Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/92

 68 BENGALI LITERATURE Fernandez composed a small treatise explaining summarily the points of the Christian religion and a small catechism in the form of a dialogue. Father Dominic De Souza translated both these works into the “Bengalla”’ tongue. ! In Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses,? Father Barbier, as early as 1723, mentions that he prepared a little catechism in Bengali. From these and other references, it is not hazardous to conclude that these Portuguese missionaries, like Carey and Marshman of a later age, though on a modest scale, must have created and left behind them an interesting body of Portuguese-Bengali literature. Of this Portuguese-Bengali literature, little trace remains. Of the few extant writings of a distinctly Portuguese origin, three works, all purported to be written or edited by Manoel da Assumpeaé, Rector of Missio de Santa Nicolao de Tolentino deserve mention. All these works are supposed to have been written at Nagori, Bhawal, near Dacca. It has already been men- tioned that the Portuguese missionaries had a centre at Dacca, where the existence of a church has been mentioned by Pére Barbier in the Lettres Edifiantes. Tavernier, ‘ Bengal Past and Present, July to December, 1910, p. 220, quoting Evtrait de Lettres du P. Nicolas Pimenta...Anvers, Trognese, 1601. Nicholas Pimenta was a Jesuit missionary of Goa (Visiteur de la Compagnie de Jesus en l’Inde lan 1598). He sent these two mis- sionaries, Francois Fernandez and Dominic (or Dominique) Sosa, to Bengal, from whose letters to Pimenta we get some account of contemporary Bengal and the Portuguese Missions at Siripur and elsewhere. See Peirre Du Jarric, Histoire des Indes Orientales 1610, chap xxix; also xxx to xxxiii. Also see Nicalao Pimenta, Relatio Historica de rebus.in India Orientali. Anno. MDCI. See Beveridge, Bakarganj, p. 29 and other references. 2 Lettre de Pére Barbier, Missionaire de la Compagnie de Jesus, La Mission-de Carnate, January 15, 1723, in Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses. Nouvelle Ed. Mémoires de Indes, tome xiii, 1781, p. 278.