Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/91

 EARLIEST EUROPEAN WRITERS 67 to be found not less than eight or nine thousand families of “Franguis, Portugals”. Indeed there is enough evidence to show that Roman Catholic Mission, some of Portuguese origin, had at this time its centre in Roman Catholic and many parts of Bengal and that it had Portuguese Missiona- ২ ছি - ০৪ extended its activity from Balasore and -Hugli to Chittagong and > Dacea.' From the records left by these missionaries it seems that these Catholic missionaries, like their Protestant or Dissenting successors in the next century, did not neglect to mix with the people of Bengal and learn their language. In 1683, Father Mareos Antonio Satueci 8.J., the superior of the Mission among these Bengali converts between 1679 and 1684 writes thus: “The fathers have not failed in their Translation-work in duty : ৯ y fe 2, না ০, they have learned the language well, have composed vocabularies, a grammar, a confessionary and prayers: they have translated the Christian doctrine ete., nothing of which existed till now.”? Hosten mentions another early allusion to translational work undertaken in Bengal in a letter of Francis Fernandez, dated Siripur, a town of “Bengalla”® January 17, 1599, where it is stated that giving interesting accounts of these missions and missionaries in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Feb. 1911) and Bengal Past and Present. in Bengal Past and Present, vol. ix, pt. i, This Church still exists. It was twice burnt down and rebuilt. Its records, Iam given to under. stand, have all perished in the fire. Rev. vol. v., 1846, is situated 18 miles south of Sonergang in Dacca and was in the 16th century an extensive Portuguese settlement. It is modern Sripur. See Jatindramohan Ray, Dhakar Itihasa vol. i, p. 839.
 * Father Hosten S. I. of the fe St. Xavier’ s College, Calcutta, han been
 * O Chronista de Tissuary, Goa. vol. ii, 1867, p. 12, quoted by Hosten
 * Siripur, we learn from an article (Portuguese in India) in Cal,