Friday, June 26, 2015

List of Important Envoys/ Foreign Travellers in Ancient India

Now I am going to list brief detail about various Foreign Travellers/ Envoys, who had travelled across India in various time. These Envoys are as follows :-

1.      Megasthenes :- He came to India as the ambassador of Selecus in the court of Chandra Gupta Maurya. He wrote “Indika”.

2.      Deimachos :- The Greek ambassador who came in the court of Bindusara.


3.      Fa-hian :- A Chinese pilgrim visited India (A.D. 401- 410) during the reign of Chandra Gupta – II of Gupta dynasty.

4.      Husan Tsang :- A Chinese pilgrim visited India (A.D. 929- 643) during Harsha rule.

5.      Wang- Hiuen- Tse :- A Chinese envoy who visited India in A.D. 657.

6.      I- Tsing :- A Chinese scholar who came to study in India at Nalanda in the second half of the 7th century.

7.      Sulaiman :- An Arab merchant who visited India in the middle of the 9th century.

8.      Al Masudi :- A native of Baghdad who visited India in the first half of 10th century.

9.      Al- Beruni :- A noted scientist and scholar from central Asia who lived in India for about ten years during the early part of the 11th century.

10.  Marco Polo :- A venetian traveller, who visited south India, particularly the Pandya Kingdom, on his way to China (A.D. 1288- 93).

11.  Ibn Batutah :- A resident of Tangier in North Africa (Moroccan) who visited India and lived at the court of Muhammad- bin- Tuglaq for eight years.

12.  Nicolus Conti :- An Italian traveller, who visited Vijayanagara empire in 1420 during the reign of Deva Raya I.

13.  Abdur Razzaq :- The Persian traveller, who had travelled widely in and outside India, visited the Vijayanagara empire  in the reign of Deva Raya II.

14.  Nikitin :- A Russian Traveller, who visited the Bahmani Kingdom (A.D. 1470- 74) during the reign of Firoz Shah.

15.  Nuniz :- A Portuguese writer of the 16th century, who visited Vijayanagara empire during the reign of Achuta Raya.

16.  Paes :- An Italian traveller, who spent a number of years at Krishna Deva Ray’s court.
17.  Barbosa :- A Portuguese traveller, who visited Vijayanagara during the reign of Krishna Deva Raya.

18.  Vasco- de- Gama :- A Portuguese sailor succeeded in reaching the port of Calicut rounding the cape of Gode hope in A.D. 1498.

19.  Caesar Frederic :- A venetian  traveller, who visited Vijayanagara in the second half of 16th century.


20.  Manucci :- An Italian traveller, who witnessed the reign of five Mughal emperor from Shahjahan to Farrukhsiyar.

1 comment:

  1. check out this books

    " The India they saw" by Meenakshi Jain ( 4 volumes)

    ReplyDelete