No. 60. — 1908.] cotJTO : history of ceylon. 



203 



ago 1 ; and then he ordered the work to be pushed on ; and on 

 receiving the message of the viceroy Dom Constantino , Manoel 

 Rodriguez Coutinho, with all the inhabitants of Punicale, 

 crossed over to that place with much satisfaction and joy 2 . 



And after the viceroy had given regulations for the new 

 fortress 3 , in which were left monks of St. Francis and of the 

 Company of Jesus, who established their houses there, and 

 have reaped much fruit for Christianity 4 , leaving everything 

 very well settled, he left for Cochim to write to the kingdom, 

 and dispatched Balthesar Guedes de Sousa as captain of the 

 fortress of Columbo, and Ceilao, where was Dom Jorge de 

 Meneses Baroche, whom he recalled, and by him he sent to the 



1 The reference is to VII. vni. xi., in which Couto relates "how 

 Bisminaique, lord of all the Fishery Coast, came with a great force 

 against the fortress of Punicalle, the captain of which was Manoel 

 Rodrigues Coutinho : and of how he defeated him, and captured that 

 fortress " (which, as Couto explains, was only a mud-wall enclosure). 

 The Portuguese were allowed to go to Tuticorin on promise of a ransom, 

 a Jesuit father being left as hostage. In VI. x. ix. we are told of a pre- 

 vious attack (in 1553) on the " fortress " by a Turk, when the same 

 nayak took advantage to make the Portuguese prisoners, releasing 

 them on ransom. Manoel Rodrigues Coutinho was captain then also. 

 There it is said : — " This town of Ponicale stands on a point of land, 

 which was cut at one part and formed an island (because it was quite 

 surrounded by water)." In the map of Ceylon and the Coromandel 

 coast in D. Lopes's Hist, dos Port, no Malabar the place is shown just 

 below Caile (Kayal), about half way between Tuticorin and Manapad. 

 Regarding its situation and history see Caldwell's History of Tinnevelly 

 (1881) 37, 42, 72. 



2 The inhabitants of Punnaikkayal were paravars, converts of Xavier 

 and his companions ; and the natives of Mannar had also been converted 

 to Romanism by the same means (see C. A. S. Jl. xi. 507). The 

 " satisfaction and joy " do not seem to have endured ; for the anony- 

 mous author of Primor e Honra says (91) : — " The viceroy D. Constan- 

 tino seeing this ordered to build the fortress of Manar, where he ordered 

 to reside the captain of the Fishery, and transferred thither the 

 Christians that they might be secure from the tyrannies, assaults, and 

 robberies of the heathens ; but on account of the land's being dry and 

 unhealthy most of them returned to the Fishery Coast and to the same 

 Ponicale, where, as Virapanayaque was a better man than his father 

 Bizaminaique, and as the fathers of the Company had there a house 

 with a superior of that coast and the succour of Manar was near, the 

 place was once more populated by married Portuguese with their wives 

 and children as before." 



3 Faria y Sousa, in connection with the events here recorded, gives 

 a plan of Mannar ; but at what date this was drawn, does not appear. 

 4 Cf. Bald. xliv. (Eng. trans.). 



