THE PAGANS OF NARSINGA.
Before Batûta reached India, and therefore long before Varthema’s time,
Afghan chiefs had swooped down on the fertile plains of India with
the war cry of “Allah and the Prophet,” and Northern India, with the
exception of its southern and western districts, where the Rajpoots
maintained their independence, was now under the rule of various
Moslem despots. The Deccan was under the sway of a powerful Moslem
dynasty—the Brahmany Sultans; but what is now the presidency of Madras
and Mysore was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, subject to
the Hindu Râja of Narsinga. A full century of conflict had resulted
in a partial triumph of the Moslem: the sovereigns of Narsinga paid a
certain tribute to be left at peace, although the western coast was,
in a measure, protected by a wall of mountains. But Portuguese traders
had just sailed into the Arabian Sea and had established themselves
here and there at trading stations on the Malabar coast; and these they
had fortified. On his outward journey, Varthema, for obvious reasons,
showed no disposition to cultivate the acquaintance of these Christian
Europeans.
Gujarat was under the rule of Fath Khân, whom Varthema calls Sultan
Machamuth. “You shall now hear of the manner of his life. He and all
his people are Mohammedans; and he keeps twenty thousand horsemen
always with him. When he arises in the morning, fifty elephants, each
with a man atop, come to the palace and do him reverence; and this
is all the labour they are put to.... When he eats, fifty or sixty
different kinds of music discourse; such as trumpets, different sorts
of drums, recorders and fifes, and many others; and the elephants again
do him reverence.... The Sultan’s moustachios are so long that he
ties them up over his head, as a woman doth tie her tresses; and his
beard, which is white, comes down to his girdle.” Fath Khân was greatly
dreaded by his subjects; and they believed strange things concerning
him; stories which are worthy of the Arabian Nights. These Varthema
heard and set down, as did Barbosa, who travelled in the East a few
years after the Sultan’s death. Machamuth was reputed to eat poison
daily, so that, while he himself had become poison-proof, he had only
to spit at a foe and death followed within half an hour. “Every night
that he shall sleep with one of his three or four thousand women, they
shall take her up dead in the morning.”
The Sultan was continually at war with a neighbouring Hindu Râja; and
his Kingdom of Gujarat had been taken from the Jains—“a race which
eats of nothing wherein courseth blood, and will kill nothing that hath
life. They are neither Moors nor heathens; and I believe that, if they
should be baptised, they would all be saved by their good works; for
they never do unto others what they would not that others should do
unto them. For dress, some wear a shirt; some, only a cloth round their
middle and a large red cloth on their head; and their colour is tawny.
And the aforesaid Sultan took their kingdom from them because of their
goodness.”
These Jains, who at first, mainly differed from Buddhists in believing
that the purification of the soul resulted in a Heaven and not in
Nirvâna, and the relation of whose creed to Buddhism is far from being
clear, had built some of their remote and mysterious temples on the
heights of Gujarat, where through clouds of incense, female figures,
clothed in scarlet and gold might be seen, weaving strange figures and
chanting monotonous psalms. But these, Varthema, posing as a pious
Mohammedan, might not see; and he makes no reference to the famous
temples of Gujarat.
From Cambay, the Persian and our Italian sailed along the coast to
Chaul; thence to a port which has disappeared but which was near
Ratnagiri, on the Concan coast; and thence to the island of Goa. “On
this island there is a fortress by the sea, kept by a Mameluke with
four hundred other Mamelukes. If the captain shall come across any
white man he gives him much wage; but first he sends for two jerkins,
made of leather, one for him and one for him that wishes to take
service; each puts on a jerkin, and they fall to. If he prove himself
a strong man, he is put among the able men; but if not, he is set to
other task than that of fighting. The captain wages great battle with
the Râja of Narsinga” (Bijayanagar the capital of the Carnatic).
From Goa, seven days of land-travel brought the pair to “the city of
Decan” (Bîjapûr), a Mohammedan place where “the King lives in great
pride and pomp. Many of them that serve him have their very shoes
adorned with rubies, diamonds, and other jewels; so you may judge how
many garnish their fingers and ears. They wear robes or shirts of silk,
shoes and breeches after the style of sailors; and ladies go quite
veiled, as in Damascus.”
Thence they returned to the coast, and visited ports, many of which
have decayed or disappeared. These were subject, but not always
friendly, to the Râja of Narsinga; and the Kinglet of Honawar was
friendly to the Portuguese. But in spite of incessant warfare, life and
property were respected. The journey now lies along the Malabar coast
to Cannanore: “the port to which steeds are brought from Persia, and
you must know that the levy for each horse is twenty-five ducats....
Here we began to meet with spices.” Here, also, were Portuguese
established.
They now turned their steps to Narsinga, where Heemrâj held his court.
Varthema calls him “King,” and indeed he ruled, for like the Frank
“Mayors of the palace,” he had gradually usurped the powers of the
real Râja, and held actual sway in the place of an ancient race which
boasted an uninterrupted succession lasting seven centuries. The city
was great and grand; the court, splendid; the revenue, enormous; the
army boasted 40,000 horsemen and 400 elephants, and was constantly
doing battle with the Moslem and neighbouring Pagan States. “The
elephant wears armour; in particular, head and trunk are armed. To
the trunk a sword of two arms’ length is fastened, and as broad as a
man’s hand.” “Seven armed men go upon the said elephant,” shielded by
a sort of castle, “And in that manner they fight.” “The King wears a
cap of cloth of gold; and a quilted garment of cotton when he goes to
the wars; over this a garment beset with gold coins; and all manner
of jewels are at the border thereof. His horse wears jewels which
are of more value than are some of our cities. When he journeys for
pleasure, three or four kings and five or six thousand horsemen attend
him. Wherefore, one may account him a most powerful prince. The common
people go naked save for a loin-cloth.... In this realm you may go
where you list in safety; but it behoves you to beware of lions on the
way.”
Varthema was very much impressed by the singular structure and equally
singular habits of the elephant, and he speaks admiringly of its
sagacity and strength. He devotes a considerable space to this noble
beast; gives us the most accurate details; and recurs to the subject
over and over again.
The Persian jewel-merchant and he left Narsinga after two days’ stay,
and visited places which were of much importance then, but which have
disappeared from the modern map. At last, they arrive at Calicut.
“Having come to the place where the greatest fame of India is gathered
up” our traveller devotes the whole of his second book concerning India
to Calicut and the manners and customs of its people, as being those of
all the inhabitants of that part of the peninsula which lies between
the Malabar and Coromandel coasts. From time out of mind Calicut had
been a famous emporium; to it calico owes its name. When Islam arose,
the spread of the Mohammedan faith stimulated the enterprise of the
intrepid Arab sailor and merchant and of the renegade from Eastern
Europe and Western Asia. The activity of the hardy Arab found scope by
reason of the natural indolence of the Hindu and his dislike of the
sea. A rich and well organized traffic sprang up between Persia and
Arabia on the one side and China and the Spice Islands on the other.
Even in China, the Arab contrived to settle; and Calicut remained the
chief centre of the Eastern trade. Here, in the season of calm, might
be seen the leviathan junks of China; and, at all times, the ships
of every civilized Eastern people. But, by the time Varthema reached
Calicut, the Arab had found Malacca to be a more convenient mart for
the trade of the far-East; and Calicut, a little fallen from her high
estate, had become mainly a market for the products of Southern India
and Ceylon, and a port of call. And yet greater change was at hand.
One of those new routes had been opened up which from time to time,
abase the pride of commercial nations and transfer their wealth: the
Portuguese rounded the Cape, reached East Africa, broke across the
Ocean, and, in 1498, Vasco di Gama anchored off Calicut. The jealous
Arabs burned down the factory which the native ruler had allowed
the Portuguese to erect, and fierce seafights ensued, which were
accompanied by much brutality. The contest was between the best sailors
of Europe and the huge, but ill-built and ill-navigated fleets of the
Arab traders. The latter were unable to expel or even to discourage the
invaders, who, incensed at opposition, shewed no mercy, and suffered
from severe reprisal. While Varthema was at Calicut, the Zamorin (as
its ruler was called by those English travellers who arrived a little
later) “agreed that the Moors should slay forty-eight Portuguese, whom
I saw put to death. And for this reason the King of Portugal is always
at war, and daily kills very many; and thereby the city is ruined, for
in every way it is at war.” Our traveller arrived at Calicut at the
precise time when India, cast into a welter by Mohammedan aggression
in its lust for wealth and dominion, was confronted with the yet more
insatiate greed of European adventures for fabled gold and direct
markets. The competitors vied with one another in all the arts of
treachery, cruelty and fraud.
Calicut was a city of mean appearance, occupying an area of about a
mile; but the “compounds” were spread over a space of six miles. It
was crowded with traders from Ethiopia, Arabia and Persia, Syria and
the Levant, Bengal and Sumatra. Varthema calculates that no less than
fifteen thousand Moors were domiciled there. He visited the palace of
the Zamorin, which was divided into chambers by wooden partitions, on
which supernatural beings were carved—beings named dêvas in the Indian
Scriptures, and taken by our Italian for devils. The flooring was a
preparation of cow-dung, used then, as it is to-day, for its antiseptic
properties. Ramna and Krishna and a demon-goddess called Mariamma were
the chief objects of worship; so we are not surprised when we read
that, in the “chapel” of the palace, the oil-lamps were set on tripods,
“on each side whereof are three devils, _in relievo_, very fearful to
behold. Such are the squires that bear lights to the King.” The chapel
was small, but its wooden door was elaborately “carven with devils. In
the middle of it is a devil seated, all in bronze; and the devil wears
a three-fold crown, like unto that of the Papacy. He has four horns and
four teeth, a huge mouth and nose, and his eyes strike terror into him
that looketh thereon. Devils are figured around the said chapel; and
on each side thereof a Satan is seated, in flaming fire, wherein are a
great number of souls. And, the said Satan has a soul to his mouth with
his right hand and with his left hand he grips a soul by its middle.”
Perchance the chapel recalled memories of pictured hells on the walls
of the Pisan Campo Santo, or of certain other mediæval frescoes at
Florence.
He went to a great religious festival near Calicut. “Truly,” he
says, “never did I see so many gathered together save at Mecca. From
fifteen days’ journey round about came all the Nairs and Brâhmans to
sacrifice.” Passing through trees which bore lights innumerable, one
came to a tank, wherein the worshippers first bathed before entering
the temple, which stood up from the middle of the tank. It had “two
rows of columns, like San Giovanni in Fonte at Rome.” The head Brâhmans
first anointed the heads of the worshippers with oil, and then burned
incense, with elaborate ritual, and offered the sacrifice of a cock at
an altar laden with flowers. “At one end of the altar is a Satan, which
all go up to worship, and then depart, each on his own way.”
Early in the morning, it is the duty of the Brâhman to bathe in a tank
of still water, and then to wash the idols with perfumed water; after
which he burns incense before them; nor does the Zamorin eat of food
that has not first been presented to the god. “Then the Brâhmans lie
flat on the ground, but in a secret manner, and they do roll their eyes
in a devilish way, and twist their mouths horribly for the space of a
quarter of an hour; and then the time to eat is come. And men eat of
food which has been cooked by men; but the women cook for themselves.”
Varthema’s account of the manners and habits of Southern India
is neither so wholly accurate nor arranged with such lucidity as
Hiuen-Tsiang’s record of the region of Ganges and Jumna, written nine
centuries before. Nor does Southern India present us with such a high
civilization as does the empire of Sîlâditya. But Varthema makes few
statements that are not confirmed by other early travellers, and his
record bears ample witness to a shrewd, observant eye and honest
enquiry. He describes the Brâhmans; the Nairs, or warrior-caste; the
artizans and other castes of the Malabar Coast. We learn that no one
of the two lowest castes may approach a Brâhman within fifty paces
“unless he bid him do so”; wherefore they shout a warning as they pass
along, and take private paths through the marshes, for, should they not
cry aloud, and should any of the Nairs meet them, they may be killed by
him, and no punishment follow thereupon.
The Nairs “eat no flesh without sanction from the Brâhmans; but other
castes eat all manner of flesh, saving that of the cow.” The lower
castes “eat mice and fish dried in the sun.” All sit on the ground at
meals; and the upper castes use the leaf of a tree to scoop up their
food from metal bowls; while the lower castes make balls of rice and
take it by the hand from a pipkin. All castes and both sexes wear a
cotton loin-cloth only. The lowest sort of people suckle their children
for three months only, and then feed them on milk night and morning.
“And when they have stuffed them therewith, they do not wash them,
but cast them into the sand, where they lie until evening. As they
are nearly black, one cannot tell whether they be little bears or
buffaloes; and they look as if they were fed by the Devil.”
Justice was admirably administered—a characteristic of Hîndustân
noticed and praised by Greeks, Romans, Arabians, and all travellers. In
fact, life and property were fairly safe throughout all civilized Asia.
Creditors, on proof of claim, drew a circle round their debtor with a
green bough, and within this he must remain until he pay or perish.
Should he leave the circle, his life was forfeit to the Zamorin. Murder
was punished by impalement; wilful injury to another by fine. Traders
transacted business by secret negotiation under a coverlet, certain
signs being made with the fingers.
When a man is sick, he is visited by a dozen men, “dressed like
devils,” who are accompanied by players on divers instruments. “These
physicians carry fire in their mouths,” and go about on stilts fixed
to their hands and feet; and so they go shouting and sounding the
music; so that truly they would make a hale man fall to the ground
for fear at the sight of these ugly beasts. They force ginger juice
on the sick; and, in three days, he is well again—cured in the main,
one may surmise, by workings of belief on his expectant imagination.
Abracadabra is a useful and time honoured ally to the learned
professions. The spirits which preside over the fertility of rice are
propitiated in a similar manner by the same men. “When the Nairs die,
their bodies are burned with much pomp, and some among them keep the
ashes; but common folk are buried within the house or garden.”
Varthema tells us of certain social customs which persist to this
day in Southern India. The caste or tribe of Nairs who preponderate
there, maintain to-day the institutions of their ancestors before
history began. Marriage is acknowledged to be the least stable and
most diversified of all human institutions; but the Nairs retain
more than a trace of the matriarchate and of the polyandry which was
associated with the matriarchate. They count descent through the
children of sisters only; and marriage is with them the loosest of
ties; it involves no responsibility towards the woman or her child.
Again the worship of the snake, and, for obvious reasons, of the cobra
in particular, throughout India is a remnant of phallic worship. Let us
hear what Varthema has to tell us of a state of society which exhibits
a stage in the slow and fluctuating course of moral development from
primitive promiscuity to the high moral standard extolled, if not
completely attained, by the Christian West. There was a habit which
is still regarded in many parts of the world as the seal of amity and
the highest possible honour which a man can bestow on a friend. “The
Pagans exchange their wives.” Indeed, they bestowed them on a friend
with all the ready generosity of Cato the Censor to Hortensius. “And
when the King takes to himself a wife, he chooses among the most worthy
and honourable of the Brâhmans” him to whom shall be accorded the
_jus primae noctis_. The Brâhman affects unwillingness “and the king
must pay him four or five hundred ducats.” Here, almost for certain,
we have a vestige of old phallic worship. When the king is journeying,
he passes on his matrimonial privileges to a Brâhman. Among the
inferior castes, “one woman has five, six, and seven husbands, and even
eight.... The children go according to the word of the woman.” “The
son of one of the sisters of the late king follows him on the throne.”
As to serpent-worship, “you must know that, when the King of Calicut
has word as to the place where a nest of any of these vile animals is
to be found, he has a little house builded over it for water.[20] And,
if anyone should kill one of these animals or a cow, he would be put
to death. They say that these serpents are divine spirits; and that,
if they were not spirits, God would not have bestowed on them so great
power that, by biting a man but a little, he shall fall headlong and
straightway die.” “And when these Pagans go a journeying, it is held
for good luck to meet one of these creatures.... There are however,
great enchanters: we have seen them grasp deadly serpents.”
The Zamorin “wore so many jewels in his ears and on his hands, arms,
legs and feet, that here was a marvel to behold.” His treasury held
the immense collection of many previous reigns, stored up for time of
need. But that recent scourge of mankind, which spread so rapidly over
the world, and which every nation called by the name of a neighbouring
nation, had already reached India; this magnificent monarch had “the
French disease in the throat.”
When the King eats, Brâhmans, stand around him, at a space of three or
four steps distant, bending the back, and holding the hands before the
month. When the King speaks, there is silence, and much reverence is
paid to his words.
In the warfare between the States of Southern India, an economy of
bloodshed was observed which would have done credit to those Italian
warriors of whom Machiavelli tells how the condottiere captain was
circumspect to save his men, and the foughten field remained almost as
bloodless as a chessboard. The Princes went forth to battle with great
armies of foot-soldiery and elephants (but no cavalry), armed with
swords, lances, bows and arrows, and furnished with shields. But when
battle was joined, and the armies were distant from one another as far
as two cross-bows’ shots might carry, Brâhmans were ordered by one King
to go to his royal foe, and ask that a hundred Nairs should fight on
either side. Then the selected Nairs would meet midway between the two
armies and fight by established rule—“two strokes to the head and one
at the legs; and this though they should fight for three days. And when
from four to six on either side are slain, the Brâhmans go straightway
into their midst, and make both sides return to their encampments.”
Then the kings were wont to employ the Brâhmans again to bear messages,
one to another, asking if that were enough, or more were wished for.
“The Brâhman says ‘no.’ And the enemy says the same. Thus do they do
battle together; an hundred set against an hundred.”
Varthema tells us of the habit of betel-chewing and gives us many
other details of the life and manners of the people; of their skill as
workmen; of their wretched shipping and of their poor navigation. He
had the naturalist’s eye, and tells us much of the animals and plants
of the district. He describes the crocodile as a “kind of reptile, as
big as a boar, but with a greater head; it has four feet, and is four
cubits long. It is engendered in certain marshes. The natives say it is
without venom; but an evil beast; doing evil to folk by its bite.”
The Persian merchant had avowed that his desire was to travel, and not
to trade, for he had enough; but all the same, he was sufficiently
eager to find good markets. “My comrade,” whose name is now spelled
somewhat differently—Cazazionor becomes Cogiazenor—“being unable to
sell his wares for that the trade of Calicut was ruined at the hands of
the King of Portugal; for the merchants that were wont to hie thither
were not there, nor did they come; we set forth, taking the way of a
river, which is the most beautiful I have ever seen, and came to a city
called Cacolon, fifty leagues distant.” This “river”-way was by the
Backwater of Cochin.
Cacolon, like so many places visited by our traveller is not to be
found on a modern map, but was a mart of some importance in its day,
“because of pepper of the best which grows in these parts.” Here dwelt
a few native Christians “of St. Thomas, some of whom were merchants,
believing in Christ.” A little later on Varthema’s journey, he is
told of the tomb of the Apostle, “guarded by Christians.” That St.
Thomas was the first missionary to India, and that he was martyred
there is an ancient tradition. William of Malmesbury tells us in his
“Chronicles of the Kings of England” how “Alfred sent many presents
over sea to Rome and St. Thomas in India. Sighelm, bishop of Sherborne,
sent ambassadors for this purpose, who penetrated successfully into
India: a matter of astonishment even in the present time.” The legend
concerning St. Thomas is however not earlier than the Fourth Century.
Earlier tradition makes him the evangelist of Parthia; and St. Thomas
was probably confused with one Thomas, a bishop, who arrived on the
Malabar coast in the middle of the Fourth Century. The shrine of the
saint is in a suburb of Madras. Indian Christianity was an offshoot of
Syrian Gnosticism, and Indian Christians were subject to the authority
of the Nestorian Patriarch at Mesopotamia. “These Christians say,”
writes Varthema, “that a priest comes from Babylon every three years to
baptize them.”
The next place reached by the travellers was Quilon in Travancore, the
port of a powerful little kingdom “for ever at war with others.... At
that time the king of this city was the friend of the King of Portugal,
but we did not think it well to remain there, for he was fighting
others.” The contentions of these petty sovereigns with each other gave
the Portuguese the opportunity which has always offered itself to the
invaders of India, and which they have never been slow to seize.
From Quilon, they sailed to the south, touched at a place where there
was a pearl fishery, rounded the “head of India,” and arrived at a
port of the Carnatic, which Varthema calls Coromandel. The King of
Coromandel was also at war with a neighbour, so Cazazionor and other
merchants hired a “sampan,” or flat-bottomed boat, and, “at great
peril, by reason of many rocks and shoals,” sailed from the Coromandel
coast and reached Ceylon.