Travels in India (Tavernier) 136.1.4

136.1.4

When I was at Patna four Armenians, who had previously made a journey to the Kingdom of Bhutan, came from Dantzic, where they had had made numerous images of yellow amber, which represented all kinds of animals and monsters, these they were taking to the King of Bhutan to place in his pagodas, he being, like his people, exceedingly idolatrous. Wherever the Armenians see that money is to be made they have no scruple about supplying materials for the purposes of idolatry, and they told me that if they had been able to get an idol made which the King had ordered from them they would have been enriched. It was a head in the form of a monster, which had six horns, four ears, and four arms, with six fingers on each hand, the whole to be of yellow amber, but the Armenians could not find sufficiently large pieces for the purpose. I was inclined to believe that money lacked them, for it did not appear that they had much of it ; it is, however, an infamous trade to furnish the instruments of idolatry to these poor people. Coming now to the road which must be followed from Patna to the Kingdom of Bhutan, upon which the caravan spends three months. It leaves Patna generally at the end of December and arrives on the eighth day at Gorakhpur, which, as I have said, is the last town in this direction in the territories of the Great Mogul, where the merchants obtain their supplies for a portion of the journey.