Mariano Jose Luis de Gonzaga Saldanha (1878 – 1975) was a Goan teacher based in Lisbon, Portugal.
Born in Uskai (Ucassaim) village in Goa, he studied medicine and pharmacy, but went on to become a teacher of Marathi and Sanskrit at the Lyceum in Goa (1915–1929) and of Sanskrit and Konkani at Lisbon, at the university and at the Advanced School of Colonial Administration (Instituto Superior de Estudos Ultramarinos) (1929–1946).
He himself acknowledged, in a writing of 1955, that it was his older uncle who got the idea of teaching him Marathi, that this was the beginning of his career as teacher of Indian languages.
He also made a plea for the adoption of the Roman script in the system of transliteration invented by Thomas Stephens and followed by other writers in the 17th century in Goa.
[4] It was Saldanha who discovered the Konkani and Marathi MS of Krishnadas Shama and others in the Public Library of Braga, around 1950.