A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.56

c6.56

This sketch of our foreign sources may be closed with the mention of Pietro della Valle who has been described as the most eminent among those who travelled for pleasure, with no motive of trade or service, ‘the most intelligent in apprehension and the most accurate in description’. He was born in Rome in 1586 and sailed for India from Bandar Abbas in January 1623. He visited Cambay, Ahmadabad, Chaul, Goa, Ikkeri, Mangalore and Calicut, and sailed back from Goa to Muscat in November 1624. His letters ‘bring before the mind’s eye a vivid and life-like representation of men and manners as they existed in the early part of the seventeenth century in the Portuguese settlements on the coast and in the native territories adjacent to them’.