Notandum.—That I have read through this book, and do confirm all that is wrote in’t to be true, in so far as the matters therein related came under my cognisance, and for the rest, I am confident in the good faith of my friend, Mr Edward Carlyon.
And to this I set my hand and seal,
(Signed) Robt. Martin,
Of the Bathe, in the county of Somerset, gentleman.
At Ellswether, this 23d day of September 1698.
APPENDICES.
APPENDIX I.
THE NATIVE RACES OF INDIA.
The early European travellers and sojourners in India designated the inhabitants generally by the name of Indians or Indosthans. Of these they recognised two main divisions, Moors and Gentues. The word Gentues, which has survived in certain parts of India to our own day in the form Gentoos, is, as Fryer tells us in his ‘New Account of East India and Persia,’ “the Portugal idiom for Gentiles,” and signifies the whole Hindu and aboriginal (or non-Aryan) population—that is to say, all the peoples of India with the exception of the Mussulmans, Parsees, and Jews. Of the Gentues, the race which came most frequently in contact with the English factories in Western India was that of the Mahrattas, Marathas, or Marhatas, under their great chief Sivaji and his successors. The Christians of St Thomas, incidentally alluded to in the text, belong to the non-Aryan races of Southern India. The other great division, the Moors, comprises all the Mahommedan invaders and their descendants, from the time of the earliest raids in the seventh century, together with the converts gained from among the Hindu and aboriginal races. This name, also, survives to the present day in the “Moormen” of Bengal and Ceylon. Until shortly before the date of our story, the results of these earlier invasions of India were apparent in the existence of the Mahommedan kingdoms of Bijapur, Golconda, Gujerat, and others, which were gradually swept away by the growing Mogul power. The name Moguls was used to distinguish from the general mass of Moors the later Persian and Afghan invaders, often of high rank in their own country, who entered India in the earlier ages as leaders of predatory bands, and at a later date with peaceful intentions, to gain power and honour in the service of the emperors of their own race at Delhi. The Parsees (spelt Parseys or Parsies), and the Black Jews of Malabar, are frequently mentioned by old writers, as also an African colony of Abyssinians not far from Surat.
APPENDIX II.
THE SPELLING OF PROPER NAMES.
In dealing with foreign names, the English author of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries pursued one unfailing method. In the case of European personal names, if he could find an English equivalent, he used that, and if not, he resorted to a Latin form, boldly rendering Emil by Æmilius, for instance. Sometimes he even applied this method to surnames, as the forms Thuanus and Montisquius, found for De Thou and Montesquieu in the ‘Book of Martyrs,’ will testify. As an example of a foreign Christian name replaced by its English equivalent, we need only recall that of the famous Don John of Austria. Mr Carlyon is, therefore, only following the custom of his time when he renders Sebastiaõ, Francisco, and Deodoro as Sebastian, Francis, and Theodorus. In the same way Madam Heliodora’s real name was Françoise Marie Louise Anne Aimée (or Amantine) Héliodore, and her father’s Gaspard Dieudonné. With regard to names of places, the case was different. It was only occasionally that an English form could be used, as with Gascoign for Gascogne (a closer approximation than our own Gascony), and St Thomas for San Thomé. The effort of the writer seems generally to have been to make the names look as English as possible. Hence we have Dhilly for Delhi, and Geminy for Jumna. He had a marked objection to the letters b and k, and a fondness for v, x, and z. J and sh he often replaced by ch or s. Indian personal names come under the same category, for which reason I have left them to the last. Here, as with the place-names, our author’s spelling was strictly phonetic, in so far as he could make it so. Loll Duss, Cogia Bux, and Rum Cunder are recognisable as Lal Das, Khoja Baksh, and Ram Chanda; but Madda Gi is not easy to interpret as Madhoji, and the modern spelling of Vincaly I have not been able to discover. Eusoff is Yusuf. What adds to the difficulty of identifying these Eastern names is that in many cases the chronicler adopted them from a Portuguese or Dutch predecessor, who had left his own mark upon them in the shape of a previous modification of the spelling in accordance with his national taste. I have thought it better in all cases to leave the names in the text in their original form (and so also with a few misspelt English and Indian words), merely explaining in a note those about which there might be some doubt, thus retaining the quaint effect.