The Barkur Manuscript

The Barkur Manuscript is an old account of the Captivity narrated by a captive who survived or escaped from exile. The copy reproduced here is an English translation from the Kannada original, published by Fr Moore in Mangalore in 1905 in The History of the Diocese of Mangalore. The narrative appears to have been written by a Christian from Barkur, a town about 7 kms from Brahmavar, who served in the lashkar-i-ahmadi and escaped circa 1789. ALP D’Souza suggests that Fr Moore used George Vas’s translation from the way in which Vas wrote the capital letter B. Fr Moore, consequently recorded Mable instead of Babli as the name of the martyr mentioned in the narrative. The church at Barkur was repaired by those who had escaped deportation and was in existence when Fra Paolino Bartolomeo, an Austrian priest belonging to the Propaganda Fide, passed that way in 1794 (Moore 1905: 247).