This tale is offered to the memory of one William Hawkins (1575-1613),
a brandy-drinking, Turkish-speaking seaman and adventurer who was the
first Englishman to reach the court of Jahangir, the Great Moghul of
India. There he delivered gifts from the new East India Company and a
letter from King James proposing direct trade, then a zealously
protected monopoly of Portugal. As he gradually adopted Indian ways,
Hawkins became a court favorite of the Moghul, who made him a knightly
_khan _and eventually tried to keep him in India. After several
Portuguese-instigated attempts to murder him, Hawkins attached himself
for safety to a certain willful Indian woman. The end of their story
eventually became a minor legend throughout the early East India
Company.
As astonishing as some of the elements in the historical landscape
described here may seem today, they are all by and large fictional re-
creations of actual events, practices, people--drawn from diaries of
seventeenth-century European travelers and from Indian historical
materials. Aside from the names, only the clocks in this remote world
have been knowingly altered. Years in historical time have become
months in these pages, months have become days. Several vicious naval
engagements between English frigates and Portuguese galleons, several
major land battles between Indian armies, have each been compressed
into one.
But the major occurrences in this faraway saga all happened. While
Shakespeare wrote of commoners and kings, while colonists hewed log
cabins from the wilds of the New World, a land ruled by violent
intrigue, powerful drugs, and sensual beauty lay hidden in that
legendary place known as Moghul India.