Vasco da Gama "discovers" India....Long after the Indians discovered the place and messed it up.....
Lorenzo de Almeida gets
lost!...It is 1505!(The year, not the time!)
| HISTORY
OF SRILANKA Part3 Abridged |
HISTORY 1 THE
ANURADHAPURA HERALD HISTORY
2 THE
PORTUGUESE OBSERVERQUEEN
ANULAIDIOT
KINGS |
| Gyan's Srilanka MADPAGE tm...A major source of useless information on SriLanka | "Oh dearie me a major undertakings!"...Times of Baroda |
|
In
1497 a young Portuguese lad by the name of Vasco da Gama
went on a sailing holiday. (It was his gap year.) He rounded off the
Cape of Good Hope and managed to find India. At least he was aiming
for India and found India ....(unlike a certain Chris Columbus!).. The date is the
15th of November 1505. Seeing
that the whole place was full of "bloody foreigners" Lorenzo
and the boys let off a few cannon....just for fun..! The locals had
never seen such behaviour....allright they did fight a bit amongst
themselves and with their darker skinned bretheren of Yalpanam
(Jaffna), but that was with swords and spears and arrows and elephants
and boiling pitch..but this was real live ammo! Take me to your leader! Lorenzo sort of liked the place and wandered along the harbour and bumped into a native who happened to be a local tout."Take me to your leader" said Lorenzo.The native didn't understand Portuguese; so he rotated his head from side to side and rolled his eyeballs and flashed a set of betel-stained teeth. Lorenzo said "Are
you a bloody moron man?". The native rotated his head violently and rolled his etc and said "F***"!?. Everybody had a good laugh. Lorenzo said "That's a bloody funny accent mate!" and patted the native on the back and gave him a gold coin (actually a copper coin painted gold..) Everybody laughed.
Friendly relations were established. Guided tour Sore
heads next morning. Tour guides/touts decide might as well make the
most of this. Can you hear the drums, Fernando? Catholic
missionaries arrive and put an end to the fun. Go about "converting"
everybody. Build churches..Force the drunken Portuguese sailors to
attend mass..Natives impressed by this..They serve wine at mass?!..
Free?!.....Might as well go for mass in the morning and then go to the
tavern at night!.. No you can't, you need to be baptised first! Just
needs water and a few prayers! Painless! |
| The
Portuguese were rotten spellers! This was probably because they had no letter U then! For example: COLVMBO (Colombo or Cola Amba Tota), NEGVMBO ( Negombo or Meegomuwa), CALATVRE (Kalutara, my home town), PANATVRE (Panadure), Candea (Kandy or Kande Uda Rata).... |
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Serious note: The date of the first visit of the Portuguese is correct as given above and Lorenzo (Dom Lourenço de Almeida) did get blown off course in the Indian Ocean. They were sailing in a fleet of eight caravels and were blown off course near the Maldive Islands by the monsoons.They made first landfall at Galle but stopped only long enough to replenish stocks of water and food. They then sailed on to Colombo. The RAJAVALIYA describes the visit thus:
The Visit To Kotte The natives took three days to take the Portuguese to Kotte which was only 6 miles from Colombo.This is probably the first recorded instance of tourists being taken for a ride! According to Codrington it is highly unlikely that the Portuguese were taken in by this trick. In a bright sunny place like Srilanka, close to the equator, it is easy to get bearings from the sun. However, the story has passed into the Sinhala forkelore and language in the form of the saying; "Parangiya Kotte giya wagé" (Translation:"Just like the Portuguese went to Kotte!" ) and is used to describe a situation where complicated methods are employed instead of the simple, straightforward method. It is generally acknowledged that the Portuguese only wanted to establish trade. They offered protection for the Kotte king.The forts were built mostly to repel the Dutch, the French and the British who started to roam the waters very soon afterwards. Opinions however differ, as to the actual intentions of the Portuguese... Mrs R.Fernando (nee de Silva) always disagrees with my views! The Coat Of Arms The rock with the carved Portuguese coat-of-arms was discovered in 1875 near the south-west breakwater of the harbour during expansion of the harbour (ref: Brohier). It was left in-situ for a while in the Customs premises and later moved a few hundred yards to Gordon Gardens of the Queen's House. Up until the late seventies visitors were allowed to Gordon Gardens. The Queen's House became the President's House and as such has sadly been a restricted area for a number of years. Fernandos of Srilanka Approx 10 percent of the population of Srilanka are named Fernando. Most of the Fernandos are of the Karawe caste and were fisherfolk originally, although most are too proud to admit to that!.(Grandad Fernando had a fishing boat!) Some are from other castes (will explain later). A large proportion of the Fernandos were originally Warnakulasuriyas. Some of us still retain the name Warnakulasuriya in our birth certificates and other legal documents.... but Fernando is easier to spell! The Portuguese Heritage
1.Codrington, H.W., A SHORT HISTORY OF CEYLON, 1947, Macmillan and Co.,London. 2.Brohier, R.L., CHANGING FACE OF COLOMBO, 1984, Lake House Printers and Publishers Ltd, Colombo. |
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HISTORY 1 THE
ANURADHAPURA HERALD HISTORY
2 THE
PORTUGUESE OBSERVERQUEEN
ANULAIDIOT
KINGS |
© GYAN FERNANDO 2001 First published on the 24th of Feb 2001.
