In The Kingdom of The Great Moguls

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

After a long six months, the ship of Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of the King of England, reached the Indian port-city of Sural in the autumn of 1615. On instructions from the East India Company he is supposed to solicit permission for a trade privilege from the Great Mogul for English merchants. The Dutch and the Portuguese already "have a foot in the door".

A captain, a surgeon, as well as some employees – and Christopher, a young draftsman – accompany Mr. Roe. Christopher’s task is to make and bring back drawings of the task if to make and bring back drawings of the people, the architecture, the landscape and the vegetation in India. Open-minded and curious as he is, Christopher quickly makes contact with the locals and learns their language, so that later he can even translate for Mr. Roe. But not everyone likes the young, talented feringi, the foreigner. More than once Christopher runs into trouble. His biggest adventure, however, is his encounter with the mysterious Amanda.

Gertraude Wilhelm relates this exciting tale of a first encounter with India in the light of Thomas Roe’s diary and her own deep understanding of the country.

Gertraude Wilhelm has done German Studies and Theatre Sciences. She knows India through many, long sojourns in that country. in 1991 her Culture and Travel guide Rajasthan was published by Walter Verlag. She has also translated into German, two major works on India : Cultural Atlas of India ( Oxford, 1995) and India: A Celebration of Independence 1946 – 1997 (Aperture, 1999).

George Baumann completed his Doctorate of Philosophy in Indology at the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg, Germany in 1973. From then until his retirement in 2001, he was director of the Oriental Department and its Special Area Collection on South Asia, sponsored by the German Research Society and the German State of Baden-Wuerttemberg at the University Library in Tuebingen, Germany. After his retirement, he has been spending a greater part of each year in Kerala, learning Malayalam and more about the classical culture of that Indian State.

The Wilhelm von Pochhammer Memorial Fund and the Federation of Indo-German Societies in India (FIGS) are privileged to present Gertraude Wilhelm's "Im Reich des Grossmoguls" in its first English translation by Dr. George Baumann.

Gertraude Wilhelm did German Studies and Theatre Sciences. She knows India through many long sojourns in the country. In 1991 her Culture and Travel Guide Rajasthan was published by Walter Verlag. In 1995, her volume entitled India: Geschichte, Kunst, Lebensformen was published in her own translation.

In the Kingdom of the Great Moguls, Gertraude Wilhelm narrates an exciting tale of an encounter with India, in the early seventeenth century, in the light of the diary of Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador of the King of England, at the court of the Mogul Emperor Jahangir. The eminent indologist, Dr. George Baumann, who has translated this novel into English, was for almost three decades the Director of the Oriental Department and its Special Area Collection on South Asia, sponsored by the German Research Society and the German State of Baden-Wuerttemberg at the University Library in Tuebingen, Germany. Since his retirement in 2001, he spends a greater part of the year in Kerala, learning Malayalam and more about the classical culture of that Indian State.

It is our hope that this effort will help achieve the objective of FIGS, which include, inter alia, to promote and develop relations between India and the Federal Republic of Germany in literary, cultural, social, commercial and industrial fields, and explore and develop new areas of mutual cooperation, understanding and goodwill.

**Contents and Sample Pages**