MARATHI RECORDS FOR GOA'S HISTORY

An American anthropologist of Jewish origin, Dr. Paul Axelrod (e-mail: Axelrod@mac.ripon.edu) of Ripon College in Wisconsin ( 300 Seward St., Ripon, Wisconsin 54871, USA), spent some time in Goa recently along with his wife Michelle Fuerch ( specialising in Romance languages) to consult the Marathi records of Goa Historical Archives. He could glean from these records in Modi (cursive) script and belonging to the 17th century and later of the New Conquests of Goa, that the Persian cultural influence in Goan villages under Adil Shahi rule was quite significant. Even within the Old Conquests, he could discover continuing land-holding by the Hindus, despite the fact that most research in the past tended to minimise the importance of this fact. Thus, for instance, Dr. Axelrod could find that in the 17th-18th centuries, nearly 70-80 % Hindu land-holders in the village of Elá , in the shadow of the capital city of Portuguese Goa. Probably, the need of Hindu services (as already substanciated for the 17th century in T. R. de Souza's «Medieval Goa», Delhi 1979) enabled them to continue holding land, despite much official legislation to the contrary. Yet another interesting statement of Dr. Axelrod (reported recently by Mr. Fredrick Noronha on Goa-net) suggests migrations of Goans to places like Kochi, even before the Portuguese take-over, and is explained as due to Hindu sectarian differences. Dr. Paul Axelrod believes that the Modi records of Goa have been insufficiently utilised by past researchers, except for some diplomatic studies. Incidentally, Prof. A. R. Kulkarni (former Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Professor of History of the Pune University, and just retired as Vice-Chancellor of the Tilak Vidyapeeth in Pune) has a study entitled «Marathi records on village communities in Goa archives» in «The Indian Economic and Social History Review», XIX, n.3 &4, pp. 377-85. It is very important to note that Marathi records in Goa were written in old Kannada script, until the Portuguese decreed against the use of this script in the Old Conquests of Goa. The last extant records in the script in Salcete dates back to 1629. We have two books of Mr. G. Ghantkar, namely «An Introduction to Goan Marathi records in Halakannada Script», Margão, 1973, and «History of Goa through Gõykanadi Script», Panjim: Goa Historical Archives, 1993. This second volume contains trnascriptions into modern Marathi script of 149 documents belonging to the years 1571-1629. No worthwhile reconstruction of Goan village life without consulting these documents is really possible. Doc. 44, for instance, refers to the people of Aldona who had fled from the Portuguese occupied territory with the fear of being converted, but they decided to come back and accept Christianity on condition that their confiscated lands would be returned to them (January 15, 1605). The language of the documents is Marathi, but with a good mixture of Konkani spoken by the people, and even with a mingling of words adapted from the newly learnt Portuguese language.

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