugal as a country. Rather, the text
commences abruptly, stating that “the first time that the Franks ap-
peared in Malabar was in 903 H [1498], and they came to Pantalayini
in three ships at the end of the Indian monsoon, and from there they
went to the port of Calicut, where they stayed for some months,
gathering information regarding Malabar, and its current situation,
after which they returned to Portugal, without having dealt with
issues of trade.” The Tuhfat then goes on to chronicle with a fair de-
gree of accuracy the wars and peaces, engagements, and skirmishes
that took place on the west coast of India in the decades that fol-
lowed, with the account petering out essentially in the late 1570s
(though some last remarks, added as an afterthought, do concern the
1580s). Zain-ud-Din’s text came to form one of the sources used by
Muhammad Qasim Hindushah “Firishta” in his Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī,
written in the early seventeenth century, where once again the
294 EUROPE’S INDIA

Portuguese appear—as it were— out of the blue. In Firishta’s work,

we learn that in 1495, when “weakness and anarchy had invaded the
kingdoms of the Deccan, the Portuguese Christians received orders
from their king to build up fortresses on the shores of the Indian
seas.”
We can thus legitimately speak of a first moment of perception,
when in Indian eyes there are “Eu ropeans without Europe.” The
beliefs and above all the practices of these Europeans are clear enough.
They are seen, especially in the Persian and Arabic chronicles, as a
violent lot, who are also given to devious acts and chicanery in order
to advance their interests. For example, here is how Zain-ud-Din
presents matters:

The Muslims of Malabar lived in a state of well-being and with

an ease of life thanks to the generosity of the princes of the land,
concerning their established usages and the conditions of their
trade. But they [the Muslims] forgot about these benefits, sinned,
and revolted against God. It was hence on account of this that
God sent the Portuguese to lord it over them, these Christian
Franks—May God abandon them!—who tyrannized them, cor-
rupted them, and practiced ignoble and infamous acts against
them. The acts of violence were numberless, the disdain and the
jeers when they obliged them to work; they would drag their
vessels onto dry land; they would throw sludge on their faces
and the rest of their bodies, and spit on them; they despoiled
them of their trade, and above all they impeded them in their
pilgrimage [to Mecca], robbing them, and burning their cities
and mosques, and seizing their ships, mistreating their Holy
Book and other books by trampling them and burning them.
They would profane the sacred sanctuaries of the mosques, in-
cite Muslims to apostasy and to adore the cross, bribing them
to this end; they decorated their own women with the jewels and
the rich dresses that they had torn from the women of the Mus-
lims, and assassinated pilgrims and other Muslims with all
sorts of violence. They would insult God’s Prophet publicly, cap-
ture Muslims and put heavy chains on them, and then drag
them to the market-place to sell them as slaves.18
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 295

He continues at length in this vein, dilating on the mistreatment of

Muslim women and learned men, forcible conversions and public hu-
miliations, only to conclude that “the enmity of the Franks is only
with the Muslims and their faith, and not with the Nayars and the
other Infidels.” These Christians from the West have, so it would
appear, managed to drive a wedge between the “infidel” (Hindu)
populations and the Muslims, with the latter seeing themselves as
their real victims.19
How “Hindus” in Kerala felt about the matter is rather difficult
to discern. It is certainly the case that the bulk of the South Asian
writings on the Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries come from writers in the Persian or Arabo-Persian tradition.20
References to them may be found to be sure in Sri Lankan materials
such as Rājāvaliya from the latter half of the sixteenth or seventeenth
century, or the still later Mandāram pura puvata. As Chandra De Silva
has convincingly shown, these Sinhala texts do not quite embody a
single perspective.21 Some, like the Mandāram pura puvata are what
he terms “unabashedly partisan,” portraying the Portuguese in terms
that are really rather close to their depiction by Zain-ud-Din, al-
though it is rather unlikely that the two texts were actually contami-
nated by each other. Thus, a passage in the Sinhala text runs:

[The Portuguese] having seized and destroyed temple lands,

temples, libraries and sacred Bo-Trees in Lanka, established
false doctrines by imposing heavy punishments and created
unrest by oppressing many people in a number of areas. The
many low-country folk who refused to accept Christianity were
imprisoned with their wives and children and burnt to death.

This was the perspective offered from the central highlands of Sri
Lanka, a zone that was never actually conquered by the Portuguese,
even at the height of their power. A very similar attitude may be
found in other texts like the Rajasiha Hatana, composed in about
1640, but a rather softer side is shown to the Portuguese in certain
sections of the Rājāvaliya chronicle. Here, we are told that the Por-
tuguese arrived in the port of Kolontota (Colombo) in Lanka from
India, and that the local people were struck by their appearance. For
296 EUROPE’S INDIA

these were “a kind [ jāti] of people very white in colour and of great
beauty; they wear jackets and hats of iron and pace up and down
without resting for a moment.” This report went on to say that they
paid excellent prices for the simplest goods, and that they had
powerful cannon that were “louder than thunder at the end of the
world.” The text suggests that the king of Kotte, Dharma Parakram-
abahu, was sufficiently impressed by this report to send a prince in
disguise to look into the Portuguese. He came back with a positive
report, whereupon the Portuguese were received at court, granted
“innumerable tokens of esteem,” and became fast friends with the
ruler.
This portion of the text is sufficiently dif ferent in tone from all
others to have provoked a good deal of discussion. One suggestion
has been that its author must have been a Christian convert, who was
hence inclined to portray the Portuguese in suspiciously favorable
terms. Another reading emphasizes what are seen as parodic or
mocking elements even in this portrayal, an interpretation that ap-
pears to stretch the possible meaning of the text beyond plausible
limits.22 Whatever the case may be, it is certainly true that this is
one of the very few portrayals of the Portuguese in South Asian
materials that does not insist on their deceitful and violent side. The
idea of Frankish deceit actually comes to be enshrined in a well-
known topos, deriving oddly enough from the story of the founda-
tion of Carthage by Dido (in the Aeneid), of which versions can be
found in Gujarat, Sri Lanka, Melaka, and even Cambodia. The ver-
sion of the story having to do with the Gujarati port of Diu and
Sultan Bahadur (d. 1537) runs as follows:

One day they [the Franks] came to him [Sultan Bahadur] and
stated that the merchants of their ports who came to the island
of Diu were obliged to leave their goods and merchandise lying
about; but if the Sultan would give them as much land in the
island as a cow’s hide, they would build four walls round it, and
then they would store their property in it, and would feel at their
ease about it. The Sultan granted their request. When Bahadur
was called away from Diu to oppose his enemies, the Firangis
took advantage of the opportunity. They cut up a hide into
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 297

strips, and enclosed as much ground as they could measure with

them. Then they built up a strong stone fort, and armed it with
guards and muskets, and took up their residence in it.23

An almost exact reproduction of this schema may be found in the

Mahā Hatana, a Sinhala text of the late seventeenth century that re-
counts the foundation of the Portuguese fort of Colombo, and in a
Malay text concerning events in Melaka in 1511.24 Mughal chroni-
cles pursue this idea of Portuguese deceit by pointing to the manner
in which they allegedly killed Sultan Bahadur shortly afterward,
when he went to visit the governor Nuno da Cunha on board his ship
in the port of Diu.
Here then is a fi rst, and indeed, rather persistent image of the
“Franks” as an untrustworthy and slippery lot, but one that must be
treated side by side with another view of them, namely as purveyors
of the strange and wonderful (‘ajā’ib-o-gharā’ib). A typical set of ex-
amples of this comes from the Mughal court, which we know sent
representatives to Goa in the late 1570s to bring back some of these
strange objects. These included musical instruments, but also birds
and creatures from the New World, and such things as tobacco. The
unofficial chronicler ‘Abdul Qadir Badayuni’s description of a mu-
sical instrument, the arghanūn, has often been remarked upon:

It was like a great box the size of a man. A European sits inside
it and plays the strings thereof, and two others outside keep
putting their fingers on the five peacock-wings, and all sorts of
sounds come forth. And because the Emperor [Akbar] was so
pleased, the Europeans kept coming at every moment in red and
yellow colours, and went from one extravagance to another. The
people at the meeting were astounded at this wonder, and in-
deed it is impossible for language to do justice to the descrip-
tion of it.25

A similar notion of wonder ( here, mixed with suspicion) pervades

the reception of another item that appeared in the Mughal court
thanks to the mediation of the Portuguese, namely tobacco. The best
description we have in this instance comes from the account of the
298 EUROPE’S INDIA

Mughal courtier Asad Beg Qazwini, who returned to Agra from the
court of Bijapur in the early seventeenth century with some tobacco
in his possession.26 We gather that on his return, Asad Beg had
decided to present the emperor Akbar with a variety of tribute-goods,
including several elephants. But the high point of the presentation
in fact centered on tobacco, which though quite common in Bijapur
was apparently new to northern India. Knowing this, Asad Beg had
procured a golden pipe (chilam) from the Deccan, studded with pre-
cious stones; this pipe was three yards long, and was originally made
in Aceh, in Sumatra. It was decorated at both ends, and the mouth-
piece was fitted with a good-quality Yemeni ruby to make it all the
more attractive. Taking a gilded torch stand typical of the Deccan
with him, he placed on it a golden betel-leaf box filled with good-
quality tobacco, of a sort that when one leaf was set afire, the rest
would catch easily. All this, and the pipe, was then put in a silver con-
tainer, itself covered with velvet. When he was presented with the
whole apparatus, Akbar apparently exhibited considerable curiosity.
One of the chief nobles present, Khan-i A‘zam Mirza ‘Aziz Koka
(who had been governor of Gujarat) then explained that the substance
was called tobacco (tambāku), and that it was already in use in Mecca
and Medina. He also said that earlier the physician, Hakim Dawa’i,
had brought it to the court, but that Akbar had paid it no attention.
But this time, the emperor asked that the pipe be prepared so that
he could smoke it. As this was being done, the physician appeared
and strongly advised against it. Despite this advice, Akbar placed the
pipe in his mouth and drew on it two or three times, and then passed
it on to the Khan-i A‘zam, who also pulled on it a few times. The
physician was then asked to explain its properties, and he replied that
in the traditional books, there was no mention of it, as it had only
been recently discovered; as for the pipes, they generally came to the
ports (banādir) of India from Aceh. The Frankish physicians
(hukamā’-i firang) had however attributed many positive properties
to it. A debate now ensued, with another physician, Hakim ‘Ali,
adding that it was an untried medicine, and hence risky; he, for his
part, could simply not recommend it without further investigation.
At this Asad Beg intervened with a rather interest ing argument. His
point was effectively that the Franks were not so naive that they
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 299

would not themselves have reflected on this. For, he stated, they too
had wise men in their midst, who rarely made wrong assessments in
such matters. Without having experimented with it, and ascertained
its properties, essence and true character, they would not recommend
it either for their own doctors, kings, and people both high and low.
No doubt it had both good and bad effects, but it could not simply
be termed a vice. To this Frankophile argument, Hakim ‘Ali appar-
ently replied that it was not necessary that the Mughals follow the
Franks in such matters blindly. In turn, Asad Beg again had a retort.
After all, he said, new things were constantly being found out in the
world, and since the time of Adam to that date, things had been dis-
covered step by step. If one nation (qaum) found something new out
and it then spread out into the world at large, the task of philoso-
phers and wise men was to find out its benefits and ill effects. It might
be that one group of people did not know of its benefits as was the
case with radix China (chūb-i chīnī), which was not much used in an-
cient times but had been found more recently to be useful in curing
several diseases. This argument apparently met Akbar’s approbation,
and he added that in truth, it was not simply because something was
not mentioned in the ancient books that it should be stopped. What
had become current in the world should be observed. But Hakim ‘Ali
and others still insisted on their position, and asked the emperor to
prohibit tobacco in his realm. The emperor now sent for a Jesuit
resident at the court (perhaps Jerónimo Xavier), who then came for-
ward and explained the benefits of tobacco, without however man-
aging to convince Hakim ‘Ali. In the end, it would seem that Asad
Beg—who had brought back many pipes and much tobacco from the
Deccan—had his way, and was allowed to distribute them among
various courtiers, some of whom even asked him expressly for the
new product. Soon enough, he claims, almost everyone expressed a
desire for tobacco, to the point that traders imported it from the
Deccan and began to sell it at whatever price they wished, and the
use of it became current everywhere. Paradoxically, though, the em-
peror Akbar did not ever take it again.
We could add further materials to these from the seventeenth
century, all dealing with the Franks in India, but not at all with
Firangistān or Bilād-i Afranj. Even a casual reading of a text such as
300 EUROPE’S INDIA

the Mughal emperor Jahangir’s memoirs confirms this impression.

In March 1612, we are told of the arrival in court from Gujarat of
the noble Muqarrab Khan, whom Jahangir had “ordered to go the
port of Goa on several items of business and [to] see the vice-rei, the
governor of Goa, and to purchase any rarities he could get hold of
there for the royal treasury.” These rarities included “every sort of
thing and object,” including several “strange and unusual animals”
such as a turkey and a rare type of monkey; another passage simi-
larly mentions the curious “pineapple, which is a fruit that comes
from the Franks’ port.”27 This is usual presentation of the Franks in
an exotic register, and it is soon followed by a reference to their more
sinister and quarrelsome aspect. For example, in November 1613
“news was received that the Franks of Goa had broken their word
and plundered in the vicinity of the port of Surat four foreign ships
that frequented that port. They had also taken many Muslims
captive and seized possession of goods and chattels that were on
the ships. This was very disagreeable to me.”28 Yet, even in De-
cember 1617, when Jahangir briefly visited the port of Cambay, “got
into a grab [ship] and sailed about a kos in the water,” he did not use
the occasion to speak of anything beyond Goa, as if the larger po-
litical structure within which the Goan viceroyalty was located was
of no concern to him.
Yet, at some level, this rings false. After all, a globe had been pre-
sented to Jahangir, and he even appears in some portraits (such as
one by Bichitr) holding a globe in one hand, in which the names of
Russia and Portugal appear. From the time of the first Jesuit mis-
sion to the Mughal court, European materials had been available to
the Mughal elite, including illustrations and woodcuts depicting
towns and peoples, and even maps of one or the other sort. The usual
view though has been that such materials were received with indif-
ference as regards their empirical content. Typical of this is the
account by Sir Thomas Roe, the English East India Company’s am-
bassador to Jahangir. He states that in early September  1617, he
handed the Mughal emperor “Mercators last edition of the maps of
the world; which I presented him with an excuse that I had nothing
worthy, but to a great king I offered the world, in which he had so
great and rich a part.” A week later, Jahangir apparently questioned
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 301

him about these maps. But by late September, the Mercator had been
rejected. Roe writes of how “he [ Jahangir] sent for the map-booke,
and told me he had shewed it his mulaies [Mullas], and no man
could reade nor understand it; therefore, if I would, I should have
it againe.”29 The same incident is transformed into a far more po-
lemical episode by Edward Terry, Roe’s chaplain. In this version,
on receiving “Mercators great book of Cosmography . . . [which]
described the four parts of the world, and all several countreys in
them contained,” Jahangir at first showed interest, but was really only
concerned with where his own territories were. “Then causing the
book to be turn’d all over, and finding no more to fall to his share but
what he first saw, and he calling himself the Conqueror of the World
and having no greater share in it, seemed to be a little troubled, yet
civily told the Ambassadour, that neither himself nor any of his people
did understand the language in which that book was written.”30
Here, the book is returned because the Mughals find their territories
rather too small for their own tastes.
In his discussion of Jahangir’s alleged response to Mercator, Ahsan
Jan Qaisar has shown some skepticism with regard to such narratives.
In his view, it is implausible that European maps would have failed
to excite curiosity among Indians, and he notes that soon after, the
Dutch East India Company factor Francisco Pelsaert was asked by
Mughal nobles for maps to be imported from Europe, including a
world map. An atlas prepared in about 1647 by Sadiq Isfahani ap-
pears to show certain signs of European influence, even if the basic
cartographic tradition remains the Arabian one (with the south above
and the north below, and meridians being determined without taking
into account the curvature of the Earth).31 There is thus some evi-
dence already assembled that goes against the late Simon Digby’s
view that the residents of Mughal India had practically no empirical
interest in the “overseas.”32

A Notion of Europe Emerges

However, it would be less than just to dismiss Digby’s point of view

summarily in this manner. It may be helpful to rehearse the major
elements in his argument to begin with. He argues that mentions of
302 EUROPE’S INDIA

Europeans in Indo-Persian literature of the seventeenth and eigh-

teenth centuries “represent a diversity of experience, intimacy of
contact and levels of sophistication.” One broad distinction is be-
tween what he terms “informed accounts” and “popular beliefs,” but
even within the first category, he argues that nothing of much em-
pirical worth can be found before the late eighteenth century, when
Indo-Persian literati entered into close contact with the British.
Rather, he suggests, “among the literate classes of the Mughal empire
a lack of curiosity about geographical matters outside their imme-
diate ken appears to have been the prevailing response through the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” Typical of this is the case of
the great savant Shaikh Abu’l Fazl (1551–1602), who referred vaguely
to the “islands of the Franks” ( jazā’ir-i Firang) as if continental
Eu rope were unknown to him; and in order to explain this, Digby
attempts to resuscitate the older stereotype that on account of “deep
cleavages, horizontal and vertical, in Indian society,” the empirical
knowledge of sailors and traders did not penetrate the world of “au-
thors of works in Arabic and Persian [who] were associated with the
administrative class.”33
In sum, the typical Mughal view—if we are to follow Digby—
would have been of an author such as Amin-ud-Din Khan in the late
seventeenth century, who in his Ma‘lumāt-ul-āfāq (Knowledge of
the Horizons) informs his readers of horse-headed ogres in the land
of Firang, and who was “apparently unaware that, for two centuries,
Eu ropean vessels had been sailing around Africa.” Or again, he
retails in some detail an account taken from a “false” (semi-
apocryphal) version of the memoirs of Jahangir, perhaps produced
in the Deccan in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In this
narrative, entitled “The Killing and Bringing to Life Again of a Man
in the Land of the Franks,” Jahangir is told a story by a visiting Iraqi
in his court of the latter’s encounters with the land of the Franks.
While on a sea voyage many years before, this man was apparently
blown off course by a severe storm, which took him to an island in-
fested with Frankish pirates from Portugal. The entire crew of the
ship was taken off, examined by a physician, and some of them were
then confi ned and fattened up. Further episodes occur involving
blood-letting and sorcery, the killing and revival of the narrator’s
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 303

brother, and other incidents in the course of which the Iraqi’s arm
own is chopped off. He meets the emperor of the Franks (Bādshāh-i
Firang), and eventually is allowed to leave.34 Thus, it would appear
that the Franks are still presented in a sort of Arabian Nights con-
text, in stories not all that dif ferent from those of Sindbad.
These valuable and intriguing materials presented by Digby can
be read quite differently, if one is willing to acknowledge that mira-
bilia and monsters were also a part of the European imagination until
far later than 1500.35 Indeed, monsters abounded in European de-
scriptions of non-European spaces, and even in descriptions of areas
as close as the Ottoman Empire in the 1720s.36
But just as is the case with the Europeans, the presence of a reg-
ister of “wonders” (‘ajā’ib- o-gharā’ib) in the Indo-Persian textual
corpus does not in fact preclude the simultaneous accumulation of
political, economic and other materials in a far more matter-of-fact
tone. An example of this may be found in an important Mughal text
of the early seventeenth century, which continued to be read for the
next two centuries and more. This is the work, entitled Rauzat-ul-
Tāhirīn (The Garden of the Immaculate), written by Tahir Mu-
hammad Sabzwari.37 The author came from an Iranian family and
had already been a Mughal official in Gujarat, while one of his
brothers was a poet at the court. Begun before 1602, and completed
some five years later, this vast text is made up of five books (qism), of
which Book 5 deals inter alia with “the wonders and curiosities of
the ports and islands” (‘ajā’ib- o-gharā’ib ki dar banādir- o- jazā’ir wa
atrāf- o-aknāf-i ān bilādast) near Bengal, including an “account of
Ceylon, Pegu, Arakan, Kuch Bihar, and Portugal,” which the author
had ascertained in large measure from the writings of a certain Kh-
waja Baqir Ansari, who had apparently long served as a Mughal of-
ficial in the province of Bengal. These xenological materials follow
a previous chapter (apparently written in 1014 H / 1605–1606) that
deals with how Bengal had fallen under the control of the Mughals,
from the earlier rule of the Karrani Afghans.
Tahir Muhammad’s text contains brief mentions of Sri Lanka and
the Moluccas, as well as a quite elaborate description of the kingdom
of Pegu in Burma, which was in fact only a few days sailing from
Bengal. He is clearly fascinated by the fact that the king there
304 EUROPE’S INDIA

possesses five white elephants, and that their way of life is dif ferent
from both Muslim and Hindu (az tarīqa-i Musalmānān-o-Hindū’ān
alahida ast); one special feature is that they worship the camel (ushtūr),
so that anyone who brings camels there can make a great deal of profit,
as the local inhabitants are willing to pay a high price for them. Some
comments are also made on the nature of the social organization and
the odd customs and usages. In Pegu, Tahir notes, when the king or
ruler (hākim) comes to the court, the grandees, viziers, and people
great and small touch their heads to his feet, and present the affairs
of the country to him while bowed down, with their two hands over
their heads. No one dares raise their voice or speak loudly in his pres-
ence. Their main celebration is also characterized by silence and
calm; anyone who speaks out is immediately locked up. Yet, not
every thing is unfamiliar, for Friday is their special day too, and a
priest called the rāwali preaches on that day, usually exhorting the
people not to harm any living creature. There are extensive dances
in their idol houses (but-khāna) in which some girls enter into a trance,
foam at the mouth, and become intoxicated. They have two spe-
cial holy days in a year, when they welcome the devil (shaitān) in
their idol houses, and celebrate with the generous consumption of
alcohol.
So even a neighboring kingdom can be treated with a mix of
“wonder” and accurate empirical detail, which is not reserved only
for distant places like Europe. Thus, in the case of Pegu, it is all ap-
parently a seamless mix of marvels and horrors. If the chief city is
unmatched in the whole world, the social customs really leave a lot
to be desired. For instance, these are people who eat all kinds of
creatures without regard to ideas of harām; brothers and sisters com-
monly marry one another, and when they are reproached for this,
they say that they descend from Adam and follow him in this regard.
Tahir is also fascinated by the shamelessness (bi-ghairatī) of the
Peguan women, and adds that if any trader goes to that country and
desires the daughter of a notable, she at once is offered to him. But
when he wishes to leave the country, if the girl has become pregnant
meanwhile or had a child, the trader is obliged to stay.38 This sec-
tion closes with a strategic appraisal that the army of Pegu is not very
impressive, the horses are far smaller than those of India, and though
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 305

the army is large it is mostly made up of foot soldiers. There have

also been a number of debilitating wars there, as in 1002 H (1593–
1594, when there was a huge general massacre), followed by a famine.39
The main produce there is rice, and there are also lots of fruits such
as mango and bananas, that are imported into Bengal. But this all is
only a brief diversion before turning to his next major object, namely
the sultanate of Aceh in northern Sumatra.
Unlike Pegu, which is treated as largely autonomous of the ques-
tion of the Franks, Aceh in Tahir’s account is intimately linked to the
problem of the Portuguese presence in the waters around India.
To be sure, he begins with a reference to some of the chief products
of the place, such as frankincense, pepper, and especially camphor,
and also notes that the area where camphor is to be found is inhab-
ited by cannibals (ādam-khor), who bring it to the ruler of Aceh as a
tribute each year. Various theories of the origin of camphor are dis-
cussed, and it is noted that the ruler of Aceh had in fact sent some of
the wood from which camphor is made (along with other gifts) with
his agents (wukalā’-i khwud) to the emperor Akbar, an interesting ref-
erence to what must have been an Acehnese embassy to the Mughal
court. The social customs and usages of the “cannibals” are then
noted: the fact that they live in scattered villages, but are all related
to one another; how, when someone falls seriously ill, they kill him
and distribute the body parts among different families, with the chief
(kalāntar) getting the head; how, when they gamble, they offer their
own hands and feet as wagers, and so on.
The description then quickly moves to the city of Aceh, which is
to a large extent under the thumb of a powerful warden (kotwāl), who
keeps a close track of every thing that happens there. A par tic u lar
concern is sexual morality, and the practice of stoning wayward lovers
is known. In a similar vein, they are also very strict with thieves, and
cut off their limbs— a punishment that shocks Tahir Muhammad.
There is also a rather severe use of exile in the polity, which again
strikes our author as rather harsh. Yet, at the same time, he is quite
positively struck by their determination to fight the Franks, and he
notes that even while performing the most simple, everyday acts,
such as drinking water or wearing clothes, they say they do so in this
determination. Faced with such a determined lot, the Franks have
306 EUROPE’S INDIA

achieved no control over their country, though admittedly this is

partly because they are protected by a mountain range. But the war-
like temperament of the Acehnese too has a part to play. When a ship
is seen to approach from the sea, or when the sound of cannon is
heard, the people ready themselves, and spread a secret oil (which
was a royal monopoly) on the water, which they then set afire as a
form of defense. The fact that they also possess saltpeter in quantity
in this country is equally an aid in warfare.
Tahir Muhammad had taken some trouble to ascertain the origins
of the rulers (hākim) of Aceh, and he declares that initially the place
was ruled over by a lineage of Sayyids from Najaf. He recounts a
rather elaborate story—manifestly derived from local Acehnese folk
traditions—of how one of these Sayyids had captured and married a
supernatural creature or fairy, and thus derived extensive powers
from her.40 Tahir goes on to describe the political transition between
Sultan ‘Alauddin Mansur Syah (r. 1577–1589) and the “usurper” Sultan
‘Alauddin Riayat Syah al-Mukammil (the latter being the grand-
father of the celebrated Sultan Iskandar Muda, r. 1607–1636). Other
contemporary sources report that Al-Mukammil had fi rst killed
Mansur Syah, and then ruled as regent for a time, before eventually
seizing direct power in around 1596.41 Tahir for his part notes that
in 999 H (or 1590–1591), a dispute had broken out between the ruler
and one of his courtiers. The courtier hence decided to enter the
palace with his clan, assassinate the Sultan, and seize power. Since
that time, rulership had fallen to him and his family. But since this
kingdom depended largely on trade (āmad-o-raft-i tijārat), even the
new ruler remained deeply concerned with it. Yet, in spite of this,
when he wished to, he seized the goods of merchants he did not like,
claiming that they had died or disappeared. This had even happened
with Sa‘id Khan, who at the time of Akbar was the governor of Bengal
and used to send his ships to trade in Aceh. Since the ruler of Aceh
did not get along with the governor’s trading agents, when his ship
reached the port, he accepted false reports that Sa‘id Khan was dead,
and simply seized his ship and its goods. When Sa‘id Khan and other
important nobles (buzurgān) in Bengal heard this, they sent a pro-
test, but their petitions (mahzar) had no effect. In Tahir’s overall view
then, admiration for the courage of the Acehnese and their stout re-
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 307

sistance to the Portuguese must be tempered with a recognition of

the rather tyrannical temperament (and innate “bad nature”) of their
rulers. Indeed, he notes, in about 1606–1607, matters were made even
worse by the fact that the ruler of Aceh had seized two or three more
ports and become still more powerful.
One section of Tahir Muhammad’s account, entitled “A brief de-
scription of the kingdom of Portugal which is under the rule of the
Emperor of Firang,”42 begins by noting that “Portugal” is a very large
city, which is the capital (pā-i takht) of the Badshah of Firang, who
is the emperor of the Franks. On the one side, the frontier of his
lands touches the land of the Maghrib, and at some twenty leagues
from there are other towns such as “Kasmalta” (perhaps Casablanca).
He then enters directly into a register where the “wonders” of the
area dominate. For he recounts that there was a large cave (ghār) in
the Maghrib where sorts of djinns lived; several people had been
lost there, of whom some had returned, but one person had stayed
on and himself become the master of magical arts. The emperor of
Franks had then cut off access to this cave. This story is then set
aside, as Tahir moves into a far more matter-of-fact political mode
of narration. He informs his readers that he will describe how the
emperor of Portugal (meaning Dom Sebastião) had entered into a
confl ict with the ruler of Maghrib in 987 H (1579), in which the
former was defeated and many of his followers killed.43 In fact, after
this battle, no one really knew whether the emperor was dead or
alive, and some Franks claimed he was simply imprisoned. His uncle
(meaning the former cardinal, Dom Henrique) had then become
ruler, and had asked that the magical cave be opened up. Some clair-
voyant people who had been enclosed inside there for seven years
now emerged, and said that the emperor of Portugal had in fact died
in the battle, thus laying all doubts to rest. We may note, inciden-
tally, that the figure of Dom Henrique was one that had already
piqued the interest of the Mughal court, if the account of the Jesuit
António Monserrate may be credited.44
It turns out that in 1579–1580, Tahir Muhammad had himself been
sent on the orders of Emperor Akbar as part of a mission (hijābat) to
the port of Goa. This port was, he notes, under the control of the
governors (hukkām) of the emperor of Portugal, and Tahir had in the
308 EUROPE’S INDIA

course of his mission gathered a fair amount of information from the

Franks themselves. He had thus come to know that for a long time
the king of Portugal had wished to conquer the kingdom of Maghrib,
until in that particular year one of the brothers of the king of Maghrib
deserted him and came over to the ruler of Portugal, offering him a
plan for the conquest. The ruler of Portugal had accepted his pro-
posal, made ready his fleet, and set off toward the Maghrib. In the
meanwhile, the ruler of the Maghrib sent one of his confidants se-
cretly to meet his estranged brother, and sent him a message as fol-
lows: “You are a descendant of the Prophet [a Sayyid]. It is improper
that you help in the conquest by the Franks of a country that has
long been under Islamic rule (tasarruf-i Islām). If they conquer it, the
people of the Maghrib would have to become Christians.” He had
thus made his wayward brother promise that he would not follow
through with his plan of betrayal. Meanwhile, the Muslim army had
reached the seashore, and the fleet of the Franks too had arrived there
from their lands. The “estranged” brother now deviously told the
Franks that the army of the Maghrib was rather weak, and that they
could be easily defeated. The overconfident Franks hence disem-
barked from their boats, and the army of the Maghrib began to re-
treat, with the Franks chasing them further and further inland. After
they had gone far inland, the trap was sprung; the principal force
of the Maghrib, mounted on fine Arab horses, attacked the force of
the Franks who were slaughtered in great numbers. The emperor
of the Franks himself was trampled over and killed, to the point that
no one could even recognize his body. What remained of the army of
the Franks retreated to their ships and returned to Portugal. Since
the emperor of Portugal had no heir, the king of Spain (Ray Aspānya,
a term derived from the Portuguese “El-Rei de Espanha”), a powerful
king from among the Franks, now entered Portugal and took over
the kingdom. When this news reached Goa, the Franks in the ports
of Hindustan had without any hesitation accepted his rule. Tahir
Muhammad reports that he had to remain in Goa until the arrival
of the new governor, who was sent out by the king of Spain, and
hence was himself a witness to this transition. It was only after a
whole year that he eventually left Goa (probably in 1581) and reached
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 309

the port of Khambayat (Cambay) in Gujarat, where his father at the

time held an administrative position (mutasaddī). He then went back
to Akbar’s court to pay him his respects, but also presumably to re-
port on what had transpired in distant Portugal.
Tahir Muhammad’s account of Dom Sebastião’s disastrous cam-
paign of 1578 is of course not quite accurate in all its details. To begin
with, he displaces it by a year to 987 H, which may be explained by
the fact that it was in this year that the news arrived in Goa. Secondly,
the two rivals in the Maghrib were not really brothers, but uncle
and nephew. The Sa‘di ruler in August 1578 was ‘Abdel Malik, who
had in fact earlier ousted his nephew Muhammad al-Mutawakkil.45
As for al-Mutawakkil, there is no indication that he deliberately led
the Portuguese into a trap, and in point of fact, he was himself killed
in the course of the battle. Tahir’s account thus does present a pic-
ture of solidarity among Muslims that is a little too smooth. But it
is also a narrative that is located in the matter-of-fact register of the
political chronicle, rather than in the marvelous register of the ‘ajā’ib
that he sometimes employs. He concludes his part of his discussion
with a rather more ethnographic assessment of the Franks as whole,
as he has observed them at first hand in Goa.

In sum, the community of Franks [tā’ifa-i Firang] wear very fine

clothes but they are often very slovenly [chirkīn] and pimply.
They don’t like to use water [ba āb muqayyad nīst and]. They
bathe very rarely. Amongst them, washing after relieving one-
self [tihārat-o-istinjā] is considered improper. They are very good
at using fi rearms [tufang], and they are particularly brave on
ships and in the water. But in contrast to this, they are not so
brave on land. The Malabari community, who live near Ceylon,
and are Muslims, are about five thousand in the number of their
households. Their principal task is to make war [ghazā’] on the
Franks. And despite their weaknesses, they do overcome the
Franks.

Cowards on land but brave in the water, the Franks are not merely
untrustworthy and devious, but also dirty, unbathed, and—worst of
Mughal portrait of unknown Eu ropean (1610–1620), © Victoria
and Albert Museum, London, IM.9-1913.
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 311

all—lacking in proper forms of toilet training. Yet, for Tahir, even

this devil can be given his due, for he does state that one skill the
Franks have mastered is navigation. Among the great terrors of the
sea for Muslims are whirlpools that draw ships in, but the Franks
have a clever device to control this. When they see clouds that can
cause a problem, they simply fire their cannon; and the sound of the
cannon fire sends the clouds upward, so that no whirlpool is formed.
A second “wonder” of the sea is a kind of special flame that begins
to hang over a ship (perhaps St. Elmo’s fire). If this fire comes down,
the ship may proceed, but if it persists in hanging over the mast, the
ship cannot advance and inevitably sinks. But here too the Franks
know how to deal with it. A third problem relating to the sea and
Franks concerns a solution to combat sharks (nahang). When they
see one, they throw a bag into the sea; the shark swallows it and is
made contented, and so does not attack the ship.
We can thus see that Tahir Muhammad Sabzwari employed both
notions of the wondrous or the marvelous—indeed the closing sen-
tences of the text call it a “wonder-book” (shigarf- nāma)— and a far
more empirical tone to deal with Eu rope, as he does in order to
describe countries of the Indian Ocean littoral. Indeed, the brief de-
scriptions that conclude the chapter continue to employ both tones.
A description of the Maldives (Dīv Mahall), islands that lie to the left
on the route from Aceh to Surat, has a basic ethnographic character to
it. The inhabitants wear the leaves of trees, and mostly eat fish, while
fresh water is lacking; people do not care to wear clothes here; men
and women live together indiscriminately in the same house. More
exotic is an island lying between Portugal and India (perhaps
St. Helena) that had been found a hundred years before. No one lived
there, but goats and cows could be found on this island, and there
was plenty of rock salt. When some Frank was unhappy (muflis), he
just got off their ships and stayed there for a year, hunting and skin-
ning animals, until the returning ship picked him up. Again, the tone
is quite matter-of-fact; these are hardly the islands of Sindbad, or
populated by monopods (or unijambistes) and amazing talking birds.
Wonders may indeed exist, but the whole world is not equally im-
pregnated with them. Europe in this sense is not somehow distinct
from the rest of the world in some essential way.
312 EUROPE’S INDIA

Europe Is Attained

Tahir Muhammad’s account, while it goes much further than any of

those surveyed earlier in this chapter, still does not constitute a real
first-person account of Europe, but rather a derivative one based on
hearsay. Throughout the seventeenth century, we remain largely
frustrated in this respect. We know of dozens of Indians who had
traveled to Europe by 1700, some of whom remaining there for years
and even decades. Princes and princelings of South Asian origin in
Portugal alone in the mid-seventeenth century ran into several
dozens, from Arakan, the Maldives, Jaffna, Bijapur, Badakhshan, and
a host of other places.46 But not a single detailed description of
Eu rope emerges from all this. Yet, as the English, Dutch, and even-
tually the French added their presence in India to that of the Portu-
guese, it is clear that the complexity of internal divisions in Europe
became apparent to courtiers and rulers all over, from Calicut
and Golkonda to the Mughal Empire. Thus, by the end of the sev-
enteenth century, when the “new” English Company’s ambassador,
Sir William Norris, appeared at Aurangzeb’s court in the Deccan, he
was mercilessly quizzed on the precise nature of political arrange-
ments in Eu rope. What was William of Orange’s (William III’s)
relationship to the Dutch Company? Was Louis XIV in fact the
greatest ruler in Europe at that time? What was particularly galling
was that Mughal court officials compared Norris’s answers to those
given by the representatives of the “old” Company, and pointed out
contradictions where they existed.47
Images of the Europeans also came to be available for the first
time in Sanskrit, even if these seventeenth-century references tend
to be sparse and rather laconic. An example is Venkatadhvarin’s
Viśvagunādarśacampū, where two alternative views of the city of
Madras are proposed by two opposing voices in the text.48 One of
these voices insists that these Europeans ( here termed “Hunas,” or
Huns) are to be associated with unusual products and devices (vastv
adbhutam, similar in spirit to the idea of the ‘ajā’ib), besides the fact
that “they never take others’ money unjustly, by force,” and observe
rules in punishment. The negative view of them, on the other hand,
contemptuously terms them “white-faces” (śvetavadanāh), and declares
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 313

in no uncertain terms that “there is no-one worse than Hûnas in this

world: they are merciless, they treat Brahmins with contempt, as if
they were no better than blades of grass; language cannot express
their vices; they care nothing for rules of purity.” This last gibe may
be another reference to the lack of bodily cleanliness that Tahir
Muhammad expressed in his text, and which Shahjahan too appar-
ently mentioned at a banquet in Lahore. Such reflections fi nd
echoes as those of Venkatadhvarin in later Sanskrit texts such as
the Sarvadevavilāsa from the late eighteenth century, where too
the śvetamukhas (“white faces”) are compared to the evil figure of
Ravana.49
It seems, then, that the first Indo-Persian eyewitness accounts of
Europe do not appear until 1750. These have received a fair deal of
attention, partly because so many of today’s Indian “xenologists”
among colonial-period historians remain quite obsessed with the
problem of Indian identity as defined in a European looking glass.50
Besides, British writers of the colonial period themselves were par-
ticularly interested in how they and their civilization were viewed
by Indians, a fact that must explain the early notoriety enjoyed by,
say, Mirza Abu Talib Khan Isfahani’s Masīr-i Tālibī fī bilād-i afranjī
(“Talib’s travels in the land of the Franks”), translated into English
by Charles Stewart as early as 1810.51 The writer, who traveled be-
tween 1799 and 1803, provided a view that was often but not always
flattering to the English, but it was congenial enough, in that it
generally contrasted Albion’s vigor to Indian decadence. Also quite
well-known is Mirza Shaikh I‘tisam-ud-Din, Shigarf-nāma-i wilāyat
(“Wonder Book of England”), written in 1785, but recounting its au-
thor’s travels two decades earlier, in the months from January 1766
to October or November 1769, initially in the company of the de-
vious and unreliable Archibald Swinton.52 In this case, interestingly,
the Persian text—which enjoyed wide manuscript circulation—has
never been published, but Urdu and English translations (or adapta-
tions) have long existed.53 I‘tisam-ud-Din, it may be noted, had a
rather poor opinion of English knowledge of Persian, Arabic, and
Turkish, and made it a point to note how both Swinton and William
Jones needed his help to read and translate sections of the celebrated
Farhang-i Jahāngīrī of Mir Jamal-ud-Din Inju Shirazi.54 Still more
314 EUROPE’S INDIA

recently, Simon Digby has drawn our attention to an unpublished

manuscript in his possession, Tārīkh-i jadīd (or “New History”) by
Munshi Isma‘il, which relates the author’s voyage to England in the
early 1770s. From the same decade, Digby also notes the existence
of another Indo-Persian text (also unpublished), Risāla-i ahwāl-i
mulk-i Firang-o-Hindustān, by Mir Muhammad Husain ibn ‘Abdul
Husaini, which recounts travels to Lisbon and London from Cal-
cutta, in around 1774.55
The bulk of these accounts were written by writers who accom-
panied Englishmen back to their native land, in some capacity or the
other, as munshīs, as envoys, but also (as with Abu Talib) more or less
as gentlemen of leisure.56 One may imagine (as Juan Cole and others
have suggested) that the production of these texts would in part have
been encouraged by the British, since they served to stress the
persistent theme of the “wonders” of wilāyat, and the superiority of
Western culture and technology, even if they may equally have con-
tained disparaging remarks on food, manners, or climate. This ad-
miration for the Europeans, stemming from the crude fact that they
were now gaining the upper hand politically, can even be found in
the writings of ‘Abdul Karim Kashmiri, author of the Bayān-i Wāqi’,
although he did not actually travel to Europe.57 Describing events
in Bengal in the mid-eighteenth century, this author mentions dif-
ferent Eu ropean settlements along the river, such as the populous
Calcutta and the smaller “Frans Danga” (Chandernagore). He notes
too that among the firangīs, there were several groups (qaum or firqa),
of which each was known according to the name of the country
(mulk), such as Fransis, Angrez, Valandez, and Purtugez. These Euro-
pean nations had extensive and well-kept gardens according to their
own countries ( here, wilāyat), in which they snipped even large trees
with scissors, giving them a par tic u lar shape. Further, since these
Europeans all lived in one area, separate from the Indians, and were
self-administering, there was no change in their lifestyles (auza’-o-
atwār) in relation to their places of origin; they had built churches
(kalīsā), where they even read the namāz after their own fashion.
According to ‘Abdul Karim, a number of distinguished (mumtāz)
Frankish intellectuals and craftsmen had settled in these places, since
they could live there securely under the protection of the Frankish
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 315

soldiers (ashāb-i saif-i firangiyān). He concludes that this is all on ac-

count of the “perfect unity of the Franks” (bar kamāl-i yak jihātī-i
firangiyān), to be contrasted to the lack of coordination to be found
in the Mughal court. A hemistich thus concludes the reflection:

Wealth grows out of coordinated acts.

Its lack comes out of disunity.

Such views as these may fruitfully be contrasted therefore to another

impor tant but relatively neglected text that comes to us from the
1770s and 1780s, namely the Malayalam travel account entitled
Varttamānappustakam, by Paremmakkal Tommakattanar (1736–
1799).58 The author of the text, a Syrian Christian man of the cloth,
accompanied the bishop Mar Joseph Kariyattil, and visited Europe
(Iberia and Rome), before returning to India, in a journey that has
some parallels to that of Joseph of Cranganore in the early sixteenth
century, but also to the travel-accounts of other Eastern Christians
of the early modern era in western lands.59
This text must be understood in terms of the changing relations
between the Catholic Church and the Syrian Christians of Kerala
in the early modern centuries. While the Portuguese had initially
been seen in very positive terms by the hierarchy of the Syrian
church, relations soured over the course of the sixteenth century.
The reasons were many, some material (notably disputes over trade),
and others having to do with the theological conflicts between the
Catholic Church and the Syrian one. As the sixteenth century wore
on, Catholic pressure on the Syrian Christians grew apace, eventu-
ally culminating in the notorious Synod of Diamper (Udayamperur)
in 1599. This synod required the Syrian Christians not merely to
change their liturgy and significant aspects of their theology, but also
to submit to the authority of the Catholic priesthood.60 However, the
“solution,” imposed from above, proved impossible to sustain, and
by the mid-seventeenth century, the Syrian community had split
(around the so-called Coonan Cross Oath of 1653), with one part of
it—the “Malabarians”—remaining loosely loyal to the Catholic
Church, and the other part—the “Jacobites”—returning to West
Syriac practices, with a separate archbishop, initially Mar Thomas.
316 EUROPE’S INDIA

Nevertheless, tensions persisted through the later seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries. The expulsion of the Portuguese from their
fortresses in Kerala, and the installation of the Dutch, further com-
plicated matters. By the late 1650s the major Catholic missionary
presence was Carmelites, whose relations with the so-called “Mala-
barian” Christians tended to vary considerably. A particularly diffi-
cult period was in the 1770s, when frustration with the behav ior of
the Carmelite vicar apostolic eventually led to a decision to send a
delegation to Rome, headed by Joseph Kariyattil (a former student
of the Carmelites, who had already studied in Rome), and Tommak-
attanar, with the two senior priests being accompanied by a couple
of younger boys who were to be admitted to the Propaganda College
in Rome. These then were the circumstances of the composition of
the Varttamānappustakam.
The combination of circumstances, and the identity of the author,
render the text rather distinct from other travel writing of the
period, such as the work of I‘tisam-ud-Din. Tommakattanar, both
individually and as a member of his community, had had long expe-
rience of dealing with Europeans. He had been ordained a priest in
1761, at the age of twenty-five, and he was well educated, with some
knowledge of Syriac, Latin, and Sanskrit, as well as Italian and Por-
tuguese. It is certain that he had notions of what Eu rope was like
before he went there, and besides his traveling companion, Mar Jo-
seph, had spent years in Rome. Further, he did not visit Europe to
ask how the British had come to conquer India. His Europe was in-
stead southern and Catholic, and his main concerns were not with
technology, military power, or the need to explain Indian “decline.”
Fi nally, this was not the view of a non- Christian from an area of
the world that was seen as dominated by Christians. Rather, it was
about what enabled one set of Christians to claim that they were
superior to another group. This “subversive” content of the book
was such that, as late as 1862, it was condemned (along with a com-
pendium of Voltaire’s writings) as containing “erroneous and scan-
dalous propositions throwing disgrace not only on the religious
orders (it was composed with this purpose), but also on the Sa-
cred Congregations . . . [and] being even less respectful towards the
Supreme Pontiff.”61
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 317

The introduction to the narrative, dated September 1785, begins

by evoking the Apostle St. Thomas and declares from the outset that
its intent is to “let our brethren and friends know . . . what experi-
ences we had in Portugal, in the city of Rome, on the way after our
departure for Europe.” It then proceeds to describe the situation in
Kerala among the Christians from about 1773; various assemblies,
discussions, and controversies that ensued are evoked, and the growing
frustration of Syrian priests is mentioned, until the decision was
taken by the Malabar General Church Assembly to send a delegation
to Rome under Malpan Joseph Kariyattil. Money had to be raised
rapidly to pay for this voyage, and eventually a group of twenty-two
persons set out in May 1778 to Madras, from where they hoped to
gain a passage to Europe. Even before reaching Madras, however, it
became clear that only a small group of four could afford the journey.
A dispute then broke out between Tommakattanar and a man named
Chakkokattanar, but Malpan Joseph eventually supported the claims
of the former to make the voyage, since “he could be of help in writing
letters and making translations, and since he could easily learn the
European languages as he knew Latin.”62
Once in Madras, the party managed to find a Lisbon-based ship
called the Esperança, owned by four Portuguese merchants, that had
recently returned from Bengal, Bombay, and Goa and that was pre-
paring for a return trip to Europe. Despite initial resistance by the
owners, permission was obtained to embark, and the party left Ma-
dras in late November 1778. The voyage was extremely unpleasant.
The shipboard food did not appeal to the priests, and they came to
believe that the food together with the ambient heat caused them all
(and especially Malpan Joseph) to come out in “blisters and ulcers”
all over their bodies. Eventually, while rounding the Cape of Good
Hope, the Malpan even came to believe that he was at death’s
door, and began to lament and weep, saying that the others would
surely come to a bad end in Europe, since they did not know the lan-
guages of the place. However, this did not come to pass, and the ship
eventually anchored at the port of Benguela (in Angola) in early
February 1779.
Tommakattanar’s description of Benguela is short and mostly con-
cerned with the climate. He notes that “the bodies of the Europeans
318 EUROPE’S INDIA

who dwell there are pale, like bodies without blood,” and adds
that “this ugliness is caused by the air and the heat of the place.”
Yet, even in his brief description, he throws in a few hostile remarks
concerning the Portuguese, and how they had seized control of the
territory. A more elaborate critique along similar lines follows at
the next port of call, which is Bahia in Brazil. Here we are told a tale
of how the Portuguese by somewhat deceitful means came to control
the area by force, and thus also seized hold of untold riches in the
form of gold, precious stones, and wood. The place had now become
a destination for Portuguese, who were willing to settle there per-
manently. Brief descriptions of the “natives” follow, as well as of the
city and buildings. Mention is also made of how the party from
Kerala was received by the resident archbishop, Joaquim Borgia de
Figueroa. However, things did not go perfectly smoothly, for the
Syrian Christian party insisted on maintaining their Syriac rites,
even though they were advised against it by the archbishop. This
seems to have made them an object of great curiosity, and Tommak-
attanar suggests that their social success among the rich merchants
of Bahia was quite considerable as a result.
By early May, the ship was ready to depart for Portugal. The port
of Lisbon was reached after a ten-week voyage, on July 18. The city
struck our narrator as noisy, crowded, disorderly, and “without
any premeditated plan,” especially after the recent earthquake. The
density of churches was no doubt impressive, and these religious es-
tablishments also enjoyed rich incomes, second only to those in Rome.
But Tommakattanar was also struck by other features of Portugal’s
capital city, including its large number of illegitimate children, who
were looked after in various charitable establishments. Other aspects
of the city also came across to him as problematic, including the pres-
ence (and to his mind excessive influence) of Goan Catholic priests,
such as a certain Padre Cajetan Vitorino Faria. On Faria’s account, the
party from Kerala encountered some difficulties in gaining access to
the Queen, although they were eventually able to present a petition
to her at Queluz Palace. Eventually, Tommakattanar and the others
left for Genoa, en route to Rome, on November 6, 1779.
A brief account of Genoa follows, its imposing buildings, winding
streets, and rich material and cultural life. The writer comments on
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 319

the mode of government there, which is not a monarchy but a

republic, headed by a Doge. But it is clear that his heart is not in
it. Rather, his main concerns are with the machinations of the Car-
melites, the enemies of the “Malabarians,” who have managed once
more to exercise undue influence with Rome. In view of this, they
were hurriedly obliged to leave Genoa for Livorno, and thence to
Pisa, Florence, and Siena. By January 3, 1780, some thirteen months
after leaving Madras, the party thus arrived at last in the seat of the
papacy.
The pages of the account that follow are full of petitions and coun-
terpetitions, ecclesiastical audiences, and vile machinations, with
letters flying back and forth between Lisbon, Genoa, and Rome. Yet,
at the end of five and a half months, Malpan Joseph and his party
were disappointed at their reception, and the lack of trust shown by
the high authorities, who clearly preferred the versions of events and
problems set out by the Carmelites to their own. Tommakattanar’s
description of Rome too is perfunctory: it is “built in a circle; its
ground is leveled; walls and gates are built around it.” St. Peter’s
Church is briefly described, as are a few other religious buildings.
The rich merchants, gardens of leisure, and even the comic actors
on the streets find mention. But the tone is a sour and disappointed
one. The church authorities have “disregarded justice and the glory of
God,” and instead done things “for reasons of self-interest and
pride.”63 It was in this mood that the group from Kerala made its way
to Loreto, then to Ancona, and eventually to Genoa, reaching that
city on July 3, 1780. This time the return to Lisbon was through
Cadiz and Tavira.
The second stay in Lisbon seems, if anything, to have been even
more miserable than the first. It lasted almost all of five years, yet
Tommakattanar reveals almost nothing of the actual events that
transpired during that long elapse of time. His main preoccupation
is instead with the disputes at the center of which his party found
itself. Besides that redoubtable schemer Padre Cajetan from Goa, the
party of Malpan Joseph also had to deal with the minister for the
Indies, Martim de Melo, described as a “devil, an enemy of peace and
concord,” who had seized “our Malabar people [and] had crushed
them and had drunk their blood.” This minister, as well as some
320 EUROPE’S INDIA

other influential persons, seem to have initiated moves to hold

Malpan Joseph back in Portugal, alleging that if he returned to
Kerala he would cause “contentions and miserable disorder” there.
Besides, the substantial Goan ecclesiastical presence in Lisbon also
did not aid the cause of the Kerala Syrians. Violent letters were ex-
changed, in one of which the Kerala party wrote to their Catholic
interlocutors: “Through deceit and tricks you have robbed our com-
munity of its dignities, and for a long time you have enslaved it and
have until now tried with all your strength to do away with the old
rites and practices of our Church.”64 An interest ing form of patri-
otic reasoning was also used to demonstrate how it was unreason-
able for priests from Europe to become bishops and high authorities
in Kerala. The Malpan and his party argued that this was no different
than putting Portugal under Habsburg rule, and added: “Suppose the
Italians govern Portugal, the Portuguese Italy, the French Germany,
the Germans France. Tell me if the people of these countries will be
pleased with this.” The conclusion was clear. “It is known as a law of
nature that the honour, the prestige, and the unity of a community
can be kept intact only if that community is governed by those of
that community.”65
Whether this rhetorical figure, in which Eu ropeans were com-
pared to the Pharaoh in Egypt, and the “Malabarians” to Moses and
the Jews, would have really appealed is not known to us. We are
aware, however, that it was only after many negotiations and diffi-
culties that they were eventually able to obtain permission to sail
back, after having formally taken leave of the royal family, once more
in Queluz. The only major concession they had managed to obtain
was the nomination of Malpan Joseph Kariyattil as archbishop of
Cranganore. Eventually, gaining the protection of the Marquês
de Castel-Melhor, the party was able to embark on a vessel carry ing
convicts (some three hundred in number) which left Lisbon on
April 20, 1785. Yet, the Kerala group’s troubles were not over. In late
June, they had to weather a terrible storm to enter the port of Bahia,
where the party (and Malpan Joseph in par tic u lar) were for once
treated with exemplary respect: “On both sides of the road, from
the shore to the residence of the governor, there stood spectators
whose number is difficult to be estimated.” Another incident fol-
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 321

lowed, in which the ship again almost capsized. Eventually, they left
Bahia on August  30, 1785; the island of Sri Lanka was sighted on
March 18, 1786 after a hard journey, with great shortages of food and
water. The Syrian party was able to reach Goa only on May 1, 1786,
and a bare four months later, Malpan Joseph Kariyattil died under
uncertain circumstances.
As for Paremmakkal Tommakattanar, he returned to Kerala as ad-
ministrator of the vacant See of Cranganore. His text, as his modern
translator writes, took on a life of its own and “appeared more sub-
versive than its author.” It also marked the inauguration of two new
forms in Malayalam, the prose narrative and the travel account.
Whether its author knew it or not, there was thus something dis-
tinctly modern about the expression he gave birth to.

Toward a Conclusion

The preceding pages have carried us over some three hundred years
in terms of the history of Europe and its relations with India, and in
this concluding chapter to a consideration of Indian perceptions of
Europe and Europeans. Our chief focus in this chapter has been with
a number of texts and narratives, deliberately organized in a some-
what schematic form. First, we have a phase wherein Eu ropeans as
a people (the “Franks”) are perceived by Indians without a clear
notion of a geographical entity called Europe. Then the first descrip-
tions of Europe appear, but not in the form of first-person narratives.
Finally, in the latter half of the eighteenth century— surprisingly
late, it could be said—the first personal narratives of travel to Europe
can be found in Persian and Malayalam.
Seen in a comparative framework, the South Asian corpus of xe-
nological materials regarding Europe is, up to 1800, undoubtedly far
less rich than that from the Ottoman Empire or the Arab-speaking
lands.66 For the Ottoman Empire alone, we can speak of a fairly rich
corpus before 1800. Thus, we have the account of Osman Agha ibn
Ahmed Temeshvarlï, who was imprisoned in Hungary and Austria
for eleven years (1688–1699) and who appears to have written his
memoirs (which are thus above all an account of captivity, but sharing
significant aspects with the travel account) in the early 1720s.67 First
322 EUROPE’S INDIA

published in a German translation in the 1950s, the text has subse-

quently been edited, and other translations in European languages
have appeared. Better understood, and belonging also to a par tic-
u lar subgenre, are the accounts of Ottoman ambassadors to foreign
courts, of which a number of well-known examples exist, in partic-
ular from the eighteenth century.68 Evliya Çelebi’s account of his visit
to Vienna in 1665 is at times counted as one of the earliest among
these; a significant example, which at times served as a model to other
later writers, is the embassy account of Yirmisekiz Çelebi Mehmed
Efendi to the court of the young Louis XV in 1720–1721.69 Along
the same line are the reports from Revolutionary and Napoleonic
France of Morali Seyyid Ali Efendi and Seyyid Abdürrahim Muhibb
Efendi, the fi rst dating from the years 1797 to 1802, and the second
from 1806 to 1811.70 This may not be all that surprising in view
of  the greater proximity, as well as the greater strategic signifi-
cance of Eu rope for the Ottomans, which meant that by the late
sixteenth century, Ottoman writers were even producing chroni-
cles of the kings of France and the conquest of the New World by
the Spaniards.71
The contention has been that these materials are characterized by
several distinct, and at times even contradictory, sentiments. There
is the picture of the deceitful European, the religious bigot, who is
willing to stop at nothing to achieve his ends. This was already a
powerful image in the sixteenth century, and it persisted into later
times. Then, we have a second set of perceptions, focusing on the
Eu ropean as a maker of wondrous objects and curiosities (adbhuta
and ‘ajā’ib), of which we have seen a number of examples. Third, we
have the idea of Eu rope itself, which emerges gradually and hesitat-
ingly from materials in the seventeenth century into a full-blown
picture, with a high degree of complexity in the last years of the
eighteenth century.
It is this that Partha Chatterjee has characterized as a mixture of
“fear and love,” which he sees as somehow impregnating the entirety
of the Euro-Indian relationship between 1498 and our own time.72
Both those emotions were undoubtedly present in varying measure
at dif ferent moments, though rather few examples of love can in fact
be found before 1750. But if we are to be more complete, we must
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 323

include in the gamut of emotions not simply fear and love, but sus-
picion and disgust, wonder and reticence at a people who may have
worn “very fi ne clothes,” but did not yet quite know how to wash
their bottoms. We must also track the subtle changes in these per-
ceptions, as political circumstances and settings for interaction
evolved. Much separated the perceptions of 1500 from those of 1800.
There is little doubt that Europeans of the early modern period
dealt with and understood India in a variety of ways, as a function of
their social locations, religious beliefs, and intellectual inclinations.
But it can equally be said that there was no monolithic view of the
“Franks” held in India over these centuries either. To be sure, for
many, indifference was also an option, since it was only in the latter
half of the eighteenth century—with the British conquest of fi rst
Bengal, and then southern and western India— that Eu ropeans
emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the quotidian realities of
the subcontinent. The central argument of this book has been to sug-
gest, however, that even in the absence of an apparatus of political
and military domination, European relations with and understand-
ings of India in the centuries from 1500 to 1800 were the product of
layered and intermittent conversations and distinct asymmetries in
perception. Cultural translation was never a transparent matter in
these contexts, because the translators themselves were such com-
plex and fraught actors, caught in webs both of their own making
and produced by others. The strategies used by them also varied
a great deal over time. The sixteenth century already witnessed a
two-pronged approach, between a hesitant employment of a form of
philology, and the use of ethnography to produce bold and slapdash
generalizations, which somehow proved enduring. These concerned
both the invention by the end of the sixteenth century of an idea of
Mughal “despotism,” and a preoccupation with giving a radically
schematic and systemic character to the society and the “religion”
of the “Gentiles” of India.
The seventeenth century saw some impor tant contestations, as
Eu ropean writers and observers of India grew in their numbers;
yet, through all this, certain topoi seem to have remained, and the
dominance of casual and indeed prejudiced ethnography as an ap-
proach continues to be noticeable, even if some Europeans gradually
324 EUROPE’S INDIA

came—like the Dutch priest Rogerius—to enter into a closer and

more intimate reading of Indian materials. Further complicating
matters was the idea of using “adroit dissimulation,” which seems to
have been a regular feature of Europeans representing themselves to
their Indian interlocutors, as we see even when reading François
Bernier.73 This is all the more curious, because in the eighteenth
century, the boot would be on the other foot, as it would be the In-
dians who would be consistently accused by Europeans of being un-
trustworthy and duplicitous ( fourbes). And yet, in the midst of all
this maneuvering, and wearing and doffing of masks, there are in-
terest ing and quite pregnant moments, when certain European ob-
servers tried to apprentice themselves to Indian knowledge-systems,
engaging in the hard work of assimilating at least some protocols
of reading before rushing to judgment or glib generalization. En-
gaging with personages such as James Fraser in an extended fashion
may help us understand where their attitudes came from, and under
what institutional and political circumstances they were even pos-
sible. Yet, as the eighteenth century wore on, and the conquest of the
subcontinent by the Company proceeded apace, one sees more and
more of a dif ferent combination of attitudes: an ill-disguised con-
tempt, a growing impatience and an urge to infantilize the Other,
and a tendency to generalize from Olympian heights in new insti-
tutions such as Calcutta’s Asiatic Society. Mirza Abu Talib Khan
would thus write (interestingly echoing I‘tisam-ud-Din) of how
among the English, “as soon as one of them acquires the smallest
insight of the principles of any science, or the rudiments of any for-
eign language, he immediately sits down and composes a work on
the subject, and, by means of the Press, circulates books which have
no more intrinsic worth than the toys bestowed on children, which
serve to amuse the ignorant, but are of no use to the learned.” This
was even true, he added with exquisite sarcasm, of someone of the
“transcendent abilities and angelic character of Sir William Jones.”74
The old constraints that had been set by a balance of force and
forms of institutional equilibrium between cultures had now begun
to give way.
In the end, this is a cultural history of Eu rope’s India that has not
been able to set aside a political and institutional history. It has
 B Y WAY O F C O N C L U S I O N 325

not been my concern here whether something like a perfect under-

standing between cultures is possible, under any historical circum-
stances. Only those who have never really experienced life across and
between cultures can afford the illusion, after all, that it is a simple
affair. Nor is it a question of blithely apportioning blame, or claiming
that this or that group deliberately set out to distort what should have
been limpid and obvious. Nor is it my intention to participate in a
project of cultural exorcism, whereby the expulsion of some alien Eu-
ropean virus from the body of India will help the “recovery” of
some pristine self. What is undeniable, however, is that even five cen-
turies after Vasco da Gama, the consequences of how India was rep-
resented in and by Europe in the centuries between 1500 and 1800
still weigh heavily on us. We must live with these consequences, but
perhaps we can do so somewhat better in a fuller knowledge of their
nuances and complexities.
 A B B R E V I AT I O N S

ANOM Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-

Provence
ANTT Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon
BL British Library, London
BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
CC Corpo Cronológico
FRP Fraser of Reelig Papers, Kirkhill, Scotland
HAG Historical Archives, Panaji, Goa
IESHR Indian Economic and Social History Review
NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
OIOC Oriental and India Office Collections

327
 NOTES

Preface
1. I should also note that among the scholars present in Berlin that year
with whom I, along with Muzaffar Alam, Partha Chatterjee, Velcheru Nara-
yana Rao, and David Shulman, enjoyed extended discussions, was Suzanne L.
Marchand, then preparing her well-known work, German Orientalism in the Age
of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009).
2. Catherine Weinberger-Thomas, ed., L’Inde et l’imaginaire, Collection
Purusârtha, 11 (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1988); Denys Lombard, Cathe-
rine Champion, and Henri Chambert-Loir, eds., Rêver l’Asie: Exotisme et litté-
rature coloniale aux Indes, en Indochine et en Insulinde, Recherches d’histoire et
de sciences sociales 56 (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1993).
3. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions
to Indian Art, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
4. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in
India, ed. Nicholas B. Dirks (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996);
Ronald B. Inden, “Orientalist Constructions of India,” Modern Asian Studies
20, no. 3 (1986): 401–46; and Ronald B. Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1990).
5. For a Marxist defense of Goldziher, and of “orientalism” more gener-
ally, see the remarks in Irfan Habib, “In Defence of Orientalism: Critical Notes
on Edward Said,” Social Scientist 33, nos. 1–2 (2005): 40–46. For a far more bal-
anced view, see John M. Efron, “Orientalism and the Jewish Historical Gaze,”
in Orientalism and the Jews, ed. Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek Jonathan
Penslar (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 87–93.
6. See Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Ene-
mies (London: Allen Lane, 2006), a work that was met by a well-orchestrated
round of applause by interested parties. An equally disappointing and unbal-
anced tirade is that of Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers
on Oriental Despotism in the Middle East and India (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2009).

329
330 N O T E S T O PA G E S x i i – 4

7. For an example, see François Pouillon and Jean- Claude Vatin, eds.,
After Orientalism: Critical Perspectives on Western Agency and Eastern Re-
appropriations (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Far more reasonable is Sophie Basch, Nora
Seni, Pierre Chuvin, Michel Espagne, Jean Leclant, and Huguette Meunier-
Chuvin, eds., L’orientalisme, les orientalistes et l’empire ottoman: De la fin du XVIIIe
à la fin du XXe siècle (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2011).
8. Luce Giard, ed., Michel Foucault: Lire l’œuvre (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon,
1992); compare Robert J. C. Young, “Foucault on Race and Colonialism,” New
Formations 25 (1995): 57–65.

Introduction
Epigraph: My translation from the text in Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer,
Aix-en-Provence (henceforth ANOM), Colonies C2 62, fls. 13–22, “Mémoire
de M. Bernier,” citation on fl. 22. An edition of this text may be found in Henri
Castonnet des Fossés, “François Bernier: Documents inédits sur son séjour dans
l’Inde,” Mémoires de la Société nationale d’agriculture, sciences et arts d’Angers 26
(1884–1885): 215–34, but it is practically unusable. For an earlier English trans-
lation, see Theodore Morison, “Minute by M. Bernier upon the Establishment
of Trade in the Indies, dated 10th March 1668,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society 1 (1933): 21, but the passage cited here is unfortunately mistranslated,
including the odd Portuguese pidgin phrase.
1. For an evaluation of Gassendi’s networks and influence, see the essays
collected in Sylvia Murr, ed., Gassendi et l’Europe (1592–1792) (Paris: J. Vrin,
1997).
2. For more on Danishmand Khan’s career, see Samsam ud-Daula Shahn-
awaz Khan and ‘Abdul Hayy, Ma’asir al-Umarā’, trans. Henry Beveridge and
Baini Prashad, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1941–1952), 1:446–48. The
double rank cited above is the personal (zāt) and cavalry (sawār) rank.
3. Frédéric Tinguely, ed., Un Libertin dans l’Inde Moghole: Les Voyages de
François Bernier (1656–1669) (Paris: Chandeigne, 2008), 369. I have restituted
the spellings of the original text, for Tinguely’s modernized versions.
4. See the discussion in Jonardon Ganeri, The Lost Age of Reason: Philos-
ophy in Early Modern India 1450–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),
13–21.
5. For a favorable evaluation of Bernier as a cross-cultural intermediary,
see Faith E. Beasley, “Versailles meets the Taj Mahal,” in French Global: A New
Approach to Literary History, ed. Christie McDonald and Susan Rubin Suleiman
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 207–22. In somewhat the same
vein, also see Nicholas Dew, Orientalism in Louis XIV’s France (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 131–67.
6. The best modern account of the emergence of this Company is Glenn J.
Ames, Colbert, Mercantilism and the French Quest for Asian Trade (DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 1996). Still useful is Paul Kaeppelin, La
Compagnie des Indes Orientales et François Martin: Étude sur l’Histoire du Com-
merce de des Établissements Français dans l’Inde sous Louis XIV (1664–1719) (Paris:
Augustin Challamel, 1908).
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 – 1 1 331

7. For more on Caron, see Jacques and Marianne Proust, eds., Le puissant
royaume du Japon: La description de François Caron (1636) (Paris: Chandeigne,
2003). The work by Gabriel Andriamiarintsoa Rantoandro, Un homme d’affaires
franco-hollandais en mer de Chine et dans l’Océan indien au XVIIeme siècle: Fran-
çois Caron, 1600–1673, Thèse de 3ème cycle en histoire (Paris: EHESS, 1978),
unfortunately remains unpublished.
8. Shahnawaz Khan and ‘Abdul Hayy, Ma’asir al-Umarā’, 1:484–85 (for
Diyanat Khan) and 722–23 (for Ja‘far Khan).
9. For more about this case, see Virginia W. Lunsford, Piracy and Priva-
teering in the Golden Age Netherlands (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan,
2005), 170–76; also the classic account in F. W. Stapel, “Hubert Hugo: Een
zeerover in dienst van de Oostindische Compagnie,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-,
Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië 86, nos. 3–4 (1930): 615–35. For
Hugo’s continued links with the French Company, also see Charles Grand-
jean, “Mémoire présenté à Louis XIV en 1664 par le Hollandais Hubert Hugo
pour la fondation d’une Compagnie des Indes orientales,” Bulletin de la société
d’études coloniales et maritimes (1893): 5–25.
10. Michel Mollat, “Passages français dans l’Océan Indien au temps de
François Ier,” Studia 11 (1963): 239–48, reprinted in Mollat, Études d’histoire mar-
itime (1938–1975) (Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1977), 241–50; and Philippe
Haudrère, “Jalons pour une histoire des Compagnies des Indes,” in Compag-
nies et comptoirs: L’Inde des Français, XVIIe-XXe siècle, ed. Jacques Weber (Paris:
Société française d’Histoire d’Outre-Mer, 1991), 9–27.
11. Archives des Missions Étrangères, Paris, vol. 114, 132–35, transcribed
in Anne Lombard-Jourdan, “À propos d’Augustin de Beaulieu: Quelques doc-
uments inédits,” Archipel 56 (1998): 145–56.
12. Denys Lombard, Mémoires d’un voyage aux Indes Orientales, 1619–1622:
Augustin de Beaulieu, un marchand normand à Sumatra (Paris: Maisonneuve et
Larose, 1996); for further details on Beaulieu, his career and his projects, see
Anne Lombard-Jourdan, “Augustin de Beaulieu et son Dessein touchant les
Indes orientales (1631–1632),” Archipel 54 (1997): 13–26.
13. See “A Journall of the Journey of Richard Steel, and John Crowther,
from Azmere in India, the place of the great Mogols residence, to Spahan
the Royall Seat of the King of Persia, in the affaires of the East Indian Soci-
etie. Anno 1615, 1616,” in Hakluytus Posthumus or, Purchas his Pilgrimes: Con-
tayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen
and Others, ed. Samuel Purchas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014),
4:266–80.
14. William Foster, ed., The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the
Great Mogul, 1615–1619, as Narrated in His Journal and Correspondence, 2 vols.
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1926).
15. Joan Mickelson Gaughan, The ‘Incumberances’: British Women in India,
1615–1856 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 18–22.
16. See the letters written by Steele from Batavia and Banten, dated Oc-
tober 19, 1626, October 28, 1627, and June 20, 1628, in The English Factories in
India, 1624–1629, ed. William Foster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), 148, 182,
278.
332 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 – 1 7

17. William Foster, “Austin of Bordeaux,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic So-
ciety of Great Britain and Ireland (1910): 494–95; William Foster, ed., Letters Re-
ceived by the East India Company from Its Servants in the East, vol. 2 (1613–1615)
(London: St. Dunstan’s House, 1897), 98, 105–6, passim.
18. Letter from Herryard (or Hiriart) to Sir Robert Cecil, 1604 (before Au-
gust 20) in Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquess of Salisbury,
preserved at Hatfi eld House, Hertfordshire, ed. M.  S. Giuseppi (London: His
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1933), 16:253.
19. Edward D. Maclagan, “Four Letters of Austin of Bordeaux,” Journal of
the Panjab Historical Society 4, no. 1 (1916): 3–17 (letter on pp. 8–9). I have slightly
corrected Maclagan’s translation. Three of these letters were published, some-
times with better readings, in Charles de la Roncière, “Un artiste français à la
cour du Grand Mogol,” Revue hebdomadaire 14, no. 15 (1905): 181–97. Roncière
used the versions in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (henceforth
BnF), Collection Cinq- Cents Colbert, Vol. 483, fls. 436, 439, whereas Mac-
lagan used the version from the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, Carpentras.
20. Wheeler M. Thackston, ed. and trans., The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of
Jahangir, Emperor of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 298–
99. Herryard’s status at the Mughal court is also confi rmed by the German
traveler Heinrich von Poser, who visited Lahore in 1621–1622; compare with
William Irvine, “Austin of Bordeaux,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Great Britain and Ireland (1910): 1343–45.
21. See the intriguing reference to a letter from “Hiriart (Augustin), na-
turel de Bordeaux, établi à Hispahan, capitale de la Perse,” in Catalogue de Lettres
Autographes provenant du Cabinet de feu M. J. J. de Bure, ancien libraire du Roi et
de la Bibliothèque Royale (Paris: Laverdet, 1853), Item 116. The undated letter,
written on highly decorated paper, was addressed to Louis XIII and stated that
Herryard intended to return to France via Spain, in order to enter the king’s
ser vice, with two elephants for the royal menagerie. The current location of
this letter is unknown.
22. Nicholas Withington at Agra to Thomas Aldworthe in Surat, Oc-
tober 29, 1614, in Letters Received, 2:141.
23. See Kornelis Sneyders de Vogel, “Une lettre de Herryard, joaillier du
Grand Mogol,” Neophilologus 39 (1955): 1–8. For more on Peiresc and his interest
in India, also see Jean-Marie Lafont, “L’Inde et l’Extrême- Orient dans la cor-
respondance de Fabri de Peiresc, 1580–1637: Mémoire pour les Indes, 1630,”
Topoi 7, no. 2 (1997): 693–732.
24. See Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Mediterranean World (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2015), 370–87.
25. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, on the other hand, had some knowledge of
Herryard; see Travels in India by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Baron of Aubonne, trans.
Vincent Ball (London: Macmillan, 1889), 1:108.
26. See, for example, Pierre Briant, The First European: A History of Alex-
ander in the Age of Empire, trans. Nicholas Elliott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2017).
27. For an encyclopedic overview of these questions, see Donald F. Lach
and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, 3 vols. (Chicago: Univer-
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 7 – 2 2 333

sity of Chicago Press, 1965–1993), especially vol. 1. For a more interpretative

essay, see Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India
through European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
28. For trading contacts across the western Indian Ocean before 1500, see
Éric Vallet, L’Arabie marchande: État et commerce sous les Sultans Rasūlides du
Yémen (626–858/1229–1454) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010), and
John L. Meloy, Imperial Power and Maritime Trade: Mecca and Cairo in the Later
Middle Ages (Chicago: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2010).
29. See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “The Birth-Pangs of Portuguese Asia: Re-
visiting the Fateful ‘Long Decade’ 1498–1509,” Journal of Global History 2,
no. 3 (2007): 261–80.
30. Dejanirah Couto, “The Role of Interpreters, or Linguas, in the Portu-
guese Empire during the 16th Century,” e-Journal of Portuguese History 1, no. 2
(2003).
31. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Intertwined Histories: Crónica and Tārīkh in
the Sixteenth- Century Indian Ocean World,” History and Theory 49, no.  4
(2010): 118–45; Zoltán Biedermann, “Nos primórdios da antropologia moderna:
A Ásia de João de Barros,” Anais de História de Além-Mar 4 (2003): 29–61.
32. Garcia da Orta, Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas da Índia, ed. Francisco
Manuel de Melo Breyner, Conde de Ficalho, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-
Casa da Moeda, 1987). For an interest ing, but rather uneven, reconsideration
of this figure, see Palmira Fontes da Costa, ed., Medicine, Trade and Empire:
Garcia de Orta’s “Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563)” in Context
(Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015).
33. António Borges Coelho, O vice-rei Dom João de Castro (Lisbon: Caminho,
2003); Luís Filipe Barreto, Descobrimentos e renascimento: Formas de ser e pensar nos
séculos XV e XVI, 2nd ed. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1983).
34. Armando Cortesão, History of Portuguese Cartography, 2 vols. (Lisbon:
Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1969–1971).
35. Primor e honra da vida soldadesca no Estado da Índia, ed. Laura Monteiro
Pereira, rev. Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, and Maria do Rosário Laureano Santos
(Ericeira, Portugal: Mar de Letras, 2003).
36. For early Eu ropean manuscripts of the Qur’an, see François Déroche,
La voix et le calame: Les chemins de la canonisation du Coran (Paris: Fayard,
2016).
37. Francis Richard, “Les manuscrits persans rapportés par les frères Vec-
chietti et conservés aujourd’hui à la Bibliothèque Nationale,” Studia Iranica 9,
no. 2 (1980): 291–300.
38. António Bocarro, O Livro das Plantas de todas as fortalezas, cidades e
povoçaões do Estado da Índia Oriental, ed. Isabel Cid (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-
Casa da Moeda, 1992), 2:249.
39. For a fuller discussion, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “An Eastern El-
Dorado: The Tirumala-Tirupati Temple- Complex in Early Eu ropean Views
and Ambitions, 1540–1660,” in David Shulman, ed., Syllables of Sky: Studies in
South Indian Civilization in Honour of Velcheru Narayana Rao (Delhi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1995), 338–90.
334 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 3 – 3 1

40. Even Herryard could not resist this temptation; thus, he claims that
“my wife’s mother and her sister when their husbands died, burnt themselves
alive, embracing the bodies of their dead husbands, but that was before I was
connected with the household.” See Maclagan, “Four Letters,” 11.
41. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions
to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
42. Jerónimo Corte-Real, Sucesso do segundo cerco de Diu: Códice Cadaval 31:
ANTT, ed. Martim de Albuquerque (Lisbon: Edições INAPA, 1991). For the
text, itself, in twenty- one lengthy cantos (but without the illustrations), see
Jerónimo Corte-Real, Sucesso do segundo cerco de Diu: estando Dom Ioham Mazcar-
enhas por capitam da fortaleza, ano de 1546 (Lisbon: António Gonçalvez, 1574).
43. C. Guadalupi, C. R. Boxer, and R. Barchiesi, Oltremare: Codice Casan-
atense 1889 con il Libro dell’Oriente di Duarte Barbosa (Milan: Franco Maria Ricci,
1984); Luís de Matos, ed., Imagens do Oriente no século XVI: Reprodução do códice
português da Biblioteca Casanatense (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1985). The most
sophisticated recent discussion of this work is that of Jeremiah P. Losty, “Iden-
tifying the Artist of Codex Casanatense 1889,” Anais de História de Além-Mar13
(2012): 13–40. This entire volume of the journal is devoted to an examination
of aspects of the codex.
44. Losty, “Identifying the Artist of Codex Casanatense,” 38.
45. C. Lethbridge Kingsford, “The Taking of the Madre de Dios,” in The
Naval Miscellany, ed. J. K. Laughton (London: Naval Records Society, 1912),
2:85–121. For a fuller discussion, see Anthony Pagden and Sanjay Subrah-
manyam, “Roots and Branches: Ibero-British Threads across Overseas
Empires,” in Per Adriano Prosperi, vol. 2, L’Europa divisa e i Nuovi Mondi, ed.
Massimo Donattini, Giuseppe Marcocci, and Stefania Pastore (Pisa: Edizioni
della Normale, 2011), 279–301.
46. J. Ph. Berjeau, ed., Calcoen: A Dutch Narrative of the Second Voyage of Vasco
da Gama to Calicut, Printed at Antwerp circa 1504 (London: B. M. Pickering,
1874).
47. Jacques de Coutre, Andanzas asiáticas, ed. Eddy Stols, B. Teensma, and
J. Werberckmoes (Madrid: Historia 16, 1991).
48. Willem Caland, ed., De Remonstrantie van W. Geleynssen de Jongh (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1929), 9–10; and for a useful biographical study,
H. W. van Santen, VOC-dienaar in India: Geleynssen de Jongh in het land van de
Groot-Mogol (Franeker, Netherlands: Van Wijnen, 2001).
49. Caland, De Remonstrantie, 59–60.
50. Markus Vink, ed., Mission to Madurai: Dutch Embassies to the Nayaka
Court of Madurai in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi: Manohar, 2012), 317–30
(translation), 358–61 (Dutch text). I have occasionally modified the translation
against the original. For the larger context of the production of such texts, also
see Markus P. M. Vink, Encounters on the Opposite Coast: The Dutch East India
Company and the Nayaka State of Madurai in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden:
Brill, 2016).
51. J. T. P. de Bruijn, “Ira nian Studies in the Netherlands,” Iranian Studies
20, nos. 2–4 (1987): 161–77.
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 1 – 3 4 335

52. See Alastair Hamilton and Francis Richard, André du Ryer and Oriental
Studies in Seventeenth- Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
53. D. H. A. Kolff and H. W. van Santen, eds., De Geschriften van Francisco
Pelsaert over Mughal Indië 1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1979); compare with J. S. Hoyland and S. N. Banerjee, The Empire of
the Great Mogol: A Translation of De Laet’s Description of India and Fragment of
Indian History (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1975).
54. British Library, London (henceforth BL), Ms. I.O. 94 (Ethé 445),
Bhimsen Saksena, “Dilkushā,” fol. 26b.
55. For more on Elstrack, whose family was originally from Liège, see
Antony Griffiths, “Elstrack, Renold (b. 1570, d. in or after 1625),” Oxford Dic-
tionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), accessed
June 27, 2013, http://www.oxforddnb.com /view/article/8763.
56. See Hugh Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645, 3rd ed. (Hound-
mills, UK: Macmillan, 1988).
57. R. W. Ferrier, “Charles I and the Antiquities of Persia: The Mission of
Nicholas Wilford,” Iran 8 (1970): 51–56. For Charles’s request, see W. Noel
Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, East Indies and Persia,
1630–1634, preserved in the Public Record Offi ce and the India Offi ce (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1892), 523.
58. BL, Oriental and Indian Office Collections (henceforth OIOC),
E / 3/15 / 1543A, Methwold, Mountney, Fremlen, etc. at Swally to the Company,
December 29, 1634, in The English Factories in India, 1634–1636, ed. William
Foster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 74–75 (the summary of the whole letter
occupies 59–85).
59. For a discussion, see John Seyller, Workshop and Patron in Mughal India:
The Freer Ramayana and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of ‘Abd al-Rahim (Zu rich:
Museum Rietberg, 1999), Artibus Asiae, Supplementum, 42:257–63. The
album may be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Laud Or. 149.
60. J. V. S. Wilkinson, “An Indian Manuscript of the Golestan of the Shah
Jahan Period,” Ars Orientalis 2 (1957): 423–25.
61. See G. J. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic
in Seventeenth- century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).
62. Andrew Dalby, “A Dictionary of Oriental Collections in Cambridge
University Library,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 9, no. 3
(1988): 248–80 (entry for Lewis on 266–67); Edward G. Browne, A Catalogue of
the Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1896), xxvi–xxvii.
63. Henry Davison Love, Vestiges of Old Madras, 1640–1800: Traced from
the East India Company’s Records Preserved at Fort St. George and the India Offi ce,
and from Other Sources (London: J. Murray, 1913), 2:24.
64. See Browne, Catalogue, 309.
65. Otto Kurz, “A Volume of Mughal Drawings and Miniatures,” Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 30 (1967): 251–71.
66. For more on Vapoer, see Van Santen, VOC- dienaar in India, 63–68,
which includes one of his drawings.
336 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 5 – 3 9

67. For an overview of Dutch painters in Asia, see Michael North, “Pro-
duction and Reception of Art through Eu ropean Company Channels in Asia,”
in Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400–1900: Rethinking
Markets, Workshops and Collections (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 89–107.
68. See Carolien M. Stolte, Philip Angel’s Deex-Autaers: Vaisnava Mythology
from Manuscript to Book Market in the Context of the Dutch East India Company,
c. 1600–1672 (Delhi: Manohar, 2012).
69. I have analyzed these materials in some detail in Sanjay Subrahmanyam,
“A Roomful of Mirrors: The Artful Embrace of Mughals and Franks, 1550–
1700,” Ars Orientalis 39 (2010): 39–83. For an earlier analy sis, see Jeannine
Auboyer, “Un maître hollandais du XVIIe siècle s’inspirant des miniatures
mogholes,” Arts Asiatiques 2, no. 4 (1955): 251–73.
70. For a full discussion, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters:
Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2012), chapter 3.
71. Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India,
1600–1800 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995).
72. James Fraser, The History of Nadir Shah, Formerly called Thamas Kuli
Khan, the Present Emperor of Persia; to which Is Prefi xed a Short History of the
Moghal Emperors (London: W. Strahan, 1742).
73. We lack a full study of Richard Johnson. But for his collections, see
Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Offi ce Library
(London: Sotheby Parke and Oxford University Press, 1981); and for musico-
logical questions, Katherine Butler Schofield, “Reviving the Golden Age Again:
‘Classicization’, Hindustani Music, and the Mughals,” Ethnomusicology 54, no. 3
(2010): 484–517, esp. 505–7.
74. Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East,
1750–1850 (New York: Knopf, 2005).
75. My understanding thus differs from that of Claire Gallien, “British
Orientalism, Indo-Persian Historiography and the Politics of Global Knowl-
edge,” in India and Europe in the Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Simon Davies,
Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, and Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa (Oxford: Voltaire
Foundation, 2014), 29–52.
76. For an old-fashioned, but still rather useful, approach to the question
that focuses largely on the eighteenth century, see Urs App, The Birth of Ori-
entalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).
77. Paola von Wyss- Giacosa, Religionsbilder der frühen Aufklärung: Bernard
Picarts Tafeln für die ‘Cérémonies et Coutumes religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde’
(Bern: Benteli, 2006); Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt,
eds., Bernard Picart and the First Global Vision of Religion (Los Angeles: Getty
Research Institute, 2010).
78. Will Sweetman, A Discovery of the Banian Religion and the Religion of the
Persees: A Critical Edition of Two Early English Works on Indian Religions (Lam-
peter, UK: Edwin Mellen, 1999).
79. Willem Caland, ed., De Open-Deure tot het Verborgen Heydendom door
Abraham Rogerius (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1915).
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 0 – 4 8 337

80. For discussions, see David N. Lorenzen, “Who Invented Hinduism?,”

Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 4 (1999): 630–59, and Will
Sweetman, Mapping Hinduism: “Hinduism” and the Study of Indian Religions
(Halle, Germany: Frankeschen Stiftungen, 2003).
81. For a broad survey of post-1750 developments, see Christine Maillard,
L’Inde vue de l’Europe: Histoire d’une rencontre (1750–1950) (Paris: Albin Michel,
2008). One can also consult the broad, but often too-hasty, survey by Massi-
miliano Vaghi, L’idea dell’India nell’Europa moderna (secoli XVII-XX ) (Milan:
Mimesis, 2012).
82. See Nicholas B. Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of
Imperial Britain (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2008).
83. See the wide-ranging discussion in Anne-Julie Etter, “Les antiquités
de l’Inde: Monuments, collections et administration colonial (1750–1835),” PhD
thesis, Université de Paris Diderot, 2012.
84. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Traces of the Ancients in India: Notes on Two
Possible Narratives,” in World Antiquarianism: Comparative Perspectives, ed.
Alain Schnapp, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Peter N. Miller, and Tim Murray
(Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2013), 372–85.
85. See Sayida Surriya Hussain, Garcin de Tassy: Biographie et étude critique
de ses œuvres (Pondicherry: Institut français d’Indologie, 1962).
86. Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1988), 115–17.
87. Michael  H. Fisher, “Representing ‘His’ Women: Mirza Abu Talib
Khan’s 1801 ‘Vindication of the Liberties of Asiatic Women,’ ” Indian Economic
and Social History Review 37, no. 2 (2000): 215–37.
88. For commercial questions, see the broad synthesis proposed by Om
Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre- Colonial India: The New Cam-
bridge History of India, Vol. II.5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
also the broad and multidimensional synthesis in Jean-Louis Margolin and
Claude Markovits, Les Indes et l’Europe: Histoires connectées, XVe – XXIe siècles
(Paris: Gallimard-Folio, 2015).

chapter 1 . On the Indo-Portuguese Moment

Epigraph: The translation from Portuguese is mine. To learn more about
Camões and India, see Shankar Raman, Framing “India”: The Colonial Imaginary
in Early Modern Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 29–86.
1. This is apparently a play on the Portuguese usage Grão Cão, which
could be translated either as “Great Khan” or more literally as “Great Dog.”
2. Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (henceforth ANTT),
Colecção de São Lourenço, vol. 1, fl. 407, in Luís de Matos, Les Portugais en
France au XVIe siècle: Etudes et documents (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra,
1952), 225–28.
3. Michel Mollat du Jourdin and Jacques Habert, eds., Giovanni et Gi-
rolamo Verrazano, navigateurs de François Ier: Dossiers de voyages, Voyages et dé-
couvertes, 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1982).
338 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 8 – 5 4

4. See Éric Barré and Philippe Hrodej, “Jean Ango (c. 1480, Dieppe–1551),”
in Dictionnaire des corsaires et pirates, ed. Gilbert Buti and Philippe Hrodej (Paris:
CNRS Editions, 2013), 14–16.
5. John Nothnagle, “Two Early French Voyages to Sumatra,” Sixteenth
Century Journal 19, no. 1 (1988): 97–107.
6. Gayle K. Brunelle, “Dieppe school,” in The Oxford Companion to World
Exploration, ed. David Buisseret (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007),
237–38; Tony Campbell, “Egerton MS 1513: A Remarkable Display of Carto-
graphical Invention,” Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 93–102.
7. Jean Phibert Berjeau, ed. and trans., Calcoen: A Dutch Narrative of the
Second Voyage of Vasco da Gama to Calicut (London: Basil Montagu Pickering,
1874). The text is unfortunately not paginated.
8. For more on Sprenger, see Beate Borowka-Clausberg, Balthasar Sprenger
und der frühneuzeitliche Reisebericht (Munich: Iudicium, 1999). For overviews of
the German materials, see Gita Dharampal-Frick, Indien im Spiegel deutscher
Quellen der frühen Neuzeit (1500–1750): Studien zu einer interkulturellen Konstel-
lation (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1994), and Christine R. Johnson, The German
Discovery of the World: Re naissance Encounters with the Strange and Marvelous
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008).
9. For a discussion, see Stephanie Leitch, Mapping Ethnography in Early
Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2010). Also useful for a broader perspective is Christian Feest, “The People
of Calicut: Objects, Texts, and Images in the Age of Proto-Ethnography,”
Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi: Ciências Humanas 9, no.  2 (2014):
287–303.
10. For more on Varthema, see Jean Aubin, “Deux Chrétiens au Yémen
Tāhiride,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 3, no. 1 (1993): 33–52. See
also Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through
European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 125–
63, who attempts to contest some of Aubin’s readings.
11. Massimo Donattini, “Ombre imperiali: Le Navigationi et viaggi di G. B.
Ramusio e l’immagine di Venezia,” in L’Europa divisa e i nuovi mondi: Per Adriano
Prosperi, ed. Massimo Donattini, Giuseppe Marcocci, and Stefania Pastore
(Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2011), 33–44; Sylviane Albertan- Coppola and
Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud, “La collection des Navigationi et viaggi (1550–
1559) de G.-B. Ramusio: Mécanismes et projets d’après les para-textes,” Revue
des études italiennes 36, nos. 1–4 (1990): 59–70. Still useful in some respects is
George B. Parks, “Ramusio’s Literary History,” Studies in Philology 52, no. 2
(1955): 127–48. For the broader context, see Liz Horodowich, “Armchair Trav-
elers and the Venetian Discovery of the New World,” Sixteenth Century Journal
36, no. 4 (2005): 1039–62.
12. For a ringside view of this debate, see Henri Lapeyre, “Deux interpré-
tations de l’histoire d’Espagne: Américo Castro et Claudio Sánchez Albornoz,”
Annales ESC 20, no. 5 (1965): 1015–37.
13. See the popu lar (not to say romantic) account in María Rosa Menocal,
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture
of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002); see also the earlier
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 4 – 5 7 339

collection of Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed., The Legacy of Muslim Spain (Leiden:
Brill, 1992).
14. A good point of departure, now somewhat dated, is Francisco Pons
Boigues, Ensayo bio-bibliográfi co sobre los historiadores y géografos arábigo-españoles
(Madrid: S. F. de Sales, 1898).
15. His work has since been continued into later periods with much success;
see, for example, David Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings: Politics
and Society in Islamic Spain 1002–1086 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1985).
16. Ambrosio Huici Miranda, ed., Colección de crónicas árabes de la recon-
quista, 4 vols. (Tetuán: Editora Marroqui, 1952–1955).
17. Pedro Chalmeta Gendrón, “Historiografía medieval hispana: Arabica,”
Al-Andalus 37, no. 2 (1972): 353–404. Also see Pedro Chalmeta Gendrón, “Una
historia discontinua e intemporal (Jabar),” Hispania: Revista española de historia
33 (1973): 23–75.
18. Rachel Arié, L’Espagne musulmane au temps de Nasrides (1232–1492)
(Paris: De Boccard, 1973), 438–45.
19. Engracia Ferré, “Une source nouvelle pour l’histoire de l’Espagne mu-
sulmane,” Arabica 14, no. 3 (1967): 320–26.
20. See Maya Shatzmiller, L’historiographie mérinide: Ibn Khaldūn et ses con-
temporains (Leiden: Brill, 1982).
21. See the useful remarks in Aziz Al-Azmeh, Ibn Khaldūn, an Essay in
Reinterpretation (London: Frank Cass, 1982).
22. We still lack a proper study of these relations. But see José Garcia
Domingues, Portugal e o Al-Andalus (Lisbon: Hugin, 1997) for a sense of the
routes of circulation; and António Borges Coelho, ed., Portugal na Espanha Árabe
(Lisbon: Editorial Caminho, 2008). Also useful as an introduction is the gen-
eral account in Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of
al-Andalus (London: Longman, 1996).
23. Amin Tibi, “Ibn Bassam al-Shantarīnī and His Anthology al-Dhakīra,”
Journal of Islamic Studies 10, no. 3 (1999): 313–16.
24. ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Sahib al-Salah, Al-Mann bil-
Imāma, ed. Ambrosio Huici Miranda. (Valencia: Anubar, 1969). For a recent
and interest ing discussion of this text, see Linda G. Jones, “ ‘The Christian
Companion’: A Rhetorical Trope in the Narration of Intra-Muslim Confl ict
during the Almohad Epoch,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 38, no. 2 (2008):
793–829.
25. James T. Monroe, Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship (Sixteenth
Century to the Present) (Leiden: Brill, 1970).
26. See David Lopes, Textos em aljamía portuguesa: Documentos para a história
do domínio português em Safi m (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1897).
27. Joseph Klucas, “Nicolaus Clenardus: A Pioneer of the New Learning
in Renaissance Portugal,” Luso-Brazilian Review 29, no. 2 (1992): 87–98.
28. Marcel Bataillon, “L’Arabe à Salamanque au temps de la Renaissance,”
Hespéris 21 (1935): 1–17. “L’Espagne de la Renaissance était à la fois le pays le
mieux désigné pour devenir une pépinière d’arabisants et le pays le moins dis-
posé à jouer ce rôle.”
340 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 7 – 6 3

29. For a general and comparative view of the Eu ropean situation, see the
valuable essay by Karl H. Dannenfeldt, “The Renaissance Humanists and the
Knowledge of Arabic,” Studies in the Renaissance 2 (1955): 96–117; and, more re-
cently, G.  J. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in
Seventeenth- century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
30. See, for example, Ruurdje Laarhoven, Triumph of Moro diplomacy: The
Maguindanao Sultanate in the 17th century (Quezon City: New Day Publishers,
1989).
31. See the study of this chronicler by Teresa Amado, Fernão Lopes, con-
tador de história: Sobre a Crónica de D. João I (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1991).
32. Josiah Blackmore, “Afeiçom and History-Writing: The Prologue of the
Crónica de D. João I,” Luso-Brazilian Review 34, no. 2 (1997): 15–24.
33. Fernão Lopes, Chrónica de El- Rei  D. João I, ed. Luciano Cordeiro
(Lisbon: Bibliotheca de Clássicos Portuguezes, 1897), 17.
34. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, Written by Gomes
Eannes de Azurara, trans. Charles Raymond Beazley and Edgar Prestage, 2 vols.
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1896–99), 1:10; for the original text, see Gomes
Eannes de Azurara, Chrónica do descobrimento e conquisita de Guiné, escrita por
mandado de elrei D. Affonso V, ed. Visconde da Carreira and Visconde de San-
tarem (Paris: J. P. Aillaud, 1841). For an impor tant discussion of this author,
see Luís Filipe Barreto, “Gomes Eanes de Zurara e o problema da Crónica da
Guiné,” Studia 47 (1989): 311–69.
35. Edgar Prestage, “The Life and Writings of Azurara,” in The Chronicle
of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, 1:xl.
36. In fact, it seems to derive from the Latin, septem.
37. Josiah Blackmore, “Imagining the Moor in Medieval Portugal,” Dia-
critics 36, nos. 3–4 (2006): 27–43. I have slightly modified the translation from
Zurara, who is cited and translated by Blackmore on page 35.
38. Vincent J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan
Sufi sm (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 79–92. For the text, see Yusuf
ibn Yahya ibn al-Zayyat, Al-Tashawwuf ilá rijāl al-tasawwuf wa-akhbār Abī al-
‘Abbās al- Sabtī, ed. Ahmad al-Taufiq (Rabat: Jami‘at Muhammad al-Khamis,
1984).
39. James B. McKenna, A Spaniard in the Portuguese Indies: The Narrative of
Martín Fernández de Figueroa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1967). This edition and translation is the object of a justifiably severe critique
by Jean Aubin, “À propos de la relation de Martín Fernández de Figueroa sur
les conquêtes portugaises dans l’Océan Indien, 1505–1511,” in Aubin, Le Latin
et l’Astrolabe, 3 vols. (Paris: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 1996–2006),
2:493–505.
40. See Joan-Pau Rubiés, “The Oriental Voices of Mendes Pinto, or the
Traveller as Ethnologist in Portuguese Asia,” Portuguese Studies 10 (1994):
24–43.
41. However, the general consideration by Manoel Cardozo, “The Idea of
History in the Portuguese Chroniclers of the Age of Discovery,” Catholic His-
torical Review 49, no. 1 (1963): 1–19, is an almost total failure.
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 3 – 6 6 341

42. For an overview that remains useful, see J. B. Harrison, “Five Portu-
guese Historians,” in Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, ed. C. H. Philips
(London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 155–169. I also draw on the earlier
discussion in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “European Chroniclers and the Mughals,”
in Explorations in Connected History: From the Tagus to the Ganges (Delhi: Ox-
ford University Press, 2004), 138–79.
43. Luís de Albuquerque, ed., Crónica do Descobrimento e primeiras conquistas
da Índia pelos Portugueses (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1986).
44. For an interest ing reexamination of this author and his context, see
Matthew Racine, “A ‘Pearle for a Prynce’: Jerónimo Osório and Early Elizabe-
than Catholics,” Catholic Historical Review 87, no. 3 (2001): 401–27.
45. We lack a proper study of Castanheda, but see Ana Paula Menino
Avelar, Fernão Lopes de Castanheda: Historiador dos Portugueses na Índia ou cronista
do governo de Nuno da Cunha? (Lisbon: Edições Cosmos, 1997).
46. Subrahmanyam, “European Chroniclers and the Mughals,” 141–42.
47. See the earlier discussions in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Profecias e
Feitiços: Gaspar Correia e a Primeira Viagem de Vasco da Gama,” Oceanos 33
(1998): 41–54.
48. Gaspar Correia, Crónicas de D. Manuel e de D. João III (até 1533), ed.
José Pereira da Costa (Lisbon: Academia de Ciências de Lisboa, 1992).
49. I am grateful to Luís Filipe Thomaz for this useful example.
50. António Coimbra Martins, “Seis escritores da Ásia Portuguesa,” in Em
torno de Diogo do Couto (Coimbra: Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra,
1985), 127–37.
51. Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, “A lenda dos dois bons irmãos, Paulo e
Vasco da Gama,” in Portos, escalas, e ilhéus no relacionamento entre o Ocidente e o
Oriente, ed. Avelino de Freitas de Meneses (Ponta Delgada: Universidade dos
Açores, 2001), 2:483–500.
52. On this broad subject, also see Jennifer  R. Goodman, Chivalry and
Exploration, 1298–1630 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1998), 134–48,
passim.
53. Here I draw on the discussion in Maurice Kriegel and Sanjay Subrah-
manyam, “The Unity of Opposites: Abraham Zacut, Vasco da Gama and the
Chronicler Gaspar Correia,” in Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and
Asia, ed. Anthony Disney and Emily Booth, (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2000), 48–71. Also see José Chabás and Bernard R. Goldstein, “Astronomy in
the Iberian Peninsula: Abraham Zacut and the Transition from Manuscript
to Print,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 90, no. 2 (2000):
1–196.
54. See Alain Desoulières, “Mughal Diplomacy in Gujarat (1533–1534) in
Correia’s Lendas da Índia,” Modern Asian Studies 22, no. 3 (1988): 433–54; it is
clear from this essay that Correia’s account is in fact quite “imaginative.”
55. We have demonstrated this in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrah-
manyam, “Letters from a Sinking Sultan,” in Aquém e além da Taprobana: Estudos
Luso- Orientais à memória de Jean Aubin e Denys Lombard, ed. Luís Filipe F. R.
Thomaz (Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar, 2002), 239–69.
342 N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 7 – 7 3

56. António Alberto Banha de Andrade, João de Barros: Historiador do pens-

amento humanista português de quinhentos (Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa da
História, 1980).
57. Stephanie Merrim, “The Castle of Discourse: Fernández de Oviedo’s
Don Claribalte (1519) or ‘Los correos andan más que los caballeros,’ ” Modern
Language Notes 97, no. 2 (1982): 329–46.
58. As cited in Merrim, “The Castle of Discourse,” 330.
59. An interest ing essay which attempts to reinterpret Barros the chroni-
cler as an early “anthropologist” is Zoltán Biedermann, “Nos primórdios da
antropologia moderna: A Ásia de João de Barros,” Anais de História de Além-
Mar 4 (2003): 29–61. For a general consideration of Portuguese imperial ide-
ology and the place of Barros therein, see Giuseppe Marcocci, A consciência de
um império: Portugal e o seu mundo (sécs. XV–XVII) (Coimbra: Imprensa da Uni-
versidade de Coimbra, 2012). A recent, and highly problematic, reading of
Barros from a literary perspective is that of Vincent Barletta, Death in Babylon:
Alexander the Great and Iberian Empire in the Muslim Orient (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2010), 117–58, where the author ignores an entire generation
of work on the Portuguese empire and mistranslates key passages.
60. For more about Couto, see the brilliant exposition in the long (book-
length) introduction that accompanies Diogo do Couto, O Primeiro Soldado
Prático, ed. António Coimbra Martins (Lisbon: CNCDP, 2001).
61. João de Barros, Da Ásia: Dos feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descobri-
mento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente, 4 vols. Década 1, “Prologo.” (Lisbon:
Livraria Sam Carlos, 1973).
62. C. R. Boxer, João de Barros: Portuguese Humanist and Historian of Asia
(New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 1980).
63. Boxer, João de Barros, 60; Israël Salvator Révah, “Le colloque Ropicap-
nefma de João de Barros: Genèse, structure et technique,” in Révah, Études Por-
tugaises, ed. Charles Amiel (Paris: Éditions Jean Touzot, 1975), 99–119. Also
see the discussion of this text in Banha de Andrade, João de Barros, 81–114.
64. Barros, Da Ásia, Década 1, bk. 1, chapter 1, 1–3. The passage is exten-
sively mistranslated in Barletta, Death in Babylon, 142–43.
65. For instance, see Juan Villegas, “La brisa emotiva de un romance viejo:
‘Aviso de la Fortuna y Derrota de Don Rodrigo,’ ” Hispania 57, no. 1 (1974): 13–
22; John R. Burt, “The Motif of the Fall of Man in the ‘Romancero del Rey
Rodrigo,’ ” Hispania 61, no. 3 (1978): 435–42.
66. Barros, Da Ásia, Década 1, bk. 1, chapter 1, 7 ( here, as elsewhere in this
edition, “Larigh” is a misprint for “Tarigh”).
67. See Jean Aubin, “Les documents arabes, persans et turcs de la Torre
do Tombo,” in Le Latin et l’Astrolabe, 2:417–52.
68. On this issue, see the abundant materials in Luís Filipe Thomaz, “La
présence iranienne autour de l’Océan Indien au XVIe siècle d’après les sources
portugaises de l’époque,” Archipel 68 (2004): 59–158.
69. Jean Aubin, “Francisco de Albuquerque: Un juif castillan au ser vice de
l’Inde portugaise,” in Aubin, Le Latin et l’Astrolabe, 2:251–73. More generally,
see Dejanirah Couto, “The Role of Interpreters, or Línguas, in the Portuguese
Empire during the 16th Century,” e-Journal of Portuguese History 1, no. 2 (2003),
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 3 – 7 9 343

https://www.brown .edu / Departments / Portuguese _ Brazilian _ Studies /ejph

/ html /issue2/ html /couto_ main.html.
70. Elias Lipiner, Gaspar da Gama: Um converso na frota de Cabral (Rio de
Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1987); of crucial importance on this figure is the
recent essay by Luís Filipe F. Reis Thomaz, “Gaspar da Gama e a génese da
estatégia portuguesa no Índico,” in D. Francisco de Almeida, 1o vice- rei portu-
guês: Actas do IX Simpósio de História Marítima (Lisbon: Academia de Marinha,
2007), 455–92.
71. Barros, Da Ásia, Década 2, bk. 4, chapter 4, 407–14.
72. Ibid., bk. 2, chapter 2, 107–8.
73. Ibid., bk. 5, chapter 2, 442–43.
74. For a helpful discussion, see Sunil Kumar, “Persian Literary Traditions
and Narrativizing the Delhi Sultanate,” in Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi
Sultanate, 1192–1286 (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2007), 362–77; and the
earlier, provocative view in Peter Hardy, Historians of Medieval India: Studies in
Indo-Muslim Historical Writing (London: Luzac, 1966).
75. Our main source for the “missing” chronicles of the Deccan is the
preface to the early seventeenth-century work of Firishta, which lists as many
as thirty-five earlier works used by him, several lost to us; see Muhammad
Qasim Hindushah Astarabadi Firishta, Tārīkh-i Firishta, vol. 1 (Poona: Dar
al-Imarah, 1247 AH / 1832).
76. Barros, Da Ásia, Década 2, bk. 5, chapter 2, 443.
77. See Jorge Flores, Nas Margens do Hindustão: O Estado da Índia e a Ex-
pansão Mogol, ca. 1570–1640 (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra,
2015).
78. Barros, Da Ásia, Década 2, bk. 4, chapter 4, 412–13.
79. Ibid., bk. 10, chapter 5, 447–48. Compare the reference in Barros, Da
Ásia, Década 2, bk. 4, chapter 4, 408: “We will undertake a small digression,
reciting what we have learnt of the invention [of chess] from the doctrine of a
book written in Persian called Tarigh, which we have translated into our lan-
guage, which is a summary of all the kings that have been in Persia until a cer-
tain time when the Arabs with their sect of Mafamede subjugated it.”
80. For the broader context of the Timurid historiographical revolution,
see John E. Woods, “The Rise of Tīmūrid Historiography,” Journal of Near
Eastern Studies 46, no. 2 (1987): 81–108.
81. Muhammad ibn Khawandshah ibn Mahmud, Tārīkh-i rauzat al-safā fī
sīrat al-anbiyā’ wa’l- mulūk wa’l-khulafā’, ed. Jamshid Kiyanfar, 10 vols. (Tehran:
Asatir, 1380/2001). For partial translations of this massive work, see Mirkhond,
History of the Early Kings of Persia: From Kaiomars, the First of the Peshdadian
Dynasty, to the Conquest of Iran by Alexander the Great, trans. David Shea
(London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1832); Mirkhond, The Rauzat- us-safa, or
Garden of Purity: Sacred and Profane History According to the Moslem Belief, trans.
E. Rehatsek, ed. F. F. Arbuthnot, 2 parts in 5 vols. (London: The Royal Asiatic
Society, 1891–94).
82. Relaciones de Pedro Teixeira del origen, descendencia y successión de los Reyes de
Persia, y de Harmuz, y de un viage hecho por el mismo autor dende la India Oriental
hasta Italia por tierra, ed. Eduardo Barajas Salas (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo,
344 N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 9 – 8 1

1994), 3–4. Of far less use is the confusingly reordered English translation,
The Travels of Pedro Teixeira, with his “Kings of Harmuz,” and Extracts from His
“Kings of Persia,” trans. and ed. William  F. Sinclair and Donald Ferguson
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1902).
83. Compare Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of Noah and the Construction
of Ethnic and Geograph ical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Pe-
riods,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54, no. 1 (1997): 103–42.
84. Boxer, João de Barros, 119.
85. Thus we may fruitfully compare Barros’s scholarly practices with “Ori-
entalists” a bare generation or two later. For examples, see Francis Richard,
“Les frères Vecchietti, diplomats, érudits et aventuriers,” in The Republic of
Letters and the Levant, ed. Alastair Hamilton, Maurits van den Boogert, and Bart
Westerveel (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 11–26; Alastair Hamilton and Francis Richard,
André Du Ryer and Oriental Studies in Seventeenth- Century France (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004); and G. A. Russell, ed., The “Arabick” Interest of
the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth- Century England (Leiden: Brill, 1994).
86. See Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, Diogo do Couto e a Década 8a da Ásia,
2 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1994), 2:265–353.
87. Rui Manuel Loureiro, A Biblioteca de Diogo do Couto (Macau: Instituto
Cultural de Macau, 1998).
88. Zain al-Din Ma‘bari, Tuhfat al- mujāhidīn fī ba‘z ahwāl al-Burtukāliyyīn:
História dos Portugueses no Malavar por Zinadím, ed. and trans. David Lopes
(Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1899); Shaykh Zainuddin Makhdum, Tuhfat al-
Mujāhidīn: A Historical Epic of the Sixteenth Century, trans. S. Muhammad Hu-
sayn Nainar (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2006).
89. For selections from this text, see Qutb al-Din al-Nahrawali al-Makki,
Lightning over Yemen: A History of the Ottoman Campaign (1569–71), trans.
Clive K. Smith (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002); also Richard Blackburn, Journey
to the Sublime Porte: The Arabic Memoir of a Sharifi an Agent’s Diplomatic Mission
to the Ottoman Imperial Court in the Era of Suleyman the Magnifi cent (Beirut:
Ergon, 2005), xi–xvi.
90. For more on Ottoman knowledge of America, see Thomas  D. Go-
odrich, The Ottoman Turks and the New World: A Study of “Tarih-i Hind-i
Garbi” and Sixteenth- Century Ottoman Americana (Wiesbaden: Otto Harras-
sowitz, 1990), and the more general reflection in Serge Gruzinski, Quelle heure
est-il là-bas?: Amérique et islam à l’orée des temps modernes (Paris: Seuil, 2008). It
is clear that Ottoman intellectuals were familiar with the works of López
de  Gómara, Fernández de Oviedo, Agustín de Zarate, and Pietro Martire
d’Anghiera.
91. See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Taking Stock of the Franks: South Asian
Views of Eu ropeans and Eu rope, 1500–1800,” Indian Economic and Social His-
tory Review 42, no. 1 (2005): 69–100.
92. For more about St. Antoninus, see Peter Howard, “Preaching Magnifi-
cence in Renaissance Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2008): 325–69;
and an older work by James Bernard Walker, The “Chronicles” of Saint Antoninus,
a Study in Historiography (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of Amer-
ica, 1933).
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 2 – 8 5 345

93. See Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2016); and an earlier essay by Carl W.
Ernst, “Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Per-
sian Translations from Indian Languages,” Iranian Studies 36, no. 2 (2003):
173–95.
94. Firishta, Tārīkh-i Firishta, 1:13–14.
95. Ira Robinson, “Isaac de la Peyrère and the Recall of the Jews,” Jewish
Social Studies 40, no. 2 (1978) 117–30; David N. Livingstone, “The Preadamite
Theory and the Marriage of Science and Religion,” Transactions of the Amer-
ican Philosophical Society, n.s., 82, no. 3 (1992): 1–78. Also the more general con-
siderations in Giuliano Gliozzi, Adamo e il nuovo mondo: La nascita dell’antropologia
come ideologia coloniale; Dalle genealogie bibliche alle teorie razziali (1500–1700)
(Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977).
96. Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Contested Memories of Pre-Islamic Iran,”
Medieval History Journal 2, no. 2 (1999): 245–75; Aditya Behl, “Pages from the
Book of Religions: Encountering Difference in Mughal India,” in Forms of
Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India
and Tibet, 1500–1800, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2011), 210–39.
97. Armando Cortesão, ed. and trans., The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires and
the Book of Francisco Rodrigues, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1944).
98. See the extensive study by Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz, “ ‘O testamento
político’ de Diogo Pereira, o Malabar, e o projecto oriental dos Gamas,” Anais
de História de Além-Mar 5 (2004): 61–160.
99. A useful summing up of his career may be found in Rubiés, Travel and
Ethnology in the Renaissance, 204–5. However, Rubiés’s claim that Barbosa trav-
eled extensively “to the interior and to the eastern coast of the peninsula” still
remains doubtful (214n).
100. Albuquerque to the King Dom Manuel, from the ship Santo António,
dated 30 October 1512, in ANTT, Gavetas, XV / 14–38, in Cartas de Affonso de
Albuquerque, seguidas de documentos que as elucidam, ed. Raymundo António de
Bulhão Pato (Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias, 1884), 1:97.
101. Historical Archives of Goa, Panaji, Livro 7737, fl s. 14v–28: “Rol da
Finta dos Portugueses,” summarized in Rafael Moreira, “Goa em 1535: Uma
cidade manuelina,” Revista da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas 2, no. 8
(1995): 177–221. The purpose of the special tax, or finta, which was levied by
the governor Nuno da Cunha on April 21, 1535, was to build the waterworks
called the Chafariz do Mandovim with the waters of Nossa Senhora do Monte.
102. For broad accounts of the city, see M. N. Pearson, “Goa during the
First Century of Portuguese Rule,” Itinerario 8, no. 1 (1984): 36–57; also Cata-
rina Madeira Santos, “Goa é a chave de toda a Índia”: Perfil político da capital do
Estado da Índia (1505–1570) (Lisbon: CNCDP, 1999).
103. ANTT, Corpo Cronológico, I-32–93, letter from the settlers in Melaka
to the King of Portugal, 12 August 1525. For a fuller discussion of the tensions
between various social groups in this context, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam,
“What the Tamils said: A letter from the Kelings of Melaka (1527),” Archipel
82 (2011): 137–58.
346 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 6 – 9 2

104. See Lima Cruz, Diogo do Couto e a Década 8a da Ásia, vol. 2.

105. Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 205, 211. This argument
is somewhat in contradiction to the same author’s point (p. 255) that the “ex-
treme emphasis on observed detail” by writers such as Correia “was, of course,
another rhetorical trick.” For a very dif ferent understanding of the functioning
of the Portuguese in relation to Goa, see Ângela Barreto Xavier, A invenção de
Goa: Poder imperial e conversões culturais nos séculos XVI e XVII (Lisbon: Imp-
rensa de Ciências Sociais, 2008), 25–27, 275–77, passim.
106. For the text, see Augusto Reis Machado, ed., Livro em que dá relação do
que viu e ouviu no Oriente Duarte Barbosa (Lisbon: Agência Geral das Colónias,
1946); the standard translation is Mansel Longworth Dames, ed. and trans., The
Book of Duarte Barbosa: An Account of the Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean
and Their Inhabitants, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1918–21). For an anno-
tated version of the section on Kerala, see M. Gangadharan, ed., Duarte Barbosa’s
“The Land of Malabar” (Kottayam: Mahatma Gandhi University, 2000).
107. Machado, Livro em que dá relação, 63–67; Dames, Book of Duarte Barbosa,
1:108–17. Since Dames’s translation is rather loose, I have not used it, save for
some clarifications. For example, he corrects brâmanes in the text to baneanes,
which appears reasonable when writing of merchants.
108. Machado, Livro em que dá relação, 107; Dames, Book of Duarte Barbosa,
1:212–13.
109. For a wide-ranging account, see Andrea Major, Pious Flames: European
Encounters with Sati (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006). In this work, Major
attempts to navigate a middle path between Said and his critics.
110. See, for instance, Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society
Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980).
111. Machado, Livro em que dá relação, 120; Dames, Book of Duarte Barbosa,
2:6–7. Dames’s translation here is again loose, and I have returned to the orig-
inal text.
112. Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 209–10.
113. Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern
India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 5.
114. Dirks, Castes of Mind, 19. Interestingly, there is a chapter on “caste” but
no mention at all of the Portuguese materials in Ronald B. Inden, Imagining
India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 49–84.
115. See the disappointing discussion in Sumit Guha, Beyond Caste: Identity
and Power in South Asia, Past and Present, rev. ed. (Ranikhet: Permanent Black,
2015), 23–36.
116. In this context, see the very useful comparative remarks on the terms
raza, casta, and linaje, in David Nirenberg, “Was There Race before Moder-
nity? The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain,” in The Origins of
Racism in the West, ed. Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 232–64.
117. Jeremiah P. Losty, “Identifying the Artist of Codex Casanatense 1889,”
Anais de História de Além-Mar 13 (2012): 13–40 (citation on 36). Guha, Beyond
Caste, 27n, misidentifies this work as “a specimen from early seventeenth-
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 2 – 1 0 0 347

century Portuguese India.” For a broader contextualization, also see Ângela

Barreto Xavier and Ines G. Županov, Catholic Orientalism: Portuguese Empire,
Indian Knowledge (16th–18th Centuries) (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015),
54–58.
118. Luís de Matos, ed., Imagens do Oriente no século XVI: Reprodução do códice
português da Biblioteca Casanatense (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1985).
119. Xavier and Županov, Catholic Orientalism, 119.
120. Agostinho de Azevedo et  al., “Estado da Índia e aonde tem o seu
princípio,” in Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, ed. António da Silva Rego
(Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1960), 1:197–263 (cita-
tion on 249–50); an alternative version appears in Silva Rego, ed., Documentação
Ultramarina Portuguesa (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos,
1962), 2:40–260 (citation on 133).
121. Xavier and Županov, Catholic Orientalism, 140. There is no evidence to
support Rubiés’s claim (Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 315) that Aze-
vedo’s was an “original summary of Hindu religion, from Shaiva Sanskrit and
Tamil texts.” Nothing suggests that Azevedo was able to read texts in either
language, as his poor efforts at transliteration clearly show.
122. Compare the conclusions of Joan-Pau Rubiés, “The Jesuit Discovery
of Hinduism: Antonio Rubino’s Account of the History and Religion of Vijay-
anagara (1608),” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 3 (2001): 210–56, and the more
convincing analysis in Xavier and Županov, Catholic Orientalism, 145–57.
123. Rego, ed., Documentação, 1:260; 2:143.
124. Ibid., 1:260–61; 2:144.
125. Diogo do Couto, Década Quinta da Ásia: Dos feitos que os Portugueses fiz-
erão no descobrimento dos mares & conquista das terras do Oriente (Lisbon: Pedro
Crasbeeck, 1612), 124v–31.
126. For example, Padre Raphael Bluteau, Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino . . .
autorizado com exemplos dos melhores escritores portuguezes, e latinos (Coimbra: Col-
legio das Artes da Companhia de Jesu, 1712), 2:183–84.
127. Urs App, The Birth of Orientalism (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 330–31, 340.
128. Dirks has claimed (Castes of Mind, 5), that “it was under the British that
‘caste’ became a single term capable of expressing, organizing, and above all
‘systematizing’ India’s diverse forms of social identity, community, and organ-
ization.” While this may indeed be true, it is unfortunate that his inadequate
understanding of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries does not render his
proposition particularly well-founded.
129. For a discussion, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in
Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History, 2nd  ed. (Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2012), 228–36.
130. See Friedrich Dobel, “Ueber einen Pfefferhandel der Fugger und
Welser, 1586–91,” Zeitschrift des historisches Vereins für Schwaben und Neuburg
13 (1886): 125–38; and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “An Augsburger in Ásia Portu-
guesa: Further light on the commercial world of Ferdinand Cron, 1587–1624,”
in Emporia, Commodities and Entrepreneurs in Asian Maritime Trade, c. 1400–
1750, ed. R. Ptak and D. Rothermund (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991), 401–25.
348 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 0 – 1 0 6

131. For an example, see David Lopes’s introduction to Zain al-Din Ma‘bari,
Tuhfat al- mujāhidīn, xc–ci.
132. Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Re naissance, 391–93. There is of
course an odd paradox in Rubiés’s argument, in that his knowledge of early
modern South Asia is almost entirely based on the very Eu ropean accounts he
claims to evaluate.
133. Jorge Flores, The Mughal Padshah: A Jesuit Treatise on Emperor Jahan-
gir’s Court and Household (Leiden: Brill 2016), 88 (translation), 131 (text).
134. Flores, The Mughal Padshah, 94–95 (translation), 135 (text).

chapter 2 . The Question of “Indian Religion”

Epigraph: My translation. “Quand je leur disais sur cela que dans les pays froids il
serait impossible d’observer leur loi pendant l’hiver, ce qui était un signe qu’elle n’était
qu’une pure invention des hommes, ils me donnaient cette réponse assez plaisante: qu’ils
ne prétendaient pas que leur loi fût universelle; que Dieu ne l’avait faite que pour eux
et que c’était pour cela qu’ils ne pouvaient pas recevoir un étranger dans leur religion;
qu’au reste ils ne prétendaient point que la nôtre fût fausse; qu’ils se pouvait faire qu’elle
fût bonne pour nous et que Dieu pouvait avoir fait plusieurs chemins différents pour
aller au ciel, mais ils ne veulent pas entendre que la nôtre, étant générale pour toute la
terre, la leur ne peut être que fable et que pure invention.” Frédéric Tinguely, ed.,
Un libertin dans l’Inde moghole: Les voyages de François Bernier (1656–1669) (Paris:
Editions Chandeigne, 2008), 327.
1. Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Re naissance: South India
through European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), 165.
2. E.  E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956). In
fact, Nuer Religion was preceded slightly by Joseph Pasquale Crazzolara, Zur
Gesellschaft und Religion der Nueer (Wien-Mödling: Missionsdruckerei St. Ga-
briel, 1953).
3. Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in The Interpreta-
tion of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 87–125. For a
particularly (perhaps unjustifiably) sharp critique of this formulation from a
philosophical viewpoint, see Nancy  K. Frankenberry and Hans  H. Penner,
“Clifford Geertz’s Long-Lasting Moods, Motivations, and Metaphysical
Conceptions,” Journal of Religion 79, no. 4 (1999): 617–40.
4. Talal Asad, “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Cat-
egory,” in Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Chris tianity
and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 53–54.
5. Asad’s position seems to be influenced by but also to differ from the
earlier work of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New
Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind (New York: New American Li-
brary, 1963). See Talal Asad, “Reading a Modern Classic: W. C. Smith’s The
Meaning and End of Religion,” History of Religions 40, no. 3 (2001): 205–22.
6. Carmen Bernand and Serge Gruzinski, De l’idolâtrie: Une archéologie des
sciences religieuses (Paris: Seuil, 1988). In fact this work is almost never cited in
English-language historiography. For a rare exception, see Guy G. Stroumsa,
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 6 – 1 0 9 349

“John Spencer and the Roots of Idolatry,” History of Religions 41, no. 1 (2001):
1–23.
7. See David  N. Lorenzen, “Who Invented Hinduism?,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 41, no. 4 (1999): 630–59. Also see the interest ing
earlier discussion in Joseph T. O’Connell, “The Word ‘Hindu’ in Gauḍīya
Vaiṣṇava Texts,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 93, no. 3 (1973): 340–
44; and for a recent overview of the question, Will Sweetman, Mapping Hin-
duism: “Hinduism” and the Study of Indian Religions (Halle, Germany: Francke-
schen Stiftungen, 2003). I have also dealt with some of the major conceptual
problems in this discussion in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “La ‘religion,’ une caté-
gorie déroutante: Perspectives depuis l’Asie du Sud,” Asdiwal: Revue genevoise
d’anthropologie et d’histoire des religions 9 (2014): 79–90.
8. Paola von Wyss- Giacosa, Religionsbilder der frühen Aufklärung: Bernard
Picarts Tafeln für die ‘Cérémonies et Coutumes religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde’
(Wabern, Switzerland: Benteli, 2006).
9. For impor tant general reflections on this text, see Margaret C. Jacob,
“Bernard Picart and the Turn to Modernity,” De achttiende eeuw 37 (2005): 1–16;
and Silvia Berti, “Bernard Picart e Jean Frédéric Bernard dalla religione
riformata al deismo: Un incontro con il mondo ebraico nell’Amsterdam del
primo settecento,” Rivista Storica Italiana 117 (2005): 974–1001.
10. Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe,
vol. 3, A Century of Advance, bk. 1, Trade, Missions, Literature (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1993), 596–97. This is also the viewpoint of the essay
by Joan-Pau Rubiés, “From Christian Apologetics to Deism: Libertine Read-
ings of Hindusim, 1650–1730,” in God in the Enlightenment, ed. William  J.
Bulman and Robert  G. Ingram (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016),
107–35. Rubiés locates the Picart-Bernard work in a simple teleology of the
Enlightenment.
11. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions
to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 64–68.
12. For more on Hastings and his milieu, see Peter J. Marshall, ed., The
British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970).
13. Bernard’s remarks of 1741, as cited in Von Wyss-Giacosa, Religionsbilder
der frühen Aufklärung, 40.
14. Cited in Von Wyss- Giacosa, Religionsbilder der frühen Aufklärung, 39.
15. La Créquinière, “The Conformity of the Customs of the East Indians
with those of the Jews and other Antient nations,” in Bernard Picart, The Cer-
emonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World: Together
with Historical Annotations, and Several Curious Discourses Equally Instructive and
Entertaining, Written Originally in French, and Illustrated with a Large Number
of Folio Copper Plates, All Beautifully Designed by Bernard Picart, and Curiously En-
graved by Most of the Best Hands of Europe; Faithfully Translated into English by a
Gentleman Some Time since of St. John’s College in Oxford, 7 vols. (London: Wil-
liam Jackson, 1733–1739), 3:214–99. The original English version appears as Mr
De la C***, The Agreement of the Customs of the East-Indians, with Those of the Jews,
and Other Ancient People: Being the First Essay of This Kind, Towards the Explaining
350 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 0 – 1 1 9

of Several Diffi cult Passages in Scripture, and Some of the Most Ancient Writers
(London: W. Davis, 1705). Also see Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century
Confronts the Gods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 17–18,
for a brief discussion.
16. La Créquinière, “The Conformity of the Customs of the East Indians,”
216.
17. The most significant recent analy sis of the work is that by Carlo
Ginzburg, “Provincializing the World: Eu ropeans, Indians, Jews (1704),” Post-
colonial Studies 14, no. 2 (2011): 135–50.
18. Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM), Colonies, C2 65, fls. 100–
100v, “Mr La Créquinière à Pondichéry, le 1er octobre 1700, fonction d’aide
majeur.” The essay by Rubiés, “From Christian Apologetics to Deism,” also
cites a letter mentioning him, written by a contemporary and dated Feb-
ruary 1702, in ANOM, Colonies, C2 66, fl. 206v.
19. For more on De Livernan, see Paul Kaeppelin, La compagnie des Indes
orientales et François Martin: étude sur l’histoire du commerce de des établissements
français dans l’Inde sous Louis XIV (1664–1719) (Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1908),
457, 547.
20. The research of Carlo Ginzburg has brought to light that from around
1706, La Créquinière was in the process of revising his text, toward a second
edition, which he never completed; see Ginzburg, “Provincializing the World,”
144. The draft revisions may be found in Bibliothèque nationale de France,
Ms occidentaux fr. 9723.
21. La Créquinière, “The Conformity of the Customs of the East Indians,”
218.
22. Ibid., 291–92.
23. Ibid., 216.
24. Ibid., 292, note a.
25. Ibid., 291–94 (notes).
26. Henry Lord, “A Discovery of the Sect of the Banians,” in Picart, Cer-
emonies and Religious Customs, 3:302–41. For a useful, more recent edition with
editorial remarks, see Will Sweetman, A Discovery of the Banian Religion and the
Religion of the Persees: A Critical Edition of Two Early English Works on Indian Re-
ligions (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999). For a summary of the contents
of Lord’s work, see Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. van Kley, Asia in the Making
of Europe, vol. 3, A Century of Advance, bk. 2, South Asia (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993), 645–51.
27. Lord, “A Discovery of the Sect of the Banians,” 341.
28. For the standard modern edition, see Willem Caland, ed., De open-deure
tot het verborgen heydendom door Abraham Rogerius (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1915). For an extended summary, see Lach and van Kley, Asia in the
Making of Europe, vol. 3, bk. 2, South Asia, 1029–57, as well as the discussion in
Sweetman, Mapping Hinduism, 89–103.
29. Bettina Noak, “Glossaries and Knowledge-Transfer: Andreas Wisso-
watius and Abraham Rogerius,” in Dynamics of Neo-Latin and the Vernacular:
Language and Poetics, Translation and Transfer, ed. Tom B. Deneire (Leiden: Brill,
2014), 251–65. The preface is signed “Leiden, 26th December 1650,” with the
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 9 – 1 2 6 351

phrase “A.  W. JCtus [ Jurisconsultus].” The author mentions (1651 edition,

“Voor-reden,” 4v) that he was given the text by “seker seer gheleert en vermaert
Professor in de Universiteyt tot Leyden,” and that the two had put together a
brief para-text (eenige korte Aenteyckeningen).
30. Abraham Rogerius, “A Dissertation on the Religion and Manners of
the Bramins,” in Picart, Ceremonies and Religious Customs, 3:351. This corre-
sponds to Caland, De open-deure, 13–14. However, the English text omits a
crucial phrase: “ghelijck den Bramine Padmanaba ghetuyghde, die oock selfs
van dese Secte was.” These changes were apparently made by Antoine-Augustin
Bruzen de la Martinière, on whose edited version of La Grue’s translation Picart
based his work; see Sweetman, Mapping Hinduism, 90.
31. “A Dissertation on the Religion and Manners of the Bramins,” 349. The
Dutch text in Caland, De open-deure, 7–8, has again been considerably short-
ened here by La Martinière.
32. “A Dissertation on the Religion and Manners of the Bramins,” 352;
Caland, De open-deure, 15.
33. “Supplement to the Preceding Dissertations,” in Picart, Ceremonies and
Religious Customs, 3:459.
34. “A Dissertation on the Religion and Manners of the Bramins,” 405.
35. Anonymous review of the Voyages de Mr Dellon in the Journal des Sça-
vans 38 (1709): 598–605. On Dellon more generally, see Charles Amiel and Anne
Lima, eds., L’Inquisition de Goa: La relation de Charles Dellon (1687) (Paris: Edi-
tions Chandeigne, 1997).
36. “An Historical Dissertation on the Gods of the East-Indians,” in Picart,
Ceremonies and Religious Customs, 3:409.
37. Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Codex Zanetti, It. 44, fls. 366
(b)–(i) in Italian; followed a more extended version in French, fls. 367–406; ex-
cerpts may be found in Piero Falchetta, ed., Storia del Mogol di Nicolò Manuzzi
veneziano, 2 vols. (Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1986), 2:170–210; and an English
translation in William Irvine, trans., Mogul India, 1653–1708, or Storia do Mogor
by Niccolao Manucci Venetian, 4 vols. (London: J. Murray, 1907–1908), 3:1–71.
38. This copy, which still bears the stamp of the Colegii Paris Societatis Jesu,
is to be found today in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Codex Phillipps 1945,
3 vols.; the relevant section is vol. 3, fls. 48r–69v.
39. The text was published in Willem Caland, ed., Twee oude Fransche ver-
handelingen over het Hindoeïsme (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Weten-
schappen, 1923), 3–92. Caland suggested that this text was itself a revised and
reworked version of an account fi rst prepared by Roberto de Nobili in about
1644. But it is in fact the same as the “Breve notícia dos erros que tem os Gen-
tios do Concão na Índia,” by João de Brito, in the Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon,
Codex 51-II-27, fls. 81v–116r.
40. Irvine, trans., Mogul India, 1653–1708, 3:1.
41. “An Historical Dissertation on the Gods of the East-Indians,” 437,
note (a).
42. “A Letter from Father Bouchet, a Jesuit, Missionary to the Maduras,
and Superior of the new Mission of Carnate, to Mons. Huet, Bishop of
Avranches,” in Picart, Ceremonies and Religious Customs, 3:442–53. For an
352 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 6 – 1 3 1

extended commentary on this correspondence, see D. J. A. Clines, “In Search

of the Indian Job,” Vetus Testamentum 33, no. 4 (1983): 398–418, and Sweetman,
Mapping Hinduism, 135–41. For more on Huet, see Alphonse Dupront, Pierre-
Daniel Huet et l’exégèse comparatiste au XVIIe siècle (Paris: E. Leroux, 1930), and
the rather narrowly conceived work by April G. Shelford, Transforming the Re-
public of Letters: Pierre-Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life, 1650–1720
(Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007).
43. Bouchet referred in par ticu lar to Huet’s celebrated work Demonstratio
evangelica ad serenissimum delphinum (1679).
44. “Supplement to the Preceding Dissertation,” 476. Here, there is also a
reference to the Bologna edition of della Valle’s work from 1672.
45. This section derives from Bernier’s letter to Monsieur Chapelain of
October 4, 1667, for which see Tinguely, ed., Un libertin dans l’Inde moghole,
331–44.
46. On the first of these texts, see Jarl Charpentier, ed., The Livro da seita
dos Indios orientais (Brit. Mus. Ms. Sloane 1820) of Father Jacobo Fenicio, S. J. (Up-
psala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1953); on the latter, Siegfried Kratzsch, ed., Deex
Autaer von Philip Angel: Eine niederländische Handschrift aus dem 17. Jahrhundert
über die zehn Avataras des Visnu (Halle: Franckeschen Stiftungen, 2007), and es-
pecially Carolien  M. Stolte, Philip Angel’s Deex-Autaers: Vaisnava mythology
from manuscript to book market in the context of the Dutch East India Company,
c. 1600–1672 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2012). For the standard edition of this sec-
tion of Baldaeus, see Albert Johannes de Jong, ed., Afgoderye der Oost-Indische
heydenen door Philippus Baldaeus (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1917).
47. Jarl Charpentier, “The Brit. Mus. Ms. Sloane 3290, the common
source for Baldæus and Dapper,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 3,
no. 3 (1924): 420.
48. On Kircher, see most recently, Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher:
The last man who knew everything (New York : Routledge, 2004); on Roth, see
Arnulf Camps and Jean- Claude Muller, eds., The Sanskrit grammar and manu-
scripts of Father Heinrich Roth, S. J. (1620–1668): Facsimile edition of Biblioteca Na-
zionale, Rome, Mss. Or. 171 and 172 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), 5–9, and Gita
Dharampal-Frick, Indien im Spiegel deutscher Quellen der Frühen Neuzeit (1500–
1750): Studien zu einer interkulturellen Konstellation (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994),
88–92. We note that various other German writers of the period on India are
not given much place; see, for example, Antje Flüchter, “ ‘Aus den fürnembsten
indianischen Reisebeschreibungen zusammegezogen’: Knowledge about India
in early modern Germany,” in Siegfried Huigen, Jan L. de Jong and Elmer
Kolfi n, eds., The Dutch Trading Companies as Knowledge Networks (Leiden: Brill,
2010), 337–59; and A. Flüchter, “Handling of Diversity in Early Modern India?:
Perception and Evaluation in German Discourse,” The Medieval History Journal
16, no. 2 (2013): 297–334.
49. For an overview of the main published accounts in French, see Frédéric
Tinguely, Le fakir et le Taj Mahal: L’Inde au prisme des voyageurs français du XVIIe
siècle (Geneva: La Baconnière, 2011).
50. See Les Voyages et Observations du Sieur de la Boullaye-le- Gouz, gentil-
homme angevin (1653 ; Paris: François Clousier, 1657).
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 1 – 1 3 5 353

51. See Stroumsa, “John Spencer and the Roots of Idolatry,” 5: “The gen-
eral preface of Cérémonies et coutumes speaks (already) of the Etre Suprême in
whom all peoples, including the most savage ones, believe, although usually
under dif ferent names.”
52. See Michele Bernardini, “The Illustrations of a Manuscript of the
Travel Account of François de la Boullaye le Gouz in the Library of the Acca-
demia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome,” Muqarnas 21 (2004): 55–72.
53. Garcia da Orta, Colóquios dos simples e drogas da Índia, ed. Conde de Fi-
calho, 2 vols. (Lisbon : Imprensa Nacional, 1891–1895); Cristóvão da Costa,
Tratado das drogas e medicinas das Índias Orientais: no qual se verifi ca muito do que
escreveu o Doutor Garcia de Orta, ed. Jaime Walter (Lisbon: Junta de Investiga-
ções do Ultramar, 1964).
54. For the best recent presentation of this text, see Jean Aubin et al. Le
voyage de Ludovico di Varthema en Arabie et aux Indes orientales (1503–1508), trans.
Paul Teyssier (Paris: Chandeigne, 2004).
55. Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters, 321–25. Also see Francis Richard, “Les
manuscrits persans d’origine indienne à la Bibliothèque nationale,” Revue de la
Bibliothèque nationale 19 (1986): 30–46.
56. Otto Kurz, “A Volume of Indian Miniatures and Drawings,” Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 30 (1967): 251–71. The unfi nished ge-
nealogical painting of the Mughals there resembles that in the Aga Khan
Collection in Toronto; see Sheila R. Canby, Princes, poètes et paladins: Minia-
tures islamiques et indiennes de la collection du prince et de la princesse Sadruddin Aga
Khan, trans. Claude Ritschard (Geneva: Musée d’art et d’histoire, 1999), 145–47
(M. 177, today AKM151).
57. See the discussion in Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer, “Het Witsenalbum:
Zeventiende-eeuwse Indische portretten op bestelling,” Bulletin van het Rijks-
museum 44 (1996): 167–254.
58. See the overview in Ronald  W. Lightbown, “Oriental Art and the
Orient in Late Renaissance and Baroque Italy,” Journal of the Warburg and Cour-
tauld Institutes 32 (1969): 228–79.
59. See Henri Abraham Châtelain, Atlas historique, ou Nouvelle introduction
à l’histoire, à la chronologie & à la géographie ancienne & moderne, vol. 5, L’Asie en
général & en particulier (Amsterdam: Z. Châtelain, 1732–1739).
60. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Smith-Lesouëf 233, described
in the volume itself as a collection: “che contiene 47 Ritratti in miniatura di
Prencipi del Mogol, raccolti nel viaggio, che nel 1690 fece in Persia e nella India
orientali M r Claudio LeBrun Pittore Olandese.” The reference is to Cornelis
de Bruyn (c.1652–1727), a Dutch artist and traveler, and author of Travels into
Muscovy, Persia, and part of the East-Indies, Containing, an accurate description of
whatever is most remarkable in those countries, and embellished with above 320 copper
plates, 2 vols. (London: A. Bettesworth and C. Hitch, S. Birt, C. Davis, J. Clarke,
S. Harding, 1737).
61. “Cata logo di alcune rarità, che il Sig. Abate Co. Giovannantonio
Baldini ha riportate da’ suoi viaggi, venute principalmente dall’Indie e dalla
Cina; indiritto al D. Piercaterino Zeno C. R. S. dal Sig. Antonio Vallisnieri,
pubblico primario Professore di medicina teorica nello studio di Padova, con
354 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 5 – 1 3 9

lettera data di Padova il dì terzo di novembre, 1719,” Giornale de’ Letterati d’Italia
33, no. 2 (1722): 118–48; “Altra Lettera del Signor Antonio Vallisnieri al Padre D.
Piercaterino Zeno, C. R. S. con cui mandagli il Catalogo de’ Re del Mogol, i
ritratti de’ quali serbansi nel ricco museo del Co. Ab. Giovannantonio Baldini,”
Supplementi al Giornale de’ Letterati d’Italia 3 (1726): 337–76.
62. These are reproduced in Lightbown, “Oriental Art and the Orient,”
between pages 264 and 265. On the Rajasthan painting, I have benefited a great
deal from Dipti Khera, “Copying Contexts: Picturing Places and Histories in
Udaipur Court Painting and Picart’s Atlas Historique,” in Books and Print be-
tween Cultures, 1500–1900, September 18–19 2015, Amherst College.
63. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Laud Or. 149; also see the discussion
in Herbert J. Stooke and Karl Khandalavala, The Laud Ragamala Miniatures:
A Study in Indian Painting and Music (Oxford: B. Cassirer, 1953).
64. For a fuller discussion, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Further thoughts
on an enigma: The tortuous life of Nicolò Manucci, 1638– c.1720,” Indian Eco-
nomic and Social History Review 45, no. 1 (2008): 35–76.
65. Also see Siegfried Kratzsch, “Die Darstellung der zehn Avataras Visnus
in Athanasius Kirchers ‘China Illustrata,’ ” Altorientalische Forschungen 9 (1982):
133–44.
66. Charpentier, “The Brit. Mus. Ms. Sloane 3290,” 415. This series, from
British Library, Additional Manuscript 5254, is reproduced in Von Wyss-
Giacosa, Religionsbilder der frühen Aufklärung, 238–39.
67. This is the conclusion reached in Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters, 298,
based on the earlier work of H. Pott, Naar wijder horizon: Kaleidoscoop op ons beeld
van de buitenwereld (The Hague: Mouton, 1962). The defi nitive work on the
question is now that of Stolte, Philip Angel’s Deex-Autaers.
68. Stroumsa, “John Spencer and the Roots of Idolatry,” 6–7.
69. For a general perspective on this issue, see Michael T. Ryan, “Assimi-
lating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 23, no. 4 (1981): 519–38.
70. For a sampling of such recent works, see Daniel Dubuisson, L’occident
et la religion (Brussels: Complexe, 1998); Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of
World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of
Pluralism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005); and Jason Ānanda
Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan (Chicago: The University of Chi-
cago Press, 2012). The most peculiar and confused work in this regard is S. N.
Balagangadhara, “The Heathen in his Blindness . . .”: Asia, the West and the Dy-
namic of Religion (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), which despite its “cult” status in some
circles, in real ity does not advance the discussion an iota.
71. Ines G. Županov, Disputed Mission: Jesuit Experiments and Brahmanical
Knowledge in Seventeenth- century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
The oft- quoted phrase from the celebrated Italian Jesuit Nobili runs: “quod
regulam, qua dignosci debent, quae sint apud hos Indos politica et quae sacra.”
See Roberto de’ Nobili, Adaptation: Narratio fundamentorum quibus Madurensis
Missionis institutum caeptum est, et hucusque consistit, auctore Illustrissimo, ac Rev-
erendissimo Domino Francisco Rocio Cranganorensi Archiepiscopo, ed. S. Rajaman-
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 9 – 1 4 3 355

ickam, trans. J. Pujo (Palayamkottai: De Nobili Research Institute, 1971),

154–55.
72. See Aditya Behl, “Pages from the Book of Religions: Encountering
Difference in Mughal India,” in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Forms of Knowledge in
Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet,
1500–1800 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 210–39; also Fath-Allah
Mojtaba’i, “Dabestān- e Madāheb,” Encyclopaedia Iranica 6, fasc. 5, (1993):
532–34. The much- debated authorship was correctly established based on a
seventeenth- century manuscript by Ahmad Monzavi, Fihrist- i nuskhahā- yi
khattī-i kitābkhāna-i Ganj Bakhsh, 4 vols. (Islamabad: Markaz-i Tahqiqat-i
Farsi-i Iran wa Pakistan, 1979–1980), 2:471–72 (No. 558). For a modern edi-
tion of the text, see Rahim Riza’zadah Malik, ed., Dabistān-i mazāhib, 2 vols.
(Tehran: Kitabkhanah-i Tahuri, 1362 Sh. [1983]), though the authorship is
incorrectly attributed there to Kaykhusrau Isfandiyar. For a somewhat dated
translation, David Shea and Anthony Troyer, trans., The Dabistán: or School
of manners, 3 vols. (Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and
Ireland, 1843); and for late eighteenth- century readings and misreadings
of  this text, also see Bruce Lincoln, “Isaac Newton and Oriental Jones on
Myth, Ancient History, and the Relative Prestige of Peoples,” History of Re-
ligions 42, no. 1 (2002): 1–18.
73. Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, “A Parsee High Priest (Dastūr Āzar Kaiwān,
1529–1614 A.C.) with his Zoroastrian Disciples in Patna in the 16th and
17th Century A.C.,” Journal of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute 20 (1932):
1–85.
74. M. Athar Ali, “Pursuing an Elusive Seeker of Universal Truth: The
Identity and Environment of the Author of the Dabistān-i Mazāhib,” Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 9, no. 3 (1999): 365–73 (citation on 371). I have
slightly emended the translation. Compare this to the letter from Spinoza to
Alfred Burgh in 1675: “But you, who presume that you have at last found the
best religion, or rather, the best men to whom you have pledged your credu-
lity, how do you know that they are the best out of all those who have taught
other religions, are teaching them now, or will teach them in the future? Have
you examined all those religions, both ancient and modern, which are taught
here and in India and throughout the whole world?” See Samuel Shirley, trans.,
Spinoza: The Letters, introduction and notes by Steven Barbone, Lee Rice and
Jacob Adler (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co, 1995), 342.
75. For a fuller discussion, see Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political
Islam in India, c. 1200–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
76. Malik, ed., Dabistān-i mazāhib, 1: 367. I am grateful to Carl W. Ernst
for providing me with this translation, which corrects that of Ali, “Pursuing
an Elusive Seeker of Universal Truth,” 365.
77. Behl, “Pages from the Book of Religions,” 221.
78. Simon Digby, “Some Asian Wanderers in Seventeenth- Century India:
An Examination of Sources in Persian,” Studies in History, N.S., 9, no. 2 (1993):
247–64 (citation on 254).
79. Behl, “Pages from the Book of Religions,” 224.
356 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 4 4 – 1 4 9

chapter 3 . Of Coproduction
Epigraph: For a discussion of the poem and its “mercantilist” resonances, see
Alex Eric Hernandez, “Commodity and Religion in Pope’s ‘The Rape of the
Lock,’ ” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 48, no. 3 (2008): 569–84.
1. British Library, London (hereafter BL), Additional MS 35,447, Hard-
wicke Papers, vol. 99 (Scotch Affairs, 1749–1753), Memoir for Lord Findlater
(1752/53), fl. 346.
2. For a discussion of these estates, including that of Lovat, see Annette M.
Smith, Jacobite Estates of the Forty-Five (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1982). The
Lovat estate was eventually returned to the family in 1774 by an act of Parlia-
ment. The Barons of the Exchequer was a common law court, the barons being
appointed judges, and the factors being managers appointed by the barons to
oversee disputed estates.
3. BL, Additional MS 35,447, fl. 353, Erskine (or, as he signs, “Areskine”)
at Edinburgh to Lord Findlater, 30 June 1753.
4. BL, Additional MS 35,447, fls. 366–75, “Copy Mr Fraser of Relicks Proof,
1752”; fls. 376–82, “Copy Mr Fraser of Relicks 2nd proof, 1753”; fls. 384–89, “Copy
Mr Grants Proof of Exculpation”; fls. 390–97, “Copy Precognition Taken by
James Grant before the Sherriff of Inverness and Mr Ross of Geddes, 1753.”
5. BL, Additional MS 35,447, fl. 360–60v, Copy Letter from James Fraser
to Mr. Baron Maule, undated (mid 1752).
6. See the valuable account of Grant and his network in David Hancock,
Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic
Community, 1735–1785 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 48–59,
passim.
7. Alastair J. Durie, The Scottish Linen Industry in the Eighteenth Century
(Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), 65.
8. BL, Additional MS 35,448, fls. 4–11, “Letters wrote to James Frazer of
Relig by John Monro of Culcairn, Hugh Rose of Geddes Sherriff Dept of the
County of Ross, Sir Harry Munro Baronet, John Forbes of Culloden Esquire,
concerning his character, his affection to His Majesty & the present Happy
Constitution.”
9. William Irvine, “Note on James Fraser, Author of the ‘History of Nadir
Shah’ (1742),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
31, no. 1 (1899): 214–20 (quotation on 215). Compare Fraser of Reeling Papers,
Kirkhill (Scotland), NRAS No. 2696 (henceforth cited as FRP), Bundle 176,
Item 2, “Character Sketch,” which notes that on his death Fraser was “in the
42nd year of his age.” I am grateful to Kathy and Malcolm Fraser for allowing
me access to these documents.
10. David Alston, “ ‘Very Rapid and Splendid Fortunes’? Highland Scots
in Berbice (Guyana) in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Transactions of the Gaelic
Society of Inverness 63 (2002–2004): 208–36.
11. Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, India Revealed: The Art and Adventures
of James and William Fraser, 1801–35 (London: Cassell, 1989).
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 5 0 – 1 5 3 357

12. William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-

Century India (New York: Viking, 2003); the main lines of argument and pre-
sentation are already anticipated somewhat in Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year
of Delhi (Delhi: HarperCollins, 1993). A careful study of a family of Lowland
Scots, the Johnstones, may be found in Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Em-
pires: An Eighteenth- Century History (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2011).
13. See the nuanced analy sis in Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in
Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006).
14. For the initial statement, C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars:
North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983). For the subsequent debate, see Seema
Alavi, ed., The Eighteenth Century in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2002), and Peter J. Marshall, ed., The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evo-
lution or Revolution? (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003).
15. See A. A. Macdonell, “Fraser, James (1712/13–1754),” rev. P. J. Marshall,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
accessed April 2, 2013, http://www.oxforddnb.com /view/article/10107.
16. Arthur H. Williamson, “George Buchanan, Civic Virtue and Com-
merce: European Imperialism and Its Sixteenth- Century Critics,” The Scottish
Historical Review 75, no. 199, part 1 (1996): 20–37.
17. The extent of James’s interest cannot be guessed at; however, for his
own letters, see G. P. V. Akrigg, ed., Letters of James VI & I (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1984).
18. See Giorgio Levi Della Vida, George Strachan: Memorials of a Wandering
Scottish Scholar of the Seventeenth Century (Aberdeen: Third Spalding Club,
1956).
19. Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
20. Robert Markley, “Monsoon Cultures: Climate and Acculturation in Al-
exander Hamilton’s ‘A New Account of the East Indies,’ ” New Literary History
38, no. 3 (2007): 527–50.
21. George Pratt Insh, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the In-
dies (London: Charles Scribner, 1932); G.  P. Insh, ed., Papers Relating to the
Ships and Voyages of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, 1696–
1707 (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1924).
22. Holden Furber, Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville, 1742–1811, Po-
litical Man ager of Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931); more
recently, Michael Fry, The Dundas Despotism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1992).
23. G.  J. Bryant, “Scots in India in the Eighteenth Century,” Scottish
Historical Review 64, no. 177, part 1 (1985): 22–41 (citation on 22).
24. For an example of such post-1760 networks, see B.  R. Tomlinson,
“From Campsie to Kedgeree: Scottish Enterprise, Asian Trade and the Com-
pany Raj,” Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 4 (2002): 769–91.
358 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 5 3 – 1 5 9

25. Bruce  P. Lenman, Integration and Enlightenment: Scotland, 1746–1832

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 82.
26. George K. McGilvary, East India Patronage and the British State: The
Scottish Elite and Politics in the Eighteenth Century (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008),
x–xi, 55–65.
27. For some details of Macrae’s trade, as well as that of some other clients
of Drummond, see Søren Mentz, The English Gentleman Merchant at Work: Ma-
dras and the City of London 1660–1740 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum
Press, 2005). By measures of purchasing power comparison, the sum of £100,000
in 1730 would be worth at least $18 million currently.
28. McGilvary, East India Patronage, 57.
29. However, we do fi nd a handful of Latin books in his library, including
de Laet’s De Imperio Magni Mogolis, the poems of George Buchanan, some works
of Joseph Scaliger, and Martini’s De bello Tartarico historia (1654). See FRP,
Bundle 176, Item 1, “Roup Roll of the Books of the deceas’d James Fraser of
Rilick” (1755).
30. Ashin Das Gupta, The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500–1800,
ed. Uma Das Gupta (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 315–68; and Das
Gupta, Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat, c. 1700–1750 (Wiesbaden: Franz
Steiner, 1979).
31. For details, see ‘Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i-Ahmadi: A Persian His-
tory of Gujarat, ed. Syed Nawab Ali, 2 vols. (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1927–
28), 2:356–57; also Mirat-i-Ahmadi, trans. M. F. Lokhandwala (Baroda: Oriental
Institute, 1965), 689–91. According to this text, whose author was also origi-
nally from Burhanpur, Sayyid Mu‘in-ud-Din Khan (or Miyan Achhan) be-
longed to a prominent family of Burhanpur-based Sufis, who were close to
Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah. His older brother, a respected pīr (of the Naqshbandi
silsila) known as Miyan Mitthan, also played a brief role in Surat politics in the
late 1740s, but died before the major conflict broke out between his brother and
Safdar Muhammad Khan. ‘Ali Muhammad Khan describes Miyan Mitthan as
belonging to the “circle of turban-wearing masters [dar zumra-i ashāb-i
‘amāyim],” though he also somewhat mocks him in his text. The brothers were
apparently descendants of Shah Makhan, a Juybari Shaikh of Bukharan origins
who settled in Burhanpur.
32. Yusuf Husain, The First Nizām: The Life and Times of Nizāmu’l-Mulk
Āsaf Jāh I (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1963), 245. The most comprehen-
sive attempt to disentangle the high politics of Surat in the years 1740 to 1760
may be found in Jos Gommans and Jitske Kuiper, “The Surat Castle Revolu-
tions: Myths of an Anglo-Bania Order and Dutch Neutrality, c. 1740–1760,”
Journal of Early Modern History 10, no. 4 (2006): 361–89.
33. For a discussion of these attempts to impose order on factory life, see
Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India
Company (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 83–103 (quotation
on 87).
34. Quoted in Ashin Das Gupta, “Pieter Phoonsen of Surat, c. 1730–1740,”
in The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 411.
35. Das Gupta, Decline of Surat, 30.
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 5 9 – 1 6 6 359

36. Ibid., 31. Schreuder concluded that the 175 wealthiest merchants at
Surat in about 1750 had a total capital of about Rs. 8.74 million; see Holden
Furber, Bombay Presidency in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (New York: Asia Pub-
lishing House, 1965), 64–66.
37. H. W. van Santen, VOC-dienaar in India: Geleynssen de Jongh in het land
van de Groot-Mogol (Franeker: Van Wijnen, 2001).
38. For the most recent reexamination of Cleland, including his Indian
career, see Hal Gladfelder, Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of
John Cleland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
39. William H. Epstein, John Cleland: Images of a Life (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1974), 9–11.
40. Ibid., 35–37.
41. John Braddyll, The Vindication of Mr. John Braddyll, against Mr. Henry
Lowther. In a Letter Humbly Address’d to the Honourable the Court of Directors for
Affairs of the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies.
With a Proper Appendix (London: n.p., 1746).
42. The authoritative historian of mercantile activity in Surat in the pe-
riod, Ashin Das Gupta (Decline of Surat, 298), remarks: “Thus the reports made
by Henry Lowther about the situation in Surat in the early 1730s were in an
impor tant sense mendacious. The version carefully concealed his own role, his
private interests and some of his activities.”
43. For a discussion see Ibid., 275–76. Lowther eventually appears to
have returned to England and France, and died in 1758 (rather than the
usual date, 1743, which is clearly incorrect). For some details of this member
of the Cumberland family (albeit viewed through a heroic lens), see Arnold
Wright, Annesley of Surat and His Times: The True Story of the Mythical Wesley
Fortune (London: Andrew Melrose, 1918), 338–43.
44. Furber, Bombay Presidency, 29.
45. William Dunn Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, with a No-
tice of the Earlier Library of the University, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1890), 215–17. The album in question is today listed by the Bodleian Library as
MS. Ind. Misc. d.3. Also see the brief discussion in Henry Beveridge, “An In-
dian Album,” Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review and Oriental and Colonial
Record, 3rd ser., 26, nos. 51–52 (1908): 327–34.
46. Besides the Bodleian album, Fraser’s effects at his death included some
“five India paintings on looking glass,” about 108 “curious India Drawings,”
and another 73 “India Pictures,” which were sold in various lots. He is also
known to have collected Indian swords and coins. See FRP, Bundle 293, Item
4, “Goods belonging to James Fraser Esquire,” sold on 3rd April 1759, and
Bundle 651, Item 6, “Roup Roll of Household Furniture etc belonging to the
deceas’d James Fraser of Rilick” (1755).
47. “Mr. Draper’s Arguments to support His Dissent,” in The Vindication
of Mr. John Braddyll, 72.
48. Epstein, John Cleland, 48.
49. This short memoir (in French) is published in Sebastião José de Carv-
alho e Melo, Escritos económicos de Londres (1741–1742), ed. José Barreto (Lisbon:
Biblioteca Nacional, 1986), 158–61. It is accompanied by a longer letter to
360 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 6 6 – 1 7 2

Cardinal da Mota by Carvalho ( later to be famous as the Marquês de Pombal).

For a discussion, see Gladfelder, Fanny Hill in Bombay, 39–45.
50. Epstein, John Cleland, 212.
51. BL, Oriental and India Office Collections (hereafter OIOC), E / 1/31,
doc. 90, “The Humble Petition of James Fraser” (1742).
52. BL, OIOC, D / 20, fol. 59, Meeting of the Committee of Correspon-
dence, 4th November 1742. Fraser’s bondsmen on his second Indian voyage
were Hugh Ross and George Fryer, both London-based merchants, for £1,000
each; see Irvine, “Note on James Fraser,” 218–19.
53. Beveridge, “An Indian Album,” 333.
54. G. Fielding Blandford, “Nova et Vetera: The Collections of Dr. Richard
Mead,” British Medical Journal 2, no. 2082 (1900): 1508–09. However, since
Sloane’s collections remained largely intact and were bequeathed to the British
Library, they have naturally attracted far more scholarly attention; see Arthur
MacGregor, ed., Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary, Founding Father
of the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1994).
55. For this larger context, see Manjusha Kuruppath, “Casting Despots in
Dutch Drama: The Case of Nadir Shah in Van Steenwyk’s Thamas Koelikan,”
Indian Economic and Social History Review 48, no. 2 (2011): 241–86.
56. Laurence Lockhart, “De Voulton’s Noticia,” Bulletin of the School of Ori-
ental Studies 4, no. 2 (1926): 223–45.
57. James Fraser, The History of Nadir Shah, Formerly Called Thamas Kuli
Khan, the Present Emperor of Persia: To which is prefi x’d a Short History of the Moghol
Emperors, at the End is inserted a Catalogue of about Two Hundred Manuscripts in
the Persic and other Oriental Languages, collected in the East, 2nd ed. (London: A.
Millar, 1742), vi. The first edition appeared in the same year from W. Strahan,
but at Fraser’s own expense.
58. See the pilgrimage manual by Shaikh Muhammad Chishti Gujarati,
Ādāb al-tālibīn ma‘a rafīq al-tullāb, wa albāb salāsa, Urdu trans. Muhammad
Bashir Husain, ed. Muhammad Aslam Rana (Lahore: Progressive Books, 1984).
Shaikh Muhammad traced his own genealogy back to the grand figure of Nasir-
ud-Din Chiragh-i Dihli (d. 1356). One of his grandsons, Shaikh Yahya Madani
(d. 1689) migrated for a time to Medina; he was the great-grandfather of our
Shaikh Muhammad Murad.
59. Levi Della Vida, George Strachan, 73–108.
60. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke,
UK: Macmillan, 1988), x.
61. Zur Shalev, “Measurer of All Things: John Greaves (1602–1652), the
Great Pyramid, and Early Modern Metrology,” Journal of the History of Ideas
63, no. 4 (2002): 555–75.
62. R. W. Ferrier, “Charles I and the Antiquities of Persia: The Mission of
Nicholas Wilford,” Iran 8 (1970): 51–56. For Charles’s request, see W. Noel
Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, East Indies and Persia,
1630–1634, preserved in the Public Record Offi ce and the India Offi ce (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1892), 523.
63. BL, London, OIOC, E / 3/15 / 1543A, Methwold, Mountney, Fremlen,
etc at Swally to the Company, December 29th 1634, in William Foster, ed.,
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 7 2 – 1 7 7 361

The English Factories in India, 1634–1636 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), 74–75 (the
summary of the entire document occupies 59–85).
64. For an analysis, see John Seyller, Workshop and Patron in Mughal India:
The Freer Rāmāyana and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of ‘Abd al- Rahīm (Zu-
rich: Museum Rietberg, 1999), Artibus Asiae, Supplementum, 42:257–63.
The manuscript may be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Laud
Or. 149.
65. J. V. S. Wilkinson, “An Indian Manuscript of the Golestān of the Shāh
Jahān Period,” Ars Orientalis 2 (1957): 423–25.
66. One of the earliest examples seems to be that in Leiden University
Library, Cod. Or. 242, which was seized by an Austrian soldier from the
Ottomans in 1566. See J. T. P. de Bruijn, “Iranian Studies in the Netherlands,”
Iranian Studies 20, nos. 2–4 (1987): 161–77 (on 167).
67. See Alastair Hamilton and Francis Richard, André du Ryer and Oriental
Studies in Seventeenth- Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
72–89.
68. Edward G. Browne, A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Library
of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896),
xii–xxii.
69. Andrew Dalby, “A Dictionary of Oriental Collections in Cambridge
University Library,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 9, no. 3
(1988): 248–80 (entry for Lewis on 266–67); Browne, Catalogue, xxvi–xxvii.
70. Henry Davison Love, Vestiges of Old Madras, 1640–1800; traced from the
East India Company’s records preserved at Fort St. Goerge and the India Offi ce, and
from other sources, 4 vols. (London: John Murray, 1913), 2:24.
71. This manuscript is listed as Cambridge University Library, Add. 207.
It has eleven illustrations, and E. G. Browne notes that they are “very curious,
executed with considerable skill”; Browne, Catalogue, 309.
72. James Fraser, A Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Persic, Arabic, and San-
skerrit Languages collected in the East (London: A. Millar, 1742), and appended to
The History of Nadir Shah. For the few Prakrit manuscripts (Fraser 16 and Fraser
38), compare with Arthur Berriedale Keith, Catalogue of the Prākrit Manuscripts
in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911); and for the forty-one-odd
Sanskrit manuscripts, see Theodor Aufrecht, Catalogi Codicum Manuscriptorum
Bibliothecae Bodleianae: Codices Sanscriticos Complectens (Oxford: Clarendon, 1864),
343–58, 403–44. The Sanskrit manuscripts were inspected by Friedrich von
Schlegel in November 1823; see FRP, Bundle 293, Item 3, and he particularly
remarked a manuscript of the Bhāgavata Purāna.
73. The Fraser Persian manuscripts are listed and extensively described in
Eduard Sachau and Hermann Ethé, Catalogue of the Persian, Turkish, Hindûstânî,
and Pushtû Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Clarendon, 1889), Part
1. I have used the Sachau-Ethé cata logue extensively in the discussion that
follows.
74. The same title, Tārīkh-i Pādshāhān-i Hind, appears in Charles Stewart,
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the Late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore,
to which are prefi xed, memoirs of Hyder Aly Khan, and his son Tippoo Sultan (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1809), 17 (Item XLII) with the following
362 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 7 8 – 1 8 4

summary description: “An abridged History of the Mohammedan Kings of

Hindustan, till the Accession of the Emperor Akbar.”
75. A text with the same title (which is, however, rather generic) appears
in Stewart, Catalogue, 6 (Item VIII) with the following description: “An
Abridged History of Asia, from Adam down to Shah Tahmasp of Persia, A.D.
1525. It also contains Memoirs of the Mohammedan Kings of Spain, from A.D.
755, to 1036. Author, Ahmed Ben Mohammed Guffari. Dedicated to Shah
Tahmasp.” The contents of the two texts clearly do not tally.
76. For a full discussion of this work, see Muzaffar Alam, “Strategy and
Imagination in a Mughal Sufi Story of Creation,” Indian Economic and Social His-
tory Review 49, no. 2 (2012): 151–95.
77. Stewart, Catalogue, 3–20.
78. Fraser also had a part of the same author’s inshā’ text entitled Majmū‘a-yi
faiz-o-fazl, copied into a larger compendium on that subject (Fraser 56, fls. 1–32).
Still another text, on astronomy and astrology, also by Muhammad Fazil, is the
Majma‘ al-fazā’il dedicated to Shahjahan (Fraser 167), but I am unable at present
to determine whether it is by the same author or a homonym.
79. We have discussed the nature of the seventeenth- century Mughal
munshī’s education in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “The Making
of a Munshi,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24,
no. 2 (2004): 61–72.
80. It is also interest ing to compare these materials to his library in Eu ro-
pean languages, for which see FRP, Bundle 176, Item 1, “Roup Roll of the Books
of the deceas’d James Fraser of Rilick.” This library includes books on travel
(Tavernier, Mendes Pinto, Pyrard de Laval, etc.), accounts of Ottoman and Is-
lamic history such as Samuel Clarke’s The Life of Tamerlane (1653) and Thomas
Smith’s Remarks upon the Manners, Religion and Government of the Turks (1678),
as well as works by Pufendorf and Picart.
81. BL, OIOC, E / 4/461, 67–68, letter from the Surat Council to the Court
of Directors, dated October 31, 1743.
82. George W. Forrest, Selections from the Letters, Despatches, and Other State
Papers Preserved in the Bombay Secretariat: Home Series (Bombay: Government
Central Press, 1887), 1:273–74.
83. BL, OIOC, E / 4/461, 95, Fraser’s letter to the Court of Directors, No-
vember 10, 1747.
84. Furber, Bombay Presidency in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, 54–61.
85. Ashin Das Gupta, “The Broker in Mughal Surat, c. 1740,” in The World
of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 401.
86. Stephen Law, quoted in Das Gupta, “The Broker in Mughal Surat,”
407.
87. See the letter from Jaggernath Laldass dated January 21, 1741, BL,
OIOC, E / 1/31, doc. 7a. For a discussion of the vicissitudes of the Parekhs in
the late 1730s, see Das Gupta, Decline of Surat, 275–79.
88. BL, OIOC, E / 4/461, 95–96, Fraser’s letter to the Court of Directors,
November 10, 1747.
89. Ibid., 98.
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 8 5 – 1 9 3 363

90. On the latter’s subsequent career, see Ghulam Ahmad Nadri, “Com-
mercial World of Mancherji Khurshedji and the Dutch East India Company:
A Study of Mutual Relationships,” Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 2 (2007): 315–
42; also see Nadri, Eighteenth- Century Gujarat: The Dynamics of its Political
Economy, 1750–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
91. There is evidence that points to a close relationship between Jagan-
nathdas Parekh and Damaji Rao Gaikwad (r. 1732–68); see Das Gupta, Decline
of Surat, 277–78.
92. BL, OIOC, P / 341/15, Bombay Public Consultations (January 1748),
18–23, meeting of 1January 19, 1748.
93. BL, OIOC, E / 1/35, Nos. 162(a)–162(c), “The Humble Memorial of
James Fraser late of Surat.”
94. BL, OIOC, E / 1/35, Nos. 165(a)–165(b), proofs adduced by James Fraser
in relation to his accusations against Governor Wake.
95. BL, OIOC, E / 1/35, Nos. 162(b)–162(c), “The Humble Memorial of
James Fraser late of Surat.”
96. Ibid.; also E / 1/35, Nos. 165(d)–165(i).
97. BL, OIOC, E / 1/35, Nos. 163(a)–163(b), and 164, documents relating
to the charges of Fraser against Wake, and draft comments of the Committee
of Correspondence.
98. For some details of the subsequent career of Wake’s family, see Paul
David Nelson, William Tryon and the Course of Empire: A Life in British Impe-
rial Ser vice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 7–9;
Tryon was Wake’s son-in-law, and a prominent governor in late colonial
Amer ica.
99. Irvine, “Note on James Fraser,” 215.
100. The clear identification of Cockell as the author of two sections of the
text is due to Laurence Lockhart, Nadir Shah: A Critical Study based mainly upon
Contemporary Sources (London: Luzac, 1938), 304–6.
101. See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Un Grand Dérangement: Dreaming an
Indo-Persian Empire in South Asia, 1740–1800,” Journal of Early Modern His-
tory 4, nos. 3–4 (2000): 337–78.
102. Histoire de Thamas Kouli-Kan, Sophi de Perse (Amsterdam: Arkstee &
Merkus, 1740); for the English translation, see The Compleat History of Thamas
Kouli Kan, (at Present Called Schah Nadir) Sovereign of Persia, 2 vols. (London:
J. Brindley et al., 1742).
103. A Genuine History of Nadir- Cha, Present Shah or Emperor of Persia, For-
merly call’d Thamas Kouli-Kan, with a Par tic ular Account of His Conquest of the
Mogul’s Country (London: J. Watts, 1741), dedication, 1.
104. Christiaan J. A. Jörg, “Jan Albert Sichterman: A Groninger Nabob and
Art- Collector,” Itinerario, 9, no. 2 (1985): 178–95; Wiet Kühne-van Diggelen,
Jan Albert Sichterman: VOC- dienaar en ‘Koning’ van Groningen (Groningen,
Netherlands: REGIO Projekt, 1995).
105. A Genuine History of Nadir- Cha, 9.
106. Kuruppath, “Casting Despots in Dutch Drama,” 260–61.
107. A Genuine History of Nadir- Cha, 47.
364 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 9 4 – 2 0 3

108. Fraser, History of Nadir Shah, 11.

109. A Genuine History of Nadir- Cha, xxxvii. Also compare The Compleat
History of Thamas Kouli Kan, 2:9: “This good Prince [Akbar] poisoned him-
self by Mistake in 1605.” In this, as in other places, the editor’s introduction
to the Genuine History seems to draw on Histoire de Thamas Kouli- Kan.
110. Edward Rehatsek, “A Letter of the Emperor Akbar asking for the
Christian Scriptures,” Indian Antiquary 16 (1887): 135–39.
111. Jaswant Rai, Sa‘īd Nāma, cited in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrah-
manyam, Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2012), 376.
112. Fraser, History of Nadir Shah, 12–18.
113. Ibid., 20–21.
114. See Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Fraser 118, with one of Fraser’s
“commonplace books,” and including Aurangzeb’s last will (fl. 13a).
115. A Genuine History of Nadir- Cha, xxxix.
116. Fraser, History of Nadir Shah, 26–27, 33–35. Compare these figures to
the jama‘ (or assessment) numbers for the empire in 1646–56 and 1687–95, re-
spectively, in Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707,
2nd ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 455. It is clear from Habib’s
discussion that Fraser drew his numbers from official Mughal sources, notably,
Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Fraser 86, fls. 57b–61b, a dastūr- ul-‘amal text
from late in Aurangzeb’s reign.
117. Mubarakullah Wazih, Tārīkh-i ‘Irādat Khān, ed. Ghulam Rasul Mihr
(Lahore: Punjab University, 1971), 129–30; Jonathan Scott, A Translation of the
Memoirs of Eradut Khan, a Nobleman of Hindostan (London: John Stockdale,
1786), 79–84. For an extended discussion, see Muzaffar Alam, introduction to
The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707–1748,
2nd ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013).
118. Fraser, History of Nadir Shah, 45–53; for the text, see Bodleian Library,
Oxford, Ms. Fraser 118, fl. 23a.
119. Ibid., 61–62.
120. On this question, see the valuable essay by Setu Madhavarao Pagadi,
“Maratha-Nizam Relations: Nizam-ul-Mulk’s Letters,” Annals of the Bhan-
darkar Oriental Research Institute 51, nos. 1–4 (1970): 93–121.
121. Fraser, History of Nadir Shah, 64–69.
122. See Zahiruddin Malik, A Mughal Statesman of the Eighteenth Century:
Khan-i-Dauran, Mir Bakhshi of Muhammad Shah, 1719–1739 (Bombay: Asia Pub-
lishing House, 1973).
123. For a biography of Sarbuland Khan, see Samsam-ud-Daula Shah Nawaz
Khan and ‘Abdul-Hayy, The Ma’āsir- ul-Umarā, trans. H. Beveridge, rev. Baini
Prashad, vol. 2, Being Biographies of the Mu.hammadan and Hindu Offi cers of the
Timurid Sovereigns of India from 1500 to about 1780 (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of
Bengal, 1952), 704–708. This Ira nian amīr migrated to India at time of Au-
rangzeb and was prominent in the 1710s and 1720s; he eventually died in 1742
in a poor fi nancial state.
124. Fraser, History of Nadir Shah, 138–39.
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 0 3 – 2 1 1 365

125. For a clear description of the engagement, see Lockhart, Nadir Shah,
135–40. Fraser consistently errs here in translating Hijri dates into the Chris-
tian calendar by a factor of 9–11 days.
126. Fraser again has this wrong, as March 10, instead of March 21; in this
year this day marked not only the Persian Nauroz but the ‘Id al-Zuha.
127. Lockhart prefers Jadunath Sarkar’s fairly modest estimate of 20,000
killed on the Indian side on that day. Lockhart, Nadir Shah, 149.
128. Fraser, History of Nadir Shah, 198–202.
129. Ibid., 217. Compare Ernest Tucker, “1739: History, Self, and Other in
Afsharid Iran and Mughal India,” Iranian Studies 31, no. 2 (1998): 207–17.
130. Fraser, History of Nadir Shah, 234. Compare the far more mitigated
judgment of Khwaja ‘Abdul Karim Kashmiri, cited in Muzaffar Alam and
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 263.
131. For more on this complex figure, see Lucette Valensi, “Éloge de l’orient,
éloge de l’orientalisme: Le jeu d’échecs d’Anquetil-Duperron,” Revue de l’histoire
des religions 212, no. 4 (1995): 419–52. Also contrast the account in Urs App, The
Birth of Orientalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennyslvania Press, 2010),
363–439.
132. A. H. Anquetil Duperron, Voyage en Inde, 1754–1762: Relation de voyage
en préliminaire à la traduction du ‘Zend-Avesta’, ed. Jean Deloche, Manonmani
Filliozat, and Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1997), 74,
340. Also see Karl F. Geldner, ed., Avesta: the Sacred Books of the Parsis (Stutt-
gart: W. Kohlhammer, 1896), xii, for a description of a manuscript of the Khorda
Avestâ (or Xwardag Abastag Sāde), Bodleian Library, Ms. Fraser 258.
133. Anquetil Duperron, Voyage en Inde, 451. Anquetil made a manifest error
here; the three incomplete volumes were of the Rāmāyana (Fraser Sanskrit 8;
Aufrecht 804–806), and there are no Mahābhārata manuscripts in the Bodleian
Fraser collection.
134. See Chapter 5.
135. For a recent reformulation of the problem of the “forceful, contentious,
contradictory language of the Enlightenment” in relation to the extra-European
world, see Carlo Ginzburg, “Provincializing the World: Eu ropeans, Indians,
Jews (1704),” Postcolonial Studies 14, no. 2 (2011): 135–50.

chapter 4 . The Transition to Colonial Knowledge

Epigraph: My translation. For the original letter, from the Archivio di Stato di
Firenze, III Serie Strozziana, fi lza 185, c. 15, see Marco Spallanzani, Mercanti
fi orentini nell’Asia Portoghese (Florence: Edizioni Scelte, 1997), 213–15.
1. An exception to this rule is Burton Stein, Thomas Munro: The Origins
of the Colonial State and His Vision of Empire (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1989). But also see the exercise in intellectual history by Ranajit Guha, A Rule
of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of the Permanent Settlement (Paris:
Mouton, 1963), a marked contrast to the same historian’s later disdain for the
study of such “elite” subjects.
366 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 1 3 – 2 2 0

2. For a reiteration of this viewpoint, see Vitorino Magalhães Godinho,

Le devisement du monde: de la pluralité des espaces à l’espace global de l’humanité,
XVème–XVIème siècles (Lisbon: Instituto Camões, 2000).
3. Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe,
vol. 3, A Century of Advance, bk. 1, Trade, Missions, Literature (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1993), 596–97.
4. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions
to Indian Art, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), xiii.
5. For a largely “heroic” view with respect to figures such as Francis W.
Ellis, see Thomas R. Trautmann, “Inventing the History of South India,” in
Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, ed. Daud Ali (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 36–54. Also the earlier work by Garland Hampton
Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones: Sir William Jones, the Father of
Modern Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), where Jones
is even described as a “scholar-martyr,” whose “personal life was as spotless as
his professional life” (82).
6. Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Re naissance: South India
through European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), 287.
7. For instance J. A. Ismael Gracias, O Bispo de Halicarnasso D. António José
de Noronha: Memória Histórica (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1903); the most
recent biographical sketch is that by Carmen Radulet, “D. António José de
Noronha: Ficha biográfica,” in Sistema Marcial Asiático, Político, Histórico, Ge-
nealógico, Analítico e Miscelânico, by António Josó de Noronha, ed. Carmen M.
Radulet (Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 1994), xi–xxvi.
8. Halicarnassus corresponds to the modern Bodrum in Turkey. Noronha
was thus named titular or nonresident Bishop in partibus infi delium, a term
meaning “in the lands of the unbelievers.”
9. Noronha, Sistema, xxi.
10. Ibid., xxiii.
11. Ibid., xxv.
12. D. António José de Noronha, Diário dos sucessos da viagem que fez do Reino
de Portugal para a cidade de Goa, D. António José de Noronha, Bispo de Halicarnasso,
principiada aos 21 de Abril de 1773, ed. Carmen M. Radulet and Francisco Con-
tente Domingues (Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 1995).
13. Compare against Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia,
1500–1700: A Political and Economic History, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2012), 198–211; Glenn J. Ames, Renascent Empire? The House of Braganza and the
Quest for Stability in Portuguese Monsoon Asia, c. 1640–1683 (Amsterdam: Am-
sterdam University Press, 2000).
14. For the relative importance of the Old and New Conquests, see Rudy
Bauss, “A demographic study of Portuguese India and Macau as well as com-
ments on Mozambique and Timor, 1750–1850,” Indian Economic and Social
History Review 34, no.  2 (1997): 199–216; and Maria de Jesus dos Mártires
Lopes, Goa setecentista: Tradição e modernidade (1750–1800) (Lisbon: Universi-
dade Católica Portuguesa, 1996).
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 2 0 – 2 3 0 367

15. The text is published in D. António José de Noronha, Obras politicas,

ed. Carmen  M. Radulet (Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2001), 39–54; and had
earlier been published by J. H. da Cunha Rivara in O Chronista de Tissuary,
nos. 10–11 (1866): 260–66, 288–94.
16. Compare against N. K. Sinha, Haidar Ali (Calcutta: J. C. Sarkhel and
Oriental Press, 1941).
17. BL, Oriental and India Office Collections (henceforth OIOC), Orme
Mss. No. 33, Document 7, “An Account of Hyderally’s Revenues, his provinces,
his expenses, sent by G. Mackay to R. O.,” 111–19.
18. Noronha, Sistema, 66–67.
19. This is a creative use of the legend of Alexander and the Jews, for which
see Andrew Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–
1600 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), chapter 2; and Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End:
Apocalyptic Tradition in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press,
1979), 56. The distant origins may be found in the Greek text from the third
century CE of Pseudo-Callisthène, Le Roman d’Alexandre: La vie et les hauts faits
d’Alexandre de Macédoine, trans. Gilles Bounoure and Blandine Serret (Paris:
Belles-Lettres, 1992).
20. Noronha, Sistema, 50–51.
21. Ibid., 77–78.
22. Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Seção de Iconografia, C. I, 2, 8,
“Notícia summaria do gentilismo da Ásia com dez Riscos Iluminados.” For a
brief discussion of the author, also see Lygia da Fonseca Fernandes da Cunha,
Riscos Illuminados de figurinhos de brancos e negros dos uzos do Rio de Janeiro e Serro
do Frio (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, 1960).
23. Noronha, Obras politicas, 117–44, 161–83.
24. Noronha, Sistema, 139.
25. For standard works, see Marc Chassaigne, Bussy en Inde (Chartres:
Marchand, 1976), and Roger Glachant, “Un conquérant sans étoile, le marquis
de Bussy (1720–1785),” Revue d’histoire diplomatique 4 (1968): 289–314.
26. Patrick Clarke de Dromantin, Les réfugiés jacobites dans le France du
XVIIIe siècle: L’exode de toute une noblesse «pour cause de religion» (Pessac, France:
Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2005), 221–29. While a competent officer,
Lally was disliked by many as a court favorite.
27. He is also an excellent example of the “portfolio capitalist” of the pe-
riod, for which see Sanjay Subrahmanyam and C. A. Bayly, “Portfolio Capital-
ists and the Political Economy of Early Modern India,” Indian Economic and
Social History Review 25, no. 4 (1988): 401–24.
28. For more on Dupleix, see Marc Vigié, Dupleix (Paris: Fayard, 1993);
and the rather extravagant interpretation in Massimiliano Vaghi, Joseph-François
Dupleix e la prima espansione europea in India: ‘Le trône du grand Mogol tremble au
seul bruit de votre nom’ (Milan: UNICOPLI, 2008). For more on questions of
private trade, see Catherine Manning, Fortunes à faire: The French in Asian Trade,
1719–1748 (Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1996).
29. See Pierre-Antoine Perrod, L’affaire Lally Tolendal: le journal d’un juge:
une erreur judiciaire au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Klincksieck, 1976).
368 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 3 0 – 2 3 7

30. Charles-Joseph de Bussy, Mémoire pour le sieur de Bussy, brigadier des ar-
mées du roi, expositif de ses créances sur la Compagnie des Indes (Paris: M. Lambert,
1764); Charles-Joseph de Bussy, Mémoire pour le marquis de Bussy . . . contre les
syndics et directeurs de la Compagnie des Indes (Paris: Louis Cellot, 1767).
31. This is largely the implication of Jean-Marie Lafont, “India and the Age
of Enlightenment, 1612–1849,” in Indika: Essays in Indo-French Relations, 1630–
1976 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), 23–50, and seems to underlie Guy Deleury,
Les Indes fl orissantes: Anthologie des voyageurs français (1750–1820) (Paris: Robert
Laffont, 1991).
32. Alfred Martineau, Dupleix et l’Inde française, 1749–54 (Paris: Honoré
Champion, 1928), 4:17, letter dated May 24, 1751.
33. Alfred Martineau, Bussy et l’Inde française, 1720–1785 (Paris: Société de
l’Histoire des Colonies Françaises, 1935), 71.
34. Ibid., 80.
35. “Mémoire instructif sur 1’état politique des Maures et des Français
dans le Décan et sur leurs intérêts réciproques,” 10 July 1753, in Martineau,
Bussy, 108.
36. Ibid., 185–86.
37. Jean Deloche, “Le mémoire de Moracin sur Macilipattinamu: Un tab-
leau des conditions économiques et sociales des provinces côtières de l’Andhra
au milieu du XVIIIe siècle,” Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême- Orient
62 (1975): 125–50.
38. Martineau, Bussy, 310.
39. Ibid., 130–31.
40. Hanno (or Hannon) being a famous navigator from Carthage of the
fourth century BCE, we may presume that this verse was in fact taken from a
French tragedy in which he was a character, or from a translation of the so-
called Periplus of Hanno.
41. The reference is to the māhī marātib, or “fish standard,” which had been
held earlier by such high umarā’ as Ghazi-ud-Din Khan and Zu’lfiqar Khan;
cf. Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707–1740, reprint
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).
42. Martineau, Bussy, 136–37 (citing ANOM, Colonies, C2 84, 138–51).
43. Ibid., 126, 132–33.
44. The career of Paul Benfield (1741–1810), who claimed that “by long
and extensive dealings as a merchant, he had gained credit at Fort St. George and
confidence with the natives of India . . . to an extent never before experienced by
any Eu ropean in that country,” would undoubtedly repay closer study. See BL,
OIOC, Mss. Eur. C. 307, “The Paul Benfield Papers,” in 5 vols.
45. Compare against Sylvia Murr, L’Inde philosophique entre Bossuet et Vol-
taire, II, L’Indologie du Père Cœurdoux: Stratégies, Apologétique et Scientificité (Paris:
Ecole française d’Extrême- Orient, 1987). Incidentally, Duperron did meet
Bussy at least once, in Srikakulam in June 1757, and was in general much in
awe of him; compare against Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, Voyage
en Inde, 1754–1762: Relation de voyage en préliminaire à la traduction du Zend-
Avesta, ed. Jean Deloche, Manonmani Filliozat, and Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat
(Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1997), 146–48.
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 3 8 – 2 4 3 369

46. For more on his career, see Robert Travers, “The Connected Worlds
of Haji Mustapha (c. 1730–91): A Eurasian cosmopolitan in eighteenth-century
Bengal,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 52, no. 3 (2015): 297–333.
47. “Mustapha’s Journey, from Bengal to Pondicherry, 1758: A Fragment,”
in Oriental Repertory, ed. Alexander Dalrymple (London: G. Bigg, 1791),
2:213–72 (citations on 2:219–24).
48. An impor tant early reconsideration of Polier may be found in Con-
stantin Regamey, “Un pionnier vaudois des études indiennes: Antoine-Louis
de Polier,” in Mélanges offerts à Monsieur Georges Bonnard professeur honoraire de
l’Université de Lausanne, à l’occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire (Geneva:
Droz, 1966), 183–210.
49. Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, A European Experience of the Mughal
Orient: The “I‘jāz-i Arsalānī” (Persian Letters, 1773–1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri
Polier (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
50. For an exploration of Polier’s career in the context of the Anglo-French
imperial projects of the period, see Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Cul-
ture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850 (New York: Knopf, 2005), 63–71, 81–
90. The larger context of the Euro-Indian intellectual encounter in the last
years of the eighteenth century has been addressed in C. A. Bayly, Empire and
Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
51. Paul F. Geisendorf, ed., Livre des Habitants de Genève, vol. I, 1549–1560
(Geneva: E. Droz, 1957), 28–29. For the larger context of these migrations,
see Daniela Solfaroli Camillocci, “Refuge et migrations à Genève au miroir de
polémistes, missionnaires et voyageurs (XVIe–XVIIe siècles),” Revue de l’histoire
des religions 232, no. 1 (2015): 53–81.
52. Eugène and Emily Haag, La France Protestante: ou vies des protestants
français qui se sont fait un nom dans l’histoire (Paris: Joël Cherbuliez, 1857), 8:274–
83, entry for “Polier.”
53. “Liste des réfugiés français à Lausanne,” in Bulletin de la Société de
l’Histoire du Protestantisme 21 (1872): 476.
54. For more on Voltaire, his contemporaries, and India, also see Sylvia
Murr, “Les conditions de l’émergence du discours sur l’Inde au Siècle des Lu-
mières,” in Inde et Littérature, Collection Purusārtha 7, ed. Marie-Claude Porcher
(Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1983), 233–84.
55. Article “Polier,” in La France Protestante, 278–79, collated with the ar-
ticle “Polier” from the Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Suisse
(Neuchâtel: Administration du Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la
Suisse, 1930), 5:313.
56. See the discussion in Georges Dumézil, preface to Le Mahabarat et le
Bhagavat du colonel de Polier (Mythologie des Indous: Selections) (Paris: Gallimard,
1986), 14–21.
57. Mythologie des Indous; travaillée par Madame la Chanoinesse de Polier, sur
des manuscrits authentiques apportés de l’Inde par M. le Colonel de Polier, 2 vols.
(Roudolstadt / Paris: F. Schoell, 1809).
58. For more on Paul-Philippe Polier, see Emile Piguet, “Paul-Philippe
Polier et la reddition du Fort St-David aux Indes,” Revue historique vaudoise
370 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 4 3 – 2 5 3

41  (1933): 174–86. Paul-Philippe Polier entered the East India Company in
1751 as captain, and rose to the rank of major. He was held responsible for the
surrender of Fort St. David by Robert Clive, and died somewhat disgraced.
59. Polier, Mythologie des Indous, 1:iii–iv.
60. Ibid., 1:iv–v.
61. See, by way of contrast, Willem G. J. Kuiters, The British in Bengal,
1756–1773: A Society in Transition Seen through the Biography of a Rebel: William
Bolts (1739–1808) (Paris: Indes savantes, 2002).
62. Jean Deloche, ed., Voyage en Inde du Comte du Modave, 1773–1776: Nou-
veaux mémoires sur l’état actuel du Bengale et de l’Indoustan (Paris: École fran-
çaise d’Extrême- Orient, 1971), 77.
63. Jean Deloche, ed., Les aventures de Jean-Baptiste Chevalier dans l’Inde
Orientale (1752–1765): Mémoire historique et Journal de Voyage à Assem (Paris:
École française d’Extrême- Orient, 1984).
64. Compare, for example, Émile Barbé, Le nabab René Madec: Histoire di-
plomatique des projets de la France sur le Bengale et le Penjab (1772–1808) (Paris:
F. Alcan, 1894).
65. For the standard accounts of Anquetil, see Raymond Schwab, Vie
d’Anquetil-Duperron, suivie des usages civils et religieux des Parses par Anquetil-
Duperron (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1934); Jean-Luc Kieffer, Anquetil-Duperron:
L’Inde en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1983).
66. Francis Richard, “Jean-Baptiste Gentil, collectionneur de manuscrits
persans,” Dix-huitième siècle 28, no. 1 (1996): 91–110.
67. Susan Gole, Maps of Mughal India: Drawn by Colonel Jean-Baptiste-Joseph
Gentil, Agent for the French Government to the Court of Shuja- ud-daula at Faiz-
abad in 1770 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1988).
68. Polier, Mythologie des Indous, 1:vi–vii.
69. Jean Deloche, ed., Les mémoires de Wendel sur les Jāt, les Pathān, et les
Sikh (Paris: École française d’Extrême- Orient, 1979); a partial translation may
be found in Jean Deloche and James Walker, Wendel’s Memoirs on the Origin,
Growth and Present State of Jat Power in Hindustan (1768) (Pondicherry: Institut
français de Pondichéry, 1991).
70. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, A Very Ingenious Man: Claude Martin in Early
Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 55–56.
71. Ibid., 56.
72. For an overview of survey operations in these years, see Matthew H.
Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–
1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
73. BL, OIOC, Bengal Secret Consultations, February 24, 1775, cited in
Jones, A Very Ingenious Man, 56.
74. Polier, Mythologie des Indous, 1:vii.
75. The English commander in question was a certain Colonel Champion,
with whom Polier had an altercation in the course of a campaign against the
Rohillas; compare against Deloche, ed., Voyage de Modave, 442n.
76. Polier, Mythologie des Indous, 1:vii–ix.
77. Sir Eyre Coote sailed for India in 1754, and was at the Battle of Plassey
(1757) and the capture of Pondicherry (1761). He then returned to England in
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 5 4 – 2 6 3 371

1762, but came back to India as commander-in- chief of the Madras army in
1769. After a further brief stint in England, he returned to India for the last time
in 1779, after he had been named commander-in-chief in 1777. In 1781, he fought
against Haidar ‘Ali in the Karnatak; he died in Madras in 1783. Also see, in this
context, Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier, Shah Alam II and His Court: A Narrative of
the Transactions at the Court of Delhy from the Year 1771 to the Present Time, ed.
Pratul C. Gupta (1947; repr., Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1989).
78. Polier, Mythologie des Indous, 1:ix–x.
79. Deloche, Voyage de Modave, 441.
80. Polier, Mythologie des Indous, 1:x–xii.
81. Jones, A Very Ingenious Man, 92–93.
82. Polier, Mythologie des Indous, 1:xii–xiii. See Ganda Singh, “Colonel Po-
lier’s Account of the Sikhs,” Panjab Past and Present 4, no. 2 (1972): 232–53.
83. See Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construc-
tion of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (Houndmills, UK: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2007).
84. Lucette Valensi, “Éloge de l’orient, éloge de l’orientalisme: Le jeu
d’échecs d’Anquetil-Duperron,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 212, no. 4 (1995):
419–52.
85. Polier, Mythologie des Indous, 1:xiii–xv.
86. Some of these manuscripts, both with and without illustrations, can be
found dispersed across various European collections. For those in Paris, see Gé-
rard Colas and Francis Richard, “Le fonds Polier à la Bibliothèque nationale,”
Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême- Orient 73, no. 1 (1984): 99–123. They were
also the focus of an exhibition entitled Ein indischer Aristokrat: Antoine-Louis
Henri de Polier und seine Sammelalben, Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin,
March 5– May 30, 2010.
87. For more on Banks, see John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English
Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1994); also Neil Chambers, Joseph Banks and the British Museum:
The World of Collecting, 1770–1830 (Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, 2016). For
more on Leitão in Jaipur, see João Vicente Carvalho de Melo, “ ‘Lord of Con-
quest, Navigation and Commerce’: Diplomacy and the Imperial Ideal during
the Reign of John V, 1707–1750” (PhD thesis, Swansea University, 2012),
88–93.
88. BL, Additional Manuscripts 5346, fls. 1–4, letter from Polier to Sir Jo-
seph Banks, May 20, 1789, transcribed in Regamey, “Un pionnier vaudois des
études indiennes,” 200–202.
89. Peter J. Marshall, ed., The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Thomas R. Traut-
mann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
Also see the recent, and wide-ranging, work of Urs App, The Birth of Orientalism
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).
90. An interest ing discussion of some of these visual materials may be
found in Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters and in earlier chapters of this book.
91. For a general discussion of these materials, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam,
“An Eastern El-Dorado: The Tirumala-Tirupati Temple Complex in Early
372 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 6 4 – 2 6 9

European Views and Ambitions, 1540–1660,” in Syllables of Sky: Studies in

South Indian Civilization in Honour of Velcheru Narayana Rao, ed. David
Shulman (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 338–90.
92. Compare with Ines G. Županov, “Le repli du religieux: Les mission-
naires jésuites du 17e siècle entre la théologie chrétienne et une éthique pa-
ïenne,” Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales 51, no. 6 (1996): 1201–23.
93. Daniel S. Hawley, “L’Inde de Voltaire,” Studies on Voltaire and the 18th
Century 120 (1974): 139–78.
94. See the broad survey in Massimiliano Vaghi, “Entre le pittoresque et
l’érudition: L’idée de l’Inde en France (1760–1830),” Annales historiques de la révo-
lution française 375 (2014): 49–68.
95. For an example of their interests, see Gérard Colas, “Les manuscrits
envoyés de l’Inde par les jésuites français entre 1729 et 1735,” in Scribes et
manuscrits du Moyen- Orient, ed. François Déroche and Francis Richard (Paris:
Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1997), 345–62.
96. See various letters in Alam and Alavi, A European Experience of the Mu-
ghal Orient, 162, 164. For Polier as a patron of the arts and music in Awadh, see
Stephen Markel and Tushara Bindu Gude, eds., India’s Fabled City: The Art of
Courtly Lucknow (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010).
97. The treatment of these questions in Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed:
European and British Writing on India, 1600–1800 (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1995), chapter 6 and elsewhere, is interest ing but manifestly inadequate.
98. See William Hauptman, “Beckford, Brandoin, and the ‘Rajah’: Aspects
of an Eighteenth-Century Collection,” Apollo 411 (1996): 30–39; Lucian Harris,
“Archibald Swinton: A New Source for Albums of Indian Miniatures in Wil-
liam Beckford’s Collection,” Burlington Magazine 143, no. 1179 (2001): 360–66.
99. The melodramatic account in Jasanoff, Edge of Empire, 88–89, unfor-
tunately further gilds the Chanoinesse’s lily.
100. For a balanced evaluation of the extent and nature of the Chanoinesse’s
interventions, see Regamey, “Un pionnier vaudois des études indiennes.”
101. See Edward Moor, Hindu Infanticide: An Account of the Measures Adopted
for Suppressing the Practice of the Systematic Murder by Their Parents of Female In-
fants (London: J. Johnson, 1811), 216–19. For a wide-ranging account of such
men, see Military Memoir of Lieut.- Col. James Skinner: For Many Years a Dis-
tinguished Offi cer Commanding a Corps of Irregular Cavalry in the Ser vice of the
Honourable East India Company: Interspersed with Notices of Several of the Principal
Personages Who Distinguished Themselves in the Ser vice of the Native Powers in
India, 2 vols., ed. James Baillie Fraser (London: Smith, Elder, 1851).
102. See Ronald Rosner, “John Parker Boyd: The Yankee Mughal,” Asian
Affairs 34, no. 3 (2003): 297–309. Also see the entry for “John Parker Boyd
(1764–1830),” in American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C.
Carnes (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3:311–12.
103. Alexander Walker, An Account of a Voyage to the North West Coast of
America in 1785 and 1786, ed. Robin Fisher and J. M. Bumsted (Seattle: Uni-
versity of Washington Press, 1982).
104. Cf. Colonial Alexander Walker, Reports on the Resources and c. of the Dis-
tricts of Neriad, Matur, Mondeh . . . in Guzerat . . . , with memoirs on the Districts
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 6 9 – 2 7 6 373

of Jhalawar, Kattywar proper; Reports of the Measures adopted . . . by Colonial Alex-

ander Walker and by his successors, for the suppression of female infanticide, com-
piled and edited by R. Hughes Thomas, 2 vols. (Bombay: Bombay Education
Society’s Press, 1856).
105. Moor, Hindu Infanticide, iv. Walker’s Report occupies 42–103 of the
work, with a postscript (also by him, 103–7) discussing human sacrifice among
the Karada Brahmins. On Duncan’s interests in such questions, see Radhika
Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi: Ox-
ford University Press, 1998).
106. Fisher and Bumsted, “Introduction,” in Walker, An Account, 12.
107. Rosane Rocher, Alexander Hamilton (1762–1824): A Chapter in the Early
History of Sanskrit Philology (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1968);
Stein, Thomas Munro; Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making
of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), chapter 5.
108. On Fraser, see Chapter 3.
109. Falconer Madan, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), 4:674–79.
110. National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (henceforth NLS), Walker
of Bowland Papers, Mss. 13817, and 13818, preface, 6–7.
111. Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in
Seventeenth- Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). For
a development of the notion of “civility” in an Indian context, see Kapil Raj,
“Refashioning Civilities, Engineering Trust: William Jones, Indian Interme-
diaries and the Production of Reliable Legal Knowledge in Late 18th- Century
Bengal,” Studies in History, n.s., 17, no. 2 (2001): 175–209.
112. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13813, fl. 110.
113. Ibid., MS. 13886, fl. 517. Compare Peter J. Marshall, “Edmund Burke
and India: The Vicissitudes of a Reputation,” in Politics and Trade in the Indian
Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Das Gupta, ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee
and Lakshmi Subramanian (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 250–69.
114. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13813, fl 110–110v.
115. Peter Burke, “The Philosopher as Traveller: Bernier’s Orient,” in Voy-
ages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel, ed. Jaś Elsner and Joan-
Pau Rubiés (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 124–37.
116. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, Miscellaneous Notices, MS. 13881,
preface, xiv.
117. Ibid., xviii–xix.
118. Ibid., MS. 13886, Miscellaneous Notices, 6:487–88.
119. Walker, An Account, 75.
120. Fisher and Bumsted, introduction to Walker, An Account, 11.
121. For example, NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13816, “Figures
and Drawings.”
122. Dirks, Castes of Mind, 91.
123. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13903.
124. Edward Moor, The Hindu Pantheon (London: J. Johnson, 1810), has been
described as “a work of considerable value, which for more than fifty years re-
mained the only book of authority in English upon its subject”: entry for
374 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 7 6 – 2 8 4

Edward Moor, 1771–1848, in Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Ste-

phen and Sidney Lee (Oxford, 1921–1922), 13:781–82. For a discussion, see
Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters, 178–81.
125. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13903, “An Account of Various
Hindoo Deities,” 1–3.
126. Ibid., MS. 13813, fls. 104, 112, 114. Again, it is interest ing to compare
Walker’s modus operandi with that of the nineteenth- century German mis-
sionary scholar in Kerala, Hermann Gundert; see the materials surveyed in
Albrecht Frenz and Scaria Zacharia, Hermann Gundert: Quellen zu seinem Leben
und Werk (Ulm: Süddeutsche, 1991).
127. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13818, “Arbores et Herbae Mal-
abaricae,” vol. 2, fl. 285. The texts in question are Vahata’s Astāngahrdayasamhita
and the Amarakośa, respectively; they are discussed in Francis Zimmermann,
Le discours des remèdes au pays des épices: Enquête sur la médecine hindoue (Paris:
Payot, 1989), 40–42, 248–49.
128. Unfortunately, the Walker Papers have not been used so far to study
the rule of Tipu Sultan; see, for example, Kate Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan’s Search
for Legitimacy: Islam and Kinship in a Hindu Domain (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1997); and Irfan Habib, ed., Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Mod-
ernization under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan (New Delhi: Tulika, 1999).
129. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13615-A, “Narrative of the Op-
erations of the Army under General Mathews,” fls. 1–25.
130. Ibid., “An Account of Tippoo Sultan, His Family, and the Revenues of
His Country etc,” Fort St. George, December 14, 1789, fls. 27–34v.
131. Ibid., MS. 13794-A, preface, to “Memoir of the life and principal trans-
actions of Tippoo Sultan written by a Mahrattah Sirdar in his ser vice,” iv.
132. This estimate may be found in NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS.
13615-B; for its wider context, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “The Politics of Fiscal
Decline: A Reconsideration of Maratha Tanjavur, 1676–1799,” Indian Economic
and Social History Review 32, no. 2 (1995): 177–217.
133. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13793, Description of Seringa-
patam, etc., written December 1800.
134. Dilip M. Menon, “Houses by the Sea: State-Formation Experiments
in Malabar, 1760–1800,” Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 29 (1999): 1995–
2003. Menon makes extensive use in the essay of the Walker Papers to examine
the political situation in Malabar in the 1790s.
135. NLS, Walker of Bowland Papers, MS. 13886, 494–97.
136. William R. Pinch, “Same Difference in India and Eu rope,” History and
Theory 38, no. 3 (1999): 389–407; the critique is directed at Bernard S. Cohn,
Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996). For a response, see Dirks, Castes of Mind, 311–12.
137. The discussion by Peter J. Marshall, “British Assessments of the Dutch
in Asia in the Age of Raffles,” Itinerario 12, no. 1 (1988): 1–16, is ambiguous on
this point. But see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to be Alien: Travails and
Encounters in the Early Modern World (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press,
2011), 160–72.
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 8 4 – 2 9 1 375

138. Juan R. I. Cole, “Invisible Occidentalism: Eighteenth- Century Indo-

Persian Constructions of the West,” Iranian Studies 25, nos. 3–4 (1992): 3–16;
and Tapan Raychaudhuri, “Eu rope in India’s Xenology: The Nineteenth-
Century Record,” Past and Present 137 (1992): 156–82.

By Way of Conclusion
Epigraph: My translation, from Luís Silveira, ed., Itinerário de Sebastião Man-
rique, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Agência-Geral das Colónias, 1946), 2:267–68. For another
version, see C. Eckford Luard and Henry Hosten, ed. and trans., Travels of Fray
Sebāstien Manrique, 1629–1643, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1927), 2:219.
1. Margaret R. Hunt and Philip J. Stern, The English East India Company
at the Height of Mughal Expansion: A Soldier’s Diary of the 1689 Mughal Siege of
Bombay (Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2016).
2. ‘Abdul Hamid Lahori, Bādshāh Nāma, ed. Kabir-ud-Din Ahmad, ‘Abdul
Rahim, and W. N. Lees, 3 vols. (Calcutta: College Press, 1867), 1:433–40.
3. Lahori, Bādshāh Nāma, 1:534–35. I have used, and emended where
necessary, the translation of the passage by Wheeler Thackston that appears
in Milo Cleveland Beach and Ebba Koch, King of the World: The Padshahnama, an
Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1997), 56.
4. ANTT, Documentos Remetidos da Índia, Livro 30, fls. 281v–82.
5. Luard and Hosten, Travels of Fray Sebastien Manrique, 2:299–333. Man-
rique claimed, incidentally, to be very close to the great Ira nian amīr Khwaja
Abu’l Hasan Asaf Khan (d. 1641), but nevertheless remains highly critical of
the Mughals.
6. See, for example, Alain Desoulières, “La communauté portugaise
d’Agra (1633–1739),” Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português 22 (1986): 145–73.
7. The problem is squarely posed in Kumkum Chatterjee and Clement
Hawes, eds., Europe Observed: Multiple Gazes in Early Modern Encounters (Lew-
isburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2008).
8. For two well-known but highly problematic formulations of the ques-
tion, see Ashis Nandy, “History’s Forgotten Doubles,” History and Theory 34,
no. 2 (1995): 44–66; and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial
Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2000).
9. Rudi Matthee, “Between Aloofness and Fascination: Safavid Views of
the West,” Iranian Studies 31, no. 2 (1998): 219–46.
10. Rudi Matthee, “The Safavids under Western Eyes: Seventeenth-
Century Eu ropean Travelers to Iran,” Journal of Early Modern History 13,
no. 2 (2009): 137–71. But contrast the rich and diverse materials presented in
Willem M. Floor and Edmund Herzig, eds., Iran and the World in the Safavid
Age (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).
11. The citation is taken by Matthee from Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Eth-
nology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 353.
376 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 9 1 – 2 9 7

12. E. G. Ravenstein, ed., A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama,
1497–1499 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1898), 105–8.
13. Georg Schurhammer, “The Malabar Church and Rome before the
coming of the Portuguese: Joseph the Indian’s Testimony,” in Orientalia, ed.
László Szilas (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1963),
351–63.
14. For earlier discussions of these themes, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “On
Indian views of the Portuguese in Asia, 1500–1700,” in From the Tagus to the
Ganges: Explorations in Connected History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005),
17–44; and Subrahmanyam, “Taking Stock of the Franks: South Asian Views
of Eu ropeans and Eu rope, 1500–1800,” Indian Economic and Social History Re-
view 42, no. 1 (2005): 69–100.
15. R.  B. Serjeant, The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast: Hadrami
Chronicles (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 43.
16. Schurhammer, “Three Letters of Mar Jacob,” in Orientalia, 335–37.
17. See the discussion in Ayal Amer, “The Rise of Jihādic Sentiments and
the Writing of History in Sixteenth- Century Kerala,” Indian Economic and So-
cial History Review 53, no. 3 (2016): 297–319. The author argues that Zain-
ud-Din represents a viewpoint that seeks alliances for the Mappilas with
Muslims outside the region, whereas other authors have a more accommodative
view of local non-Muslims, such as the Samudri raja of Calicut.
18. Zain-ud-Din, História dos Portugueses no Malabar por Zinadím: Manu-
scripto árabe do século XVI, trans. and ed. David Lopes (Lisbon: Imprensa Na-
cional, 1898), 44–47.
19. A somewhat dif ferent view may be found in Qazi Muhammad ibn
‘Abdul ‘Aziz, Fat’h al-Mubīn: A Contemporary Account of the Portuguese Invasion
on Malabar in Arabic Verse (Arabic text and English translation), ed. K. S. Sha-
meer, C. Hamza, and A. K. Bhattacharya (Calicut: Other Books, 2015).
20. For a discussion of a few additional sources from the Deccan, see Sumit
Guha, “Conviviality and Cosmopolitanism: Recognition and Representation
of ‘East’ and ‘West’ in Peninsular India, c. 1600–1800,” in Cosmopolitismes en
Asie du Sud: Sources, itinéraires, langues (XVIe–XVIIIe siècle), ed. Corinne Lefèvre,
Ines G. Županov, and Jorge Flores (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 2015), 275–92.
21. Chandra Richard De Silva, “Beyond the Cape: The Portuguese En-
counter with the Peoples of South Asia,” in Implicit Understandings: Observing,
Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in
the Early Modern Era, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1994), 295–322. Some of these materials may be found excerpted in
Chandra R. De Silva, ed., Portuguese Encounters with Sri Lanka and the Maldives:
Translated Texts from the Age of Discoveries (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009). For
an important close reading of another set of texts from the seventeenth century,
see Stephen C. Berkwitz, Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism: Alagiyavanna and the
Portuguese in Sri Lanka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
22. Michael Roberts, “A Tale of Resistance: The Story of the Arrival of the
Portuguese in Sri Lanka,” Ethnos 54, nos. 1–2 (1989): 69–82.
23. This is taken from Sikandar ibn Manjhu, “Mirāt-i Sikandari,” in E. C.
Bayley, The Local Muhammadan Dynasties: Gujarat (London: W. H. Allen, 1886),
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 9 7 – 3 0 3 377

394–95. Bayley points out that in one manuscript, Sikandar notes that “it seems
improbable that the Sultan should have been so foolish,” and rejects the story
as a fabrication. But also compare the exchange of letters between Bahadur, the
Portuguese king, and Nuno da Cunha, in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrah-
manyam, Writing the Mughal World: Studies in Political Culture (New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 2012), 61–87.
24. See Luís Filipe Thomaz, “Os Frangues na Terra de Malaca,” in A
Abertura do Mundo: Estudos de História dos Descobrimentos Europeus, ed. Fran-
cisco Contente Domingues and Luís Filipe Barreto (Lisbon: Editorial Pre-
sença, 1987), 2:209–17.
25. Cited in Ahsan Jan Qaisar, The Indian Response to European Technology
and Culture AD 1498–1707 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 108. For a
general discussion of such passages, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “The Circula-
tion of Musical Instruments in the Indian World, 1500–1800,” Oriente (Lisbon)
2 (2002): 76–83.
26. Waqā’i’-i Asad Beg, Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University,
Abdus Salam Collection, no.  270/40 (4), 90–92. Also see the discussion in
Qaisar, Indian Response, 118–20. Asad Beg’s account is discussed at some length
in Alam and Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World, 133–61, 192–201.
27. Wheeler M. Thackston, trans., The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir,
Emperor of India, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), citations on
133–34 and 206.
28. Ibid., 154.
29. William Foster, ed., The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615–1619
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1926), 380–82.
30. Edward Terry, A Voyage to East India: Wherein Some Things Are Taken
Notice of, in Our Passage Thither, but Many More in Our Abode There, within the
Rich and Most Spacious Empire of the Great Mogol (London: J. Martin and J. All-
estrye, 1655), 367; fi rst published in part as True Relation without All Exception,
of Strange and Admirable Accidents which Lately Happened in the Kingdome of the
Great Magor, or, Magull, Who Is the Greatest Monarch of the East Indies (London:
Thomas Archer, 1622). For an analysis of this account, see Corinne Lefèvre,
“Entre despotisme et vertu: Les représentations de l’Inde dans A Voyage to East-
India d’Edward Terry (1655),” in Rêver d’Orient, connaître l’Orient. Visions de
l’Orient dans l’art et la littérature britanniques, ed. M.-E. Palmier- Chatelain and
I. Gadoin (Lyons: ENS Éditions, 2008), 99–112.
31. Irfan Habib, “Cartography in Mughal India,” Medieval India— A
Miscellany 4 (1980): 122–34.
32. Simon Digby, “Beyond the Ocean: Perceptions of Overseas in Indo-
Persian Sources of the Mughal Period,” Studies in History, n.s., 14, no. 2 (1999):
247–59.
33. M. N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the
Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
34. Digby, “Beyond the Ocean,” 250–52. Digby has written more exten-
sively to suggest that such materials can be located in a larger tradition of
“wonder-tales,” for which see Simon Digby, Wonder-Tales of South Asia (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2006).
378 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 0 3 – 3 0 9

35. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature
1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998), which can be compared to the far
more teleological vision in Jean Céard, La Nature et les Prodiges: L’insolite au XVIe
siècle, 2nd ed. (Geneva: Droz, 1996).
36. See, for example, Emblema vivente, ou, Notícia de hum portentoso monstro
que da província de Anatolia foy mandado ao Sultão dos Turcos. Com a sua figura,
copiada do retrato, que delle mandou fazer o Biglerbey de Amasia, recebida de Alepo,
em huma carta escrita pelo mesmo autor da que se imprimio o anno passado (Lisboa
Occidental: Pedro Ferreira, 1727), perhaps authored by José Freire de Monter-
roio Mascarenhas (1670–1760). For a discussion of this text, see Laura Lunger
Kuppers and Joan B. Landes, introduction to Monstrous Bodies / Political Mon-
strosities in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004),
1–6, 21–22.
37. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Elliot 314 (Sachau-Ethé No.  100),
Rauzat- ul-Tāhirīn, bk. 5, chapter  5, fl s. 621a–26; also see British Library,
London, MS. Or. 168, fls. 698a–700. For a discussion, see Alam and Subrah-
manyam, Writing the Mughal World, 97–115.
38. This repeats an idea about Pegu that may already be found in the
fifteenth-century Russian account of Afanasii Nikitin, for which see Jean-Yves
Le Guillou, Le voyage au- delà des trois mers d’Afanasij Nikitin (1466–1472)
(Québec: Coméditex, 1978), 34. For recent reconsiderations of Nikitin, see
Mary Jane Maxwell, “Afanasii Nikitin: An Orthodox Russian’s Spiritual Voyage
in the ‘Dar al-Islam’, 1468–1475,” Journal of World History 17, no. 3 (2006): 243–
66; and Michèle Toucas-Bouteau, “Le Voyage par-delà trois mers: Errances et
découvertes d’un marchand russe au XVe siècle,” in Les voyageurs au Moyen Âge,
ed. Henri Bresc and Denis Menjot (La Rochelle: 130e Congrès national des
sociétés historiques et scientifiques, 2005), 124–33.
39. For a discussion of these events, see Victor B. Lieberman, Burmese
Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c. 1580–1760 (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984), 38–60.
40. Rauzat- ul-Tāhirīn (Bodleian MS.), fl. 623b.
41. Compare Jorge M. dos Santos Alves and Pierre-Yves Manguin, O ‘Ro-
teiro das Cousas do Achem’ de D. João Ribeiro Gaio: Um olhar português sobre o Norte
de Samatra em finais do século XVI (Lisbon: Comissão nacional para as comem-
orações dos descobrimentos portugueses, 1997).
42. Rauzat- ul-Tāhirīn (Bodleian MS.), fl. 626a.
43. The battle in fact took place on August 4, 1578 (Jumada 30, I 986 AH).
For more about the circumstances of the battle, see Maria Augusta Lima Cruz,
D. Sebastião (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2006), 267–84.
44. S. N. Banerjee and John S. Hoyland, The Commentary of Father Mon-
serrate, S. J., on His Journey to the Court of Akbar (London: Oxford University
Press, 1922), 128–29.
45. For an extended discussion of this battle, see Pierre Berthier, La ba-
taille de l’Oued El- Makhazen dite bataille des Trois Rois (4 août 1578) (Paris:
Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1985); and Lucette
Valensi, Fables de la mémoire: La glorieuse bataille des trois rois (Paris: Seuil,
1992). For a broader perspective, see Weston F. Cook Jr., The Hundred Years
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 1 2 – 3 1 3 379

War for Morocco: Gunpowder and the Military Revolution in the Early Modern
Muslim World (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994).
46. For a small sample, see “Principes, e pessoas de sangue real convertidos
no Oriente pelos religiosos de S. Agustinho,” in Documentação para a história
das missões do padroado português do Oriente: Índia, ed. António da Silva Rego,
12 vols. (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1947–1958), 12: 62–66.
47. BL, OIOC, MSs. Eur. D. 1075, from O.C. 57-I, 7561. “The answer of
the King of England, the Wearer of Hats, concerning what was demanded of
the Ambassador.” For more about the historical context, see Sanjay Subrah-
manyam, “Frank Submissions: The Company and the Mughals between Sir
Thomas Roe and Sir William Norris,” in The Worlds of the East India Company,
ed. H. V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby (Woodbridge: Boydell,
2002), 69–96.
48. Marie-Claude Porcher, Un poème satirique sanskrit: La Viśvagunā-
darśacampū de Venkatādhvarin (Pondicherry: Institut français d’Indologie, 1972),
verses 502–6. For a discussion, see Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka-period
Tamilnadu (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 1–12.
49. Tapan Raychaudhuri, “Eu rope in India’s Xenology: The Nineteenth-
Century Record,” Past and Present 137 (1992): 156–82.
50. For an intelligent summing-up, see Juan R. I. Cole, “Invisible Occi-
dentalism: Eighteenth- Century Indo-Persian Constructions of the West,”
Iranian Studies 25, nos. 3–4 (1992): 3–16; and for two broad surveys of the mate-
rial, see Gulfishan Khan, Indian Muslim Perceptions of the West During the
Eighteenth Century (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998), and Michael H.
Fisher, Counterfl ows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain,
1600–1857 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).
51. Mirza Abu Talib Khan Isfahani, Masīr-i Tālibī: Safar Nāma-yi Mīrzā
Abū Tālib Khān, ed. Husayn Khadivjam (Tehran: Shirkat-i Sahami-i Kitabha-
yi Jibi, 1352 [1974]); also Charles Stewart, trans., The Travels of Mirza Abu Talib
Khan in Asia, Africa and Europe during the Years 1799–1803, 2 vols. (London:
Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1810).
52. For an older English adaptation, see J. E. Alexander, Shigurf namah-i-
velaët: Or Excellent Intelligence Concerning Europe; Being the Travels of Mirza Itesa
Modeen, Translated from the Original Persian Manuscripts into Hindostanee, with
an English Version and Notes (London: John Taylor, 1827). A more recent ver-
sion, Mirza Shaikh I‘tisam-ud-Din, The Wonders of Vilayet: Being the Memoir,
Originally in Persian, of a Visit to France and Britain in 1765, trans. Kaiser Haq
(Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2001), in fact derives from the Bengali translation by
A. B. M. Habibullah, Bilāyetnāmā (Dhaka: Muktadhara, 1981). For the larger
context, also see Kalikinkar Datta, “A Letter of Shāh Alam II to George III, in
1772,” Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 26, no. 4 (1940): 309–22.
53. At last count, at least fi fteen manuscripts exist of Mirza I‘tisam-ud-
Din’s text. These include Nadwat-ul-‘Ulama, Lucknow, Tarikh 146; Cambridge
University Library, Or. 1060; British Library, London, Or. 200, Or. 5848,
Delhi Persian 595, Delhi Persian 685, and IO. 4021 (the last three listed by
C.  A. Storey, Persian Literature, vol. 1, part 2, 1143–44); Asiatic Society of
380 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 1 3 – 3 2 1

Bengal, Kolkata, Ivanow-Curzon, No. 96; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Sachau-

Ethé No. 1854 (Caps. Or. A. 8); Maulana Azad Library, AMU, Aligarh, Habib-
ganj Collection, HG. 35/7; a manuscript in the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public
Library, Patna; two copies at the Andhra Pradesh Government Oriental
Manuscripts Library and Research Institute, Hyderabad (old Asafiya collec-
tion, II, 836, no. 25 and III, 350, no. 94); Government Oriental Manuscripts
Library, Chennai, Persian MS. 778; National Archives of India, New Delhi,
Acc. nos. 402 and 2364.
54. I‘tisam-ud-Din, Wonders of Vilayet, 71–72.
55. Simon Digby, “An Eighteenth- century Narrative of a Journey from
Bengal to England: Munshi Ismā’īl’s New History,” in Urdu and Muslim South
Asia: Studies in Honour of Ralph Russell, ed. Christopher Shackle (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1991), 49–65.
56. But also see, in this context, the interest ing materials by a rather less
lettered Indian presented in Michael H. Fisher, The First Indian Author in En-
glish: Dean Mahomed (1759–1851) in India, Ireland and England (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1996).
57. Khwaja ‘Abdul Karim ibn Khwaja ‘Aqibat Mahmud Kashmiri, Bayān-i
Wāqi’: A Biography of Nādir Shāh Afshār and the Travels of the Author, ed. K. B.
Nasim (Lahore: University of Punjab, 1970), 161–165. For a discussion, also
see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-Persian Travels in the Age
of Discoveries, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),
247–94.
58. For the Malayalam text, see Matthew Ulakamthara, ed., Varttamāna-
ppustakam, athavā Rommayātrā (Kottayam: D. C. Books, 1983). For an English
translation, see Cathanar Thomman Paremmakkal, The Varthamanappust-
hakam: An Account of the History of the Malabar Church between the Years 1773
and 1786 . . . [and] the Journey from Malabar to Rome via Lisbon and Back . . . ,
trans. Placid  J. Podipara (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum,
1971). I am grateful to Kesavan Veluthat who first drew my attention to this
text.
59. Thus, see John-Paul A. Ghobrial, “The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon
and the Uses of Global Microhistory,” Past and Present 222 (2014): 51–93; and
Hanna Dyâb, D’Alep à Paris: Les pérégrinations d’un jeune Syrien au temps de Louis
XIV, ed. and trans. Paule Fahmé-Thiéry, Bernard Heyberger, and Jérôme
Lentin (Paris: Sindbad-Actes Sud, 2015).
60. For an earlier discussion, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Dom Frei Aleixo
de Meneses (1559–1617) et l’échec des tentatives d’indigénisation du christian-
isme en Inde,” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 103 (1998): 21–42.
61. Paremmakkal, The Varthamanappusthakam, 23.
62. Ibid., 76.
63. Ibid., 173.
64. Ibid., 253.
65. Ibid., 259.
66. The Arabic materials are dealt with in Nabil Matar, In the Lands of the
Christians: Arabic Travel-Writing in the Seventeenth Century (New York and
London: Routledge, 2003).
 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 2 1 – 3 2 4 381

67. Osman Agha de Temechvar, Prisonnier des Infi dèles: Un soldat dans
l’Empire des Habsbourg, trans. Frédéric Hitzel (Paris: Actes Sud, 1998).
68. Some thirty such accounts are to be found listed in Faik Reşit Unat,
Osmanlı sefi rleri ve sefaretnameleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi,
1968); they concern embassies to Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, Madrid,
Morocco, Iran, the Mughal court, and Bukhara.
69. For his account, see Julien- Claude Galland, Le Paradis des infi dèles: Un
ambassadeur ottoman en France sous la Régence, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: Fran-
çois Maspero, 1981).
70. Morali Seyyid Ali Efendi and Seyyid Abdürrahim Muhibb Efendi,
Deux Ottomans à Paris sous le Directoire et l’Empire: Relations d’ambassade, trans.
Stéphane Yerasimos (Paris: Actes Sud, 1998).
71. Jean-Louis Bacqué- Grammont, trans., La première histoire de France en
turc ottoman: Chroniques des pādichāhs de France, 1572 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997);
and Thomas D. Goodrich, The Ottoman Turks and the New World: A Study of
‘Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi’ and Sixteenth- Century Ottoman Americana (Wiesbaden,
Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1990).
72. Partha Chatterjee, “Five Hundred Years of Fear and Love,” Economic
and Political Weekly 33, no. 22 (1998): 1330–36, reprinted (with some revisions)
in Chatterjee, Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 29–52.
73. Our reading may thus be contrasted to the classic and still valuable essay
by Sylvia Murr, “Le politique ‘au Mogol’ selon Bernier: Appareil conceptuel,
rhétorique stratégique, philosophie morale,” Purusartha 13 (1990): 239–311 (spe-
cial issue edited by Henri Stern and Jacques Pouchepadass, De la royauté à l’État
dans le monde indien).
74. Stewart, trans., The Travels of Mirza Abu Talib Khan, 2:40–41.
 INDEX
Page numbers in italics refer to figures.
Abdürrahim Muhibb Efendi, Seyyid, 322
‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, 81, 173
Abu’l Fazl, Shaikh (mīr munshī), 30, 75,
141, 249, 302; Fraser manuscripts of,
177, 179–180, 194–195; Lewis
manuscripts of, 175–176
Aceh, 305–306; French presence, 8;
resistance to Portuguese, 306–307;
rulers and political transitions, 306
Achhan, Miyan, 187–188
Agra, 4, 12, 14, 27, 31, 53, 101, 135, 159,
222, 247, 252–254, 257, 264, 286–287,
298
Agüero de Trasmiera, Juan, 62, 156
Akbar, Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad, 10, 36,
173, 177–179, 194–195, 197, 209, 249,
297–299, 305–307, 309, 362, 364
Albuquerque, Afonso de, 62, 64, 73–74, 84
Alexander the Great, 16–17
Almeida, Dom Francisco de, 17, 50, 62,
72
Amadís de Gaula, 65
Añaya, Pedro de, 62
Andrade, Fernão Peres de, 73
Angel, Philip, 35, 129, 136
Ango, Jean, 48
Animals, trade in, 14–15
Anquetil-Duperron, Abraham Hya-
cinthe, 207–210, 231, 247–248,
258–259, 263–265, 268
Antiquities. See Art
Arabic language, 17, 54–62; Romance
languages in Arabic script, 57
Arabic written materials, burning of, 57
383
Arbores et Herbae Malabaricae (Walker), 271
Art: daśāvatāra paintings, 136; Dutch
painters and paintings, 34–36;
Eu ropean artists in India, 43–44;
Eu ropean collectors and artists, 38;
exchange of Eu ropean and Indian
prints and woodcuts, 32; German art
based on early accounts of India, 51;
Indian art in Eu rope, 133–136; Jesuits
and antiquities, 26; looting by East
India Company, 40–41; Naauwkeurige
beschryvinge van Malabar en Choro-
mandel, 35; Scottish antiquarians, 40;
Vatican collection of Mughal portraits,
34. See also Illustrations in printed
works
Asad, Talal, 105
Asia (Dapper), 132
Asia in the Making of Europe (Lach), 107,
212–213
Asiatic Researches, 41
Asiatic Society (Bengal), 41
Atlas (Fernão Vaz Dourado), 20
Atlas Historique (Châtelain), 134–135
Aurangzeb-‘Alamgir, Muhyi-ud-Din, 1,
4, 5, 35–36, 156, 170, 177, 179, 197, 225,
262, 312; history written by Murad, 170;
portrayal in Schellinks’s painting, 36
Aureng-zebe (Dryden), 36
Azevedo, Agostinho de, 22, 94–95, 98–99
Bahadur (Sultan of Gujarat), 34, 46–47,
66, 175, 296–297
Baihaqi, Abu’l Fazl, 75
384 INDEX
Balde, Philip (Baldaeus), 35, 107,
129–130, 132, 136
Baldini, Giovanni Antonio, 134–135, 138
Barani, Ziya-ud-Din, 75
Barbosa, Duarte, 18, 52, 83–84, 89–90,
94–95; kingdoms of Gujarat and Sind,
86–88
Barros, João de, 18, 23, 26, 63–64, 75–81,
226; translators for, 67–73
Bassingh, Adolph, 29–30
Bataillon, Marcel, 57
Bayān-i Wāqi‘ (Kashmiri), 314
Beaulieu, Augustin de, 8–11
Beckford, William Thomas, 267
Bedwell, William, 171
Benfield, Paul, 237, 368n44
Bernand, Carmen, 106
Bernard, Jean-Frédéric, 38–39, 106, 115,
123, 127
Bernier, François, 1–7, 14–16, 37, 129,
324
Bhartrihari, 39
Bhimsen, 32
Bocarro, António, 22
Bodleian Library: portrait of Shahjahan,
201; portrait of Timur, 165; Rāgamāla
(Laud), 33, 135, 163; Walker collection,
268, 270. See also Fraser, James,
manuscript collection; Laud, William
Bolts, William, 246
Bomanji, Naushirvanji, 185
Bombay (Mumbai), 19, 53, 152, 154,
158–162, 166–167, 182–186, 188–189,
207–208, 286, 317
Bombay Mayor’s Court, charges of
extortion against Lowther, 161–163
Bouchet, Jean-Venant, 126–127
Bowrey, Thomas, 34
Boxer, Charles R., 68–69, 79
Boysson, François, 2–3
Braddyll, John, 162–163
Brahmins. See Religion, Hinduism
Breu, Jörg, 51
Breu, Jörg (the Elder), 23
Brito, João de, 39, 125–126
Bryant, Gerald James, 152
Buchanan, George, 151
Burgkmair, Hans, 51, 52
Bussy, Charles de, 227–239, 268, 272–274;
comparison to Noronha, 231; Hanno
of Carthage quoted in letter, 368n40;
la politique à l’asiatique, 233–234; letter
to Léon Moracin, 235–236; return to
India, 230–231
Calcoen (also see Calicut) 27, 49–50
Calcutta (Kolkata), 243–246, 249,
251–254, 256, 258, 266, 314, 324
Calicut, ix, 17, 27, 49, 51, 53, 104, 293,
212
Cambridge, Richard Owen, 226
Camões, Luís Vaz de, 23
Campbell, Archibald, 153
Cantino, Alberto, 49
Carmichael, Charles and George, 154,
158
Caron, François, 4, 7
Cartography and maps: Cantino
planisphere, 49, 213; “Dieppe school”
of cartography, 48–49; early Eu ropean
settlements, 53; Eu ropean influence on
Indian maps, 301; gift of Mercator to
Jahangir, 300–301; João de Castro and
navigation of Indian Ocean, 20; Map
of the settlement of São Tomé de
Meliapor, 218; Portuguese and
navigation, 311; Portuguese Atlas,
20–21
Casta. See Caste system
Castanheda, Fernão Lopes de, 23, 59–60,
63–66, 68, 72, 79, 81, 86
Caste and caste system, 90–92, 347n128;
“A Dissertation on the Religion and
Manners of the Bramins,” 120–122;
cosmology and creation myth described
in Picart’s work, 117–118; description
of social groups in India and Asia,
94–95, 98–99; parallels to Biblical
material in Henry Lord’s work,
117–118; Pariahs, 120–121; Walker’s
views of, 279–280
Castro, Américo, 54
Castro, Dom João de, 20, 23, 100
Cātikal Tottam, 99
Cecil, Robert, 11
Çelebi, Evliya, 322
Çelebi Mehmed Efendi, Yirmisekiz, 322
Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les
peuples du monde (Bernard, Picart),
38–39, 106; “A Discovery of the Sect
of the Banians, 116; “A Dissertation
on the Religion and Manners of the
 INDEX
Bramins,” 118; comparison to
Pansebeia, 138; illustrations in, 131–132,
135, 137; quotations from authoritative
travelers and missionaries, 129–130;
section on India, 108–110, 115–116;
sources, cited and plagiarized, 130;
“Supplement to the Preceding
Dissertations,” 127–130
Charles I (king of England), 32–33, 171,
173
Charpentier, Jarl, 129, 136
Châtelain, Henri, 134
Chatterjee, Partha, 322
Chevalier, Jean-Baptiste, 246–247
Chézy, Antoine-Léonard de, 42
China, Ming Dynasty, 73
China illustrata (Kircher), 130
Christian ity, 18; claim of Indian religion
as lost Christians, 126–127; contrast to
eastern religions, 23; differences with
English and Dutch in India, 28; New
Christian ( Jewish converts), 19–20, 26;
Rópica Pnefma (Barros) banned by
Inquisition, 68–69; Syrian and
Catholic Church relations, Synod of
Diamper, 315–317; view of Mughals
toward Catholics and Reformed
Church, 28–29
Chronicles: Castilian account by
Figueroa, 62; Indian travels to
England, 313–314; Pādshāh Nāma
(Lahori), 287; Sistema Marcial Asiático
(Noronha), 223; Timurid chronicle, 31;
Varttamānappustakam of Tommakat-
tanar, 315–320. See also Portugal,
chronicles and chroniclers
Cisneros, Francisco Jiménez de (Car-
dinal), 57
Cleland, John, 160–163, 166–167;
altercation with Lowther, 161–163,
166; “Secretary for the Portugeze
Affairs,” 166
Cleland, William, 160–161
Cleynaerts, Nicolas, 57
Clive, Robert, 40, 228, 237–238, 244–245,
253
Cochin (Kochi), 5, 16, 49–51, 53, 81, 84,
100
Cockell, William, 168, 190, 202, 206
Codex Casanatense, 24, 91–92
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 4
385
Cole, Humphrey, 168, 190, 200
Colección de crónicas árabes de la Reconquista
(Miranda), 54
Colóquios dos simples e drogas e coisas
medicinais da Índia (Orta), 19–20
Columbus, Christopher, 58
Commerce and trade: France and
Mughal empire, 4–9; Portugal and
Malay peninsula, 83–84, 100
Compagnie royale des Indes Orientales,
3–4, 6
Company of Scotland Trading, 152
Conquista de las Indias de Persia e Arabia
que hizo la armada del rey don Manuel de
Portugal (Figueroa, Agüero) , 62
Coote, Eyre, 253, 256, 258, 370n77
Correia, Gaspar, 23, 63, 64–68, 72,
79–80, 86
Corsairs or pirates. See Ango, Jean;
Hugo, Hubert
Corsali, Andrea, 51
Corte-Real, Jerónimo, 24
Costa, Cristóvão da, 132
Couto, Diogo do, 22–23, 63, 68, 80, 86,
94, 130, 226
Coutre brothers ( Jacques and Joseph), 27
Cowan, Robert, 162, 182
Cron, Ferdinand, 100
Crónica da Guiné (Zurara), 60
Crónica da tomada de Ceuta (Zurara), 61
Crónica d’El Rei Dom João I (Lopes), 59
Crónica do Conde Dom Duarte de Meneses
(Zurara), 60
Crónica do emperador Clarimundo donde os
Reys de Portugal descendem (Barros), 67
Daniell, Thomas and William, 43
Danishmand Khan. See Yazdi, Mulla
Muhammad Shafi‘
Dapper, Olfert, 132
Das, Kesu, 32
Das Gupta, Ashin, 154, 158–159, 182,
359n42
Década Quarta, 80
Décadas da Ásia (Barros), 18, 67, 69–71,
74, 79, 80
Década Segunda, 74, 77. See also Décadas da
Ásia (Barros)
Deccan, 13, 19–21, 72, 74–77, 80, 82, 156;
chronicles of, 172, 179, 194, 199, 219;
Sultanates, 37, 53
386 INDEX
Decker, Coenrat, 136
Decker, Matthew, 191–192
De Imperio Magni Mogolis (Laet), 31
De l’idolâtrie: Une archéologie des sciences
religieuses (Bernand, Gruzinski), 106
Delhi, xi, 3, 27, 42, 53, 74–77, 149, 169,
190, 193, 200, 202–206, 225, 229, 251,
253–255
Dellon, Charles, 124–125, 130
De rebus Emmanuelis regis Lusitaniae
(Osório), 63
Desceliers, Pierre, 49
De variolis et morbillis liber (Mead), 168
De Voulton, Joseph, 168, 191
Dias, Estêvão (Estiene Dies), 46–47, 49
Dieu, Louis de, 31
Digby, Simon, 301–303, 314
Diplomacy: Persian and Arabic language
and, 72–73; translators of Persian for
Portuguese, 73
Dirks, Nicholas, 90, 91, 275
Discourse on the Plague, A (Mead), 168
Display of Two Forraigne Sects in the East
Indies, A (Lord), 116; illustrations in,
131
Dissertation on the Manners and the
Religion of the Bramins (Rogerius), 122;
illustrations in, 131–132
Don Claribalte (Oviedo), 67
Dourado, Fernão Vaz, 20
Drummond, John, 153–154, 162
“Drummond network,” 154
Dryden, John, 36
Dundas, Henry, 40, 152, 153
Dupleix, Joseph-François, 191, 216, 220,
228, 235; view of Indian character,
230–232
Dutch East India Company (VOC), 1,
4–8, 16, 21, 26–32, 34–35, 39, 107,
118–121, 129–131, 134, 157–159, 182,
188, 191–193, 301, 312, 316, 324;
schenkagie goederen to India, 32; secret
dealings between Wake and Mossel,
182
East India Company (English), 7, 10, 147,
159; Arabic and Persian manuscripts
requested, 32–33; collections of art,
manuscripts, and paintings, 38,
171–172; colonial civility after
conquest, 284; factory reform and
moral order, 157; fraud at Surat factory,
162–163; Laud Rāgamāla, 33; Mylapore,
attack on, 216; politics and intrigues,
245–246; power of, 40–41; Rustom and
Manakji family, brokers, 182–183;
Scottish role in, 40, 151–153; transition
to colonial power, 211, 270
Elstrack, Renold, 32
England: beginnings of an Indo-Persian
collection, 32; Government of India
Act, 40. See also East India Company
(English)
Erskine, Charles, 145, 146
Erskine, William, 40
Ethnography: Malay geograph ical
perspective, 83–84. See also Barbosa,
Duarte; Codex Casanatense; Pires, Tomé
Eu rope, trade with India, 17
Eu ropean presence in extra-European
world, 290
Eu ropeans, common identity, 282–284
Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan, 104
Evenemens particuliers (Bernier), 3
Farrukhsiyar, 198–199, 202
Fenício, Jacobo (Giacomo), 129, 136
Figueroa, Martín Fernández de, 62, 66
Filipe, António, 57
Firdausi, 75, 79
Flanders and Flemish, early publications’
influence, 27, 49, 51, 62
France: commerce with Mughal empire,
4–9, 237; comparison to other Eu ropean
nations, 5–6, 8; distancing from Hugo,
French corsair, 6–7; role of Englishman
in trade with Mughal empire, 9;
stolen plans for defense of Fort
William, 246
Frangistan, 5, 6
Fraser, James, 362n78; called a discon-
tented Jacobite, 148–149; collector of
textual materials in India, 166, 169,
208–209; dispute involving James
Grant, 147–149; dispute involving
Rustamji and Parekh families, 183–185;
education in Persian and Sanskrit
language and religion, 169, 176,
180–181; to Eu rope then back to India,
181; friendship with Cleland, 163;
mussel beds dispute, 145; not part of
fraud at Surat factory, 163; return to
 INDEX
Eu rope and back to India, 166–167;
time in Surat and other Indian locales,
154, 156; view of India by “unruly
orientalist,” 150–151
Fraser, James in Khambayat, 151, 154,
156, 160; study with Shaikh Mu-
hammad Murad, 169–170
Fraser, James in Surat, 149, 151, 154, 156,
157–158, 160; return to India, 181–182;
suspended from post, 185–189
Fraser, James, manuscript collection, 177,
208–209; Bodleian collection on
ethics, politics, novels, 180–181;
Bodleian collection on history,
177–179; poetry collection, 179–180;
rubrics of, 176–177
Fraser, James Baillie, 149
Fraser, Mary Satchwell, 149, 166, 181
Fraser, Simon, Lord Lovat, 144–145
Fraser, William, 149
French East India Company, 110, 191,
217, 228–230, 238, 246–247
Fryer, John, 130
Furber, Holden, 162–163
Gama, Gaspar da, 291
Gama, Vasco da, 17, 27, 58; Indians
return to Portugal, 291; voyage to
India described, 49
Gassendi, Pierre, 2, 15, 129
Geertz, Clifford, 104–105
Geleynssen de Jongh, Wollebrant, 28;
understanding of Persian and
Hindustani, 159
Gendrón, Pedro Chalmeta, 54–55
Gentil, Jean-Baptiste, 247–249, 265
Gentze, Georg (Gentius), 31, 174
Georg, Johann, 174
Germany and German traders: early
publications’ influence, 24, 31, 49, 62;
Sprenger’s account of voyage to India,
50–51; Welsers, early presence in
India, 50–51
Goa, 13, 16, 19–20, 24, 26, 28, 53, 62, 74,
77, 80–81, 84, 92, 100, 124, 132, 155,
211, 216, 218–220, 222–223, 227, 247,
289, 297, 300, 307–309, 317–321
Góis, Damião de, 63
Golius, Jacob, 31, 32
Grant, Alexander, 147
Grant, James, 145–149
387
Greaves, John, 171
Grierson, George, 43
Gruzinski, Serge, 106
Grynaeus, Simon, 52
Guerand, Augustin (also see Herryard),
11
Guha, Sumit, 91
Gujarati, Shaikh Muhammad Chishti,
170
Haidar ‘Ali Khan, 217, 219–222, 227
Hamilton, Alexander, 152, 270
Hastings, Warren, 42, 108, 245, 248–249,
251, 253, 256–257
Herryard, Augustin, 11–16, 332n21,
334n40
Hindu Infanticide (Moor), 269
Hindu Pantheon, The (Moor), 39, 276,
373n124
Hindu religion. See Religion, Hinduism
Hindushah Muhammad Qasim
(Firishta), 38, 82, 173, 177, 249,
293–294
Histoire de la dernière révolution des Estats
du Grand Mogol (Bernier), 3
Histoire de la littérature hindoue e
hindoustanie (Tassy), 43
Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane (Lévi-
Provençal), 54
Historia Arabum (Rada), 55
História do descobrimento e conquista da
Índia pelos Portugueses (Castanheda),
63–64
Historia religionis veterum Persarum
(Hyde), 33
Historiography: Arabic in the Iberian
peninsula, 54, 56–57; Eu ropean view
of India, 212–214; French view of
Bussy and Dupleix, 228, 230; khabar
and tārīkh, 60–61, 69, 71, 77, 79–83;
Mughal study of Eu ropeans, 81;
Persian, 72, 75; Portuguese, 63–64;
Sultanate of Delhi in Persian, 75
History of Nadir Shah (Fraser), 164, 168,
189; assassination of Nadir Shah, 207;
comparison to Rehatsek translation,
196; conquest of Delhi, 202–206;
differences from Genuine History ,
191–193, 197; earlier translations of
works on Nadir Shah, 190–192
Holwell, John Zephaniah, 99
388 INDEX
“Honaremand.” See Herryard, Augustin
Horne, John, 183
Huet, Pierre-Daniel, 126–127
Hughli, 192–193, 286–289
Hugo, Hubert, 6–7
Hunt, Thomas, 168, 208–209
Husaini, Kamgar, 170, 177
Husaini, Mir Muhammad Husain ibn
‘Abdul, 314
Hyde, Thomas, 33, 208
Hyderabad, 37–38, 198–199, 225, 229
Iberian peninsula: Arabic historiography,
54–56, 60–61; convivencia between
Muslims, Christians, and Jews, 54;
expulsion of Jews and Muslims, 58;
fi rst chronicle of Portuguese in Asia,
62; hispanidad or “Spanishness,” 54;
Iberian chivalric fiction, 65–67;
rediscovery of tārīkh in India, 58
Ibn Bassam al-Shantarini, Ali, 56, 57
Ibn Khaldun, 56
Ibn Sahib al-Salah, Abd, 56, 57
I‘jāz-i-Arsalānī (Polier), 239, 253, 266
Illustrations in printed works, 35, 51,
131–133, 275; Codex Casanatense, 24;
Eu ropean portrayals of widow
burning, 23; in The Hindu Pantheon
(Moor), 276; in Julião’s work, 226; in
Picart’s work, 128, 131–133, 136; in
Walker’s “An Account of various
Hindoo Deities,” 276–277, 278
India, kingdoms of: Awadh, Bengal, and
Hyderabad regional dynasties, 37;
Mughal conquerors, 37–38; Tamil
country, 99; Vijayanagara, 37, 72, 74,
88–90, 224
Indian Ocean and land surrounding:
Codex Casanatense, 24; knowledge and
information of, 48–49
Indian views of Eu rope and Eu ropeans,
291, 311–315, 324; comparison to
Ottoman written views, 321–322;
Eu rope ans without Eu rope, 294;
Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī (Firishta),
293–294; Joseph of Cranganore,
291–292; no written descriptions of,
312; Syrian Christian authors, 292;
Tuhfat al-Mujāhidīn fī ba‘z Ahwāl
al-Burtukāliyyīn (Zain-ud-Din), 293;
untrustworthy “Franks,” but purveyors
of strange and wonderful, 297–298,
300
Isfahani, Mirza Abu Talib Khan, 43, 313,
324
Islam: Portuguese expansion and, 69–70;
Portuguese view of “law of Mu-
hammad,” 21; Shi‘i and Sunni, 21, 52,
53, 71. See also Religion, eastern
Isma‘il, Munshi, 314
Italy and Italians: Arabic and “Oriental”
languages in, 57–58; early Italian
publications’ influence, 49, 51–53;
Navigationi et Viaggi (Ramusio), 18, 52
Itinerario (Varthema), 51
I‘tisam-ud-Din, Mirza Shaikh, 313, 316,
324, 379, 380
Ja‘far Khan ‘Umdat al-Mulk, 5
Jagannathdas Laldas Parekh, 182–185
Jahangir, Nur-ud-Din Muhammad, 9,
11–13, 15, 197–198; Jesuit text about,
101–102; memoirs and views of
Eu ropeans, 299–301; painting of,
32, 36
Jesuits: abridged versions of doctrines of
“gentiles,” 26; acting for Portuguese
traders, 28; in Agra, 12; caste system
and, 94; Dāstān-i Ahwāl-i Hawāriyān,
lives of saints, 173; disarray in Eu rope,
265; presence in India, 263–264; Tamil,
understanding of, 30; treatise on
Mughal court, 101–102. See also
Christian ity
Jewels, artefacts or animals: Eu ropean
collectors of, 31–32; trade in, 14–15, 26;
Wunderkammers, or antiquarian
collections, 32
Jews and Judaism: anti-Jewish sentiment
in Décadas da Ásia , 69; Brahmins of
Jewish descent according to Noronha,
224; expulsion of Jews and Muslims,
58, 66; parallel between the Jews and
the Indians, 112–115; residents of
Cranganor, 50; translators of Persian
for Portuguese, 18, 73. See also
Christian ity
Johnson, Richard, 38, 209
Jones, William, 41, 190, 210, 231, 253,
258–264, 266, 313
Julião, Carlos, 226
Juzjani, Minhaj al-Siraj, 75
 INDEX
Kariyattil, Joseph, 315–317, 320–321
Kashmiri, ‘Abdul Karim, 190, 314
Kaywan, Azar, 140–141
Kazim, Muhammad, 170, 177, 190
Kerridge, Thomas, 116–117
Khabar and tārīkh. See Historiography
Khambayat. See Fraser, James in
Khambayat
Khan, Diyanat, 5
Khan, Namdar, 5
Khan, Rustam, 5
Khan, Safdar Muhammad, 156, 181,
187–188
Khan, Tegh Beg, 156, 163, 181, 184, 187
Khattri, Ramchand, 260
Khurshedji, Mancherji, 185
Kidd, William, 152
Kingdom of Gujarat (“Guzerate”). See
Barbosa, Duarte
Kircher, Athanasius, 129–130, 132, 136
Koedijk, Isaak Jansz, 34
Kroniek (Pelsaert), 31
Lach, Donald, 107, 212–213
La Créquinière, 39, 109–116; on war in
India, 115
Laet, Johannes de, 31–32
Lahori, ‘Abdul Hamid, 170, 177, 287
La Marie de Bon Secours (Le Grant
Engloys), 46
Lambton, John, 183
Langlès, Louis-Mathieu, 44
Language and culture: Codex Casanatense,
watercolors of people of coastal India,
24, 26; illustration and lack of in early
texts, 23–24; Indian culture, ancient or
modern, 42–43; Portuguese as lingua
franca, 157; Portuguese explorers,
traders and historians, 17–19;
Portuguese facing linguistic com-
plexity of Asia, 72–73; sāstra and
purānas, 117. See also Arabic language;
Latin; Persian language; Sanskrit;
Translators
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 106
Latin, 55, 63; De rebus Emmanuelis regis
Lusitaniae (Osório), 63; Rosarium
politicum, 174; study by Mughals, 81;
translations into, 20, 31, 51
Laud, William, 32, 172; Persian
manuscript collection, 33, 135, 170–174
389
Le Gouz de la Boullaye, François, 37,
130–131, 132, 139
Lendas da Índia (Correia), 64–65
Lettera allo ill. Laurentio de’ Medici ex
India (Corsali), 51
Lettera allo illustrissimo Iuliano de Medici
venuta dell’India (Corsali), 51
Levant Company, 171
Lévi-Provençal, Évariste, 54
Lewis, George, 34; collection of Persian
manuscripts, 175–177
Lhomaca, Dominique, 238
Libro del caballero Zifar, 65
Lord, Henry, 39, 116–118, 123, 125, 131
Lowther , Henry, 154, 157–158, 161–163,
166, 182–183
Lusíadas (Camões), 23
Ma’asir- i Jahāngīrī (Husaini), 170
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 42
Mackenzie, Colin, 40, 41, 149–150,
270–272, 275
Macrae, James, 154
Madras, 16, 34, 37, 39, 119–120, 136,
153–154, 159, 175–176, 186, 216–217,
243, 312, 317, 319
Ma‘lumāt- ul- āfāq (Khan), 302
Manuzzi, Nicolò, 37, 125–126, 136
Marshall, Peter J., 263, 270
Martin, François, 110
Marwan Ibn al-Hakam, 71
Marx, Karl, xii, 42
Master, Streynsham, 157
Mathews, Richard, 279–280
Maule, John, 146, 148
Maupas, Charles Cauchon de, 11
McGilvary, George, 153–154
Mead, Richard, 168
Melo, D. João José de, 218
Melo, Martim de, 319
Mémoire . . . pour l’établissement du
commerce dans les Indes, 4, 7
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Cleland),
160
Methwold, William, 33, 171
Meurs, Jacob van, 132
Midnall, John (Midenhall), 10, 11, 16
Military battles: siege of English
settlement of Bombay, 286–287; siege
of Portuguese settlement of Hughli,
286–289
390 INDEX
Mill, James, 42
Miranda, Ambrosio Huici, 54
Mir Khwand, 31, 78–79, 170, 173, 175,
177, 193
Mirza Zu’lfiqar Azar Sasani, 140–143
Mitter, Partha, 107–108, 133, 213
Montalboddo, Fracanzio da, 52
Monuments anciens et modernes de
l’Hindoustan (Langlès), 44
Moor, Edward, 39, 276, 373n124
Moracin, Léon, 234–237
Mossel, Jacob, 182
Muda, Iskandar, 8
Mughal dynasty. See Religion, Mughal
and dynasty
Muhammad Shah, 156
Müller, Max, 42
Munro, Thomas, 41
Murad, Shaikh Muhammad, 169–170,
176, 178
Muslim religion: in Spain, 54–56, 58,
69, 71. See also Religion, Mughal and
dynasty
Mustafa, Haji. See Lhomaca, Dominique
Mythologie des Indous (Polier), 242, 268
Nadir Shah, 37, 168–170, 189
Nagar, Lacchmidas, 185
Nahrawali, Qutb al-Din Muhammad, 81
National Library of Scotland, Walker
collection, 268, 270
Nauroji, Manakji, 185
Navigationi et Viaggi (Ramusio), 18, 52
the Netherlands, Persian, study of,
30–31
New Account of the East Indies, A
(Hamilton), 152
Newman, Richard, 10
Noronha, António José de, 216–217,
284; complaints about British
historians, 226–227; ecclesiastic
turned man- of- action, 218–219;
named bishop of Halicarnassus, 217,
366n8; Portuguese governor of
Mylapore, 216; views of Brahmins
and Islam, 224–226
Northwestern Eu rope, 17
Notícia (de Voulton), 191
Novus orbis regionum ac insularum
veteribus incognitarum (Grynaeus), 52
Nuer Religion (Evans-Pritchard), 104
Ogborn, Miles, 157
Oriental Scenery (Daniell), 43
Orme, Robert, 221, 226
Orta, Garcia da, 19–20, 132; language
fluency, 19
Osório, Jerónimo, 63
Ottoman art, 133
Ottoman empire, 10, 21, 52, 81, 156, 173,
303
Ottoman writers, 321–322
Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández de, 67
Oxford University: Arabic language at,
171. See also Bodleian Library
Padmanabha, 39, 119, 120
Paesi novamente retrovati (Montalboddo),
52
Paintings. See art
Pansebeia: or, A view of all religions in the
world (Ross), 138
Parekh, Bhimji, 182
Parmentier, Jean and Raoul, 48
Parsi. See Zoroastrianism
Paspor, Matthias, 171
Pecquet, Jean, 2
Pegu, 303–305
Peiresc, Nicolas-Fabri de, 15
Pelsaert, Francisco, 31, 37, 301
Peregrinação (Pinto), 62–63
Pereira, Diogo, 84
Persian language, 9, 10, 72, 172; ‘Abdul
Masih, 13; diminishment of impor-
tance, 42; “Honaremand,” 13; needed
for trade, 17; translations of “Hindu”
materials, 81–82
Persian and Arabic written materials, 26;
Ajā’ib al- makhlūqāt, 173; al- Barq
al-Yamānī fī al- Fath al-‘Usmānī
(Nahrawali), 81; al-Mann bi-al-Imāma
(Ibn Sahib al-Salah), 56; al-Zakhīra fi
mahāsin ahl al-Jazīra (Ibn Bassam
al- Shantarini), 56; Atwār dar hall- i
asrār (Qutbjahani), 181; Babur’s
memoirs (‘Abdur Rahim Khan-i
Khanan), 170; Chronicas dos Reys delle,
que nos foram interpretadas de Persico, 74;
chronicles of the Bahmani Sultanate of
the Deccan, 76–77; Dāstān-i Ahwāl-i
Hawāriyān, 173; Dīwān-i Anwarī, 33,
172; Dīwān-i Mukhtarī, 173; Gulistān
and Bustān of Shaikh Sa‘di Shirazi, 31,
 INDEX
33, 173–174; Habīb al- Siyār (Kh-
wandmir), 175; histories of India, 38;
looting by East India Company, 40–41;
Majma‘ al- bahrain (Dara Shikoh),
181; manuscript collections, 32–34,
170–171, 173; Mughal dynastic history,
31; Mu’nis al-arwāh ( Jahanara), 180;
Pādshāh nāma (Lahori), 41, 170; Rauzat
al-Tāhirīn (Sabzwari), 81; Samrat
al-Falāsifa (Sattar), 81; Shāhnāma
(Firdausi), 75, 79; study of, 18, 30–31;
Tabaqāt-i Nāsirī ( Juzjani), 75; Tārīkh-i
‘Alamgīrī (Kazim), 170; Tārīkh-i
Mas‘ūdī (Baihaqi), 75; Tārīkh-i Rauzat
al- Safa’ fi Sirāt al-Anbiya’ wa’l-Mulūk
wa’l-Khulafa’ (Mir Khwand), 78–79,
170, 175, 177; Tārīkh-i Yamīnī (‘Utbi),
75; translations of the Gospel, 21, 30,
81; Tuhfat al- mujāhidīn fī ba‘z ahwāl
al-Burtukāliyyīn (Zain al-Din), 80–81.
See also Fraser, James, manuscript
collection
Peyrère, Isaac de la, 83
Phélypeaux, Louis, 110
Picart, Bernard, 38–39, 106–110, 123,
127, 131; daśāvatāra paintings, 136–138;
Indian art in Eu rope, 134–136
Pierozzi, Antonio, 81
Pinheiro, Manuel, 30
Pinto, Fernão Mendes, 62–63
Pires, Tomé, 52, 83, 86
Pitt, Thomas, 175
Pococke, Edward, 33, 171
Polier, Antoine-Louis-Henri, 38, 110,
239–242, 249–251; biographical notice,
242–246, 254–255; biography, 266–268;
and East India Company, 246; military
role, 251–253; Orientalist in last years
in India, 259–261; Sanskrit manu-
scripts to British Museum, 209,
261–263, 265; transition to direct
Mughal ser vice, 253–255
Polier, Jean-Antoine-Noé, 241–242
Polier, Marie-Élisabeth (Chanoinesse),
242–243, 267, 268
Polier, Paul-Philippe, 241
Politics, Indian: 1759 Castle Revolution,
156; Tegh Beg Khan bid for Surat
Castle, 156
Polo, Marco, 17
Pope, Alexander, 161, 163, 168, 210
391
Portugal, battles and military episodes:
Battle of Ourique, 56; capture of
Goa, 62, 74; Diu, 24, 25; Hurmuz,
62; kingdom of Maghrib, 308–309;
Mamluk fleet at Diu, 62
Portugal, chronicles and chroniclers, 54,
62–68; Décadas da Ásia, 69–70, 71,
73–75; Fernão Lopes, chief chronicle
under Dom Duarte, 59–60. See also
Barros, João de; Couto, Diogo do
Portugal, monarchy of: chronicles of
Portugese role in global history, 63–64;
Dom Afonso Henriques, 71; Dom
Afonso III, 56; Dom Duarte, 59; Dom
Manuel and Dom João III, 49, 71, 84;
Dom Sebastião, 308–309
Portugal, viceroys of: Count of Linhares,
13; Dom Francisco de Almeida, 17, 50,
62, 72
Portugal and Portuguese: Carreira da
Índia (Cape Route), 44, 62; casados
moradores or residents of India, 84–86,
100; differences with English and
Dutch in India, 27–28; early presence
in Cochin and Cranganor, 50; Estado
da Índia, 19, 45, 52, 100, 220; fi rst
voyages into Indian Ocean and East
Asia, 17–18; historiography at home
and in Indian Ocean, 63; letter of
captive French sailors from Gujarat,
45–48, 49; multinational participation,
27; Papal Bulls and Treaty of
Tordesillas, 46; Portuguese Recon-
quista, 56, 71; Primor e Honra da Vida
Soldadesca no Estado da Índia, 21; trade
in Indian spices in Eu rope, 27. See also
Noronha, António José de
Pulicat, 5, 39, 53, 118–120, 122
Qaisar, Ahsan Jan, 301
Qur’an, 21; Persian translation owned by
Lewis, 34, 175
Rada, Rodrigo Ximénez de, 55
Rāgamāla (Laud), 33, 135, 172
“Rahim”, Khan-i Khanan, ‘Abdur
Rahim, 170, 172
Ramsden, James, 162
Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, 18, 51–53,
83
Rauzat- ul-Tāhirīn (Sabzwari), 303–307
392 INDEX
Ravelingen, Frans van, 30
Rehatsek, Edward, 195–196
Religion, anthropology of, 106
Religion, defi nition of, 104–105
Religion, eastern: attack on returning
hājīs from Mecca, 27, 49; cosmology
and creation myth, 117; gentiles,
18th century view of Indian, 38–39,
138–139; gentiles, abridged versions of
doctrines of, 26; gentiles, Dutch view
of Moors and, 29–30; gentiles,
Eu ropean understanding of, 103–104;
gentiles, pilgrimage of, 22; gentiles,
“sacred books” of, 22; gentiles: Hindus,
Buddhists, and Jains, 22–23, 53, 104;
horrific images of gods by Jörg Breu,
51; images of Indian gods, 107–108;
monotheistic or polytheistic, 39, 131;
parallel between the Jews and the
Indians, 109, 112–115, 116; parallels to
Christian doctrine, 126; peaceful
coexistence of religions, 28; Portu-
guese exploration of Islam, “law of
Muhammad,” 21; Qur’an, Eu ropean
study, 21; Shaster, book of Religious
laws, 117. See also Christian ity; Jesuits;
Jews and Judaism
Religion, Hinduism, 40, 106, 107,
143, 264; “A Dissertation on the
Religion and Manners of the
Bramins,” 118–122; Brahmins in,
87–89, 94–95, 96, 120–121; Parama-
Bruma, monotheism and, 125–126,
131; “School of Sects (or Theologies)”
(Sasani), 139–142; Walker’s views of,
276. See also Cérémonies et coutumes
religieuses de tous les peuples du monde
(Bernard, Picart)
Religion, idolatry, 106, 108, 110, 123;
“Historical Dissertation,” 124–125,
127
Religion, Mughal and dynasty, 37; Arabic
language in, 19; combat with Portu-
guese, 62; fanatical compared to
Hindus, 282–283; in India, 60, 80, 82,
86–87; La Créquinière’s writing on,
112–113; Muslims of Malabar
treatment by Portuguese, 293–295;
Muslims treatment by Portuguese,
300; opinion of Roman Catholic and
Reformed Churches, 28; pre-Adamite
argument and narrative of Noah, 83;
seeds of Eu ropean secular denuncia-
tion, 101–102; Sultanate of Delhi, 19;
view of world outside India, 302–305;
in Western India, 52
Rembrandt, 35
Remonstrantie (Pelsaert), 31
Resources and treasures: precious stones,
9, 11, 15, 17. See also Spices, medicines,
and plants
Robinson, John, 162
Roe, Thomas, 10, 32, 151, 170, 300–301
Rogerius, Abraham, 39, 40, 99, 324;
“An Historical Dissertation on the
Gods of the East- Indians,” 123–124;
complex view of India, 120–123;
Padmanabha, in for mant on castes,
118–120, 123
Rópica Pnefma (Barros), 68–69
Rosarium politicum. See Persian and
Arabic written materials
Rose, Hugh, 149
Ross, Alexander, 138
Roth, Heinrich, 129, 136
Roy, Raja Rammohan, 40
Rubiés, Joan-Pau, 86, 90, 104
Rumi, Khudawand Khan, 158
Rustamji Manakji family, 183
Ryer, André du, 31, 173–174
Sabzwari, Tahir Muhammad, 81, 179,
303–313; mission to Goa, learning
about Portuguese, 307–308
Said, Edward, xi, xii, 213, 258, 290, 329,
346
Saleh, Mulla, 5
Sampaio, Lopo Vaz de, 45
Sánchez-Albornoz, Claudio, 54
Sankaracharya, 120
Sanskrit: Images of Eu ropeans in,
312–313; Jesuits and antiquities, 30;
Latin, compared to, 23, 26; study of
ancient Indian culture, 42
Sarbuland Khan, Mubariz ul-Mulk,
202–206
Sati, or forcibly cremated widow, 23, 35,
88, 92, 93, 134, 136, 276
Scaliger, Joseph, 30
Schellinks, Willem, 35–36
Schreuder, Jan, 159
Schuylenburgh, Hendrik van, 35
 INDEX
Scotland: Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeat,
150; chronology of Scottish interest in
India, 151–152; linen industry, 147;
mixed race with Indian wives, 150
Seyyid Ali Efendi, Morali, 322
Shahjahan, Shihab-ud-Din Muhammad,
13–14, 33, 35, 36, 41, 133, 173, 197, 198,
286, 287, 289, 313, 362
Sherley, Robert, 12, 14, 16
Shivshankar Bholanath Vasantrai, Lala,
161
Sichterman, Jan Albert, 191
Sidi Abi al-‘Abbas al-Sabti, 61
Silva, Pedro da, 262
Sistema Marcial Asiático (Noronha),
221–224, 227–228
Smalbroke, Samuel, 149
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 139
Sousa, Martim Afonso de, 19
Spices, medicines, and plants, 50;
Colóquios dos simples e drogas e coisas
medicinais da Índia (Orta), 19–20
Sprenger, Balthasar, 50–51
Steele, Richard, 10–11, 16
Stewart, Charles, Tipu Sultan’s library
cata logue, 179
Storia del Mogol (Manuzzi), 125
Strachan, George, 151, 170
Sucesso do Segundo Cerco de Diu (Corte-
Real), 24, 25
Suite des Mémoires du Sieur Bernier
(Bernier), 3
Suma Oriental (Pires), 83–84
Summa Historialis or Chronicon partibus
tribus distincta ab initio mundi ad 1360
(Pierozzi), 81
Surat, 1–4, 14, 28, 33, 34, 37, 39, 53, 87,
116, 135, 149, 151, 154–163, 166–167,
169, 171, 176, 180–188, 195, 200,
207–209, 247, 270, 300, 311. Also see
Fraser, James in Surat
Surat, study and description of, 158–160
Survey of India, 41
Swinton, Archibald, 313
Tārīkh. See Historiography
Tassy, Garcin de, 42
Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, 37, 132, 133
Teixeira, Pedro, 26, 78–79
Thomson, Robert, 149
Tipu Sultan, 179, 231, 272, 280–282
393
Tirant lo Blanc, 66
tobacco, 298–299
Tod, James, 40
Tommakattanar, Paremmakkal,
315–321
Translators: Briot, Pierre, 116; Fraser,
James, 181; Índia, Gaspar da, 73
Trautmann, Thomas R., 263
Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 170
University of Cambridge library: Arabic
materials, 174; Lewis donation of
Persian material, 175; Rauzat al- Safa’
(Mir Khwand), 175; “secular” content
of Persian literature, 174
‘Utbi, Abu’l Nasr, 75
Valle, Pietro della, 129
Vallisnieri, Antonio, 135
van Doetechem, Jan, 134
Van Erpe, Thomas (Erpenius), 30–31,
174
Van Linschoten, Jan Huyghen, 130, 132,
134, 138
Vansittart, Henry, 42, 246
Vapoer, Hendrik Arentsz, 34
Varthema, Ludovico di, 24, 51, 132
Varttamānappustakam (Tommakattanar),
315
Vecchietti, Giovan Battista and
Gerolamo, 21
Venkatadhvarin’s Viśvagunādarśacampū,
312–313
Verdadeira, e exacta notícia dos progressos de
Thamas Kouli Khan Schach da Persia no
Império do Gram Mogôr (de Voulton),
168
Vida ( Jacques de Coutre), 27
Vijayanagara, 37, 53, 72, 74, 88–90, 104,
224
Vindication of Mr. John Braddyll against
Mr. Henry Lowther, The (Braddyll),
162
Voltaire, 241–242, 264
von Wyss- Giacosa, Paola, 106, 131
Voulton, Joseph de, 191
Voyages de Mr Dellon, avec sa relation de
l’Inquisition de Goa, augmentée de
diverses pièces curieuses (Dellon), 124
Voyages et Observations (Le Gouz de la
Boullaye), 131
394 INDEX
Wake, William, 182, 183–185, 187, 189
Walker, Alexander: biography, 268–269;
on English rule and Orientalism,
272–274; in Gujarat, 269; in Kerala,
269; memoirs and views of India,
274–276, 279, 284–285; in the Scottish
tradition of India, 270; trust and
confidence of Indian natives, 271–272.
See also Tipu Sultan
Webbe, Frances, 10
Wedderburn, Alexander, 153, 154
Wendel, François-Xavier, 251, 265
Wilson, Horace Hayman, 42
Xavier, Jerónimo, 30, 173
Yazdi, Mulla Muhammad
Shafi‘ (Danishmand Khan),
3, 5, 15
Zacut, Abraham, 66
Zain-ud-Din, ibn Ahmad Ma‘bari,
Shaikh, 80–81, 293–295
Zanetti, Anton Maria, 135
Zanetti, Anton Maria, the Younger,
135–136
Zoroastrianism, 33, 39, 140; discussed
by Henry Lord, 116; pre-Adamite
argument, 83
Zurara, Gomes Eanes de, 60–61, 66, 68,
72