Armenians in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

683 Pages·2016·169.14 MB·English

by  Seth Mesrovb J.

ARMENIANS
IN INDIA
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY
AWORK OFORIGINAL RESEARCH
MESROVB JACOB SETH
ASIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
* *
NEW DELHI MADRAS 1992
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ARMENIANS IN INDIA
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY
A ~'ORK OF ORIGINAL RESEARCH
By
MESROVB JACOB SETH
(Gold Medalist. Armenian College, Calcutta.)
M,mbn . Ro}'al Asiatic Society of Bengal; Royal Asiatic Society oj Great
Britain Qnd Ireland: Indian Historical Records Commission; CaleaNo
Historical Society: Numismatic Sodety 0/ India: The American
Numismatic Association.. Bcn~111 Library Association: and
Examiner in Classical and Modern Armenian to the
University 01 Calcutl4.
PUBLISHED BY TI-IE Atm-lOR
9. MARSDEN S11IEET
CALCUTTA
1937
TO
T ill' CIIERISII FD ,\:\1> EVERl..\ST I:\(;
,,,E.\IORY
OF
MY DEAR AND REVERED FATHER,
JACOB SETH MACKERTICH AGAZAR SETH
( 1820-19(0)
who instilled into my )'011'''1,,1 hrnrt n 111\/," /01
liistorira! (Hutantiqunrinn knOll'(r,I1!.'-nlHt fill mdrnt
fOlIC 107 'he rich clnssscal Armrnian litrnunrr,
'These pa~", arc rcvcrcnrly and atlcctionan-ly
I)fIHCArr.n
.\S ,\ S:\U U . IOl\.t:fl' OF GKXn II'1)1
nY
HIS YcuNCL.T AND ONLY SlJRVIVING Sox,
;\IESRO\'I\ J. SI'T II.
"Part a zavakatz.
Zanoon tznoqatz.
Araviel hargele.
Khan uzkienus euriantz."- Tholiodion
Translation.
..It IS the duty of children to honour the names of their
parents more than their own lives.·'-- Thaliadian.

PREFACE.
As a small contribution to tlrejlisto.!)' of India and as a
supplement to Armenian colonial histoiy, we havesucceeded,
under great difficulties, in publishing a complete history of the
Armenians ill India, a work of original research, which we
trust will supply a long-felt want.
We have laboured ceaselessly in the thorny fields of
historical and antiquarian research fOJ 45 long years, for the
sakeof an ideal. We have bornethe heat of the day and have
toiled fearlessly in deserted and snake-inlested cemeteries,
where we have, so to speak, opened old graves, gathered the
dried bones, breathed life into them and made them speak.
We have, during the past 45 years, travelled extensively in
India, from Lahore in the Punjab to Madras in the Deccan,
and fromSurat inGuzerat to Dacca in East Bengal, practically
from North to South and from East to West of this great
Continent.
We have, under great physical difficulties and discomforts,
succeeded in rescuing from oblivion, thousands of old Arme
nian epitaphs from deserted cemeteries and churchyards.
These will be published, Deo volente, in a separate volume,
with illustrations, historical and biographical notes, under the
title, Armenian Obituary of India. Those valuable landmarks
tell the sad tale of colonies, once flourishing, which have dis
appeared with the shifting of trade from old commercial
centres to new. As is well known, the once important trade
of Surat was captured by Bombay, and that of Dacca,
Saidabad and Chinsurah by Calcutta, by reason of the favour
able geographical positionof the two great ports, Bombay and
Calcutta.
In 1895, Wepublished, a short history of the Armenians
in India, the first work of its kind, as no attempts had been
made, previousto that, to place on record the achievementsof
the Armenian settlers in India.
The work was received very favourably by the public
and the Press. It was dedicated to the late Mr. Gladstone,
the "Grand Old Man" of England, in recognition of his
PREFACE
Vi
strongly-expressed sympathy for oppressed Armenians in
Turkey which had endeared himto everyArmenian throughout
the world. The veteran statesman, in an autograph letter,
thanked us for the work sayingthat he was "gratified by the
honour we had done him". The viewswhich he expressedin
his letter, anent the massacres of Armenians in Turkey, are
publishedon page 183 of the presentwork.
The work had someshortcomings, for it was prepared in
great haste, during the sultry nights of the summer of 1895,
as we were anxious to place before the British public, an
authentic record of the valuable services rendered by the
Armeniansto the British cause in India, in the fond hope that
the chivalrous British nation, the champions of liberty and
justice, would come to the rescue of oppressed Armenians in
Turkey, who were being ruthlessly massacred for their
Christian religion, by the blood~thirsty Turks, during the
never-to-be forgottenbarbarousregimeof Sultan Abdul Hamid
of cursed memory, justly called the •'Great Assassin" by the
greatest British statesman of the 19th century, referred to
above.
Weare glad to state that since the publication of our
first edition, we have had ample and unique opportunities of
collecting much valuable data relating to the early Armenian
settlers in India, from musty old records, from well-nigh
obliterated inscriptions, and lastly from the lettersof the Jesuit
priests who resided at Agra, Delhi and Lahore during the
glorious days of the mighty Moguls. Our object in collecting
fresh and hitherto unpublished materials, was to bring out a
new and an enlarged edition, as the first one, published 42
yearsago, was out of print. For want of leisure, the bane of
literary workers, the work was unavoidably deferred till last
year when an event occurred, which though highly vexatious,
yet it provedto be a blessingin disguise, for it made us more
determined thanevertopublishthe fruitsof ourlabours, without
any further delay, since time and tide wait for no man and
procrastination is verily the thief of time.
We have endeavoured, with the rich materials at our
disposal, the accumulations of manyyearsof patient search, to
makethe presenteditionascomplete as possible, as those who
have read the former editioncan testify. For instance, we had
PREFACE V11
in our first edition, referred to the famous Mirza Zul-Qamain,
in a few words, for want of materials, whereas in the present
work we have devoted 87 pages to the life and work of that
illustrious Armenian, thanks to the valuable researches of the
late Father Henri Hosten, 5.]. of blessed memory.
We had in our first edition given the translations of only
nine Armenian inscriptions, from Agra, which we had found
in the pages of the ..Azgasare", an Armenian weekly pub
lished in Calcutta by the immortal Mesrovb Thaliadian, from
J845-J852, but in the present work we have published a
complete list of the Agra inscriptions, to the number of J25,
with biographical and historical notes. The achievements of
several distinguished Armenians, who flourishedat the Court of
Akbar, were not recorded in our former edition, for want of
materials, as we were a novice then and moreover had no time
for research work. The reader will see, in the course of this
work, that the Armenians, apart from being eminent merchants
in India, have given to the country of their adoption able
governors and administrators like Mirza Zul-Qarnain and
Markus Erizad, clever diplomats like Khojah Israel Sarhad,
Margar Avag Sheenentz and Khojah Petrus Arathoon, distin
guished military Commanders like Gorgin Khan, and Colonel
Jacob Petrus, skilled artisans and manufacturers of huge pieces
of ordnance likeGorgin Khan and Shah Nazar Khan, renowned
poets like Mirza Zul-Qarnain and Sarrnad who composed
beautiful odes and poems in a language (Persian) which was
not their own. And this forcibly reminds us of what a great
English writer once said of the late Bengalee orator, Sir
Surendra Nath Banerjee, that what Cicero was to Rome,
Demosthenes to Greece, Burke and Sheridan to England, so
was Surendra Nath Banerjee to India, with this exception that
whereas the former orators spoke and fired the imagination of
their hearers in their own language, the Indian Demosthenes
spoke, with equal if not greater force, in a language which was
not his own, namely English.
Armenians though membersof a small minoritycommunity,
have nevertheless rendered valuable servicesto the British cause
in India. We shall give but a few instances. When Calcutta
which to-day occupiesthe proud and the enviable positionof the
"second city" in the wide British Empire, over which the sun
Vlll PREFACE
never sets, was still in its infancy, an Armenian merchant
diplomat, the famous Khojah Israel Sarhad, secured from the
Mogul Government certain important rights and privileges forthe
early British Settlers in Bengal, without which the settlement
founded by Job Charnock in the village of Sutanati in 1690,
after his expulsion from Hugli, could never have existed and
attained its adolescence, for according to the verdict of that
renowned researchscholar and historian, the late Professor C. R.
Wilson, "if Job Charnock be the Founder of Calcutta, the
author of its privileges and early security is the great Armenian
merchant, Khojah Israel Sarhad". And it was this merchant
diplomat who secured for the English, the historic •'Grand
Farman" from the Mogul Emperor Farrokh Siyar in 1715.
In the dark days succeeding the sack 01 Calcutta and the
tragedy of the "Black Hole", a humane Armenian merchant,
Khojah Petrus Arathoon, secretly supplied the British fugitives
who had taken refuge in their ships down the river at Fulta,
with-boat loads of provisions for six months, before the arrival
of the Army of Retribution from Madras, under Admiral
Watson and Colonel Clive in December 1756. And in the
momentous days before the famous battle of Plassey, which
made the English absolute masters of Bengal, the same Arme
nian was employed by Clive to negotiate with Mir Jaffar for
the overthrow of Nawab Suraj-ud-dowlah, the author of
the "Black Hole" tragedy. It was the same Armenian, whom
Clive calls the .,Armenian Petrus", who was again instru
mental in the removal of the imbecile Nawab Mir Jaffir in
1760, when his son-in-law, Mir Kasim was placed on the
masnad (throne) of Murshidabad as the Nawab Nazim of
Bengal, Behar and Orissa.
Before we conclude, we must record our thanks to the
Government of India for the honour they did us by appointing
us in 1925, a member of the "Indian Historical Records
Commission'" which was inaugurated in 1919, for unearthing
and bringingto light unknown and hitherto unpublished records
of historical interest relating to India. It may be mentioned,
en passant, that for reasons of economy, the Commission sus
pended its annual Meetings and historical Exhibitions in 1931,
but we are glad to see that they are to be resumed this year,
in December, asin former years.