Who W Rote About Sati Name Of
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Chronological Chart of Indian Voyages of Early Modern European Travelers (cited in the book) Who Wrote about Sati Name of Traveler Dates Origin Profession Dates in India Places Visited / Location of Sati 1. Pedro Alvares Cabral 1467–?1518 Portuguese Captain of Fleet 1500–01 Calicut/sati in Calicut 2. Duarte Barbosa d. 1521 Portuguese Civil Servant 1500–17 Goa, Malabar Coast/sati in Vijaynagar 3. Ludovico di Varthema c. 1475–1517 Bolognese Adventurer 1503–08 Calicut, Vijaynagar, Goa, Cochin, Masulipatam/ sati in Calicut 4. Tome Pires 1468–1540 Portuguese Apothecary 1511–16 Goa, Cannanore, Cochin/sati in Goa, Kanara, Deccan 5. Fernao Nuniz ? Portuguese Trader 1535?–37 Vijaynagar/sati in Vijaynagar 6. Caesar Frederick ? Venetian Merchant 1563–81 Vijaynagar, Cambay, Goa, Orissa, Satgan/sati in Vijaynagar 7. Antoine Monserrate, SJ d. 1600 Portuguese Missionary 1570?–1600 Goa, Surat, Agra/sati near Agra 8. John Huyghen van Linschoten 1563–1611 Dutch Trader 1583–88 Goa, Surat, Malabar coast/sati near Goa 9. Ralph Fitch d. 1606? English Merchant 1583–91 Goa, Bijapur, Golconda, Agr/sati in Bidar near Golconda 10. Francesco Carletti 1573–1636 Florentine Court Official 1599–1601 Goa/sati in Vijaynagar 11. Francois Pyrard de Laval 1590?–1621? French Ship’s purser 1607–10 Goa, Calicut, Cochin, Ceylon, Chittagong/sati in Calicut 12. Henri de Feynes, M. de Montfort ? French Adventurer 1608–?20 Agra, Surat, Mangalore, Daman, Cochin, Ceylon, Bengal/sati in Sindh 13. William Hawkins d. 1613 English Trader 1608–12 Surat, Agra/sati in Agra 14. Pieter Gielisz van Ravesteyn (?) d. 1621 Dutch Factor 1608–14 Nizapatam, Surat 15. Antony Schorer d. 1616 Dutch Trader 1608–14 Masulipatam 16. Jean Mocquet b. ?1575 French Collector (Keeper of 1609–10 Goa/sati in Goa the Royal Cabinet of Rarities) 17. John Jourdain b. 1572/3–d. 1619 English Civil Servant 1609–16 Surat, Agra/sati in Mando 18. Robert Coverte ? English Adventurer 1612–?14 Cambaya, Addar (continues) Chronological Chart (continued) Name of Traveler Dates Origin Profession Dates in India Places Visited / Location of Sati 19. Nicholas Withington d. 1624? English Civil servant 1612–16 Surat, Agra, Ajmer/sati in Surat 20. Sir Thomas Roe 1580–1644 English Ambassador 1615–19 Agra, Ahmedabad, Ajmer, Surat 21. Edward Terry 1590–1660 English Chaplain 1617–19 Malwa, Ahmedabad, Surat 22. William Methwold 1590–1653 English Factor 1618–22, Surat, Calicut, Masulipatam/sati in “Telegu 1633–39 country”? Golconda 23. Francisco Pelsaert d. 1630 Dutch Trader 1618–27 Surat, Agra/sati in Rajasthan? Surat? 24. Jon Olaffson 1595–1679 Icelander Gunner in Danish ship 1623–24 Masulipatam, Coromandel Coast/sati in Malabar 25. Pietro della Valle 1586–1652 Rome Adventurer 1623–24 Cambay, Ahmedabad, Chawal, Goa/sati in Ikkeri 26. Mads Matthias Rasmussen ? Dane Chaplain 1624 Malabar Coast 27. Sir Thomas Herbert 1606–82 English Adventurer and author 1627–28 Goa, Surat, Coromandel Coast/sati in Negapatm 28. Peter Mundy c. 1596–1667 English Trader 1628–34, Surat, Gwalior, Agra, Benares, Patna/sati in Surat 1636–37, 1655–56 29. Abraham Roger d. 1649 Dutch Missionary 1630–40 Coromandel Coast, Pulicat 30. John Albert de Mandelslo 1614–? German Courtier 1638–39 Surat, Agra, Lahore/sati near Surat, at Cambay 31. Jean Baptiste Tavernier 1605–89 French Diamond Merchant 1640–43, Surat, Ahmedabad, Agra, Dacca, Goa, Golconda, 1645–47, St. Thome, Masulipatam, Madras, Patna, 1648, 1652– Bengal/sati in Goa, Gujarat, Bengal 54, 1659– 61, 1665–67 32. Niccolao Manucci 1639–1717 Venetian Physician 1653–1717 Goa, Delhi, Agra, Pondicherry, Lahore/sati in Qasimbazar, Agra 33. Francois Bernier 1620–88 French Physician 1658–67 Agra, Patna, Bengal, Golkonda, Masulipatam, Surat/sati in Surat 34. Jean de Thevenot 1633–67 French Adventurer 1666–67 Diu, Surat (continues) Chronological Chart (continued) Name of Traveler Dates Origin Profession Dates in India Places Visited / Location of Sati 35. Thomas Bowrey 1650–1713 English Sailor 1669–79 Coromandel coast, Madras, Bengal/sati in Masulipatam, Bengal 36. Domingo Navarette 1618–86 Spanish Missionary 1670–71 Goa, Coromandel Coast, Madras, Golconda, Masulipatam, Surat/sati at Cananor 37. Phillip Baldaeus ? Dutch Missionary 1672 Malabar, Coromandel/sati in Coromandel 38. Abbe D. Barthelemy Carre b. 1639/40– French Missionary 1672–74 Bombay, Surat, St. Thome, Madras/sati in St. d. 1699? Thome, Madras 39. John Fryer 1650?–1733 English Surgeon 1673–77, Bombay, Junnar/sati near Bombay 1678–82 40. Alexander Hamilton ?–1732 Scottish Trader 1688–1723 Sindh, Diu, Surat, Daman, Bombay, Malabar coast/sati in Canara 41. John Ovington 1653–1731 English Chaplain 1689–93 Surat, Bombay/sati in Surat 42. John Francis Gamelli Careri 1651–1725 Neapolitan Lawyer 1695 Daman, Agra/sati in Ponda 43. John Burnell ? English Surveyor 1711–13 Bombay, Bengal/sati in Bombay Notes Introduction 1. Sati is both the Hindu widow who burns herself alive with the corpse of her dead husband as well as the act of widowburning. 2. I use the term “European women” with a great deal of reservation. It suggests an undifferentiated grouping of different women from various regions—a homogenization of the kind I have said European travelers impose on Asian women. Although I will explore the shared cultural roots of many social constructs in Europe (a common Latin literature, similarities in Catholic and Puritan conduct books, or cor- respondences in religious practices, for example), there were signifi- cant regional differences in the cultural constructions of women from one European region to another. Obviously, Dutch, French, Scottish, or English women were not responding to exactly the same social mechanisms at exactly the same time. Some of these differences are borne out in the degree of ferocity of the witch-hunts. Other differ- ences pertain not just to the particular regions the women came from but also whether they were rural or urban, educated or illiterate. So- cial class as well as marital status also marked such differences. De- spite the differences, however, many shared cultural legacies suggested a “European” identity. See Peter Rietbergen, Europe: A Cultural History (London and New York: Routledge, 1998). 3. Stephen Greenblatt’s work remains one of the most influential texts in this genre of criticism. See Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self- Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Cul- ture (New York: Routledge, 1990); and Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 4. Here I am referring to the East in more generic terms. As I have dis- cussed elsewhere, in early modern discourses “India” was a vast, un- defined space, frequently used as a handy synecdoche for all of Europe’s others; see “Milton’s India and Paradise Lost,” in Milton Studies 37, ed. Albert C. Labriola (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts- burgh Press, 1999), 142–65. There is a vast body of scholarship on 216 B URNING W OMEN Renaissance notions of race and its implications. Apart from an- thologies of essays such as Women, “Race” and Writing in the Early Modern Period, ed. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker (London: Routledge, 1994), there are the special issues of The William and Mary Quarterly 54:1 (1997), ed. Michael McGiffert, and Shakespeare Studies 26, ed. Leeds Barroll (Madison, WI: Associated University Presses, 1998). See also, among others, Ania Loomba, Gender, Race, and Renaissance Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989); John Gillies, Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Daniel J. Vitkus, “Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor,” Shakespeare Quarterly 48 (1997), 145–76. 5. On Irish “crossovers,” see Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfield, and Willy Maley, ed., Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser’s Irish Experience: Wilde Fruit and Savage Soyl (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); and Christo- pher Highley, Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis in Ireland (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 6. Ania Loomba, “Outsiders in Shakespeare’s England,” in The Cam- bridge Companion to Shakespeare, ed. Margareta de Grazia and Stan- ley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 147–66. 7. See Edward Thompson, Suttee: A Historical and Philosophical En- quiry into the Hindu Rite of Widow-Burning (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928), 132. We will have occasion to return to this ac- count later. 8. Whereas European witchcraft persecutions and Hindu widowburn- ing were both intensely gendered rituals and violently shaped by the patriarchic ideologies of their respective cultures, each burning was embedded within the specific, local contingencies of its cultural con- text. While widowburning occurred within Hindu caste hierarchies and was driven by Hindu patriarchal ideologies, witchburning was produced within the competing ideologies of the church and state in Europe. Furthermore, the two kinds of burnings cannot be expressed within a single transnational, transhistorical category of patriarchy, because there was no stable, shared patriarchal structure in India and Europe. The various regional forms of the brahmin patriarchies were as distinct from themselves as they were from the complex