Since the time when the human race first began tospeculate about the origin of the universe therehave been two cosmological models that have seemedparticularly attractive to its imagination. One hasbeen to derive everything in the world from a singleprimal origin, out of which the cosmos, in all itsapparent complexity, evolves. The other has been toview the history of the universe as a battle betweentwo opposing forces which contradict and undermineeach other. The two views can be called monism anddualism. They are not the only possibilities. Therehave been systems that posit three, four or anindefinite number of principles, but most of thesehave also tended to assume one basic pair ofopposites with one or more neutral or intermediateprinciples beside them; this too can be seen as aform of dualism.

The Mongol conquests produced the last in a series ofrealignments of the Turkic peoples, creating, moreor less, the configurations in which we find themtoday. The earliest of these realignments wasassociated with the rise and fall of the Hsiung-nupolity (second century BC to mid-second century AD).This was the first of the attempts at a pannomadicstate. Mao-tun, the “Great Shanyü whom heaven hasset up”, the founder of the Hsiung-nu union, boastedin a letter to the Han Court that because of hisefforts “all the people who live by drawing the boware now united into one family.”2 ČinggisQan expressed similar thoughts regarding the “peoplehaving skirts of felt” i.e. living in feltcoveredtents.3 Although it cannot bedemonstrated that all the Eurasian nomads were,indeed, incorporated into the Hsiung-nu polity,substantial numbers of the Turkic nomads undoubtedlywere. In its formative, “heroic” years of conquestand in the course of its collapse, a number ofTurkic (and other) pastoral, nomadic peoples werebrought into motion along China's northern frontiersand adjoining regions. Others were pushed westward,some making their way to what is today Kazakhstanand into the Caspian-Pontic steppelands. This markedthe first large-scale movement westward of Turkicpeoples from Inner Asia to Central Asia and thenceto the Western Eurasian steppelands. The finalstages of these migrations ultimately brought someof the nomads to Danubian Europe and the HungarianPlain.

This essay is concerned with the career of a somewhatobscure figure in the early history of Orientalism,Colonel Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier, who is howeverknown both to aficionados of theearly European manuscript collections in the West,as well as to historians of the more obscure aspectsof the Enlightenment on the Continent. The occasionfor the research on which this essay is based is, inlarge measure, a project intended to translate theextensive Persian letter-book that Polier (togetherwith his amanuensis, or munshī,Kishan Sahay) produced during his long stay inIndia; this translation, of a text entitled Ijāz-i-Arsalānī (which is preserved in theBibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris), hasrecently been brought to partial fruition byMuzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, through the auspicesof Oxford University Press (Delhi). In this context,it may be useful to reflect somewhat on the ratherextraordinary career, and fascinatingmilieu, of Colonel Polier.

In 1824 the governor of the important southern Siamesecity of Nakhon Sri Thammarat, and of the largeregion which fell under Nakhon's jurisdiction, waschao phraya Nakhon (Noi). Heruled the city from 1811–39 and was a man ofextraordinary character, a vigorous and determinedruler who was reputed to be the son of a former kingof Siam, Taksin. This attribution of royal birth wascurrent in his own lifetime, and was recorded byHenry Burney in 1826, and by Lieutenant James Low alittle later (Munro-Hay, in press). At that time theBritish, at war with Burma, Siam's westernneighbour, were concerned by developments relatingto the Rangoon expedition, and it was determined tosend an envoy from the Government of India on amission to the Siamese governor to discussoutstanding problems and possible co-operation.