No. 60. — 1908.] couTO : history of cbylon. 



215 



of which was his son Raju Pandar, now against Columbo, 

 now against the fortress of Cot a, where was the king 

 Peria Pandar 1 . The captain of Columbo was Baltesar 

 Guedez de Sousa 2 , who had with him his brother Goncalo 

 Guedez, both very good captains, with some others that had 

 come from Goa, such as Nuno Pereira de Lacerda, Simao de 

 Mello Soarez, Gaspar Goterrez de Vasconcellos, Antonio 

 Chainho de Crasto, Andre d'Afonseca, Antonio d'Afonseca, 

 Diogo Fernandez Pirilhao, and others, whom the captain 

 Baltesar Guedez de Sousa had appointed to various posts. 



Raju after having delivered many assaults, now on Ccta, 

 now on Columbo, determined to besiege Columbo and en- 

 deavour to take it, and so he laid siege to it with more than 

 thirty thousand men around the fortress 3 , and attacked it at 

 all parts in great force , many times risking his whole power in 

 order to get the town into his hands ; but it was always defended 

 against him very well by our people, with many deaths on 

 each side, and our people many times gave themselves up for 

 lost ; and in this siege they did so many things and performed 

 such great deeds of chivalry, that I know not how to parti- 

 cularize them ; and the assaults were so many, that it is 

 impossible to make or give a detailed account of them. I shall 

 only say one thing, that of each day of this siege could be 



1 This is the first occasion on which Couto employs this title, one 

 used by Dharmapala alone, and explained in a document printed in 

 Gol. de Trat. i. 225 as meaning " emperor." It appears to represent 

 Sinh. parahanddra or Tarn, periya pandar. (See also supra, p. 155, 

 note \) 



2 See supra, VII. ix. x. (p. 21 1), where we read of his succeeding D- 

 Jorge de Menezes, in February 1561, apparently. 



3 This seems to have been in 1563. It will be noticed that Couto 

 gives no details of the occurrences of 1561 and 1562. In VII. x. ix. he 

 mentions, among those who accompanied the viceroy (the count de 

 Redondo) in his huge fleet from Go a to Cochin in December 1562, { \Dom 

 Theodosio ambassador from Ceilao," but he nowhere tells us when 

 this ambassador was sent to Goa, or with what object. This is evidently 

 the person referred to by Garcia da Orta in his forty-second Goloquio 

 as having given him information regarding the " snake- wood " in 

 Ceylon. He was named, doubtless, after the duke of Braganca, 

 the elder brother of Dom Constantino, during whose viceroy alty he 

 was probably baptized. The Raj dvaliya entirely passes over these two 

 years, and says very little regarding the next three, as we shall see 

 further on. Respecting the sieges of Columbo and Cota described by 

 Couto, the Sinhalese historian is absolutely silent. The Hist. Seraf. 

 (iii. 539) recounts briefly these sieges, which, it says, were five in 

 number. 



