 Catholic missionaries , who had arrived in the coastal areas of southern India — the southwestern Malabar coast , the western Kanara coast , and the southeastern Coromandel coast ( also " Carnatic " ) — beginning early in the 16th century , did not start work in land @-@ locked Mysore until half way through the seventeenth . ( See Map 5 ) . The Mysore mission was established in Seringapatam in 1649 by Leonardo Cinnami , an Italian Jesuit from Goa . Expelled a few years later from Mysore on account of opposition in Kanthirava 's court , Cinnami returned , toward the end of Kanthirava 's rule , to establish missions in half a dozen locations . During his second stay Cinnami obtained permission to convert Kanthirava 's subjects to Christianity . He was successful mostly in the eastern regions , later part of the Madras Presidency of British India . According to ( Subhrahmanyam 1985 , p . 209 ) , " Of a reported 1700 converts in the Mysore mission in the mid @-@ 1660s , a mere quarter were Kannadigas ( Kannada language speakers ) , the rest being Tamil speakers from the western districts of modern @-@ day Tamil Nadu , ... " Married ten times , the ruler died on 31 July 1659 , at the age of 44 . At his funeral , all his surviving wives killed themselves by committing sati on his funeral pyre . 
