– Joaquim Magalhães de Castro
To a Portuguese, like Cacela, hearing about grapes certainly attracted his attention and although this fruit did not grow in Bhutan but in another place across the border, “in a town called Compo, which is twenty days away, where make they make wine.
” The area to which the Jesuit refers corresponds to the present-day province of Konpo in eastern Tibet, and there is no record of growing vines there. Cacela also recalls the Chinese products that, via this kingdom of Compo, arrived there, such as silk, gold, porcelain. “Everything comes from that city of Compo, and from there it descends into these parts.” Estevão Cacela also recalls the trade made in Kashmir via Chaparangue “with the lands adjacent to this Kingdom,” namely Tibet, drawing the attention to “the court of Demba Cemba,” king of Utsang, Central Tibet, “the most powerful of the Potent,” and of Lasa, “the city where the Chescamoni Pagoda is,” which is probably the oldest reference in western writings to the famous and revered Jorkang temple in the heart of the Tibetan capital. Such city, Lhasa, Cacela tells us, “is very frequented by yogis and merchants from other parts.” The Jesuit also made a point of emphasizing that in those places, where he and João Cabral were, there was no memory of passing foreigners there, and “they only remember some yogis passing here, but very rarely.” He stressed that from the “Kingdom of the Cooch Bihar comes only captives brought from those who descend from this kingdom to there,” denoting with this phrase that there was a latent conflict between the two kingdoms, which historically proves with the wars between the kings of Cooch Behar and the king of Bhutan. The reference to the traveling yogis is also curious, since they were (and still are today) attracted to Tibet, especially to the region of Mount Kailash and Lake Manasorovar, a large number of Hindu monks, the so-called sadhus, who our Jesuits dubbed plays, or yogis. In fact, these Indian ascetics were one of the main victims of the banditry of those mountains, who after being captured were made slaves. Estevão Cacela also tells us that Bhutan is a little more than a month on the way to Chaparangue, where Father Antonio de Andrade had just established a mission the year before, in 1626, as Cacela tells us in the following passage: “ … and so after we are here we have some news from the priests who are there, not by their way, who seem not to know yet of our arrival in these mountains, but by the lamas, who came from there, and by others who have gone there have already written to the priests three times and together I sent them letters via Goa to send them to your reverence.” Unfortunately, nothing is known about the whereabouts of those letters.
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