150 H. HOSTEN ON 



Bengala, Bisnagar [Vijayanagar], Vizapur [Bijapur], and other Kings of lesser impor- 

 tance throughout IndustaS. He was very intelligent and desirous to know about all 

 the sects, whether of the Heathen or of the Moors, many of whom follow Muhammad 

 [regularly: Mafamede], others Ali, Muhammad's son in-law. This King Hacabar, 

 going to parts of Bengala, found there a priest of the country and started arguing with 

 him and examining into many things of our holy law and faith. 1 The priest answered 

 to everything, as far as he knew, and finished by telling the King that, if His Majesty 

 wished to have a deeper knowledge of, and be better grounded in, the things of the 

 faith of the Firinguis {i.e., of the Portuguese), there were in Goa some Fathers, called 

 Fathers of St. Paul, 2 and that he should call some to his Kingdom. Learned as they 

 were, they would solve all his doubts and explain to him the mysteries of the faith of 

 the Portuguese. So said, so done. The King despatched at once and in all haste a 

 messenger with a formao [farman] for the Fathers of St. Paul, and this formao is kept 

 to this day in our Secretariat of Goa. 3 In it he said : ' Masters of the law, come to my 

 Kingdom with all your books, and be quite sure that I shall treat you with much 

 love, and have no fear.' The Holy Martyr Rodolfo Aquaviva and Father Antonio de 

 Monserrate had then come from Europe. Both were sent, 4 and they were the first 

 who, about a hundred years ago, entered the Kingdom of the Great Mogol. When 

 the Fathers arrived, King Hacabar was in the City of Phatepor [Fatehpur Sikri] with 

 his Court. He rejoiced much at the Fathers' arrival, ordered them to lodge in an 

 apartment of his Palace, and presently he entrusted to them one of his sons to be 

 taught Portuguese and good manners. 6 L,ittle by little, the King was informed by 

 the Fathers about the mysteries of our holy faith and law, and he assigned for the 

 Fathers' daily maintenance a certain sum of money, besides which he gave the 

 Fathers continually so many gifts in money and in kind (e pegas) that the letters of the 

 said Fathers, still preserved in this Secretariat, show the money was so ample that they 

 did not know what to do with it, for there were not yet then Christians among whom 

 to dole it out. The Superiors wrote to them from Goa to take only as much of the 

 money as was necessary for their daily wants, and to explain to the King that we 

 were poor. They did so, and the King was much edified." 



" In spite of the religious discussions that were held, the King remained as much 

 a Moor as before. Great was the Fathers' patience; they wrote repeatedly from there 

 to the Superiors that they were losing their time in inaction, and asked them for 



1 We gave a more accurate account of what happened in J.A.S.B., 1912, pp. 216-218. Akbar did not go to Bengal, 

 but called a priest from there. 



2 As the Jesuits were popularly called from the name of their College of S. Paolo da Santa Fe, Goa. 



3 The original does not appear to exist among the Marsden MSS in the British Museum. 



* There was a third one, Francisco Henriques. The beginnings of the Mission under Akbar are ably exposed in 

 J.A.S.B., 1896, pp. 38-113, and in Fr. F. Goldds's First Christian Mission to the Great Moghul. Fr. Goldie was not 

 aware of the article in J.A.S.B. Our last and best authority is Father Antonio Monserrate. Cf. Memoirs A.S.B. (1914), 

 III, No. 9, pp. 513-704. 6 Prince Murad. 



6 Mrs. F. A. Steei, in her A Prince of Dreamers, as she calls Akbar, identifies the Provincial of Goa with greed of 

 money, and Blessed Rudolf Aquaviva with greed of souls ! And she goes out of her way to insist up >n the truth of her 

 descriptions, implying that they are the result of a careful study of her subject. Cf. H. Thurston, S.J., on Once more 

 the Jesuit in fiction in The Tablet, London, January 5, 1910, pp. 88-90. 



