Goa & Gomantak · Western Coastal Strip
No Indian region's periodisation is further from the national one than this coast's. Its ancient period is the Bhoja and Kadamba one on the Zuari and the Mandovi, and it is long. Its medieval period is short and crowded — Delhi in 1312, Vijayanagara from 1370, the Bahmanis in 1469, Bijapur from 1492 — and it ends in 1510, two and a half centuries before European power reached most of the subcontinent. Its modern period is therefore four hundred and thirty-seven years long and runs on Portuguese dates rather than Indian ones. The two that matter most are 1510 and the sequence of annexations between 1763 and 1788, because the line between the Old Conquests and the New still tells you which temple, which kitchen and which script you are standing in. Portuguese rule here did not end when British rule in India ended in 1947. And underneath every one of these regimes, older than all of them and disturbed by none of them, is the gaunkari — the association of hereditary village co-sharers who held and worked the khazan paddy land, whose usages the Portuguese crown recorded in a foral of 1526 and which was administered thereafter as the comunidade. Authority over land in Goa was collective and hereditary, not royal, and that institution rather than any dynasty is the continuous thread of Goan self-government.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The coast's early history is estuarine. Every capital it had stood on a river mouth, because the laterite plateau behind is poor ground and the wealth was in the khazan paddy behind the bunds and in the trade coming up the Mandovi and the Zuari. The Bhojas ruled from Chandrapura, modern Chandor, and are the earliest dynasty for which the region has records. After centuries of Chalukya and Rashtrakuta overlordship, the Kadambas took Chandrapura in 960 and ruled for three and a half centuries, moving their capital to Gopakapattana on the Zuari and making it the principal port of the coast, trading horses and pepper across the Arabian Sea. They patronised Jainism as well as the Shaiva and Vaishnava establishments, and the village comunidades functioned under them exactly as they had before.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| prehistoric | Rock engravings are cut into the laterite riverbed at Usgalimal on the Kushavati, the oldest human record in the region. |
| 3rd century BCE | The coast lies within the Maurya empire under Ashoka. |
| from the 4th century CE | The Bhojas rule from Chandrapura, modern Chandor on the Zuari, the earliest dynasty here for which written records survive. |
| 6th–10th centuries | Chalukya and then Rashtrakuta overlordship, with the Shilaharas holding the coast locally. |
| 960 | Shashthadeva I takes Chandrapura from the Shilaharas and founds the Goa Kadamba line. |
| 1050–1080 | Jayakeshi I expands the kingdom. The capital is later moved to Gopakapattana on the Zuari, which becomes the principal port of the coast. |
| 1265–1310 | Kamadeva, the last Kadamba, rules as the dynasty declines; Gopakapattana is plundered during the campaigns of Malik Kafur. |
Two centuries in which the coast changed hands four times and nobody held it long enough to remake it. Delhi took it in 1312, Vijayanagara in 1370, the Bahmani Sultanate in 1469 and the Adil Shahi sultans of Bijapur in 1492. What each of them wanted was the same thing — the ports, because horses imported from Arabia and the Gulf came ashore here and went up the pass roads to the Deccan, and whoever controlled that traffic controlled the cavalry of the interior. The Adil Shahis developed Ela on the Mandovi, later called Old Goa, as their port for it. Through all of this the gaunkari associations continued to allot the paddy fields, maintain the bunds and fund the village shrine, because none of these rulers had any reason to interfere with a system that delivered the revenue.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1312 | Goa comes under the governance of the Delhi Sultanate. |
| 1370 | Vijayanagara takes the coast and holds it for a century. |
| 1469 | The Bahmani Sultanate takes Goa from Vijayanagara. |
| 1492 | The coast passes to the Adil Shahi sultans of Bijapur, who develop Ela on the Mandovi, later Old Goa, as the port through which horses reach the Deccan. |
| throughout the period | The gaunkari village associations continue to hold and manage the khazan land under each of these rulers in turn, unaltered by any of them. |
Afonso de Albuquerque took the island of Tiswadi from Bijapur in 1510, at the second attempt, and Bardez and Salcete followed by 1544. Those three taluks are the Old Conquests, and over the following decades their temples were dismantled and their endowments transferred, the deities being carried across the Zuari into Ponda and Bicholim and then beyond the Portuguese boundary. That single displacement explains the map a visitor sees today, because when Ponda and the other inland taluks were themselves annexed between 1763 and 1788, Lisbon's religious policy had changed and the shrines that had moved there two centuries earlier were left where they stood. The rest of the modern period is administrative and, from the eighteenth century, increasingly contested — a conspiracy of Goan Catholic clergy and officers in 1787, a Goan appointed to govern the territory in 1835 and removed within three weeks, repeated risings in the hill taluk of Satari through the nineteenth century, a Goan press from 1900, and organised nationalist politics from 1928. Portuguese rule continued past the independence of British India in 1947.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1510 | Afonso de Albuquerque takes Tiswadi from the Adil Shahi sultanate. Having lost it in May, he retakes it on 25 November, and the formal surrender follows on 10 December. |
| 1526 | The Portuguese crown issues a foral recording the usages of the gaunkars, the hereditary co-sharers of the village associations. The institution is administered thereafter as the comunidade and survives as a landholding body. |
| 1542–1560s | The Jesuits arrive in 1542, and by 1544 Bardez and Salcete are held alongside Tiswadi as the Old Conquests. Over the following decades the temples of those taluks are dismantled and their endowments transferred, their deities carried inland into Ponda and Bicholim. |
| 1560–1812 | The Inquisition operates in Goa as a tribunal, established in 1560, suspended between 1774 and 1778, and abolished in 1812. Most of its records were destroyed when it ended. |
| 1739–1740 | Maratha forces attack the Portuguese territory. |
| 1763–1788 | The New Conquests are annexed from the Raja of Sonda, the Desais of Kudal and the Bhonsles. Portuguese religious policy had changed by this date, so the temples that had relocated inland two centuries earlier were now inside Portuguese territory and left undisturbed. |
| 1787 | The conspiracy of the Pintos, a plot by Goan Catholic priests, army officers and members of the Pinto family of Candolim, is disclosed to the authorities before it can act. |
| 14 January – 1 February 1835 | Bernardo Peres da Silva, the only Goan ever appointed to govern Portuguese India, holds the office of Prefect for seventeen days before a military coup removes him and he is deported to Bombay. |
| 1900–1930 | A Goan press develops in Portuguese and Konkani from the founding of O Heraldo in 1900, and in 1930 a resolution on Goan self-determination is moved in the Legislative Council at Panjim and adopted. |
| 1928 | Tristão de Bragança Cunha founds the Goa Congress Committee at Margao, which is recognised at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress and given representation on the All India Congress Committee. |
| 18 June 1946 | A public meeting held at Margao in defiance of a ban on assembly is broken up and its speakers arrested, beginning a campaign of civil disobedience that continued through the rest of the year. |
| 1947 | Portuguese rule in Goa continued past the independence of British India in this year. |
Rulers and commanders
Took Chandrapura from the Shilaharas and founded the Goa Kadamba line, which held the coast for three and a half centuries — the longest single dynastic tenure the region has had.
Dynasty: Kadambas of Goa. Seat: Chandrapura
Expanded the kingdom and presided over the shift of the capital to the Zuari estuary, where Gopakapattana became the principal port of the coast and the point at which horses from Arabia and the Gulf came ashore for the Deccan trade.
Dynasty: Kadambas of Goa. Seat: Chandrapura, later Gopakapattana
The last Kadamba. His reign ends with the port plundered in the course of the Khalji campaigns, after which the coast passes through four rulers in two centuries.
Dynasty: Kadambas of Goa. Seat: Gopakapattana
The gaunkars were the hereditary co-sharers of a village's land. Meeting as an assembly, they allotted the paddy fields, maintained the earthen bunds and sluices that keep salt water off the khazan, and funded the village shrine and later the parish church. Authority over land in Goa was collective and hereditary rather than royal, and this office survived every change of ruler from the Kadambas onwards. It is the reason Goa has continuous local self-government and a very discontinuous dynastic record.
Seat: The khazan villages of the Mandovi and Zuari
Held the Goan coast from 1492 and developed Ela on the Mandovi, later Old Goa, as the port for the Deccan horse trade. It was from the Adil Shahi administration that Albuquerque took the island in 1510.
Dynasty: Adil Shahi of Bijapur. Seat: Bijapur
Took Tiswadi in 1510 at the second attempt, after losing it in May and retaking it on 25 November, and made it the capital of the Portuguese Estado da India — the administrative decision from which the whole of the region's modern period follows.
Seat: Old Goa
Physician and politician, and the only Goan ever appointed to govern Portuguese India. He held office from 14 January to 1 February 1835, seventeen days, before a military coup removed him and he was deported to Bombay and his predecessor reinstated.
Seat: Panjim
A chiefly lineage in Satari, a hill taluk annexed with the New Conquests, which led repeated risings against Portuguese authority. Standard accounts count fourteen local revolts against Portuguese rule in Goa, the last of them in 1912. Satari kept a reputation through the whole nineteenth century for being difficult to govern from Panjim.
Seat: Satari
The history of Goa & Gomantak from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)