The City Of Satagan Is
Tolerably Handsome As A City Of The Moors, Abounding In Every Thing, And
Belonged Formerly To The King Of _Patane_ Or _Patna_, But Is Now Subject
To The Great Mogul.
I was in this kingdom four months, where many
merchants bought or hired boats for their convenience and great
advantage, as there is a fair every day in one town or city of the
country.
I also hired a bark and went up and down the river in the
prosecution of my business, in the course of which I saw many strange
things.
The kingdom of Bengal has been long under the power of the Mahomedans,
yet there are many Gentile inhabitants. Wherever I speak of Gentiles I
am to be understood as signifying idolaters, and by Moors I mean the
followers of Mahomet. The inhabitants of the inland country do greatly
worship the river Ganges; for if any one is sick, he is brought from the
country to the banks of the river, where they build for him a cottage of
straw, and every day they bathe him in the river. Thus many die at the
side of the Ganges, and after their death they make a heap of boughs and
sticks on which they lay the dead body and then set the pile on fire.
When the dead body is half roasted, it is taken from the fire, and
having an empty jar tied about its neck is thrown into the river. I saw
this done every night for two months as I passed up and down the river
in my way to the fairs to purchase commodities from the merchants. On
account of this practice the Portuguese do not drink the water of the
Ganges, although it appears to the eye much better and clearer than that
of the Nile.
"Of _Satagan, Buttor_, and _Piqueno_, in the kingdom of Bengal, no
notices are to be found in the best modern maps of that country, so that
we can only approximate their situation by guess. Setting out from what
the author calls the port of _Orissa_, which has already been
conjectured to be Balasore, the author coasted to the river Ganges, at
the distance of 54 miles. This necessarily implies the western branch of
the Ganges, or _Hoogly_ river, on which the English Indian capital,
_Calcutta_, now stands. _Satagan_ is said to have been 100 miles up the
river, which would carry us up almost to the city of _Sautipoor_, which
may possibly have been _Satagan_. The two first syllables of the name
are almost exactly the same, and the final syllable in Sauti_poor_ is a
Persian word signifying town, which may have been _gan_ in some other
dialect. The entire distance from _Balasore_, or the port of Orissa, to
_Piqueno_ is stated at 170 miles, of which 154 have been already
accounted for, so that Piqueno must have been only about 16 miles above
Satagan, and upon the Ganges[163]." - ED.
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