Godfrey Thomas Vigne (1801-1863), an English barrister, artist and traveller, spent 1835 to 1839 in north India, Kashmir, Ladakh and Baltistan ('Little Tibet'), crossing the mountains from the Punjab several times. His two-volume book (1842) mixes route notes, sketches, politics of the Sikh kingdom, geology, and history of the Mughal emperors, whose roads, rest-houses and gardens he followed into Kashmir. This corpus copy is volume I only, which ends before his journeys into Ladakh and Baltistan. The word Tartar hardly appears in it; the relevant material concerns the Mughal emperors, whom Vigne calls Timurians and traces to Chagatai, son of Genghis Khan.
How they knew
Eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
Almost never used. Where it appears it means Central Asian nomads in general (in a Milton quotation) or a style of dress. The nearest 'Tartar' subject is the Mughal dynasty of Delhi, which Vigne calls Timurians, descended from Timur and the Chagatai line of Genghis Khan.
Why read it
Shows what the 'Mogul' (Mongol-descended) emperors actually left in Kashmir: paved roads, brick rest-houses and palaces, many of them in ruins by the 1830s, and a living Timurid wedding custom Vigne claims no European had seen.
Watch out
Only volume I is in the corpus; the Ladakh and Baltistan chapters, where Tibetan peoples appear, are in volume II. Vigne's 'Moguls' are the Indian Mughal emperors, not steppe Mongols.
Editorial contextShahbad, once the largest town at the south end of the Kashmir valley and named as a royal seat, had become a ruin by Vigne's visit. The Mughal palace was hardly worth a remark and its grounds were overgrown. Vigne blames much of Kashmir's decay on recent Sikh rule, famine and earthquake rather than on any lost civilization.
Shahbad, the abode of the king, which was the largest place at the southern end of the valley, is now a ruin ; and the palace of the Moguls is scarcely worth a remark. Its environs are overgrown with nettles and wild hemp.
BuildingsThanna Mandi, Rajouri district1830s (built late 1500s)
Akbar's red-brick rest-house on the road to Kashmir
Editorial contextOn the old imperial road over the Pir Panjal, Vigne finds loose stones that are all that remain of a causeway laid by Akbar's pioneers, and a large brick serai (caravan rest-house) Akbar built for the imperial retinue. He credits the building plainly to the Mughal emperor and describes its material. He chose to sleep in a humbler house prepared for Ranjit Singh instead.
A large Serai built by him, of red brick, is conspicuously placed on the right bank of the stream, near Thana, and its quadrangle was well adapted to the reception of a cortege of a Mogul Emperor
Editorial contextAt the same wedding Vigne is allowed to watch a rite he says belongs only to the Timurid family. The bride pushes her bare, henna-dyed foot out of her palanquin and the groom, still in his wedding clothes, kills a goat and touches her great toe with its blood. Vigne presents this as something he saw with his own eyes and believes no European had seen before.
I was admitted, as a great favour, to see a custom peculiar, I believe, to the Timurians, and which, perhaps, no European ever saw before … she thrust her bared foot … through the sliding doors, and the bridegroom touched her great toe with the blood of a goat, which I saw him kill with his own hands
Editorial contextCrossing eastern Turkey in deep winter, with the thermometer at 15 degrees below zero, Vigne kept warm by dressing in Tatar style: five pairs of stockings under big travelling boots. In the Ottoman lands 'Tatar' dress meant the outfit of the government couriers, which European travellers often copied (see Clarke, W032).
On the plain of Erzeroum, the thermometer, on a morning in the middle of February, fell to 15° below zero ; but I was clothed a la Tatare, with five pairs of stockings and large travelling boots drawn over them, so that I felt perfectly warm
Editorial contextAttending the marriage of a Delhi prince, Vigne insists on calling the Indian imperial house 'Timurians', after their ancestor Timur (Tamerlane), rather than the usual 'Mogul'. It is a small but telling point: the word Mogul (Mongol) had become a name for an Indian Muslim dynasty that itself descended from Central Asian conquerors.
I was fortunate in being present at the marriage of his grandaughter with Unjim Shikoh, one of the Princes of Delhi, or Timurians, as they are generally called … a much more correct name for the Indian Emperors than that of Mogul.
Editorial contextIn a footnote Vigne explains the name Zagatai (Chagatai) that Kashmiris still used for the old imperial rule: it comes from a son of Genghis Khan who founded the Chagatai branch in Transoxiana. This links the Indian Mughals directly to the Mongol conquests of the 1200s.
Or Cheguthai, the Mogul Emperors ; so called from Zagatai Khan, a son of Jenghiz Khan, who founded the Zagatai branch in Transoxiana.
Editorial contextStanding on the Pir Panjal pass, Vigne quotes in a footnote Milton's famous simile of a vulture bred on Imaus (the Himalaya), 'whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds'. It shows the English literary picture of the Tartar that travellers carried with them: a wandering herdsman on the far side of the great mountains.
On Imaus bred, Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, Dislodging from a region scarce of prey. To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling kids, On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams
John Milton, Paradise Lost iii.431, quoted in a footnote by Vigne