Category Archives: Portuguese

Cochin, Paravars, Pearl divers, Pearl Fishery Coast, Pearl Oysters, Pearls, Portugal., Portuguese, T. V. Antony Raj Fernando, This is Life, Tuticorin, tvaraj

The Paravars: Chapter 10 – Conversion to Catholicism

17 Comments

Myself 

 By T. V. Antony Raj Fernando

.

Previous The Paravars: Chapter 9 – Seeking Help from the Portuguese

.

In 1534, the Malabarian João da Cruz trading in Arabian horses, was in Cape Comorin waiting for payment for the horses he had sold.  The distraught Paravar leaders who knew about his connections with the Portuguese met him and told their woes.

João da Cruz felt sorry for the Paravars who were then fearing atrocities from the Muslims. He told the Paravars that as the past events showed they could not expect help from the Viceroy of Madura. So, to find a permanent solution to their problem he advised them to approach the Portuguese Captain of Cochin who would be willing to help them.

So in 1535, fifteen of the most influential Pattangattis (Parava leaders) led by Vikirama Aditha Pandya, accompanied João da Cruz to Cochin.

Here there seems to be a discrepancy in the name of the place that João da Cruz took the Paravars to. Some writers say that João da Cruz accompanied Vikirama Aditha Pandya and the other Pattangattis to Goa and it had been duplicated by others, but from what I have read I would like to differ.

In Cochin, Captain Pero Vaz de Amaral received them cordially since the Portuguese were waiting for such an opportunity to gain a strategic foothold and control of the pearl fisheries in the Coromandel Coast. He said that the protection would be granted on the condition that the leaders who had come were baptised immediately as Catholics and that they would encourage their people also to convert to Catholicism. To this, they gladly consented.

As part of the arrangement for protection from the Muslims, Vikirama Aditha Pandya offered to manage the pearl diving on behalf of the Portuguese.

Fortunately for the Paravars, Fr. Miguel Vaz, Vicar General of India, was in Cochin at that time and he instructed them in the Christian faith. Some days later they were baptized.

In Volume 6, page 123 of his work “Castes And Southern India“, Edgar Thurston quotes what Philippus Baldaeus, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church said concerning the Paravas:

The Paruas being sorely oppress’d by the Mahometan, one John de Crus, a Native of Malabar, but who had been in Portugal, and honourably treated by John, the then king of Portugal, advised them to seek for Aid at Cochin against the Moors, and to receive Baptism. According‘ly some of the chief Men among them (call’d Patangatays in their Language) were sent upon that Errand to Cochin, where being kindly receiv’d, they (in honour of him who had given His Advice) took upon them the Sirname of Crus, a name still retain’d by most persons of Note among the Paruas.

So, as described by Philippus Baldaeus, the name João da Cruz was appended to the name of all the Pattangattis including Vikirama Aditha Pandya to honour the Malabarian who guided them and brought them to Cochin to be baptized and seek the help of the Portuguese.

When the baptized leaders returned to the Fishery Coast the other Paravars at first did not believe the report they brought back with them; so a larger delegation of eighty-five Paravars was sent to Cochin.

On  getting wind of these negotiations between the Paravars and the Portuguese, the Middle Eastern Arab Merchants who were then trading in the Pearl Fishery Coast dispatched two envoys to Cochin to bribe the Portuguese Captain Pero Vaz de Amaral, to not allow conversion of the Paravars to Catholicism, but Pero Vaz Amaral refused to do so.

Captain Pero Vaz immediately arranged for the baptism of 85 Paravar leaders in Cochin by the Vicar General, Miguel Vaz, probably in December 1535. The Paravar leaders were given Portuguese names as surnames such as Fernando, Pereira, Vaz,  Almeida, Peres, da Cruz and so forth.

In 1536, Peter Goncalves the vicar of Cochin and three other priests came to the Coromandel Coast along with a naval force conveying troops. They found the men of the Hindu Paravar community assembled for the pearl-fishery and then and there baptized them en masse to Catholicism. It is said that 20,000 Paravars were baptized. The women and children who had been left behind in the villages during the fishery were added to the flock later.

By the end of the year 1537, most of the Hindu Paravars of the seven Paravar villages – Manapadu, Virapandiapattanam, Vembar, Alanthalai, Punnaikayal, Thoothukudi and Vaipar – were baptized and were accepted as subjects of the King of Portugal. Some, however, did not receive baptism till the arrival of Saint Francis Xavier at the end of 1542.

On June 27, 1538, the Portuguese proceeded to destroy the Arab fleet when they met fortuitously at Vedalai in the present Ramanathapuram district.

The Portuguese then firmly settled the rights and privileges of the Paravas and the Rajas no longer dared to interfere with the Paravas or attempt to impede or abridge their prerogative on the Pearl Fishery Coast. The Rajas were then compelled to allow separate laws for the Paravas from those which bound their own subjects.

The Portuguese kept for themselves the command at sea and exercised their sovereignty over the Paravas, their villages, harbours and the pearl fisheries.

Thus the Paravas dwindled into subordination to the Catholic priests and the Portuguese and had to forego having their own chiefs and their own laws. Though the Catholic Paravar community as a whole enjoyed renewed prosperity from that point in history, they became a client community of the Portuguese.

In reality, the declaration of acceptance of the Catholic faith by the Paravars did not prevent them from continuing to worship their old deities of the Hindu pantheon in the manner they had done before being baptized. There were no translators to spread the Catholic message from Latin and Portuguese to Tamil. Also, the conversion was seen by the Paravar people as being merely a convenient arrangement to obtain protection from the atrocities of the Muslims. In fact, the Paravas became a “Christian caste in Hindu society“, whose distinctive Catholic rites and doctrines came to reinforce their place in the Hindu caste structure.

The Portuguese first settled in Tuticorin in 1543, and the port began to expand until it eventually became the hub of the pearl fishery.

In 1543, the Portuguese rewarded Vikirama Aditha Pandya alias João da Cruz for his bartering with the elders of the Paravar caste to convert the community to Christianity since 1535. They offered him the management of the pearl fisheries on their behalf. He became known as Senhor dos Senhores Dom João da Cruz (“first among notables Dom João da Cruz”). The Portuguese recognised him as jathi thalaivan (head of the caste) and also as their official intermediary from 1543 to 1553.

The Portuguese also recognised the caste elders in the various villages perhaps because they were the first to be converted. In the eyes of the Paravars and non-Paravars alike, this led to a formal system of hierarchical control, based on religious authority and economic standing that extended from the jathi thalaivan to the elders and then to the villagers.

Previous: The Paravars: Chapter 9 – Seeking Help from the Portuguese

.

RELATED ARTICLES

.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arabic, Joao da Cruz, Paravars, Pearl divers, Pearl Fishery Coast, Pearl Oysters, Portuguese, T. V. Antony Raj Fernando, This is Life, Tuticorin, tvaraj

The Paravars: Chapter 9 – Seeking Help from the Portuguese

13 Comments

Myself

 By T. V. Antony Raj Fernando

.

Previous: The Paravars: Chapter 8 – Arrival of the Portuguese in India

.

Afonso de Albuquerque (1453 – 1515), Captain-Major of the Seas of Arabia, second governor of Portuguese India, First Duke of Goa. (Source – Palácio do Correio Velho)

.

In 1509, Afonso de Albuquerque was appointed the second governor of the Portuguese possessions in the East. In 1510, he defeated the Bijapur sultans with the help of Timayya, on behalf of the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire, leading to the establishment of a permanent settlement in Velha Goa (or Old Goa). From then on, the Southern Province, also known simply as Goa, became the headquarters of Portuguese India, and the seat of the Portuguese Viceroy who governed the Portuguese possessions in Asia.

A new fleet under Marshal Fernão Coutinho arrived with specific instructions to destroy the power of the Zamorin of Calicut. The Portuguese captured Zamorin’s palace and destroyed it and set the city on fire. Zamorin’s forces rallied to kill Coutinho and wound Albuquerque.

In 1513, the wounded Albuquerque relented and entered into a treaty with the Zamorin of Calicut to protect Portuguese interests in Malabar. The Zamorin and the Portuguese signed a treaty giving the Portuguese the right to trade as “they pleased“.

At this point in history, one of those curious figures,  unimportant in themselves,  by whom at a given point the course of history would be changed stepped on to the stage.

.

Dom João da Cruz

In 1513, as part of the treaty, the Zamorin sent a fifteen-year-old young Chetti as his agent to the court of King Manuel in Lisbon. Some writers claim that this youngster was a Nair and a relative of the Zamorin. The young man spent three years (1513-1516) in Lisbon and learned to read and write Portuguese. He became popular with King Manuel. and he got baptised with the name Dom João da Cruz. On March 12, 1515, he was knighted, made a fidalgo (a noble), and along with the title of nobility received the habit of the Order of Christ and a life grant that went with it.

Sometime between 1515 and 1518, hostilities were renewed when the Portuguese attempted to assassinate the Zamorin.

João da Cruz returned to Calicut from Lisbon in 1516. The Zamorin dismissed him from his service as he had changed religion and appropriated some properties of da Cruz.

At that time, private trade was thriving in the Portuguese settlements. To earn his livelihood by trading, da Cruz obtained a loan of 7400 pardaos from the Portuguese feitoria of Calicut. Since he occupied a privileged position as a knight of the Order of Christ, he received the necessary licences to export pepper and ginger to Portugal for three years till the Portuguese crown officially monopolized spice trade in 1520.

In 1521, the ship carrying his cargo drowned and he was unable to repay his loans.

In 1525, the Portuguese crown gave João da Cruz permission to send 100 quintals of pepper and 30 quintals of ginger to Cambay.

From 1516 until this time the Zamorin had extracted 35,000 pardaos from  João da Cruz for becoming a Christian in Portugal.

João da Cruz shifted his residence from Calicut to Cochin probably against the background of the strained relationship between the Portuguese and the Zamorin. In Cochin, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Portuguese for not having paid back the loan, which then came about 4000 pardaos.

However still hopeful he placed certain requests before the Portuguese crown that would safeguard his entrepreneurial activities, and which would ultimately help him to improve his financial position. In one of his letters, he expresses a variety of desires:

  1. The post of captain and factor of Quilon, which, if conferred upon him, would enable him to prevent pepper-smuggling to Vijayanagara kingdom;
  2. The monopoly right of selling horses to Rey Grande (king of Cape Comorin), to the king of Travancore, to the kingdom of Tumbichchi Nayak and to the kingdom of Vettumperumal who resided in Kayattar and the neighbouring principalities which were involved in wars with Vijayanagara and Bijapur;
  3. The office for collecting the tribute of the Pearl Fishery Coast which was lying in the territory of Rey Grande (king of Cape Comorin).

The Portuguese crown granted João da Cruz only his second request.

In the first quarter of the 16th century, the Paravars of the Pearl Fishery Coast paid a small tax to the state for permission to scour the deep for pearls. This contribution which was paid to the Pandya kings till then came to be shared by the two powers between whom the coast was divided namely King Chera Udaya Martanda, the king of Travancore who annexed the southern half of the coastal territory and the Vanga Tumbichi Nayak, who possessed himself to the north.

In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Paravas had to contend with the demands of a variety of rulers. Both the Chera and the Pandiya kings were not far away. The king of Vijayanagar still claimed a rather shadowy sovereignty as far as Cape Comorin, though effective power was exercised by Visvanatha Nayakar, who from the city of Madurai claimed dominion over the northern villages of the Paravas. A new crisis appeared on an already complicated scene with the arrival of a race of Moors (Arabs) who made the ancient port of Korkai their headquarters. These Moors who had considerable experience in pearl-fishing started monopolising the traditional pearl harvesting trade of the Paravars. They converted many Paravars to Islam and married Paravar women.

In 1516, the tax dues for the Pearl Fishery were farmed out by a Muslim who became the virtual master of the coast. This personage must have been a descendant of Takiuddin Abdur Rahman (See The Paravars: Chapter 5 – The Pre-Muhammadan Period). Duarte Barbosa, a Portuguese factor at Cochin in the early sixteenth century mentions in Volume II of his book “The Book of Duarte Barbosa“:

A wealthy and distinguished Moor has long held the farm of the duties levied on seed-pearls. He is so rich and powerful that all the people of the land honour him. as much as the King. He executes judgment and justice on the Moors without interference from the King.

The fishers for seed-pearl (the Hindu Paravars) fish all the week for themselves save on Friday when they work for the owner of the boat, and at the end of the season, they fish for a whole week for this Moor, whereby he possesses a great abundance of seed-pearl.

The Portuguese managed to wrest out a share of the profits by way of a tribute from the local kings against threats of attack.

In 1523, Joao Froles, appointed as the first captain and Factor of the  Pearl Fishery Coast was sent to Tuticorin to take control of the area. All dwellers on the Pearl Fishery Coast became aware of the new power that had emerged in their midst.

Joao Froles succeeded in farming out 1,500 cruzados as the tax dues for the Pearl Fishery for a year. The Muslims who couldn’t farm out that much retaliated by attacking the poor Paravars. In consequence, the Portuguese had to maintain a flying squadron to ward off the attacks of the Muslims.

From 1527, the Hindu Paravars were being threatened by the privateers of the Zamorin of Calicut aided by the offshore Arab fleets, the local Tamil Muslim Paravars, and by the Rajah of Madurai who wanted to wrest control of Tirunelveli and the Pearl Fishery Coast from the hands of the Rajah of Travancore. In due course, the Rajas themselves joined the Moors, anticipating great advantages from the pearl trade which the Moors carried on, and from their power at sea.

In 1528, following a defeat of the Moors by the Portuguese, retribution had to be paid to the Portuguese. The Muslims coerced the Hindu Paravas to pay additional tributes during the pearl fisheries. Soon the oppressed Hindu Paravars were reduced to virtual slavery, and for the first time in history, the Paravars lost their right over the pearl fishery.

In 1532, during a pearl fishery near Tuticorin, a Muslim man taunted a Parava woman selling homemade savouries. She went home immediately and told her husband of what happened. The enraged husband accosted the Muslim. During the ensuing brawl, the Muslim cut off an earlobe of the Parava who wore large ornaments on his ears.

This incident provoked the Paravars who felt that the honour of the entire Parava community compromised. After some days of secret plotting, the Paravars without warning attacked the Muslim quarters of Tuticorin. The rest took off from the city for their lives and committed themselves to their little boats. These events sparked off a civil war between the Paravars and the Muslims.

According to a report dated December 19, 1669, written by Van Reede and Laurens Pyh, respectively Commandant of the coast of Malabar and Canara and senior merchant and Chief of the sea-ports of Madura:

“they (the Paravars) fell upon the Moors, and killed some thousands of them, burnt their vessels, and remained masters of the country, though much in fear that the Moors, joined by the pirates of Calicut, would rise against them in revenge.”

The revenge of the Muslims was terrible. The Muslims of the neighbouring towns joined the fracas. The rich and mighty Muslims then swore to exterminate the Hindu Paravars. They collected an army, made an alliance with all the petty rulers of the neighbouring areas who were dependent on the Viceroy of Madura, and advanced against Tuticorin by land and sea. The Nayaks of Vembar and Vaipar, far from joining this confederacy with the Muslims, defended the Paravar territories.

The Muslims offered a bounty of five panams per Paravar head to the mercenaries most of whom belonged to the Maravar caste.

The gold coin called panam was of light 15-carat gold. It was the main monetary medium used for exchanges in Calicut, Cannanore and Cochin, where 19 panams formed one Portuguese cruzado.

The Paravars of Tuticorin and its vicinity were pitilessly massacred on this occasion. The persecution lasted for some considerable time. As the heads of Paravars piled up, the bounty paid to the mercenaries was reduced to one panam.

The Hindu Paravas had nowhere to go and were in a dire situation with no hope for the future. Some writers feel that a little exaggeration can be seen in these accounts since the Muslims who had the pearl fisheries under their control needed the Hindu Paravars to eventually go out to sea and continue with their occupation and pay them the taxes for harvesting pearl oysters.

The Hindu Paravars were much in fear that the Moor pirates of Calicut might help the local Paravar Muslims to take revenge on them. In this situation, the Paravars thought of the Portuguese, the new power that had mushroomed amidst them, and seek their protection.

.

Next: The Paravars: Chapter 10 – Conversion to Catholicism

Previous: The Paravars: Chapter 8 – Arrival of the Portuguese in India

.

RELATED ARTICLES

 

 

Arabs, Portugal., Portuguese, T. V. Antony Raj Fernando, This is Life, tvaraj, Zamorin

The Paravars: Chapter 8 – Arrival of the Portuguese in India

12 Comments

Myself

 

 

 

By T. V. Antony Raj Fernando

.

Previous: The Paravars: Chapter 7 – The Hazardous Occupation of Harvesting Pearl Oysters

.

For decades, Europeans including the Portuguese were looking for a sea route to India from Europe while encountering attacks from the Islamic naval forces, losing thousands of lives and dozens of vessels lost in shipwrecks. The Red Sea trade route was monopolised by Islamic rulers from which they earned immense revenues. In the fifteenth century, the mantle of Christendom’s resistance to Islam fell on the Portuguese who had inherited the Genoese tradition of exploration.

Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) was obsessed with the idea of finding a sea route from one ocean to another. He was also keen to find a way to circumvent the Muslim domination of the eastern Mediterranean and all the routes that connected India to Europe.

.

Pope Nicholas V by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)

.

In 1454, the stage was set for the Portuguese incursions into the waters surrounding India when Pope Nicholas V conferred a papal bull on Henry which gave him the right to navigate the “sea to the distant shores of the Orient”, more specifically “as far as India”, whose inhabitants were to be brought to help Christians “against the enemies of the faith”. And the pagans, wherever they might be who were “not yet afflicted with the plague of Islam” were to be given the “knowledge of the name of Christ.” By the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), all new territories were divided between Spain and Portugal.

In 1487, the Portuguese navigator, Bartholomew Dias, rounded the “Cape of Good Hope”, and so opened the sea route to India.

On July 8, 1497, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (c. 1460s – December 24, 1524), left Lisbon. with a fleet of four ships and a crew of 170 men. On May 20, 1498, his fleet arrived in Kappadu near Kozhikode (Calicut) on Malabar Coast. He was the first European mariner to reach India by sea.

The sovereign of Calicut, Manavikraman Raja, the Saamoothiri (or Zamorin) of Kozhikode (Calicut), greeted Vasco da Gama with traditional hospitality, that included a grand procession of at least 3,000 armed Nairs.

Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (1469-1524) is received by Manavikraman Raja, the Saamoothiri (or Zamorin) of Kozhikode (Calicut)
Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama  is received by Manavikraman Raja, the Saamoothiri (or Zamorin) of Kozhikode (Calicut). Illustration from “The History of China and India”, by Miss Corner, (Dean and Co, London, 1847). (Credit: Heritage Images)

.

Vasco da Gama brought gifts from King Dom Manuel of Portugal to the Zamorin: four capotes or cloaks of scarlet cloth, six hats, four branches of corals, twelve almasares (we do not know what those were; might have been a veils with fringes used to decorate altars), a box with seven brass vessels, a chest of sugar, two barrels of oil and a cask of honey. There was no gold or silver.

The Zamorin and his court roared with laughter at the trivial gifts offered by the Portuguese. The Muslim merchants in Calicut who considered the Portuguese as their rival suggested that Vasco da Gama was just an ordinary pirate and not a royal ambassador.

Despite the objections of the Arab merchants who were already trading in Calicut, Gama managed to secure a letter of concession for trading rights from the Zamorin. However, Vasco da Gama’s request to leave a factor behind him in charge of the merchandise he could not sell was turned down by the Zamorin who instead ordered that da Gama pay customs duty in gold like any other trader.

The Zamorin’s officials detained a few Portuguese agents of da Gama as security for payment which strained the relationship between the Zamorin and Vasco da Gama. Annoyed by this royal constraint, Vasco da Gama kidnapped a few Nairs and sixteen Mukkuva fishermen.

Somehow, probably by stealing,  da Gama filled the holds of his ships with loot, mostly spices, worth sixty times the cost of the expedition.

In spite of all these shortcomings, Vasco da Gama’s ships finally reached Lisbon on either August 29, September 8 or September 18, 1499 (sources differ).

On September 13, 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral, a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer often regarded as among the first Europeans to discover Brazil reached Calicut. He traded pepper and other spices. After negotiations, he established a feitoria (factory/trading post) in Calicut.

Instigated by the Arb merchants, the locals conducted a surprise attack on the Portuguese feitoria at Calicut resulting in the death of more than fifty Portuguese. Outraged by the attack on the feitoria, Cabral seized ten Arab merchant ships anchored in the harbour and killed about six hundred of their crew. After confiscating their cargo he burned the ships. He then ordered his ships to bombard Calicut for an entire day in retaliation for the violation of the agreement.

On October 30, 1502, Vasco da Gama arrived at Calicut for the second time with 15 ships and 800 men and signed a treaty with the willing ruler. This time, Gama made a request to expel all Muslims (Arabs) from Calicut but his call was vehemently turned down. So, Gama bombarded the city of Calicut and captured several rice vessels. He returned to Portugal in September 1503.

On March 25, 1505, Francisco de Almeida was appointed Viceroy of India. He left Portugal with a fleet of 22 vessels with 1,500 men.

On September 13, 1505, Francisco de Almeida reached Anjadip Island, where he immediately started the construction of Fort Anjediva. And then with the permission of the friendly ruler of Cannanore, he started building St. Angelo Fort at Cannanore, on October 23.

When Francisco de Almeida reached Cochin on October 31, 1505, he learned that the Portuguese traders at Quilon had been killed. He sent his son Lourenço de Almeida with 6 ships, who destroyed 27 Calicut vessels in the harbour of Quilon. Almeida took up residence in Cochin. He strengthened the Portuguese fortifications of Fort Manuel on Cochin.

The Zamorin of Calicut assembled a large fleet of 200 ships to oppose the Portuguese. However, in March 1506, Lourenço de Almeida was victorious in a sea battle at the entrance to the harbour of Cannanore which was an important setback for the fleet of the Zamorin.

In Cannanore, however, a new ruler, hostile to the Portuguese and friendly with the Zamorin, attacked the Portuguese garrison, leading to the Siege of Cannanore.

In 1507 the arrival of Tristão da Cunha’s squadron strengthened Almeida’s mission.

In March 1508, a Portuguese squadron under command of Lourenço de Almeida was attacked by a joint Mameluk Egyptian and Gujarat Sultanate fleet at Chaul and Dabul respectively, led by admirals Mirocem and Meliqueaz in the Battle of Chaul. Lourenço de Almeida lost his life after a fierce fight in this battle.

.

Next: The Paravars: Chapter 9 – Seeking Help from the Portuguese

Previous: The Paravars: Chapter 7 – The Hazardous Occupation of Harvesting Pearl Oysters

.

RELATED ARTICLES

Buddhists, Catalan, Catalonia, Catholic, Ceylon, Paravar, Pereira, Perera, Portuguese, Surname, T. V. Antony Raj Fernando, This is Life

The Origin of the Name ‘Perera/Pereira’

4 Comments

Myself 

By T. V. Antony Raj Fernando

.

.

Catalan is a Western Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catatonia, in northeastern modern Spain. Pereira is a topographic name derived from Catalan Perera meaning ‘pear tree’.

There are other variants for Perera in the Iberian Peninsula meaning “pear tree”:

In Catalan: Perer
In Extremadura, Salamanca and Valladolid: Perero, Pereros
In Portugal: Pereira, Pereyra, Pereyras, Das Pereiras, Paraira 
In the Pyrenees: Pereire, Pereyre
In Galicia: Pereiro, Pereiros

The Portuguese colonists introduced the name Pereira to the Goanese in Goa and to the Paravars in Tamil Nadu in India.

Perera and its variants are common surnames in Portugal, Brazil, India,  Sri Lanka, and most of the Lusosphere (regions where people speak Portuguese, either as native speakers or as learners).

After Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa in February 1510, the Portuguese converted the Hindu Goanese to Catholicism and gave them Portuguese names such as Fernando, da Souza, Pereira and so on.

In 1516, when the Hindu Tamil Paravars of the Pearl Fishery Coast in Southern India sought the help of the Portuguese to circumvent the oppression of the Middle Eastern Arab Merchants and their Muslim Paravar brethren, one of the stipulations laid out by the Portuguese was that the Paravars should convert to Catholicism.

The Middle Eastern Arab Merchants getting wind of these negotiations dispatched two envoys to Cochin to bribe the Portuguese Captain Pero Vaz de Amaral, to not allow conversion of the Paravars to Catholicism, but Pero Vaz refused to do so.

Pero Vaz immediately arranged for the baptism of 85 Paravar leaders in Cochin by the Vicar General, Miguel Vaz, probably in December 1535. The Paravar leaders were given  Portuguese names as surnames. Pereira was one of the names given to the   Paravars as a surname.

In 1505, Lourenço de Almeida, a Portuguese explorer and military commander made his first voyage to Ceylon and established a settlement there. From then on, the Catalan name “Perera” became one of the surnames among both the Catholics and Buddhist Sinhalese.

.

RELATED ARTICLES