Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India Through European Eyes, 1250-1625 (review)

Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissanceis a rich and detailed account of political and religious life in medieval South India, drawing on the individual narratives of European merchants, missionaries, and adventurers. The volume covers the period of European visitation, roughly coinciding with the rise and decline of the Vijayanagar Empire ( AD1308- AD1685).

Rubies employs a distinct methodology of cultural history-derived from the study and interpretation of "cultural encounters." The author examines the process by which Europeans acquired knowledge about other cultures: first explaining how European visitors educated in the Christian traditions viewed South Indian politics and religion; second, how the wide-ranging and evolving written record of explorers, missionaries, and merchants portrayed South India's social, religious, and political milieus (for example, the writings of Marco Polo); and finally how visitors perceived themselves as distinct and separate from the cultures that they encountered. Rubies maintains that their evaluations and re-evaluations contributed to Europe's renaissance.

Although the volume is almost entirely written from the perspective of European elites, using European documents and English-language scholarship, Rubies' approach presents a more integrated and potentially more authentic "picture" of European perspectives on Indian civilization. Rubies also examines a number of non-European sources, Muslim and Hindu, thereby challenging simplistic interpretations of Western "orientalism."

The volume's ten chapters are laid out in rough chronological order, beginning with the visit of Polo to the region and ending three and a half centuries later with the visit of the Roman aristocrat Pietro della Valle. To be sure, this book is not about the function and purpose of India's medieval political and religious systems. In many ways, the history of South India can be viewed as the process by which various local kingdoms attempted to affirm, through religious and political structures and values, the legitimization of succeeding generations of rulers (both male and female). South India during the Vijayanagar period, as well as the earlier Pallava, Pandya, and Chola periods, stand outs to the extent that it exemplifies the process of shaping and transforming the mechanisms of the social order. Rubies explains how this process of ritual legitimation was interpreted by Christian scholars and how this complex system influenced European political and religious thought in a myriad of important ways.