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as they could in that time realize; they now chiefly subsist by 
trade, and many are in flourishing circumstances. The poor Kan- 
kanies who remained in the Portuguese dominions were all con- 
verted to Christianity ; if the religion professed and practised by 
the Malabar converts can deserve that appellation. 
In the second geographical division of the Malabar coast, I 
mentioned Goa among the cities in Visiapoor: this part of India, 
including the Concan and Deccan (which latter word means the 
south country, relatively to the northern provinces of Ilindostan), 
has been from time immemorial inhabited by the nations of Canara 
and Malabar; people from Merhat and Telinga, mingled among 
them in the northern districts: until the middle of the sixteenth 
century, it formed a considerable part of the vast empire of Beze- 
negur, just mentioned. At that period, five of the Mahomedan 
princes who had usurped the dominion of their respective govern- 
ments, north of the Kistnah, ambitious of new conquests, and of 
making converts to the mussulman religion, confederated in a war 
against Ram Raje, the Hindoo monarch of Bezenegur, who was 
killed in battle, A. D. 1565. In consequence of his death, and a 
disputed succession, many of the naiks, or governors of provinces, 
became independent; and formed the modern Hindoo govern- 
ments of Mysore, Trinchinopoly, Madura, Tanjore, and some 
others: at the same time the zamorine of Calicut, the king of 
Travancore, and different Malabar princes, shook oft' all depend- 
ence upon the Hindoo empire; whose seat of government was 
removed from Bezenegur to Penekonda. 
About this period, the Mahomedan prince of Bejapour, or Vi- 
siapoor, under his general Mustapha Khan, assisted by Sahoo 
