Page 364 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

ENCOUNTERS WITH INDIA: LAND OF GOLD,

SPICES, AND MATTERS SPIRITUAL

Stuart Gary Welch

India is rich — and vulnerable. In the western the sand is, they fill sacks with it and ride Christianity came to India when the Apostle
world, from ancient times into the eighteenth away homeward with all speed. For the ants Saint Thomas journeyed overland to the Persian
.
century, this has been the seductive and inviting no sooner become aware of them . . by smell Gulf, sailing the rest of the way to Malabar in
legend, one more concerned with taste buds, . . . than they give chase. south India on a Moorish ship. He established
fine raiment, and full purses than with mind or During the fourth century B.C., Alexander churches there and in Sind, always maintaining
spirit. It grew over many centuries from a the Great, inspired by legends of India's wealth contact with the Syrian Church in Aleppo.
hotchpotch of soldiers' and sailors' yarns and and curious about its anomalous culture, led his Even King Alfred of England (843-899) sup-
travelers' and merchants' dreams, most of which armies across the known world as far as the ported Indian missions, to fulfill a vow made
must be sifted for hard facts. Herodotus, writ- Beas River. But the heat and distance were so before one of his battles. After winning, true to
ing between 450 and 430 B.C., is our earliest great that his armies refused to go farther. He his word he sent Bishop Sigelm of Shireburn to
source. The first of his piquant anecdotes tells withdrew, leaving behind governors who estab- south India, whence — according to William of
of Indian hounds, of which the Great King of lished long-lasting, eventually independent prov- Malmesbury (d. 1143) — he brought back "many
Babylon (Assyria) owned so many that their inces, well known to today's museum visitors brilliant and exotic gems, and aromatic juices,
maintenance drained all of the taxes from four from their sculptures in which classical natural- in which the country abounds." Many Francis-
large villages. Another of his claims is as fresh ism blends with indigenous inner vision. Al- cans were sent to India during the first half of
as today's news: in the sixth century B.C. there though Alexander's "conquest," which fostered the fourteenth century. John of Monte Corvino
were more Indians "than any other people international trade, was celebrated by western served in southern India before becoming arch-
known to us." Furthering the legend of wealth historians, Indian sources scarcely mention it. bishop of Peking. Odoric of Pordenone traveled
he wrote that Persia's north Indian provinces In 115 B.C., King Ptolemy m Euergetes sent by land from Ormuz to Tana in Salsette, after
paid the empire's highest tribute, three hun- Eudoxus of Cyzicus to India. Guided by an which he sailed to Polumbum (Quilon), Cey-
dred and sixty talents of gold dust. His infor- Indian whose life he had saved during a ship- lon, and to the Coromandel coast. A French
mation slithers between the humdrum and the wreck, he sailed as far as the Malabar coast, monk, Jordanus, urged the establishment of
fantastic, touching on Indians and their ways where he acquired a wealth of precious stones missions at Poroco (Broach) and Supra (Surat),
before revealing the surprising source of all and spices before returning home. Word spread; although he was stationed as Bishop at Polum-
that gold: trade burgeoned; and greed fanned investiga- bum (Quilon), the largest trading center near
There are many Indian nations; and they do tions of the east and how to go there. Alexan- the tip of the peninsula.
not all speak one language, some are nomads; drian geographers such as Eratosthenes in the Compilers of the Catalan Atlas of 1375 (cat.
. . . some live in the marshes beside the river third century B.C. separated truth from fiction i) gathered and summarized information from
and eat raw fish . . . other Indians .. to the and drew charts that included India. Although ecclesiastical travelers as well as from Marco
.
east. . . are nomads and eat raw flesh. It mere fragments of these are known, they seem Polo and others. It is the earliest extant map to
is ... a custom . . . that if one of their folk is to have been more accurate than those prepared show India as a peninsula. Most of Asia, how-
sick, he is killed by his nearest kinsmen, who a century later by Claudius Ptolemy, whose ever, was still lumped together as "the Indies,"
say that as he is wasted with sickness his flesh maps, preserved in Byzantium, reached western subdivided into India within and India beyond
is ... spoiled . . . ; but [the others] not agree- Europe in the fifteenth century and profoundly the Ganges, India Extrema or Superior, Greater
influenced cartography there (see cats. 126,
ing, kill and eat him. . . . On the other hand, 127). India, Middle India, and Lesser India. Accord-
there are Indians who will kill no living ing to Marco Polo, Abyssinia was in Middle
thing, who sow no seed nor are accustomed Indian trade flourished under the Romans, India, while Greater India reached from Malabar
to have houses, and they are grass eaters . . . who established stations along the west coast to Kech-Makran (on the coast of Iran), and the
for buying
spices and textiles.
The gold, we are told, is found in the desert however, were of little interest Western goods, eight major kingdoms of Lesser India extended
from
Chamba (in South Vietnam) to Motupalli.
to Indians, who
near the city of Caspatyrus, where giant ants, demanded gold and silver coin. A worryingly Knowledge of India proliferated, especially
"somewhat smaller than dogs but bigger than uneven balance of trade brought complaints after Byzantine Constantinople fell to the Otto-
foxes," in burrowing into the ground bring up from Pliny in the Senate. Increasing commerce man Turks in 1453. During this era of travel,
sand mixed with gold:
led to first-hand knowledge of India, such as Hindu yogis were also on the road, following
It is in search of this sand that the Indians that compiled by the anonymous Greek or quite different quests. A painting from Turcoman
make journeys into the desert. Each man has Greek-speaking Egyptian trader or ship-master Tabriz, now in Istanbul, depicts them accurately,
a team of three camels . . . [with which he who, between 95 and 130 A.D., wrote The apparently from life, in the company of Muslim
.
goes] to fetch the gold . . at the hottest time, Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, an invaluable holy men at a startlingly ecumenical shrine the
for then . . . the ants disappear into the ground source of information on sea routes and trade walls of which are adorned with Christian im-
. . . When the Indians reach the place where goods. agery. A few decades after this miniature was

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