Indian Antiquary Vol 31

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 60

56
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(FEBRUARY, 1902.
If it should happen, Sir, that they should place there some boats and should [f. 126v] shoot from them, let them go out and capture them, for any force would be able to capture them. When they saw that they came out for that purpose they would not wait,'! because their arms wonld not allow them to await the attack of the Portuguese. The swords are after the fashion of ours, some three spans in length, of plain iron, without any point. For! armour they wear quilted bajos and a helmet on their head made of tin. They shoot arrows, and that not very well. This is their manner of warfare; and these, Sir, are those who are pressed for this. For the common people do not know how to do this, they simply shat the doors, and do not trouble any further, and bury what silver they have, for they have no household articles, only an old table and a chair: everything else of silver they bury.
And this, Sir, is not the case with the common people : they have nothing in the way of sword or arrow; only when any rising takes place the people shut the gates, and everyone gets inside his house ; and whoever is most capable, him they obey. In fine, Sir, these people, by means of whom the mandaring maintain the country, are of this fashion, which description I have given in brief. Every man who is taken prisoner is condemned to death ; but when he has been four or five years in the prison there come other mandarins, and if the prisoner has silver for a bribe they write respecting him to the king, and the great mandarins free him from that penalty that rests upon him, and sentence him to banishment in perpetuity; and the song are likewise liable to this banishment. It is comparable, Sir, to the men who in Portugal are banished to the islands. To the man who is like the hangman these men give each month a pioul of rice to eat in his house with his wife. And so of other doings, if they recur, they make exiles of these men likewise. These men of this city they banish to another province, and those of other provinces they banish to this. In this province there are distributed throughout the cities, towns and villages, and employed in guarding the gates and prisons and going along the rivers, in order that they may not rise (f. 127) in the cities, thirteen to fourteen thousand men. In this city there are constantly some three thousand men gaarding the gates of the city with captains. As to which, there is not a Malabar that could not fight with forty of these men and kill them all, because they are just like women: they have no stomach; simply onteries.99 It is with these people that the mandarins maintain this country, which is a world in itself.
Wherefore as soon as the fleet should mako sail to come to this city there is not a man. darin that would await in the city the fleet in the river: the mandarins would certainly hurry out by the gates; of this there is no doubt that it wonld be so. In the middle of this river is a church of the Chinese which stands on the outskirts in the middle of the city (it is about as big as the fortress of Calequo), which has already been made into a fortress, only they are to erect the wall and construct towers for it, the which should form a strong fortress with towers or bastions ; 100 wherefore with this fortress standing there with twenty or thirty men the river would be blocked and everything cut off, because from there the artillery would be able to dominate all sides, both towards the city and towards the river upwards and downwards.1 This is the reason why artillery must be brought from India, so that it will be possible to do great things against any people whatsoever.
When the people in the city have settled down, then, in a short time, after not more than two to four days have passed, they should take paraos, and dispose themselves in foists if they
* The orig. has "fos," which I take to stand for filhos. Of The orig. has fto," which should represent feitos ; but the sense is not very clear.
# of. Fa. Ricoi's opinion of the Chinese, as quoted in Introd. to Hak. Soc. ed. of Mendoza, p. luxviii. Conto says (X. X. iv.): "... tho groter part of the heathens of India fight as much with their tongues me with their banda." (See also quotations in Hobson-Jobson, 1. w. 'Cucuya, Cucuyada.')
This must, I think, refer to the rook on which, in later times, wag erected the Hai Chu (Sea Pearl) Fort or Datoh Folly. It is referred to above by Christovão Vieyra (f. 122v). Soe also Gaspar da Crus in Purches, Pilg. III. p. 195. 10 See sketch of fort in Nieubof. .
1 Canton oity was bombarded by the British from Dutoh Folly Fort in 1856-87