The Lusiad Part 51

[633] _Afric behold._--This just and strongly picturesque description of Africa is finely contrasted with the character of Europe. It contains also a masterly compliment to the expedition of GAMA, which is all along represented as the harbinger and diffuser of the blessings of civilization.

[634] _Gonsalo's zeal shall glow._--Gonsalo de Sylveyra, a Portuguese Jesuit, in 1555, sailed from Lisbon on a mission to Monomotapa. His labours were at first successful; but ere he effected any regular establishment he was murdered by the barbarians.--CASTERA.

[635] _Great Naya, too._--Don Pedro de Naya.... In 1505 he erected a fort in the kingdom of Sofala, which is subject to Monomotapa. Six thousand Moors and Caffres laid siege to this garrison, which he defended with only thirty-five men. After having several times suffered by unexpected sallies, the barbarians fled, exclaiming to their king that he had led them to fight against G.o.d.--CASTERA.

[636] _In Abyssinia Heav'n's own altars blaze._--Christianity was planted here in the first century, but mixed with many Jewish rites unused by other Christians of the East. This appears to give some countenance to the pretensions of their emperors, who claim their descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and at least reminds us of Acts viii. 27, where we are told, that the treasurer of the Queen of Ethiopia came to worship at Jerusalem. Numerous monasteries, we are told, are in this country. But the clergy are very ignorant, and the laity gross barbarians. Much has been said of the hill Amara--

"Where Abyssin kings their issue guard ...

... by some suppos'd, True Paradise, under the Ethiop line By Nilus head, inclos'd with shining rock, A whole day's journey high"--MILTON;

and where, according to Urreta (a Spanish Jesuit), is the library founded by the Queen of Sheba, and enriched with all those writings of which we have either possession or only the names. The works of Noah, and the lectures on the mathematics which Abraham read in the plains of Mamre, are here. And so many are the volumes, that 200 monks are employed as librarians. It is needless to add, that Father Urreta is a second Sir John Mandevylle.

[637] _Thy son, brave Gama._--When Don Stephen de Gama was governor of India, the Christian Emperor and Empress-mother of Ethiopia solicited the a.s.sistance of the Portuguese against the usurpations of the pagan King of Zeyla. Don Stephen sent his brother, Don Christoval with 500 men. The prodigies of their valour astonished the Ethiopians. But after having twice defeated the tyrant, and reduced his great army to the last extremity, Don Christoval, urged too far by the impetuosity of his youthful valour, was taken prisoner. He was brought before the usurper, and put to death in the most cruel manner. Waxed threads were twisted with his beard and afterwards set on fire. He was then dipped in boiling wax, and at last beheaded by the hand of the tyrant. The Portuguese esteem him a martyr, and say that his torments and death were inflicted because he would not renounce the faith.--See Faria y Sousa.

[638] Infidel, pagan.

[639] _Before the virgin-martyr's tomb._--He must be a dull reader indeed who cannot perceive and relish the amazing variety which prevails in our poet. In the historical narrative of wars, where it is most necessary, yet from the sameness of the subject, most difficult, to attain, our author always attains it with the most graceful ease. In the description of countries he not only follows the manner of Homer and Virgil, not only distinguishes each region by its most striking characteristic, but also diversifies his geography with other incidents introduced by the mention of the place. St. Catherine, virgin and martyr, according to Romish histories, was buried on Mount Sinai, and a chapel was erected over her grave. It is now the Monastery of St.

Catherine.--_Ed._

[640] The crescent, the sign of Turkish supremacy.--_Ed._

[641] _De Branco's sword._--Don Pedro de Castel-Branco. He obtained a great victory, near Ormuz, over the combined fleets of the Moors, Turks, and Persians.

[642] _There Barem's isle._--The island of Bahrein is situated in the Persian Gulf. It is celebrated for the plenty, variety, and fineness of its diamonds.

[643] _Her warrior sons disdain the arms of fire._--This was the character of the Persians when GAMA arrived in the East. Yet, though they thought it dishonourable to use the musket, they esteemed it no disgrace to rush from a thicket on an unarmed foe. This reminds one of the spirit of the old romance. Orlando having taken the first invented cannon from the King of Friza, throws it into the sea with the most heroic execrations. Yet the heroes of chivalry think it no disgrace to take every advantage afforded by invulnerable hides and enchanted armour.

[644]

_There Gerum's isle the h.o.a.ry ruin wears Where Time has trod.--_

Presuming on the ruins which are found on this island, the natives pretend that the Armuzia of Pliny and Strabo was here situated. But this is a mistake, for that city stood on the continent. The Moors, however, have built a city in this isle, which they call by the ancient name.

[645] _He who first shall crown thy labours, Gama._--Pedro de Cabral, of whom see the preface.

[646] Ceylon.

[647] _Some Macon's orgies._--Macon, a name of Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed.

[648] _The tomb where Thomas sleeps._--There is (to talk in the Indian style) _a caste_ of gentlemen, whose hearts are all impartiality and candour to every religion, except one, the most moral which ever the world heard of. A tale of a Brahmin, or a priest of Jupiter, would to them appear worthy of poetry. But to introduce an apostle---- Common sense, however, will prevail; and the episode of St. Thomas will appear to the true critic equal in dignity and propriety.

To renew and complete the labours of the apostle, the messenger of Heaven, is the great design of the hero of the poem, and of the future missions, in consequence of the discoveries which are the subject of it.

The Christians of St. Thomas, found in Malabar on the arrival of GAMA, we have already mentioned. The Jesuit missionaries have given most pompous accounts of the Christian antiquities of India and China. When the Portuguese arrived in India, the head of the Malabar Christians, named Jacob, styled himself Metropolitan of India and China. And a Syriac breviary{*} of the Indian Christians offers praise to G.o.d for sending St. Thomas to India and China. In 1625, in digging for a foundation near Sigansu, metropolis of the province of Xensi, was found a stone with a cross on it, full of Chinese, and some Syriac characters, containing the names of bishops, and an account of the Christian religion, "that it was brought from Judea; that having been weakened, it was renewed under the reign of the great Tam" (cir. A.D. 630). But the Christians, say the Jesuits, siding with the Tartars, cir. A.D. 1200, were extirpated by the Chinese. In 1543, Fernand Pinto, observing some ruins near Peking, was told by the people, that 200 years before, a holy man who worshipped Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived there; and being murdered, was thrown into a river, but his body would not sink; and soon after the city was destroyed by an earthquake. The same Jesuit found people at Caminam who knew the doctrines of Christianity, which they said were preached to their fathers, by John, the disciple of Thomas. In 1635, some heathens, by night pa.s.sing through a village in the province of Fokien, saw some stones which emitted light, under which were found the figure of crosses. From China, St. Thomas returned to Meliapore in Malabar, at a time when a prodigious beam of timber floated on the sea near the coast. The king endeavoured to bring it ash.o.r.e, but all the force of men and elephants was in vain. St. Thomas desired leave to build a church with it, and immediately dragged it to sh.o.r.e with a single thread. A church was built, and the king baptized. This enraged the Brahmins, the chief of whom killed his own son, and accused Thomas of the murder. But the saint, by restoring the youth to life, discovered the wickedness of his enemies. He was afterwards killed by a lance while kneeling at the altar; after, according to tradition, he had built 3300 stately churches, many of which were rebuilt, cir. 800, by an Armenian named Thomas Cananeus. In 1533, the body of the apostle, with the head of the lance beside him, was found in his church by D. Duarte de Meneses; and in 1558 was, by D. Constantine de Braganza, removed to Goa.

To these accounts, selected from Faria y Sousa, let two from Osorius be added. When Martin Alonzo de Souza was viceroy, some brazen tables were brought to him, inscribed with unusual characters, which were explained by a learned Jew, and imported that St. Thomas had built a church at Meliapore. And by an account sent to Cardinal Henrico, by the Bishop of Cochin, in 1562, when the Portuguese repaired the ancient chapel of St.

Thomas,{**} there was found a stone cross with several characters on it, which the best antiquarians could not interpret, till at last a Brahmin translated it, "That in the reign of Sagam, Thomas was sent by the Son of G.o.d, whose disciple he was, to teach the law of heaven in India; that he built a church, and was killed by a Brahmin at the altar."

{*} The existence of this breviary is a certain fact. These Christians had the Scripture also in the Syriac language.

{**} This was a very ancient building, in the very first style of Christian churches. The Portuguese have now disfigured it with their repairs and new buildings.

A view of Portuguese Asia, which must include the labours of the Jesuits, forms a necessary part in the comment on the Lusiad: this note, therefore, and some obvious reflections upon it, are in place. It is as easy to bury an inscription and find it again, as it is to invent a silly tale; but, though suspicion of fraud on the one hand, and silly absurdity on the other, lead us to despise the authority of the Jesuits, yet one fact remains indisputable. Christianity had been much better known in the East, several centuries before, than it was at the arrival of GAMA. Where the name was unknown, and where the Jesuits were unconcerned, crosses were found. The long existence of the Christians of St. Thomas in the midst of a vast pagan empire, proves that the learned of that kingdom must have some knowledge of their doctrines. And these facts give countenance to some material conjectures concerning the religion of the Brahmins.

[649] _When now the chief who wore the triple thread._--Of this, thus Osorius: "_Terna fila ab humero dextero in latus finistrum gerunt, ut designent trinam in natura divina rationem._--They (the Brahmins) wear three threads, which reach from the right shoulder to the left side, as significant of the trinal distinction in the Divine Nature." That some sects of the Brahmins wear a symbolical tessera of three threads is acknowledged on all hands; but, from whatever the custom arose, it is not to be supposed that the Brahmins, who have thousands of ridiculous contradictory legends, should agree in their accounts or explanations of it. They have various accounts of a Divine Person having a.s.sumed human nature. And the G.o.d Brahma, as observed by Cudworth, is generally mentioned as united in the government of the universe with two others, sometimes of different names. They have also images with three heads rising out of one body, which they say represent the Divine Nature.{*} But are there any traces of these opinions in the accounts which the Greek and Roman writers have given us of the Brahmins? And will the wise pay any credit to the authority of those books which the public never saw, and which, by the obligation of their keepers, they are never to see; and some of which, by the confession of their keepers, since the appearance of Mohammed, have been rejected? The Platonic idea of a trinity of divine attributes was well known to the ancients, yet perhaps the Athanasian controversy offers a fairer field to the conjecturist.

That controversy for several ages engrossed the conversation of the East. All the subtilty of the Greeks was called forth, and no speculative contest was ever more universally or warmly disputed; so warmly, that it is a certain fact that Mohammed, by inserting into his Koran some declarations in favour of the Arians, gained innumerable proselytes to his new religion. Abyssinia, Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Armenia were perplexed with this unhappy dispute, and from the earliest times these countries have had a commercial intercourse with India. The number, blasphemy, and absurdity of the Jewish legends of the Talmud and Targums, bear a striking resemblance to the holy legends of the Brahmins. The Jews also a.s.sert the great antiquity of their Talmudical legends. Adam, Enoch, and Noah are named among their authors; but we know their date; Jerusalem, ere their birth, was destroyed by t.i.tus. We also know, that the accounts which the Greek writers give of the Brahmins fall infinitely short of those extravagances which are confessed even by their modern admirers. And Mohammedanism does not differ from Christianity, more than the account which even these gentlemen give, does from that of Porphyry. That laborious philosopher, though possessed of all the knowledge of his age, though he mentions their metempsychosis and penances, has not a word of any of their idols, or the legends of Brahma or his brothers. On the contrary, he represents their worship as extremely pure and simple. Strabo's account of them is similar. And Eusebius has a.s.sured us they worshipped no images.{**} Yet, on the arrival of the modern Europeans in India, innumerable were their idols; and all the superst.i.tion of ancient Egypt, in the adoration of animals and vegetables, seemed more than revived by the Brahmins. Who that considers this striking alteration in their features, can withhold his contempt when he is told of the religious care with which these philosophers have these four thousand years preserved their sacred rites.

{*} To these undoubted facts the author will not add the authority of a Xavier, who tells us, that he prevailed upon a Brahmin to explain to him some part of their hidden religion; when to his surprise, the Indian, in a low voice, repeated the Ten Commandments.

{**} ... ?????de? p????? t?? ?e?????? ??a?????, ??t??e? ?at? pa?ad?s??

t?? p??????? ?a? ????, ??te f??e???s??, ???? ????? S???????.--EUSEB.

Prep. Evan. lib. 6, c. 10, p. 275. Ed. Paris, 1628.

[650] _Thee, Thomas, thee, the plaintive Ganges mourn'd._--The versification of the original is here exceedingly fine. Even those who are unacquainted with the Portuguese may perceive it.

"Choraraote Thome, o Gange, o Indo, Choroute toda a terra, que pizaste; Mas mais te chorao as almas, que vestindo Se hiao da Santa Fe, que lhe ensinaste; Mas os anjos do ceo cantando, & rindo, Te recebem na gloria que ganhaste."

[651] _Like him, ye Lusians, simplest Truth pursue._--It is now time to sum up what has been said of the labours of the Jesuits. Diametrically opposite to this advice was their conduct in every Asiatic country where they pretended to propagate the gospel. Sometimes we find an individual sincere and pious, but the great principle which always actuated them as a united body was the l.u.s.t of power and secular emolument, the possession of which they thought could not be better secured than by rendering themselves of the utmost importance to the see of Rome. In consequence of these principles, wherever they came their first care was to find what were the great objects of the fear and adoration of the people. If the sun was esteemed the giver of life, Jesus Christ was the Son of that luminary, and they were his younger brethren, sent to instruct the ignorant. If the barbarians were in dread of evil spirits, Jesus Christ came on purpose to banish them from the world, had driven them from Europe,{*} and the Jesuits were sent to the East to complete his unfinished mission. If the Indian converts still retained a veneration for the powder of burned cow-dung, the Jesuits made the sign of the cross over it, and the Indian besmeared himself with it as usual.

Heaven, or universal matter, they told the Chinese, was the G.o.d of the Christians, and the sacrifices of Confucius were solemnized in the churches of the Jesuits. This worship of Confucius, Voltaire, with his wonted accuracy, denies. But he ought to have known that this, with the worship of _tien_, or heaven, had been long complained of at the court of Rome (see Dupin), and that after the strictest scrutiny the charge was fully proved, and Clement XI., in 1703, sent Cardinal Tournon to the small remains of the Jesuits in the East with a papal decree to reform these abuses. But the cardinal, soon after his arrival, was poisoned in Siam by the holy fathers. Xavier, and the other Jesuits who succeeded him, by the dexterous use of the great maxims of their master Loyola, _Omnibus omnia, et omnia munda mundis_, gained innumerable proselytes.

They contradicted none of the favourite opinions of their converts, they only baptized, and gave them crucifixes to worship, and all was well.

But their zeal in uniting to the see of Rome the Christians found in the East descended to the minutest particulars. And the native Christians of Malabar were so violently persecuted as heretics that the heathen princes took arms in their defence in 1570 (see Geddes, Hist. Malabar), and the Portuguese were almost driven from India. Abyssinia, by the same arts, was steeped in blood, and two or three Abyssinian emperors lost their lives in endeavouring to establish the pope's supremacy. An order at last was given from the throne to hang every missionary, without trial, wherever apprehended, the emperor himself complaining that he could not enjoy a day in quiet for the intrigues of the Romish friars.

In China, also, they soon rendered themselves insufferable. Their skill in mathematics and the arts introduced them to great favour at court, but all their cunning could not conceal their villainy. Their unwillingness to ordain the natives raised suspicions against a profession thus monopolized by strangers; their earnest zeal in ama.s.sing riches, and their interference with, and deep designs on, secular power (the fatal rock on which they have so often been shipwrecked), appeared, and their churches were levelled with the ground. About 90,000 of the new converts, together with their teachers, were ma.s.sacred, and their religion was prohibited. In j.a.pan the rage of government even exceeded that of China, and in allusion to their chief object of adoration, the cross, several of the Jesuit fathers were crucified by the j.a.panese, and the revival of the Christian name was interdicted by the severest laws.

Thus, in a great measure, ended in the East the labours of the society of Ignatius Loyola, a society which might have diffused the greatest blessings to mankind, could honesty have been added to their great learning and abilities. Had that indefatigable zeal which laboured to promote the interests of their own brotherhood and the Roman see been employed in the real interests of humanity and civilization, the great design of diffusing the law of Heaven, challenged by its author as the purpose of the Lusiad, would have been amply completed, and the remotest hordes of Tartary and Africa ere now had been happily civilized. But though the Jesuits have failed, they have afforded a n.o.ble lesson to mankind.

"Though fortified with all the brazen mounds That art can rear, and watch'd by eagle eyes, Still will some rotten part betray the structure That is not bas'd on simple honesty."

{*} This trick, it is said, has been played in America within these twenty years, where the notion of evil spirits gives the poor Indians their greatest misery. The French Jesuits told the Six Nations, that Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and had driven all evil demons from France; that he had a great love for the Indians, whom he intended also to deliver, but taking England in his way, he was crucified by the wicked Londoners.

[652] _The dying._--The innumerable superst.i.tions performed on the banks of the river Ganges, afford a pitiable picture of the weakness of humanity. The circ.u.mstances here mentioned are literally true. It is no uncommon scene for the English ships to be surrounded with the corpses which come floating down this hallowed stream.

[653]

_Pegu, whose sons (so held old faith) confess'd A dog their sire.--_

The tradition of this country boasted this infamous and impossible original. While other nations pretend to be descended of demi-G.o.ds, the Peguans were contented to trace their pedigree from a Chinese woman and a dog; the only living creatures which survived a shipwreck on their coast.--See Faria.

[654] _A pious queen their horrid rage restrain'd._--Thus in the original:

"Aqui soante arame no instrumento Da geracao costumao, o que usarao Por manha da Raynha, que inventando Tal uso, deitou fora o error nefando."

[655] _And 'mid white whirlpools down the ocean driven._--See the same account of Sicily, Virg. aen. iii.

[656] _Ophir its Tyrian name._--Sumatra has been by some esteemed the Ophir of the Holy Scriptures; but the superior fineness of the gold of Sofala, and its situation, favour the claim of that Ethiopian isle.--See Bochart. Geog. Sacr.

[657] _And thousands more._--The extensive countries between India and China, where Ptolemy places his man-eaters, and where Mandevylle found "men without heads, who saw and spoke through holes in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s,"

continues still very imperfectly known. The Jesuits have told many extravagant lies of the wealth of these provinces. By the most authentic accounts they seem to have been peopled by colonies from China. The religion and manufactures of the Siamese, in particular, confess the resemblance. In some districts, however, they have greatly degenerated from the civilization of the mother country.

[658] _And gnaw the reeking limbs._--Much has been said on this subject, some denying and others a.s.serting the existence of anthropophagi or man-eaters. Porphyry (de Abstin. i. 4 -- 21{*}) says that the Ma.s.sagetae and Derbices (people of north-eastern Asia), esteeming those most miserable who died of sickness, when their parents and relations grew old, killed and ate them, holding it more honourable thus to consume them than that they should be destroyed by vermin. St. Jerome has adopted this word for word, and has added to it an authority of his own: "Quid loquar," says he, (Adv. Jov. l. 2, c. 6), "de caeteris nationibus; c.u.m ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Scotos, gentem Britannicam, humanis vesci carnibus, et c.u.m per sylvas porcorum greges et armentorum, pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates, et faeminarum papillas solere abscindere, et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari?" Mandevylle ought next to be cited. "Aftirwarde men gon be many yles be see unto a yle that men clepen Milhe: there is a full cursed peple: thei delyten in ne thing more than to fighten and to fie men, and to drynken gladlyest mannes blood, which they clepen Dieu."--P. 235. Yet, whatever absurdity may appear on the face of these tales; and what can be more absurd than to suppose that a few wild Scots or Irish (for the name was then proper to Ireland), should so lord it in Gaul, as to eat the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the women and the hips of the shepherds? Yet, whatever absurdities our Mandevylles may have obtruded on the public, the evidence of the fact is not thereby wholly destroyed. Though Dampier and other visitors of barbarous nations have a.s.sured us that they never met with any man-eaters, and though Voltaire has ridiculed the opinion, yet one may venture the a.s.sertion of their existence, without partaking of a credulity similar to that of those foreigners, who believed that the men of Kent were born with tails like sheep (see Lambert's Peramb.), the punishment inflicted upon them for the murder of Thomas a Becket. Many are the credible accounts, that different barbarous nations used to eat their prisoners of war. According to the authentic testimony of the best Portuguese writers, the natives of Brazil, on their high festivals, brought forth their captives, and after many barbarous ceremonies, at last roasted and greedily devoured their mangled limbs. During his torture the unhappy victim prided himself in his manly courage, upbraiding their want of skill in the art of tormenting, and telling his murderers that his belly had been the grave of many of their relations.