VISUAL IMAGERY OF SIR THOMAS ROE IS IN CONFLICTFALSE ATTRIBUTION BY ENTHUSIASTS VERSUS REALITY

So much desire to prove Sir Thomas Roe that internet bombarded with imaginary and assumed images of Thomas Roe. Of course the real Thomas Roe can be seen in official portraiture but nothing to do with the reality. The only old one is an attributed imaginary miniature of Thomas Roe and it is deliberately faded and with so much wrong in it. Thomas Roe raises his left hand to salute Emperor Jahangeer. In right he holds something like a book. Maybe a bible. Or the image has been made from a khaka (sketch) in reverse. Actually it looks like a flipped tracing. The noble is kissing left hand of Jahangeer, but when flipped it becomes the proper right hand. His level of importance can be judged by no respect being afforded to him even by the courtiers. But look at his face and dress. He does not have an upper covering on his so called trousers.  But his face shows hair growing after a possible TEEND (head with no hair) and shaved beard. Drooping mustaches against upright ones in official picture. No beard at all, no hair on head, just a few days stubble. Fresh from a prison may be, or a sick bed. Look at the eye brows, certainly it is not Roe in any way. But it is a possible 18th or 19th century work and fading may have been done to hide the age or some wrong imagery under the erased part. The European could be an addition on a destroyed work. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

It is not Sir Thomas Roe but perhaps a missionary priest assumed to be the diplomat. Edward Terry writes about the meetings of the diplomat with Emperor Jahangeer in his travelogue, in a very elusive way, as:

“The Mogul looked to be presented with some things or other, when my Lord Ambassador came to him, and if he saw him empty handed, HE WAS NOT WELCOME; and therefore the East-India company were wont very year to send many particular things, unto him, in the name of the King of England, that were given to him at several times, especially then when the Ambassador had any request unto him, which made a very fair way unto it.”

And the most funny statement (they hardly knew anything) from Edward Terry is:

He is called the Great Mogul, as the chief of the circumcised , or Chief of the Circumcision.

Great knowledge they had, when they thought Mogul meant one who is circumcised.

The lack of details in the journal says many things unsaid. Making baywaqoof of us in all ways. Chittay angrez day agay seer newan (in front of white Englishman, the head bows down). Tell us documentation, not varied stories. Whereas Edward Terry tell us the various things presented to Emperor Jahangeer, internet story tells he rejected most but a portrait by John Hoskins of Thomas Roe’s wife which saved the day. From where does all this comes from. Proof or probabilities.

The so called journal of Sir Thomas Roe found and printed around 1899 AD. Where was it all those years? Re-written in 1926 and then even further casting in 2016. Hiding the truth is the main aim of this sporadic doings of a journal which is about 1615 to 1618 AD. The truth is an illusion. In fact it is said:

“The reader should be grateful for the omission of parts of Roe’s MS, often so provokingly obscure in meaning and so full of repetition”.

Even the white man is not happy with the contents of the MS. Can we believe same? Particularly when they are not ready to believe pages after pages of historical research by our own historians. Truth does not come on its own. It is sought!