Vijayanagar

I am glad to edit these chronicles of Paes and Nuniz for National Book Trust, India, for the second time.

These two accounts of Paes and Nuniz were discovered and brought to light, for the first time, by Senhor David Lopes in Dos Reis de Bisnaga, in Lisbon in the year 1897. Later, in 1900 Sewell published an English translation of these chronicles for which he has consulted the manu script in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris along with Senhor David Lopes' work. In the introduction of his work A Forgotten Empire Sewell writes: "The two Portuguese chronicles, a translation of which is now for the first time offered to the public, are contained in a vellum-bound folio volume in the Biblithèque Nationale in Paris, amongst the manuscripts of which institution it bears the designation 'Port. No. 65'.....The first pair of original papers was sent with a covering letter by someone at Goa to someone in Europe. The names are not given, but there is every reason for believing that the recipient was the historian Barros in Lisbon". Further, Sewell strengthens his views by saying that his friend Fergusson has pointed out to him, I quote, "that in the third Decada (liv. vi. cap.ii), after quoting some passages almost verbatim from this chronicle of Nuniz regarding Vijayanagar, Barros writes "According to two letters which our people had two or three years afterwards from these two men....This renders it certain that Barros saw these letters" (A Forgotten Empire, 1962, introduction pp. iii-v). Probably, these chronicles were sent to Lisbon somewhere in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

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