South Asian views of Europeans and Europe, 15001800 / 69 Taking stock of the Franks: South Asian views of Europeans and Europe, 15001800 Sanjay Subrahmanyam University of California at Los Angeles This article reflects on a diverse set of materials that constitute a part of South Asian xenology in the early modern period. Partly derived from South India, and partly from the northern Indian core of the Mughal empire, these materials deal with the problem of the Franks, namely the Europeanswhether seen in the context of Asia or of Europe. Initially the Europeans appear as strange, wondrous and also largely untrustworthy interlocutors in the Indian Ocean. Then, with the passage of time, an image of Europe itself emerges, which is finally sealed in the later eighteenth century with the first travel accounts by Indians to Europe. However, these images are part and parcel of a more general xenological and geographical understanding of the areas that neighbour South Asia, and should hence be analysed as such. Truly, the Franguis would be a great people (gran gente) but for their having three very bad aspects: first, they are Cafares [kfirs]that is, an infidel people, secondly, they eat pork, and thirdly, they do not wash those parts from which replete Nature expels the superfluous from the belly of the body. Attributed to Shahjahan (r. 162857). 1 The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 42, 1 (2005) SAGE New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London DOI: 10.1177/001946460504200103 Acknowledgements: This article was initially presented at a conference in Pennsylvania State University in March 2004. I am grateful for comments, aid and suggestions to Muzaffar Alam, KumKum Chatterjee, Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Kesavan Veluthat. 1 Silveira, (ed.), Itinerário de Manrique, Vol. II, pp. 26768.