The Moghul, page 50
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Father Manoel Pinheiro's clean-shaven face was grim and his lipsset tightly against the brisk air as he pushed a path through thecrowded alley, headed toward the riverside palace of Nadir Sharif.Around him large black cauldrons of frying bread filled the dawn withthe aroma of oil and spice. He had slipped from the mission house atfirst light and, clasping his peaked black hat tightly over hisforehead, he had tried to melt inconspicuously among the rattlingbullock carts and noisy street vendors. Now he paused for breath andwatched as a large white cow licked the few grains of rice from thebegging bowl of a dozing leper. The image seemed to capture all thedespair of India, and he suddenly felt himself overwhelmed by theenormity of the Church's
burden. Before he could move on, a crowd of chanting Hindus jostled himagainst a wall as they poured into a small, garishly decorated templebrimming with poly-colored heathen idols. On either side Hindu fakirssat listlessly, long white hair streaming down over their streakedfaces, their limpid eyes devoid of God's understanding. He shook hishead sadly as he made the sign of the cross over them, and found hisheart near bursting.
On every hand, he told himself, the fields are ripe unto harvest, theflocks wanting a keeper. For every soul in this forgotten land we bringto God and the Church, a hundred, nay a thousand, are born into eternaldarkness, damned forever. Our task is overwhelming, even with God'shelp.
He thought of the Holy Church, the Society of Jesus, and their longyears of disappointment in India. But now, at last, it seemed theirhopes and prayers might be nearing fulfillment. After all the years ofhumiliation and ignominy, there seemed a chance, a genuine chance, thatArangbar, the Great Moghul himself, would at last consent to bebaptized into the Holy Church. After him, all of India would surelysoon follow.
Father Pinheiro crossed himself again, and prayed silently that Godwould make him a worthy instrument of His will.
The burden of India was by now a Jesuit legend. It had been taken upwhen the first mission came to the court of Akman over three decadesbefore. And even now the pagan fields of India remained, in many ways,the greatest challenge of the Society of Jesus and the Holy Church.
India had, it was true, been held in the grip of Portuguese sea powerfor many years before the first mission arrived in Agra. But Portuguesearms and trade had not served the work of the Church. They had servedthe greed of Portuguese merchants and the coffers of Portugueseroyalty. The lost souls of India were denied the Grace of the HolyChurch.
Then, in 1540, a priest named Ignatius Loyola, once a nobleman and asoldier, founded the Society of Jesus, whose dual purpose was to defendthe Holy Church against the Protestant Reformation and begin preachingthe True Faith
to the pagan lands of Asia and the Americas. In 1542 the Society ofJesus reached Portuguese Goa, on the very shores of India, in theperson of Francis Xavier, a close friend of Ignatius Loyola's fromstudent days at the University of Paris.
With Goa as base of operations, the society had immediately pushedfarther eastward, reaching Japan and Macao a few short years later.Paradoxically, it was India itself that had initially eluded theirinfluence. Finally, in 1573, the Great Akman journeyed south andencountered the members of the Society of Jesus for the first time. Hewas awed by their learning and moral integrity, and soon thereafter heposted an envoy to Goa requesting that a Jesuit mission be sent to hiscourt. Three Jesuit fathers traveled to Fatehpur Sekri.
The Jesuits' hopes soared when they were immediately invited to debatethe orthodox Islamic mullahs at Akman's court. The leader of themission, a soft-spoken Italian father with encyclopedic learning, knewthe Quran well in translation and easily refuted the mullahs'absolutist arguments--to the obvious delight of Akman. It was only afterseveral months at Fatehpur Sekri that the three learned fathers beganto suspect that Akman's real purpose in inviting them was to have onhand skilled debaters for entertainment.
Akman may have had scant patience with Islam, but it had grown obvioushe had no desire to become a Christian either. He was an intellectualwho amused himself by questioning the ideas and teachings of allfaiths, with the inevitable result that he always found something ineach to affront his own reason. He was, in fact, beginning to form thenotion that he himself was as great a leader as any of the spiritualteachers he had heard about, and accordingly should simply declarehimself an object of worship. After a decade the three Jesuits finallyconceded their first mission was a failure and abjectly returned toGoa.
Almost a decade later, in 1590, Akman again requested that Jesuitfathers be sent to his court. Once more a mission was sent, and oncemore its members eventually concluded Akman had no real intention ofencouraging Christianity in India. The second mission was alsoabandoned.
There remained some, however, in Goa and in Rome, who believed theGreat Moghul Akman still could be converted. Furthermore, as theProtestant countries began to venture into the Indies, the politicalusefulness of having Portuguese priests near the ruler of India becameincreasingly obvious. Thus, in 1595, a third mission was sent toAkman's court. Father Pinheiro remembered well their instructions upondeparting Goa. They would convert Akman if they could; but equallyimportant now, they would ensure that Portuguese trading interests wereprotected.
The Jesuit fathers drew close to Akman, became valued advisers, andfound themselves being consulted on questions ranging from whetherJesus was the Son of God or merely a Prophet, to the advisability ofsmoking tobacco. Still, the only lasting achievement of the mission wasto extract from Akman a _firman _granting Jesuits the right to freeexercise of the Catholic religion. They wanted his soul, and through itthe soul of India, but the most they ever attained was his protection.He died a royal skeptic, but a sovereign whose religious toleranceshocked the dogmatic sixteenth-century world.
Father Pinheiro paused to study the outline of the Red Fort against themorning sky and listened to the _azan _call to Islamic prayer soundingfrom a nearby mosque. He smiled to think that the schism between therule of Arangbar and the rule of Islam might soon be complete. LikeAkman, Arangbar had never bothered to hide his distaste for the mullahswho flooded his court. He collected Italian paintings of the Virgin forhis palace, even scandalizing the mullahs by hanging one in the _Diwan-i-Am_, and whenever one of the Jesuit fathers journeyed to Goa, therewas always a request for more Christian art. True the Moghul'sunderstanding of blasphemy was erratic, as evidenced by a recentevening in the _Diwan-i-Khas _when, drunk and roaring with laughter,Arangbar had set a wager with the Jesuits on how long he could standwith his arms outstretched as a cross. But then he had built a churchfor the mission, and also provided them a house, which he now visitedever more frequently to secretly indulge his passion for forbiddenpork.
A scant two months before, Arangbar had taken an action that sent themission's hopes soaring. He had summoned the Jesuit fathers to baptizetwo of his young nephews, ordering the boys to become Christians. Themullahs had been outraged, immediately spreading the pernicious rumorhe had done so merely to better remove them from the line ofsuccession. In Goa, however, the mission was roundly congratulated onnearing its goal. If Arangbar became a Christian, many in his court andperhaps eventually all of India would someday follow.
This had all been before the arrival of the English heretic,Hawksworth. At the very moment when Arangbar's mind seemed within theirgrasp, there had now emerged the specter that all their work might beundone. Arangbar had treated the Englishman as though he were qualifiedto speak on theological matters and had even questioned him about themost Holy Sacrament, when the Church's doctrine regarding this Mysteryhad already been fully expounded to him by Father Sarmento himself.Arangbar had listened with seeming interest while the Englishmanproceeded to tell him much that was contrary to the Truth and to Churchteaching. When asked point blank, the Englishman had even denied thatHis Holiness, the pope, should be acknowledged head of the UniversalChurch, going on to characterize His Holiness' political concerns inalmost scatological terms. Father Sarmento, normally the mostforbearing of priests, was nearing despair.
Most disturbing of all, Arangbar had only last week asked theEnglishman by what means the Portuguese fortress at the northern portof Diu could be recaptured by India. The Englishman had confided thathe believed a blockade by a dozen English frigates, supported by anIndian land army of no more than twenty thousand, could force thePortuguese garrison to capitulate from hunger!
Clearly Arangbar was growing eccentric. The English heretic hadbeguiled him and was near to becoming a serious detriment to Portugueseinterests. To make matters worse, there was the latest dispatch fromGoa, which had arrived only the previous evening. Father Pinheiro hadstudied it well into the night, and finally concluded that the time hadcome to stop the Englishman. He also concluded it was time to make thisunmistakably clear to Nadir Sharif. As the situation continued todeteriorate, only the influence of Nadir Sharif could still neutralizethe Englishman.
Father Pinheiro moved on through the jostling street, occasionallyswabbing his brow. And as he looked about him, he began to dream of theday there would be a Christian India. It would be the society'sgreatest triumph. What would it be like? What would Arangbar do tosilence the heretical mullahs? Would the time come when India, likeEurope, would require an Inquisition to purify the sovereignty of theChurch?
One thing was certain. With a Catholic monarch in India, there would beno further English trade, no Dutch trade, no Protestant trade. Thedeclining fortunes of Portuguese commerce at Goa, the Protestantchallenge to Portuguese supremacy in the Indies, would both bepermanently reversed in a single stroke.
The thought heartened him as he looked up to see the sandstone turretsof Nadir Sharif's palace gleaming in the morning sun.
