A Russian and a Horse

An old Russian city, a merchant, and a horse hold a surprising connection to Kozhikode. 

In the old Russian city of Tver some 170 km to the northwest of Moscow, on the bank of the Volga, stands an imposing monument.

That is Afanasy Nikitin, a bold and enterprising merchant of Tver, standing in the prow of a boat. In 1468 (some historians say 1466), he set sail down the Volga with goods bought on borrowed money, looking for new markets. Near Astrakhan, where the Volga falls into the Caspian Sea, local Tatars looted his goods. If he returned to Tver, his creditors would have him thrown into prison. Afanasy decided to press on instead along the Caspian. He lost one of his boats in a storm but managed to reach Baku and finally Persia, hoping to somehow recoup his losses. There he learnt that there was good money to be made by trading in horses in Hindustan. So, he made his way to Hormuz, already well known in Russia for its pearls, and bought a thoroughbred stallion to sell in Hindustan at a profit.

When Afanasy Nikitin sailed into the Gulf of Cambay and went ashore in Chaul with his horse, he was three decades ahead of Vasco da Gama. Which means that people on the west coast, in the Bahmani and Vijayanagar kingdoms, saw a Russian long before they saw anyone from Portugal, France, England, or Holland! In April this year, Kozhikode celebrated the 550th anniversary of Afanasy Nikitin’s visit and became a twin city of Tver. Fittingly, Customs Road in Kozhikode was renamed Afanasy Nikitin Road to honor the pioneering Russian merchant.

The monument in Tver shows him holding a scroll in his left hand, a symbol of his travel notes titled ‘Voyage Beyond the Three Seas’. It is a remarkable piece of writing, the first secular travelogue in Russian. Only pilgrimages had been described earlier. Afanasy Nikitin, on the other hand, records his observations of the people of Hindustan, their customs, the prevailing political system, and the exotic flora and fauna.

Since he could not get a good price for his horse in the coastal area, he decided to go inland, and his wanderings took him to Junnar, Bidar, Gulbarga, Golconda, Raichur, Kallur, Parvat, and the Malabar. Everything about the people fascinated him, from their dark complexion to their sheer numbers. Women, he writes, seem to be pregnant all the time. He is surprised that men and women wear very few clothes but a lot of jewelry. The nakedness is not out of poverty, he clarifies. But he also notes the inequity in society - the farmers are poor but the kings are very rich and powerful. They ride in palanquins of gold and their horses’ harness is made of silver. They maintain a huge retinue of elephants, horses, and servitors, and their harem follows them everywhere.

Bidar features prominently in his account. It took him a month to get there from Dabhol. He is impressed by the Sultan’s palace with its eight gates. At each gate, there are 100 scribes to note down who enters and who leaves – not unlike the gated communities of today. At night it is guarded by 1000 armed sentries on horseback headed by a kotwal, and they all carry flaming torches. Bidar also stands out as the place where he saw the longest snakes - over 4 meters. The Vijayanagar king is also powerful, he notes and has a large army. His palace has three moats and is difficult to capture.

As a white man, Nikitin evoked wonder and crowds followed him wherever he went. He had to explain that he was neither Hindu nor Muslim but Christian and tried to tell people about his faith. He doesn’t say in which language he communicated, but it is safe to assume that as a good trader, he already knew some Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, and had picked up the local languages of peninsular India.

He saw that people of different faiths and castes did not eat or drink together, nor did they intermarry, and no one ate pork. He notices the difference between Hindus and Muslims and also caste differences. Hindus are vegetarians and their food is poor, he writes. They do not drink wine. They eat twice during the day and do not eat at night. They fast on certain days. They do not eat together, not even with their wives, and no Busurman (Mussalman) may look at their food. They eat only with their right hand and use no spoons or knives. They speak openly about their food, trade, and religion. The women, he adds, come out to talk with him. These observations of domestic life indicate that Afanasy Nikitin was able to mix freely with the local people wherever he went. He comes to the conclusion that they like white people.

He even knows that Hindus apply the ash from burnt cow dung cakes as religious marks on their faces and bodies, that they burn their dead and scatter the ashes in a river. He also remarks on commonalities. Hindus, like Russians, face east when they pray and prostrate themselves on the floor.

He describes the monsoon as three months of water and mud. Farmers use buffaloes and oxen as beasts of burden and to prepare the fields to sow rice, wheat, and pulses. He describes khichri and a “wine made out of a big nut”, which is probably toddy from the coconut palm. As a merchant, he is disappointed that none of the food or drink of Hindustan would be of interest in Russia. He goes to a 10-day trade fair in Aland but finds nothing there either that could be of commercial value.

During the voyage, Afanasy Nikitin lost his holy books and Church calendar in a storm and did not know when to keep the Lenten fast. This caused him great anxiety and he prayed to “the true God” for forgiveness. He also found a practical solution – he kept the month-long fast together with the Mussalmans and also observed Hindu days of fasting. This must have endeared him to both communities. He describes in detail a five-day religious festival he attends in Parvat with his Hindu friends. Parvat, he says, is their Jerusalem or Mecca, and is about half the size of Tver. The temple is built of stone and the walls are filled with carvings depicting miracles. He sees many idols, half man and half beast. The main idol is a monkey carved out of a black stone, carrying a spear, one hand raised high, and surrounded by other monkeys. He notes that it is forbidden to harm real monkeys. In front of the temple is a huge black bull of stone. People come up and kiss the hoof and shower petals on the bull. They come from faraway places and have their heads tonsured here. “Lakhs” of people were at the festival, he says, unaware that he is using a number word that would be unintelligible to a Russian reader.

By this time Nikitin has spent almost four years in India and homesickness adds to his sadness over abandoning Christian practices. He decides to return home. Unfortunately, sale of the stallion did not bring him the windfall profit he had expected. Food and drink are expensive in Hindustan for man and horse, he complains. He barely recouped what he had spent on the horse. He could only take back cheap pepper and indigo.

His return journey was not smooth. A storm threw the ship off course but it managed to reach Hormuz. He again traveled through Persia but this time to the Black Sea coast of Turkey. Hence the three seas of the title – the Caspian, Arabian and Black seas. In the Turkish port of Trabzon, he was arrested on suspicion of being a spy, and his goods were confiscated. Luckily for posterity, his notes were of no interest to his captors. He managed to convince them to let him go, crossed the Black Sea to Feodosia where Russian merchants lent him money to pay off his debts and headed home. But his health failed him before he could reach Tver and he passed away near Smolensk in 1474. The merchants who were traveling with him handed over his travel journal to scribes and, happily, it survives in several versions. They lay forgotten until 1817, when the Russian historian Karamzin discovered a copy in a monastery when he was collecting material for his monumental work, ‘History of the Russian State’. It is a perceptive and fair-minded account of the Hindustan of five-and-a-half centuries ago written for Russians but equally interesting for Indians.   

Good to know: The Indo-Russian joint production ‘Pardesi’ of 1957 is based on Afanasy Nikitin’s ‘Voyage Beyond Three Seas’. It was made in Hindi and English.

Cover image courtesy: Kala Sunder