An Outlier
Percival Spear had described him as belonging to a type of Europeans who were “adventurers pure and simple”. He left behind Storia do Magor (Story of the Mughal), his “lengthy memoirs full of amusing and unreliable anecdotes.” Yet, of all the innumerable white men who visited India then and penned accounts, Nicolo Manucci’s are regarded as the most reliable. Instead of hearsay, he was recounting first-hand experiences in late 17th century, despite his inability to write the languages, including his native Italian. He was otherwise well-versed in French, Turkish, Portuguese, Persian and perhaps Urdu. This allowed him to act as a go-between for the Mughals to communicate with Shivaji, and in later life-switching loyalties and siding with the British, dictated entirely by self-interest.
Manucci joined Prince Darah Shukoh’s army as artilleryman like many Europeans, and later wormed himself into the confidence of potentates and influential men when he decided to practise medicine without any practical knowledge. Luck favoured him and he became immensely successful and wealthy as a much-sought-after physician. Manucci thus managed to remain in the thick of the action as the Mughals began to fade out and the British stealthily moved centre stage. Slippery as an eel, Manucci was blessed with the protean ability to switch roles, and a talent for turning adversities to his advantage. At 14, Manucci left behind his impoverished family in Venice in 1653 as a stowaway on a ship and arrived at Surat. He yearned to return home, but he died here at 82. He was told he had lived too long in India to acclimatise to colder climes.
With the benefit of hindsight, Marco Moneta retells Manucci’s spellbinding story, skillfully weaving in strands from Storia do Magor with a brilliant cast of characters featuring merchants, soldiers, courtiers, colonials, missionaries, rogues and royalty. Manucci, over the years, traversed the length and breadth of the sub-continent from Lahore to Goa and the Deccan, to Bengal and Benaras in the service of Aurangzeb’s son, Shah Alam, who indulged him, and later to flee from his clutches as he never wanted to marry a Muslim woman, instead seeking the company of his fellow Christians. Unlike another fortune seeker, Claude Martin, who was born just about a century later and embraced a sybaritic Indian lifestyle, Manucci, who had reservations both about Muslims and Hindus, always remained an outsider.
A Venetian at the Mughal Court: The Life and Adventures of Nicolo By: Marco Moneta
Translator: Elisabetta Gnecchi Ruscone
Publisher: Penguin Vintage
Pages: 276
Price: Rs 699