Page 366 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

Although the word caste was derived from the except for the lowliest prostitutes they were Vasco da Gama and his men in all likelihood
Portuguese word for color, this system must completely unapproachable. Men probably encountered more Hindus than Muslims. Espe-
have baffled and occasionally embarrassed Vasco seemed refined to the point of effeminacy. Both cially eye and ear-engaging would have been
da Gama and his men. They could not have must have smelled oddly to these sweaty visi- Hindu dancers. With luck, they might have
understood its subtle distinctions according to tors, for they would have worn — or been mas- seen early forms of Kathakali, the Hindu dance
which Aryan society was led by priests whose saged with — oil-based scents concocted from epics of a kind associated with Kerala, in which
complex rituals had become accepted as indis- musk, sweetly smelling earths, and unfamiliar heroes, heroines, and monsters dressed in bell-
pensable to tribal prosperity. They divided hu- flowers. shaped skirts wear god-size "masks" built up to
mankind into four still familiar social classes, Meeting and communicating with these in- deeply sculptural forms in layers of polychromed
each further divided into many castes and sub- comprehensibly exotic people would have been rice-flour paste. Although it is claimed that this
castes. The scholars and priests who devised difficult. Immediately troublesome was the lan- tradition was codified during the nineteenth
and perpetuated the system constituted them- guage barrier; for surely no Portuguese at that century, early sixteenth-century Calicut must
selves as the highest class, the Brahmins. The time spoke Malayalam, the language of Calicut, have taken pleasure in comparable religious danc-
Kshatriyas, warriors and rulers intended to one of India's 845 languages and dialects. But ing. At once instructive to the public, with its
protect and maintain the Brahmins, came sec- India's sights and sounds must have attracted, characterizations drawn from the Hindu pan-
ond. The third class, the Vaishyas, was com- even delighted the strangers, especially if they theon and religious epics, it also provided ec-
posed of farmers and merchants, and the laborers came upon a religious procession, glorious with static release by stimulating trance states in its
and serfs who worked the land were the fourth glitteringly caparisoned elephants, huge wooden dancers. Unless its dynamically "heathen" char-
class, the Shudras. The darker, "uncivilized" chariots teeming with carved and polychromed acters, including droll demons, offended Portu-
aboriginals whom the fair-skinned Aryans had Hindu deities. It would have been accompanied guese religious sensibilities, it should have
defeated were relegated to a fifth group, the by musicians sounding horns and shrill pipes, thrilled them.
Panchama, who, along with the Portuguese and twanging stringed instruments, tinkling bells, Observing non-Christian religious activities,
other foreigners, were outside the caste system. and pounding several kinds of drums which alas, might not have gratified the Portuguese,
However oblivious Vasco da Gama and his must have astonished Portuguese ears. The to whom revering images of Christ or the
followers were to the land and people before intense — sometimes extreme — religious faith Virgin Mary was admirable but doing so to
them, they were fortunate in having been guided of many Hindus would have been apparent in images of Hindu Gods shaped like elephants or
to Malabar's most powerful kingdom and its such processions, during which people normally monkeys was not. Once the Portuguese were
chief center of trade. The Zamorin was mightier decorous suddenly lost themselves in divine established in India, instead of acquiring such
than the Raja of Cochin, who traditionally paid adoration, perhaps reminding the Portuguese of items, they commissioned Indian craftsmen to
him annual offerings of elephants and who was similar ecstacies at home. carve ivories of Christian subjects and to manu-
neither permitted by him to strike coins nor Although the Zamorin and most of his people facture richly carved and inlaid chests, tables,
even to roof his palace with tiles. Astute in were Hindus, whose religion had developed cupboards, and other furniture based upon Eu-
trade as well as royal, this cosmopolitan ruler over millennia and encompassed every level of ropean forms. We are unaware of any significant
received merchants from places distant as China, thought and religious feeling, from animism to Hindu or Muslim object or painting brought
Sumatra (Jawa), Ceylon (Saylan), the Maldive Brahminism and to highly evolved philosophi- back from India by the scrupulously Christian
Islands, Yemen, and Pars (Persia). We must cal systems, Muslims were powerful at court Portuguese during their colonial period.
realize, however, that except for these foreign and in trade, as Vasco da Gama learned. Unlike Had Vasco da Gama and his followers been
ships and men, everything that the Portuguese the Hindus they had come to India in 712 A.D., observant, interested, and open-minded they
saw stretched out before them — each pictur- less than one hundred years after the death of could have learned remarkable things about
esque date or coconut palm, low-slung white- the Prophet, when Arab traders reached Sind in Indian life and customs. As Christians, they
washed mud-brick building, all the lean boats what is now Pakistan. Over the next three might have noted that in Hinduism there are
with graceful prows reminiscent of gondolas, centuries, the teachings of Muhammad spread many priests but no religious hierarchy, no
every elephant, temple, and all the people — throughout Central Asia, and the armies of equivalent to their bishops, cardinals, or pope.
represented but a tiny sampling of India's over- Islam gathered strength. In the eleventh and Holy men, however, abounded; and many would
whelming variety. twelfth centuries, far greater forces led by rug- have seemed wildly picturesque, with long hair,
The Portuguese must have been struck by ged Turks and Afghans raided India through sometimes wrapped as turbans, and curling,
Malabar's crisp freshness. Roadways, animals, the same northwestern mountain passes en- untrimmed fingernails. Some of them spent
buildings, and people alike would have been tered by the Aryans. These invaders not only their days staring into the sun; others proudly
immaculately clean. Very dark skinned, the destroyed many Hindu temples but also dealt suffered fiercer discomforts, such as holding
Zamorin and his people were finely featured. the final blow to Buddhist culture in north their arms above their heads for years on end or
They dressed lightly, the women naked above India. As the conquerors adjusted to their new stretching out on beds of sharply pointed nails.
the waist and wrapped below in unstitched surroundings, Islam's cultural heritage enriched Perhaps the Portuguese sensed similarities be-
white cotton, relieved by occasional stripes and and blended with India's, and by 1300 truly tween these self-imposed austerities and those
block-printed floral patterns. Like the men, who Indo-Muslim idioms were emerging in the art of Christian Penitentes.
also wore white cotton, they were small-boned and architecture of the sultanates of northern After shipboard fare the Portuguese must
and most of them were thin, with lustrously India and the Deccan. Many of the Muslims have enjoyed south Indian food, with its succu-
oiled hair. They moved gracefully, with ele- encountered by Vasco da Gama would have lent fruits, rice, crunchy rice-flour breads, and
gance and dignity. To the comparatively rough- been affiliated with the Deccani sultanate of vegetables cooked in clarified butter. Inasmuch
hewn Portuguese, Indian women must have Bijapur, which yielded Goa, its major port, to as the chili peppers for which Indian cuisine is
been greatly attractive and voluptuous, but Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510. now famous were brought there from America

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