Early Travels in India (1538-1619)

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The following pages contain the narratives of seven English- men who travelled in Northern and Western India during the reigns of the Emperors Akbar and Jahangir. Though these do not by any means exhaust the list of English visitors of that period who have left us records of their experiences, they include practically all those of real importance, with the exception of Sir Thomas Roe, whose lengthy account of his embassy is already procurable in a modern edition.

In the case of none of these narratives is a manuscript source available, and it has been necessary to go instead to the earliest printed editions. Ralph Fitch's story of his adventures appeared first in Hakluyt's Principall Navigations, from which it is here reprinted. The other six are to be found in the voluminous collection published by the Rev. Samuel Purchas in 1625, and in the case of four of them we follow the text there given. For Nicholas Withington, however, use has also been made of a fuller version (from his original manuscript) given in a scarce eighteenth-century work; while the letters of Thomas Coryat are printed from the contemporary pamphlets in which they first saw the light and from which Purchas made merely a selection.

Since each of the narratives has its own introduction, little need be said here by way of preliminary. It may perhaps be pointed out that at the time (1584) when the earliest of our travellers reached the court of Akbar, the Mughal Empire in India had not yet reached its sixtieth anniversary. It was in 1525 that Babur, then King of Kabul, crushed at Panipat the Afghan dynasty which had rule at Delhi during the preceding three-quarters of a century. Babur's son, Humayun, was driven from his throne in 1540 by Sher Shah, the Afghan reigning monarch. The revenues of the country were either spent in extravagant display and in maintaining large military forces, or else were hoarded in the imperial treasury. On the other hand justice, if rough and liable to be influenced by bribery, was fairly good traders of all nations were freely admitted; and in religious matters toleration was more consistently practised than in any European country at that period. On the whole, our travellers, who were of course comparing Indian conditions with those of their own country, were not unfavourably impressed. This was particularly the case with Terry, though his optimistic views are discounted by the fact that he really saw less of India than any of the other narrators whose stories are here given.

**Contents and Sample Pages**