'Gods, Guns and Missionaries' excerpt: When Jesuits met devils and monsters in India
Live MintWhile the chief antagonists of the Jesuits in the Mughal court were its Muslim scholars, three fathers had observed some Hindu practice too. This ‘putting European clothing on an Indian subject’ became a ‘constant feature of the early Western image of Indian gods’ as well. Or as Mitter tells, ‘classical monsters and gods, Biblical demons and Indian gods were all lumped together’ in one universal master class: ‘monsters’. Once van Linschoten passed by some villages and ‘at everie hil, stonie Rocke or hole’ there was a ‘Carved Pagode, or rather Devils, and monsters in hellish shapes’. Leaving aside Marco Polo’s bundle of overstatements, there was one like Odoric Mattiussi who in the early 14th century described in coastal India an idol ‘which is half man and half ox’ and ‘giveth responses out of its mouth’.
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