Storia do Mogor 281.17.4

281.17.4

Things being in this position, it was absolutely imperative for the preservation of this mission and those adjoining it, not to unmask to these people the stratagem employed to bring them to Jesus Christ ; not to inform them that the missionaries living there disguised as Brahmans were nothing of the sort, but only Farangls, consequently Pariahs. To do otherwise was to stake all upon one throw, to bring to the ground in one moment an edifice erected and upheld for so many years at the cost of many efforts. For who fails to perceive that the Brahmans born in the country having shared the communion with the disguised Brahmans, now known to be Farangī Pariahs, a tumult must be excited at once within every family? Lo and behold, consternation everywhere! I must avow, in all simplicity, that I have no expressions strong enough to express the feelings of rage and despair aroused by this discovery of the stratagem practised by the reverend Portuguese Jesuit fathers, which must be the cause to these peoples of a calamity reputed by them to be so great. Nevertheless, this is what that featherhead of a catechist did, publishing at an open meeting, either by his own impulse or instigated by the reverend French Jesuit fathers, that the father they saw and had heard preach was a brother of and belonged to the same Society as the Brahman priests of the Christians then living at Tanjor, and that consequently these latter were also his brethren.