CHAPTER VII.

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.