Estêvão Cacella

Estêvão Cacella, SJ (1585–1630) was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary.

Life Cacella was born in Aviz, Portugal, in 1585. He joined the Jesuits at the age of nineteen and sailed for India in 1614, where he worked for some years in Kerala. In 1626, Father Cacella and Father João Cabral, another younger Jesuit priest, travelled from Cochin to Bengal, where they spent six months preparing for a journey through Bhutan. This journey eventually took them to Tibet, where they founded a mission in the town of Shigatse (near the River Brahmaputra), residence of the Panchen Lama and site of the great Tibetan monastery of Tashilhunpo. Cacella arrived in Shigatse in November 1627 and Cabral followed in January 1628. Although the Jesuits were well received and had high hopes for the success of the mission in Shigatse, it only lasted a few years. Father Cacella's poor health led to his death in 1630 on the high Tibetan plateau.

While in Bhutan, Father Cacella and Father Cabral met Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyel, and at the end of a stay of nearly eight months in the country, Father Cacella wrote a long letter from Chagri Monastery, to his superior in Cochin on the Malabar Coast; it was a report, A Relação, relating the progress of their travels. This is the sole report of Shabdrung that remains.

Father Cacella was the first European to enter Bhutan and travel through the Himalayas in the winter. Also it was Cacella who, for the first time, described to European civilization a fictional place called Shambala (a Sanskrit term indicating "peace/tranquility/happiness"). According to Tibetan Buddhism, this is an ideal country located north or west of the Himalaya Mountains; the myth inspired James Hilton to write his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, featuring the fictional utopian lamasery of Shangri-La.

From Cacella's own words: