No. 59.— 1907.] 



PROCEEDINGS. 



395 



Mr. Anthonisz's theory is very romantic, but has not a shred of 

 evidence to support it. 



I now come to Mr. P. E„ Pieris's criticisms, for which I am grate- 

 ful, as they afford me the opportunity of adducing further evidence 

 in support of my " theory" — as he calls it, though I assure him I 

 entered on the investigation with an open mind. 



Mr. Pieris accepts three of my four contentions, and with regard 

 to the third says : " Few will venture to deny that the commemo- 

 rative padrdo was erected in Colombo ; In all probability 



that padrdo is the one on the rock at the foot of the Breakwater ; 

 that clearly is what was referred to by de Queiroz in 1687 as the 

 original. It is significant that the word used by him is abrir, 

 which cannot possibly refer to an erection, but to an engraving. 

 The padrdo was engraved on a rock ; that is why the Moors lit a 

 fire to destroy it, instead of pulling it down ; and that fire accounts 

 for its present damaged condition." On which I would remark 

 that I should have supposed Mr. Pieris to be aware of the fact that 

 padrdo means a pillar, and that all three of the great Portuguese 

 historians of India agree in stating that a pillar was erected. 

 (Regarding Queiroz I shall speak later.) 



My fourth contention, that the " discovery " of Ceylon by Dom 

 Lourenco de Almeida took place in September 1506, Mr. Pieris 

 rejects, accepting instead Castanheda's statement that it occurred 

 in November 1505. In support of this Mr. Pieris advances certain 

 propositions, by which he seeks to damage my " case." In the 

 first place he tries to show that D Francisco would not have been 

 guilty of a breach of the royal instructions in sending his son on a 

 voyage of discovery before the cargo ships had been dispatched for 

 Portugal, and to support this gives a garbled quotation from those 

 instructions — which is hardly honest. Mr. Pieris also thinks that 

 " The commander of this important expedition had surely a moder- 

 ate amount of discretion vested in him ? " Perhaps so ; but not in 

 regard to that part of the royal commands : the dispatch of the 

 cargo ships was the business that had to be first attended to. 

 That D. Lourenco was sent by his father at the end of October 

 1505 to avenge the massacre at Coulam is no argument in support 

 of Mr. Pieris's theory. When he speaks of the possibility of D: 

 Lourenco' s avenging fleet " continuing its journey to Ceylon and 

 the Maldives," he is throwing over even Castanheda, who distinctly 

 states that D. Lourenco returned from Coulam to Cochin. Mr. 

 Pieris seems to think that the viceroy could easily have sent out an 

 exploring expedition at any time after his arrival in India. Such, 

 however, was not the case, a large number of his men being sick, 

 owing to the voyage, change of climate and food, &c. (see the 

 letter of Goncalo Fernandes in Cartas ii. 381-85). 



The omission by the viceroy to mention in his letter of 16 De- 

 cember 1505 to the king the fact that he had sent his son to the 

 Maldives and Ceylon, Mr. Pieris attempts to explain in several ways. 

 He says (1) that D. Francisco may have mentioned it in another 

 letter. He may (if D. Lourenco had really been sent ere then) ; 



i 36-07 



