could not understand one another as I spoke Castilian and they spoke Malabar. So I picked out the most intelligent and well read of them and then sought out with the greatest diligence men who knew both languages. We held meetings for several days. By our joint efforts and with infinite difficulty we translated the Catechism to the Malabar tongue. This I learnt by heart……..”.⁴ This missionary had a novel method of attracting a crowd to whom he could preach. He would ring a bell, and people hearing it would congregate around him merely out of curiosity and then they would be gladly served with the Sermons of Christ. This is of interest in our context since we see that right from the outset earnest efforts have been taken by foreign missionaries to master the local tongue through which to spread the Gospel.

The cruelty of the Portuguese became almost intolerable. Albuquerque’s ruthless treatment reached the climax when he did not hesitate poison the Zamorin of Calicut. After Albuquerque’s death, the Government of Portugal under King John III, a bigoted fanatic, engaged itself in an insane attempt to force the Indian Natives to adopt Christianity. The religious policy of the Portuguese together with the corrupt state of their local government, and the degraded stat of the men as a result of the mixed marriges hastened the decay of the Portuguese empire in India. In the “Foreword” of K. M. Panikkar’s book, R.C. Temple remarks, “…………. among the mistakes” (the Poruguese made) “perhaps the most serious” ..…… is “that conversion to the Portuguese form of Christianity of all the Indian population was a feasible proposition…..”.⁵ Portugal lacked the resources to supply and control a distant empire. Thus Portuguese settlements fell an easy prey to their Dutch and English rivals.

By 1599 the Dutch had well established their Eastern trade. The monopoly of trade with India which portugal had enjoyed for a century almost ended with this. Their trade also slowly

4. Coleridge, H. J. Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier; 1812; Vol. I, P. 58

5. Panikkar, K. M. op. cit. P. viii.