often hired stout daring men, such as Beloochis, CHAP. IX. Patans, or Rajpúts, as guards. These men were so trustworthy that they were always ready to die in defence of the property they were engaged to protect. Terry said that an English merchant might have travelled alone under such a guard from Surat to Lahore with a treasure of gold and jewels; and so long as the men received their fair wages, not one would have touched a penny of it. Terry doubted if an Indian merchant could have done the same in England without being robbed and murdered. Terry, it will be remembered, flourished in the reign of James the First.

servants.

The faithfulness of servants in India was said to be Faithfulness of very remarkable. Their pay, equal to five shillings a month, was given them every new moon, but they always required a month's pay in advance. One of the camel-leaders in Terry's party received his pay regularly for two months, but at the end of the third month was told to wait a day or two, when a fresh supply of cash would come to hand. The man was offended at the delay, and took a solemn farewell of his camel, and then went away and was never seen again. The other servants stayed with the party, and were paid within the specified time.

6

Great Moghul.

Terry furnishes some particulars respecting the Power of the Great Moghul and the general administration of the country, which are valuable as expressions of contemporary opinion. The Great Moghul, he says, is an overgrown power in respect to the vast extent of his territories. He is like a huge pike in a great pond that preys upon all his neighbours. Consequently,

6 Terry can scarcely have told this story as a proof of the faithfulness of

native servants.

CHAP. IX.

Absence of written laws.

Diversities in capital punishments.

Frequent transfers of Viceroys.

Kotwals and

Kázís.

the native princes outside his dominions purchase his forbearance by large presents and homage, and by a submissive acknowledgment of his mighty power." He is master of unknown treasures, and can command what number of men he pleases. His armies consist of incredible multitudes, but the officers are not learned in the art of war, and they are in need of skilful captains and commanders.

There were no laws to regulate justice but what were written in the breasts of the Moghul and his Viceroys. The governors often proceeded as they pleased in punishing the offender rather than the offence men's persons more than their crimes.

Murder and theft were punished with death, and with that kind of death which the judge pleased to impose. Some malefactors were hanged, some were beheaded, some were impaled, some were torn to pieces by wild beasts, some were killed by elephants, and some were stung to death by snakes.

The Moghul never suffered any one of his Viceroys to tarry long in one government. After one year, he generally removed them elsewhere, so that none might become too popular or powerful in any particular province.

The Moghul and his Viceroys adjudicated all cases of life and death. There were officers to assist them, who were known as Kotwals; and it was the business of the Kotwal to arrest offenders and bring them before the judge. There were other judges, known as Kázís, but they only meddled with contracts, debts, and other civil matters. The Kotwal arrested both

7 Terry is probably alluding to the Rajpút Rajas.

Terry was writing in the reign of Jehangir. It will be seen hereafter that Aurangzeb reserved to himself the right of passing sentence on all capital cases.

debtors and sureties, and brought them before the Kází; and if the debt was not satisfied, both debtors and sureties were imprisoned and fettered, or sold into slavery, together with their wives and children."

CHAP. IX.

Valle, 1623-25.

PIETRO DELLA VALLE was a noble Italian from Pietro Della Rome, and a Roman Catholic by birth, education, and conviction. He had no taste for trade or profit of any kind; on the contrary, he looked down with contempt on the Portuguese in India, who affected to be soldiers and gentlemen, whilst their daily lives were absorbed in the pursuit of gain. Della Valle visited India out of an intelligent curiosity, begotten of the learning of the time, to discover any affinities that might exist between the religion of Egypt and that of India. He had previously travelled in Turkey and Persia, and had lost a dearly beloved wife. In India he found a change of scene, but he could not throw off the melancholy which often tinges his narrative. 10

and English

Della Valle landed at Surat, on the western coast of Surat: Dutch India, in February 1623. The port belonged to the factories: hatred Moghuls, and was already the resort of European guese.

This barbarous custom prevailed in all Moghul countries, and exists to this day in the dominions of the king of Burma.

10 Della Valle's Travels in the East Indies. English translation, folio. London, 1665. Della Valle was born in 1586, and set out on his travels in 1614, when he was twenty-eight years of age. He landed at Surat in 1623, when he was thirty-seven years of age. The story of his marriage is a forgotten romance. At Bagdad he had fallen in love with a young Maronite lady, whom he calls Madame Maani. He married Maani, and she accompanied him during his subsequent travels through Kurdistan and Persia. In his letters to his friends in Italy, he describes her as a model of beauty, accomplishments, and virtue. She died in Persia in 1621, and the bereaved husband had her body embalmed, and carried it with him during his subsequent travels in India. In 1626, five years after her death, her remains were buried in the Chapel of St. Paul with great pomp and ceremony; and Della Valle pronounced a funeral oration, expressing his intention of being laid in the same place that their two souls might rise together at the last day.

of the Portu

CHAP. IX. traders, especially Dutch and English. Both Dutch and English had factories at Surat, and thence carried on a trade with Persia on one side, and the Eastern Archipelago on the other. At this period neither Madras, Bombay, nor Calcutta had any existence. Farther south, half-way between Surat and Cape Comorin, the Portuguese had a city and territory at Goa; and Goa had been the capital of the Portuguese empire in the East, and the residence of a Portuguese Viceroy, for more than a century. The Portuguese were Catholics, and hated both the English and the Dutch as heretics in religion and rivals in the Eastern trade. On the other hand, both English and Dutch were equally bitter against the Portuguese, not only as Papists, but as claiming to hold, by some dubious grant from the Pope, a monopoly of all the trade to the eastward.

Signora Mari uccia.

Politeness of Moghul customhouse officers.

Della Valle was accompanied on his voyage to Surat by a young girl named Signora Mariuccia, who had been brought up in his family from infancy, and seems to have been a favourite of his deceased wife. The custom-house officials at Surat had been rude to Sir Thomas Roe and Mandelslo; and even Della Valle complained of the strictness with which they examined every article of baggage; but they behaved like gentlemen towards the Signora. They required to be informed of her quality, and ordered that she should be politely treated and protected from any violence or disorder. Meanwhile, a certain Donna Lucia, the wife of one of the most eminent Dutchmen at Surat, sent a coach to bring away the Signora, and accommodate her in her own house."1

11 This young girl is frequently mentioned by Della Valle in subsequent parts of his travels, under the more familiar name of Mariam Tinitin.

CHAP. IX.

At this period the English in India were all bachelors, or living as bachelors; for those who had Dutch marriages. been married in England were strictly prohibited by the laws of the East India Company from having their wives out in India. The Dutch, however, were mostly married men living with their wives. Originally the Dutch had been under the same restrictions as the English, but they had recently planted a colony in Java under the name of New Batavia, and great privileges had been offered to every Dutchman who married a wife and settled in Java. Accordingly, all unmarried Dutchmen in Surat were bent on finding wives, as one of the necessary conditions of a trading life in the East. In the absence of European women, they married Armenians, Syrians, and even Hindus; in fact, a Dutchman was ready to marry a wife belonging to any class or nationality, provided only that she was a Christian or would become a Christian. Della Valle states, and there is no reason to discredit him, that sometimes a Dutchman bought a female slave in the bazar, and required her to become a Christian, in order to marry her at once and carry her off to Java.

Donna Lucia,

captive.

Donna Lucia, who took charge of the young Signora Adventures of Mariuccia, had been the heroine of a strange adventure, the Catholic It was the custom of the king of Portugal to send a number of well-born orphan girls every year to Goa, with sufficient dowries to procure them husbands in Portuguese India. Donna Lucia was one of three Portuguese orphan girls of good family who had been sent to India the previous year. The fleet which carried them was attacked by the Dutch, who captured some of the ships, and carried off the three damsels to Surat. Being passably handsome, the