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



213 



devout Catholic, and God-fearing, and obedient to the prelates, 

 he did not care to go forward with that business, or to do 

 anything without a general council. Wherefore he assembled 

 the archbishop, prelates, and divines of the religious orders, 

 captains and old fidalgos, and revenue officers, and before 

 them all explained the case, and the large sum of money that 

 they had promised him for that tooth ; and represented the 

 great need in which the state was , which could all be remedied 

 with that ransom. And the matter having been debated 

 amongst all those divines, who had already well studied it, 

 they resolved that that tooth could not be given up, because 

 it would give occasion to great idolatries, and insults to God 

 our Lord ; and that that was a sin that could not be com- 

 mitted, even at the risk of the state and the whole world. 

 The principal divines that were present were the archbishop, 

 the inquisitors 1 , the father Frei Antonio Pegado, vicar- 

 general of St. Dominick, Frei Manoel da Serra of the same 

 order, prior of Goa, the father deputy provincial of St. Francis 

 and another divine of the same convent, the father Antonio 

 de Coadros 2 of the Company of Jesus, provincial of India, the 

 father Francisco Rodriguez 3 the Cripplekin 4 , of the same 

 Company, and others. 



This having been agreed to, and a contract having been 

 drawn up, which all signed (a copy of which is in our possession 

 in the Torre do Tombo 5 ), the viceroy ordered the treasurer to 

 bring the tooth, and delivered it to the archbishop, who 

 there in the presence of all threw it into a mortar, and with his 

 own hand pounded it and reduced it to fragments, and cast 

 them into a brasier, which he ordered to be brought for that 

 purpose, and commanded the ashes and cinders to be thrown 

 into the midst of the river in the sight of all, who witnessed it 

 from the verandas and windows that looked on to the sea. For 

 this there was much murmuring against the viceroy, some 

 saying, that for the heathen to idolatrize there were not 

 lacking to them other idols, and that of any piece of bone they 

 could make another tooth in memory of that one, which they 

 would hold in the same reverence ; and that such a large amount 

 of gold as they would have given him would have been very good 

 for the expenses of the state, which was greatly in need ; and 



1 In VII. ix. v. Couto gives their names as Aleixo Dias Falcao and 

 Francisco Marques Botelho. 



2 Regarding him see Miss, dos Jes. 132. 



3 See Miss, dos Jes. 135. 



4 Manquinho. 



At Goa. This document no longer exists (see Gerson da Cunha's 

 Mist, of the Tooth Relic 44, note f ). 



