Map of Montserrat’s travels in Mughal India
The Mughal emperor Jalal-ud-din Akbar (1542–1605), heir to the Timurid dynasty that conquered much of India in the sixteenth century and who reigned with remarkable energy and success for over fifty years, between 1556 and 1605, has traditionally been perceived as one the greatest Indian rulers. Not only did Akbar dramatically expand and consolidate the territories controlled by the dynasty beyond their core in northwest India, from Kabul and Kandahar (in modern Afghanistan) in the west to Bengal in the east, and from Kashmir in the north to Sind, Gujarat, and the northern Deccan in the south; he also created the imperial structures of a patrimonial-bureaucratic state that would serve his successors until the eighteenth century, with a particularly bold and successful policy of incorporating the defeated Rajputs, who as Hindu subjects were considered by more orthodox Muslims as mere idolaters, into the ruling military elite (he even married a Rajput princess who was the mother of his heir, Salim [1569–1627], future emperor Jahangir [r.1605–27]). Akbar was also a remarkable patron of the arts, distinguished for example by sponsoring a vast program of production of illuminated manuscripts in Persian that incorporated many classics of Iranian and Indian literature and history, including translations from the Sanskrit and Turkic languages (he was reputedly illiterate, but this was no obstacle to a passion for having books read to him).1 In this respect, under his direct patronage, poetry, painting, and architecture all evolved toward new forms that combined the rich Timurid traditions of Persianate courtly culture with local Indian artistic elements. Finally, Akbar was also original in the way he engaged with religion. In particular, he widened the scope of his Muslim religiosity, tinged with Sufi themes (as was already characteristic of the Timurids), by seeking to incorporate the various religious traditions—biblical or non-biblical—found in India into a syncretic royal cult, rather than emphasizing their mutually exclusive claims to the most fundamental truths. His legacy was therefore wide-ranging and of enormous consequence.
Akbar’s unquestionable greatness and originality generated a great deal of hagiography and controversy both in his lifetime and among succeeding generations of historians, who have, for example, been tempted to project upon him modern liberal ideals of religious toleration that would be hardly comprehensible in his own cultural context. In reality, his syncretic religious movement or “Religion of God” (din-i ilahi), which offended many orthodox Muslims, was, however sincerely experienced, pragmatically focused on loyalty to his own person, in a manner consonant with the personal loyalty he demanded from elite subjects of different religious persuasions.2 It may be best described as a culturally flexible ideology of sacred kingship that proclaimed the ideal of “universal peace” (sulh-i kull) in an imperial context. For example, Parsi (Zoroastrian) ideas about the struggle between good and evil, and their worship of fire, could easily be translated into a Sufi-inspired cult of light associated with the figure of the monarch and a courtly ethos of just kingship. Thus, Akbar’s “peace” mainly involved the integration of diverse subject populations into his empire, usually after a military conquest that was necessarily violent, on a relatively equal footing. His multi-ethnic cosmopolitanism, like his interest in Sanskrit epic literature or Zoroastrian beliefs, was also pragmatically biased toward imperial needs. This is not to deny its positive aspects, most notably the bold abolition early in his reign of the jizya (special tax for unbelievers) traditionally applied to Hindus. Nonetheless, while largely successful in this strategy of incorporating various local Indian elites, Hindu as well as Muslim, within its military and administrative structures, the Mughal state inherited, expanded, and drastically reshaped by Akbar never ceased to be an empire of conquest, one that was closely connected—culturally, economically, and in terms of personnel—to Iran and Central Asia. Hence the dynasty’s Turco-Mongol origins outside India—or Hindustan, the land east of the Indus River, in their own terminology—and its patronage of Persian political ideas and court culture remained relevant to its identity. For this reason, while on the one hand providing a crucial precedent for the future unification of the Indian subcontinent by its next successful conquerors, the British, the Mughals sit uneasily in any narrative driven by modern ideas of a nation state. In fact, their cultural and political legacy is currently shared by different states with different religious and cultural identities, notably Afghanistan, Pakistan, modern India, and Bangladesh.
Akbar’s quasi-mythical status as a great charismatic leader invites continuous re-assessment of the primary sources upon which our knowledge of his personality and historical agency has been built. Fortunately, his multi-ethnic court, closely attached to the Turkic and especially Persianate historiographical traditions cultivated by the Timurid dynasties, produced a number of contemporary histories of this exceptional reign, usually framing Akbar’s achievements in relation to the conquest of Hindustan by his grandfather Babur (1483–1530), and its subsequent loss and recovery by his father Humayun (1508–56, r.1530–40, 1555–56).3 Of these, the most “official” account was the Akbarnama (History of Akbar) produced by Akbar’s close associate and chief ideologue Abu’l Fazl (1551–1602), a court bureaucrat in charge of diplomatic correspondence and of the translation bureau. His narrative was often detailed but also obscenely biased—as far as he was concerned, Akbar was the perfect ruler and his status quasi-divine: indeed, he considered him a manifestation of the “divine light” (in Sufi terms, divine wisdom).4 Thus the integration of ancient Iranian (Sassanid) monarchical models with Islamic Sufi ideas of spiritual perfection offered the basis for Abu’l Fazl’s exalted ideology of sacred royalty, which apparently was shared by Akbar himself, since he specifically commissioned the historical work in 1588 and kept promoting Abu’l Fazl until the latter was assassinated in 1602.5 By contrast, the Tabaqat-i Akbari by Nizam al-Din Ahmad Bakhshi (1551–1621), who was an imperial administrator from a family originally from Khorasan that had long been loyal to Babur’s dynasty, is more sober and offers much alternative and useful information.6 His narrative was often closely followed by another important contemporary court historian, his friend the theologian and translator Abdul-Qadir Badayuni (1540–1615), who, however, was not afraid to add his own interpretative bias, one imbued with a strict sense of Muslim orthodoxy (as well as some personal resentment). Thus, Badayuni was openly critical of Akbar’s religious experiments, in particular his tolerance of Hindus, and offers a valuable counterpoint to the celebratory rhetoric of Abu’l Fazl.
In these and a few other historical works produced in Akbar’s court, the rhetorical conventions of Persianate historiography, which tend toward open partisanship and extravagant exaggeration, often weigh heavily. The most obvious model was the Zafarnama (Book of victories) by Ali Yazdi (d.1454), a 1425 history of Akbar’s ancestor, the great conqueror Timur (a Chagatai Turk known in Europe as Tamerlane [1336–1405, r.1370–1405]), that combined the narrative of events with ornate poetry and exerted a strong influence on subsequent Timurid writers. By contrast, the less elevated genres not directly focused on the deeds and misdeeds of kings, princes, and emirs could be more straightforward and wide-ranging in the kind of information they supplied—we may in this respect consider Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari (Administration of Akbar), a supplementary volume to the (already voluminous) Akbarnama, offering a remarkably rich and precise compilation of administrative, fiscal, and ethnographic information about Akbar’s empire.7 This kind of material, less ideologically charged than the often pretentious high genres of dynastic history writing, is what the modern historian often looks for in order to obtain a broader perspective on how the Mughal elites understood their own empire. But ideally, one also needs works written from outside the rhetorical conventions and concerns of Mughal court historiography. Although we are generally limited to elite testimonies, there are also Hindu (for example Rajput) historical sources, often in the form of poetical compositions; however, some of these seem more concerned with justifying the internal acceptance of Mughal overlordship by particular Rajput lineages than with offering contrasting information.8
Because of their relative objectivity, and despite their own cultural biases, European sources from this period follow different rhetorical expectations, in particular those pertaining to late humanist historiography (whether secular or religious). Whenever available, they are therefore crucial as a counterpoint. Abundant for the seventeenth century, they are few and usually quite late for the reign of Akbar. The detailed account by the Catalan Jesuit Antoni de Montserrat (c.1536–1600) of his mission to Akbar’s court in 1570–82, written in Latin with the title Mongolicae legationis commentarius (Commentary on the embassy to the Mughal court), offers the greatest exception and hence is uniquely valuable. As the British historian of the Jesuit missions to the Mughals Edward Maclagan (1864–1952) wrote in 1932, besides providing our main source of knowledge concerning the first Jesuit expedition to the Mughal court, Montserrat’s Commentary may be considered “the best account written by any European of the court and character of Akbar.”9
Father Henri Hosten (1873–1935), a Belgian Jesuit based in Calcutta, first gave notice of the autograph manuscript of the Commentarius in 1911 and in 1914 published a carefully annotated edition of the original Latin text in the Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in what may be considered an example of the continuity of the contribution of “Catholic orientalism” to the British system of imperial knowledge well beyond the early modern period.10 This edition, however, has remained difficult to access and, being in Latin, has had relatively few readers. Its impact was nonetheless felt in one of the classic books on Akbar produced by the British imperial experience, Akbar the Great Mogul by Vincent Smith (1843–1920), first published in 1919. An English translation by Hosten and another Jesuit, Father J. Gense, soon appeared in successive issues of the Catholic Herald of India between 1920 and 1921—unfortunately, it was never collected in book form. Not long after, in 1922, a meritorious English translation by John S. Hoyland (1887–1957) of Hislop College in Nagpur was published by Oxford University Press, with historical notes by S. N. [Sikhar Nath] Banerjee, and this has become the standard version of Montserrat known to most international scholars for the last century.11
Antoni Montserrat (born in the Catalan town of Vic), or Antonio Monserrate, as his name is usually found in the Portuguese and Spanish (Castilian) documents that he signed or those produced by other Jesuits under the Portuguese padroado of their oriental missions, is known to us through the numerous and remarkably well-preserved documentation produced by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, including not a few of his own letters and reports.12 For the Indian missions of the sixteenth century, much of the primary material was carefully edited in the second half of the twentieth century by Josef Wicki (1904–93) in the Documenta Indica series.13 Hence we know not only how his fellow Jesuits chose to remember him in public writing by means of the biographical and historical genres characteristic of the order, often tinged with hagiography, but also what some of his superiors in India wrote in their ordinary and confidential catalogs to the Society’s Superior General in Rome. The first catalogs recorded objective information concerning nationality, age, health, status within the Society and education, while the second catalogs gave an assessment of personality and mental capacities. For example, the catalog of December 1594, when Montserrat was still a captive in Sanaʿa, reads as follows:
Father Antonio de Monserrate, Catalan from the city Vic, 61 years old, of mediocre strength, of 39 years in the Society; studied cases [of conscience] for four years, read Latin for many years; was vice-rector of the College of Santo Antão in Lisbon and rector of Salsete; did votes as spiritual coadjutor on January 1, 1579.14
The second catalog, produced separately, was obviously more confidential: “Good wits [buen ingenio], poor judgment and prudence; experience in negotiations and practical things, knows well cases [of conscience]; choleric, talent for practical affairs and dealing with people.”15 The distinction between wits (intelligence) and judgment (prudence) is interesting: Montserrat’s companion in captivity, Pedro Páez (1564–1622), for example, had the opposite assessment and was perceived as having mediocre ingenio, buen juicio y prudencia (mediocre intelligence, good judgment, and prudence). It is also interesting to note that Montserrat’s reputation as having a “rare talent for others” (raro talento con los próximos) was long-standing and had already been mentioned twenty years earlier when he left for India, in the catalog of 1574.16
Best known for his Mughal mission, the Catalan Jesuit in fact had substantial previous experience in Europe. Although he joined the order in Barcelona, he spent the best part of his youth abroad in Portugal, where he studied and taught the humanities, was a tutor at the court of the young king Sebastian (1554–78, r.1557–58), and became particularly active promoting various charitable initiatives, in particular during and immediately after the great plague that hit Lisbon in 1569. He thus was already mature—around forty—when he was granted his wish to travel to India, which he reached, together with a large number of Jesuits, in 1574, in the company of the all-powerful Visitor Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606). Between 1577 and 1579, he was based at Cochin, where he played an important role in the policy of integrating the native Christian communities of the Serra (the chain of mountains alongside Malabar) into the Catholic Church, supposedly converted in ancient times by Saint Thomas the Apostle and traditionally connected to the Syriac churches of Mesopotamia. The task was delicate because, due to this connection, these Syriac churches were mainly Nestorian and thus considered heretical by Roman Catholics. During that mission, Montserrat already produced some interesting ethnographic material on the Saint Thomas Christians.17 It was probably this experience with frontline missionary efforts that involved a limited degree of cultural accommodation, together with his reputation for social skills and (perhaps) some knowledge of Arabic, that suggested him as a member of the expedition to Akbar’s court prompted by the emperor’s direct invitation in 1579.18 The enterprise, not meant to be confrontational, was undertaken under the illusion of the possibility of the Mughal’s imminent conversion to Christianity, which in turn suggested the prospect of a top-down process of evangelization. It was Montserrat, rather than the head of the mission and better theologian Rodolfo Acquaviva (1550–83), whom Akbar chose in 1583 as a member of a planned Mughal embassy to Philip II in Spain (1527–98, r.1556–98) (although the project was eventually abandoned). Having acquired a fair knowledge of Persian, he was subsequently selected by the provincial Pedro Martins (1542–98) to revive the flailing Jesuit mission in the Christian (but not theologically orthodox) kingdom of Ethiopia—yet another task characterized by the need to develop a friendly relationship in a courtly setting. Alas, the attempt in 1588 by Montserrat and his companion the younger Pedro Páez (also from Spain) to reach the isolated East African kingdom from Goa disguised as Armenian merchants ended with their capture on the southern Arabian coast by the Ottoman authorities. Montserrat’s main focus during his captivity in Yemen seems to have been on perfecting his Commentarius, the completion of which he dated at Sanaʿa on January 7, 1591. By the time the Jesuits were ransomed for a considerable sum and were able to return to Goa in late 1596, Montserrat’s health was broken. He died in 1600 in the College of Salcete.
Perhaps the most important testimony of the pious version of Montserrat’s life by members of his own order is the account given by Páez in his remarkable history of the Jesuit mission in Ethiopia, because between 1588 and 1596 they spent many years in intimate contact with each other, that is, during the journey to the East African kingdom that ended with a seven-year period of captivity in Yemen and the Red Sea.19 The younger Páez went on to try to reach Ethiopia alone some years later, this time more successfully, entering Abyssinia in 1603, and eventually played a crucial role in the Jesuit attempt to subject the native Christian church to Roman rite, doctrine, and discipline (like the parallel experience with the Syrian churches of Malabar, this effort generated much local resistance and eventually backfired). His História da Etiópia (History of Ethiopia), completed in 1622 not long before Páez passed away in Gorgora, was the history of an apparent triumph of the faith over the heresies of a barbarian church, given that Emperor Susenyos (c.1571–1632, r.1606–32) had publicly accepted the Catholic doctrine in 1621 and rejected the many “errors” of the traditional Ethiopian church (notably circumcision, the celebration of the Sabbath, and a monophysite Christology that did not sufficiently distinguish between the human and divine natures of Christ).20 Páez’s narrative was, however, thoroughly rewritten by his successors because it was overly polemical against the alternative historical claims concerning the Catholic missions in East Africa published in 1610 and 1611 by the Dominican Luis de Urreta (c.1570–1636) in Valencia (the two orders were, here as elsewhere, bitter rivals). It was also corrected, it was alleged, for its imperfect Portuguese style, Páez being a Castilian at a time of heightened nationalist tension within the united Spanish monarchy. Thus, the original autograph manuscript did not see publication until the twentieth century.21 Nonetheless, Páez’s account, duly edited, became the basis for the official Jesuit historiography of the Ethiopian mission through the subsequent versions by Manuel de Almeida (1580–1646) and, finally, Baltasar Teles (1596–1675), whose Historia geral de Ethiopia a Alta ou Abassia do Preste Joam (General history of Upper Ethiopia, or Abyssinia of the Prester John) was published in Lisbon in 1660. In this way, the pious life of Montserrat, as written by the “apostle of Ethiopia,” reached the European public.
Montserrat’s Commentarius, based on a journal kept at the orders of his superior Ruy Vicente (1523–87), is permeated by humanistic pretensions to antiquarian learning, although the Latin is often awkward.22 This ethos of pious learning was clearly explained by the author in his dedication of the work to Superior General Claudio Acquaviva (1543–1615, in office 1581–1615): in imitation of “the diligence of the ancients” who “would note down most carefully the everyday occurrences of their travels,” the modern travel writer aspired to contribute with new studies of geography, history, and navigation to the Republic of Letters.23 Following the practice of the order from the days of Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556) “to write down whatever occurs,” Montserrat described the events of the mission as he saw them with his own eyes. Afterward, he amplified the information about the “Mongols” (Mughals) with other books available at Akbar’s court, facilitated by the emperor, or subsequently by those found in Goa, such as the recently published fifteenth-century account of the embassy of Ruy González de Clavijo (d.1412) to the court of Timur.24 Finally, the Jesuit sought to use the new information to “correct, clear up, and reconcile” what previous ancient and humanist geographers and historians had written about India, or (in a separate lost book he produced in Yemen) about Arabia.25
The extended text was also accompanied by a path-breaking map of India, which combined Montserrat’s own personal latitude calculations with other sources. There was also a second volume of the Commentarius, now sadly lost, in which Montserrat gathered all the geographical, ethnological, and antiquarian information about India north of Goa that he had been able to find.26 Despite this loss, the extant text of the Commentarius is by itself sufficiently impressive and testifies to Montserrat’s intimate knowledge and positive appreciation not only of Akbar’s personal qualities as a ruler but also of Mughal court culture and Indian civilization, in particular the expressive capacity of the Persian language (which Montserrat learned with Abu’l Fazl), the wealth of cities such as Lahore, and the architecture of the new royal capital Fatehpur Sikri. It fully belongs to the Renaissance paradigm that made it possible to value positively a non-Christian civilization according to European cultural norms inspired by the classical past.27 It is true that as an effort at antiquarian scholarship it remained tentative—there were few modern authorities on whom he could rely, with one of the notable exceptions being the Portuguese historian João de Barros (1496–1570), who had little to say about north India beyond the coastal areas frequented by the Portuguese. Driven by the author’s desire to identify in India peoples and places known from ancient historians and geographers such as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, the Commentarius contains many examples of erroneous identifications—something not uncommon among the cosmographers of that period. Montserrat was in this respect typical in his adoption of the aims and methods of the humanist models at his disposal, including the works by Pope Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius [1405–64, r.1458–64]), Raffaello Volterrano (1451–1522), and Marcantonio Cocci Sabellico (1436–1506), as well as Paolo Giovio (1483–1552) on the Ottoman Turks.28
However, rather than the erudition, what seems most significant is the intellectual attitude displayed: first, in the dominant role played by precise personal observation, obviously by means of a travel diary kept during the journey; and second, in the relative lack of cultural prejudice revealed by the effort to integrate these observations with both classical authorities and Persian historical sources, in order to create a comprehensive historical and geographical synthesis. In this respect, the section toward the end of the Commentarius devoted to reconstructing the double genealogy of the Mughals, from Genghis Khan (c.1162–1227, r.1206–27) on the maternal side and from Timur on the paternal side, reflects Akbar’s dynastic self-understanding and is symptomatic of Montserrat’s considerable effort at cross-cultural understanding, notwithstanding the difficulty of recognizing many of his Latin transliterations of Persian names and other errors of interpretation. While the previous English edition by Hoyland and Banerjee excised and relegated these “ill-authenticated tales” to an appendix, the new translation offered in this volume by Wahlgren-Smith and Melo rightly restores these passages to where they belong.
Modern scholars have sometimes complained that the very term “Mughals” is a European distortion that exaggerates Mongol dynastic claims and does not do justice to the dynasty’s Timurid origins: the members of the dynasty in India usually called themselves “Gurkani” (literally “son-in-law,” after Timur’s marriage to a female descendant of Genghis Khan).29 Montserrat, however, no doubt partly responsible for this emphasis on Mongol origins in the very title of his most influential work, the “Relation on Akbar, King of the Mughals,” was not ill-informed about how the dynasty understood these origins: he explained that Akbar himself had emphasized that he was a descendant of Genghis Khan through the female line (albeit not through his own mother); noted that the Timurid Mongols were, unlike the Tartars, closely connected linguistically to the Turks, although their Chagatai language was quite different from the one spoken by the Ottoman Turks in the west; and established the genealogical connection between Chagatai (1183–1242, r.1227–42), one of Genghis Khan’s sons, as ruler of Samarkand, and the later emergence of Timur, Akbar’s direct ancestor on the male side, as a Chagatai Turk who established his rule in that same area. He also appreciated that this Turco-Mongol heritage had been overlaid by Persian language and culture and adapted by Akbar to Hindustani realities, with many “Gentiles” appointed to positions of trust in his court and army. While the Jesuit could not settle where the name “Mongols” had first been acquired, he associated them with the ancient Scythians—an identification symptomatic of his classical training, but not one that he used to erase Akbar’s own narrative of origins. What seems to be Montserrat’s most egregious error—the idea that before the Muslim conquests, India had been ruled by Christian, rather than “Gentile” (Hindu) rulers—was probably inspired by an otherwise authentic fifteenth-century travel narrative, the account of the embassy led by González de Clavijo to the court of “Tamerlán” (Timur) in Samarkand at the orders of King Henry III of Castile (1379–1406, r.1390–1406) in 1403–6.30
Although Montserrat’s Mughal writings are extremely informative, there is no consensus about his intellectual qualities, in contrast with the praise heaped on contemporary missionaries such as Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). In this respect, it is interesting that Montserrat’s progress within the Society of Jesus was limited to the status of a “spiritual coadjutor” and that he never reached the highest level of the “professed,” which involved a fourth vow (putatively of special obedience to the pope). Formally, this may have been related to the fact that Montserrat, albeit educated in Barcelona, Coimbra, and the Jesuit College of Santo Antão in Lisbon, primarily pursued studies in the humanities, rhetoric, and logic and never completed his theological training.31 The Jesuit order remained rigidly hierarchical, and while men of aristocratic status were quickly promoted, others of less illustrious background found more difficulties. In this respect, it seems that Montserrat came from a quasi-patrician background—filho de pais honrados (of honored parentage), according to Páez, which suggests that his father was one of the ciutadans honrats (honored citizens) in the town of Vic that, in imitation of the social system of Barcelona, constituted the privileged urban class in many Catalan towns.32 He did not, however, belong to the upper nobility, by contrast with, for example, Rodolfo Acquaviva, the son of a southern Italian duke and nephew of the Superior General of the order, Claudio Acquaviva, who was educated in the Collegio Romano and, despite his youth (he was barely thirty years old in 1580, in contrast to Montserrat’s forty-five), was placed in command of the mission to Akbar’s court very soon after arriving in India.33 Some historians, Hervé Pennec in particular, have emphasized the shortcomings of Montserrat’s training as a theologian in order to explain his limited status within the order as a spiritual coadjutor, a vow that he took in 1579.34 In this interpretation, the mission in Ethiopia was not considered a high priority by the superiors of the Indian province, and for that reason two Jesuits who had not yet professed their fourth vow—one of them very young—were sent on what was bound to be a very dangerous journey.35 However, in that period professed Jesuits with four vows were very rare in the vast province of India: according to the littera annua (annual letter) that Montserrat himself composed, in 1579 only nine out of 123 priests had reached this elite status (less than ten percent).36
Leaving aside the issue of whether it is correct to deduce that the provincial Pedro Martins did not consider a project sponsored personally by Philip II particularly important (this is certainly not how others saw it, including an enthusiastic Páez in his letters to his Jesuit friends in Spain), we know that Valignano, the powerful Jesuit Visitor of the eastern missions with whom Montserrat first traveled to India, did not develop a particularly high opinion of the Catalan Jesuit’s abilities and personality, and this might have affected his chances of further promotion. Valignano was himself a man of aristocratic status who believed in exercising strong leadership and was prone to thinking in terms of extreme racial and social hierarchies. While Montserrat was widely perceived as pious and especially talented at dealing with people, in 1589 Valignano questioned whether he had the endurance to lead the mission to Ethiopia.37 Nonetheless, as João Melo suggests in his introduction to this volume, Valignano was probably negatively influenced by a previous disagreement in 1576, when Montserrat and other Jesuits complained about the working conditions among the Parava fishermen in Punnaikayal (Coromandel Coast, modern Tamil Nadu) and were removed from that mission. To this, we can add that when Montserrat became rector of the College of Salcete, in the south of Goa, in 1583, following the violent death of Rodolfo Acquaviva and many other Christians massacred in the Hindu village of Cuncolim (an event quickly constructed as a martyrdom), he soon asked to be relieved of the administrative responsibility that had fallen upon him, to which he felt unsuited.38 This paints a picture of a man happier with books or acting as a Latin tutor at royal courts than engaged with grassroots ministries among Tamil- or Konkani-speaking villagers. In any case, Valignano’s doubts do not really target Montserrat’s intellectual abilities as much as his moral disposition, and after his capture in Yemen his superiors also complained about his lack of judgment (juicio) when choosing to travel via Ormuz, where he could be recognized, rather than his intelligence (ingenio). This explains why it was Montserrat who was chosen as tutor for one of Akbar’s sons, Prince Murad (1570–99); produced an unprecedented map of the Mughal territories in North India all the way to Kabul; and wrote the most detailed account of the Mughal court available to his generation. While the larger Latin commentary became a lifetime’s intellectual project and remained a single manuscript, the shorter, more synthetic Portuguese “Relation of Akbar, King of the Mughals” of 1582 was widely copied, reached Europe quickly, and became a fundamental source for many other historians, especially the Jesuit historians of their overseas missions.39 The reader will find a fresh translation of this influential report at the start of this edition of the Commentarius.
With this new English translation of Montserrat’s key works by Lena Wahlgren-Smith, the volume’s editor João Melo does not simply offer a newly annotated text but also a proposal of how to read the Jesuit’s account in the light of the most recent historiographical concerns. The last four decades have seen the emergence of a new history of the early modern Christian missions (notably, but not exclusively, by members of the Society of Jesus), one less bound than used to be the case by religious apologetics and, instead, largely devoted to exploring their social and political implications and the mechanisms of cross-cultural interaction at the micro-historical level. In some cases, there has also been a new effort to identify longue-durée cultural transformations connected to these missions. Some of the traits that make this first Mughal mission particularly illuminating are the fact that very little was known at that point about the Mughal Empire in Europe or, indeed, in Goa, and that it belongs to the period of around four decades, between 1575 and 1615, when various forms of cultural accommodation were being explored by an outstanding generation of Jesuits in South India, Japan, China, and Ethiopia. It is from this perspective that we can re-examine the old problem of assessing the value and significance of how the Jesuits interpreted Akbar’s attitude to Christianity and the Europeans in a new light. Melo, in the rich introduction to this volume, writes about a chronicle of disappointment. Even though, as he rightly emphasizes, Acquaviva and Montserrat developed some specific strategies for converting a Muslim ruler (and it would be valuable to consider in more detail how they compare to Christian missionary strategies in other parts of the Islamic world), these bore little fruit in North India no less than in Ottoman or Safavid lands. No narrative of conversions to Roman Catholicism in the Mughal Empire could ever compete with some of the reports coming from Japan in that period, or from China a few decades later. For this reason, the uniqueness of Akbar’s religious attitude may in the end have been less significant to the Portuguese than the opportunities this Jesuit legation offered to observe the Mughal court and its army.
Notwithstanding the religious mission’s lack of progress, Montserrat’s admiration for Akbar’s personal qualities still permeated the physical and moral description of the emperor that he wrote upon his return to Goa and that came to shape the emperor’s European image. That he had granted the Jesuit priests exceptional access to his person and treated them with great courtesy no doubt left a lasting impression. In Montserrat’s report, Akbar emerged as a sharp, prudent, courageous, and affable ruler, as well as a man remarkably engaged with all kinds of intellectual matters, notwithstanding his illiteracy: “He does not know how to read or write, but he is very curious, and always surrounds himself with men of letters whom he orders to debate various subjects or read aloud diverse histories.”40 This fits in well with what we know about the emperor from Abu’l Fazl, including a collection of his sayings that may at various points be compared to those of a Stoic philosopher king, determined to control desire and anger and to value virtue for its own sake rather than through a fear of death.41 On the other hand, it seems clear to modern historians that Akbar’s agenda was not about choosing the best religion but rather about using rational elements from all of them in order to construct for himself a position as supreme interpreter of Islam that would in turn allow him to strengthen tolerant policies toward Hindus, an aim he perceived as politically desirable. He was not, however, a cynic, as the whole process seems to have been accompanied by genuine curiosity and led to the creation of an elite syncretic mysticism within the court. It was not too difficult for someone in his position to find some positive elements in Christianity, and in particular the figure of Jesus, who of course was already recognized by Muhammad as a prophet, while keeping his distance from the usual polemics about the divine nature of Christ or the authenticity of the Gospels.42 During the expedition to Kabul, for example, which Montserrat was allowed to accompany as Prince Murad’s tutor and that forms one of the most valuable parts of the Commentarius, Akbar would ask Montserrat why Christ allowed his own passion to go ahead, or what was the point of clerical celibacy, while treating him with every consideration. In this process, his main concern when inciting the Jesuits to offer their learned arguments, or when praising Parsis and Hindus in public disputations, was not to declare any non-Islamic religion as superior, but rather to weaken the more intolerant branch of orthodox Islam.
It was natural that the Jesuits, infused with evangelical zeal and a militant spirit, would initially imagine that Akbar might truly convert to Christianity, since they approached the issue as an either/or choice. They were therefore disappointed when they finally realized that Akbar was constructing his own eclectic religion, one in which what was distinctive about Christianity played no significant role. Although the presence of the Jesuits was still politically useful to Akbar, both symbolically (their presence at the side of others bore witness to his religious universality) and in relation to diplomacy with the Portuguese and their new king, Philip II (I of Portugal [1527–98, r.1556–98/1580–98]), “the ruler of the Franks,” Montserrat concluded that the Mughal ruler was trampling on “the pearls of the Gospel.” It is, on the other hand, surprising that the wishful thinking of Akbar’s public conversion to Catholic Christianity, albeit for political reasons, still found its way into some serious twentieth-century scholarship. For Maclagan writing in 1932, “it is a fair conjecture that amongst other possibilities he was considering the feasibility of experimenting with Christianity as a faith to be imposed on all his subjects.”43 Nothing in Abu’l Fazl or any of the courtly sources justifies this interpretation. What we can fortunately do is to explore how the agreements and discrepancies between different documents, European and Mughal, may illuminate the complex agendas at stake.
An interesting example is the account of the ordeal by fire proposed at one point, but prudently declined, in order to settle the differences between the Christian missionaries and some of their Muslim opponents. Abu’l Fazl’s pages devoted to the religious disputations on Thursday evenings at the house of worship constructed for that purpose in the royal capital of Fatehpur Sikri are clearly geared toward presenting Akbar’s own spiritual accomplishments, and it is in that context only that the European fathers have a place in the chronicle of his reign (the political significance of the Portuguese—the “Franks” in India—is, on the other hand, uniformly minor in his narrative). The cosmopolitan “search for truth” pursued by learned men from “the seven climes,” of all nations and ethnic groups, is opposed to the limitations of Akbar’s local opponents, “deceptive, dishonorable persons” who clung to their opinions—these are of course orthodox Muslims unwilling to entertain the idea that the truth could be found elsewhere.44 Rodolfo Acquaviva is presented in this context as a uniquely intelligent man who humiliated Muslim fanatics with logical arguments. These fanatics, in turn, resorted to attacking the text of the Gospels as corrupt, in contrast with the perfection of the Qurʾan.45 In this context, according to Abu’l Fazl, Acquaviva issued a challenge: he should walk into a big fire with the book of the Gospels in his hand, and his opponents would do the same with the Qurʾan. The “black-hearted” fanatics, who could only superficially be considered Muslims since they sought to impose their faith through coercion rather than rationally (which here equates to inner spiritual conviction), refused and withdrew with ignominy, “and the whole assembly was enlightened by the splendour of debate.”46
This account stands in stark contrast to the narrative of these disputations offered by Abdul-Qadir Badayuni, who belonged to the group of mullahs ridiculed by Abu’l Fazl (the two men were personal opponents). He complained that Akbar would divide Muslims by questioning the foundations of belief and instead favor other religions: Zoroastrians, Christians, and especially Brahmans.47 It was simply scandalous that the Catholic fathers from Europe, who followed the doctrines of the Roman pope, were allowed to give normal currency to their Trinitarian arguments and teach Christianity to Prince Murad.48 Thus, at one point they were challenged to an ordeal of fire by a Muslim holy man, Shaikh Qutb-ud-din of Jaleswar, but they refused, and Akbar even punished the “victorious” Muslim challenger by sending him into exile.49 What is interesting is that Montserrat’s version of the trial of fire event generally confirms the facts—not their interpretation—proposed by the scandalized Badayuni, rather than those offered by the more tolerant, but often unreliable, Abu’l Fazl. According to the Jesuit, it was the Muslims who, having been “defeated” (or offended?) by Acquaviva when discussing the contradictions of the Qurʾan and the Gospels, issued the challenge, and they were immediately supported by Akbar, while Acquaviva refused to accept, arguing that miracles were not necessary in the context of a rational disputation. The Jesuits, so as not to be perceived as men unwilling to die for their faith, subsequently suggested to the king that since they were not men without sin, they could not be certain that they deserved a miracle on their own behalf, and, indeed, that asking God for a miracle by provoking an ordeal was contrary to the example of Christ; however, they offered themselves for unilateral martyrdom (knowing perfectly well that Akbar would refuse this). Montserrat’s account also offers illuminating details about Akbar’s private explanation to Acquaviva of what he was up to when he declared that, having heard enough arguments, he supported the challenge: his aim was not to actually see the ordeal by fire take place or harm the priests, but to shame the Muslim shaikh who had arrogantly issued it, presumably by asking him to go first. He thus requested that the Jesuits play along. Acquaviva’s reply, that the king needed no subterfuge to punish that man, was, according to Montserrat, well received by the nobles at the court.
There are many other examples of how the Mongolicae legationis commentarii, together with the “Relation of Akbar, King of the Mughals” and other letters by Montserrat and Acquaviva, can today help us reach a more balanced understanding of Akbar and the conditions of his empire, once we have recognized the ideological biases and cultural assumptions that permeate the early modern genre of missionary travel and historical writing. Of course, we also need to undertake a similar critical analysis of the Mughal sources: there is no simple dichotomy here between (un)reliable native versus (un)reliable foreign documents, but rather a complex set of cultural assumptions, rhetorical conventions, and individual motivations that need to be disentangled systematically in all cases, in order to read these various narratives together. And if we want to do this with a reasonable chance of success, few things are as useful to the scholarly community—the modern heir to the Republic of Letters Montserrat was writing for—as having an annotated edition of a reliable translation of the most informative primary texts. This new edition of Montserrat’s key writings, which is the end result of a Marie Curie research project undertaken by João Melo at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, has been many years in the making and will no doubt become, for the foreseeable future, a new standard text.
Joan-Pau Rubiés
ICREA & Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Being illiterate (ummi) was not a disgrace, since it was also a charismatic mark of piety— Muhammad himself was reputedly illiterate when he received the Koran from the angel Gabriel. Akbar, who was aware of that tradition, could therefore have chosen to cultivate that reputation, and his chief propagandist Abu’l Fazl indeed suggested that his unlettered learning was a “gift from God.” See Annemarie Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art, and Culture (London: Reaktion, 2004), 33. A more natural explanation of his difficulties with the alphabet, put forward by Ellen Smart forty years ago, is that he may have been dyslexic. See Ellen Smart, “Akbar, Illiterate Genius,” in Kalādarśana: American Studies in the Art of India, ed. Joanna Williams (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), 99–107.
In this respect, rather than a broad religious movement, it may be best understood as a spiritual brotherhood restricted to select members of the court.
Babur produced his own autobiography, inaugurating a historiographical tradition closely connected to the founding figure of the imperial dynasty. Although written in his native Chaghatay Turkic, Akbar had it translated into Persian, the dominant court language. For an English translation, see Wheeler M. Thackston, The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (New York: Modern Library, 2002), superseding the earlier effort by Annette S. Beveridge (1842–1929). Humayun, who died soon after re-conquering Hindustan from his Afghan rivals (after falling down the stairs of his library while rushing to prayer), is primarily known by the materials written under the patronage of his son Akbar. Of these, perhaps the most notable is the account produced by Humayun’s half-sister, Gulbadan Begum (1523–1603). See Annette S. Beveridge, ed. and trans., The History of Humāyūn (Humāyūn-Nāma) (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1901). See further Wheeler M. Thackston, ed. and trans., Three Memoirs of Homayun (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2009).
The English translation by Henry Beveridge (1799–1863), which has served generations of historians, is now being superseded by a new edition of the Persian text with English translations by Wheeler M. Thackston: Abu’l Fazl, The History of Akbar, ed. and trans. Wheeler M. Thackston, 7 vols., Murti Classical Library of India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015–21).
Abu’l Fazl was murdered at the instigation of Prince Salim, Akbar’s heir and the future emperor Jahangir, whose succession he had opposed. Jahangir’s personal memoirs are fairly open about his role in the murder.
The Tabaqat-i Akbari was in reality a first attempt at a comprehensive history of the various Muslim dynasties that ruled India up to Akbar and did not seek to compete with Abu’l Fazl’s Akbarnama but managed to offer a substantial and independent account. Nizam al-Din was a prudent official who had a good relationship with Akbar and (unlike Badayuni) seems to have kept his more orthodox religious opinions to himself.
Abu’l Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, ed. and trans. Heinrich Blochmann and Henry S. Jarrett, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873–96; new ed. revised by D. C. [Douglas Craven] Phillott and J. [Jadunath] Sarkar, Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1939–49). This is not to deny the enormous interest of works produced within the immediate royal circle. Of these, the personal memoirs of Babur and Jahangir are particularly fascinating and give us exceptional access to the minds of these two very different rulers, which is, unfortunately, unattainable for Akbar, who—we must assume—was a much more interesting man than would appear from the heavy propaganda rhetoric of Abu’l Fazl.
See Cynthia Talbot’s illuminating analysis of the Surjanacarita (The deeds of Surjan), a Sanskrit poem commissioned either by the Rajput lord and Mughal officer Rao Surjan of Bundi (d.1585) or, more likely, his son Bhoj (d.1607), upon his succession in 1585: Cynthia Talbot, “Justifying Defeat: A Rajput Perspective on the Age of Akbar,” Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient 55 (2012): 329–68. This account of the deeds of the Rajput lord was imbued with a sense of heroic lineage comparable to that of the Timurid aristocracy, but it deploys specifically Hindu ideas of spiritual liberation in order to justify his submission to Akbar’s overlordship as a religious choice, an embarrassing action contrary to the traditional Rajput warrior code.
Edward Maclagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London: Burns & Oates, 1932), 148. Sir Edward Maclagan, born in the Punjab, was a high-ranking officer in British India and became governor of the Punjab in 1921. Upon his return to England, he presided over the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, at which point he also wrote his important work on the Jesuits and the Mughals.
Henry Hosten, S.J., “Mongolicae legationis commentarius, or First Jesuit Mission to Akbar, by Father Antonio Monserrate, S.J.,” Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 3, no. 9 (1914): 513–704. This edition, with its important critical apparatus, remains the last word on the history of the text and the stages of its composition. On the British colonial appropriation of Catholic missionary learning, see Ines G. Županov, “The Historiography of the Jesuit Missions in India (1500–1800),” in Jesuit Historiography Online, ed. Robert A. Maryks, November 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2468-7723_jho_COM_192579 (accessed April 30, 2021).
S. N. [Sikhar Nath] Banerjee, ed., and John S. Hoyland, trans., The Commentary of Father Monserrate S.J. on His Journey to the Court of Akbar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922). There is also a Catalan translation from the Latin original: Antoni de Montserrat, Ambaixador a la cort del Gran Mogol, ed. Josep Lluís Alay (Lleida: Editorial Milenio, 2002).
Montserrat usually wrote in Portuguese, which he mastered completely, or in Castilian (which, for example, he used when writing to the Superior General of the order Everard Mercurian); Antonio Monserrate, or alternatively Antonio de Monserrate, is an adaptation of his Catalan name Montserrat to those languages. Translating names was the usual practice in the period. Italians such as Rodolfo Acquaviva wrote “Monsarrat” instead of Monserrate, and in Latin he signed as Monserratus.
Josef Wicki, S.J., ed., Monumenta historica Societatis Iesu: Documenta Indica, 18 vols. (Rome: IHSI, 1948–88) (hereafter DI).
“First and Second Catalogues of the Province of India,” Goa, December 15, 1594, DI, 16:987. I have translated from the original Spanish. Salsete (Salcete) is here the region south of Goa, not the Island of Salsette where Mumbai/Bombay is located (also in Portuguese hands at that time). Although unsigned, the probable author of the 1594 catalog was the provincial, Francisco Cabral (1529–1609). This catalog does not entirely agree with the previous ones in relation to age: for example, in 1588 Montserrat was fifty-three years old.
“First and Second Catalogues of the Province of India,” Goa, December 15, 1594, DI, 16:988.
DI, 9:240.
See the report on the Christians of Saint Thomas written in January 1579 to the then Superior General Everard Mercurian, published in DI, 11:512–21. The document has close parallels with an undated “Report on the Christians of Saint Thomas,” written, according to Josef Wicki (1904–93) (who recognized the handwriting), by the Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pacheco (1549–93). See DI, 10:966–82. This is part of a larger compilation of ethnographic reports—including Montserrat’s account—on various mission fields and must have been composed in Goa in the period 1580–83.
The fact that Montserrat in 1579 was acting as secretary to the provincial in Goa, Ruy Vicente, with an opportunity to display some of his writing skills, probably helped too. For example, that year he wrote the Annual Letter for the Goan province. At the Mughal court, the Catalan Jesuit also claimed to have known some Arabic, learned in North Africa.
Pedro Páez, História da Etiópia, ed. Isabel Boavida, Hervé Pennec, and Manuel João Ramos (Lisbon: Assírio & Alvim, 2008). Montserrat’s biography appears on 562–63. See also the English translation published by the Hakluyt Society: Isabel Boavida et al., ed. and trans., Pedro Páez’s History of Ethiopia, 1622, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 2001).
It was a very short-lived triumph, but Páez did not live to see the unraveling of all his efforts when—largely as a reaction to the heavy-handed approach of the new Jesuit head of the mission, Patriarch Afonso Mendes (1579–1659)—a civil war quickly broke out that eventually led to Susenyos’s replacement by his more orthodox (according to the Ethiopian church) son Fasiladas (1603–67, r.1632–67). Fasiladas expelled the Jesuits from Ethiopia altogether.
Camillo Beccari, Rerum aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti a saeculo XVI ad XIX, vols. 2 and 3 (Rome: Casa Editrice Italiana, 1905–6). Now superseded by a critical edition of the autograph manuscript (see n. 19 above).
He even adopted a personal motto, In pondere, numero et mensura (By weight, number, and proportion), echoing the biblical book of Wisdom: “Pondere, mensura, numero Deus omnia fecit”—that is, God has ordered all things by measure, number, and weight.
Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 518. The title of the work was directly inspired by the third-person narrative of Julius Caesar (100 BCE–44 BCE), who “took this labour upon himself when the wrote the Commentaries of his wars” (Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 518).
The book traveled remarkably quickly from Spain, where it was published in 1582, to Goa, where Montserrat probably read it between 1582 and 1588.
Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 520. During his captivity, Montserrat also attempted to write an antiquarian geography of the southern Arabian Peninsula, but this seems lost too.
For a discussion of this second book, to which Montserrat refers in his 1591 preface to Acquaviva, see Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 523–28. Hosten deduced that this second book was still in existence in British India in the early nineteenth century, since it was used and quoted by Colonel Francis Wilford (1761–1822) in various of his contributions to Asiatick Researches. Fortunately, the manuscript of the commentaries we have still contains many of the geographical and antiquarian passages that were meant to be transferred, and probably expanded, in the lost book.
On the distinction between Christianity and civilizations, see Joan-Pau Rubiés, “New Worlds and Renaissance Ethnology,” History and Anthropology 6, no. 2 (1993): 157–97.
See Hosten, “Mongolicae legationis,” 533, for Montserrat’s list of his ancient and modern authorities.
See further, Thackston, Baburnama, xlvi–xlvii. Thackston himself (xli) suggests that the concept of Moghuls originated in the Persianate Muslim urban culture of cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand when confronted with the “uncivilized” nomadic steppe peoples who had been united by the Mongols (even though the majority were Turkic).
Montserrat offered this claim in his Relation of Akbar as well as the Commentaries. See especially Francisco López Estrada, ed., Embajada a Tamorlán (Madrid: Castalia, 1999), 288, where it is clear that the Castilian author, writing from Samarkand and relying on interpreters, confused Parsis and Hindus with Christians. It is quite possible that the widespread use of the Arabic word zunnar to describe the girdle worn by Parsis and Christians—and also the Brahmanic thread, thus encompassing various non-Muslims as dhimmis or infidels—facilitated this confusion. Local versions of the legend of St. Thomas (d.72 CE) as apostle of India did the rest. It is, by the way, very doubtful that this travel journal was directly written by the ambassador González de Clavijo, as often assumed. The text had a notable impact after its scholarly publication in 1582 by the Andalusian antiquarian Gonzalo Argote de Molina (1548–1596). See Historia del gran Tamorlán e itinerario y enarración del viage, y relación de la embaxada que Ruy Gonçalez de Clavijo le hizo, por mandado del muy poderoso señor rey Don Henrique el Tercero de Castilla (Seville: En casa de Andrea Pescioni, 1582). In addition to the account of Clavijo’s embassy, Montserrat was also misled by another fifteenth-century source, the universal Chronicon (1477) by the Dominican Antoninus of Florence.
He did, however, study cases of conscience—moral casuistry, a Jesuit specialty—for the purposes of confession.
Honored citizens placed themselves a step above merchants and very close to the lower gentry. Of course, Páez, or Montserrat himself when talking to him, could have exaggerated. The social elite of a small town such as Vic was in any case less elevated than that of Barcelona. According to Páez, Montserrat was attracted to the Jesuit order when studying in Barcelona. There was also a family connection, since his father had apparently met Ignatius of Loyola when the future founder of the Society was studying in Barcelona, following his mystical experiences in the town of Manresa (which, coincidentally, is situated below the sacred mountain of Montserrat).
Páez’s statement that Montserrat had been offered the position but turned it down is very doubtful.
Hervé Pennec, Des jésuites au royaume du Prêtre Jean (Éthiopie): Stratégies, rencontres et tentatives d’implantation 1495–1633 (Paris: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2003), 100–9. As a spiritual coadjutor, Montserrat took the usual perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience but was no longer eligible for professing the four vows and therefore barred from becoming provincial superior. He did in 1579, however, have the trust of his superiors in Goa, after assisting them in disciplining Francisco Dionisio, a Castilian Jesuit working in Malabar who was trying to leave the order with the support of the bishop of Cochin.
As argued by Boavida, Pennec, and Ramos in their critical edition of Páez, História da Etiópia, 18.
DI, 11:644. Montserrat counted 258 Jesuits in the province, of which 121 were ordained as priests and the rest brothers. Only nine had professed four vows, and eighteen three; thirteen were trained spiritual coadjutors, ten trained temporal coadjutors, eighty-one were scholastics (being trained for the priesthood), and the rest (127) were novices.
Valignano was shocked when he learned of the appointment: “It was unreasonable to send there [to Ethiopia] a man already well known from experience not [to have the right disposition for the task] and who could be trusted and relied upon, and who could be expected to give consolation to the two old [Jesuit] men who were there, who always endured so much hardship. But the said father [Montserrat] does not have the condition for this, and it was already hard enough to put up with him in the professed house [of Goa] […]”; from a letter from Valignano to Acquaviva written in Macao on September 22, 1589, published in DI, 15:327.
The massacre of Christians (analyzed by Melo in his introduction) is best understood as an episode in the history of local Hindu resistance to forced Christianization and was followed by a punitive expedition from Goa that was no less violent. Although Montserrat actively participated in the construction of Acquaviva’s hagiography, in 1583 the situation in Salcete was dire.
In particular, it was a fundamental source for Giovanni Battista Peruschi’s Informatione del regno e stato del gran rè di Mogor (Brescia, 1597) and the relevant sections of Luis de Guzmán, Historia de las missiones que han hecho los religiosos de la Compañía de Jesús para predicar el Sancto Evangelio en la India Oriental y en los reynos de China y Japón, 2 vols. (Alcalá, 1601); with a French version of the same in Pierre Du Jarric, Histoire des choses plus memorables advenues tant ez Indes Orientales que autres païs de la descouverte des Portugais, en l’establissement et progrez de la foy Chrestienne et Catholique; Et principalement de ce que les religieux de la Compagnie de Jésus y ont faict et enduré […], 3 vols. (Bordeaux, 1604–14).
“Relaçam do Equebar, rei dos Mogores,” November 26, 1582, DI, 12:649.
Akbar’s sayings were collected in the Ain-i-Akbari. Consider, for example: “The Hindu philosopher says that in the garnering of good works one should have death constantly in view, and, placing no reliance on youth and life, never relax one’s efforts. But to me it seems that in the pursuit of virtue the idea of death should not be entertained, so that freed from hopes and fears, we should practise virtue for the sake of its own worth,” in Ain-i-Akbari (Jarrett translation revised by Sarkar, 1948), 3:438. A comparison with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (121–80 CE) would not be unwarranted.
Akbar’s courteous approach was to treat the Gospels—he was presented with a copy of Plantin’s polyglot Bible—with great public respect while openly confessing that the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity were to him incomprehensible. He was impressed that the Jesuits, and in particular Acquaviva, had such good knowledge of the Qurʾan as well as their own sacred scriptures but asked them to be more moderate (or should we say polite?) when offering their arguments.
Maclagan, Jesuits, 28. Maclagan believed that Akbar was looking for an alternative to both Islam and Hinduism, but he misses the point that he did not believe in imposing one single religion on everybody—his courtly religious circle was, in this respect, obviously elitist.
Abu’l Fazl, History of Akbar, 6:55 (year twenty-three of Akbar’s reign, 1578–79).
Abu’l Fazl, History of Akbar, 6:59.
Abu’l Fazl, History of Akbar, 6:61. The target is made clear: those superficial, dishonest Muslims who had been exposed in the debate were also those who wanted to coerce Hindus—those “inclined to the religion of the Brahmans”—to convert. The Jesuits were the emperor’s tool for the public ritual of shaming his most inflexible Muslim opponents.
Quite clearly, the courtly debate about Akbar’s religious policy primarily concerned Muslims and their tolerance of Hinduism, with European Christians playing an exotic but secondary role.
Abdul Qādir bin Malūk Shā al-Badāonī, Muntakhab-ut-tawārīkh, trans. W. H. [William Henry] Lowe (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1884), 2:262–68. Abdul-Qadir Badayuni had been appointed to the court office of grand mufti of Hindustan by Akbar in 1575 and was also employed as a historian while translating the Sanskrit epics. However, he was deeply uncomfortable with Akbar’s religious policies (or “innovations”) and withdrew from the public disputations. He kept private his narrative of Akbar’s reign, with its harsh criticisms hidden until the reign of Jahangir.
Al-Badāonī, Muntakhab-ut-tawārīkh, 308. According to this version, the fire was actually made, and Qutb-ud-din tried to pull a Jesuit toward it. This holy man, of the same party as Badayuni, apparently died during his exile in Bhakkar and is not to be confused with the tutor of Prince Salim, Qutb-ud-din Muhammad Khan, governor of Gujarat.