Storia do Mogor 354.1.2

354.1.2

On the other hand, the Jesuit was all indignation and scolded them severely, ordering them to leave the church at once and never enter it again. In fact, the merchants of the country were from this time forced to go into the city to say their prayers, which occasioned them great inconvenience. However, after some months they obtained leave to go back and enter the church, but only upon Christmas Day, and even that was the effect of several donations that from time to time they gave the Jesuit. At that church it is the custom of those fathers to enter the pulpit holding a rattan cane. If while [99] they are preaching they see any man and woman of the country talking together (as is the habit all over India, as I have noticed), and not behaving devoutly, the preacher leaves the pulpit and, without reserve, applies the cane several times. This admonishment finished, he mounts to his desk again and resumes his sermon. At nine o'clock at night upon September 5, 1705, the Jesuits of Pondicherry entered a Hindu temple by forcing in the doors. At the time a festival was being celebrated, which had been sanctioned in the hope of increasing the number of new Hindu settlers. Several of the Brahmans were beaten with shoes, and their hair was pulled, which is the greatest dishonour that can be inflicted. The other men present were treated in the same way. The idols they defiled by making water upon them, and then broke them into pieces.