THE FIRST BOOK CONCERNING INDIA.

THE CHAPTER concerniNG COMBEIA, A CITY OF INDIA. ABOUNDING IN ALL THINGS.

HAVING promised at the commencement, if I remember rightly, to treat all subjects with brevity, in order that my narrative might not be wearisome, I will continue to relate concisely those things which appeared to me the most worthy to be known, and the most interesting.

We entered India where, near to the said port [Cheo], there is a very large river called the Indus, which Indus is near to a city called Combeia. This city is situated three miles inland, and to the south of the said Indus. You must know that you cannot go to the said city either with large or middlingsized ships, excepting at high water. There is a river which goes to the said city, and the tide flows up three or four miles. You must know that the waters rise in the reverse

1 Varthema appears to have had very confused notions respecting the relative positions of Cambay (more correctly, Khumbáyut) and the Indus. This is not surprising, since Philip Baldæus, writing a century and a half later, describes it as "situated at the entrance of one of the largest channels of that river." (COLLECTION OF VOYAGES, vol. iii. p. 566.) Nicolò de' Conti, who preceded our traveller by fifty years, places it more accurately "in the second gulf after having passed the mouth of the Indus." (India in the Fifteenth Century, iii. p. 19.) However, he correctly locates it to the south of the Indus, and near another river, which was undoubtedly the Myhee, and his description of that estuary is confirmed by the following extract from Horsburgh :-" Opposite the

way to ours; for with us they rise when the moon is at the full, but they increase here when the moon is on the wane.1 This city of Combeia is walled, after our fashion; and truly it is a most excellent city, abounding in grain and very good fruits. In this district there are eight or nine kinds of small spices, that is to say, turbidi, gallanga, spiconardo, saphetica, city of Cambay, seven or eight miles from the sea, the width is probably about three miles, and the water is so shallow from side to side, at low water spring tides, that the ground is left almost dry, and navigation is impracticable even for the smallest boats." India Directory, vol. i. p. 475.

1 This is an error into which Varthema may have been led by the accounts which he heard, or by his own limited observation, of the peculiar and extraordinary tides in the Gulf of Cambay, called the Bore, which is thus described by the late Captain Ethersey of the Indian navy: "The eastern or principal Bore rises five miles to the W.S.W. of Cambay Creek, and is not perceptible on the neaps without the previous springs have been very high, when it may be observed slightly through the quarter. It generally commences when the springs begin to lift, the wave increasing daily in height as the tides gain strength, and is at its greatest height about two days after the new and full moon. Its height depends upon the position of the moon with respect to the earth, and consequently on the rise and strength of the tide; for at new moon, when she is in perigee, at which time the highest tides occur, the wave of the Bore will be the greatest; and at full moon, when she is in apogee, and the low tides lower than any other springs, it will be least. It also varies with the night and day tide, because the higher the tide the greater is its velocity; and as the two tides differ from six to eight feet, and still the flood of both runs the same length of time, the highest tide must have the greatest velocity; and hence the wave of the Bore will be highest with the greatest tide." (Bombay Government Selections, No. xvii. p. 87.) Dr. Vincent recognizes the Bore in the account which the author of the Periplus gives of the navigation of the Gulf of Cambay (Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients, etc., vol. ii. p. 396); and so imposing is its appearance, and so striking its effects, that we cannot be surprised at the notice which it attracted from the early travellers to India. Forbes says: "The first rush of the spring tide is irresistible in its force, and affords a scene which only an eyewitness can fully realize. A perpendicular wall of water, three or four feet in height, and extending across the Gulf as far as the eye can reach, approaches at the rate of twelve miles an hour in speed, and with an alarming noise, carrying certain destruction to the mariner whose ignorance or foolhardiness leads him to neglect its warning voice." Râs Mâlâ, vol. i. p. 319.

and lacra,' with other spices, the names of which I do not remember. An immense quantity of cotton is produced here, so that every year forty or fifty vessels are laden with cotton and silk stuffs, which stuffs are carried into different countries. In this kingdom of Combeia also, about six days' journey, there is the mountain whence cornelians are extracted, and the mountain of chalcedonies. Nine days' journey from Combeia there is another mountain in which diamonds are found.2

THE CHAPTER CONCERNING THE ESTATE OF THE SULTAN OF THE VERY NOBLE CITY OF COMBEIA.

We will now declare the estate and condition of the sultan of this Combeia, who is called the Sultan Machamuth. About

1 The Latin version of Varthema omits all these names. The Italian edition in Ramusio has "turbitti, galanga, spico nardo, assa fetida, e lacca." The first is the well known drug turbith, the root of a species of convolvulus (C. Turpethum, L.) which is found throughout India, and also in the islands of the South Sea. I find it enumerated under that name in a list of drugs purchased by Captain John Saris in 1612 from the captain of a native vessel which had arrived at Mokha from Surat. Galanga, according to Baretti, is a kind of arrow-root used medicinally. Spikenard and assafoetida are well known Indian drugs. Lacca is, doubtless, the dye produced by the lac insect, of which Dr. Buchanan gives a full account in his Journey through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar. (See PINKERTON's Voyages, vol. viii. pp. 760-1.) Nicolò de' Conti, writing of Cambay, says: "it abounds in spikenard, lac, indigo, myrobalans, and silk ;" and Nikitin mentions "lek daakyk dalon" as among its produce. These latter I take to be, lac; 'akeek, the Arabic for agates; and dûl, the Hindostani for lentils, phaseolus aconitifolius. (See India in the Fifteenth Century, ii. p. 20; iii. p. 19.)

2 Cambay is still famous for agates, cornelians, and onyxes, which are wrought into a great variety of ornaments. The best agates and cornelians are found in a peculiar stratum, about thirty feet below the surface, in a small tract among the Rajpeepla Hills, on the banks of the Nerbudda, about seventy miles to the south-east of Cambay. I am not aware of any diamond mines existing in or about Guzerat. Probably those at Golconda are indicated.

forty years ago he captured this kingdom from a king of the Guzerati, which Guzerati are a certain race which eats nothing that has blood, and never kills any living thing. And these same people are neither Moors nor heathens.1 It is my

The Sultan at the time was Fath Khân, entitled Mahmûd Bigarrah, who began to reign A.D. 1459 and died in 1511; but our author is not so correct in his history of the succession. Guzerat became independent of Delhi under Dhâfir Khân, who assumed the sovereignty of the province in 1408. For obvious reasons that event does not tally with the occurrence referred to by Varthema. The mention of "a king of the Guzerattis", who was neither a Moor nor a Heathen, inclines me to think that he distorted the accounts which he had heard of Mahmûd Khân's successful wars with some of the native princes into the apocryphal statement respecting the time and manner of his accession to supreme power. The most probable event in the history of that sovereign which may have led to this misapprehension, was his final capture of the strong forts of Girnar and Janagarh from Rao Mandalik in 1472. Those fortresses are in Kattywar, a province of Guzerat, and appear to have been inhabited at the time chiefly by Jains. Writing of Girnar, Postans says: "The whole of this extraordinary mount is invested with peculiar sanctity, the origin of which would seem to be of high antiquity. That the present system of worship would seem to be a graft of the ancient Buddhist faith which obtained here, there can be no doubt. The edicts of Pyadasi testify abundantly that the hill of Girinagar and its neighbourhood was originally a stronghold of the Monotheists, whose form of worship has now degenerated into the modern system of Jainism." (Notes on a Journey to Girnar, p. 882.) I am the more inclined to draw the foregoing inference from Varthema's description of the creed and habits of the people to whom he refers; for the Jains generally, who are numerous in and about Cambay, are very careful of animal life. The Shravakas, one of the Jain castes, have many Pinjreepols, or hospitals for animals and reptiles, however vile. They have also another peculiar establishment called a Jevkotee. This is a dome, with a door large enough at the top for a man to creep in. In these repositories wevils, and other insects which the Shravakas may find in their grain, are provided with food by their charity and extraordinary protection to everything containing life. Moreover, they profess to worship the Supreme being alone, and wholly reject the agency of Devtas and the Aryhuntas, or Gooroos. (See Bombay Government Selections, No. xxxix. p. 342-5.) Fitch notices the Pinjreepoles. He says: "In Cambaia they will kill nothing, nor have anything killed. In the town they have hospitals to keep lame dogs and cats, and for birds. They will give meat to the ants." PINKERTON's Voyages, vol. ix. p. 409.

opinion that if they were baptized, they would all be saved by virtue of their works, for they never do to others what they would not that others should do unto them. Their dress is this some wear a shirt, and some go naked, with the exception of a piece of cloth about their middle, having nothing on their feet or on their legs. On their heads they wear a large red cloth; and they are of a tawny colour. And for this, their goodness, the aforesaid sultan took from them their kingdom.

You shall now hear the manner of living of this Sultan Machamuth. In the first place he is a Mohammedan, together with all his people. He has constantly twenty thousand horsemen. In the morning, when he rises, there come to his palace fifty elephants, on each of which a man sits astride; and the said elephants do reverence to the sultan, and they have nothing else to do. So in like manner when he has risen from his bed. And when he eats, there are fifty or sixty kinds of instruments, namely, trumpets, drums of several sorts, and flageolets, and fifes, with many others, which for the sake of brevity I forbear mentioning. When the sultan eats, the said elephants again do reverence to him. When the proper time shall come, I will tell you of the intelligence and understanding which these animals possess. The said sultan has mustachios under his nose so long that he ties them over his head as a woman would tie her tresses, and he has a white beard which reaches to his girdle.1 Every day he eats poison. Do not, however, imagine that he fills his stomach with it; but he eats a certain quantity, so that when he wishes to destroy any great personage he makes him come before him stripped and naked, and then eats

1 'Ali Muhammed Khân, in his History of Guzerat, gives the following account of Sultan Mahmûd :-" Regarding his surname of Bigarrah, the people of Guzerat say, that each of his mustachios being large and twisted like a cow's horn, and such a cow being called Bigarrah, they thus obtained for him the name." BIRD's Translation, pp. 202-3.