Page 365 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

painted in western Iran, men of learning in the at one point taking some of them prisoner and, so fully to life that we can envision, hear, and
west were busy digesting the newly available when Da Gama sailed, fighting a brief naval indeed smell them. Except perhaps for a few
information from Constantinople, important battle with his ships. astutely professional senior officers and the
work by Arab travelers and geographers and This initial success invited further Portuguese ships' doctor, they must have been — like most
Ptolemy's long hidden maps. royal ventures. On 9 March 1500, thirteen mariners of their period — a raucously tatterde-
The Ottoman victory of 1453 also disrupted vessels led by Pedro Alvarez Cabral set sail. malion lot, at best hardy and brave — men who
trade. This was a serious matter at a time when Carried by winds and current to Brazil, which quite literally "knew the ropes."
refrigeration was either primitive or non-existent, he called Vera Cruz (Land of the True Cross), he However much one empathizes with the afflic-
and not only royalty but wealthy nobles and profited from his mistake by claiming it in tions withstood by these rugged officers and
rich merchants craved spices to improve the Portugal's name. But India was his goal, and crews on what must have seemed like endless
flavor of food and to help preserve it. Merces after losing four ships off the Cape of Good voyages from Europe, one also sympathizes
subtiles (cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, vanilla, Hope, he finally dropped anchor off Calicut on with the Indians whose culture they misunder-
cloves, ginger, et al.}, as well as indigo for dyeing 13 September. Cabral was well received by the stood, often affronted, and weakened. Is it
and gold, previously had reached Europe from benevolent Zamorin, who overlooked further poetic justice that this first contingent of Portu-
the Black Sea and Constantinople via Genoese protests by Arab merchants and permitted the guese, bent so exclusively on trade, saw and
and Venetian middlemen. Virtually overnight, establishment of a trading station. Friction be- experienced so little of India? On the hot,
the Ottoman triumph cut off supplies of these tween the Portuguese and the Muslim traders, sunny day on which Vasco da Gama arrived at
luxuries that had become necessities, valued as who saw the new arrivals as trespassers on their Calicut on the Malabar coast, he and his men
highly as gold or precious stones. And when own trading grounds, led to a riot against the had landed near the lower extremity of the
fresh inventories were again available, delivered Portuguese and the destruction of their outpost, Indian subcontinent, a triangular peninsula 2,000
via circuitous routes by greedy Italians who had and to Cabral's rash decision to bombard the miles long suspended beneath the vast land
to pay fierce tolls, prices were exorbitant. In city in revenge. mass of Central Asia. Closed off at the top by
Europe, only the Genoese and Venetian traders Cabral then sailed to Cochin, a lesser Hindu 1,600 miles of almost impenetrable mountain
with their small but seaworthy xebecs and kingdom to which he promised aid against his ranges — the Hindu Kush, Karakorum, and
carracks profited, repacking and transporting former ally the Zamorin. Cabral's alliance with Himalaya — it was bordered by the Bay of
cargoes brought from India by Arab dhows to spice-rich Cochin was followed by one with Bengal to the east and by the Indian Ocean to
Syrian ports. Finding a new route to the East Cannanore. This so pleased the king of Portugal the west. It could be seen as an enclosed garden,
became a matter of some concern for the rest of that in 1502 he commissioned Vasco da Gama in which varied but interconnected cultures,
Europe. to return to south India with twenty vessels, isolated as though in a test tube, ever gained in
Following Christopher Columbus' "Enterprise not only to augment trade but to establish a intensity and savor. The land is naturally di-
of the Indies/' an auspicious failure on behalf of Christian mission. Despite these pious — as well vided by mountain ranges (ghats) into high
Spain, Portugal's program of voyages down the as mercenary — intentions, while en route da plateaus and plains, some of them desert, others
African coast reached its successful climax. On Gama intercepted a rich Muslim pilgrimage watered and provided with rich loam by rivers
9 July 1497, Vasco da Gama set forth with three vessel homeward bound from Arabia laden with fed by melting mountain snow. Northern and
vessels destined for India via the Cape of Good men, women, and children. The ship was at- southern India are noticeably distinct. Sealed
Hope by a direct sea route. More than eight tacked, plundered and scuttled. off by geography, the south has been harder to
months later, on 20 May 1498, he reached Worse followed. Vasco da Gama arrived in reach than the north; and before the arrival of
Capucad, a small village eight miles north of Calicut where he demanded "as a preliminary sizeable vessels its people were less open to
Calicut. Landing there was a stroke of good condition of peace" that the Zamorin expel foreign influences.
fortune. His pilot was an Arab unaware of the every Muslim from the land. When this was Three and a half millennia ago, the "original
long-term results of this minor task, for he had refused, he blasted the town with cannon, kill- Indians" — probably Australoids — were driven
spared the Portuguese from landing in the ing many people, and sailed away, still smarting. away to less desirable lands by Aryan tribes who
territories of the Muslim sultan of Gujarat, He also butchered or burned alive several hun- had worked their way from Central Asia through
who probably would have disrupted — if not dred fishermen who had sailed out that day the always vulnerable mountain passes of the
ended — Vasco da Gama's ambitions. By chance, unaware that hostilities were about to resume, northwest. These so-called Dravidians (descended
Da Gama had been brought to the lands of the evincing a brutality that was lamentably typical from the land's prehistoric inhabitants) can be
friendly Hindu Zamorin of Calicut, who wel- of these early campaigns. Cabral's and Da Gama's found in remote tracts of the subcontinent
comed him and offered every facility of this expeditions were the spearhead of an expan- among India's tribal people. Of similar ancient
major center of the spice trade. sionist Portuguese policy that soon led to the lineage are the Dravidians of south India, peo-
This initial encounter between Portugal and establishment of a string of bases and fortresses ple encountered by the Portuguese. The ancient
India brought with it some tense moments. The in western India and to Afonso de Albuquer- Aryans were probably the last of many waves of
meager trade goods of the Portuguese were que's capture of Goa in 1510. invaders and immigrants of the early period
scoffed at by the Indians, whom the Portuguese When European sailor-adventurers first landed whose ways were not gradually absorbed or
amazingly took to be Christians, reasoning that on the shores of south India and met their Indianized entirely beyond recognition. They
they could not be Muslims because the Hindu inhabitants, what must these so dissimilar beings not only contributed to Indian culture the ear-
temples contained images of gods in human have thought of one another? Although neither lier Vedas (knowledge), written in Sanskrit
form. After his welcome, the Zamorin, advised the Indians nor the Portuguese have left us probably between 1500 and 1000 B.C., but they
by knowledgeable Moorish traders that these specific reports of this encounter, it is not should be credited with codifying (if not initiat-
new visitors were not trustworthy, pursued a difficult to picture the scene. Documents from ing) the caste system, a specifically Indian con-
rather ambiguous policy toward the Portuguese, the age of these European manners bring them cept which was still rigorously followed in 1498.

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