Will the real Zamorin please stand up
A note on painting and propoganda
Today marks 526* years to the day, when Vasco Da Gama sailed into peppery waters, somewhere off the coast of Calicut.
I am not an historian, but the accounts I have read have always left me puzzled. So here goes, let me lay out what I know for you.
First, during a talk by Dr. Kurush Dalal, who is an archaeologist, historian, anthropologist and a brilliant teacher, he mentioned that one of the reasons the Portuguese sent their men out to sea, looking for a trade route to India, was the Little Ice Age.
The Enviromental History Resources page tells me that the The Little Ice Age was a period of regionally cold conditions between roughly AD 1300 and 1850. There were two phases of the Little Ice Age, the first beginning around 1290 and continuing until the late 1400s
Europe felt the impact of this Little Ice Age, and reeled under crop failure, population decline, prices of grain going up, flooding, famine and a general not-a-good-time feels.
Environmental History Resources also tells me that the The Little Ice Age coincided with the maritime expansion of Europe and the creation of seaborne trading and later colonial empires. First came the Spanish and Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, English and other European nations. Key to this success was the development of shipbuilding technology which was a response to both trading, strategic but also climatic pressures.
Which means things were not looking too good at home when Vasco Da Gama set off to India, hoping to find in his words or the words of his crew “christians and spices.”
And as they say in the movies, My Lord, that is point number one to be noted.
Now the second point is that on landing, Vasco and his crew got to meet the Samudripadd (lord of the sea) or in its anglicuised form, the Zamorin . The Zamorin by all accounts was a very wealthy and powerful man. An eye witness account describes the meeting with the king as ~
He lay on a sofa covered with a cloth of white silk and gold, and a rich cauopy over his bead. On bis head he had a cap or mitre adorned with precious stones and pearls and had jewels of the same kind in his ears*. He wore a jacket of fine cotton cloth having buttons of large pearls and button holes wrought with gold thread. About his middle he had a piece of white calico, which came only down to his knees; and both bis fingers and toes were adorned with many gold rings set with fine stones; his arms and legs were covered with many golden bracelets. Close to the sofa there stood a gold shallow bason on a gold stand, in which was betel, which the King chewed with salt and arena. . .The King had a gold bason on a golden stand, into which he spat out the betel when cliewcd, and a gold fountain with water for washing his month.
It’s not just gold fountains and jackets with pearls that point to the difference in affluence between Vasco and the Zamorin, but also the rather disasterous gifts Vasco presented to him.
They are mentioned as twelve pieces of lambel [a striped cloth], four scarlet hoods, six hats, four strings of coral, a case containing six wash-hands basins, a case of sugar, two casks of oil, and two of honey.
When the gifts were inspected, the Portuguese were scornfully told “the poorest merchants from Mecca or any other part gave more and that if he wanted to make a present it should be in gold”.
Now that this has been set up, what’s really fun is to look at the pictures that depict Vasco meeting the Zamorin. It’s a complete about turn!
It looks like the Zamorin has personally come to meet the man who has rocked up to his shore. And is also bowing and welcoming him.
This is one of the defining images that we keep seeing, of Vasco meeting the Zamorin. Vasco stands with his chest out and arm raised, not just an equal, but also the center of attention. The Zamorian and the members of his court look straight out of an oriental theatre perfomance of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
Here the Zamorin looks like the last mughal, old, frail and ready to hang up his boots.
The Zamorin’s clothes also seem to depend on what the artist likes at that moment. For instance here, it seems the onsie was having a moment in the artist’s imagination.
Here the tables turn. Vasco is old and the Zamorin looks really bored with his speech.
And this one, again. Where it looks like Vasco is dressed in as much silk and finery as the Zamorin, And is also standing in a raised position of power. Plus there is a man bowing down in submission to him.
It’s interesting to see how the words describing the encounter are so contrary to the pictures and how over time, Vasco was painted as this heroic figure.
But then I also discovered an artist called Pushpamala N. Who has deconstructed and recreated the 1898 painting by Jose Veloso Salgado.
An excerpt from her site states For The Arrival of Vasco da Gama Pushpamala plays her first male role as the celebrated navigator, recreating the original painting as a photographic tableau with artist friends as supporting cast. Elements of the painted sets made for the shoot and written texts form an installation like a theatre museum around the photograph, unpeeling the work.
The artist turns Salgado’s conception on its head, returning what is a work of imagination that has over time gained a degree of historical legitimacy, to the space of fiction and masquerade.
And for me, the circle has been completed.
And oh, also happy 526 years to the occassion that sealed Bandra’s fate.
Sources: http://www.pushpamala.com/projects/the-arrival-of-vasco-da-gama, https://franpritchett.com, https://cestlaviepriya.wordpress.com/, https://www.idsa.in/system/files/news/daxiyangguo27_online_artigo-1.pdf, https://www.eh-resources.org, https://www.asian-voice.com/, Zamorins Of Calicut From The Earliest Times Down To A.d. 1806, https://www.ibiblio.org/
I also found this delightful blog where the writer has gone down the same rabbit hole as me, and has a lot of other interesting details: https://historicalleys.blogspot.com/2010/12/many-faces-of-zamorin.html
*My math is really bad. I had to depend on https://www.calculator.net for this.
Nice, love the different art you've dug out! Had never read about the two-bit presents he brought along :)
Interesting piece. I'd think that artists were commissioned by their patrons. So depending on who was doing the commissioning, the characters were painted accordingly.