108 ~=E. D. Maclagan— Jesuit Missions to the Emperor Akbar. [No. 1, 
of the common people! appears to have been held throughout as a 
matter of somewhat secondary importance, and the extent of suecess 
attending the Jesuit efforts in this direction can be pretty fairly judged 
from the extracts given from their letters in this paper. The acme of 
success was reached in the succeeding reign, when the churches of Agra 
and Lahor increased in popularity and two new churches were started 
at Delhi. With Shahjahan, however, a new era arose, the imperial 
support was entirely withdrawn, the Lahor and Agra churches were 
either destroyed or greatly impaired,* and by the time of Aurangzeb 
there was but little left of the Christianity introduced by the Jesuits 
in Northern India. In 1739 the Churches at Delhi were destroyed by 
the soldiery of Nadir Shah in the great massacre of that year. 
In estimating, however, the success or otherwise of these Jesuit 
Missions, it must not be forgotten that they had to some extent a 
political as well as a religious object in view. It will have been 
already observed that even the saintly Rodolfi Aquaviva supplied the 
authorities at Goa with political information and pushed the interests 
of the Portuguese at the Mughal Court.* It is clear too, from the 
various extracts quoted iu this paper, that the Fathers were at all times 
supporters of Portuguese claims, and it is even possible (see Noer, I. 
489) that the third mission was undertaken mainly on political grounds 
and that the Jesuit superiors had from the beginning little belief in the 
conversion of the Kmperor. 
At any rate the fact that the Portuguese authorities looked on the 
Jesuits at the Mughal Court in the light of useful political informants 
is abundantly evident from the following passages which occur in letters 
addressed by the King of Portugal to the Viceroy at Goa® :— 
In a letter dated Lisbon the 28th January 1596, the king referring to a 
letter from from the late Viceroy Martin d’ Albuquerque, writes: ‘He 
also tells me [in his letter] that Akbar had written him some letters, and 
1 The most useful work done by the Jesuits was probably their spiritual attend- 
ance on Europeans and Hurasians in the Mughal Empire: but this was, of course, 
apart from their purely missionary duties. 
2 See notes on pp. 71 and 93, above. 
3 Letters Hdifiantes et Curieuses IV. 260. The history of Christianity in Nor- 
thern India during the two centuries following Akbar’s death has yet to be written; 
it is full of curious vicissitudes and there are many episodes such as that of Dara 
Shikoh and that of Juliana, which would give interest to such a history. 
4% See p. 58, above. 
5 See Mr. Rehatsek in Cale. Rev. January 1886. The letters are given in 
Sénor da Cunha Ravara’s ‘ Archivo Portuguez Oriental,’ Fasc. 8: but as the third 
fasciculus of this book is not in the British Museum the above quotations are made 
from Mr. Rehatsek’s article. 
