Lieut. -Colonel Briggs on the Life and TFritings ofFerishta. 357 



chronicles of the Western invaders. The Portuguese in 1498 found the 

 Hindus highly civilized, and well skilled in the arts of war, commerce, and 

 navigation. Their merchant ships traded in great numbers, even to the 

 vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope ; and their navigators used nautical 

 instruments superior to those of Europe. They describe the Indian vessels 

 as having more guns, and being as well equipped as their own. They used 

 fire-ships in action ; and in 1508 distinct mention is made of the Muhame- 

 dans using "grenadoes" and other fire-works. 



Don Alfonso Albuquerque, one of the greatest men of his age, so strongly 

 attached the natives of India to him, tliat availing himself of the animosity 

 existing between the Hindus and Mussulmans, he employed eight hundred 

 of the former on board his fleet, ten years after the first arrival of Vasco de 

 Gama on the coast. Two years afterwards he captured Goa from the Mu- 

 hamedan king of Bijapur ; and such was the good feeling subsisting be- 

 tween him and the native Indians, that he entrusted the fort to four hun- 

 dred European Portuguese ; while he placed Mali Rao, the Raja of Onore, 

 in charge of the territorial acquisitions, with a body of five thousand Hindu 

 soldiers, to protect the country from the Muhamedan king of Bijapur. 

 From that period the Portuguese identified themselves so much witli the 

 inhabitants, that no expedition took place in which the natives did not 

 bear a conspicuous part. Thirty-three years only had elapsed since their 

 first intercourse with India, when the Portuguese, in 1531, fitted out an 

 armament equal, if not superior, to any which has sailed from those shores 

 in our own days. Four hundred sail of vessels assembled in the harbour of 

 Bombay, manned by fourteen hundred European and five thousand Indian 

 sailors, and conveying three thousand six hundred European and ten thou- 

 sand native soldiers ; in all twenty thousand men. This armada was pre- 

 pared, according to orders from Europe, to take the island of Diu in Guze- 

 rat, from the Muhamedan king. All its efforts, however, were vain ; and 

 after experiencing a total defeat, the Portuguese armament returned to Goa, 

 having merely landed and burned some towns along the coast, without pos- 

 sessing itself of one inch of territory. At this time Bahader Shah, the king 

 of Guzerat, was so straightened by Ills enemies, that he sent (according to 

 the Turkish historians) an ambassador to the Grand Seignor at Constanti- 

 nople ; and shipped off all his vast wealth to Medina, on the confines of 

 Egypt. He was soon after engaged in an affray with the Portuguese of Goa, 

 in which he lost his life : while his kingdom fell a prey to intrigues and 



Vol. II. 3 A 



