The India, which Vasco da Gama reached, was in a very different condition to the India of the Great Moghuls, which came into relations with the first Dutch and English adventurers. It contained no emperor, exercising almost universal sway, but many independent kingdoms. “An Afghán of the Lodí dynasty was then on the throne of Delhi, and another Afghán king was ruling over Bengal. Ahmadábád formed the seat of a Muhammadan dynasty in Gujarát. The five independent Muhammadan kingdoms of Ahmadnagar, Bijápur, Ellichpur, Golconda, and Bídar had partitioned out the Deccan. But the Hindu Rājā of Vijayanagar still ruled as paramount in the south, and was, perhaps, the most powerful monarch to be found at that time in India, not excepting the Lodí dynasty at Delhi.”[14] The ruler of the city at which Vasco da Gama first arrived was a Hindu Rājā, who bore the title of Zamorin, a word derived, according to some writers, from the tradition that the first limits of the settlement were decided by the distance the crowing of a cock could be heard from the summit of the Tali Temple. But though himself a Hindu, the most important subjects of the Zamorin were the fanatical Moplas, the descendants of some Arab and Mohammedan settlers on the Malabar coast. These men had greatly extended the dominions of the Zamorins of Calicut and were the wealthiest inhabitants of the seaboard, for they held the trade of the Malabar coast with Aden, and therefore with the Red Sea, Egypt, and Europe in their hands. It is not to be wondered at therefore, that, though the Hindu Zamorin received the Portuguese navigator with courtesy, the Moplas showed the bitterest opposition to him, and discouraged the idea of a direct trade with Europe, which would bring about their own ruin. This opposition prevented Vasco da Gama from carrying out his intention of leaving some settlers to form a trade establishment at Calicut, and after cruising about along the Malabar coast he commenced his voyage back to Europe.