The Nairs, Armed on Both Hands
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Desta sorte o Judaico povo antigo Não tocava na gente de Samária. Mais estranhezas ainda das que digo Nesta terra vereis de usança vária. Os Naires sós são dados ao perigo Das armas; sós defendem da contrária Banda o seu Rei, trazendo sempre usada Na esquerda a adarga e na direita a espada.
In this same way the ancient Jewish people would not touch the folk of Samaria. Stranger things still than those I am telling you will see in this land, of varied custom. The Nairs alone are given over to the peril of arms; they alone defend their King from the enemy side, always carrying, ready for use, the leather shield on the left hand and the sword on the right.
Monçaide continues his account of the castes of Calicut to Gama. Having compared the Indian caste separation to the old Jewish avoidance of Samaritans, he now describes the Nairs, the warrior caste of Malabar.
Monçaide is still explaining caste to Gama, and he reaches for the one analogy a European crew might already know: Jews and Samaritans, two peoples who share a land and will not eat from the same dish. Then he narrows to the Nairs, the warrior caste of Malabar, and defines them by a single image: shield left, sword right, always. Not armed when war comes. Armed.
The line a first reader skims is "sós" — it appears twice, in the same metrical position, and both times it means only these men. The Nairs alone face danger; the Nairs alone defend the King. Camões is not admiring their courage so much as noting the arrangement: a kingdom where fighting is one family's inherited job and nobody else's business. That is the strangeness he is pointing at, and it is aimed at Portugal, where by 1572 the fighting nobility was likewise the only class expected to bleed for the crown.
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