72 E. D. Maclagan— Jesuit Missions to the Emperor Akbar. [No.1, 
1888, but it may be convenient to give here a somewhat fuller descrip- 
tion of the purport of the letter. ! 
It begins with an account of the valley of Kashmir which Xavier. 
and Benedict de Goes had visited with the Emperor in the previous 
summer. It mentions the temperate climate, the wild ducks, the 
fertility of the land, the number of streams and the vines growing 
on the mulberry trees. One of the antiquities, which it is rather diffi- 
cult to identify, is thus described: ‘Not far from the city is seen an 
old Palace of exquisite workmanship, built in black stone, the columns 
and porticos of which are composed of blocks exceeding the ordinary 
measurement. It is commonly said that when the city followed heathen 
rites (for the inhabitants embraced Muhammadanism three hundred 
years ago) it used to reach to this place.’ 
Then follows an account of a great famine in the valley.2 The 
mothers would put out their children on the streets to die and the 
priests would then collect and baptize them. Sometimes the mothers 
would themselves call in the priests to baptize their children at the 
point of death, and when the priests were about to leave the valley, a 
woman besought them to take charge of her child. The journey back 
across the mountains was slow and full of difficulty, but at last on 
November L3th [1597] they reached Lahor, exactly six. months after 
they had left it. The Governor and people who had previously 
threatened to stone them now received them with a certain amount of 
cheerfulness. The Emperor and the Prince reached Lahor a few days 
later: the latter having been mercifully preserved from the attack of a 
lioness whom, during the journey, he had wounded in the chase. 
The Father then returns to a more particular account of the pro- 
gress of his mission :— 
‘ At Christmas [1597] our brother Bendict de Goes prepared a manger 
and cradle as exquisite as those of Goa itself, which heathens and 
Muhammadans, as well as Christians, thronged to see. In the evening 
masses were said with great ceremony, and a pastoral dialogue on the 
subject of the Nativity was enacted by some youths in the Persian tongue, 
with some Hindistani proverbs interspersed (adjunctis aliquot Industant 
sententiis).2 This gave such satisfaction that one Muhammadan in the 
I See Oranus ‘ Japoniea, Sinensia, Mogorana’ and the Maintz work referred to on 
p- 44 above. Copies of the letter are also to be found in Hay and De Dieu. 
2 The Empire generally had suffered from the failure of the rains of 1596 
(Elliot, Hist. Ind. V1. 94). Xavier is said to have had fever for two months during 
his stay in the valley, but his own letter does not mention this. 
3 An earlier use of the word ‘ Hindustani’ than those given in Yule’s Hobson- 
Jobson, s.v. The word is probably used, as it stillis in native parlance, to describe 
the native as opposed to the Persian language: and does not connote the same 
tongue as Urdu Cf. p. 58 above, and p. 96 below. 
