goa fr francisco de sousa in his oriente conquistado a jesu christo pelos padres da companhia de jesus da provincia de goa 1710 describes the process of making a book by the natives in the 16th century quando estes gentios querem ordenar hum livro buscam folhas de palmeyra brava das mais largas grossas nestas cortadas em pedaos do tamanho de hum palmo abrem os caracteres com penna do ferro ou de hua parte smente ou de ambas se a folha he grossa penduro estas folhas ao fumo at ficarem pretas depois as lavo de forte que as letras aparecem pretas o mais da cor natural da folha se tem tinta passo as folhas por ella alimpandoas fico distinctos os caracteres when these gentiles want to make a book they look for wide and thick palm leaves these are then cut into pieces of the size of about a palm hand then they cut the alphabets into it with an iron pen either on one side only or on both the sides if the palm leaf is thick then they hang these leaves over smoke until they are black then they wash them well now the letters appear black and the rest of the leaf retains the natural colour if they have ink they dip the leaves into it once they are washed the alphabets can be clearly seen this description pertains to circa 1550 palmeira brava refers to what is locally called bhill mad or bel mad or tad mad dalgado 1919 glossrio luso asitico this passage proves beyond doubt that there existed the art of writing then and the tools for it and the texts sousa describes this process in the context of relating how a certain young brahman from chorao after being baptised set about to compile a book comparing his old and new faith for this purpose he sought to collect the sacred books of his previous faith from the mainland terra firme the reference here seems to be to bicholim one night he along with some companions went across the river and brought the books the important point to note here is the existence of native literature before the advent of the portuguese of course there is the question of the language in what language were the sacred books fetched from bicholim written sousa does provide us a clue to that in the same paragraph where he writes trazia logo os livros a pblico lendoos a vista dos todos primeyro na lngua materna depois na portugueza he would soon bring the books to the public and read them in the sight of all first in the mother tongue and then in portuguese the language the sacred books were written in could be sanskrit but most likely it was not for it is difficult to accept that fr de sousa would use the term lngua materna for sanskrit more important it was a language that the masses understood