THE SECOND BOOK CONCERNING INDIA. HAVING nearly arrived at the head of India, that is to say, at the place in which the greatest dignity of India is centered, it has appeared to me fitting to bring the First book to an end and commence the Second; as, moreover, I have to lay before every kind reader matters of greater importance and comfort to the intellect, and of courage, so far as our favourite labour of travelling through the world may assist us and our intelligence may serve us, submitting, however, everything to the judgment of men who may, perhaps, have visited more countries than I have. THE CHAPTER CONCERNING CALICUT, A VERY LARGE CITY OF INDIA. Calicut1 is on the mainland, the sea beats against the walls of the houses. There is no port here, but about a mile from 1 Calicut, a seaport town in the British district of Malabar. "It is situate on the open beach, there being neither river nor haven; and ships must anchor in the open sea... The haven, said to have been once capacious, has been filled up with drifted sand... Forbes, who visited it in 1772, speaks of it as offering very little to interest a traveller, being chiefly composed of low huts shaded by cocoa-nut trees, on a sandy shore." (THORNTON's Gazetteer.) Ibn Batûta describes Calicut as "one of the greatest ports in the district of Malabar;" Nicolò de' Conti as "a maritime city, eight miles in circumference, a noble emporium for all the place towards the south there is a river, which is narrow at its embouchure and has not more than five or six spans of water. This stream flows through Calicut and has a great number of branches. This city has no wall around it, but the houses extend for about a mile, built close together, and then the wide houses, that is, the houses separate one from the other,1 cover a space of about six miles. The houses are very poor. The walls are about as high as a man on horseback, and the greater part are covered with leaves, and without any upper room. The reason is this, that when they dig down four or five spans, water is found, and therefore they cannot build large houses. However, the house of a merchant is worth fifteen or twenty ducats. Those of the common people are worth half a ducat each, or one or two ducats at the most. THE CHAPTER CONCERNING THE KING OF CALICUT AND THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE. The King of Calicut is a Pagan, and worships the devil in the manner you shall hear. They acknowledge that there is a God who has created the heaven and the earth and all India ;" and 'Abd er-Razzak as a perfectly secure harbour, which, like that of Hormuz, brings together merchants from every city, and from every country." 1 That is, houses with compounds, as the open space around them is called by Anglo-Indians. 2 In a subsequent chapter, Varthema alleges the same reason for the lowness and insignificance of the Zamorin's palace at Calicut. The following extract from Hamilton seems to corroborate his statement :— "In anno 1703, about the middle of February, I called at Calecut on my way to Surat, and, standing into the road, I chanced to strike ou some of the ruins of the sunken town built by the Portuguese in former times. Whether that town was swallowed up by an earthquake, as some affirm, or whether it was undermined by the sea, I will not determine." PINKERTON's Voyages, vol. viii. p. 378. the world;1 and they say that if he wished to judge you and me, a third and a fourth, he would have no pleasure in being Lord; but that he has sent this his spirit, that is the devil, into this world to do justice: and to him who does good he does good, and to him who does evil he does evil. Which devil they call Deumo, and God they call Tamerani. And the King of Calicut keeps this Deumo in his chapel in his palace, in this wise: his chapel is two paces wide in each of the four sides, and three paces high, with a wooden door covered with devils carved in relief. In the midst of this chapel there is a devil made of metal, placed in a seat also made of metal. The said devil has a crown made like that of the papal kingdom, with three crowns; and it also has four horns and four teeth, with a very large mouth, nose, and most terrible eyes. The hands are made like those of a flesh-hook, and the feet like those of a cock; so that he is a fearful object to behold. All the pictures around the said chapel are those of devils, and on each side of it there 1 "They all believe in a great God, whose image they can neither fancy nor make." HAMILTON. 2 "The word Dev means, indefinitely, a dweller in the upper worlds, and, more particularly, an inhabitant of Swerga, the paradise where Indra rules. Three hundred and thirty millions of Devs are spoken of in the Hindu scriptures; but, in its sense of God, the term can only apply to one being." (See FORBES's Râs Mâlâ, vol. ii. pp. 423-442, for an able dissertation on this subject.) Varthema draws a distinction between a "Diavolo" and a "Sathanas," evidently making the latter the higher personage; but it is surprising that he gives so tolerably correct an account of the Hindu theogony and worship. 3 Tambarân, lord or master, is a common title of honour, throughout Malabar, among the higher classes of Nairs. 4 "The great men of the clergy build temples, but they are neither large nor beautiful. Their images are all black and deformed, according as they fancy the infernal gods to be shaped, who, they believe, have some hand in governing the world, particularly about the benign and malignant seasons that happen in the productions or sterility of the earth, for which reason they pay a lateral adoration to them." (PINKERTON's Voyages, vol. viii. p. 376.) This quotation from Hamilton shows that, like Varthema, he understood the Devs to be devils. is a Sathanas seated in a seat, which seat is placed in a flame of fire, wherein are a great number of souls, of the length of half a finger and a finger of the hand. And the said Sathanas holds a soul in his mouth with the right hand, and with the other seizes a soul under the waist. Every morning the Brahmins, that is the priests, go to wash the said idol all over with scented water, and then they perfume it;1 and when it is perfumed they worship it; and some time in the course of the week they offer sacrifice to it in this manner: They have a certain small table, made and ornamented like an altar, three spans high from the ground, four spans wide, and five long; which table is extremely well adorned with roses, flowers, and other ornaments. Upon this table they have the blood of a cock and lighted coals in a vessel of silver, with many perfumes upon them. They also have a thurible, with which they scatter incense around the said altar. They have a little bell of silver which rings very frequently, and they have a silver knife with which they have killed the cock, and which they tinge with the blood, and sometimes place it upon the fire, and sometimes they take it and make motions similar to those which one makes who is about to fence; and finally, all that blood is burnt, the waxen tapers being kept lighted during the whole time. The priest who is about to perform this sacrifice puts upon his arms, hands, and feet some bracelets of silver, which make a very great noise like bells, and he wears on his neck an amulet (what it is I do not know); and when he has finished performing the sacrifice, he takes both his hands full of grain and retires from the said altar, walking backwards and always looking at the altar until he arrives at a certain tree. And when he has reached the tree, he throws the grain above his head as Forbes says: "The ordinary Hindu religious service consists in performing for the idol such acts as a menial servant performs for his human master." Among these, which are given in detail, he describes the anointing of the Dev with sandal-wood dust and water, and the burning of incense before him. high as he can over the tree; he then returns and removes everything from the altar.1 THE CHAPTER CONCERNING THE MANNER OF EATING OF When the King of Calicut wishes to eat he uses the following customs: you must know that four of the principal Brahmins take the food which the king is to eat and carry it to the devil, and first they worship him in this manner : they raise their clasped hands over his head, and then draw their hands towards them, still clasped together, and the thumb raised upwards, and then they present to him the food which is to be given to the king, and stand in this manner as long as a person would require to eat it; and then the said Brahmins carry that food to the king. You must know that this is done only for the purpose of paying honour to that idol, in order that it may appear that the king will not eat unless the food has been first presented to Deumo.2 1 I have not been able to verify this particular service; but it is generally known that animal sacrifices, propitiatory of the Bhuta, or wicked spirits, are offered by several sects of the Brahmins. Among the victims so offered by the Hindus of Mysore, the Abbé Dubois mentions buffalos, hogs, rams, cocks, and the like. The amulet (pentacola) noticed by Varthema was probably the peonoob, or Brahminical thread. 2 An apt illustration of what St. Paul says (1 Cor. viii.) respecting meats offered to idols. A Brahmin can only eat of what is prepared by one of his own caste. Buchanan states that the Kurüm, the highest order of Nairs in Malabar, act as cooks on all public occasions, which, among Hindus, is a sure mark of transcendent rank; for every person can eat the food prepared by one of higher birth than himself. Marco Polo notices the custom prevailing among the Brahmins of eating off leaves: -"Instead of dishes, they lay their victuals on dry leaves of the apples of Paradise," meaning, probably, the plantain. See PINKERTON's Voyages, vol. viii. pp. 735-6. GREENE'S Collection, vol. iv. p. 616. The elaborate ceremonial of a Brahmin's repast is thus described by Forbes:-"The Brahmin, when his food is ready, before eating, performs jane û |