Three Ways to Be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World

249 Pages·2011·3.09 MB·English

by  Sanjay Subrahmanyam

three
ways
to
be
alien
Travails &
Encounters
in the Early
Modern
World
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
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Three Ways to Be Alien
•
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The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures
Sponsored by the Historical Society of Israel
and published for Brandeis University Press
by University Press of New England
Editorial Board:
Prof. Yosef Kaplan, Senior Editor, Department of the History
of the Jewish People, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
former Chairman of the Historical Society of Israel
Prof. Michael Heyd, Department of History, The Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, former Chairman of the Historical Society of Israel
Prof. Shulamit Shahar, professor emeritus, Department of History,
Tel-Aviv University, member of the Board of Directors of the
Historical Society of Israel
For a complete list of books in this series,
please visit www.upne.com
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to Be Alien: Travails and
Encounters in the Early Modern World
Jürgen Kocka, Civil Society and Dictatorship in Modern
German History
Heinz Schilling, Early Modern European Civilization and Its
Political and Cultural Dynamism
Brian Stock, Ethics through Literature: Ascetic and Aesthetic
Reading in Western Culture
Fergus Millar, The Roman Republic in Political Thought
Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire
Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical
Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism
Carlo Ginzburg, History Rhetoric, and Proof
Subrahmanyam_Book.indb 2 4/6/11 9:27:21 AM
Three Ways to Be Alien
•
Travails & Encounters
in the Early Modern World
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Brandeis
The University
Menahem Press
Stern
Jerusalem
Lectures Historical
Society of
Israel
Brandeis University Press
Waltham, Massachusetts
Subrahmanyam_Book.indb 3 4/6/11 9:27:21 AM
Brandeis University Press /
Historical Society of Israel
An imprint of University Press of New England
www.upne.com
© 2011 Historical Society of Israel
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
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book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England,
One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766;
or visit www.upne.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear
on the last printed page of this book.
5 4 3 2 1
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For Ashok Yeshwant Kotwal
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Subrahmanyam_Book.indb 6 4/6/11 9:27:21 AM
Contents
List of Illustrations • viii
Foreword by David Shulman • ix
Preface • xv
1 Introduction: Three (and More) Ways to Be Alien • 1
2 A Muslim Prince in Counter-Reformation Goa • 23
3 The Perils of Realpolitik • 73
4 Unmasking the Mughals • 133
5 By Way of Conclusion • 173
Notes • 179
Index • 213
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Illustrations
Maps
The world of the Iberian Empires in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries • 16
Anthony Sherley’s travels • 103
The India of Nicolò Manuzzi • 143
Figures
Public display of the ambassador of the ruler of
Bijapur in Goa • 65
Portrait of Anthony Sherley • 105
Nicolò Manuzzi as physician • 145
Emperor Jahangir on an elephant • 153
An ascetic or penitent • 164
“Deplorable events,” or, a Hindu cremation
gone awry 166
The Tirupati temple • 167
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Foreword •
David Shulman
There was a time, some five centuries ago, when restless Europeans headed
east, as did many enterprising Iranians, and curious North Indians set out
either for Central Asia or for the wild and barbarous lands of the Marathas,
Tamils, and Telugus to the south. Most of them were men, though there
were also some colorful, adventurous, polyglot women like Nicolò Manuzzi’s
English-Portuguese wife, Elisabetta Hardeli (or Elizabeth Hartley). The ma-
jority of the Europeans were driven — let’s face it — by sheer greed, some-
times masked by an assumed missionary zeal or a taste for political intrigue.
Some, however, were genuinely curious about the exotic cultures into which
they had wandered, although even among this latter group there were figures
like Manuzzi who, having miraculously survived some six decades in India,
came to detest the place and its peoples. Homesickness, the intimate shadow
of wanderlust, affected all of them to some degree and became a predictable
topos in their records and letters. Pravara, the prototypical, middle-Indian
hero of the sixteenth-century Telugu poet Peddana’s novel The Story of Man,
though consumed by a burning desire to see the remote places he has heard
about, is unable to get through even a few hours in the Himalayas before des-
perately looking for a safe route home. For most adventurers of the sixteenth
through nineteenth centuries, home was a place very far away.
Every one of these individuals carried with him or her a set of mental
maps, usually fuzzy and unsystematic and full of gaps, often also dogmatic
and condescending, about the outlandish cultural worlds to be encountered.
In the works they have left us — travelogues, memoirs, endless letters, his-
tories and pseudo-histories, rudimentary ethnologies, diaries — we find the
not unreasonable presupposition that people back home are dying to hear the
often self-aggrandizing account of the would-be hero’s adventures and more
than eager to learn about the peculiar ways of the distant East or North or
South. In any case, the urge to report is a staple feature of this vast literature,
in which a host of tricksters, charlatans, and operators try, usually unsuccess-
fully, to hide the true nature of their careers, and the borderline psychotics
generally sound, well, insane.
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