Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c18.s1.80

v2.c18.s1.80

The same traveller mentions another people about whom many foreign witnesses have left their reminiscences. These were the Jōgis. Varthema has a great deal to say about a certain "King of the Iogbe" "a man of great dignity", who ruled over 30,000 people. But this was in northern India.² Barbosa has a very ingenious explanation to offer about the origin of the Jōgis. It appears that on the country passing into the hands of the Muhammadans, the Heathens (i. e., the Hindus), "unwilling to stay under the power of the Moors, go forth (for the most part of them) from that land and assume poor attire, resolving to go through the whole world sojourning in no place whatsoever; and this continue to do until they die during their pilgrimage".¹ Barbosa was told this by one of the Jōgis. "I have oft times asked them wherefore they went about thus, to which they replied that they always carried these iron chains as a penance for the great sin they had committed, in that they were unwilling to endure taking arms for the defence of their honour, and had allowed themselves to be overcome by a wicked people like the Moors; and that they went naked as a token of their great loss of honour, because they had submitted to be deprived of their lands, and houses in which God had brought them up. And now, they said, they wished for no property, as they had lost their own and they ought rather to have died; and that they smeared themselves with ashes to remind them of dust and ashes they were made, and to these they must return; all else was falsehood".²