No. 60. — 1908.] couTO : history of ceylon. 155 



certain to be a great argument for him to induce his vassals to 

 go over to him, which would be the cause of that kingdom's 

 being lost 1 ; but that he would give him a prince who was his 

 first cousin to take to Goa, and that there he might make him a 

 Christian : and at once he committed him to the viceroy, who 

 ordered him to be given quarters in his galleon, and in Goa he 

 made him a Christian with great solemnity ; and when he left 

 for the kingdom 2 he took him with him, and the king com- 

 manded him to be, committed to the fathers of the Company to 

 be indoctrinated, giving him six hundred thousand reis for the 

 expenses of his household. 



This prince (who was called Dom Joao) frequented the 

 court for many years, and the king bestowed honours upon 

 him, and when he talked with him gave him a chair, as he did 

 to the counts. Afterwards he sent him to India with the same 

 allowance of six hundred thousand reis 3 ; and in the city of Goa 

 he married a Portuguese wife, the daughter of an honoured 

 knight, who is still living; and the prince of Ceilao (for thus 

 he was always intitled) died, and lies interred in Sao Francisco 

 at Goa. We have given an account briefly of this prince, in 

 order not to do it afterwards in bits 4 . 



1 And yet, in his curious appeal to the pope, the king of Portugal, 

 and the viceroy of India, written at Columbo on 10 December 1594 

 (see Arch. Port.-Or. iii. 735-40), Dom Joao Pereapandar claims to have 

 been a Christian for forty-five years ! The Rdjdvaliya (80), after the 

 paragraph that I have quoted above (p. 150, note x ), proceeds: — "He 

 [Dharmapala] was "made a proselyte to the religion of Christ and 

 admitted to baptism, and had the baptismal name of Don Juvan Propan- 

 dara conferred upon him. At his baptism many leading men of Kotte 

 also received baptism." (In the glossary prefixed to the English trans- 

 lation of the Rdjdvaliya the learned translator explains Propandara 

 by " proponent " — which means a divinity candidate in the Dutch 

 Reformed Church !) On the other hand, Ribeiro (liv. i. cap. v.) implies 

 that Dharmapala was not baptized until 1594. The fact is, that the 

 actual year when he was baptized is not mentioned in any of the authori- 

 ties that I have consulted. (See further infra, p. 172, note 4 .) 



2 In 1555. 



3 From a royal letter of 6 February 1589, printed in Arch. Port.-Or. 

 iii. (187), it would seem that this prince received an annual sum of 2,500 

 parddos from the rents of opium and soap : this, at 300 reis to the 

 parddo, equals 750,000 reis — rather more than Couto mentions. 



4 As the Rdjdvaliya is silent regarding this prince, I cannot identify 

 him ; nor do I know when he died, but, judging from the document 

 referred to in the previous note, his death occurred probably in 1587. 

 Sae Menezes, in his Rebelion de Ceylan cap. ii., refers to this prince (see 

 C. A. S. Jl. xi. 462-3, where, however, the translation is very faulty). 



