CHAPTER VII

PERILS BY LAND AND SEA

Our ambassador sets off with the returning mission attended by two favourites of the Sultan, and a guard of 1,000 horse. He has charge of gifts which far surpass the Chinese presents—100 horses of the best breed, richly caparisoned, 100 Hindu singing and dancing girls, robes of rich brocade, jewelled arms, instruments of gold and silver, silks and stuffs, and 1,700 rich dresses.

He has not travelled 100 miles from Delhi when he finds a district in revolt against the Mohammedan conquerors. The Hindus are besieging a city; the cavalry attending the embassy rushes at the investing forces, loses many men, but leaves not an enemy alive. The news is sent to the Sultan, and a halt is made for his instructions to arrive. Batûta is sitting in the grateful shade of a garden when word comes that a fresh body of Hindus is attacking a village hard by. He rides off with an escort to see how he may help. The insurgents are already fleeing from a hot pursuit, and he finds himself left with only five others and a few mounted men. His horse gets its fore-feet wedged between some stones, and he has to dismount; his companions ride off, and he finds himself alone. Suddenly, two score of the enemy’s horse appear and ride at him. He is stripped to the skin, bound, and threatened with death. He is unable to talk the language of his captors, is kept a captive during two days, and then they ride away. He shuffles off to a neighbouring jungle, and hides there. He cautiously tries every foot-track to find that not one of them but leads to some enemy village or to some village in ruins. He keeps himself alive by sucking wild fruit and chewing leaves. Seven days have passed, and he is quite exhausted, when he sees “a black man, carrying a small water-vessel and walking by aid of an iron-tipped staff.” The man is a Mohammedan, and gives him water and pulse, which he has with him. Batûta tries to walk with him; but he is too weak and faint; his feet totter, and he falls to the ground. The “black man” throws him across his shoulders; all consciousness is lost, and he comes to himself at the Imperial gateway one daybreak, the East aglow with the rising sun. That good Samaritan, the “black man,” stands out in bright relief from a background of crime and cruelty and shadows of feet swift to shed blood.

Mohammed Tughlak received Batûta more kindly than ever, gave him handsome compensation, and commanded him to return to the Embassy. On his way to Cambay, we hear more of Yogi magicians and how they will remain long time without food. “I have seen, in the city of Mangalore, a Moslem who had learned of these folk. A sort of platform was set up for him; and thereon he had stayed 25 days, neither eating nor drinking. Thus did I leave him; and I know not how long he kept there afterwards. It is said that they make up pills, and, after swallowing one of them, can do without food or drink. They foretell hidden things. The Sultan honours them and admits them to his society. Some among them eat vegetable food only; and these are the greater number. There are among them those who can slay a man by a glance at him. The common people hold that, if the chest of the dead man be opened, no heart is to be found within; for it has been consumed. Women do this in the main, and such an one is called a hyæna.”

Batûta’s chief interest was in Islam; but he noted natural products carefully and was alive to the odd. North of the Hindu Kûsh he had seen a woefully obese man; and now, on this 1,500 mile journey to Calicut, he came across the ruler of a small State, “a black giant,” who thought little of devouring a whole sheep at a sitting.

He took ship near Goa, and the craft ran along the Malabar coast, “the land of black pepper.” Twelve kinglets ruled as many states in Malabar at that time, and each king had an army of from 5,000 to 50,000 men at his command. Many ancient polyandric practices were retained; which explains why each Râja was succeeded by a sisters’ son. No landing was made until a king’s son had been handed over as a pledge of safety. Many Arab traders had settled in the ports, and become wealthy. Punishment, swift and severe, followed on the smallest infringement of _meum_ and _tuum_. We are told how a Hindu noble, out riding with his father-in-law, who was no less a personage than the Râja, picked up a mango which had dropped from an overhanging tree. The Râja ordered that both he and the mango should be cut into two halves, and half of the mango and half of the culprit laid on either side of the public way precisely where the enormity had been done. One may suspect that the son-in-law was not wholly _persona grata_ to the despot.

The Embassy had to tide over three months at Calicut awaiting the season for the sailing of the fleet of junks from China. There were thirteen of them at Calicut, and they also traded to Hili and Quilon. He tells us that the biggest junks were as floating cities. They would carry a crew of 1,000 men, whereof 400 were soldiers. The junk was worked by oars and sails of bamboo-matting, slung from masts varying in number from three to twelve, according to the size of the junk. Ten to thirty men stood to pull at each oar. Garden-herbs and ginger were grown on deck, and on it, too, were houses built for the chief officers and their wives. The quarters of the junk were three-fold, fastened together by spikes. Each junk of the biggest size was accompanied by three tenders of progressively diminishing proportions. Needless to say, the commander of a junk was a very important functionary. Often more than one junk would be owned by a single Chinaman. But then, “truly the Chinese are the wealthiest people on earth.”

Our ambassador sent his servants, slave-girls and baggage on board; but the cabin was too small to hold both concubines and luggage; so the skipper advised him to hire a _kakam_ or junk of the third size. This he did on a Thursday, the _kakam_ took in its cargo, and he remained on shore the next day for public worship.

During the night, the terror of the sea fell on them all. A violent storm came on, and the waters shook the land. Some of the junks contrived to get away from the perilous neighbourhood of the shore to more open water; but one of them was wrecked, and only a few swimmers managed to escape. The _kakam_, with all his worldly goods and slave-concubines in it, had disappeared; but it had been seen making for the open. The body of an envoy was washed ashore, with the skull smashed in. A guardian Eunuch was also cast up, a nail driven right through the brain from temple to temple. Down came the Zamorin to the scene of disaster, Comedy attendant on Tragedy, for he braved the tempest clad with a loin-cloth, the scantiest of head-gear, and a necklace of jewels, but the insignium of royalty, the umbrella, was somehow held up over his sacred head. Batûta cast himself on his prostration-carpet, which was all that was left to him, excepting ten pieces of gold and his servant, a freed slave, who immediately made off. Some pious people gave him small coin, which he kept as treasure, for it would bring blessing with it.

We are told of the noble deed of a simple Moslem sailor during this great storm. “There was a girl on board who was the favourite of a merchant. The merchant offered ten pieces of gold to anyone who should save her. A sailor, hailing from Hormuz, did save her; but he refused the reward, saying, ‘I did it for the love of God.’”

The junk which held the precious gifts for China was seen to go down outside the port; and Batûta heard that the little boat which held all his slave-concubines and worldly goods had contrived to gain the open sea, and might conceivably put in at Quilon. He set off at once, and arrived there after a ten days’ journey. He found the Chinese Embassy there. They had suffered shipwreck, but their junk had not broken up and was being refitted.

It did not require the advice proferred him by his co-religionists to deter him from returning to the capricious, passionate lord of Delhi. He bethought him of Jamâl Oddîn, ruler of Honowar, a man of sense and understanding, whom he had visited on his way to Calicut. It casts a pleasant ray on the Mohammedan occupation of India, that there were no fewer than 44 schools set up in the busy little capital of a small State, and that of these no fewer than 11 were for girls. Now Jamâl Oddîn knew the uncertain temper of the Lord of India quite as well as Batûta, and did not give him too hearty a welcome. So to appease offended Heaven, or to rehabilitate himself by an evidence of piety, he repaired to a mosque and read the Koran from end to end once, and ultimately twice, a day. Now, there were 52 ships being fitted out to attack the island of Sindâbûr; and Jamâl evidently thought that Batûta might prove useful, for he commanded him to accompany him on this expedition. Batûta tried to read the future by a time-honoured method of divination. He opened the Koran at random, and his eye fell on a promise of Allah to aid his servant. This was satisfactory to Jamâl Oddîn as well as to himself.

After strenuous resistance Sindâbûr was carried by assault, and Batûta, who was something of a warrior, received a slave-girl, clothing and other presents from his patron. He remained on the island with Jamâl Oddîn for some months, and then got permission to go to Calicut. For the Chinese fleet would be returning to India by this time, and he might get news of his little junk. At Calicut, he learned that his _kakam_ had reached China, that his property had been divided up, and that his pretty concubine had died on the voyage. “I felt very much grief for her.” He went back to the island to find the city besieged by Hindus.

Now he had heard marvellous things concerning the Maldives, an archipelago of small islands lying S.S.E. of India, near the equator. The inhabitants, under British rule to-day, had accepted Islam. He found that before he or anyone was allowed to land he must show himself on deck; “for although the islands are multitudinous, each lies close to its neighbour, and folk knew one another by sight.” He speaks of the inhabitants as “pious, peaceable, and chaste. They never wage war. Prayers are their only weapons. Indian pirates do not alarm them; nor do they punish robbers; for they have learned that sudden and grievous ill will come to evil-doers. When any of the pirate-ships of infidel Hindus pass by these islands, whatsoever is found is taken, nor will anyone stand out.” But, in spite of the moral reflection indulged in by the islanders, Batûta traces their policy of non-resistance to physical feebleness. And “there is one exception to it. Should a single lemon be taken woe befals the offender. He is punished and forced to listen to a homily. The natives delight in perfumes and in bathing twice a day, which the heat forces them to do; yet trees give delicious shade. Their trade is in ropes, which they make of hemp, and which are used for sewing together the timbers of ships of India and Yemen; for if a ship strike against a rock, the hemp allows of its yielding, and so saves it from going to pieces, which is not the case when iron nails are used. Shells are used for coin, and palm-leaves are used for all writing, except for copying out the Koran; and the instrument used has a sharp point.”

Batûta sailed among these islands during ten days, and took up his abode on one, the sovereign of which was a woman. For the lady’s husband had died, leaving no male issue; so she married her vizier who, in reality, ruled. Batûta took the full license accorded in Islam. He married the four legal wives permitted, and took to himself some concubines also, “all pleasant in conversation and of great beauty.” He must have divorced his previous wives before being able to do this. Marriage in the Maldive Islands was facile and cheap. Only a small dowry was demanded for a handsome woman; but it was required that the stranger should divorce the wife on leaving the land, and by no means take her with him. But, should he not desire to marry, there was no difficulty in getting a woman to cook for him at a very small wage. Wives were less companionable here than in most parts of the world, since women and men took their meals apart; nor could Batûta get his women-folk to break the custom of their country—a custom which Varthema speaks of, nearly two centuries later, as obtaining in South West India. Batûta had been appointed judge, and another thing that troubled him was the irregular attendance of the lax Moslems of his island at the mosque. He was very eager that such flagrant non-observance of religious duty should be duly punished; and he urged that the best way would be literally to whip the recalcitrants to attend on public worship.

Now Batûta’s wives had powerful relatives. The sister of one of his wives at Delhi was wife to the Emir of Mobar; to whom, therefore, Batûta was doubly related. He had become a power in his island, and the vizier grew jealous and suspicious. Might not the stranger conspire to bring an army over from the coast of Coromandel? When Batûta saw what was going on, he acted at once. “I divorced all my wives,” he says, “save one, who had a young child, and I went on to other islands of that great multitude of them.” From one of these, he shipped for Mobar; but the wind changed, and he was driven to the coast of Ceylon and in no small danger of drowning. The governor of the port came sailing by, and refused a landing; for he was no friend to Moslem skippers. Batûta won him over by telling him that he was on his way to visit the Sovereign of Mobar, that he was related to him by marriage, and that the whole cargo of the ship was intended as a present for that potentate. The Ceylonese Râja of the district was on good terms with his Moslem brother of Mobar, so Batûta was allowed to land. He found, like Marco Polo, that Ceylon was divided among four kinglets. He of the district soon sent for him, and gave him hospitality. He admired the famous herds of elephants, the troups of chattering monkeys, the pool of precious stones, and the luxuriant vegetation and glorious scenery of Ceylon. He scaled that iron chain, which still exists, to reach the top of Adam’s peak, and gives us the measure of the print of Adam’s foot, on hard rock; for in Ceylon, as elsewhere, supernatural vestiges are to be found. He visited Colombo and several other places in the island, and then set sail for the coast of Coromandel.

But, while crossing the strait, “the wind blew strong, and the ship was nearly swamped. Our skipper was a lubber. We were driven near perilous rocks, and barely escaped going to pieces; and then we got into shallow water. Our ship grated against the bottom, and we were face to face with death. Those on board threw all that they had into the sea, and bade farewell to one another. We cut down the mast and cast it onto the sea, and the sailors made a raft. The beach was eight miles off. I wanted to get down to the raft. I had two concubines and two friends with me. These latter exclaimed: ‘would you get down and leave us?’ I had more regard to their safety than to my own; so I answered: ‘Get down, both of you, and the young girl whom I love with you.’ My other young girl said: ‘I can swim. I will fix ropes to the raft and swim alongside these people.’ My two comrades got down, one of the young girls being with them; and the other swam. The sailors tied ropes to the raft, and so helped her to swim. I gave them whatever of value I had in the way of jewels, amber, and other goods. They got to shore safe and sound, for the wind was in their favour. But I stayed aboard the ship. The skipper got to shore on a plank. The sailors took the building of four rafts in hand; but night came on before they had finished, and the ship was filling. I got up on the poop, and remained there until morning. Then several idolaters came to us in their barque. And we got safe to land.”

His connexion, the Emir, received him warmly. This potentate was about to attack a Hindu Power; and, while he was away on this expedition, Batûta travelled about. He tells us that he came across a fakir with long hair, who sat and ate in the society of seven foxes, and who kept a “happy family”—a gazelle and a lion together. The Emir was a ruthless tyrant, butchering women and children. Yet Batûta had no scruple in proposing a scheme to him for the conquest of the Maldives, where he had received so much kindness, and where he had left wives and paramours. But pestilence came and swept away most of the inhabitants of the district, including the Emir. The new ruler wanted to carry out the scheme for occupying the Maldives; but Batûta got fever badly, and very nearly died. When sufficiently recovered, he received permission to recuperate his energies by taking the long voyage round Cape Comorin to Honawar, where he wished to meet his old friend, Jamâl Oddîn, again. But, from time immemorial, the sea had been a no-mans province, infested by pirates; and the calling, continuous or accidental, of sea-thief was then as honourable as it was ancient. His ship was attacked by twelve Hindu craft, and taken after a severe battle. Batûta was stripped of his jewels and all his belongings, and set on shore with a pair of breeches on. He lost the notes of his travels with his other belongings. Out of the way of direct business, the robbers could be merciful, and there was no reason why they should take his life. He made his painful way to Calicut, and put up at a mosque—always the asylum of the indigent. Some of the lawyers and traders here had known him at Delhi. They clothed, fed, and housed him. What was he to do? He dared not return to Delhi. A son had been borne to him by a Maldive wife. He had a desire to see the child. The vizier was dead; but the queen had married again, and he wondered what sort of reception he should get. Paternal tenderness prevailed: “I went there on account of my little son; but when I had seen him, I left him with his mother, out of kindness to her.” He was hospitably entertained, but stayed a very few days. The new vizier furnished him with those provisions which every traveller by sea must purchase for himself and carry with him in the fourteenth century; and he set sail for Bengal, where he arrived after 43 days at sea (A.D. 1341).