Storia do Mogor 3: II. CATROU'S 'HISTOIRE GENERALE DE L'EMPIRE DU MOGOL,' 1705.
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 3
- Language
- English
II. CATROU'S 'HISTOIRE GENERALE DE L'EMPIRE DU MOGOL,' 1705.
3.1
In 1705 there appeared at Paris a quarto volume of 272 pages entitled 'Histoire Generale de l'Empire du Mogol depuis sa fondation, sur les Memoires de M. Manouchi, Venitien, par le Pere François Catrou, de la Compagnie de Jesus.' There is an epistle dedicatory to the Duc de Bourgogne (1682-1712), grandson of Louis XIV., and a preface of eight (unnumbered) pages. The subjects treated are Tamberlank, Miracha, Abou Chaid, Sec Omor, Babar, Amahum, Akbar, Jean-Guir, and Cha-Jahan, till the end of the war of succession (1659). The last of these reigns occupies 78 pages. The work concludes with 40 pages of a 'Description de la Cour, des Forces, des Richesses, et du Gouvernement, des Empereurs Mogols.'
3.2
François Catrou was born at Paris on December 28, 1659, joined the Jesuit Society on October 28, 1678, and died at Paris on October 12, 1737. He was the author of some five separate works, among them a discredited 'History of the Romans' (21 volumes), published in 1721-1737, and translated into English in 1728-1737 (6 volumes, folio). For twelve years, 1701-1712, he edited the literary organ Journal de Trevoux, and acquired some reputation as a critic, though he displayed singularly little critical acumen in not discarding the earlier for the later and really valuable part of Manucci's historical notices. He was thus a practised and experienced literary man; but on the whole it would not be a libel to style him something of a hack writer, ready to undertake any task, whether he knew anything of the subject or not. Certainly he managed to give the coup de grace to the work sent home by Manucci, without establishing any permanent reputation for himself in the process. When he says in his second preface (1715) that the 'Memoires' were confided to him by Manucci himself, he tells a deliberate lie; for, as we shall see farther on, the unfortunate Italian had vigorously protested nine years before—namely, in 1706—that his manuscript had been communicated to the Jesuits without his knowledge or consent.
3.3
In his first preface of 1705 Catrou tells us, more truthfully, that he obtained Manucci's manuscript from M. Deslandes, a Pondicherry official, who had brought it to Europe in 1701 or 1702. As to the truth of the earlier historical events, Catrou (Preface, p. 2) relies for proof of authenticity on Manucci's assertion (Text, I. 55) that his facts were taken direct from official chronicles. But in reality, for the period preceding Shahjahan—that is, up to the year 1627—Manucci's history is no more than a tissue of popular stories of no historical value whatever. Thus Catrou, in his volume of 1705, reproduced for the most part what are perhaps the least valuable chapters of Manucci's text. The volume of 1705 ends with the struggle in 1658 between Aurangzeb and his brothers for the imperial throne.
3.4
Catrou was not content to draw his matter from Manucci alone; he tells us in the Journal de Trevoux for 1705, p. 128, and in his first preface (p. 6), that he also had recourse to Maffei, Tossi, Texeira, Pietro della Valle, Thomas Roe, Jean de Laet, Bernier, Tavernier, and D'Herbelot. In the course of another notice on pp. 574-580 of the same volume of the Journal de Trevoux he boasts that Manucci is only the fondement of his work. He also in his preface acknowledges aid received from another M. Deslandes, connected with Tavernier's works, and still alive in 1705. This is evidently A. Daulier Deslandes, author of 'Les Beautes de la Perse' (1673), who, so far as I can find out, was never in India at all. Owing to Catrou's giving no indication of which of these sources he is at the moment using, and Manucci himself having hitherto been inaccessible, it has been impossible to know in reading 'L'Histoire' what statements are to be attributed to Manucci and what to other writers.
3.5
Robert Orme, Historiographer to the East India Company, is, so far as I know, the first writer to make use of Catrou's 'Histoire.' After the publication in 1763 of his great work 'The Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from the Year 1745,' Orme began to collect materials for a continuation, his plan including a resume of Indian history from the year of Aurangzeb's accession (1658). At his death on January 13, 1801, his design was still incomplete; but we have the result of his forty years' labour in his valuable 'Historical Fragments,' the first edition published in 1782 (octavo), and the second (quarto) in 1805, after his death. As Orme himself says (p. 169), 'We have taken largely from this work' — i.e., Catrou's. Although Orme knew that Manucci had been at Madras in 1691, he had no access to his manuscripts, and, while admitting the elegance of Catrou's style and the interest of his narrations, comments (pp. 168, 169) on the want of chronological arrangement, and the errors in the few dates given. To this subject of chronology we will recur. In Orme's book there are at least eighteen references to Catrou and Manucci combined.
3.6
In 1778 A. H. Anquetil Duperron published at Amsterdam his 'Legislation Orientale' (quarto), and in the index he describes Manouchi as a Venetian physician at the court of the Mogul, whose memoirs he saw in 1763 in the library of the Jesuit Professed House at Paris, this manuscript being the original of Father Catrou's work. Duperron makes over twenty quotations from Catrou in support of his various contentions. J. Bernoulli in his 'Beschreibung von Hindustan' (founded on Père Joseph Tieffenthaler's papers), vol. ii., part ii. (1788), p. 192, has an interesting note on Manucci in reference to Tieffenthaler's criticism (vol. i., p. 29) of the erroneous latitudes and longitudes which appear in Catrou (edition of 1705, pp. 258-261). Tieffenthaler declares Manucci 'a better physician than geographer or astronomer.' If so, Heaven help him, for as a physician his learning was of the crudest. However, the whole of the statements so criticised are absent from Manucci's text, and must have come from some one or other of Catrou's additional sources. Similar instances of misleading interpolations will be referred to farther on. Bernouilli had, however, a most just sense of the need for the original text, for he says: 'This work (Manucci) is worth printing just as the author wrote it, in Portuguese. I invite its learned owner to endow the public with it' ('Recherches sur l'Inde,' 1787, ii., note a to p. 284).
3.7
In his 'History of the Maratthas,' first published in 1826, J. Grant-Duff makes more than one reference to Catrou. On p. 88 (Bombay edition of 1873) he uses him to confirm Khāfī Khān's account of Shiva Jī's device for getting into Shāistah Khān's quarters at Poonah (see Manucci's text, Part II., 77), and again he quotes him on p. 92 (note) as to a point in Jai Singh's Dakhin campaign. On p. 99 he contests Catrou's assertion that the rebellion of Aurangzeb's son Mu'azzam was collusive (Manucci's text, Part II., p. 122; Catrou, p. 79 of part iii., edition of 1715). Next we come to Elphinstone's 'History of India,' published in 1841. In at least one instance, p. 554, fourth edition, he quotes Catrou (or Manucci) for events in the reign of Aurangzeb; and although, in agreement with Grant-Duff's view, he considers the story absurd, it would be easy to show that the objection made by him on chronological grounds is untenable. In 1852 Maximilian Müllbauer brought out at Freiburg im Breisgau a most useful work on Catholic missions, 'Geschichte der Katholischen Missionen in Ostindien' (372 pages, 8vo.). He makes some thirteen citations from Catrou. Unfortunately for him, most of these passages are not to be found in Manucci's text, and cannot, therefore, be supported by his authority, whatever it may be worth. I will comment on this more precisely later on.
3.8
W. Erskine in his 'History of India' (Baber and Humayun), London, 1854, vol. i., pp. 542, 543, quotes with approval the statement of Aurangzeb's revenue given in Catrou, p. 264, 4to. edition of 1705; and Edward Thomas in 'The Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi' (1871), refers to the same passage, reproducing at the same time Mr. Erskine's misprint of Catron for Catrou. In his appendix (p. 443) he gives the figures in a tabulated form, and on pp. 447-450 inserts the French text of Catrou, pp. 264-267. By a supplementary treatise published the same year (1871) under the title 'The Revenue Resources of the Mughal Empire in India,' E. Thomas returns to the subject, and on pp. 44-48 gives the figures once again, with a further passage of the French text on the miscellaneous heads of revenue. Although rejecting Catrou as a worthless witness in himself, Mr. Thomas is, on the whole, inclined to accept Manucci's evidence. In fact, he places much more reliance on his figures than I should be prepared to do myself.
3.9
Considerable attention is given to Catrou's work by Mr. H. G. Keene in his 'Turks in India' (1879). On p. 14 of the introduction he quotes Manucci's value for a 'sol,' and on p. 15 he inserts his statements of the Mogul revenues. On p. 116 he notices with approval Manucci's refutation of Bernier's imputations on Jahan Ara Begam, daughter of Shahjahan. His comments upon Catrou's mode of dealing with his materials are excellent and to the point. We cordially agree with Mr. Keene's summing up, p. 118, that 'the Father would have done far better to have left his author to tell his own story.' Many details are given erroneously in Mr. Keene's account, as can be seen from our author's text and the rest of this Introduction. Manucci landed in India in 1656, not 1649; the person to whom he entrusted his manuscript was not Laudes, but Deslandes (Catrou, Preface, 2); the 'favourable mentions' of Catholic missionaries are not Manucci's but mostly inserted by Catrou himself; in 1705 Manucci was certainly alive, but in India, not in Europe; the paintings have not disappeared: they are in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, Département des Estampes, and we give reproductions of them; the first edition of Catrou is of 1705, not 1708.
3.10
The late J. Talboys Wheeler in the introduction to vol. iv., part i., of his 'History of India,' published in 1876, refers to his frequent citations from Catrou, whom he considered as the very best authority for Shahjahan's reign. He had not then seen Catrou's continuation, published in 1715. In 1881, when part ii. of his fourth volume appeared, Mr. Wheeler returns to the subject. By that time he had obtained a copy of the volume of 1715, but hazarded the assertion that the original memoirs, written in Portuguese, had not then been discovered. Another writer who quotes freely from Catrou is Professor S. Lane-Poole, in his 'Aurangzīb' (Rulers of India), 1893. His view is that the work is full of errors, savours strongly of the chronique scandaleuse, and is the production of a malicious and disappointed backstairs underling. But he adds that Catrou's 'Histoire' would be 'invaluable if there were any means of authenticating it by comparison with Manucci's MS.' An article in the Quarterly Review for April, 1893 (p. 519), couched in the same strain, may probably be attributed to the same writer, since a desire for the production of the Portuguese text is again expressed. Our present volumes, giving a close and faithful rendering of that text, are, it is hoped, a sufficient compliance with Professor Lane-Poole's requisition. Until in 1893 Mr. Poole drew my attention to the French edition of 1715, I had read Catrou only in the English version of 1826.
3.11
It is already abundantly clear that from the first Catrou's mode of editing his text has not met with approval. Anyone who consults the volumes now produced by me will agree, I think, that Catrou, for literary effect, acted wisely. He began by throwing overboard all, or almost all, personal narrative, looking on it as so much useless lumber, and then proceeded to dress out the rest according to his notions of what a history ought to be. While he thus produced a more artistic book, he much diminished, if he did not totally destroy, the authority of Manucci as an original source of history. It might even be doubted, confining oneself to Catrou's pages, whether Manucci ever was in India, or, granting that he did reach India, whether he had seen any more of it than a little of the country round Goa, and perhaps the town of Madras. If Manucci's narrative had already been in print, and thus available for reference, Catrou would have been justified in rearranging the material in his own way. But our ideas on the use of original and inedited documents have changed since his time, and unless a man's actual narrative can be consulted we discard him as an original authority. Moreover, it is the personal detail, in which Manucci so abounds, that at once secures our faith in the man, and leads to our believing that he did see and hear or undergo what he tells us.
3.12
Not only does Catrou omit, but he imports largely from other sources, without affording any means of distinguishing between such additions and what he drew from Manucci's manuscript. Instances of the misleading consequences of Catrou's method may be adduced. The chapter on Babar occupies pp. 38-52 of the quarto edition; yet of these fourteen pages almost all that can be assigned to Manucci are the names of Ranguil Das (p. 39, not including the speech), and Amuvi Xa (pp. 46, 47), with the last two paragraphs of pp. 51 and 52. Then, again, Noer on pp. 135-137 of his 'Geschichte,' quoting Catrou in regard to the Jesuit missions to the Mogul Court, believes that he is appealing to the authority of Manucci. Not a word of all these statements is to be found in Manucci's text, as will be readily seen. Quite recently (Bombay, 1903) Mr. Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, B.A., published a most interesting account of 'The Parsees at the Court of Akbar,' where, on p. 77, a table of the arrival and departure of the missions is taken from Catrou, 'on the authority of Manouchi'; and again, on p. 80, a detailed account of Akbar's reception of Rodolfo Aquaviva. Mr. Modi will be somewhat surprised to learn that nothing about any of these missions is to be found in the real Manucci text, and the statements made in Catrou obtain no confirmation from an appeal to it.
3.13
In 1715, ten years after his first edition had appeared, Catrou produced a continuation, what he called a Third Part, which deals with the long reign of Aurangzeb and ends with the death of Kam Bakhsh in January, 1709. In the quarto edition this Third Part of 1715 covers 207 pages, and is thus almost equal in size to the earlier publication (272 quarto pages). The narrative, much more valuable than most of the historical matter in the previous work, is almost entirely taken from the Second Part of Manucci's manuscript, and deals with events of which he was a contemporary, and often an eye-witness. But Catrou claimed to have received from India other memoirs, though he admits Manucci to be almost the only writer he has followed in writing the life of Aurangzeb (Preface of 1715, p. 3); and he goes on to say how a person newly arrived from India, to whom he read the manuscript, confirmed whatever it contained. To allay a suspicion that he had tampered with Manucci, he relies upon the manuscript, which he still possessed and could show to anyone expressing such doubts. But, as he goes on to say, he preferred a metaphorical style, like that of the Greek and Roman historians, to the simpler language adopted by Manucci.
3.14
In preparing his volume of 1715, had Catrou access to the fourth and fifth parts of Manucci's work, sent home, one in 1706 and the other before 1712? I think not. It is true that Catrou carries his narrative beyond 1700, the period at which Manucci's Parts I., II., and III. terminate; but the probabilities are that, for the last twenty to twenty-five pages of his later volume, he relied on those other memoirs from India of which he speaks in his preface. I have put together the following list of editions of Catrou from the catalogues of the British Museum and the India Office Library, from Carlos Sommervogel's edition of Backer's 'Bibliographic de la Compagnie de Jesus,' ii., column 882, s.v. Catrou, F., from Lowndes, ed. 1862, vol. i., p. 393, and from the exemplars in my own possession.