Rural Social Life | Goa State PSC (GPSC) Preparation - GPSC (Goa) PDF Download

 Page 1


G
OAN VILLAGES IN the seventeenth century continued to be communities
with their corporate organisation which attended to the economic
as well as social needs of the native population. Whatever might have
been their self-suf?ciency and degree of isolation prior to the arrival of the
Portuguese, the impact of mercantile capitalism and the introduction of
post-Tridentine Christianity forced changes in the agrarian relations and
brought about a very signi?cant change in the modus vivendi of the Goan
rural population.
Religious worship
When the Portuguese adopted the policy of conversion in the forties of the
sixteenth century, they destroyed nearly three hundred Hindu temples in
each of the three talukas.
1
An average of four to ?ve temples of varying di-
mensions in each village suggests the unimaginable control religion must
have exercised upon village life. Village life was centred upon the temple:
every activity had to be initiated and ended with offerings to the family
and village deities. Religious festivities were also occasions for gathering
fairs which promoted inter-village economy.
2
Temples served as reposito-
ries for the village records, including the land survey and the land revenue
registers.
3
It was in the temple premises that children were educated and
where the adults organised their cultural activities, particularly their zagor
or dramatic performances.
4
The banyan trees in the vicinity of the temples
served as venues for the village council meetings. It was also in the temple
that a ?nal solution nwas sought in case of property disputes which could
not be solved with the help of written evidence.
5
The revenue of some of
the most fertile paddy ?elds of the village was applied to the expenses of
Page 2


G
OAN VILLAGES IN the seventeenth century continued to be communities
with their corporate organisation which attended to the economic
as well as social needs of the native population. Whatever might have
been their self-suf?ciency and degree of isolation prior to the arrival of the
Portuguese, the impact of mercantile capitalism and the introduction of
post-Tridentine Christianity forced changes in the agrarian relations and
brought about a very signi?cant change in the modus vivendi of the Goan
rural population.
Religious worship
When the Portuguese adopted the policy of conversion in the forties of the
sixteenth century, they destroyed nearly three hundred Hindu temples in
each of the three talukas.
1
An average of four to ?ve temples of varying di-
mensions in each village suggests the unimaginable control religion must
have exercised upon village life. Village life was centred upon the temple:
every activity had to be initiated and ended with offerings to the family
and village deities. Religious festivities were also occasions for gathering
fairs which promoted inter-village economy.
2
Temples served as reposito-
ries for the village records, including the land survey and the land revenue
registers.
3
It was in the temple premises that children were educated and
where the adults organised their cultural activities, particularly their zagor
or dramatic performances.
4
The banyan trees in the vicinity of the temples
served as venues for the village council meetings. It was also in the temple
that a ?nal solution nwas sought in case of property disputes which could
not be solved with the help of written evidence.
5
The revenue of some of
the most fertile paddy ?elds of the village was applied to the expenses of
the cult and to the maintenance of the temple priests and other servants.
In addition to these nelly and namasy lands there were several other cus-
tomary contributions in cash and in kind offered to the temples on different
occasions during the course of a year.
6
The forties of the sixteenth century proved to be roaring and stormy for the
cultural life of the village communities. On the eve of the arrival of the Soci-
ety of Jesus in Goa two gentlemen occupying positions of in?uence in the
Church hierarchy of Goa had set up a confraternity, known as Confraternity
of the Holy Faith, for initiating a drive for conversions to Christianity. This
confraternity persuaded the Government authorities to pressurise the chief
ganvkars of Tisvadi into making a grant of 2,000 tangas brancas every year
from the revenues of the lands which had been set aside for the temples
which were there no more. This was done, but the authorities recognised the
claim of the chief ganvkars that the lands had always belonged and would
continue to belong to the village communities.
7
The Society of Jesus that had then just come into existence in Europe as
the shock-troops that led the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation did
not take more than a couple of years to reach Goa and to impress upon
the Portuguese Catholic authorities the need of applying to their overseas
possessions the principle ‘cujus regio, illius religio’ that was being enforced
by the Reformers in Europe. It was through the Society of Jesus that Goa
was infected with the zeal of Counter-Reformation.
8
The Goan inhabitants saw for the ?rst time since the arrival of the Por-
tuguese that both the Church and the State were serious and worked in
unison to force upon them the Roman Catholic Church. We are not ques-
tioning here if it was to be condemned or justi?ed, but it is relevant to
note that the impact of the drive upon the corporate life of the Goan vil-
lage communities was impressive and far reaching. The methods adopted
for propagating Christianity disrupted several social bonds and traditional
attachments which were keeping village communities together. Among
other measures adopted, Hindu temples disappeared, religious and social
celebrations of Hindus in public were banned, Hindus were made to wear
a dress distinguishing them from converts, convert ganvkars of whatever
ranks in the social hierarchy of the village would precede a Hindu ganvkar
in af?xing their initials or signatures upon village community records, and
in villages where convert ganvkars were already a majority Hindu ganvkars
could be dispensed with in meetings of village councils.
9
Economic pressures were no less intimidating: no Portuguese of?cials were
to employ any Hindus in Government or private service: Shenvi Brahmins,
who had traditionally been village clerks, were to be replaced by competent
converts; converts were to be preferred as State tax farmers, if their bids
were as good as those of a Hindu bidder; Hindu artisans were not to produce
anything connected with Christian worship; Hindu sailors and ?shermen
Page 3


G
OAN VILLAGES IN the seventeenth century continued to be communities
with their corporate organisation which attended to the economic
as well as social needs of the native population. Whatever might have
been their self-suf?ciency and degree of isolation prior to the arrival of the
Portuguese, the impact of mercantile capitalism and the introduction of
post-Tridentine Christianity forced changes in the agrarian relations and
brought about a very signi?cant change in the modus vivendi of the Goan
rural population.
Religious worship
When the Portuguese adopted the policy of conversion in the forties of the
sixteenth century, they destroyed nearly three hundred Hindu temples in
each of the three talukas.
1
An average of four to ?ve temples of varying di-
mensions in each village suggests the unimaginable control religion must
have exercised upon village life. Village life was centred upon the temple:
every activity had to be initiated and ended with offerings to the family
and village deities. Religious festivities were also occasions for gathering
fairs which promoted inter-village economy.
2
Temples served as reposito-
ries for the village records, including the land survey and the land revenue
registers.
3
It was in the temple premises that children were educated and
where the adults organised their cultural activities, particularly their zagor
or dramatic performances.
4
The banyan trees in the vicinity of the temples
served as venues for the village council meetings. It was also in the temple
that a ?nal solution nwas sought in case of property disputes which could
not be solved with the help of written evidence.
5
The revenue of some of
the most fertile paddy ?elds of the village was applied to the expenses of
the cult and to the maintenance of the temple priests and other servants.
In addition to these nelly and namasy lands there were several other cus-
tomary contributions in cash and in kind offered to the temples on different
occasions during the course of a year.
6
The forties of the sixteenth century proved to be roaring and stormy for the
cultural life of the village communities. On the eve of the arrival of the Soci-
ety of Jesus in Goa two gentlemen occupying positions of in?uence in the
Church hierarchy of Goa had set up a confraternity, known as Confraternity
of the Holy Faith, for initiating a drive for conversions to Christianity. This
confraternity persuaded the Government authorities to pressurise the chief
ganvkars of Tisvadi into making a grant of 2,000 tangas brancas every year
from the revenues of the lands which had been set aside for the temples
which were there no more. This was done, but the authorities recognised the
claim of the chief ganvkars that the lands had always belonged and would
continue to belong to the village communities.
7
The Society of Jesus that had then just come into existence in Europe as
the shock-troops that led the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation did
not take more than a couple of years to reach Goa and to impress upon
the Portuguese Catholic authorities the need of applying to their overseas
possessions the principle ‘cujus regio, illius religio’ that was being enforced
by the Reformers in Europe. It was through the Society of Jesus that Goa
was infected with the zeal of Counter-Reformation.
8
The Goan inhabitants saw for the ?rst time since the arrival of the Por-
tuguese that both the Church and the State were serious and worked in
unison to force upon them the Roman Catholic Church. We are not ques-
tioning here if it was to be condemned or justi?ed, but it is relevant to
note that the impact of the drive upon the corporate life of the Goan vil-
lage communities was impressive and far reaching. The methods adopted
for propagating Christianity disrupted several social bonds and traditional
attachments which were keeping village communities together. Among
other measures adopted, Hindu temples disappeared, religious and social
celebrations of Hindus in public were banned, Hindus were made to wear
a dress distinguishing them from converts, convert ganvkars of whatever
ranks in the social hierarchy of the village would precede a Hindu ganvkar
in af?xing their initials or signatures upon village community records, and
in villages where convert ganvkars were already a majority Hindu ganvkars
could be dispensed with in meetings of village councils.
9
Economic pressures were no less intimidating: no Portuguese of?cials were
to employ any Hindus in Government or private service: Shenvi Brahmins,
who had traditionally been village clerks, were to be replaced by competent
converts; converts were to be preferred as State tax farmers, if their bids
were as good as those of a Hindu bidder; Hindu artisans were not to produce
anything connected with Christian worship; Hindu sailors and ?shermen
could be forcibly recruited to help in State galleys; and traditional laws
of inheritance were modi?ed to enable female converts to inherit when a
Hindu head of family died without a male heir.
10
As in the case of all legislation the above legislation was not always enforced
with equal zeal and strictness, but even so the success was clearly visible.
The practice of Hinduism was practically banished within the Portuguese
jurisdiction of Goa; Christianity had been implanted and majestic Church
edi?ces in baroque style were beginning to occupy the sites where formerly
stood modest village temple structures; those who did not wish to conform
to the change had begun to emigrate. What was not so easily visible was the
growing bankruptcy of the village communities. This was a result of their
lands, labour and money being coaxed out of them to establish a baroque
style of worship that did not suit the modest agrarian economy of the Goan
villages.
11
It may be remarked in this connection that it is not uncommon to hear that
the early missionaries did no harm to the village economy by transferring
to the Catholic Churches the paddy ?elds and the other bene?ces, which
the village communities had already set aside since time immemorial for
the maintenance of the Hindu cult. Such a way of arguing is fallacious,
because it is based upon ignorance of the fact that the revenue of such lands
and bene?ces had never maintained any strangers to the village, but had
always supported several families of the village connected with the temple
worship and service. Obviously, this was no longer the situation when the
foreign missionaries introduced the new religion and transferred the surplus
revenues to the common pool of their religious orders.
12
Where social integration was concerned the preaching of equality of all men
did not prevent the missionaries from establishing religious confraternities
(confrarias) based on castes: and, just as their doctrinal wealth failed to
promote greater social cohesion, their vast income and unlimited political
in?uence did not achieve proportionate results in raising the standard of
living of their native converts.
13
Even in admissions to their own ranks, reli-
gious orders, particularly the Jesuits, maintained strict racial quali?cations
during the period covered by this study.
14
Promotion of education
The Portuguese did not meet uncivilised and illiterate masses of people
when they took over Goa in the early sixteenth century, but it was not until
some decades later that they took cognizance of the literary heritage of the
natives. They discovered natives who were well versed in Sanskrit religious
literature and were conversant with contemporary Marathi religious litera-
ture as well. During their night raids upon the houses of prominent Hindus,
the Jesuits came across volumes of the Anadi Purana and Mahabharata.
15
Page 4


G
OAN VILLAGES IN the seventeenth century continued to be communities
with their corporate organisation which attended to the economic
as well as social needs of the native population. Whatever might have
been their self-suf?ciency and degree of isolation prior to the arrival of the
Portuguese, the impact of mercantile capitalism and the introduction of
post-Tridentine Christianity forced changes in the agrarian relations and
brought about a very signi?cant change in the modus vivendi of the Goan
rural population.
Religious worship
When the Portuguese adopted the policy of conversion in the forties of the
sixteenth century, they destroyed nearly three hundred Hindu temples in
each of the three talukas.
1
An average of four to ?ve temples of varying di-
mensions in each village suggests the unimaginable control religion must
have exercised upon village life. Village life was centred upon the temple:
every activity had to be initiated and ended with offerings to the family
and village deities. Religious festivities were also occasions for gathering
fairs which promoted inter-village economy.
2
Temples served as reposito-
ries for the village records, including the land survey and the land revenue
registers.
3
It was in the temple premises that children were educated and
where the adults organised their cultural activities, particularly their zagor
or dramatic performances.
4
The banyan trees in the vicinity of the temples
served as venues for the village council meetings. It was also in the temple
that a ?nal solution nwas sought in case of property disputes which could
not be solved with the help of written evidence.
5
The revenue of some of
the most fertile paddy ?elds of the village was applied to the expenses of
the cult and to the maintenance of the temple priests and other servants.
In addition to these nelly and namasy lands there were several other cus-
tomary contributions in cash and in kind offered to the temples on different
occasions during the course of a year.
6
The forties of the sixteenth century proved to be roaring and stormy for the
cultural life of the village communities. On the eve of the arrival of the Soci-
ety of Jesus in Goa two gentlemen occupying positions of in?uence in the
Church hierarchy of Goa had set up a confraternity, known as Confraternity
of the Holy Faith, for initiating a drive for conversions to Christianity. This
confraternity persuaded the Government authorities to pressurise the chief
ganvkars of Tisvadi into making a grant of 2,000 tangas brancas every year
from the revenues of the lands which had been set aside for the temples
which were there no more. This was done, but the authorities recognised the
claim of the chief ganvkars that the lands had always belonged and would
continue to belong to the village communities.
7
The Society of Jesus that had then just come into existence in Europe as
the shock-troops that led the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation did
not take more than a couple of years to reach Goa and to impress upon
the Portuguese Catholic authorities the need of applying to their overseas
possessions the principle ‘cujus regio, illius religio’ that was being enforced
by the Reformers in Europe. It was through the Society of Jesus that Goa
was infected with the zeal of Counter-Reformation.
8
The Goan inhabitants saw for the ?rst time since the arrival of the Por-
tuguese that both the Church and the State were serious and worked in
unison to force upon them the Roman Catholic Church. We are not ques-
tioning here if it was to be condemned or justi?ed, but it is relevant to
note that the impact of the drive upon the corporate life of the Goan vil-
lage communities was impressive and far reaching. The methods adopted
for propagating Christianity disrupted several social bonds and traditional
attachments which were keeping village communities together. Among
other measures adopted, Hindu temples disappeared, religious and social
celebrations of Hindus in public were banned, Hindus were made to wear
a dress distinguishing them from converts, convert ganvkars of whatever
ranks in the social hierarchy of the village would precede a Hindu ganvkar
in af?xing their initials or signatures upon village community records, and
in villages where convert ganvkars were already a majority Hindu ganvkars
could be dispensed with in meetings of village councils.
9
Economic pressures were no less intimidating: no Portuguese of?cials were
to employ any Hindus in Government or private service: Shenvi Brahmins,
who had traditionally been village clerks, were to be replaced by competent
converts; converts were to be preferred as State tax farmers, if their bids
were as good as those of a Hindu bidder; Hindu artisans were not to produce
anything connected with Christian worship; Hindu sailors and ?shermen
could be forcibly recruited to help in State galleys; and traditional laws
of inheritance were modi?ed to enable female converts to inherit when a
Hindu head of family died without a male heir.
10
As in the case of all legislation the above legislation was not always enforced
with equal zeal and strictness, but even so the success was clearly visible.
The practice of Hinduism was practically banished within the Portuguese
jurisdiction of Goa; Christianity had been implanted and majestic Church
edi?ces in baroque style were beginning to occupy the sites where formerly
stood modest village temple structures; those who did not wish to conform
to the change had begun to emigrate. What was not so easily visible was the
growing bankruptcy of the village communities. This was a result of their
lands, labour and money being coaxed out of them to establish a baroque
style of worship that did not suit the modest agrarian economy of the Goan
villages.
11
It may be remarked in this connection that it is not uncommon to hear that
the early missionaries did no harm to the village economy by transferring
to the Catholic Churches the paddy ?elds and the other bene?ces, which
the village communities had already set aside since time immemorial for
the maintenance of the Hindu cult. Such a way of arguing is fallacious,
because it is based upon ignorance of the fact that the revenue of such lands
and bene?ces had never maintained any strangers to the village, but had
always supported several families of the village connected with the temple
worship and service. Obviously, this was no longer the situation when the
foreign missionaries introduced the new religion and transferred the surplus
revenues to the common pool of their religious orders.
12
Where social integration was concerned the preaching of equality of all men
did not prevent the missionaries from establishing religious confraternities
(confrarias) based on castes: and, just as their doctrinal wealth failed to
promote greater social cohesion, their vast income and unlimited political
in?uence did not achieve proportionate results in raising the standard of
living of their native converts.
13
Even in admissions to their own ranks, reli-
gious orders, particularly the Jesuits, maintained strict racial quali?cations
during the period covered by this study.
14
Promotion of education
The Portuguese did not meet uncivilised and illiterate masses of people
when they took over Goa in the early sixteenth century, but it was not until
some decades later that they took cognizance of the literary heritage of the
natives. They discovered natives who were well versed in Sanskrit religious
literature and were conversant with contemporary Marathi religious litera-
ture as well. During their night raids upon the houses of prominent Hindus,
the Jesuits came across volumes of the Anadi Purana and Mahabharata.
15
The Jesuit correspondence also refers to their discoveries of the Viveka-
Sindhu of Mukundaraja, the Bhagvadgita, and the Yogaraja-Tilak of
Amritananda.
16
The Jesuits were deeply interested in having translations of
these works in order to refute effectively the “errors”’ of Hinduism.
It is also known that a Goan Hindu from Kelxy, known as Krishnadas Shama,
wrote religious poems in Marathi in 1526. Two of his compositions along
with those of some others, such as Visnudas Nama, Dnyandeva, Shivadas,
Nivritideva, Samayananda and Namdeva, are found transliterated in Roman
script in a MS of the Public Library of Braga in Portugal.
17
In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Jesuits began writing Chris-
tian puranas in order to satisfy the desire of the converts to listen to their
esteemed pauranic stories. The Purana Christão of Thomas Stephen, S.J.
and the Purana of St. Peter by Etienne de la Croix, S.J., both written in the
contemporary style of Marathi with some mixture of Konkani, are worthy
expressions of the missionary zeal of the Society of Jesus which had realised
the value of inculturation as an effective method of transmitting Christ’s
message.
18
Besides these two Jesuits there were some others who also com-
posed works of religious and literary merit in the vernacular languages of
Goa. Though comparatively less in quantity the output of the Franciscan
friars in the ?eld of literary production was no less meritorious.
19
Prior to Christianisation, formal education must have been imparted in
agraharas and brahmapuris. There is epigraphic evidence for the existence
of two such educational places, namely in Goa Velha and Goalim-Moula,
established in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries respectively.
20
The Shenvi Brahmins of Kortaly and Kelxy possessed a long tradition of
scholarship. The kulkarnis of the village communities all over Goa were
mostly Shenvis. Fr. Francisco de Souza writes in his Oriente Conquistado
that “all the Brahmins from Kortaly are known as Xenem (sic), which means
tutors. Throughout the lands of Konkan they are the ones who teach the
Brahmin youths to read, write and count.”
21
Churches replaced temples as centres of learning in the wake of conversions
to Christianity. Church schools were maintained at the cost of village com-
munities which paid the school master for teaching the sons of ganvkars.
22
There is not much evidence to expatiate upon the way schools were con-
ducted or upon the nature of curricula followed. But in the more developed
schools run by the religious orders in Old Goa, by the Jesuits at Rachol and
by the Franciscans at Reis Magos, the curriculum included Latin language
and literature, religious knowledge, and liberal arts, including vocal and
instrumental music. There were also lessons in the vernacular language
intended to train catechists who were to go back to their villages and assist
their parish priests in the conversion of their co-villagers.
23
At St. Paul’s
boys’ school run by the Jesuits in the city of Goa special attention was paid
Page 5


G
OAN VILLAGES IN the seventeenth century continued to be communities
with their corporate organisation which attended to the economic
as well as social needs of the native population. Whatever might have
been their self-suf?ciency and degree of isolation prior to the arrival of the
Portuguese, the impact of mercantile capitalism and the introduction of
post-Tridentine Christianity forced changes in the agrarian relations and
brought about a very signi?cant change in the modus vivendi of the Goan
rural population.
Religious worship
When the Portuguese adopted the policy of conversion in the forties of the
sixteenth century, they destroyed nearly three hundred Hindu temples in
each of the three talukas.
1
An average of four to ?ve temples of varying di-
mensions in each village suggests the unimaginable control religion must
have exercised upon village life. Village life was centred upon the temple:
every activity had to be initiated and ended with offerings to the family
and village deities. Religious festivities were also occasions for gathering
fairs which promoted inter-village economy.
2
Temples served as reposito-
ries for the village records, including the land survey and the land revenue
registers.
3
It was in the temple premises that children were educated and
where the adults organised their cultural activities, particularly their zagor
or dramatic performances.
4
The banyan trees in the vicinity of the temples
served as venues for the village council meetings. It was also in the temple
that a ?nal solution nwas sought in case of property disputes which could
not be solved with the help of written evidence.
5
The revenue of some of
the most fertile paddy ?elds of the village was applied to the expenses of
the cult and to the maintenance of the temple priests and other servants.
In addition to these nelly and namasy lands there were several other cus-
tomary contributions in cash and in kind offered to the temples on different
occasions during the course of a year.
6
The forties of the sixteenth century proved to be roaring and stormy for the
cultural life of the village communities. On the eve of the arrival of the Soci-
ety of Jesus in Goa two gentlemen occupying positions of in?uence in the
Church hierarchy of Goa had set up a confraternity, known as Confraternity
of the Holy Faith, for initiating a drive for conversions to Christianity. This
confraternity persuaded the Government authorities to pressurise the chief
ganvkars of Tisvadi into making a grant of 2,000 tangas brancas every year
from the revenues of the lands which had been set aside for the temples
which were there no more. This was done, but the authorities recognised the
claim of the chief ganvkars that the lands had always belonged and would
continue to belong to the village communities.
7
The Society of Jesus that had then just come into existence in Europe as
the shock-troops that led the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation did
not take more than a couple of years to reach Goa and to impress upon
the Portuguese Catholic authorities the need of applying to their overseas
possessions the principle ‘cujus regio, illius religio’ that was being enforced
by the Reformers in Europe. It was through the Society of Jesus that Goa
was infected with the zeal of Counter-Reformation.
8
The Goan inhabitants saw for the ?rst time since the arrival of the Por-
tuguese that both the Church and the State were serious and worked in
unison to force upon them the Roman Catholic Church. We are not ques-
tioning here if it was to be condemned or justi?ed, but it is relevant to
note that the impact of the drive upon the corporate life of the Goan vil-
lage communities was impressive and far reaching. The methods adopted
for propagating Christianity disrupted several social bonds and traditional
attachments which were keeping village communities together. Among
other measures adopted, Hindu temples disappeared, religious and social
celebrations of Hindus in public were banned, Hindus were made to wear
a dress distinguishing them from converts, convert ganvkars of whatever
ranks in the social hierarchy of the village would precede a Hindu ganvkar
in af?xing their initials or signatures upon village community records, and
in villages where convert ganvkars were already a majority Hindu ganvkars
could be dispensed with in meetings of village councils.
9
Economic pressures were no less intimidating: no Portuguese of?cials were
to employ any Hindus in Government or private service: Shenvi Brahmins,
who had traditionally been village clerks, were to be replaced by competent
converts; converts were to be preferred as State tax farmers, if their bids
were as good as those of a Hindu bidder; Hindu artisans were not to produce
anything connected with Christian worship; Hindu sailors and ?shermen
could be forcibly recruited to help in State galleys; and traditional laws
of inheritance were modi?ed to enable female converts to inherit when a
Hindu head of family died without a male heir.
10
As in the case of all legislation the above legislation was not always enforced
with equal zeal and strictness, but even so the success was clearly visible.
The practice of Hinduism was practically banished within the Portuguese
jurisdiction of Goa; Christianity had been implanted and majestic Church
edi?ces in baroque style were beginning to occupy the sites where formerly
stood modest village temple structures; those who did not wish to conform
to the change had begun to emigrate. What was not so easily visible was the
growing bankruptcy of the village communities. This was a result of their
lands, labour and money being coaxed out of them to establish a baroque
style of worship that did not suit the modest agrarian economy of the Goan
villages.
11
It may be remarked in this connection that it is not uncommon to hear that
the early missionaries did no harm to the village economy by transferring
to the Catholic Churches the paddy ?elds and the other bene?ces, which
the village communities had already set aside since time immemorial for
the maintenance of the Hindu cult. Such a way of arguing is fallacious,
because it is based upon ignorance of the fact that the revenue of such lands
and bene?ces had never maintained any strangers to the village, but had
always supported several families of the village connected with the temple
worship and service. Obviously, this was no longer the situation when the
foreign missionaries introduced the new religion and transferred the surplus
revenues to the common pool of their religious orders.
12
Where social integration was concerned the preaching of equality of all men
did not prevent the missionaries from establishing religious confraternities
(confrarias) based on castes: and, just as their doctrinal wealth failed to
promote greater social cohesion, their vast income and unlimited political
in?uence did not achieve proportionate results in raising the standard of
living of their native converts.
13
Even in admissions to their own ranks, reli-
gious orders, particularly the Jesuits, maintained strict racial quali?cations
during the period covered by this study.
14
Promotion of education
The Portuguese did not meet uncivilised and illiterate masses of people
when they took over Goa in the early sixteenth century, but it was not until
some decades later that they took cognizance of the literary heritage of the
natives. They discovered natives who were well versed in Sanskrit religious
literature and were conversant with contemporary Marathi religious litera-
ture as well. During their night raids upon the houses of prominent Hindus,
the Jesuits came across volumes of the Anadi Purana and Mahabharata.
15
The Jesuit correspondence also refers to their discoveries of the Viveka-
Sindhu of Mukundaraja, the Bhagvadgita, and the Yogaraja-Tilak of
Amritananda.
16
The Jesuits were deeply interested in having translations of
these works in order to refute effectively the “errors”’ of Hinduism.
It is also known that a Goan Hindu from Kelxy, known as Krishnadas Shama,
wrote religious poems in Marathi in 1526. Two of his compositions along
with those of some others, such as Visnudas Nama, Dnyandeva, Shivadas,
Nivritideva, Samayananda and Namdeva, are found transliterated in Roman
script in a MS of the Public Library of Braga in Portugal.
17
In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Jesuits began writing Chris-
tian puranas in order to satisfy the desire of the converts to listen to their
esteemed pauranic stories. The Purana Christão of Thomas Stephen, S.J.
and the Purana of St. Peter by Etienne de la Croix, S.J., both written in the
contemporary style of Marathi with some mixture of Konkani, are worthy
expressions of the missionary zeal of the Society of Jesus which had realised
the value of inculturation as an effective method of transmitting Christ’s
message.
18
Besides these two Jesuits there were some others who also com-
posed works of religious and literary merit in the vernacular languages of
Goa. Though comparatively less in quantity the output of the Franciscan
friars in the ?eld of literary production was no less meritorious.
19
Prior to Christianisation, formal education must have been imparted in
agraharas and brahmapuris. There is epigraphic evidence for the existence
of two such educational places, namely in Goa Velha and Goalim-Moula,
established in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries respectively.
20
The Shenvi Brahmins of Kortaly and Kelxy possessed a long tradition of
scholarship. The kulkarnis of the village communities all over Goa were
mostly Shenvis. Fr. Francisco de Souza writes in his Oriente Conquistado
that “all the Brahmins from Kortaly are known as Xenem (sic), which means
tutors. Throughout the lands of Konkan they are the ones who teach the
Brahmin youths to read, write and count.”
21
Churches replaced temples as centres of learning in the wake of conversions
to Christianity. Church schools were maintained at the cost of village com-
munities which paid the school master for teaching the sons of ganvkars.
22
There is not much evidence to expatiate upon the way schools were con-
ducted or upon the nature of curricula followed. But in the more developed
schools run by the religious orders in Old Goa, by the Jesuits at Rachol and
by the Franciscans at Reis Magos, the curriculum included Latin language
and literature, religious knowledge, and liberal arts, including vocal and
instrumental music. There were also lessons in the vernacular language
intended to train catechists who were to go back to their villages and assist
their parish priests in the conversion of their co-villagers.
23
At St. Paul’s
boys’ school run by the Jesuits in the city of Goa special attention was paid
to arithmetic, because it was subject very much appreciated by the business-
minded natives. The contemporary Jesuit reports say that it was not unusual
to ?nd grown-ups in the arithmetic classes.
24
Although Marathi written in old Kannada script appears to have been the
literary language of the Goans, the spoken language was Konkani to which
the early missionaries refer as lingua canarina or lingua bracmana.
25
The
earliest reference to the spoken language of the Goan people is found in
the Suma Oriental of an administrative assistant of Afonso de Albuquerque,
Tomé Pires who wrote in 1514: “. . . the language of this kingdom (of Goa) is
concanim. . . The language of this kingdom of Guoa (sic) differs from that of
Deccan as well as from that of Vijayanagar. . . ” .
26
The Jesuit Henrique Henriques, who had completed the writing of a Tamil
grammar in 1567 and had begun preparing a grammar of Konkani, wrote to
the General Superior of the Society of Jesus comparing the two languages:
“ A few words are similar in both the languages, and the construction is very
much alike; nevertheless, Konkani is the more dif?cult of the two.”
27
Thomas
Stephen, S.J., who published his Purana Christão at Rachol in 1616, writes
in the introduction that he did not use Shudha Marathy (pure Marathi),
because the middle class people would not understand it (madhima lokasy
nakale dekunu).
28
The same Thomas Stephen, who made a distinction
between Marathy and the language of the Brahmins, wrote a grammar of
Konkani and a Catechism in Konkani, which he called lingua canarim.
29
From all the above it may be safely concluded that the village schools were
administering knowledge of Christian doctrine in Konkani following the
catechisms published by the missionaries in Konkani. The dictionaries of
the Konkani language compiled by the Jesuits during the ?rst half of the sev-
enteenth century, and the grammars of Konkani written by the missionaries,
suggest also that they were trying to master Konkani in order to instruct the
people in their own language.
30
As the seventeenth century was coming to its close the Portuguese authori-
ties were becoming painfully aware that their hold on Goa and other pos-
sessions in India was more precarious than ever before, and that the natives
had never ceased to express their lack of feeling for the Portuguese. The
main reason was the con?ict between the white religious parish priests and
the native clergy that was growing numerically and in their demand for right-
ful place in the hierarchy. Archbishop Brandão was inclined to favour them
and replace the white parish priests. This was seen by the white religious as
a threat to their livelihood. They mounted a campaign of vili?cation against
the native clergy in their representations to the crown. While the church
councils, the Constitution of the Archdiocese and the past instructions of
the religious orders had always favoured the use of Konkani for pastoral
purposes, now the move was to suppress Konkani as a strategy of taking
away from the native clergy their hold over the native faithful.
31