Luis de Camoes Collected Poetical Works

by Luis de Camoes

  {*} 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 assumed human nature. And the god 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 assert 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 Titus. 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 assured us they worshipped no images.{* *} Yet, on the arrival of the modern Europeans in India, innumerable were their idols; and all the superstition 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.

  {* *} ... χιλιάδες πολλὰι τῶν λεγομένων Βραχμάνων, ὅιτινες κατὰ παραδισόν τῶν προγόνων καὶ νόμων, οὐτε φονεύουσιν, ΟΥΤΕ ΞΟΑΝΑ ΣΕΒΟΝΤΑΙ. — Euseb. Prep. Evan. lib. 6, c. 10, . 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.

  “Choraraóte Thomé, o Gange, o Indo,

  Choroute toda a terra, que pizaste;

  Mas mais te choráo as almas, que vestindo

  Se hiáo dà Santa Fê, 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 lust 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 God 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 amassing 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 massacred, and their religion was prohibited. In Japan 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 Japanese, 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 noble 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 superstitions performed on the banks of the river Ganges, afford a pitiable picture of the weakness of humanity. The circumstances 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-gods, 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 géraçáo costumáo, o que usaráo

  Por manha da Raynha, que inventando

  Tal uso, deitou fóra o error nefando.”

  655 And ‘mid white whirlpools down the ocean driven. — See the same account of Sicily, Virg. Æn. 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 breasts,” 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 asserting the existence of anthropophagi or man-eaters. Porphyry (de Abstin. i. 4 § 21{*}) says that the Massagetæ 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 cæteris nationibus; cum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Scotos, gentem Britannicam, humanis vesci carnibus, et cum per sylvas porcorum greges et armentorum, pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates, et fæminarum 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 breasts 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 assured us that they never met with any man-eaters, and though Voltaire has ridiculed the opinion, yet one may venture the assertion 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 à 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. Thus the fact was certain long before a late voyage discovered the horrid practice in New Zealand. To drink human blood has been more common. The Gauls and other ancient nations practised it. When Magalhaens proposed Christianity to the King of Subo, a north-eastern Asiatic island, and when Francis de Castro discovered Santigana and other islands, a hundred leagues north of the Moluccas, the conversion of their kings was confirmed by each party drinking of the blood of the other. Our poet Spenser tells us, in his View of the State of Ireland, that he has seen the Irish drink human blood, particularly, he adds, “at the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O’Brien, I saw an old woman, who was his foster-mother, take up his head whilst he was quartering and suck up all the blood that run thereout, saying, that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most terribly.” It is worthy of regard that the custom of marking themselves with hot irons, and tattooing, is characteristic both of the Guios of Camoëns and of the present inhabitants of New Zealand. And if, as its animals indicate, the island of Otaheite was first peopled by a shipwreck, the friendship existing in a small society might easily obliterate the memory of one custom, while the less unfriendly one of tattooing was handed down, a memorial that they owed their origin to the north-eastern parts of Asia, where that custom particularly prevails.