156 H. HOSTEN ON 



had a vety fine church within the walls and precincts ; it was entirely vaulted and had 

 cost eleven or twelve thousand rupees the greater part of which sum had been dona- 

 ted by an Armenian, a rich Christian merchant ; [ but, King Xajan [Shah Jahan] 

 ordered to destroy the Church on the occasion which I shall relate. King Xajan was 

 very much disturbed by the insults he had received from the Portuguese of Bengala 

 and the natives of the country at Ogoly [Hugli], a sea-board district of those parts. 

 He sent against it a powerful army, destroyed its buildings and the ships in the 

 harbour ; but, all those who escaped death, whether Portuguese or natives, women 

 and children, were caught by the Moors, 2 and Fr.Morando, who was in our College 

 of Agra on that occasion, told me that they numbered upwards of four thousand 

 souls. All entered that City as prisoners to be presented to the King, and the greater 

 Pol. 43c number of them, of the men at least, came [| two by two, with iron rings round their 

 necks and chains.* The King took as his slaves many of the chief men,. and the white 

 women he ordered to be taken to his Mai/ or women's quarter ; the rest of the men 

 he distributed among various Umbraos, 6 and the greater number of these people fell 

 away, and he ordered to circumcise them, to which some consented for fear of the 

 various kinds of death they threatened them with, others out of love for their wives, 

 who were scattered about in the Mai of the King and of the Umbraos. Even so, there 

 were many who did not renounce their faith, because they were not pressed so much. 

 And there were so many of those of Bengala who, on Sundays and Feast-days, as- 

 sembled near the College gate to enter the Church and hear Mass, and they made such 

 a noise and quarrelled so much among themselves before entering, that, as Fr.Morando 

 told me, even at the door of the Misericordia or in the Rua Direita (Straight Road) of 

 Goa, they did not quarrel or shout as much as there. Seeing this, the Cassiz and the 

 Mulnas [sic], 6 the masters of the law of Muhammad, went to King Xajan, asking 



or guests, might have been a separate building. If the present house of the Archbishop of Agra embodies the old Jesuit 

 house, it is difficult to recognize any of the old features. One of the wonders of the place is the cellar. Inside of it, 

 overhead, there are indications of two old staircases with big sandstone slabs for steps : it has three staircases, therefore, 

 of which only one now reaches the outer world. I was told by the Fathers of Agra, that the house originally had two 

 stories ; that the lower story was filled in (except in some places, the cellar ?), and that a third story, now the second, 

 was eventually built. The level of the garden is lower than that of the house, but is it low enough to account for what I 

 was told ? I heard also a remark which I found rather irrelevant to our case : that Begam Suinru's house at Sardhana 

 has an underground floor, where she lived in summer, air-holes being provided in different places. The Agra cellar remained 

 a mystery to me. Perhaps, the Capuchin Fathers of Agra will be able to read a meaning into Fr. Botelho's description. 



1 Khwaja Martinus. This gift of money for the church is not alluded to in Fr. Joao de Velasco's letter. (Cf. Appendix 

 A). At any rate, Fr. Botelho does not say that John Philip de Bourbon and Lady Juliana built the Agra Church of 

 1604. Tradition says, moreover, that John Philip de Bourbon and Lady Juliana were both buried in the Agra Church. 

 Cf. Fr. Felix, 0.C , p. 204 n. 26, in Catholic Calendar for Agra. . . . 1907. The tradition must be utterly wrong, for Lady 

 Juliana died before 1598, i.e., before any church is heard of at Agra. Lady Juliana da Costa, her namesake, was buried 

 in the present Agra Church, having died in 1732. (Cf. Gentii,, Memoires sur I'Indoustan, Paris 1822, pp. 367-380). 

 This appears to be the cause of the confusion. There is no inscription over Lady Juliana da Costa's grave. 



2 Some 3,000 escaped to Saugor Island, at the mouth of the Hugl., but many of these may have been caught, like 

 the rest, subsequently. 3 In the beginning of July 1633. 



+ Not an unusual form of the word mahal : mansion, seraglio. Mahal-sard : the inner or female apartments of a 

 mansion. 



& For umard, the Arabic plural of amir. In old European accounts it is used as a singular for a lord or grandee of 

 the Moghul Court Cf. Hobson-Jobson, s.v. omrah. 



6 Qashish or qasis, a Muhammadan priest; mauld (Arab.), mulld (Hind.), a learned man, a teacher, a doctor of the 



