Image of a Kerala man; collector, or physician (?)

Indian knowledge providers - physicians, collectors who identified the medicinal plants, and artists who accurately recorded them - were individuals from all levels of Indian society. van Rheede states that some of them were scholars "constantly occupied with genteel wisdom, star-gazing and natural sciences," and others "experts in plants to whose care it was entrusted to collect for us finally from everywhere the plants with the leaves, flowers and fruits for which they even climbed the highest tops of trees."

This rare image of an unidentified Kerala man from the 17th century could be any one of the individuals responsible for the knowledge recorded in the volumes. As the Portuguese factor Tome Peres, in Suma Orientalis (1506), attests, in 17th century Indian society, individuals were respected for the knowledge they possessed irrespective of their social status: "They always make a deep reverence to the masters who teach them, so much so that if the best of the Nayars (warriors) were to meet a Mukkuvan (fishermen) who happened to have taught him something, he would make him a reverence ……" (Tomé Pires, Suma Oriental, 1506, Translated from Portuguese by Armando Cortesão, Hakluyt Society, London, 1944.)