Rulers of India: Albuquerque

f Musalman conquerors, and the Hindu Rájá of Vijayanagar or Narsingha was the most powerful potentate in the South of India. The monarchs and chieftains whom the Portuguese first encountered were Hindus. Muhammadan merchants indeed controlled the commerce of their dominions, but they had no share in the government; and one of the ruling and military classes consisted, on the Malabar coast, where the Portuguese first touched, of Nestorian Christians.

The concentration of all commerce in the hands of the believers in the Prophet was not favourably regarded by the wisest of the Hindu rulers, who were therefore inclined to heartily welcome any competitors for their trade. The condition of the Malabar coast at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese was {18} particularly favourable to the Portuguese endeavours, and, had they been inspired with nineteenth-century instead of with sixteenth-century ideas of religion and morality, a prosperous and peaceful commerce might easily have sprung up be