ABSTRACT

[151/1] Since I am about to narrate the toils and struggles which my confrères of the Augustinian Brotherhood underwent, during thirteen years’ work of converting the heathen in the Kingdoms of Arracan and Pegu, I must first give some account of the political status of these Kingdoms. I have already described how these Kingdoms abut at Chatigān and Assaram 1 on the vast, powerful empire of the Great Mogol, who intends, as his predecessors had proposed before him, to conquer them and thus become possessed of the White Elephant and the valuable Chanequas of the Tangu, on which subjects I have already dilated at sufficient length; he also intended to invade the wide dominions of Pegu, Siam, and Calamiña 2 through them.