The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

by Sanjeev Sanyal

Local texts, inscriptions and oral histories are routinely discounted as being somehow inferior sources than the testimonies of foreign visitors and travellers who are assumed to have greater credibility. I am not suggesting that we should not use the writings of foreign travellers—I have used them extensively in this book—but want to point out that such sources should not be blindly accepted as they too contain their own biases and prejudices. These not only pertain to colonial-era biases but are also evident in highly regarded precolonial sources. Take, for instance, Ibn Battuta, the famous fourteenth-century Moroccan traveller, who proudly recounts how he threw out an elderly Jewish physician from a dinner party hosted by the Sultan of Birgi for no apparent reason other than his religion. He had not behaved unusually badly and merely reflected a common prejudice of his times, but modern historians who use Ibn Battuta need to consciously adjust for this.6 We see a similar slant in the writings of Chinese pilgrim-scholars like Xuan Zang who viewed the world exclusively from a Buddhist perspective. Thus, we are told of an incident where Xuan Zang is robbed of all his belongings and is helped by a group of Brahmins in Kashmir who give him new clothes and provisions. Far from being grateful after accepting all the gifts, Xuan Zang proceeds to lecture them on their ‘erroneous doctrine’!