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An Indian Shield

Chapter 3 – The Great Moghul and European Travellers – 1605–1627 A.D.

Toward the close of the sixteenth century the curious began to listen to rumours, vague indeed, but impossible to be ignored, of a new and singular power that had arisen in the East. Stories were told of an emperor who had conquered the whole of Hindustan, and was ruling his vast dominions with extraordinary wisdom. Strange tales were bruited of his toleration. It was said that Christians were sure of a welcome at his court; that he had even taken a Christian to wife. Toleration was sufficiently out of tune with Tudor England, but in the barbarous East it possessed the charm of the wholly unexpected. The name and character of the Great Moghul became the

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common talk. In a few years Englishmen came to see him face to face, as no Indian king had been seen by Europeans since the days when Alexander met Porus on the plains of the Jihlam.

Hitherto, India, except in parts of the coasts of the peninsula, had been practically a terra incognita. What little was known had filtered through Portuguese missionaries, and one has only to turn over a few pages of the travels of Europeans in the first quarter of the seventeenth century to realize how little these writers were prepared for the sights they saw. They found a novel and almost undreamt of civilization, possessing elements of practical statesmanship and sagacity which the most philosophic of them all, the French physician Bernier, deemed worthy of commendation to the serious consideration of the minister of Louis XIV. They met with a series of spectacles, ceremonies, customs, religions, and systems of government which were wholly unforeseen; and where they expected to find at the utmost rude and vacuous pomp, they encountered literature and learning, poetry and art, and a reasoned theory of government, which, in spite of their Western prejudices, fairly compelled their admiration. With all this they discovered only too many examples of superstition and degradation, and witnessed scenes of savage cruelty contrasted with barbaric splendour; yet the splendour and the degradation were such as belong not to uncivilized races, but to the exuberance of a great empire.

The native annalists of the Moghul period are both

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numerous and authoritative. No one who has studied the invaluable series of volumes in which the late Sir Henry Elliot and Professor Dowson epitomized the “History of India as told by its own Historians,” and extracts from which are given in the fifth volume of the present series, will be disposed to depreciate the importance of the Persian chronicles therein rendered with such erudition and skill. But the native writers have serious defects. They are prone to panegyric and are disposed to exaggerate the merits of reigning sovereigns and contemporary magnates with the traditional obsequiency of the Oriental author. They are apt to suppress facts which tell against their hero, and it is rare to come across an Indian writer with the critical or historical faculty. Besides, they naturally assume a familiarity with the every-day customs and methods of the age in India which a Western reader does not possess. They write as Indians for Indians. Had we to depend entirely upon them, our insight into life in the Moghul empire in the seventeenth century would be shallow. Fortunately we have other witnesses. Europeans of various nations, qualified in many respects to observe with penetration and record with accuracy, visited India in the period of Moghul supremacy, and their observations complete and correct with singular minuteness the narratives of native chroniclers.

The Fates were unusually propitious when they ordained that the Saturnian Age of Moghul power should coincide with the new epoch in European intercourse with the East. Up to the closing years of the

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A budgerow, Calcutta

sixteenth century a single European nation had held the monopoly of commerce in the East Indies. When Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and landed at Calicut in 1498, the trade with India and the Far East passed into a Portuguese channel.

The old routes had been in the hands of Mohammedan traders, who shipped their goods by the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and so overland to Syrian and Egyptian ports, whence the merchandise found its way to Europe in Venetian bottoms. These routes were tapped at their source when Portugal acquired the command of the Indian Ocean. In the hands of such heroes as Pacheco, Almeida, and Albuquerque, the control of Portugal over the whole of the commerce with the East Indies, Spice Islands, and China was assured. Arab traders and Egyptian navies sought in vain to oust the invaders of their ancient privileges. From the Cape of Good Hope to China the extended coast-line was armed with a chain of Portuguese fortresses, and no ship could sail without a Portuguese passport.

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But the age of heroes for Portuguese India passed away, and there were still no signs of a consolidated Portuguese empire in the East. Albuquerque had dreamed of such an empire, in the spirit of a Dupleix or a Clive, and he had exhausted his little nation by the constant drain of colonization. His policy had not been continued, and an empire on Indian soil was abandoned in favour of fortified trading centres supported by the command of the Eastern seas. The forts remained, but no attempt at any more ambitious settlement was made; and should the command of the seas be lost, there was nothing to save the commerce of Portugal with the East. The Spanish annexation in 1580 was the death-blow to Portuguese enterprise in the Indies; but the corruption of the nobles themselves, who found their Capua in the tropical verdure of Old Goa, had already paved the way to ruin. In 1597 the Dutch appeared in the Indies, and a few years later they were joined by the English, upon the incorporation of the first East India Company on the 31st of December, 1600. Even as early as Pyrard de Laval’s voyage in 1607 the Dutch had almost destroyed the Portuguese monopoly of commerce with the Far East; and as soon as the English founded their factory at Surat, the Indian trade began to be transferred from Portuguese to English bottoms. The naval victories of Best and Downton off Surat and in Swally Roads decided the command of the sea, and the Indian trade of Portugal practically came to an end.

The opening of English trade with India was followed

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by the arrival in the Moghul empire of European travellers, and the publication of their experiences. Two sea-captains, Hawkins and Herbert; Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador; two clergymen, Terry and Ovington; Dr. Fryer, and Hedges, the Company’s Agent and Governor, form a tolerably representative group of Englishmen, and there were many more, as may be seen in the recently edited correspondence of the East India Company’s factors. France sent Pyrard, who did not get beyond the Portuguese settlements in India; but the travels of Tavernier, Thevenot, and Bernier are among our best authorities. Pietro della Valle was “a noble Roman,” Mandelslo a gentleman of the court of the Duke of Holstein, Gemelli Careri a Neapolitan doctor, and Maimed. a Venetian. In such a cloud of witnesses of varied ranks, professions, and nationalities, truth, divested of insular or continental prejudice, may surely be found. The body of information furnished by their journals, letters, and travels, is indeed of priceless value to the historian of India.

The visit of William Hawkins to the court of the Great Moghul at Agra was a memorable event in the history of British intercourse with India. He was the first Englishman ever received by the Emperor of Hindustan as the official representative of the King of England, and he obtained from the Great Moghul the first distinct acknowledgment of the rights of British commerce in India. Hawkins sailed with Sir Francis Drake on his voyage to the South Seas in 1577. Thirty years later, in 1607, he commanded the “Hector” for

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the East India Company on a voyage to Surat, charged with letters and presents from James I “to the princes and governors of Cambaya, on account of his experience and language.” He arrived at the bar of Surat, August 24, 1608, and soon discovered that his credentials would have to be presented to a higher potentate than those of Cambay. After twenty days he obtained leave to land his cargo, and was told he must deliver the king’s letter to the Great Moghul in person. Accordingly, he dismissed his vessel to trade with a new cargo to Bantam. The Portuguese, however, were not yet innocuous, and their ships captured the “Hector” as soon as she sailed. The Portuguese captain-major received Hawkins’s remonstrances with contempt, and set to “vilely abusing his Maiestie, tearming him King of Fishermen, and of an Island of no import, and a ––– for his Commission.” To these ignominious expressions a Portuguese naval officer added that “these seas belonged unto the King of Portugall, and none ought to come here without his license.” Such was the reception of the first envoy of England at the port of the Great Moghul.

Hawkins soon found that his troubles had only begun. Notwithstanding Akbar’s administrative reforms, it is clear that the local authorities in Gujarat were oppressive and venal, and nothing could be done without a bribe. The governor pillaged the seaman’s goods, paying only “such a price as his owne barbarous conscience afforded. He came to my house three times, sweeping me cleane of all things that were good.” Matters came to such a pass that the traveller had to defend

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Gold coins of Jahangir.

his house by force of arms, for Padre Pineiro offered the governor forty thousand “ryals of eight” if he would deliver up Hawkins to the Portuguese. At last, on February 1, 1608–9, he received a pass for his journey to Agra. At Burhanpur he saw the viceroy of the Deccan, who received him well, talked to him in Turkish (a language with which Hawkins was familiar) for three hours, of course accepted a present, and invested him with “two Clokes, one of fine Woolen and another of Cloth of Gold; giving mee his most kind letter of favour to the King, which avayled much.

This done, he imbraced me, and so we departed.” A guard of Pathans hardly sufficed to save the traveller from several attempts at assassination, or what he believed to be such (for one cannot but suspect that the gallant captain made the most of his perils), but at length, “after much labour, toyle, and many dangers,” he arrived at Agra on April 16, 1609.

At this time Akbar had been dead nearly four years, and a very different personage sat on the throne. The Emperor Salim, entitled Jahangir, or “Grasper of the World,” formed a striking contrast to his father, against whom he had more than once openly rebelled. Born

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under a superstitious spell, named after a wonder-working saint, petted and spoilt, the boy grew up wilful, indolent, and self-indulgent, too lazy and too indifferent to be either actively good or powerfully evil. He had instigated the murder of Akbar’s trusted friend and minister, Abu-l-Fazl; he was possessed of a violent and arbitrary temper; and, like his wretched brothers, Murad and Daniyal, he was a notorious and habitual drunkard, although, unlike them, he could control himself when necessary. His image may be seen depicted on his coins, wine-cup in hand, with unblushing effrontery: it is of a piece with the astonishingly simple candour of his own memoirs. As he grew older he toned down somewhat, partly, he says, from a conviction that he was injuring his health, but chiefly, no doubt, under the influence of his beautiful and talented wife Nur Jahan, the “Light of the World.”

When he ascended the throne in 1605, at the age of thirty-seven, his character, never wanting in a certain indolent good-nature, had mellowed. He had become less savage and more sober; by day he was the picture of temperance, at night he became exceeding “glorious.” But what was done in the evening was entirely ignored in the morning, and any noble who ventured to approach the daily levees with the least odour of wine upon him was destined to certain and severe punishment. Jahangir carried his daylight sobriety so far as even to publish an edict against intemperance, and he emulated his far more contemptible “brother” James of Great Britain by writing a Persian counterblast against tobacco.

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In spite of his vices, which his fine constitution supported with little apparent injury almost to his sixtieth year, he was no fool; he possessed a shrewd intelligence, and he showed his good sense in carrying on the system of government and principle of toleration inaugurated by Akbar. He was not deficient in energy when war was afoot; he was essentially just when his passions were not thwarted; and he cultivated religious toleration with the easy-going indifference which was the key-note of his character. The son of an eclectic philosopher and a Rajput princess, he professed himself a Moslem, restored the Mohammedan formulas of faith which Akbar had abandoned on the coinage, and revived the Hijra chronology, although for regnal years and months he preserved the more convenient solar system. He followed his father, however, in his policy toward the Hindus, and was equally tolerant toward Christians. He allowed no persecution or badges of heresy, but welcomed the Jesuit father Corsi to his court, encouraged artists to adorn the imperial palaces with pictures and statues of Christian saints, and had two of his nephews baptized, doubtless for reasons of his own. He could be magnanimous and forgiving, when he was not angry. He even bestirred himself to redress the grievances of the people – witness his specious “Institutes” – and had a chain and bell attached to his room at the palace, so that all who wished to appeal to him might ring him up without running the gauntlet of the officials. But it is not on record that anybody was hardy-enough to pull the bell.

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William Hawkins was the first to set on record a portrait of this “talented drunkard,” and very curious it is. It was a singular situation for a bluff sea-captain to find himself, in a strange land, called upon to meet a great emperor, about whom absolutely nothing was known in England. There was nothing to suggest the most distant dream that in two centuries and a half the slight introduction Hawkins was then effecting between England and India would culminate in the sovereignty of a British queen over the whole empire where the “Light of the World” and her imperial husband then reigned. The gift of prophecy would doubtless have added considerably to the sailor’s feeling of responsibility. As it was, he was quickly put at his ease by the complaisant emperor. Jahangir was so eager to see this messenger from a new country that he scarcely gave him time to put on his “best attyre”; and so far from seeming annoyed at the poverty of his offering – for the governor of Surat had left him nothing but cloth for a present – the emperor “with a most kind and smiling countenance bade me most heartily welcome,” reached down from the throne to receive his letter, and, having read it by the aid of an old Portuguese Jesuit (who did his best to prejudice him), promised “by God, that all what the King had there written he would grant and allow with all his heart, and more.” Jahangir then took his visitor into the private audience-chamber, where they had a long conversation, and, on leaving, Hawkins was commanded to return every day. The language of the court was

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Persian, though everyone could speak Hindustani; but Jahangir and several of his ministers were also familiar with Turkish, the native tongue of Babar and his descendants, and this was the language in which the emperor conversed with Hawkins. “Both night and day, his delight was very much to talk with mee, both of the Affaires of England and other Countries.”

The two evidently suited each other well. Hawkins would have felt constrained in the presence of Akbar, but it was impossible to regard his son – at least of an evening – in any other light than as a jovial and somewhat tipsy boon-fellow. Hawkins for his part was a simple honest sailor, a little inclined to bluster, but just the man to take the emperor in the right way, and not at all apt to be shocked at an extra allowance of grog. The result of the harmony between the two was that Hawkins acquired a footing in the court more intimate than was ever afterwards enjoyed by any European, and held it for years in spite of the strenuous opposition of the Jesuits. At one time Jahangir granted everything that the Englishman asked, “swearing by his Father’s soule, that if I would remeyne with him, he would grant me articles for our Factorie to my heart’s desire, and would never go from his word.” He talked of sending an ambassador to England, and tried to induce Hawkins to make India his home, promising to make him a mansabdar, or officer of four hundred horse, with an allowance of £3,200 a year. He even admitted him within the red rails before the throne, where only the greatest nobles stood, and

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Palace of Jahangir at Agra.

saluted him by the lofty title of “Inglis Khan”: all of which mightily delighted the honest captain.

No wonder “the Portugalls were like madde Dogges.” The English khan was universally envied; but he had to work hard for his glory. Jahangir gave him little liberty.

Half of every twenty-four hours he served the emperor, by day and night, and he was obliged to marry an Armenian – a “white Mayden out of his Palace” – to cook his meals for him, for fear of poison being mixed with his food. His position was, moreover, extremely precarious. The commission for an English factory at Surat was first granted, and then, under pressure from the Portuguese viceroy, withdrawn. “Let the English come no more,” said the

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emperor, weary of the squabble. But Hawkins knew the way to mend the matter, and on his giving Jahangir a fresh present, this order was rescinded: “so this time againe I was afloate.” Then the Portuguese plied the emperor with bribes, and Hawkins fell out of favour. Nur Jahan reversed this state of things for the moment, but Hawkins found it impossible to pin the emperor to his promises, and retired from court in disgust on November 2, 1611. He sailed for Bantam in the following January in Sir Henry Middleton’s fleet, and died a couple of years later on his voyage home.

Hawkins’s intimacy with the Great Moghul gave him unrivalled opportunities for observation, but he was not an educated or penetrating observer. A good deal of his information is obviously based upon hearsay, but there is a large amount of first-hand evidence which no historian of Mohammedan India can afford to neglect. He describes the life-peers, or “men of Livings or Lordships” as he calls them, in their several ranks, from those “of the Fame of twelve thousand Horsemen” down to those of twenty horse, and says there were altogether three thousand in receipt of such grants. The army raised by these mansabdars amounted to three hundred thousand horsemen, who were maintained out of the income allowed to their rank. On their death, all their property went to the emperor, and “all the lands belong to him,” but “commonly he dealeth well” with their children. The king’s yearly income he estimated at fifty crores of rupees, or over fifty millions of pounds. The royal treasury

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A combat with iron claws

contained an infinity of gold plate and jewels, including five hundred drinking-cups, some of which were made of “one piece of Ballace Ruby.” The servants, gardeners, grooms, and others, attending upon the court, he estimated at thirty-six thousand. There were also twelve thousand elephants, three hundred of which were reserved exclusively for the emperor’s use.

The daily expenses of the court were fifty thousand rupees, besides thirty thousand for the harem; or, altogether, £9,000, which comes to three and a quarter millions a year.

Hawkins describes the emperor as far from popular with his subjects, “who stand greatly in fear of him,” and ascribes this partly to his preference for Mohammedans

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over Rajputs for posts of honour and command, and partly to his innate cruelty. Jahangir took pleasure in seeing men executed or torn to pieces by his elephants, and the dangerous sport of elephant fights was his favourite spectacle on five days in the week. He was said to have killed his secretary with his own hand on mere suspicion, and to have flogged a man almost to death for breaking a dish. He delighted in combats between men and animals, and made an unarmed man fight with a lion till he was torn to shreds. At last the keepers contrived to tame fifteen young lions, who played before the king, “frisking betweene men’s legs,” and with these animals as opponents the combats became comparatively bloodless. All this cruelty, added to a rapacious and severe government, produced disaffection among his subjects. Thieves and outlaws infested the roads, and many rebellions broke out.

The daily life of the Emperor Jahangir was scarcely edifying. “About the breake of day, he is at his Beades, with his face turned to the westward in a private faire room,” in which was “the picture of Our Lady and Christ, graven in stone.” Then he showed himself to the people, who flocked to bid him good-morrow. Two hours of sleep ensued, then dinner, after which the emperor retired to the harem. At noon he again held public levee till three, and witnessed the elephant fights and other sports. The nobles at Agra all came and paid him homage, and he heard all causes and complaints. He then said his prayers, and had a

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meal of four or five sorts of well-dressed meats, of which “he eateth a bit to stay his stomach, drinking once of his stronge drinke. Then he cometh forth into a private roome, where none can come but such as himself nominateth (for two yeeres I was one of his attendants here). In this place he drinketh other five cupfuls, which is the portion that the Physicians alot him. This done he eateth opium, and then he ariseth, and being in the height of his drinke, he layeth him down to sleep, every man departing to his own home. And after he bath slept two houres they awake him, and bring his supper to him, at which time he is not able to feed himselfe; but it is thrust into his mouth by others, and this is about one of the clock; and then he sleepeth the rest of the night.”

Such was Akbar’s successor, and such the sovereign to whom Sir Thomas Roe presented his credentials as ambassador of the King of England in January, 1615. Roe had come to complete what Hawkins had only partly succeeded in effecting. The English agents and traders were still in a humiliating situation, subject to all kinds of indignities, possessing no recognized or valid rights, and obliged to sue and bribe for such slight facilities as they could win. Their chiefs, the agents of the East India Company, had brought scorn upon their nation by “kotowing” to the Moghul dignitaries, cringing to insult, and asserting no trace of dignity; and had even “suffered blowes of the porters, base Peons, and beene thrust out by them with much scorne by head and shoulders without seeking satisfaction.”

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Englishmen were flouted, robbed, arrested, and even whipped in the streets. It was evident that a different manner of man was needed to retrieve the indignity done to our name and honour. Sir Thomas Roe was invited by the directors, after much consideration and debate, to accept the task, and the choice was approved by King James, whose royal commission duly constituted, appointed, ordained, and deputed “the said Sir Thomas Rowe our true and undoubted Attorney, Procurator, Legate, and Ambassador” to that “high and mighty Monarch, the Greate Mogoar, King of the Orientall Indyes, of Condahy, of Chismer, and of Corason.”

Roe was in every way an excellent choice. He combined the business capacity of the great merchant with the urbanity and address of the courtier. His grandfather was lord mayor of London, and the blood of the Greshams ran in his veins; but he was entered at Magdalen College, Oxford, belonged to the Middle Temple, had been esquire of the body to Queen Bess herself, and was on terms of affectionate intimacy with Prince Henry and his sister Elizabeth, the future “Rose of Bohemia.” Not yet thirty-five, he had led a voyage of discovery to Guiana and explored the Orinoco; he had disputed in Latin with Dutch divines; he had even sat for Tamworth in the “Addled Parliament.” The East India directors described him as “of a pregnant understanding, well spoken, learned, industrious, and of a comelie personage,” and Mr. William Foster, the latest and best editor of his journal, justly adds that “his commanding presence and dignified bearing were

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useful qualifications for a mission to an Eastern court, while in the still more important matters of judgment and tact he was equally well equipped. Sprung from a noted City family, he combined the shrewdness, readiness of resource, and business ability which had raised his ancestors to fortune, with the culture and experience obtained by a varied training in most favourable circumstances.”

More than all this, he was a true Elizabethan, with the gallant bravery, the passionate devotion to king and country, and the great-hearted fanaticism of his age. It was not the merchant’s son, but the Elizabethan gentleman, who faced the Moghul prince as an equal, and told an insulting prime minister that “if his greatness were no more than his manners he durst not use me soe; that I was an Ambassador from a mighty and free Prince, and in that quality his better.” When the governor of Surat tried slyly to carry out the odious practice, hitherto tamely allowed, of searching the persons of British subjects, in spite of Roe’s claiming the absolute exemption of an ambassador’s suite, there was a- spirited scene: “Master Wallis breaking out came up after me and tould me this treachery; whereon I turnd my horse and with all speed rode backe to them, I confess too angry. When I came up, I layd my hand on my sword, and my men breake through and came about me. Then I asked what they entended by soe base treachery: I was free landed, and I would die soe, and if any of them durst touch any belonging to me, I bade him speake and shew himself. Then they desired

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me not to take yt in ill part: it was done in Frendship. I called for a Case of Pistolls, and hanging them at my saddle I replyed those were my Frendes, in them I would trust. It was a Custome to be usd to rouges and theeves and not to free men: I was resolved not to return to my Country with shame; I would rather dye there with Honor.”

Roe was certainly no meek-tempered man. His journal is full of similar scenes. But he did well to be angry, and his defiant and punctilious assertion of his dignity as the mirror of his sovereign, his insistence upon every necessary point of courtesy, and his stately refusal to unbend a jot of his proud bearing, had their due effect. When he came to India, the English were very nearly on the point of being driven out of even their slight hold at Surat; the influence of the Portuguese at court threatened to oust the scanty merchant colony which, in deep humiliation, was unconsciously laying the foundations of an empire; the Moghul authorities were accustomed to treat the English as beggars to be spurned. All this was changed before he left. Despite the opposition of the prince, afterwards Shah Jahan, who almost ruled his father, and who, as governor of Surat, had the means of making his enmity felt; in spite of the intrigues of the empress, the prime minister, and the Jesuits, Roe not merely asserted his countrymen’s rights, but won a series of important diplomatic victories. He compelled the court favourite to refund his illegal exactions, and “recovered all bribes, extortions, debts made and taken before my

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House of carved teak, Surat.

tyme till this day, or at least an honourable composition.” His firmness and courage, combined with wary management, were too much for the cleverness of Father Corsi, and the Portuguese almost lost their influence.

The emperor and his son were men fully capable of measuring and admiring Roe’s manly qualities; and his independence and dogged persistence, supported by natural dignity and courtliness, won from the Moghul authorities as much advantage as could at that time be expected.

The ambassador tried in vain to obtain a general

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treaty, embodying articles resembling the capitulations granted in Turkey. Experience taught him that the time was not ripe for any such concession, and the Moghul emperor was too ignorant of foreign kingdoms to measure India with them. “Neyther will this overgrowne Eliphant,” said Roe, “descend to Article or bynde himselfe reciprocally to any Prince upon terms of Equality, but only by way of favour admitt our stay.” “You can never expect to trade here upon Capitulations that shall be permanent. Wee must serve the tyme.” All he could obtain were firmans, or orders to the local authorities, sanctioning the English trade at Surat upon reasonably satisfactory terms. “You shall be sure of as much priviledge as any stranger,” Jahangir promised, and he kept his word. The English factory at Surat was set on a sufficiently stable basis, and officially recognized by emperor and prince-governor.

Indeed, Roe was disposed to judge favourably of the Moghul authorities, considering their ignorance and the uncertainty of their official position. “All the Government dependes upon the present will,” he wrote in 1618, “whose appetite only governs the lordes of the kingdome; but their Justice is generallie good to strangers; they are not rigorous, except in searching for thinges to please [i. e. presents and luxuries], and what trouble we have is for hope of them, and by our owne disorders.” He noted the turbulence of the English crews and even of some of the factors, and warned the Company against a policy of aggression: “A war

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and trafique are incompatible. By my consent, you shall no way engage yourselves but at sea, when you are like to gayne as often as to loose. It is the beggering of the Portugall, notwithstanding his many rich residences and territoryes, that bee keepes souldiers that spendes it; yet his garrisons are meane. He never profited by the Indyes since bee defended them. Observe this well. It hath beene also the error of the Dutch, who seeke Plantation heere by the sword. They have a woonderfull stocke, they proule in all Places, they Posses some of the best; yet ther dead Payes consume all the gayne. Lett this bee received as a rule that if you will Profitt, seeke it at Sea, and in quiett trade; for without controversy it is an error to affect Garrisons and Land warrs in India.”

Roe’s journal is perhaps better known than any similar work on India; but it is extremely limited in its scope. It deals almost exclusively with the court and the ambassador’s audiences with the emperor, and with the political intrigues of the time, but of the state of the country it reveals little. As a record of court life, however, it forms an admirable complement to Hawkins’ narrative. Sir Thomas was admitted to the king’s privacy almost with the freedom which the seaman enjoyed. Indeed, Jahangir seemed to be unable to distinguish between an ambassador and a buccaneer, and entertained his excellency with a familiar joviality which severely tried the patience of the grave diplomatist. He made him sneeze with his “strong drink,” to the delight of the assembled court, and then fell asleep

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A Dancing Girl, or Bayadere

The nautch girls, or professional dancers in India, are sometimes spoken of in European writings as the Bayaderes, a term borrowed from the Portuguese, who thus designated them. They are frequently connected with the temples and called Devadasis, “Servants of the Gods,” acting as handmaidens of the priests who minister in the shrines.

in his cups, when the candles were immediately “popped out” and Sir Thomas “groppt” his way out in the dark. Jahangir especially piqued himself on his taste for art; pictures and statues, even of the Madonna, adorned his palace, and in the hall of audience were displayed pictures of “the King of England, the Queen, the Lady Elizabeth, the Countesse of Somerset and Salisbury, and of a Citizen’s wife of London; below them, another of Sir Thomas Smith, Governour of the East-India Companie.” When Roe showed him an English picture, he immediately had it copied by Indian artists, so that the owner could not tell which was the original, whereat the Great Moghul “was very merry and joy-full, and craked like a Northerne man.” In his usual communicative mood of an evening, “with many passages of jests, mirth, and bragges concerning the Arts of his Country, hee fell to aske me questions, how often I drank a day, and how much, and what? what Beere was? how made? and whether I could make it here? In all which I satisfied his great demands of State.”

The ambassador must have found the privy council room of an evening anything but a suitable place for business. One night he was summoned thither after he had got to bed, merely to show the Great Moghul a portrait. “When I came in I found him sitting cross-legd on a little Throne, all clad in Diamonds, Pearls, and Rubies, before him a table of Gold, in it about fiftie pieces of Gold plate, set all with stones, his Nobilitie about him in their best equipage, whom he commanded to drinke froliquely, several wines standing by in great

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flagons. So drinking, and commanding others, his Majestie and all his Lords became the finest men I ever saw, of a thousand humours.” At other times Jahangir waxed solemn and sentimental: “The good King fell to dispute of the Lawes of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, and in drinke was so kinde, that he turned to me and said: I am a king, you shall be welcome: Christians, Moores, Jewes, he medled not with their faith; they came all in love, and he would protect them from wrong, they lived under his safety, and none should oppresse them; and this often repeated, but in extreame drunkenesse, he fell to weeping and to divers passions, and so kept us till midnight.” On another occasion the ambassador found him sharing the coarse meal of “a filthy beggar” – a holy fakir, no doubt – “taking him up in his armes, which no cleanly body durst, imbracing him, and three times laying his hand on his heart, calling him father “: for superstition was a potent factor in this singular specimen of royalty.

Among the court festivals which Sir Thomas Roe witnessed, none was more curious than the process of weighing the Great Moghul. “The first of September was the King’s Birth-day, and the solemnitie of his weighing, to which I went, and was carryed into a very large and beautiful Garden, the square within all water, on the sides flowres and trees, in the midst a Pinacle, where was prepared the scales, being hung in large tressels, and a crosse beame plated on with Gold thinne: the scales of massie Gold, the borders set with small stones, Rubies and Turkeys, the Chaines of Gold large

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And massie, but strengthened with silke Cords. Here attended the Nobilitie, all sitting about it on Carpets until the King came; who at last appeared clothed or rather loden with Diamonds, Rubies, Pearles, and other precious vanities, so great, so glorious; his Sword, Target, Throne to rest on, correspondent; his head, necke, breast, armes, above the elbows, at the wrists, his fingers every one, with at least two or three Rings; fettered with chaines, or dyalled Diamonds; Rubies as great as -’Pal-nuts, some greater; and Pearles such as mine eyes were amazed at. Suddenly he entered into the scales, sate like a woman on his legges, and there was put in against him many bagges to fit his weight, which were changed six times, and they say was silver, and that I understood his weight to be nine thousand rupias, which are almost one thousand pounds sterling: after with Gold and Jewels, and precious stones, but I saw none, it being in bagges might be Pibles; then against Cloth of Gold, Silk, Stuffes, Linen, Spices, and all sorts of goods, but I must believe for they were in fardles. Lastly against Meale, Butter, Come, which is said to be given to the Banian.”

One of the lights thrown by Roe’s journal on the administration of the Moghul Empire is contained in his report of a conversation which he held with the “Viceroy of Patan,” which shows the profits derived by the mansabdars, or life-peers, from their appanages: “As for his Government of Patan onely, he gave the King eleven Lackes of Rupias (the Rupia sterling is two shillings two pence), all other profits were his, wherein

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he had Regall authoritie to take what he list, which was esteemed at five thousand horse, the pay of every one at two hundred Rupias by the yeare, whereof he kept fifteene hundred, and was allowed the Surplusse as dead pay: besides the King gave him a Pension of one thousand Rupias a day, and some smaller governments. Yet he assured me there were divers had double his entertainment, and about twenty equall.” This being translated means that the governor of Patna was an officer, or mansabdar, of the rank of five thousand horsemen, nominally, but was expected to maintain a force of only fifteen hundred, which cost him three hundred thousand rupees a year. Nevertheless, he drew from the imperial treasury at the rate of five thousand horse, or one million rupees, thus gaining seven hundred thousand profit, besides whatever he could sweat out of the taxes of the province which was farmed out to him, except for the one million one hundred thousand rupees which he had to pay as rent to the treasury. In other words, this official drew a fixed salary of nearly £80,000 a year, besides what he could make out of the taxes, and without reckoning the pension of one thousand rupees a day, which is probably a confused repetition of the three hundred thousand allowed for the troops. It was at any rate four times the pay of a British viceroy of India.

Roe had no easy time, what with the intrigues of the court, the vacillations of the emperor, and the hostility of the Dutch, for whom he always nourished an inveterate dislike. “They wrong you in all Parts, and grow

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to insufferable insolencies, and vse vs woorse than any braue enemie would or any other but vnthanckfull drunckards that wee haue releeued from Cheese and Cabbage, or rather from a Chayne with bread and water.” In his solitude and harassments his great consolation was the sense of duty ungrudgingly performed, and he could write to his employers proudly, yet without boasting, “My sincerity toward you in all Actions is without spott; my Neglect of Privat Gayne is without example, and my frugalitye beyond your expectation. I was neuer an ill husband of my Credit nor any trust committed to mee. My Patrimoniall vnthriftines only I feele and repent. I will bragg of no industrie nor successe. Judge mee by my Actions, Not by the fauour of an Infidel King, with whom yet I stand on such outward showes of Creditt as Neuer any stranger did.” His “frugalitye” was indeed extraordinary. He kept up the embassy on about £250 a year; his own salary was only £600; and though the Company received him with twelve coaches at Tower Wharf, and voted him £1,500 for his services, he returned a poor man, and was thankful to accept another mission from the king, though it involved a second exile, this time to Constantinople. In those days it was an exception for a man in his position to refuse, as unworthy of his high office, the many opportunities for making money in India; but Thomas Roe was fashioned in a refined and exalted ideal of conduct, and his high principles and noble character stand clearly revealed in his writings.

We shall obtain no more familiar glimpses of the jocund

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Tomb of Nur Jahan’s father at Agra.

court of Jahangir after Sir Thomas Roe’s departure in 1618. The ambassador’s chaplain, Edward Terry, in his “Voyage to the East Indies,” adds little; nor is much to be learnt about the court, or even the country and government, from the travels of Pietro della Valle, who visited Surat, Ahmadabad, and Cambay in 1623, and then turned south to Goa.

He gives an amusing account of the sumptuous mode of life among the English merchants of Surat, but he has little to tell of the Moghul empire, and he did not see the capital. But of the famous empress, the “Seal of Womankind “(Muhri-Nisa), Nur Jahan – or, as she was then called, Nur Mahal – he has this notice: “He has one Wife, or Queen, whom he esteems and favours above all other Women; and his whole Empire is governed at this day by her

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counsel. She was born in India, but of Persian Race, and was formerly wife in India to another Persian Captain, who served the Moghul. After her husband’s death, however, a fair opportunity being offered, as it falls out many times to some handsome young Widows, I know not how, Shah Selim had notice of her and fell in love with her. At length he determined to receive her for his lawful Wife above all the rest, and as such she commands and governs at this day in the King’s Haram with supream authority; having cunningly removed out of the harem, either by marriage, or other handsome ways, all the other Women who might give her any jealousy; and having also made many alterations in the Court by deposing and displacing almost all the old Captains and Officers, and by advancing to dignities other new ones of her own creatures, and particularly those of her blood and alliance. This Queen is called at this day Nurmahal, which signifies ‘Light of the Palace.’ ”

“By degrees,” says Mohammad Hadi, the continuer of Jahangir’s memoirs, “she became, in all but name, undisputed sovereign of the empire, and the king himself was a mere tool in her hands. He used to say that Nur Jahan Begam had been selected, and was wise enough, to conduct the affairs of state, and that he wanted only a bottle of wine and a piece of meat to keep himself merry. Nur Jahan won golden opinions from all people. She was liberal and just to all who begged her support. She was an asylum for all sufferers, and helpless girls were married at the expense of her private

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purse. She must have portioned above five hundred girls in her lifetime, and thousands were grateful for her generosity.”

So great was the influence of this Persian princess that Jahangir joined her name with his own on the coinage, a conjunction unparalleled in the history of Mohammedan numismatics, although there is no real basis for the popular tradition that she issued the famous Zodiacal Mohrs when the emperor appointed her mistress of the mint for a single day. Her unlimited dominion. over her husband, who loved her with a supreme devotion, is the more remarkable since she was no longer young when he married her in 1610, and Indian widows of thirty-four are usually widows indeed. This gifted woman, aided by her subtle brother, Asaf Khan, practically ruled the empire during the greater part of Jahangir’s reign, much to his satisfaction; but although at first her influence kept him straight and benefited the empire, her overweening power, covetousness, and unscrupulous favouritism aroused bitter jealousies; and to the resulting intrigues were due the troubles that darkened the closing days of the self-indulgent emperor, the weakening of the old martial spirit of the Moghuls, the corruption and cupidity of the court, and the rebellion of Jahangir’s son. His reign so far had been successful and curiously little disturbed. There had been hostilities with the rana of Udaipur, which were ended in 1614 by the military genius of Prince Khurram, the future Shah Johan; and, in addition to temporary revolts in Bengal and elsewhere, there was

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the constant difficulty of maintaining a hold upon the Deccan provinces, where there was hard fighting with Malik Amber, the able vizir of the Nizam Shah. The boundaries of the empire remained much where they had been under Akbar, though Kandahar was lost to the Persian Shah in 1622 and was not recovered till it was betrayed to Shah Jahan in 1637. On the whole, the years were tranquil until the question of the succession excited rival interests.

Jahangir’s eldest son, Prince Khusru, who seems to have been always on bad terms with his father, had openly rebelled in the early days of the reign, and on his defeat had been condemned to a lifelong but not severe captivity, while many of his followers were impaled by his infuriated father in the presence of the youth whom they had followed to the death. Khusru had by some quality or other acquired extraordinary popularity – as Roe’s journal repeatedly indicates – and people compassionated his dreary fate, and even rose in open rebellion in his cause, with the like enthusiasm that others in Great Britain showed for Marie Stuart or Prince Charlie. He was believed to have been blinded by his father, but Della Valle explains that, though the eyelids were sewn up, the eyes were still uninjured when Jahangir caused them to be unripped, so that he was not blinded, but saw again, and it was only a temporal penance.” Sir Thomas Roe met him and found him an interesting mystery. The second son, Khurram, reckoned him an exceedingly dangerous factor in politics. What actually happened will never

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be known; but when Prince Khurram went to restore order in the Deccan in 1621, he insisted on taking his elder brother with him, and there the unfortunate Khusru died – of a fever, as was said, but such fevers sometimes happen very opportunely in the East.

Khurram, or Shah Jahan as he was already styled, now became more clearly marked than ever as the future emperor. He was the best general of his time, and had overcome the Rajputs of Udaipur and the many-headed foe in the Deccan. He was an able administrator and a cool, calculating statesman; yet he was intensely unpopular in those early days, however well he overcame the prejudice afterwards. Sir Thomas Roe found him cold and repellent, though always stately and magnificent. “I never saw so settled a countenance,” he wrote, “nor any man keepe so constant a gravitie, never smiling, nor in face shelving any respect or difference of mien.” There was nothing in common between Jahangir and this capable, self-contained son whom the father, depressed by his gravity, plaintively exhorted to take a little wine, “not to excess, but to promote good spirits;” and to Nur Jahan, who had formerly supported him, he became hateful, perhaps the more so since he had won her brother Asaf’s favour by marrying his daughter, the lady of the Taj. Her aim was to induce her husband to name as successor his youngest son (by another wife), Shahriyar, a handsome fool who had married her daughter by her first marriage, and so to keep the dreaded Shah Jahan out of power. Jahangir himself, however, favoured his

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third son, Parviz, who could drink level with himself. The result was civil war. Shah Jahan, no longer impeded by an elder brother’s claim, took the field against his father, but was defeated, and after an attempt at independent sovereignty in Bihar and Bengal in 1624, and a final resort to the protection of his old enemy, Malik Amber, in the Deccan, the rebel prince made his submission, surrendered his few remaining forts, and sent two of his sons, Dara and Aurangzib, as hostages to Agra.

Shah Jahan was now apparently helpless, and the imperious queen next sought to gain the command of the army. The general, Mahabat Khan, however, was not to be won over, and seeing that his own command, even his life, was at stake, he took the bold course of seizing the person of the emperor while he was separated from his guard when on the point of crossing the river Behat (the Hydaspes of the classical writers) on his way to subdue a rising at Kabul in 1626. The empress, far from daunted by this unexpected stratagem, lost not a whit of her splendid courage. She secretly escaped to the imperial guard and marshalled her husband’s troops against the division of his captor, riding at the head of the army on her tall elephant, armed with bow and arrows. Mahabat’s Rajputs had burned the bridge, but the empress was among the first to cross the ford and engage the enemy on the other side. The struggle is thus described by Elphinstone: “A scene of universal tumult and confusion ensued: the ford was choked with horses and elephants; some fell and were trampled

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Tomb of Jahangir at Lahore.

under foot; others sank in the pools and were unable to regain the shore; and numbers plunged into the river and ran the chance of making good their passage or being swept away by the stream.

The most furious assault was directed on Nur Jahan: her elephant was surrounded by a crowd of Rajputs; her guards were overpowered and cut down at its feet; balls and arrows fell thick round her howdah, and one of the latter wounded the infant daughter of Shahriyar, who was seated in her lap. At length her driver was killed; and her elephant, having received a cut on the proboscis, dashed into the river and soon sank in deep water and was carried down the stream. After several plunges he swam out and reached the shore, where Nur Jahan

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Empress Nur Jahan, the wife of Jahangir.

was surrounded by her women, who came shrieking and lamenting, and found her howdah stained with blood, and herself busy in extracting the arrow and binding up the wound of the infant.”

Open war had failed, and the brave woman resorted to other methods. She boldly entered the camp and for months shared her husband’s captivity. By degrees her arts lulled to rest the watchful suspicions of the general; she won over some of the leading officers to her side; and finally the emperor found himself at liberty, with his faithful queen beside him and the army at his command. Mahabat Khan fled to Shah Jahan. The victory came too late, however, for Jahangir had scarcely restored order at Kabul and paid a visit to the happy vale of Kashmir, his favourite summer resort, when he was seized by a mortal sickness, and died in October, 1627, before he had attained his sixtieth year. There was now little use in opposing Shah Jahan, who had Mahabat Khan at his side and the full support of the army. The empress’s brother, the minister Asaf Khan, joined the rising power, which he had always favoured, and Prince Shahriyar, who never had the smallest tide to the throne, was defeated,

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imprisoned, and killed. A temporary stop-gap, Dawar Bakhsh, son of Khusru, vanished as soon as Shah Jahan appeared from his distant exile in Shad. The great empress proudly retired into private life, wearing thenceforward the white robe of mourning for her queer, loving husband. She was held in honour, and drew a handsome pension; but she appeared no more in public, and maintained her rigid seclusion until in 1646 she was laid in her grave close beside the tomb of Jahangir at Lahore.

Coin of Jahangir and Nur Jahan.

Struck at Agra, A.H. 1037 (A.D. 1627–8).

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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