FIRST PORTUGUESE SETTLEMENTS IN INDIA 77 recognized by Hindu geography. After Kerala broke up, its largest fragment, Vijayanagar, was reported with Eastern exaggeration to have " three hundred ports, each one of which is equal to Calicut. " The Portuguese were themselves on so small a scale that they may well be excused if they overestimated the importance of the princelets with whom they came in contact. Their whole view of their territorial conquests within India was, in truth, out of perspective. Affonso de Albuquerque in 1507, when the Portu- guese had but two or three little forts on the Indian coast, spoke of his master in diplomatic correspondence as " King of Portugal and Lord "of the Indies." The Indian titles assumed by the Portuguese sovereigns, and further exaggerated by their courtiers, were yet more absurdly grandiose. The overestimates of the Lusiad may plead the license of poetry, but even the Lisbon dictionary-maker rises in flights of fancy when he touches an Indian word. The name of that respect- able coast-chief, the Zamorin, is explained by Bluteau to mean " Supreme emperor and God upon earth." The Portuguese conquests on the Indian continent were never equal in extent to one of the hundred divisions of the Moghul empire, nor ever contained the average population of a single one of the 250 British Indian districts of our day. The real " India Portugueza r was the dominion of the Eastern seas, a mighty achieve- ment for so small a nation. The isolated coast-rajas of Malabar were not only on a scale with which Portugal could fairly cope, but
