Afanasy Nikitin (fl. 1466-1472)

by Caroline Stone

Afanasy [Athanasius] Nikitin is the first Russian traveller to have left an account of India. His travels lasted from 1466 to 1472 and his description is important for the details he gives of commerce and everyday life in the west and centre of the subcontinent on the eve of Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India via the Cape of Good Hope. He was from Tver (now Kalinin), a wealthy and important trading city on the Volga, whose merchants were frequently to be found in the markets of Europe and Central Asia.

In 1456, an ambassador from the Khanate of Shirvan arrived at the court of Ivan III, Grand Duke of Muscovy, bringing valuable gifts. Ivan decided to send a return embassy, and several local merchants took the opportunity to accompany it down the Volga. One of them was Afanasy Nikitin. His account begins:

"Through the prayers of the Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, Thy sinful servant Afanasy, son of Nikita. I have described my sinful voyage beyond the three seas, the first being the Sea of Derbent, or Sea of Khwalis (the Caspian), the second the Indian Sea, or Sea of Hindustan, and the third the Black Sea, or Sea of Stambul."

Trouble began almost immediately. Near Astrakhan they were robbed by Tatars, and a little further on, before Derbent, one of the boats was wrecked and those aboard, all Russians, taken prisoner and enslaved. The Iranian ambassador succeeded in negotiating their release.

Nikitin went on to Baku on the Caspian shore of Azerbaijan, "where an eternal fire is burning" – a reference to natural flares of petroleum – and thence across Iran to Hormuz.. Unfortunately, his description consists of little more than a list of places. Of Hormuz, he tells us: "People from all over the world arrive there, and all kinds of goods are sold in its market. The toll however is very high – one-tenth of everything." Having been told that horses were highly prized in India, Nikitin bought a good stallion and set out by boat.

The largest section of Nikitin’s account deals with India, where he spent some three years. He is, naturally, largely concerned with the trade goods available, but his description of them is mixed with fascinating glimpses of Indian life at all social levels. He also records the wars that were then taking place, and expresses amazement at the numbers of soldiers and the wealth he saw there, although he probably exaggerates the former. "The land is very populous; the countrymen are very poor, but the boyars are rich and live in luxury." Here Nikitin uses the Russian word denoting the second rank of the aristocracy to describe the noble class of Moghul India.

Nikitin also adds routes and distances as well as useful information for other important trade centres, such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Pegu (in Burma) and Cathay (China), although it seems clear that he did not actually go to these places.

An interesting aspect of Nikitin’s account is the personal element. The author describes movingly the pain of being deprived of the comfort of his faith, his spiritual struggles, and the pressures brought on him to convert to Islam. In the end he concludes: "As for the true faith, God alone knows it, and the true faith is to believe in one God, and to invoke His name in purity in every pure place." Several times in the course of his narrative Nikitin gives short passages in a mixture of Turkish and Persian, perhaps intended to lend authenticity to his account.

Being cut off from the communal practise of his religion seems to have troubled Nikitin more than any other aspect of his long absence from home (1466-1472). A true Russian patriot, he writes, "May God protect the Russian land! There is no land in the world like it, although the boyars in the Russian land are unjust. May the Russian land be well-ordered, and may there be justice there."