54 H. Beveridge —Observations on General Maclagart s paper. [No. 1, 
Indian title of Pietro Tavares, a Portuguese captain who was at Akbar’s 
Court in 1578. His mission to Akbar is mentioned by Sebastian Man" 
rique—Murray’s Discoveries in Asia, p. 11, 99—who says he went up from 
Hooghly. Bartoli, on the other hand (Missione al Gran Mogor, Piacenza, 
1819, p. 5) describes him as a military servant of Akbar. Tavares, ap¬ 
parently, deserves the credit of having been the first to introduce 
Portuguese priests to Akbar. He induced him to send for Egidio Anes 
Pereira, or Julian Pereira, the vicar of Satgaon, and then the latter 
suggested to Akbar that he should send for priests from Goa. It was 
this which led to Akbar’s sending an ambassador to Goa, and to the 
mission of Rodolfo Acquayiva and his companions. According to Bar¬ 
toli, Akbar had already been favourably impressed by the honesty of 
two priests who had come to Bengal some three years previously, and 
had rebuked their countrymen for -cheating the imperial government in 
the matter of the customs. 
The exact date of the arrival of Tavares and Pereira is not known, 
but presumably it was in 1578. Tavares is represented by Bartoli as 
remarking to Akbar that the priests would be better able to instruct 
him in religion than the Brahmans and Mullas by whom he was sur¬ 
rounded. This is an allusion to the discussions in the ‘Ibadatkhana which, 
as we learn from the Akbarnama III. 252, were re-inaugurated about 
the beginning of October 3578. The building, however, had been con¬ 
structed some three years before this—Akbarnama III, I12. 1 
General Maclagan has touched, p. 53, upon the interesting question 
of Akbar’s Christian wife. It is not certain if there was such a lady r 
but possibly she was some relation of Tavares. 
Colonel Kincaid in an article in the Asiatic Quarterly Review, Yol. 
Ill, p. 164, speaks of a Juliana who married John Philip Bourbon, and 
who was Akbar’s sister-in-law, and the Catholic Bishop of Agra told 
Dr. Wolff that there was a Juliana who acted as a Doctor in Akbar’s 
harem. Possibly, however, there has been a mistake of dates, and the 
lady Juliana meant is the lady who flourished in the time of Aurangzeb 
and Bahadur Shah 2 . 
General Maclagan has quoted a passage from Badayuni about a ques¬ 
tion put by HajI Ibrahim regarding the derivation of the word Musa. 
A Qazi’s son afterwards made a remark about this which was much 
1 Abul Fazl puts the construction of the building into the 19th year of the reign, 
and Nizamu-d-din puts it into the 20th year. It was begun in the month Zu-l-qa‘da 
which, according to the Akbarnama III. 334, is a month in which kindness should be 
shown to heretics. 
2 Colonel Kincaid’s article appeared in the Asiatic Quarterly Review for Janu 
ary 1887, p. 164. He describes John Philip Bourbon as having been born in 1535. 
