The Moghul Read online



  THE MOGHUL was immediately a European bestseller, optioned by Indian producers who commissioned a six-hour mini-series, then Canadian producers with the BBC.

  Based on real people (ca. 1620) – THE MOGHUL begins in a rip-roaring sea battle north of Bombay in which the vastly out-gunned adventurer, Brian Hawksworth, ship's captain and emissary of King James, blows away a flotilla of Portuguese galleons to gain access to an Indian port. He's come to open trade for “barbaric” England and squeeze out the Portuguese, who try to kill him at every turn. But once on land, he’s captive: the beauty and romance of the exquisite Moghul Empire seduce him from his material goals to a new quest – of supreme sensuality in music, visions, and sacred lovemaking.

  India, ruled by the son of great Akbar, is about to pass to one of his sons. Hawksworth must choose sides, but will he choose right? The future of England, and of India, depend on it. Assailed by intrigue and assassination, tormented by a forbidden love, enthralled by a mystic poet, Hawksworth engages war elephants, tiger hunts, the harem of the Red Fort of Agra, the Rajput warriors at Udaipur, becomes intimate champion to Shah Jahan, (builder of the Taj Mahal), and, in his supreme test, plays the sitar with a touch that elicits from the great Shah – “Finally, my English friend – you understand.”

  Reviews

  A SWEEPING ADVENTURE THAT SWEPT THE CRITICS!

  "IF YOU ENJOYED THE FAR PAVILIONS OR SHO-GUN, YOU SHOULD OBTAIN THOMAS HOOVER'S NEW NOVEL ABOUT INDIA . . . ROBUST . . . ROUS­ING ... ROLLICKING ADVENTURE . . . JUST ABOUT PERFECT'

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  "HIGH ACTION . . . SPRAWLING"

  —San Diego Union

  "THOMAS HOOVER CAPTURES THE SOUNDS AND SMELLS AND ATMOSPHERE OF THE TIME, FROM THE MYSTERIESOFTHE HAREM TOTHE BATTLES BETWEEN MASSED ELEPHANTS"

  —Milwaukee Journal

  "ROUSING"

  —Publishers Weekly

  "GOOD ENTERTAINMENT ... I WOULD NOT HESI­TATE TO RECOMMEND THE MOGHUL TO ANY­ONE WHO ENJOYS ROBUST HISTORICAL ADVEN­TURE AND ROMANCE"

  — Omaha World-Herald

  "PLENTY OF ACTION . . . FASCINATING ... A VIV­IDLY TOLD TALE"

  -- Wichita Falls Times

  Tags: Moghul, India, Shah Jahan, British India, Taj Mahal, Portuguese India, India History, Agra, Raj, Seventeenth-Century India

  BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER

  Non-fiction

  Zen Culture

  The Zen Experience

  Fiction

  The Moghul

  Caribbee

  The Samurai Strategy

  Project Daedalus

  Project Cyclops

  Life Blood

  Syndrome

  The Touchdown Gene

  All free at www.thomashoover.info

  Copyright © 1983 by Thomas Hoover

  *

  Reissued by arrangement with Doubleday & Co.

  First Zebra Books edition: October 1984.

  Print ISBN 0-385-17576-0

  AUTHOR‘S NOTE

  This tale is offered to the memory of one William Hawkins (1575-1613), a brandy-drinking, Turkish-speaking seaman and adventurer who was the first Englishman to reach the court of Jahangir, the Great Moghul of India. There he delivered gifts from the new East India Company and a letter from King James proposing direct trade, then a zealously protected monopoly of Portugal. As he gradually adopted Indian ways, Hawkins became a court favorite of the Moghul, who made him a knightly khan and eventually tried to keep him in India. After several Portuguese-instigated attempts to murder him, Hawkins attached himself for safety to a certain willful Indian woman. The end of their story eventually became a minor legend throughout the early East India Company.

  As astonishing as some of the elements in the historical landscape described here may seem today, they are all by and large fictional re-creations of actual events, practices, people—drawn from diaries of seventeenth-century Euro­pean travelers and from Indian historical materials. Aside from the names, only the clocks in this remote world have been knowingly altered. Years in historical time have become months in these pages, months have become days. Several vicious naval engagements between English frigates and Portuguese galleons, several major land battles between Indian armies, have each been compressed into one.

  But the major occurrences in this faraway saga all happened. While Shakespeare wrote of commoners and kings, while colonists hewed log cabins from the wilds of the New World, a land ruled by violent intrigue, powerful drugs, and sensual beauty lay hidden in that legendary place known as Moghul India.

  BOOK ONE

  LANDFALL