Storia do Mogor 15.1
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 15.1
- Language
- English
15.1.1
A work written by an Italian not in his mother-tongue, but in Portuguese, has always presented an interesting problem. We find now, on consulting the Codex at Venice, that about one-third of the whole work was drawn up originally in Italian. I have not used this text much, so I am not able to say fully in what it differs from the final copy of Parts I. to III., prepared in French and in Portuguese for transmission to Europe. But from what I have seen of it, the Italian text is much inferior in arrangement to the Berlin MS. ; its only use is to furnish a various reading here and there, and, perhaps, a few extra details worth preserving. The explanation for the choice of language, perhaps not a very sufficient one, as given by Manucci in two or three places, is that he was forced to change the language according to the nationality of the amanuensis available at the time. For instance, what he says (in Italian) on folio 364 of Codex XLIV. (Zanetti) is : ' Owing to the want of an Italian copyist, I have been obliged to continue my work in French, and even in Portuguese. The latter is far from correct, there not being any scribes here who are careful to seek always for the meaning of words ; I leave the matter to the goodwill of the learned.' From this point he drops Italian for French, and shortly after changes into Portuguese.
15.1.2
The French, as it seems to me, is handled with less freedom and force than the Portuguese. The latter would probably be deemed a patois, but I am not in a position myself to judge it, or compare it with more highly-elaborated compositions in that language. As used by Manucci, it has the merits of being simple, direct, and graphic ; and it forms an excellent vehicle for his narrative. As a raconteur Manucci takes high rank, knowing all the secrets of how to tell a story, precision of place and date, abundance of appropriate and convincing detail. Passages that may be singled out from much that is nearly as good are the death of the eunuch Basant, the author's first surgical case at Lahor, the onset of the Rajput chivalry headed by their red-eyed, opium-maddened bards chanting their battle-songs, the Nathan-like apologue told to Bishop Caspar Affonço of San Thomé, and the scene at the bleeding of Shah 'Alam's wife. Many others might be adduced. His style, though simple and non-literary, is extremely vivacious. He had what Catrou calls 'je ne scai quel feu d'imagination' in his mode of narration ; he never fails in interesting and carrying his readers along with him, and reproduces something of the stir of life in Indian cities, and their vividly contrasted splendour and squalor. In an occasional grossness of expression, opposed to our present canons of taste, he is following only the usage of his age and country. On the other hand, he is seldom guilty of pruriency or lubricity.
15.1.3
As an historian Manucci presents us with a somewhat mingled yarn. His supposed extracts from the Mogul official chronicles are for the reigns preceding that of Shahjahan a tissue of absurdities. These fables were, no doubt, current among the people, but they are distortions of the facts, as such folks' talk always is. What is told about Jahangir, whether true or not, is at any rate characteristic, and might be true. With the reign of Shahjahan things alter, and certainly for the later years of that reign and for the fifty years of Aurangzeb Manucci is a writer whose statements cannot be ignored. I will not assert that what he says must always be believed. He was at times misinformed; he was prejudiced; he wrote in the decline of life, thirty to forty years after many of the events had happened. I do not think he was intentionally unveracious; he is, indeed, quite honest and specific, as a rule, about the sources of his information. No doubt he had a penchant for the personal side of history — in fact, he has been called a 'backstairs gossip,' — but I do not think this condemns him as unworthy of credit. Oriental history, as tricked out by venal and fulsome pens, tells us little or nothing of the real character of the actors in it, or of the inner causes of events; and a writer like Manucci supplies us with the necessary corrective of lifelike, if at times sordid, detail.
15.1.4
Merely because they reveal undignified or discreditable actions, I do not hold that his stories should be rejected, while I think they are always true to the spirit of the time and country, and therefore antecedently probable. Governor Pitt's remark that the work was a 'history of Tom Thumb' is absurd, and the less worthy of respect that he had not seen any part of what he was condemning. One of the principal objects I have had in writing the notes which I have added to the text has been to show that, with rare exceptions, Manucci's statements, where they can be verified, are historically accurate, and a fair inference is that, where there is no such corroboration, he may equally be accepted as trustworthy. In my opinion Manucci has not copied from others, with the partial exception of F. Bernier. Evidently he possessed Bernier's book, and I think that where the two deal with the same events, Manucci took the order of his subjects from Bernier. Even then the topics are used chiefly as suggesting to him his own reminiscences. Another fact which distinguishes Manucci from Bernier is that in the contest for the crown they were on opposite sides, Manucci with Dara and Bernier with Aurangzeb; and we thus obtain the story of the defeated faction, which is frequently suppressed by the victor's eulogists.
15.1.5
In one instance Manucci may be convicted of actually copying Bernier. But after 1667, when the French physician left India, no suggestion can be made of any debt due to him by our author. Bernier was, of course, a trained physician and a man of superior education. But Manucci was an equally acute observer, and had an advantage in his very much longer experience of the country. In one or two cases, for instance, that of the siege of Bhakkar, p. 93, Bernier was probably indebted to Manucci himself for his information. If before 1667 Bernier (p. 55, ed. Constable) had the political prescience to see that the Mogul military power was rotten at the core, and could easily be overthrown by a small but well-commanded European brigade, we must not refuse some credit to Manucci for having, thirty years later, equally foretold the course of history. On folio 66 of Part III. (written in 1700) he says : ' I assert from what I have seen and tested, all that is required to sweep it away and occupy the whole Empire is a corps of thirty thousand European soldiers led by competent commanders, who would thereby acquire the glory of great conquerors.' Manucci seems to have had strong likes and dislikes. The chief objects of his dislike are the emperor Aurangzeb, the Portuguese, and the Jesuits. Can anyone assert that in any of these cases he had nothing to justify him ? His romantic attachment to Dara Shukoh, his first master, possibly made him unfair to Aurangzeb.
15.1.6
But, I ask, can a man who attacks and kills two brothers, imprisons an aged father, and thus ' wades through slaughter to a throne,' be held up as a model of all the virtues ? Were the Portuguese, in those days of their decay, not open to the censures passed upon them by Manucci ? Were the methods of the Jesuits as missionaries, and their defiance of the Pope, deserving of no reprobation ? In all other cases Manucci is usually tolerant, but does occasionally break forth into bitter and bigoted remarks on both Hinduism and Mahomedanism. He also takes a very low view of the Indian character, Hindu and Mahomedan, a view, though far from being the whole truth, which has impressed itself strongly on the majority of Europeans. Strangely enough, he entirely disapproves of and ridicules astrology ; yet he is always ready to swallow anything in the nature of witchcraft or soothsaying. Another of his peculiarities is his readiness to attribute poisoning as the cause of any great man's sudden death. He is constantly making such accusations against Aurangzeb. Possibly there are some grains of truth hidden in this wholesale denunciation ; and Manucci's readiness to see poison everywhere may be attributed, perhaps, to his Italian origin, and his knowledge of what had been the case in his own country.
15.1.7
Parts I., II., III. were written in 1699 and 1700, Part IV. between 1701 and 1705, Part V. between 1706 and 1709. On p. 21 of Part II. the then date is given as March 9, 1699 ; when he was writing Part III., p. 241, it was December, 1700. He began the work at the instigation of François Martin and Boureau-Deslandes, with whom he was intimate ; and the intention evidently was to send it to Europe for presentation to Louis XIV., in the hope that he would direct its publication.