History
Paper: History of India (1550-1750)
Topic: 2(Historiography and Sources)
Lesson – 3.1.3
Glossary
Ralph Fitch – Merchant of London known to be one of the earliest travelers to come to India.
Moor – Characteristics pertaining to Morocco in the later middle ages.
Jahangir (1569 – 1627) – Son of Akbar, he was the Mughal Emperor from 1605 to 1627.
Akbar (1524 – 1605) – Son of Humayun and grandson of Babur, he was the Mughal Emperor from 1556 to 1605.
Thomas Roe (1581 – 1644) – English diplomat to the Mughal court during the reign of Jahangir known to establish the English company at Surat.
Francois Bernier (1625 – 1688) – French physician and traveler, he was the personal physician of Emperor Aurangzeb, known for his accounts of his travel in India.
Madrasha – Literally a place where teaching and learning is done, but in the modern parlance it means a typical Islamic school.
Shah Jahan (1592 – 1666) – Son of Jahangir, he was the Mughal Emperor from 1628 to 1658.
Tavernier (1605 –1689) – French traveler and pioneer of trade in India, he traded jewellery to the Mughal nobles.
Niccolo Manucci (1653 – 1708) – Traveller from England he is known for his memoirs of his experiences in India.
Objectives
The students will:
Learn about the accounts of various foreign travellers
Recognize the characteristic features of their writings
Understand the importance of the accounts of the foreign travellers
Summary
European travellers who came to medieval Mughal India ranged from aristocrats, priest to merchants. Their accounts are divided into 1) accounts of foreign travellers and 2) correspondence of the European companies. The accounts of foreign traveller were either descriptive or analytical in nature, memoirs and Jesuit writings.
Fitch, Bernier, Tavernier, Thevnot, Marshall, Bowrie, Ovington and Friar have written extensively on their travels in India. The Jesuit priest gave an account of their evangelization. The memoirs of Thomas Roe and Niccolo Manucci are important too.
Most of these travellers have coming via the Middle-east expected Indian cities to look similar. They compared the Indian cities with the European counterparts and finding them lacking labeled them as overgrown villages. Also some of the accounts are inaccurate as they are based on bazaar gossips. However their accounts are invaluable because they have documented many areas that were not written by Persian sources or provincial literature.
FAQs
1. How are the European sources of historiography categorized?
The European sources may be divided broadly into two kinds
i) Accounts of foreign travellers
ii) Correspondences of European companies in India
2. How are the works of foreign travelers be categorized?
The accounts of the foreign travellers could be divided again into various kinds depending on the nature of their writings:
a) Descriptive accounts
b) Analytical accounts
c) Memoirs and Diaries and Personal letters
d) Jesuit letters – Church history
3. How were the writings of the Jesuit priests different?
The writings of the Jesuit priests have a kind of hope that not only the ordinary people will be converted but the princes will be converted too. So there is a kind of bias in their writings. They are always looking at good and evil.
4. Discuss the opinion of the foreign travelers of the Indian cities.
Many of the travellers wanted to show that the civilization of India was inferior to the civilization of Europe. European civilization then was far more and while looking at the cities they were always searching for the European city or the circular city of the Middle East. They were looking for straight avenues, broad regular streets, blocks of houses, well divided markets, which they did not find in India and therefore they said that Indians do not have cities, they have overgrown villages.
5. Why are the European sources relevant?
The Europeans had written on certain areas, which are not covered either by the Persian sources or by the Provincial literature of the times. Thevnot had written on the town officials of Surat giving a very detailed description of their functions. Also most of these travellers had gone from one place to another either by river or by land. They had given the description of the route. So for certain aspects of life the accounts of the foreign travellers are invaluable.
Quiz
1. Some of the Indian cities were termed as Moor Cities by A) Bernier B) Tavernier C) Ralph Fitch
2. Tavernier by profession was a A) Historian B) Explorer C) Jeweller
3. The lingua franca in medieval India in the Mughal court was A) Persian B) Urdu C) Arabic.
4. The Jesuit priests hoped to convert A) Akbar B) Jahangir C) Shah Jahan.
5. During the reign of Jahangir the self-proclaimed ambassador of the British Queen was A) Thomas Roe B) John Marshall C) John Friar
Assignment
1. Discuss the works of the British travelers during the Mughal period.
2. Elaborate on the accounts of the Jesuit priests in India during the Mughal period.
3. Identify some of the common features of the accounts of the foreign travellers.
4. How did the foreign travellers represent India in their accounts?
5. Why is the work of the European travellers important to the historians?
History
Paper: History of India (1550-1750)
Topic: Historiography and Sources
Lesson – 3.1.3
1. Introduction
A large number of European travellers from myriad backgrounds visited India during the rule of the Mughal emperors – aristocrats, priest and merchants traversed the length and breadth of the country and have left impressions that are absorbing and sometime insightful as well. Some of these accounts have been important sources for scholars studying the history of that period. Some remain as well-crafted narratives, a brilliant amalgamation of fact and fiction that recreates medieval India in all its color and romance.
2. European Sources
European Sources for the study of the history of the Mughal India
The European sources may be divided broadly into two kinds:
1) Accounts of foreign travellers
2) Correspondences of European companies in India
Accounts of foreign travellers
Among the foreign travellers, there were different kinds who had come to India from the late 16th to the end of 18th century. They had written in different languages including English, French, Dutch, Italian, even German and Russian.
The accounts of the foreign travellers could be divided again into various kinds depending on the nature of their writings:
a) Descriptive accounts
b) Analytical accounts
c) Memoirs, Diaries and Personal letters
d) Jesuit letters – Church history
3. Descriptive and Analytical Accounts
Descriptive accounts
Among the descriptive, the first one that is important to us is written by Ralph Fitch who came to India between 1583 and 1591. His account is important in the sense that he called some of the Indian cities as Moor Cities perhaps being influenced by the cities of the Middle East (Baghdad or such other Muslim cities), which is more or less accurate. He traveled widely both in boats and on land and had given a good description of India; not a very flourishing India though.
Analytical accounts
The second kind is by three French writers – Tavernier, Bernier and Thevnot. Bernier’s writing is the only analytical writing on Mughal India. Tavernier is not a writer; he did not write it; it was written by a court historian under the order of Louis XIV. It is not very clear when he came roughly around 1646 and he went back in 1668; he came 6 times. He was not an ordinary traveller. He was a jeweler and he came to sell jewels, which he did with a large profit to many nobles including Shahista Khan, one of the important of the Mughal court.
Tavernier’s writing is partly memoir and partly descriptive. He has given description but it was not written by him and therefore it is not always very accurate. Thevnot on the other hand is a better writer, gives very good descriptions and the importance of Thevnot lies in the fact that he has given the administration of the Mughals of the towns in India, their officials, their functions. That way he is little different but he is still descriptive.
The one that came during the early years of Jahangir was Pilsert, a Belgium one who wrote on Agra. He said there were five storied buildings and everybody used to eat ghee. He has given a record of the amount of money which is 10 crore of rupees that was left behind by Akbar apart from jewels.
4. Other Foreign Travellers
There were some other travellers apart from these three who did not tour the whole of the Mughal Empire; they toured only certain provinces. John Marshall, an Englishman, in the 1670s came to Bengal and Patna and wrote about the disastrous famine at Patna, the description of the famine in those days. Another one was Thomas Bowrie, an Englishman who came to Bengal and Orissa and wrote about the flourishing condition of Bengal and Orissa in the 1680s. Similarly in Western India two travellers John Friar and John Ovington, in the 1680s had been to Surat and other parts of Gujarat and wrote about it. Their view which has not been accepted by the historians was that the Muslim merchants were living in style and the Hindu merchants were living in cottages in one room along with their animals. The reason as they said is that the Hindu merchants were afraid of the Mughal emperor. This has not been accepted by any historian so far and one may reject this kind of opinion straightaway.
The person who came in the early 18th century Gujarat, when Gujarat was slightly in the point of decline was Dr. Alexander Hamilton who was in Gujarat for a number of years and wrote about the cities, their declining condition. The person who wrote about the entire India with details came around 1750 and stayed about 1780 was a German priest whose book was translated in French and in Dutch, (he wrote in Latin though) – Josef Tiefenthaler. Tiefenthaler’s description is not very accurate but covering the whole of India shows that India as of the Mughals was certainly on the point of decline. This view of Tiefenthaler has been corroborated by a French traveller and an aristocrat Count of Modav who traveled in some portion of north and eastern India between 1773 and 1776. Modav had shown the decline of Agra and he said that the reason of the decline was that the Mughal court has gone away to Delhi. But that is not the only reason now as the historians say. There were other deeper causes linking with the decline of the Mughal Empire.
Modav had given a description and warning to the French of the rise of the French power and the fall of the French power and the rise of the English power and the fall of the Mughal power at the same time. This kind of contrast and the description as given by the Count of Modav is very illuminating. He has given an excellent description of Calcutta or Chandernagar of those days, which was in rapid decline in his view.
5. Jesuit writings
Apart from the descriptive accounts of the foreign travellers there are the writings of the Jesuit priests, mostly letters written in Latin but now translated into English. One of the earliest of them in the Mughal court was Father Monserart. Monserart and his companions (there were 4 Jesuit teams who came in succession into the court of the Mughals in Fatehpur Sihkri and in Agra). They always thought that they are going to get the conversion of Prince Salim, Jahangir, son of Akbar. Their writings have this kind of hope that not only the ordinary people will be converted but also the princes will be converted at the same time. So there is a kind of bias in their writings. They are always looking at good and evil.
Apart from these writers there were certain others who had been to certain other parts of India. In early 17th century Bengal there are some rare letters of Jesuit writers from eastern part of Bengal – Jessore, Sripur, Bakla and Sonargaon. The bias remains the same. They wanted the conversion of the princes. This was the period late 16th and early 17th century when Akbar was allowing the Christians some kind of latitude. He had allowed them to build churches and had even allowed them to make conversions. So the priests were taking advantage of this. The result was that there was a backlash after some time. In Jessore we know that the Muslims (Afghan soldiers) got very angry and there was a riot; some of the Christian priests were killed, some of them were imprisoned. This kind of things continued in other parts of the empire sometimes without a riot but with the same result.
Apart from their writings there was certain other priest who came even after that. We have some of them but their writings are not very important.
6. Memoirs, Diaries and Letters
One of the earliest who wrote diary was Thomas Roe. Thomas Roe came to the court of the Mughals around 1616-17 during the time of Jahangir. He claimed himself as an ambassador of the British Queen. He wanted to establish the English company at Surat, with a permission, which was opposed by Portuguese tooth and nail. He had given description of the politics of the court that was going on around this demand for the permission. Finally he got it and the English were established in Surat. He accompanied the Mughal Emperor in different places including Mandu, which was then coming up. It was his best description.
Apart from Thomas Roe there were two others who had lived long enough in India. One is a Frenchman Francois Martin who came around 1668 and died at Pondicherry as the first Governor-General of the French in 1706. He had written several diaries, which have now been published in French apart from his voluminous letters to the Company. He was a company official. He had shown how the French power had been established in India or the history of the French establishment in India. Along with that he had shown the attitude of the Mughals and other states like the Marathas – the Mughal officials and the Maratha officials, the corruption that was reigning, the commodities, which were available, the kind of trade that was possible.
The third one who wrote memoirs which is different from Francois Martin was Niccolo Manucci (died in 1706 perhaps in Pondicherry). He came at the age of 12 and stayed here. The writings of Manucci had been found in 4 different languages, which had raised doubts because if he had come at the age of 12, how can he learn 4 different European languages. In any case Arvind has done the edition in 3 volumes. Manucci was a person who had done almost all kinds of jobs – from goldsmith to gunner (he was a gunner for Dara Shikhoh), a physician at Lahore (he used to sit in the market and people came to him). Then he fled to Goa for different reasons. He was a close friend of Martin at the same time. Niccolo Manucci’s memoirs were full of rumors as well as stories of ghosts which were there in certain areas according to him.
7. Analytical sources
The analytic type is that of Francois Bernier. All these accounts of the foreign travelers have certain features in common. They are
i) They had come via the Middle-east either from Mecca or from other places by ship which Bernier did or by overland route as Tavernier did. They were influenced or impressed by what they saw in the Middle-eastern cities. Therefore they were looking for the same kind of cities with the minarets and minars, mosques and madrashas etc. They were thinking it will be the same kind of city and civilization. Bernier mad the same kind of statement. So one feature is that they were very influenced by what had happened in the Middle-east.
ii) Most of these travellers had taken the big routes going into the towns. Very few had gone into the villages. Therefore there are no references to peasants in the villages, their kind of agriculture, their lives, their houses, their utensils, and their food – these were not told by the travellers. In looking at the cities they were always searching for the European city or the circular city of the Middle-east. In the European cities they were looking for straight avenues, broad regular streets, blocks of houses, well divided markets, which they did not find in India and therefore they said that Indians do not have cities, they have overgrown villages. It is the same thing some of them said about the Middle-east.
8. European Travellers – local sources
iii) Third feature of the accounts of European travellers is the question that what are their sources because most of the travellers except two or three did not know Persian, which was the lingua franca in those days for the Mughal court. Bernier claimed that he knew Persian which is doubtful but others did not even claim that. So what are their sources? They relied on bazaar gossips and rumors. One Italian traveller (anonymous) who came around 1630 wrote at least 10 pages that Shah Jahan was sleeping with Jahannara forgetting that Jahanara was his daughter and said that the Mullahs had approved it. This was in 1630s. In 1660 Bernier is repeating almost the same story almost verbatim and his source, he stated, was a Portuguese half-caste maid who had once worked in the harem of the Mughals. So this is the source and naturally on the basis of this source they had written many inaccurate details. For example most of them did not understand the relationship within the members of the royal family.