Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 3.5
Travels in the Mogul Empire (Constable) 3.5
- Language
- English
3.5.1
I had, in the next place, ascertained that my friend, as well as his Mahometan companion, had solemnly promised Aureng-Zebe to urge his King to permit the repair of a mosque in Ethiopia, which had been in ruins since the time of the Portuguese. The Mogol gave the ambassadors two thousand roupies in anticipation of this service. The mosque, erected as the mausoleum of a certain Cheik, or derviche, who left Meca for the purpose of propagating Mahometanism in Ethiopia, and had made great progress there, was demolished by the Portuguese, when they entered the country with troops from Goa, as allies of the lawful sovereign, who had embraced Christianity, and been driven from the throne by a Mahometan prince. My third objection to Murat's conduct arose from the part he took in entreating Aureng-Zebe, in the name of the Ethiopian King, to send the latter an Alcoran and eight other books, with the names of which I am familiar, and which are of the first repute among the treatises written in defence of the Mahometan creed.
3.5.2
There seemed to me something extremely base and wicked in these proceedings, on the part of a Christian ambassador, acting in the name of a Christian King. They afforded but too satisfactory a confirmation of the account I had received at Moka of the low ebb to which Christianity is reduced in the kingdom of Ethiopia. Indeed, all the measures of its government, and the character of the people, savour strongly of Mahometanism, and it cannot be doubted that the number, even of nominal Christians, has been on the decline since the death of the King, who was maintained on the throne by the troops from Goa. Soon after that event, the Portuguese, in consequence of the intrigues of the Queen-mother, were either killed or driven out of the country. The Jesuit Patriarch, whom his countrymen had brought from Goa, was compelled to fly for his life. During the stay of the ambassadors at Dehli, my Agah, ever eager in search of knowledge, invited them frequently to his house. He asked many questions concerning the condition of their country and the nature of its government; but his principal object was to obtain information respecting the source of the Nile, which they call Abbahile, and concerning which they talked to us as so well ascertained that no one need question it. Murat and a Mogol, who travelled with him from Ethiopia, have visited the source, and the particulars given by them both are substantially the same as those I had learnt at Moka.
3.5.3
They informed us that the Nile has its origin in the country of the Agaus, rising from two bubbling and contiguous springs, which form a small lake of about thirty or forty paces in length; that the water running out of this lake is already a pretty considerable river; which continues, however, to increase in size by reason of the small tributary streams which, from here and there, flow into it. They added that the river went on in a circuitous course, forming, as it were, a large island; and that after falling from several steep rocks, it entered into a great lake wherein are several fertile islands, quantities of crocodiles, and, what would be much more remarkable, if true, numbers of sea-calves which have no other means of ejecting their excrement than the mouth. This lake is in the country of Dumbia, three short stages from Gonder, and four or five from the source of the Nile. The river, they continued, when it leaves the great lake, is much augmented by the numerous rivers and torrents which fall into that lake, especially in the rainy season; which is as periodical as in the Indies, commencing towards the end of July. This, by the way, is an important consideration, and accounts for the overflowing of the Nile. From the lake just mentioned the river runs by Sonnar, the capital city of the King of Fungi (tributary to the King of Ethiopia) and continues its course until it reaches the plains of Mesra or Egypt.
3.5.4
The two ambassadors dilated more copiously than was agreeable either to my Agah or myself on the magnificence of their sovereign, and the strength of his army; but their travelling companion, the Mogol, never joined in these panegyrics, and told us, during their absence, that he had twice seen this army in the field, commanded by the King in person, and that it is impossible to conceive troops more wretched and worse disciplined. The Mogol gave us a great deal of information about Ethiopia, the whole of which is noted in my journal, and may one day be given to the public. At present I shall content myself with noticing three or four facts related by Murat, and which, considering that they occurred in a Christian land, will be deemed sufficiently remarkable.
3.5.5
He said that in Ethiopia there are few men who do not keep several wives; nor was he ashamed to confess that he himself had two, besides the wife to whom he was legally married, and who resided in Aleppo. The Ethiopian women, he observed, do not hide themselves as in the Indies among the Mahometans and even the Gentiles; and nothing is more common than to see females of the lower ranks, whether single or married, bond or free, mingled together, day and night, in the same apartment; the whole of them perfectly unacquainted with those feelings of jealousy so prevalent in other nations. The women, or wives of grandees, are at no great pains to conceal their attachment to any handsome cavalier, whose house they enter without fear or scruple. If I had visited Ethiopia, I should have been compelled, they told me, to marry. A few years ago, a wife was forced upon an European, a Padry, who passed for a Greek physician; and it is curious enough that the woman whom they obliged him to wed was the same that he designed for one of his sons.
3.5.6
A man, eighty years of age, having presented to the King four-and-twenty sons, all of mature age, and able to carry arms, was asked by His Majesty whether those were the only children he could exhibit? The old gentleman answered that they were indeed the whole of the male part of his family, but that he was also the father of a few daughters. 'Out then from my presence, thou old calf!' was the King's rejoinder. 'I am astonished that instead of feeling shame, thou presumest to appear before me. Is there a lack of women in my dominions that thou, a man well stricken in years, canst boast of only two dozen sons?' The Ethiopian King himself has at least eighty children, who are met running about indiscriminately in all parts [qui couroient pêle mêle] of the seraglio. They are known by a round stick varnished, resembling a small mace, which the King had made for them, and which they carry about with great delight, as a sceptre, to distinguish them from those who are the children of certain slaves or other people of the seraglio.
3.5.7
Aureng-Zebe sent twice for the ambassadors. He hoped, like my Agah, to increase his stock of knowledge by their conversation; but his chief anxiety was to be made acquainted with the state of Mahometanism in their country. He expressed a desire to see the mule's skin, which somehow or other remained afterward in the fortress in possession of the officers; much to my disappointment, for it was promised me in return for my good services, and I had counted upon one day presenting it to one of our Virtuosi in Europe, I strongly recommended the ambassadors to show the great horn to the King, as well as the skin : but this might have subjected them to the very embarrassing question : how it happened, that in the ransacking of Sourate they lost the civet, and yet retained the horn ? The Ethiopian embassy was still in Dehli, when Aureng-Zebe assembled his privy-council, together with the learned men of his court, for the purpose of selecting a suitable preceptor for his third son, Sultan Ekbar, whom he designs for his successor. He evinced upon this occasion the utmost solicitude that this young Prince should receive such an education as might justify the hope of his becoming a great man. No person can be more alive than Aureng-Zebe to the necessity of storing the minds of Princes, destined to rule nations, with useful knowledge. As they surpass others in power and elevation, so ought they, he says, to be pre-eminent in wisdom and virtue.
3.5.8
He is very sensible that the cause of the misery which afflicts the empires of Asia, of their misrule, and consequent decay, should be sought, and will be found, in the deficient and pernicious mode of instructing the children of their Kings. Intrusted from infancy to the care of women and eunuchs, slaves from Russia, Circassia, Mingrelia, Gurgistan, or Ethiopia, whose minds are debased by the very nature of their occupation ; servile and mean to superiors, proud and oppressive to dependants; — these Princes, when called to the throne, leave the walls of the Seraglio quite ignorant of the duties imposed upon them by their new situation. They appear on the stage of life, as if they came from another world, or emerged, for the first time, from a subterraneous cavern, astonished, like simpletons, at all around them. Either, like children, they are credulous in everything, and in dread of everything; or, with the obstinacy and heedlessness of folly, they are deaf to every sage counsel, and rash in every stupid enterprise. According to their natural temperament, or the first ideas impressed upon their minds, such Princes, on succeeding to a crown, affect to be dignified and grave, though it be easy to discern that gravity and dignity form no part of their character, that the appearance of those qualities is the effect of some ill-studied lesson, and that they are in fact only other names for savageness and vanity;
3.5.9
or else they affect a childish politeness in their demeanour, childish because unnatural and constrained. Who, that is conversant with the history of Asia, can deny the faithfulness of this delineation? Have not her Sovereigns been blindly and brutally cruel, — cruel without judgment or mercy? Have they not been addicted to the mean and gross vice of drunkenness, and abandoned to an excessive and shameless luxury; ruining their bodily health, and impairing their understanding, in the society of concubines? Or, instead of attending to the concerns of the kingdom, have not their days been consumed in the pleasures of the chase? A pack of dogs will engage their thoughts and affection, although indifferent to the sufferings of so many poor people who, compelled to follow the unfeeling Monarch in the pursuit of game, are left to die of hunger, heat, cold, and fatigue. In a word, the Kings of Asia are constantly living in the indulgence of monstrous vices, those vices varying, indeed, as I said before, according to their natural propensities, or to the ideas early instilled into their minds. It is indeed a rare exception when the Sovereign is not profoundly ignorant of the domestic and political condition of his empire.
3.5.10
The reins of government are often committed to the hands of some Vizier, who, that he may reign lord absolute, with security and without contradiction, considers it an essential part of his plan to encourage his master in all his low pursuits, and divert him from every avenue of knowledge. If the sceptre be not firmly grasped by the first minister, then the country is governed by the King's mother, originally a wretched slave, and by a set of eunuchs, persons who possess no enlarged and liberal views of policy, and who employ their time in barbarous intrigues; banishing, imprisoning, and strangling each other, and frequently the Grandees and the Vizier himself. Indeed, under their disgraceful domination, no man of any property is sure of his life for a single day.