A year before Christopher Columbus set sail from Castille on a journey that would take him to the Americas, another two Genoans travelled south to Egypt and then to Sumatra through India, Ceylon and Burma.
The nearly-forgotten merchant duo of Giròlamo da Santo Stefano and Giròlamo Adorno set off on their adventure in 1491 from Genoa. While Adorno would die in Pegu, Burma, some years later, da Santo Stefano completed the trek, returning home via the Maldives in 1499.
Da Santo Stefano described his travels – coming a little before Vasco da Gama’s arrival in India – in a letter to Gian Giacomo Mainerio, who published it in Portuguese. Read today, that account provides a picture of late 15th-century southern India, a time of change and considerable activity.
Mountains and deserts
To get to India, da Santo Stefano and Adorno took the route that was popular among Arab traders plying between West Asia and Kerala. So they first went to Egypt.
In Cairo, they bought coral beads and other merchandise, and then travelled by land through what da Santo Stefano described as “those mountains and deserts, wherein Moses and the people of Israel wandered when they were driven out by the Pharaoh”.
At the Red Sea port of Quseer, they boarded a ship, “the timbers of which were sewn together with cords and the sails made of rush mats,” da Santo Stefano wrote.
The ship sailed for 25 days, “putting in every evening at very fine but uninhabited ports” before arriving in Massawa in modern-day Eritrea. The Genovese stayed in the city for two months and then carried on with their journey.
“Sailing through the said sea...for twenty-five days more, we saw many boats fishing for pearls, and having examined them we found that they were not of so good quality as the Oriental pearls,” da Santo Stefano wrote. “At the end of twenty-five days, we arrived at the city of Aden, situated on the left shore of the sea and on the mainland.”
So impressed was da Santo Stefano with the ruler of Aden that he wrote, “The lord of this country is so just and good, that I do not think any other infidel potentiate can be compared with him.”
Adorno and da Santo Stefano stayed in Aden for four months before sailing to Calicut. “We sailed for twenty-five days with a prosperous wind without seeing land, and then we saw several islands, but did not touch at them; and continuing our voyage for ten days more, with a favourable wind, we finally arrived at a great city called Calicut.”
Spice production
The Calicut that the Genovese merchants reached was a prosperous town ruled by the Samoothiri (Zamorin). The primary spice exporter in south India at the time, Calicut was a popular destination among Arab and Chinese merchants and travellers.
“We found that pepper and ginger grew here,” da Santo Stefano wrote. “The pepper trees are similar to the ivy, because they grow round other trees wherever they can attach themselves; their leaves resemble those of the ivy. Their bunches are the length of half a palm or more, and as slender as a finger: the grain grows very thickly around.”
Da Santo Stefano was genuinely fascinated with how pepper was produced. “When it is ripe and gathered in, it is green like ivy; it is left to dry in the sun, and in five or six days it becomes black and wrinkled as we see it.” The production of ginger also interested him. “For the propagation of ginger, they plant a small fresh root, about the size of a small nut, which at the end of the month grows large: the leaf resembling that of the wild lily.”
Like other staunch Catholics at the time, da Santo Stefano referred to Muslims as “infidels” and Hindus and Buddhists as “idolaters”. Describing the Hindus of Calicut, he wrote, “They worship an ox, or the sun, and also various idols, which they themselves make. When these people die, they are burnt: their customs and usages are various; inasmuch as some kill all kinds of animals excepting oxen and cows: if anyone were to kill or wound these, he would be himself immediately slain, because as I have before said, they are objects of worship.” He mentioned that some people in Calicut were vegetarian.
Like some other foreigners who travelled to India in the 15th or 16th century, da Santo Stefano had his own interpretation of the local marriage customs. “Every lady may take to herself seven or eight husbands, according to her inclination. The men never marry any woman who is a virgin; but if one, being a virgin, is betrothed, she is delivered over before the nuptials to some other person for fifteen or twenty days in order that she may be deflowered.”
Da Santo Stefano noted that Calicut had a thousand houses inhabited by Christians, probably referring to the St. Thomas Christians of Kerala.
Coromandel Coast
From Calicut, Da Santo Stefano and Adorno went to Ceylon. “We departed hence in another ship, made like the one above described, and after a navigation of twenty-six days, we arrived at a large island called Ceylon, in which grow the cinnamon trees, which resemble the laurel even in the leaf,” da Santo Stefano wrote.
He found the landscapes of Malabar and Ceylon similar. “There are many trees here of the sort which bears the nut of India (cocoa-nut), which also are found in Calicut, and are properly speaking like palm trees.”
Ceylon, at the time, was as famous for its gems as it was for its cinnamon. “Here grow many precious stones, such as garnets, jacinthes, cat’s eyes, and other gems, but not of very good quality, for the fine ones grow in the mountains.”
The Genovese merchants spent only a day on the island. Da Santo Stefano did not mention where in Ceylon their vessel called on, but the primary port on the island back then was Galle.
From Ceylon, the merchants travelled to the Coromandel Coast, reaching it 12 days later. The region was so abundant in red sandalwood trees that, Da Santo Stefano wrote, people built houses with it.
In the region, Da Santo Stefano noticed the prevalence of Sati. “There is another custom in practice here, that when a man dies and they prepare to burn him, one of his wives burns herself alive with him; and this is their constant habit.”
Da Santo Stefano and Adorno spent seven months in southeastern India, but nothing about this period was mentioned in da Santo Stefano’s letter to Mainerio. From modern-day Tamil Nadu, they sailed over 20 days to reach the city of Pegu in Burma.
After Adorno died in Pegu, da Santo Stefano travelled as far as Sumatra, before going back home. On his return journey, he visited the Maldives and then Hormuz and mainland Persia. Travelling overland through Persia and Iraq, he went to Aleppo and Tripoli in modern-day Lebanon, from where he wrote the letter to Mainero.
An Italian version of the letter was published in the mid-16th century and featured in a collection of travel accounts compiled by Italian humanist and historian Giovan Battista Ramusio. The collection was titled Delle Navigationi et viaggi (On Journey by Sea and Land).
The Enciclopedia Italiana (Italian Encyclopedia), published in 1933, said the travelogue was “poorly connected and crudely written,” but it gave Europe a rare glimpse of life in late 15th-century Asia before the age of colonial conquest.
The account was translated to English and published in India in Fifteenth Century Being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India, edited by RH Major.
Little more is known about Giròlamo da Santo Stefano, an adventurer who set off from Genoa to distant lands on challenging journeys, seeing what few from his part of the world had done before him.
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.
