The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c11.s7.2

c11.s7.2

Athnasius Nikitin, who travelled in the Deccan between 1470 and 1474 says that the land is overstocked with people: but those in the country are very miserable¹⁴² Durate Barbosa (1600-1615) was horrified by the poverty existing on the Malabar coast and says that some of the lower classes in the region were so poor that they lived on roots and wild fruits and covered themselves with leaves. His near contemporary Varthema (1504-06) and the later visitor Linschoten wrote in a similar strain. Writing around the year 1624, Della Valle gives glimpses of life in Surat by pointing out that the people were numerous, wages were low, and slaves cost practically nothing to keep. Similar is the testimony of Pyrard.¹⁴³ The Portuguese writer Paes (wrote in 1520) and Nuniz (1536-37), confirm the assertion that the mass of the people were living in the greatest poverty and distress. In the seventeenth century John De Laet (1631) summarised the information he had collected from English, Dutch and Portuguese sources regarding the Mughal empire as a whole. The condition of the common people in these regions (south and west) is, says he, exceedingly miserable; wages are low; workmen get only one regular meal a day, the houses are wretched and practically unfurnished, and people have not got sufficient covering to keep warm in winter.¹⁴⁴