No. 60. — 1908.] co i to : htstory of ceylon. 



173 



The contracts between Machine and Afonso Pereira de 

 Lacerda having been agreed to, Machine dispatched a bastard 

 son of his called Raju 1 (who was the worst enemy and gave 

 more trouble to that fortress than all others, and laid two very 

 strait sieges to it, one when Maiioel de Sousa Coutinho was 

 captain, and the other in the time of Joao Correa cle Brito, as 



Villa da Conde, and a captain xilfonso Pereira with him, who came first 

 to Colombo, and afterwards to Cotta to the emperor Darrnapala, 

 whilst the latter was preparing for a severe conflict, in which the Portu- 

 guese also took their share. After this priest had been here for some 

 time, he brought the emperor so far, that, in the presence of the cap- 

 tain-general, he with many of his grandees, and a large portion of his 

 people, was baptized." So we find that the mysterious padre ** Vilponsi 

 Aponsu Perera " resolves himself into the friar Frei Joao de Villa do 

 Conde and the captain Affonso Pereira de Lacerda ! Now, the latter, 

 as we have seen, did not arrive in Ceylon until April 1555 : so that it is 

 evident that Dharmapala's baptism could not havo occurred before that 

 date. According to the Hist. Seraf. iii. 536, Fr. Joao de Villa do Conde 

 was one of the six Franciscan friars sent out by King Joao III. in 

 1540 [sic] in reply to the request of " Bonezabago," whom, however, 

 he failed to convert, but who, nevertheless, was persuaded to send two 

 of his sons (?) to Goa, where they were baptized, and died shortly after- 

 wards (see C. Lit. Reg. iii. 245, 327). The death of Bhuvaneka Bahu 

 is mentioned, and the succession of his grandson, D. Joao Parea 

 Pandar, who deferred becoming a Christian, but gave a cousin (and so 

 on, as Couto states above on pp. 154-5). This writer then says : — 

 "Some time having passed, the same father Fr. Joao baptized not only 

 this king, but the queen his wife, who took the name of D. Catharina, 

 many of the grandees of his court, all the ladies of the palace, and so 

 large a number of the people in the city, and outside of it, that the 

 baptized were counted by thousands. Within a few months in a limit 

 of thirty leagues he erected twelve churches, where with his companions 

 by day and night, without taking an hour of rest, they cultivated and 

 watered with the holy sacraments these new plants, which afterwards 

 filled the whole circuit of the island. Besides this we baptized in Goa 

 his grand chamberlain, who received the name of D. Francisco Barreto.'* 

 Now, taking the above with the official documents quoted supra (p. 166, 

 note 3 , and the first part of this note), I think we may conclude that 

 it was in 1557 that Dharmapala was baptized and took the name of 

 Dom Joao (after the king of Portugal), his wife taking that of Catharina 

 (after the queen of Portugal). That it could not have been later than 

 the early part of 1558 is certain, since King Joao III. died on 11 June 

 1557 ; and the news would have reached Ceylon in the latter part of 

 1558. 



1 Here enters on the scene the famous " royal lion," Raja Siyha I., at 

 this time only a lad in his teens, known as Tikiri Baiidara (see Rajdv. 82). 

 There is no reason for believing him a bastard, as Couto calls him (c/. 

 infra, p. 272, note l ). 



