MIRZA ZU-L-QARNAIN, A CHRISTIAN GRANDEE. 173 



lady, was in medical charge of Akbar's harem and married [John] Philip of the 

 house of Navarre. 1 Col. Kincaid reporting the Bourbon tradition (Asiatic Quarterly 

 Review , January, 1887, p. 165) says she was sister to Akbar's Christian wife. 



For the first time now we have an authoritative, contemporaneous statement 

 from Father Corsi, who was in Mogor from 1600, about a Bibi Juliana in Akbar's time. 

 The information given to Dr. Wolff in 1832 reflected a correct tradition in this point 

 at least. Why, however, should the Bishop of Agra have called her Juliana <f of 

 Goa," unless he supposed her to have been of Portuguese extraction, which, we have 

 seen, she was not. The note in the Agra Mission Archives about Juliana, an Armenian 

 lady, is "more correct. Was there not, after all, lurking in the Bishop's mind a con- 

 fusion between the Juliana of Akbar's time and Dona Juliana Dias da Costa of Shah 

 Alam's reign? The more so, because the Jesuits do not hint that BIbi Juliana was 

 a doctoress, while there is evidence that the later Lady Juliana was. (H. BevEridGE, 

 East and West, Bombay, 1903, June, reprint, p. 7). 



If iikbar had a Christian wife, Bibi Juliana and her sister ought to bring 

 us very close to her and tear the veil of her concealment. Certainly, some curious 

 things were going on in the women's quarters and other parts of the palace. 



In 1595-96, Father Jerome Xavier, Father Manoel Pinheiro and Brother Benedict 

 Goes were living near Akbar's Palace, within the Lahore Fort. Their house was along 

 the river, and, when the King went to his pleasure-boat, he passed sometimes that side 

 with his daughters, one of them a marriageable girl, and, what is more, he would, call 

 the Fathers and hold converse with them, while in his daughters' company, a breach 

 of Moslem etiquette. ' f In this matter, the King and the Prince [Salirn, later Jahangir] 

 have great confidence in us, and, when we go to see the Prince, we go with his permis- 

 sion along the River, 1 under the window of his wives, and sometimes, when we come 

 back, the daughter of the King [Akbar] calls out to us from above, c Eh, Padri 3 Padri ! 

 By the sign of the Holy Cross God deliver us ! ' And it seems that she learned this from 

 a small girl, the daughter of Domingo Piz [Pirez], an Armenian, who brought us from 

 Goa, and who [the girl] is with the Queen the greater part of the year." 3 



Who was this Domingo Pires, an Armenian again ? In 1579 he acted as inter- 

 preter to f Abdu-llah, the ambassador whom Akbar sent to invite the Jesuits of Goa 

 to Fatehpur Slkri. We hear next of his getting into some trouble with Akbar in 

 1582; but, on September 24th, 1582, the Emperor assisted at his marriage with an 

 Indian woman, the Emperor translating to the woman Blessed Rudolf Aquaviva's 

 Persian sermon, and sitting down afterwards with his children and two of his princi- 

 pal chiefs at a banquet a la Portugaise in the Fathers' house.* In 1595, he accom- 

 panied from Goa to Lahore the Fathers of the third Mission. 6 In 1596, we find him 

 at Lahore with his daughter. As the Fathers of the third Mission were still igno- 

 rant of Persia% he acted as their interpreter before the King. 6 



1 To be quoted more fully further. Cf. p. 179. 



2 The river flowed then close to the walls of the Fort. 



3 Cf. Letter of Pr. Jerome Xavier, SJ. (Lahore, 8 September, 1596), fol. 248^. MS. letter in my possession. 

 J J.A.S.B., 1896, pp. 48, 56, 57. 5 Ibid., p. 64. 



8 This last detail which I take from the MS. Jesuit letters I cannot now lay hands on for the exact reference. 



