European travelogues have been for a long time used by the generations of scholars as one of the most important, even primary, source of information on medieval and early modern India. In many cases these travel records were even preferred to the texts in Persian and more so in Indian languages as more trustworthy, objective and adequate in describing pre-colonial Indian society. The veracity of European travelogues was so steadfastly believed in by the scholars that, until fairly recently, this class of sources had been excluded from critical analysis. The present paper attempts to discuss a hitherto unattended aspect of European travel in late medieval–early modern India: the problem of language communication between European visitors and their Indian hosts. It analyses this problem from the viewpoint of cultural understanding and argues for the re-assessment of the validity of European travelogues as one of the major sources for medieval India studies.
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