India is both a familiar and unfamiliar place for Europe and China, and the destination that Europeans want to find when they go on great voyages is India, and they even call the Caribbean islands they first discovered the West Indies, and the natives of the islands Indians.

It was the discovery of the West Indies that led European navigators to launch voyages to the west again and again, and finally discovered the American continent and the Pacific Ocean and the true route to the East.

Therefore, Europeans have known the name India for a long time, but it was only after the discovery of the American continent that they really found a new route to India. Almost as soon as they arrived in India, they discovered that the silk and spices they had thought were from India were actually from China and the South Seas.

Despite the richness of the Indian continent, the thirst for silk and spices led European navigators to use India as a transit port before arriving at their destinations, and their sailing destinations changed from India to the Spice Islands and China.

It is for this reason that Europeans, even though they have been on the west coast of the Indian continent for more than 100 years, have a good understanding of the Indian continent. For example, the Portuguese, who occupied Goa in 1510, have not been able to grasp the number of dialects and beliefs in their area until today.

The methods used by Portuguese missionaries to preach to the inhabitants of Goa in 1638 were almost the same as those used by Portuguese missionaries in 1515, still using threats of violence and verbal intimidation.

Of course, the only thing these missionaries have improved compared to a hundred years ago is that they at least don't chase poor Goans down the streets, forcibly stuff meat into their mouths, destroy their caste first, and force them to convert to Catholicism.

These missionaries now kidnap pagan children and force their parents to come to church to convert, so that they seem much more civilized.

This cultural arrogance prevented Zhu from obtaining more information about the Indian continent from the Portuguese in Goa. It was with the British in Surat that Zhu Yujian was able to obtain some of the latest information about the Mughal Dynasty, which helped him unravel the fog covering the Indian continent.

Although there is only an endless stream of tall mountains between China and India, most of the Ming people's understanding of India at this time comes from the "Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty" written by Master Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty.

In other words, what the Ming people understood was the India of the past, not the India of today. When Zhu Yujian landed in Surat, accompanied by local officials, and headed inland along the Narmada River toward mainland India, today's India is very different from the India that Master Xuanzang wrote.

India, which was once the birthplace of Buddhism, did not see many monks and Buddhist temples along the way, but mosques and temples of various exotic gods were everywhere.

Buddhism, which was introduced to China from the Han Dynasty, has been almost integrated into the daily life of the Chinese after thousands of years of transformation. In the Ming Dynasty, Buddhism flourished for a while, and the slogan of equality of all living beings was also easily accepted by the small people in the market.

Although Zhu Yujian did not believe in Buddhism much, under the influence of his father, he did not lack understanding of the teachings of Buddhism, and he also highly recognized the concept of equality of all beings put forward by Buddhism.

But in the land where the Buddha was born, he was stunned to find that the local natives not only did not support the Buddhists who were equal to all beings, but also clinged to the caste system.

There is almost no interaction between the people of all classes, and they live in isolation within their own class. The lowest pariahs are not as good as a livestock, but they still endure this life in obedience, and they have never seen their words or actions in defiance.

As the vassal king of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yujian naturally knew that some clans considered themselves different from ordinary people, and even many clans often abused slaves and eunuchs who served them. But at least these people knew that they were sinning, and they also recognized these slaves and eunuchs as human beings.

But in the eyes of the Indian officials around him, he saw no sympathy for the plight of the untouchables, and he never treated them as human beings, as if they were born to be treated as such.

One day, when their team met with a pair of untouchable mothers and children on the road, although the road was wide enough for both parties to walk together without contact, the mother and son quickly rolled into the mud on one side and crawled in the mud to greet their team.

The Indians in the team are accustomed to this, but Zhu Yujian is a little unbearable about it. Reed, an employee of the British East India Company who accompanied Zhu Yujian to Delhi in the carriage, saw the unbearable expression on Zhu Yujian's face, and couldn't help but sigh and say to him.

"This is India, and under the gorgeous silk robes, fleas and bed bugs are actually everywhere. I have always believed that the civilized world should be responsible for this continent and not allow it to become a paradise of barbarism and ignorance. ”

Regarding Reed's extremely obvious provocative remarks, Zhu Yujian was not fooled. Compared to the Portuguese and Dutch, the British were a new apprentice in the East.

Shortly after the British arrived in India, in 1622 they joined forces with the Persian ruler Shah Abbas to seize Olmuz, the choke point of the Persian Gulf, from the Portuguese, and drove the Portuguese out of the trading centers of the Persian Gulf.

Now they have just established a few merchant houses on the Indian mainland, and they have begun to try to use the power of the Ming Dynasty to enter the interior of India in search of wealth and opportunity.

Zhu Yujian was silent for a while, then opened the topic and said, "What kind of monarch is the current Mughal emperor?" ”

Reed pondered for a moment, then said to Zhu Yujian: "The current Shah Jahan Emperor is the fifth monarch of the Mughals, and this emperor is more interested in architecture and jewelry than anything else..."

The conversation with the Englishman, the communication with the Indian officials accompanying him, and what he saw and heard along the way, finally made Zhu Yujian have a concept of the current situation of the Indian continent in his mind.

For India, the Mughal dynasty was a pagan foreign power from the north. The descendants of Timur, the followers of the *, Babur led the Afghans south to occupy Delhi and establish power in Agra.

Babur's conquest of India did not rely entirely on force, but political co-optation and freedom of religious belief brought the kings of northern India to his feet one after another.

Babur generously returned these conquered lands to his defeated rivals, and quickly gained a large number of loyal local powers.

Although this method of rule quickly created an empire, it also led to local rebellions, and it was not until the third Mughal emperor Akbar that the empire's rule was truly stabilized.

But the war between the princes over the throne never stopped. For example, the fourth emperor was impatient to wait for the succession to the throne and raised an army against his father Akbar when he was a prince, and the current emperor Shah Jahan also raised an army against his father before he inherited the throne.

Although the chaotic political situation within the Mughal Empire made Zhu Yujian's research dizzy, he also had to admit that the current Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was not an easy person.

The emperor didn't look very good before he ascended the throne, but after he ascended the throne, he immediately stabilized the overall situation in the country. He repelled the aggressive Portuguese in Bengal, annexed the Rajput dynasty in the west, wiped out two more powerful princely states on the Deccan plateau, crossed the Khyber Pass with Mughal armies in the northwest, and forced Ali Mardan Khan, the governor of Kandahar in Persia, to surrender to himself.

Under his rule, the Mughal Empire had become a large military camp, with military nobility and armies almost quadrupling in size compared to before his accession. Such a policy of reckless militarism, although it allowed the Mughal Empire to expand its territory, seemed to be a shining era.

But Zhu Yujian had already noticed that the villages he encountered along the way were constantly decaying, and the war and construction were constantly draining the country's vitality. Of course, the expansion of the Mughal Empire was not without its benefits, and as the territory expanded and the wars continued, some central cities were gradually prospering due to the development of commerce and handicrafts.

In fact, the Indian continent is not as vast as the territory of the Ming Dynasty, but the journey from Surat to Delhi made Zhu Yujian feel that this is really a vast country. Perhaps the Indians built very wide and flat roads on the Gangetic plain from west to east, but most of the journey from south to north was in a state of primeval jungle.

However, compared with the road taken by the Englishman Thomas Rowe in 1615, the Mughal Dynasty, which had occupied almost the entire Deccan Plateau, finally built a main road from the west coast to Agra, which made Zhu Yujian and his party travel by half compared with Thomas Rowe, and it only took more than a month to reach the city of Delhi.

The mosquito nets, mosquito repellent water, and various medicines that Zhu Yujian carried with him prevented him and his entourage from suffering from endemic diseases. The four-wheeled carriage and rubber tires he brought with him also greatly accelerated the progress of the mission.

Local officials along the way were extremely curious about the items that the Chinese royal family was carrying, and kept reaching out to him for them, so that Zhu Yujian had to refuse the Indian officials' requests for the final leg of the journey.

Since the time of mythology, Delhi has been the center of India. In the early Mughal period, it was not chosen as the capital, but it remained the most important city of the Mughal Empire. Surrounded by seven gates, the grandeur of Delhi is not much weaker than that of Beijing.

At the heart of Delhi is a castle under construction - Delhi Red Fort. Modeled after the Red Fort in Agra, the Red Fort of Delhi is not as large as the original one, but it is a castle-like palace of the utmost luxury as you can tell from the materials carefully selected by the architects.

Of course, the current Mughal emperors can only live in the Salingar Fort, built in 1546, in the northeast corner of the Red Fort, on the banks of the beautiful Yamuna River.

The reason why Shah Jahan left the comfortable and luxurious Red Fort of Agra and relocated the center of the empire to Delhi was that the city of Agra was too small to accommodate nobles and merchants from all over the country who wanted to see the emperor; The second is that the death of his concubine Ajman Banu due to difficult childbirth made Shah Jahan reluctant to live in the sad place of Agra Red Fort anymore.

When Zhu Yujian stood in front of Delhi City, he undoubtedly felt a great shock. He did realize that there were also powerful and rich countries outside of the Ming Dynasty, and not all of them were barbarian lands.