Gaspar Correa

Gaspar Correia (1492 – c. 1563 in Goa) was a Portuguese historian considered a Portuguese Polybius. He authored Lendas da Índia (Legends of India), one of the earliest and most important works about Portuguese rule in Asia.

Quotes

• The historian Gaspar Correa describes what da Gama did next:
  When all the Indians had been thus executed [sic], he ordered their feet to be tied together, as they had no hands with which to untie them: and in order that they should not untie them with their teeth, he ordered them to strike upon their teeth with staves, and they knocked them down their throats; and they were put on board, heaped on top of each other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them; and he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over them, and the sails to be set for the shore, and the vessel set on fire … and the small vessel with the friar [Brahmin], with all the hands and ears, was also sent ashore, without being fired.
  • Empires of the Monsoon; The History of the Indian Ocean and its invaders; by Richard Hall; Harper Collins; pages 575; chapter 22.

• He (Da Gama) then ordered the upper and lower lips of the Brahman to be cut off, so that all his teeth shewed, and he ordered the ears of a dog on board the ship to be cut off, and he had them fastened and sewn with many stitches on the Brahman instead of his, and he sent him in the Indian boat to return to Calicut.
  • as attributed in [1]