156 called Ceilão by the Mouros and gentiles. All the zambucos from Malabar pass along it on their way to Coromandel, and every year many are lost on the shoals, because the channel is very narrow. In the year that the Admiral came to settle India for the second time, so many ships and zambucos from Malabar sank here that twelve thousand men drowned, by dint of the fact that they had come with the purpose of expelling the Portuguese navy from India, without letting it load its cargo. Kilakarai Returning to the mainland from the island of Ceylon and rounding Cape Camorim, one comes upon a country belonging to the King of Quilon and other lords who are his subjects. It is called Kilakarai, where there are many large gentile villages and a large number of seaports, where many local Mouros live; they use small vessels called sampans to sail in. Mouros from Malabar come here to trade, bringing goods from Cambay. Certain horses are worth a lot of money here; they take on board rice and cloths bound for Malabar. There is a gentile temple in this province of Kilakarai with an idol which is highly revered here; every twelve years, they hold a huge celebration, to which all the gentiles bring pardons and they believe they will be saved, as if it were a jubilee; this temple owns many lands which bring in a lot of revenue. They are ruled by a king, whose reign will not exceed twelve years from one jubilee to the next, if he lives that long, and at the end of those twelve years, on the day of this great gathering and festival, a very large number of people assemble, where a very large sum of money is spent feeding an infinite number of Brahmins. The king has a platform erected, which is draped with many silk cloths and on the day itself, he goes to wash in a tank, with a great deal of playing and ceremonies. He then goes to pray to the idol, and after that, he climbs up on to the wooden platform and there in front of everyone, they take some very sharp knives and he starts to cut
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