Calicut

“ Though this king is very rich and powerful, he does not use such pompous and magnificent ceremony as the king of Calicut, and is so affable and accessible, that even a child may come into his presence and speak to him; yet the rich jewels, pearls, and precious stones, especially rubies, with which he is decorated surpass all belief, and exceed the value of a great and flourishing city. ”

“ We have been informed by those who were on board of the fleet which sailed from Lisbon to India in May 1502, and returned on the 15th December 1503, that the king of Calicut has concluded a peace with our sovereign on the following conditions. As a compensation for the slaughter of our men, he is to pay 4000 bahars of pepper, equal to 12, 000 quintals. That the Moors shall not be allowed to trade there from any place whatever, excepting only those who are natives of Calicut; and that these even shall not be permitted to trade with Mecca. ”

“ No nair woman ever enters the towns under pain of death except once a year, when they may go for one night with their nayrs wherever they like. On that night more than twenty thousand nair women enter Calicut to see the town, which is full of lamps in all the streets, which the inhabitants set there to do honour to the nairs, and all the streets are hung with cloth. ”

“ The sovereign of this city (Calicut) bears the title of Sāmari. When he dies it is his sister's son who succeeds him."—Abdurrazzāk?, in India in the XVth. Cent. 17.
1498.—"First Calicut whither we went.... The King whom they call Camolim (for Çamorim) can muster 100,000 men for war, with the contingents that he receives, his own authority extending to very few."—Roteiro de Vasco da Gama.
1510.—"Now I will speak of the King here in Calicut, because he is the most important King of all those before mentioned, and is called Samory, which in the Pagan language means God on earth."—Varthema, 134. ”

“ Calicut is a city on the coast of Malabar, a province of the second India, which begins at the mount of Delhi, and ends at Cape Comory, being sixty- one leagues in length, and fifteen leagues broad [48] . The whole of this country is very low, and apt to be covered with water, having many islands in its rivers, which flow into the Indian Sea. This country of Malabar is divided from the kingdom of Narsinga by a very high hill. ”

“ The great king of Molebar, or Malabar, is, I suppose, the Samudra Raja, or Zamorin of the Portuguese, whose capital was at Calicut.
Singuyli is a nut hard to crack. Our friar’s contemporary, Odoricus, calls the two chief ports of the pepper country in his day Flandrina and Cyncilim. The former is no doubt the Fandaraina of Ibn Batuta, “a large and beautiful place,” the Colam Pandarani of Ramusio’s Geographer, lying a little north of Calicut, but not marked in our modern maps. ”

“ But as Calicut is greatly more resorted to by merchants, it is therefore much richer than Cochin. The king is an idolater, of the same manners and customs with him of Calicut; but his country being small he is very poor, and has not even the right to coin money, being in many respects subordinate to the zamorin; who, on his accession to the throne always goes to Cochin, and takes possession of that kingdom, either retaining it in his own hands, or restoring the rajah as he may think proper. ”

“ On landing, the general was received with every demonstration of respect by the kutwal, attended by 200 nayres, and a great concourse of natives, both of the country and from the city of Calicut. After compliments were passed, the general was placed in an andor or litter, which the king of Calicut had sent for his use. In this country it is not customary to travel on horseback, but in these andors. ”

“ Calicut is surrounded by many gardens and orchards, producing all the herbs and fruits of this country in great abundance, having also many palms and other sorts of trees, and abounds in excellent water. This part of India produces but little rice, which is a principal article of food in these parts, as wheat is with us; but it procures abundance of that and all other kinds of provisions from other countries. The city is large, but the dwellings consist only of straw huts; their idol temples, and chapels, and the kings palace excepted, which are: built of stone and lime and covered with tiles ”

“ They also wear two strings of silk, more than two fingers wide, which they hang round the neck. They wear their ears full of jewels and none on their fingers. The colour of the said race is semi-white, because the air here is cooler than it is in Calicut, and the seasons are the same as with us, and also the harvests.
Foreigners and Conjugals The king of the said city does not cause his wife's virginity to be taken by the Brahmins as the King of Calicut does, but he causes her to be deflowered by white men, whether Christians or Moors, provided they be not pagans. ”

“ But the boy told him, they had no permission to carry any letter, and that he must return along with the Moor, as the people of Calicut had threatened to put all their Portuguese prisoners to death in case he did not return. On this account, the admiral gave the boy a verbal message for the prisoners; saying that he would very soon come to Calicut, where he would anchor as near as possible to the shore; and as the captives were allowed to go about the city without irons, they might find an opportunity to come off to the fleet either in boats or by swimming. ”

“ It was so well known to the Arabians that in the seventeenth century a fanatical sect of Mohammedans named Moplahs immigrated to Calicut, and entered with great success into the commercial life of the city, and occupy in it, even to this day, a most important place, carrying on a very profitable trade between Calicut, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and various parts of India, its chief exports being rice, cocoanut, ginger, cardamoms, and sandal- and teak-wood. ”

“ European and Hindu refugees of all classes are concentrated at Calicut and it is satisfactory to note that they are safe there. One trembles to think of the consequences if the forces of order had not prevailed for the protection of Calicut. The non Muslim in these parts was fortunate indeed that either he or his family or his house or property came under the protection of the soldiers and the police. Those who are responsible for causing this grave outbreak of violence and crime must be brought to justice and made to suffer the punishment of the guilty. ”

“ Before Affonso and Francisco de Albuquerque left for home it was known that the King (the Samuri) of Calicut was about to attack Cochin with his entire forces by land and sea. None of the Portuguese captains evinced any alacrity to be left behind in its defence, and when Pacheco accepted with a good will, but “rather to serve God and the King than for any hope of profit,” those who knew how great was the might of Calicut said: “God have mercy on Duarte Pacheco and those who remain [Pg 84] with him,” scarcely expecting to set eyes on him again. ”

“ What brought you here!” was the compliment addressed to the Portuguese by a Moor in Calicut; and in Mozambique and Mombasa the Moors (we will henceforward use this word as a generic term, as aforesaid) persuaded or forced Samundri Rajah (Zamorin) king or count (India was under a pseudo-feudal rule) of Calicut, to exterminate the Portuguese. Calicut was the commercial empire of the coast of Malabar, and the dominions of the rajah formed the so-called kingdom of Kanara. ”

“ In this kingdom of Calicut no women ever die by sentence of law for any offence whatever; they are only subject to pecuniary penalties. And if any woman of Nayr family should offend against the law of her sect, and the king know of it before her relations and brothers, he commands her to be taken and sold out of the kingdom to Moors or Christians. And if her male relations or sons know of it first, they shut her up and kill her with dagger or spear wounds, saying that if they did not do so they would remain greatly dishonoured. ”

“ He reached Calicut on October 29th, and immediately bombarded the city, seizing the inoffensive native fishermen in the port, eight hundred of whom he massacred in cold blood under circumstances of brutal atrocity. In 1503 he again left for Europe, after establishing a factory at Cochin. In consequence of his violence a war ensued between Cochin and Calicut. In 1504 Lopo Soares came out with a fleet of fourteen caravels, and proclaimed a blockade of the port of Cochin, in spite of the fact that the Rajah of that place had always shown great kindness and hospitality to the Portuguese. ”

“ Upon this information the Father Vice-Provincial, at the instance of the Bishop, resolved to send thither a priest well acquainted with the Malabar tongue, and therefore he commissioned the father who was going to the residence of Calicut to inquire the easiest road and best season for this mission. He found that it was much nearer Calicut through the territory of the Samorim, and that the best time was the month of January, when, by the help of God, a father will set out with several Cassamars, and of what occurs your Rev. will be informed next year. ”

“ But as the leave granted to the King of Calicut to reign so long as he could defend himself against all comers was a mitigation of the old rule which set a fixed term to his life, so we may conjecture that the similar permission granted to the King of the Wood was a mitigation of an older custom of putting him to death at the end of a definite period. ”

“ From the earliest times, therefore, down to the end of the eighteenth century, the Nāyar tara and nād organization kept the country from oppression and tyranny on the part of the rulers, and to this fact more than to any other is due the comparative prosperity, which the Malayāli country so long enjoyed, and which made Calicut at one time the great emporium of trade between the East and the West. ”

“ Calicut, the capital of the Malabar district, was then one of the chief mercantile cities of India, having for centuries carried on an extensive [Pg 14] trade with Arabia and the cities of the West, in native and Arabian vessels. Hence among its merchants were many Moors, [10] who, holding in their hands the most profitable branches of the trade, naturally “perceived the great inconvenience and certain destruction which would fall upon them and upon their trade if the Portuguese should establish trade in Calicut.” ”

“ As soon as it became known to the king of Portugal, that the king of Calicut was one of the mightiest kings of all the Indies and a Christian, he was anxious to establish a treaty of amity and commerce with him, that he might procure spices, which were in great abundance in his country, and to procure which the merchants of many parts of the world trade thither: And, if his highness would give a licence to send for spices, he would send many things from his kingdom which were not to be had in the dominions of his highness ”

“ The king and people of Calicut are idolaters, and worshippers of the devil, though they acknowledge one supreme God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the first chief cause of all things. But they allege that God could have no pleasure in his government, if he were to take it upon himself, and hath therefore given it in charge to the devil, who was sent as they say from heaven, to rule over and judge the world, rendering good or evil to men according to their deserts. The great God they call Tamerani, and this devil or subordinate deity Deumo. ”

“ In these islands until you reach the islands of Banda, which are in four degrees and a half of south latitude, there are collected from thirty to forty thousand cantaros of nutmegs annually, and there is likewise collected much mastic; and if you wish to go to Calicut you must always sail amidst the islands as far as Malacca, which is distant from the Moluccas 2000 miles, and from Malacca to Calicut are 2000 miles more. ”

“ At this time, Calicut was inhabited by idolaters of many sects, and by many Moorish merchants, some of whom were so rich as to be owners of fifty ships. These ships are made without nails, their planks being sewed together with ropes of cayro , made of the fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, pitched all over, and are flat-bottomed, without keels. Every winter there are at least six hundred ships in this harbour, and the shore is such, that their ships can be easily drawn up for repairs. ”

“ Pepper is brought from a certain tower near the coast, about fifty leagues beyond Calicut. Cinnamon comes from a country called Zolon , Ceylon, 260 leagues beyond Calicut, and from no other place. Cloves come from the district of Meluza , which is twelve Portuguese leagues from Calicut, and is in the country of Cananore. Nutmegs and mastic come from Meluza , which is 740 leagues from Calicut [2] . Castor, which is musk, comes from a certain region called Pegu, 500 leagues from Calicut. Fine pearls come from the coast of Armuzi [3] , 700 leagues from Calicut. ”

“ In this kingdom of Calicut, and in all the other Malabar kingdoms, there is a sect of gentile merchants who are called amongst them brabares, who trafficked also before foreign persons came to port or navigated in these seas. These still deal, especially in the interior, in all sorts of goods, and collect [134] all the pepper and ginger from the nayrs and cultivators, and frequently buy them in advance in exchange for cotton stuffs, and other goods which come from beyond the sea. These people are also great changers, and gain much upon coin. ”