One of the provisions of the law passed by king D. Sebastifo on December 4, 1567 was to the effect that in his dominions there should not exist any M… - Anant Priolkar

In a report submitted by Irmao Gomes Vaz to the king on December 12, 1567, he gives extracts from some letters sent by the Captain of Rachol in which the latter gives particulars of his campaign of destruction of temples. In this we find a reference to ‘‘Malsa devi.’”’ In one of the extracts it is stated that on the preceding day the captain of Rachol broke the principal image of the temple of “‘ Alardol ’’ (Mardol ?) into pieces.*4 It is also stated that on March 15, 1567 the temples of Doro, Mando, Narana, Baguaonte and Hesporo (Ishwar) of Sancuale were burnt down and the images found therein destroyed. There is also a reference to the destruction of the temples of Cuncolim, Chinchinim and Ambelim. It is also stated that the images found in the destroyed temples were thrown into the rivers in the vicinity or melted to make candlesticks and other objects for use in the local churches.

In the present chapter it is proposed to review in brief various measures taken by the Portuguese rulers in India with the object of converting the natives to Christianity. The measures tall into two broad categories. Firstly, there were those the object of which was to make it difficult for the natives to continue to retain their old religion. The temples and shrines of the Hindus were destroyed and they were forbidden to erect or maintain new ones even outside the Portuguese territories; practice of Hindu rites and ceremonies such as the marriage ceremony, the ceremony of wearing the sacred thread, ceremony performed at the birth of a child, was banned ; priests and teachers of the Hindus were banished ; Hindus whose presence was considered as undesirable from the point of view of propagation of Christianity were sent into exile ; those who remained were deprived of their means of subsistence and ancestral rights in village communities; they were also subjected to various humiliations, indignities and disabilities ; ‘‘ orphan” children of the Hindus were snatched away from their families for being baptised ; and men and women were compelled to listen to the preaching of Christian doctrine. In the second category can be classed the measures intended to provide positive incentives for conversion to Christianity, such as, those which sought to give the Christians a monopoly of public posts, altered the laws of inheritance in favour of persons who changed their religion, discriminated in favour of Christian converts in the matter of the rights and privileges in the village community. As would be expected, the Inquisition played a prominent role both in bringing pressure on the secular authorities to pass discriminatory legislation and in enforcing the measures with characteristic sternness and severity.

One can visualise two main difficulties in the way of a historian of the Holy Office in Goa. First, the Inquisition continued to inspire terror in the hearts of contemporaries for a long time even after its power was on the wane and they would naturally prefer not to speak of it or to disclose what they knew of its dark deeds to the curious historian. Second, records of the Inquisition and other authentic documentary material were not available. It may be expected also that the authorities of the Church and the State in Portugal would prefer to hush up the excesses com- mitted by this tribunal and they would frown at any attempt to bring to the light of the day this dark chapter in the history of that country. I hence believe that in the present conditions few Goan savants would dare to undertake the task and it would be only a historian of Portuguese birth, like A. Herculano, Oliveira Martins or Cunha Rivara, who may some day do full justice to it.