54 Journal of the Asiatic Sociely of Bengal. |N.S., XVII 
three parishes of Dacca, Bhowal and Husainabad was 10,150. 
In 1873, the Portuguese vicar of Husainabad calculated that 
3,000 persons belonged to his church, while the French priest of 
the adjoining parish [Bandura Golla] rated his at 1,200. 
The census of the Dacca Farangis for 1877 and 1878 has 
been kindly furnished by Mr. R. D. Lyall, C.S., who considers 
the returns of the French Mission more exact than the 
Portuguese :— 



Mission. Parishes. 1877. 1878. 
‘ Ae 103 2tz 
og Nagori a 1,221 1,265 
Portuguese ¥% ezgdon es 140 122 
(Husainabid .. 2,820 2,823 
4,284 4,432 
Bandura ) st 5,000 1,440 
French . Tumilia > ie 2,020 
Sualpur ) a [600? | 
[4060] 
The total number of Dacca Farangis may therefore be estimated 
at 8,500, but nearly 2,000 under the French fathers, being 
converted natives, have no right to be called Farangis at all. 
[p. 419] The system by which the Portuguese made converts 
was not one that could prosper. Children of both sexes, either 
kidnapped or purchased, were made Christians, while girls after 
baptism became concubines and their offspring Christians. At 
one time this trade flourished to such an extent that the slave 
dealers boasted of having converted more Hindus in a year than 
all the missionaries of India did in ten. When the Portuguese 
power in the Delta was overthrown slave-catching ceased, and a 
final blow was dealt to this novel plan of converting the natives. 
With the seventeenth century the Portuguese mission ceased to 
triumph, and during the last century and a half it has not 
held its own against Muhammadan aggression. Many reasons 
for this failure are assigned, but Monsignor Cerri refers it to the 
immorality of the priests and laity, the former leading loose 
lives, exhibiting great ignorance and extreme avarice, and 
retaining large staffs of servants given up to all manner of vice 
and lewdness. The Goa priests, to whose care the Christians of 
Bengal were confided, have for many generations been half- 
castes, born and bred at Goa. Each parish church, moreover, 
is endowed with rent-free land, or with property held and man- 
aged by the vicar. Communication with S. Thomé being irregular 
and uncertain, the internal economy and discipline of the pari- 
shes are not interfered with as long as the annual donation is sent 
to Goa. An illiterate priesthood, a rich isolated establishment, 
and a simple credulous laity, was a combination of evils sufficient 
to ruin any church. No one who has given a thought to the 
