However, geographical knowledge went through a major change in the sixteenth century. At the centre of this revolution were Geradus Mercator and Abraham Ortilius, both from the Low Countries.
The Low Countries form the coastal region in north-western Europe. These include Belgium, the Netherlands, and the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt and Ems rivers, where a large part of the Land is at or below sea level.
Mercator was born in 1512 near Antwerp and by the time he was twenty-four, he was already an expert map-maker. He doesn’t seem to have travelled to the faraway lands that were being newly discovered but he put together all the information available about them. In 1538, he published his first world map that is one of the earliest to have the names of North and South America. He also showed Asia and America to be separate continents long before the discovery of the Bering Strait proved it.
Mercator lived in a time of religious and political chaos. He was an innovator who asked too many questions and was regarded with suspicion. In 1544, he was arrested for being a heretic, someone who was going against the accepted religious beliefs of the times. Thankfully for Mercator, he had powerful friends, or he was sure to have been tortured or even burnt at the stake! A few years later, Mercator shifted East to Duisburg where he produced his most famous work. In 1569, he produced his world map with the lines ‘New and Improved Description of the Lands of the World, amended and intended for the use of navigators.’
The map did not just have better information than earlier maps, it also used a novel way of depicting the curved surface of the world on a flat surface. This was a major innovation.
Did you know?
The ‘Mercator Projection’ is still the most commonly used format for a world map even though it is based on a distortion that squeezes the countries near the equator and stretches those near the poles. This is why countries like Norway and Sweden look much larger than they are in reality while India and Indonesia look definitely smaller.
Ortilius produced the first atlas in 1570 in Antwerp with Mercator’s encouragement. The first edition of the atlas had seventy sheets and was called the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum(Theatre of the World). It was such a big success that forty editions were eventually published. The rediscovery of the classical Greek and Roman works had a deep impact on the Europeans of that time. Ortilius took pains to include a map that tried to fit in the new findings about India with the Periplus and with Arrian’s account of Alexander’s expedition. The map locates cities like Pataliputra and Muzaris accurately though so many years had passed.
THE CITY OF VICTORY
A feature very prominently drawn in early European maps of India is the kingdom of Narsinga that covers much of the southern peninsula. Most modern Indians will not know where this place is but it refers to what is now remembered as the Vijayanagar Empire, which was named after its capital city. It was ruled by Narasingha Raya when the Portuguese first arrived in India. He was not a very important king in the history of Vijayanagar but his name stuck and Europeans continued to mark it on their maps long after he and his empire were gone.
The city of Vijayanagar was established just after the brutal raids of Alauddin Khilji’s general, Malik Kafur. Around 1336, two brothers, Hukka and Bukka, appear to have got together to defeat rival groups and build a fortified new city. This city was called Vijayanagar or City of Victory. At its height in the early sixteenth century, it was probably the largest city in the world.
The city was built across the river from Kishkindha, site of the monkey-kingdom described in the Ramayana. It is a landscape of rock outcrops and gigantic boulders. This was not a coincidence because the rocky terrain would help to defend the city against the military skill of the Turkic cavalry. An additional advantage was that the place had easy access to iron-ore from the mines of Bellary which were nearby. These mines are still in use today.
A number of visitors have described Vijayanagar in those times, including Abdul Razzaq, envoy from the Persian court, and several Europeans such as Domingo Paes and Fernão Nunes. They say that the city was encircled by a series of concentric walls, as many as seven of them! The largest gap between the first and second walls was used mostly for gardens and farming. Within the inner walls were bazaars, homes, mansions and temples. At the core was a magnificent palace-complex surrounded by strong fortifications. Though the city considered itself to be a place where Classical Hinduism was alive and flourishing, it was quite cosmopolitan. That is, it had sizeable numbers of Muslims, christians and even Jews. Paes tells us that ‘the people of this country are countless in number, so much so that I do not want to put it down for fear that it should be thought fabulous.’ He goes on to add, ‘This is the best provided city in the world . . . the streets and markets are full of laden oxen so much so that you cannot get along for them.’
The remains of Vijayanagar can be visited at Hampi in Karnataka and are simply spectacular. Perhaps only the ruins of Angkor in Cambodia can be compared to those of Hampi in terms of sheer scale. It is too large to be explored by foot and you will need a car and a good guide. As described by the travellers, there is still quite a bit of farming that continues within the UNESCO World Heritage Site. People still use the old canals. There are even remains of a system of stone aqueducts that once brought water into the city.
The remains of temples, palaces and bazaars show that the reports of the city’s size were not exaggerated. After decades of excavations, much of the site has still not been uncovered. One of the most remarkable remains is that of Ugra Narasingha—a gigantic sculpture of Lord Vishnu as half-lion and half-man (the Egyptian sphinx is the other way round with the head of a man and the body of a lion). As you will remember, the Vijayanagar Empire was called Narsinga by the early Europeans and this sculpture fits right in.
The ruins of the Vijayanagar are located right across the Tungabhadra from Kishkindha. Almost five hundred years ago, Domingo Paes crossed the river and wrote, ‘People cross to this place in boats which are round like baskets; inside they are made of cane and outside they are covered with leather; they are able to carry fifteen or twenty people and even horses and oxen can use them if necessary but for the most part these animals swim across. Men row them with a sort of paddle, and the boats are always turning around.’ Just like they do now.
In 1565, Vijayanagar was attacked by an alliance of all the Muslim kings of the Deccan. After they were defeated in the Battle of Talikota on 26 January, the Vijayanagar army withdrew instead of defending the capital. The great city was plundered for six months. It never recovered from this attack. Vijayanagar can be considered the last flash of the classical phase of Hindu civilization. The second cycle of India’s urbanization had begun on the banks of the Ganga but ended on the banks of the Tungabhadra.
THE KING OF THE WORLD
By the late 1500s, the Portuguese and the Spanish had competition from rival European nations. In the autumn of 1580, Francis Drake returned to London after he had gone around the world. By 1588, the English had decisively defeated the Spanish. However, it was the Dutch who first took on the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. The Dutch, only recently free from Iberian rule, set up the United East India Company in 1602. In the following year, they had a trading post in Banten, West Java and by 1611 in Jayakarta (later Batavia and now Jakarta). Soon they were challenging the Portuguese along the Indian coast and in Sri Lanka.
Apart from this, the Dutch also had better maps. Thanks to Mercator and Ortilius, they had the upper hand. A map of the Bay of Bengal by Janssan and Hondius printed in the 1630s captures the improvements in the level of knowledge since Waldseemüller a century earlier. The map shows Sri Lanka, the Eastern coastline of India, Bengal, the Burmese coast, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the northern tip of Sumatra.
A lot of details along the coast are shown with major and minor habitations marked out. These include Masulipatnam and Pallecatta. The temple town of Puri in Orissa is marked as Pagod Jagernaten after the temple to Lord Jagannath. Sinc
e it is a chart for ships, depth measurements are marked out in a number of places such as the Gangetic delta. For the first time, we have some concrete information of the interior of the country. For example, the riverport of Ougely (Hooghly) is clearly pointed out. Hooghly was the most important trading centre in Eastern India and even though it’s not as important now, this channel of the Ganga is now named after the old port.
In the meantime, the English had also formed their own East India Company. By 1612, they had set up their first factory at Surat, Gujarat. The company’s position became stronger because of the embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the court of Emperor Jehangir. Roe presented an atlas of the latest European maps to the Mughal court but these maps were politely returned after four days. Was it because the courtiers didn’t understand the maps? It could also be that the maps showed how tiny the Mughal Empire was compared to the world known to the Europeans. Maps have always been about politics, just as they are about geography. Even now, India and China are fighting about how Arunachal Pradesh is shown on the map.
Shah Jehan came to power after Jehangir in 1628. The name Shah Jehan means ‘King of the World’ in Persian and his rule was the golden Age of Mughal architecture. Many monuments, small and great, including the Taj Mahal, were built under him. He also decided to move the capital back to Delhi and build a new city in 1639. The city was called Shahjehanabad—what we now know as Old Delhi.
Shahjehanabad was completed in 1648. It had twenty-seven towers, eleven gates and a population of around 4,00,000. Shah Jehan had chosen a place that was north of the existing city, the northernmost Delhi built so far. It contained a walled palace-complex surrounded by walls of Red Dholpur sandstone—what we call the Red Fort. For lesser buildings, material was taken from older Delhis, especially Dinpanah and Feroze Shah Kotla. The Red Fort was built along the river and during the monsoon, water would have flowed along the palace walls. However, most of the time, there was a beach between the river’s edge and the fort where elephant-fights and other events were organized for the entertainment of the court.
Old Delhi has gone through many changes since these times but you can still see some features that continue to exist. There was a straight and wide avenue that began at the Red Fort’s western gate and ran through the main bazaar to one of the city’s main gates—Chandni Chowk! It was named after the way the full moon once reflected on a canal that ran along the middle of the road.
The French traveller Bernier visited the city a few decades after it was completed. One of the first things that struck him was that the fortifications of both the city and the Red Fort were old-fashioned and not designed to withstand a military attack. Why did Shah Jehan go for such outdated designs? Was it because he felt that his empire was safe and that nobody would try and attack it? Or does it show us that India was already technologically behind the West? Whatever the reason was, this would prove to be a major problem as the Shahjehanabad walls repeatedly failed to hold off attackers over the next two centuries.
Bernier describes the grand palaces of the nobility with their courtyards and walled gardens. He tells us that the rich had raised pavilions set in the middle of gardens and open on all sides to allow the breeze to flow from any direction. The insides of the private apartments had cotton mattresses covered in cloth in summer and carpets in winter. Cushions of brocade, velvet and satin were scattered around the rooms for the use of those sitting down. All of this can be seen in Mughal paintings and buildings that have survived from that time across northern India.
Delhi was not a city that just had grand palaces and mosques. The majority of the people were common folk—shopkeepers, artisans, servants, soldiers and so on. These people lived in huts made of mud and straw that were built between and around the great palaces of the nobility. This means that Shahjehanabad had many slums—just as modern Indian cities do. These slums made it look like the city was a collection of many villages.
Fires were common and Bernier reports that sixty thousand roofs had been gutted in just one year—this might have been an exaggeration but it shows how big a problem this was. This issue had been described 1800 years earlier by the Greek ambassador Megasthenes when he visited Mauryan Pataliputra but it was still not solved in Mughal India. Mughal Delhi was a city of extremes. In Bernier’s words, ‘A man must either be of the highest rank or live miserably.’
The Frenchman describes the bazaars as busy, chaotic and dirty—not very unlike Old Delhi now! He says there were many halwais all over the city but there were many flies too. And dust. There were also shops selling a variety of kebabs and meat preparations. Old Delhi still has these. You get off at the Chawri Bazar Metro stop and then take a rickshaw to the Jama Masjid. Go late at night when the lanes with the kebab-and-sweet-shops are full of people. With smoke rising from the open ovens and the old mosque in the background, it looks so much like medieval Delhi must have!
Bernier was not very tempted by the kebab shops. He says, ‘There is no trusting their dishes, composed for aught I know, of the flesh of camels, horses, or perhaps oxen who have died of disease.’ Did Bernier suffer a bad case of Delhi Belly during his stay?
PEACOCK KEBABS, ANYONE?
At the time that Bernier was travelling through the Mughal Empire, there were many other Europeans—merchants, officials, mercenaries, adventurers—who were also in the country and have left us many colourful accounts of their experiences. One of these was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, also a Frenchman.
In the winter of 1665–66, Tavernier travelled from Agra to Bengal and wrote about his experiences. He says that the imperial highways were full of bullock-cart caravans carrying rice, salt, corn and so on. Although most caravans were made of one or two hundred carts, some were huge with 10,000 to 12,000 oxen! Remember the traffic jams we talked about earlier?
The bullock-cart caravans were driven by nomadic castes called Manaris who travelled the trade routes with their families and belongings. At every stop, they would set up their tents and make a temporary village. Each group had a chieftain who usually wore a string of pearls. There were quarrels between the leaders of rival caravans and sometimes, these got so intense that the disputing parties had to be taken to the emperor! So the ill-tempered truck drivers who now drive on these highways have a long history!
Tavernier says that the travellers had a choice between two kinds of transport—light carriages pulled by bullocks and palanquins carried by men. The carriages cost about a rupee a day and came with cushions and curtains. The palanquins needed about six people to lift and a long journey would mean at least twelve people were there so they could take turns. Each man cost four rupees a month. Some people who wanted to show off would hire twenty to thirty armed guards who came with muskets and bows! These cost as much as the palanquin bearers but were higher in status.
You must have seen modern-day VIPs travelling with little flags on their luxury cars. Tavernier says that in those times, the English and Dutch officials insisted on a flag bearer who walked in front of the party in honour of their respective companies.
In addition to the Sadak-e-Azam highway through the Gangetic plains, there were many other internal trade routes that continued to thrive. As per a tradition that went back to ancient times, trees were planted all along the way to provide shade. This custom was followed even in the twentieth century but somehow, we’ve stopped planting trees along major highways now.
In the south, the road through the Palghat Gap continued to be used to connect the ports of the Kerala coast with the interior. However, the old Dakshina Path seems to have been used lesser and lesser in this period. Instead, there were a number of important trade routes that linked the imperial capitals of Agra and Delhi with the ports of Gujarat. For example, a route used by Peter Mundy of the English East India Company began in Agra and made its way south-west through Fatehpur, Bayana, Ajmer, Jalore, Mehsana, Ahmedabad and finally to Surat. Another route was to travel more directly south from Delhi-Agra to Dholpur, Gwalior, Narwar, Ujjain and final
ly to Mandu. From Mandu, the route turned west to Surat. Bernier tells us that goods from Surat made it to Delhi in four-six days.
Some of these places were important towns but there were many camping areas along the way though their quality wasn’t always the same. The larger ones had spacious walled enclosures where merchants could spend the night safely. Travellers could draw water from the wells and buy provisions. Many of the busy roads had water-stops or ‘piyaus’. Giving a thirsty traveller drinking water was supposed to give one punya (religious merit) and people built piyaus in memory of their loved ones. Many of these old ones still exist alongside the new ones. The road from Delhi to Gurgaon (MG Road) used to have many old piyaus till recently. The last one was demolished in 2009 to make way for the new Metro line.
The quality of the road and accommodation could sometimes be terrible! The Portuguese Catholic priest Friar Sebastian Manrique wrote down many amusing anecdotes of his travels through Orissa and Bengal during the monsoons of 1640. After leaving Jalesar, the priest and his companions found themselves in a small village which did not have a proper caravanserai. They had to spend the night in a large cowshed! The cows were not the problem though. The travellers were attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes! And then, it began to rain and they discovered that the roof leaked! It was almost dawn when Sebastian Manrique was able to sleep but not for long. The cowshed was suddenly full of birds, including two peacocks! The friar’s companions decided to kill and eat the peacocks. They knew that the locals thought the birds to be sacred and tried to hide what they had done. But the truth was discovered by their hosts and an armed mob gathered outside. The friar’s party fled, firing muskets. Such was life on the road in seventeenth-century India!
The Incredible History of India's Geography Page 14
