Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography (21 page)

In 1565, Vijayanagar was attacked by a grand alliance of all the Muslim kings of the Deccan. After being defeated in the Battle of Talikota on 26 January, the Vijayanagar army withdrew instead of defending the capital. It is said that the great city was plundered for six months. It never recovered. 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.

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 his circumnavigation of the globe. By 1588, the English had decisively defeated the Spanish Armada. 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. It was the world’s first company to issue common stock and would grow into a truly enormous multinational company. By 1603, the Dutch 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.

The Dutch were not just helped by the efficiencies of private sector enterprise, but also by the better quality of their maps. Thanks to Mercator and Ortilius, they were at the cutting edge of cartography. A map of the Bay of Bengal by Janssan and Hondius printed in the 1630s shows 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. There is a lot of detail along the coast with both major and minor habitations marked out including
Musalipatam
and
Pallecatta
. The temple-town of Puri
in Orissa is marked as
Pagod Jagernaten
after the temple to Lord Jagannath. Since it is a navigation chart, depth measurements are marked out in a number places such as the Gangetic delta. For the first time, we see some detailed knowledge of the interior of the country. For instance, the riverport of Ougely (Hooghly) is clearly marked out on the westernmost channel of the Ganga. Hooghly was then the most important trading centre in eastern India and, despite its subsequent decline, the river channel continues to bear the name of the old port even today.

Meanwhile, the English had also formed their own East India Company. By 1612, they had set up their first factory at Surat, Gujarat. Its position was strengthened a few years later by the embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the court of Emperor Jehangir. Interestingly, Roe presented an atlas of the latest European maps to the Mughal court but it was politely returned after four days.
¹⁵
It is possible that the courtiers were unused to cartographic representations and could not understand the atlas. However, in my view, it may also have been because it showed how small the Mughal Empire was in relation to the world known to the Europeans. Maps have always had a geo-political aspect to them, and the recent friction between India and China about the depiction of Arunachal Pradesh shows that it remains the case to this day.

Shah Jehan succeeded Jehangir in 1628. The name Shah Jehan means ‘King of the World’ in Persian, and his reign was the golden age of Mughal architecture. Many edifices 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 would be called Shahjehanabad
after himself, although we now know it as Old Delhi. Completed in 1648, it had twenty-seven towers, eleven gates and a population of around 400,000. Shah Jehan had chosen a site that was farther north of the existing city, the northernmost Delhi yet. It contained a walled palace-complex surrounded by walls of red Dholpur sandstone—what we call the Red Fort. For lesser buildings, material was scavenged from the 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.

It is not easy to see the original layout of Shahjehanabad by merely visiting Old Delhi because the city has gone through many changes over the centuries. Nonetheless, one can still discern many of the key features. 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. It remains as Chandni Chowk, 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 and has left us a detailed eyewitness account
¹⁶
. One of the first things that struck Bernier was that the fortifications of both the city and the Red Fort were old-fashioned and not designed to withstand artillery. He states, ‘Considerable as these works may appear, their real strength is by no means great and in my opinion a battery of moderate force would soon level them to the ground’. It is unclear why
Shah Jehan opted for designs that were already considered outdated in the mid-seventeenth century. Perhaps the empire felt so secure that he did not feel it necessary to build for a military siege. Perhaps, it is just another example of the increasing technological gap between India and the West. It would prove a major error as Shahjehanabad’s walls repeatedly failed to hold off attackers over the next two centuries.

Bernier describes the opulent palaces of the nobility with their courtyards and walled gardens. He tells us that the rich had raised pavilions set in the middle of flower-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. This matches what we can see in Mughal paintings and buildings that have survived from that time across northern India.

However, one should not get the impression that Delhi was a city merely of grand palaces and imperial mosques. The majority of the people of Delhi 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. In other words, Shahjehanabad suffered severely from slums, that perennial problem of modern Indian cities. Bernier tells us that these slums gave the city the impression of a collection of many villages. Fires were common and sixty thousand roofs had been gutted in just one year (the number is probably an exaggeration, but point taken). The problem with fires had been described 1800 years earlier by the Greek ambassador
Megasthenes when he visited Mauryan Pataliputra, but had yet to be solved in Mughal India. In other words, Mughal Delhi was a city of extremes. As Bernier puts it, ‘A man must either be of the highest rank or live miserably.’

The Frenchman describes the bazaars as bustling, chaotic and dirty, not dissimilar to what Old Delhi looks like today. He tells us that there were many confectioners (i.e. halwais) all over the city but disapproved of the dust and the flies. There were also shops selling a variety of kebabs and meat preparations. Old Delhi remains home to some excellent kebab shops. The visitor can get off at the Chawri Bazar Metro stop and then take a five-minute rickshaw ride to the Jama Masjid area. Go late at night when the lane with the kebab- and sweet-shops throngs with people. With smoke rising from the open ovens and the old imperial mosque looming in the background, one could be back in medieval Delhi. Bernier, however, was quite suspicious of the kebab shops for he wrote, ‘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’. Perhaps he had suffered a bad case of Delhi Belly during his stay.

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 colourful accounts of their experiences. One of these was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, also a Frenchman. In the winter of 1665–66, he travelled from Agra
to Bengal and wrote about the experiences. We know from his writings that the imperial highways were full of bullock-cart caravans carrying rice, salt, corn, and so on. Although most caravans consisted of one or two hundred carts, some were huge, with 10,000 to 12,000 oxen. When two large caravans going in opposite directions encountered each other on a narrow section of the road, it could take two to three days to pass each other. One can imagine the dust, the noise and the tempers.

The bullock-cart caravans were driven by nomadic castes called Manaris who travelled the trade routes with their families and belongings. At every stop a temporary village of tents would be set up. Each group had a chieftain who could be identified by a string of pearls. Often there would be quarrels between the leaders of rival caravans and matters could be escalated all the way up to the Emperor
¹⁷
. In other words, the ill-tempered truck drivers that one encounters in modern Indian highways have a long lineage.

Tavernier tells us that travellers had a choice between two kinds of transport—light carriages pulled by bullocks and palanquins carried by men. The former cost about a rupee a day and came with luxuries like cushions and curtains. The palanquins needed about six people to lift and a long journey required a company of twelve men at least so that they could relieve each other. Each man cost four rupees a month. Of course, if one wanted to make a statement, one could 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. In addition, Tavernier says, the English and Dutch officials also insisted on a flag-bearer who walked in
front of the party in honour of their respective companies. I suppose this is the origin of the little flags that modern-day ambassadors and dignitaries have fluttering in front of their luxury cars.

On 6 December 1665, Bernier and Tavernier met each other on the banks of the Ganga near Allahabad. They drank a toast of wine mixed with water on the banks of the river—but this seems to have upset Tavernier’s stomach. A couple of days later they crossed the river at Allahabad but had to wait half the day for the governor to send them entry/exit permits. Revenue officials stood on both banks, checked papers and charged octroi. Wagons were charged four rupees each and carriages one rupee. The boatman had to be paid separately.

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 survived into the twentieth century but is unfortunately no longer adhered to. 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 route appears to have gone into decline during 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 instance, a route used by Peter Mundy of the English East India Company originated in Agra and made its way south-west through Fatehpur, Bayana, Ajmer, Jalore, Mehsana, Ahmedabad and finally to Surat. An alternative route was to head more directly south from Delhi–Agra to Dholpur, Gwalior, Narwar, Ujjain and finally 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 towns of importance but there were many caravan-serais along the way although their quality varied a great deal. The larger caravan-serais had spacious walled enclosures where merchants could spend the night in safety. Travellers would have been able to draw water from the wells and buy provisions. In addition, many of the busy roads would have had water-stops or ‘piyaus’. The provision of drinking water to a thirsty traveller was said to gain religious merit (
punya
) and people built piyaus in memory of loved ones. Many of these have survived to modern times (indeed, new ones are still being built). The road from Delhi to Gurgaon (MG Road) used to have several old piyaus till recently. The last one was demolished in 2009 to make way for the new Metro line.

Of course, the quality of the road and accommodation could sometimes be appalling, especially on the less-frequented routes. The Portuguese Catholic priest Friar Sebastian Manrique has left us a most amusing anecdote of his travels through Orissa and Bengal during the monsoon of 1640
¹⁸
. After leaving the town of Jalesar, the priest and his companions found themselves in a small village which did not have a proper caravanserai. They were, therefore, obliged to spend the night in a large cowshed. The bovine occupants of the shed were the least of their problems for they were attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes. When they thought that matters could get no worse, it began to rain and they discovered that the roof leaked.

It was almost dawn when Sebastian Manrique was finally
able to doze off but the peace did not last. The cowshed was suddenly full of birds including two large peacocks. The friar’s companions decided to kill and eat the peacocks. They were aware that the locals regarded the birds as sacred and tried to hide their activities. Unfortunately, the truth was discovered by their hosts and very soon an armed mob gathered outside. The friar’s party hurriedly fled, firing muskets to cover their retreat. Such was the experience of life on the road in seventeenth-century India.

By the time Bernier and Tavernier were criss-crossing India, Shah Jehan was no longer the emperor. The throne had been usurped in 1658 by his son Aurangzeb, who imprisoned his father in Agra fort and ruthlessly eliminated his siblings, including the liberal and scholarly Dara Shikoh. The new emperor next attempted the last great expansion of the Mughal empire. The governor of Bengal, Mir Jumla, pushed into the Brahmaputra valley in 1662 till he reached Garhgaon, between modern Jorhat and Dibrugarh, the capital of the Ahom kings of Assam. However, he was unable to completely eliminate the Ahoms due to torrential rains, the difficult terrain and constant guerrilla attacks.