Indian Antiquary Vol 54

SR No.: 032546
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1985
Total Pages: 376
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 285

APRIL, 1925)
NOTES ON PIRACY IN EASTERN WATERS
hempseed, that has an intoxicating quality, and whilst it atỉects the head they are furious. They wear long hair, and when they let that hang loose they'll give no quarter '89. Hamilton also says (I. 134) that the Gujarati ports employed Rajputs to protect them from the Sanganiaus (who were themselves largely of Rajput origin). His account of the Sanganians seems to contradict Fryer's (see para. 331 above) in certain points. His remark about their letting their long hair louse when they intended to give no quarter reminds one of the Spartans at Thermopylae combing out their long hair in preparation for their last stand (Herodotus, VII. 248). Heliodorus (c. 400 A.D.) writes of the Egyptian pirates "The pirates, willing to render themselves as formidable as they can, among other things, cherish long hair, which they suffer to grow down their foreheads and play over their shoulders, well knowing that flowing locks, B they make the lover more amiable, so they render the warrior more terrible" (Theagenes and Chariclea, Bohn's Greek Romances, p. 45).
858. The Warrels were the Vadhels, a class of Rajputs associated with the Vagher pirates of Kathiawar (Hedges, II. 327 n). Of these Hamilton writes (I. 140) :-"All the country between Diu and Daud point, which is about thirty leagues along shore, admits of no traffio, being inhabited by free-booters called Warrels, and often associate with the Sanganians in exercising piracy and depredations. They confide much in their numbers as the others do and strive to board their prizes and 80 soon as they get on board they throw in showers of stones on the prize's deck in order to sink them that way if they don't yield, and they have earthen pots as big as a six-pound grenade shell, full of unquenched lime well sifted, which they throw in also and, the pots breaking, there arises so great a dust that the defendants can neither breathe nor see well (see paras. 162 and 343 above). They also use wicks of cotton, dipt into & combustible oil, and firing the wick and throwing it into their opposer's ship, it burns violently and gets fire to the part it is thrown in."
Ara blans. 359. In reprisal for piratical interference with Dutch trade the Sieur Caza mbrod with eight Dutch ships seized thirteen "Moor" vessels near Gombroon and on the 4th August 1684 ocoupied and fortified the Island of Kishm (Dubois. p. 248),
360. In 1684 Sir Thomas Grantham was sent to India in the Charles II (60 to 70 guns) with & Royal Commission to re-establish the English Factory at Bantam, and, if that were impracticable, to proceed to the Persian Gulf to enforce the Company's claim to one half the revenues of Gombroon or Bandar Abbas (Bruce, II. 499, 539-40). He arrived in Bombay on the 12th November 1684 and very tactfully suppressed Keigwin's rebellion. According to Bruce, he took a small force to the Persian Gulf to put an end to the piracy there prevalent.
361. Sir John Chardin (Coronation of Solyman, III. 1) mentions the existence, about this time, of Arab pirates at Al Kadar on the eastern side of the Persian Gulf and on the mouths of the Shat-al-arab.
Danes. 862. A new Danish Company had been formed in 1670 and about ten years later there began to appear rumours of acts of piracy by Danish ships. Hamilton (I. 349) says that in 1684 the English ship Formosa having left Calicut for home, the same night a great firing was heard out at sea and no further news was ever received of that ship. It was supposed that she had been sunk by two Danish vessels which were cruising between Surat and Cape Comorin" on what account none could tell but themselves."
863. On the 29th September 1686 Mr. J. Pitt wrote to Madras from Achin that on the 20th a Danish ship in that port, having news of a very rich Surat ship, had cut her cable and
* Walter Vaughan, & prisoner at Johor in March 1702-3, says of the people of Macassar " when the mon let down their hair (which they always wear knotted up behind) they are desperately resolved to go through with their designs." (Adventures of five Englishmen from Pulo Condore, p. 117.)