MANUEL DE FARIA E SOUSA'S FIRST EUROPEAN SYSTEMATIC EXPOSITION OF "HINDUISM" IN THE SECOND VOLUME OF ASIA PORTUGUESA (1640-1674).

Originally planned but not completed in time for the journal's special issue in homage to Pavlo Ritter, this paper seeks to rescue the lengthy textual representation of "Hinduism" in Spanish, completed in 1640 by the Portuguese intellectual Manuel de Faria e Sousa, which was only published in 1674 by Lisbon presses. This study covers the main themes of Faria e Sousa's dissertation, from Hindu cosmogony and myths to the religious practices observed by Catholic missionaries, especially in the Malabar region. The research highlights the sources of Sousa's text and his literary effort to offer to a cult reader auditorium of Spanish a curious and very open systematic digest of the Hindu religion interpreted through Christian parallels and comparisons alongside some erudite mobilization of classic topoi that had been in circulation throughout the European cultural world since the Renaissance. Faria e Sousa explains in the introduction and other marginal notes that his dissertation on the "religion of India" was based on a manuscript written in Portuguese, without authorship, sent from Portugal to Madrid by an influential epochal writer, memorialist, and owner of an extensive library, Manuel Severim de Faria (1584-1655), powerful canon of the Évora dioceses. This Portuguese manuscript of 73 folios still exists in the Évora Public Library, entitled "Tratado dos deuses gentílicos de todo o oriente e dos ritos e cerimónias que usam os Malabares" (Treatise on the Gentile Gods of All the East and on the Rites and Ceremonies Used by the Malabarians), dated from 1618 and attributed to the Jesuit Manuel Barradas (c. 1570-1646), missionary in India and later in Ethiopia. This paper explains that this manuscript's primary source of Faria e Sousa dissertation was a copy of a selected abridged version of a polemic treatise of the Italian Jesuit missionary Giacomo Fenicio (1558-1632), later receiving the title of its first chapter: "Livro da Seita dos Índios Orientais" (East Indian Sect Book). It has circulated in Portuguese among the Jesuit missionaries in India to teach them how to criticize and denounce the "Brahmins' idolatry". The only remaining integral manuscript copy of Fenicio's large text belongs to the British Library (Ms. Sloane 1820) and was published in 1933 in Uppsala by Jarl Charpentier, unfortunately with numerous misreadings and gaps. Faria e Sousa's dissertation on "Hinduism" allows the readers to rescue the non-polemic and descriptive segments of Fenicio's largely unknown work, completing it and rebulbing its anonymous circulation among some Portuguese Jesuits and intellectuals up to reach the pages of Asia Portuguesa. Moreover, Faria e Sousa's text is much more than a simple copy and translation of the manuscript abridging Fenicio's treatise, adding text, comments, and remarks, thus producing an exciting digest of the religious cosmology, mythology, and practices that nowadays we commonly identify as "Hinduism". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]