to the one occupied by the host; the indignant CHAPTER IX. gentleman would collect ten or twelve of his companions, and fall upon the offender at some unguarded moment, and beat him with bamboos, or bags of sand, until he was dangerously wounded, if not brutally murdered. resulting from When mixed mar were riages. From the first foundation of Goa these danger- Demoralization ous bravos had been the pest of the city. expeditions were being undertaken, or reliefs being sent out, the services of such men were of course in great demand; but when not so employed, they were generally idling their way on the island, indulging in theft, debauchery, and outrage, to an extent which made them obnoxious to all classes, and especially to the native population. About 1512 the great Albuquerque had endeavoured to bring this turbulent class to order, and at the same time promote the spread of Christianity amongst the natives, by marrying a number of the soldiers to native female converts, and providing them with permanent posts and employments. The experiment seems to have been a failure from the commencement. A number of native girls were baptized and married off to a number of drunken soldiers; but this was done with so much precipitation, and amidst so much confusion, that many whimsical mistakes were made as regards the right partners, which under the circumstances were permitted to stand. But these girls were Christian only in name. They still retained their native ideas and usages. They could derive no intellectual or religious advantages from their husbands, whilst bringing them under the influence of their own social ideas, and rendering them as Asiatic CHAPTER IX. as themselves. Within two or three generations. the daughters of mixed parentage had become natives in everything except the name; whilst those of pure Portuguese descent, who had been born and bred at Goa, may have been of somewhat lighter complexion, but otherwise were equally native in all their thoughts and ways. They lounged away their lives in their back rooms and gardens, entirely concealed from the society of the other sex; and went about in native attire, eating their curry and rice with their hands, and doing little or nothing beyond chattering to their slaves, chewing betel leaves, rubbing themselves with sandal, smelling perfumes and sweet herbs, and consuming handfulls of cloves, pepper, and ginger, after native fashion. Meantime they were supposed to converse with none of the other sex who had passed their boyhood, excepting their own husbands; and consequently their companionship exercised no refining influence upon the social circle, or kindled any sentiments of chivalry or devotion. Degeneracy of the female population. Before the end of the sixteenth century the whole so-called Portuguese population of Goa had become hopelessly degenerated. The men treated their wives and daughters with all the jealousy of orientals, whilst both sexes were demoralized by their association with their slaves. Meantime, in spite of every precaution, and perhaps as a consequence of these precautions, the wives of the Portuguese were notorious for their amours with the poor but unscrupulous soldiers from Portugal, and would lavish upon them money and favours of every kind. Intrigues were carried on through the medium of the slaves; husbands were drugged; propriety was forgotten; and occasionally a wife was murdered CHAPTER IX. by her infuriated lord, and no cognisance whatever was taken of the crime. The fact was that the conversion of native girls from heathenism to nominal Christianity had loosened the obligations of caste and Brahmanical law, and substituted no other obligation worthy of the name. The poor orientalized Portuguese women had little to fear beyond detection; whilst they had no social or intellectual training to satisfy the aspirations of humanity and elevate and purify the affections.. of morals. Whilst the Portuguese population of Goa was Depraved state thus becoming at once orientalized and demoralized, the Catholic church of the Portuguese in India was undergoing a similar transformation. The discovery of the Indies had been received with exultation by the whole Christian world. In those days of unclouded faith, the Hindús were regarded in a very different light to the Mussulmans. They did not provoke the crusading hatred, which found expression in slaughtering wars against the perverse followers of the Prophet. On the contrary, they rather stirred up a profound pity for the millions who worshipped idols from sheer ignorance of a Redeemer, and who only required the teachings of the holy church to become at once converted and baptized. Nor was this idea altogether a mistaken one. Francis Xavier, a type of the zealous missionaries of the sixteenth century, had converted thousands of the heathen in Malabar, as well as in Malacca, and other remote regions of the east; and established churches of purely native growth far away from the corrupting influence of the depraved Portuguese. Indeed the Christian priests of those CHAPTER IX. days were men who proved their earnestness and sincerity by the sacrifice of all that is dear to humanity; who had been imbued with the highest intellectual culture of the age; and who preached with a vehemence of soul, which could not fail to carry conviction to the minds of their auditors. There is consequently every reason to believe that thousands were converted that could not be converted now, excepting by the employment of a similar Conversions effected by the Roman Catholic mis sionaries. agency. The sixteenth century was indeed the golden era of Catholic Christianity in the cast. The Society of Jesus had imparted a new spiritual life to the Church of Rome at the most critical period of her history. They enforced a strictness of discipline, a perfect subordination, and a uniformity of religious teaching, which imparted a peculiar force to their missionary operations, and for a long time promised a still greater success than was even attained. Moreover the form of teaching was admirably adapted to the religious culture of the Hindús. The Jesuit missionaries commenced their operations by simply teaching the creed and the ten commandments, and thus made religion and morality the basis of their sermons.36 Through the creed they appealed directly to the affections, the love of Deity for suffering humanity; whilst through the ten commandments they appealed still more directly to that moral sense, which is rarely wanting in the most barbarous communities, and which twenty centuries before had imbued the teachings of Gótama 36 Marshall's Christian Missions, vol. i., chap. 3, part i. Catholic Missions in India, London, 1863. Jesuits. Buddha with vitality and power. Meantime the CHAPTER IX. personal influence of the Jesuits was equal to that Labours of the of the Brahman sages of old; and not only was their moral life without a stain, but they excited the utmost respect and veneration by their daily austerities and self-denial. Bad priests there were, as there always will be; but such offenders were placed under the ban of excommunication, and were either lingering away their lives in the cells of the Inquisition, or joining the piratical outlaws who had thrown off all the obligations of religion and morality, and were leading lives of unbridled violence and wickedness in the more secluded quarters of the Eastern seas. heathenism. But whilst numbers of the heathen may have Relapses into embraced Christianity and received the rite of baptism, the relapses were apparently numerous, and must have often been disheartening. One petty Raja on the Malabar coast had embraced Christianity, and been baptized. He had then proceeded to Goa of his own free will, and been confirmed with the utmost pomp and ceremonial in the magnificent Cathedral. Yet very shortly afterwards he not only abandoned his new principles, but actually joined a military confederacy, which the Zamorin of Calicut was attempting to form against the Portuguese. The difficulties experienced in contending against this backsliding tendency cannot be over-estimated. The enthusiasm under which native converts embrace a new faith soon dies away under the perpetual influence of relatives and friends. It was only after Christian communities had been maintained for one or more generations, that the new faith became a heritage; and in this manner many Christian vil |