ABSTRACT
From about the 16th century onwards, travel began to be recommended as a way of broadening the mind. Over the course of the period from the 13th to the 17th centuries, the writings show a steady change in both form and content. They start off with a very hazy notion of the east, where India represented the east, but where much of the east was still unknown, untraversed and different, if not outright dangerous. Older terms like India Extra Gangem or India Intra Gangem, or the three Indias, began to be replaced, and words like ‘Grand Sophy’ (the Safavid rulers) or ‘Great Mogor’ became more familiar to English readers who did not leave England. But there was also a slightly ambivalent attitude to travel and the east that began to manifest itself in this period, visible in literary works in particular. Some of these have been studied in this chapter.
