Account of the Numbers, Births, and Deaths of the Christian Inhabitants appertaining to the Parish Church of St. Michel, at Mahim in the Island of Bombay, from January 1800 to January 1810. No. V. List of the Christian Inhabitants of the Church of Our Lady of Salvation; of the Births, Deaths, and Living, from January of the Year 1800 to the 31st of December of the Year 1810. Abstract of the Births, Death's, and Living of the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary TRANSACTIONS OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBA Y. I. AN ACCOUNT OF THE FESTIVAL OF MAMANGOM AS CELEBRATED ON THE COAST OF MALABAR. By FRANCIS WREDE, Esq. (afterwards Baron Wrede.) Communicated by the Honourable JONATHAN DUNCAN. Read in the Literary Society of Bombay on the 31st December, 1804. IN Hamilton's account of the East Indies, volume i. chapter xxv, printed at Edinburgh in the year 1727, there is mention of a custom in Malabar, which he describes in the following words: "And a new custom is followed by the modern Samorins, that a jubilee is proclaimed throughout his dominions at the end of twelve years, and a tent is pitched for him in a spacious plain, and a great feast is celebrated for ten or twelve days with mirth and jollity, guns firing night and day; so at the end of the feast any four of the guests that have a mind to gain a crown by a desperate action, in fighting their way through 30 or 40,000 of his guards, and kill the Samorin in his tent, he that kills him succeeds him in his empire. "In anno 1695 one of those jubilees happened, and the tent pitched B near Pennany, a sea-port of his about fifteen leagues to the southward of Calicut. There were but three men that would venture on that desperate action, who fell in with sword and target among the guards, and after they had killed and wounded many, were themselves killed. One of the desperadoes had a nephew of fifteen or sixteen years of age, who kept close by his uncle in the attack on the guards; and when he saw him fall, the youth got through the guards into the tent, and made a stroke at his majesty's head, and had certainly dispatched him if a large brass lamp which was burning over his head had not marred the blow; but before he could make another he was killed by the guards, and I believe the same Samorin reigns yet. I chanced to come that time along the coast, and heard guns for two or three days and nights successively." the The existence of the extraordinary observance alluded to by captain Hamilton will be found in some degree explained in the further account now delivered, as composed by Francis Wrede, esq. in the year 1793, at which period I was also on that part of the coast, and have no doubt of the general accuracy of the description then drawn up by Mr. Wrede; with whose assent the present copy has been transcribed for the Society. It is needless to add, that under the British government such an appeal to arms cannot be admitted; neither has, I believe, the festival been celebrated since Malabar became part of the British dominions in India. An Account of the Festival of Mamangom, as written by FRANCIS WREDĖ, Esq. in the Year 1793. This feast is celebrated every twelve years at Tirnavay, near the pagoda of that place dedicated to the god Sheeven; it lasts twenty-eight days, and attracts a prodigious concourse of people from all parts of India; it consists in a great many religious rites, military games, comedies, &c. and a splendid fair. The institution of this feast seems to be of the most remote antiquity, at least prior to the government of the Perumals, who used to preside over it; after Cheruma the last Perumal's abdication, Tirnavay made part of the Vellaterra rajah's country, and the mamangom was, of course, celebrated under the auspices of the Wallawuna |