The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (65 page)

Nikitin on the people of Bidar: ‘They are all black and wicked, and the women are all harlots, or witches, or thieves and cheats, and they destroy their masters with poison.’

Abu Zaid: ‘The Chinese are men of pleasure; but Indians condemn pleasure and abstain from it.’

Timur in his autobiography offers brief descriptions of some of the Indian communities he came across. The Jats, he writes, are ‘a robust race … [They] had not their equals in theft and highway robbery … Jats were as numerous as ants or locusts, and … no traveller or merchant passed unscathed from their hands.’ Timur decided to suppress them in order to secure the roads, and he claims that, marching into jungles, he ‘slew 2,000 demon-like Jats, made their wives and children captives, and plundered their cattle and property.’ Timur is more respectful in his description of Rajputs, the military aristocracy of North India, whom he describes as ‘a class which supplies the most renowned soldiers of India.’

Chach-nama
on Jats: ‘They have the disposition of savages, and always rebelled against their sovereign. They plunder on the roads.’

Battuta, a keen admirer of female charms, is all praise for Maratha women: ‘God has endowed Maratha women with special beauty, particularly in their noses and eyebrows.’ And about Malwa he writes that ‘their women … are exceedingly beautiful and famous for their charms of company.’

Idrisi, a twelfth-century Sicilian chronicler: ‘Indians are naturally inclined to justice and never depart from it in their actions. Their good faith, honesty and fidelity to engagements are well-known, and they are so famous for these qualities that people flock to their country from every side; hence the country is flourishing.’

Siraj on the role of astrologers in India: In one instance, when a queen was about to deliver, astrologers cautioned that the child would be unlucky if born just then, ‘but if the birth occurred two hours later the child would reign for eighty years. When his mother heard this opinion of the astrologers, she ordered her legs to be tied together, and caused herself to be hung with her head downwards. She also directed the astrologers to watch for the auspicious time. When they all agreed that the time for delivery had come, she ordered herself to be taken down, and Lakhmaniya was born directly, but he had no sooner come into the world than his mother died from the anguish she had endured.’

Battuta on a reservoir outside Delhi: It is ‘a large reservoir … from which the inhabitants draw their drinking water. It is supplied by rain water, and is about two miles in length and half that in breadth. In the centre there is a great pavilion built of squared stones, two stories high. When the reservoir is filled with water it can be reached only in boats, but when the water is low the people go into it. Inside it is a mosque, and at most times it is occupied by mendicants … When the water dries up at the sides of the reservoir, they sow sugarcanes, cucumbers, green melons and pumpkins there. The melons and pumpkins are very sweet but of small size.’

Tome Piers on Kerala: ‘In Malabar it is the custom for woman to have her eyes on the bed during coitus, and for man to have his eyes on the ceiling. This is the general practice among the great and small, and they consider anything else to be strange and foreign to their condition … The Nair women of Malabar have no virtue, nor do they sew and work, but only eat and amuse themselves.’

Barbosa: Among Nairs in Kerala, when a girl comes of age, her ‘mother goes about searching and asking some young man to take her daughter’s virginity … They regard it among themselves as a disgrace and a foul thing to take a woman’s virginity … These Nayre women at their periods shut themselves up in a house apart for three days, touching no one, and prepare their food in separate pans and dishes … It is an article of faith with them (Nairs) that every woman who dies virgin is damned.’

Barbosa: ‘The distinctive
kudumi
knot of the Malayali … does not hang down behind as with Tamils, but lies on the top of the head or is drawn around to the left of the forehead.’