INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
The conquests and long occupation of the Portuguese, who by the year 1540 had established themselves in all the chief ports of India and the East, have, as might have been expected, bequeathed a large number of expressions to the European nations who have followed, and in great part superseded them. We find instances of missionaries and others at an early date who had acquired a knowledge of Indian languages, but these were exceptional.[1]
The natives in contact with the Portuguese learned a bastard variety of the language of the latter, which became the lingua franca of intercourse, not only between European and native, but occasionally between Europeans of different nationalities. This Indo-Portuguese dialect continued to serve such purposes down to a late period in the last century, and has in some localities survived down nearly to our own day.[2] The number of people in India claiming to be of Portuguese descent was, in the 17th century, very large. Bernier, about 1660, says:— “For he (Sultan Shuja', Aurangzeb's brother) much courted all those Portugal Fathers, Missionaries, that are in that Province. … And they were indeed capable to serve him, it being certain that in the kingdom of Bengale there are to be found not less than eight or nine thousand families of Franguis, Portugals, and these either Natives or Mesticks.” (Bernier, E.T. of 1684, p. 27.)
A. Hamilton, whose experience belonged chiefly to the end of the same century, though his book was not published till 1727, states :—
“Along the Sea-coasts the Portuguese have left a Vestige of their Language, tho' much corrupted, yet it is the Language that most Europeans learn first to qualify them for a general Converse with one another, as well as with the different inhabitants of India” (Preface, p. xii.)
Lockyer, who published 16 years before Hamilton, also says :—
“This they (the Portugueze) may justly boast, they have established a kind of Lingua Franca in all the Sea Ports in India, of great use to other Europeans, who would find it difficult in many places to be well understood without it.” (An Account of the Trade in India, 1711, p. 286.)
The early Lutheran Missionaries in the South, who went out for the S.P.C.K., all seem to have begun by learning Portuguese, and in their diaries speak of preaching occasionally in Portuguese. [3] The foundation of this lingua franca was the Portuguese of the beginning of the 16th century; but it must have soon degenerated, for by the beginning of the last century it had lost nearly all trace of inflexion.[4]
It may from these remarks be easily understood how a large number of
- ↑ Varthema, at the very beginning of the 16th century, shows some acquaintance with Malayalam, and introduces pieces of conversation in that language. Before the end of the 16th century, printing had been introduced at other places besides Goa, and by the beginning of the 17th, several books in Indian languages had been printed at Goa, Cochin, and Ambalakkadu. — (A. B.)
- ↑ “At Point de Galle, in 1860, I found it in common use, and also, somewhat later, at Calecut.”— (A. B.)
- ↑ See "Notices of Madras and Cuddalore, &c., by the earlier Missionaries." Longman, 1858, passim. See also Manual, &c. in BOOKK-LIST, infra p. xxxix. Dr Carey, writing from Serampore as late as 1800, says that the children of Europeans by native women, whether children of English, French, Dutch, or Danes, were all called Portuguese. Smith's Life of Carey, 152.
- ↑ See Note B. at end of Introductory Remarks. “Mr. Beames remarked some time ago that most of the names of places in South India are greatly disfigured in the forms used by Europeans. This is because we have adopted the Portuguese orthography. Only in this way it can be explained how Kolladam has become Coleroon, Solamandalam, Coromandel, and Tuttukkudi, Tuticorin.” (A. B.) Mr. Burnell was so impressed with the excessive corruption of S. Indian names, that he would hardly ever willingly venture any explanation of them, considering the matter all too uncertain.
