The Aravidu Dynasty of Vijayanagara, Vol. I v1.c10.81

v1.c10.81

² Purchas, o. c., p. 109. In a letter of one Fr. Froes to Fr. Quadros, both Jesuits, dated Goa, November, 1559—one year after Rama Raya's expedition—we read the following lines: "Os enuiamos," says Froes, "las copias de ciertas prouisiones que un rey antiguo de Bisnaga, gentil, suscribio en fauor de la casa del glorioso Apostol S. Tomas sobre ciertos......que alli dijo, las cuales copias enuio aqui el P. Cipriano algunos meses antes de su muerte" *Nuovi avisi dell' Indie*, f. 101 v. Were these *prouisiones* any grant of Rama Raya to St. Thomas' church made on this occasion? The fact is that Manucci speaks of it some years later: "Up to this day", said he in 1688, "the Portuguese preserve one of these plates for a gift to them, by the said Ram Rajah, of the city of Sao Thome." *Storia do Mogor*, III, p. 97. Was this goldenplate grant of Sao Thome made by Rama Raya when the Portuguese first settled in the place or after the expedition we are going to relate? Or was it perhaps a forgery of the Portuguese themselves? The inscription on the memorial stone in the church of Nossa Senhora da Luz, according to which it was built by the Franciscan Friar, Fr. Pedro da Atougia in 1516, must be rejected as not authentic. Cf. Davison Love, *Vestiges of old Madras*, I, p. 289-90.