in Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss, and Heike Liebau, eds., Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India, vol. 2 (Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2006), 797–811.
by Will Sweetman
University of Otago
January 2006
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In August or September 1705 Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg was asked whether he would accept a commission from the Danish King, Frederik IV, to go to the West Indies as a missionary. At the time he was acting as a temporary curate in a small town close to Berlin, and intending to return to university to continue the studies that had been interrupted due to his poor health and the death of his sister. Three weeks later, when in Berlin to attend a wedding, he was surprised to discover that his initial noncommittal response had been taken as an acceptance.1 In early October, as he set out for Copenhagen to be ordained, he wrote to a friend to say he would now be sent to another of the Danish overseas territories in Guinea, West Africa, which he had heard was much less healthy than America.2 By 29 November, when he embarked, the destination had changed again, now to the 'East Indies'. These details are mentioned here in order to demonstrate how little prepared Ziegenbalg was for India and its religions. There is no evidence of his having made any study of what was known of India in Europe prior to his being sent there, and during the seven month voyage the only language Ziegenbalg was able to study was Danish.3
First Encounters with Tamils and Catholics
On arrival in India, in July 1706, Ziegenbalg fully expected to find barbarians. In 1708 he wrote that when he first came among the Tamils, he shared the opinion of most Europeans that they were a "truly barbaric people" without learning or morals.4 It was not until he began to learn Tamil that his view of them changed. What is remarkable is how quickly this happened, within months of his arrival in Tranquebar. In one of his earliest letters from India, dated 1 October 1706, he writes: "These Malabarian heathens are, however, a very intelligent and rational people, who must be won over with great wisdom."5 He continues that their faith is quite as well ordered as that of "we Christians" -- a statement which was toned down in the published version of the letter to say only that their "fabulous" faith is well ordered.6 Moreover, he found the Tamils to lead a "quiet, honorable and virtuous life," on the basis of their natural powers alone, surpassing that of the Christians tenfold. Again this statement was edited, to read that they surpass "false" Christians not a little.
Alongside his realization that the Tamils were not barbarians, came an awareness of the difficulty of his missionary task. In another letter written on the same day, Ziegenbalg lists five hindrances to the conversion of the 'heathen'. Among them are the vexatious life of the other Christians in Tranquebar, the preference of the Hindus for outward ceremonial over the inward worship of the mind, and the fact that any convert would be excommunicated by his or her family, unless he was the head of the household. The other two reasons relate to the activities of the Catholics. The conversion of the 'heathen' "is greatly hindered, because they see how craftily the Catholics have made so many so-called Christians of them, thinking that one wants to mislead them in the same way with such deception." The other and, says Ziegenbalg, perhaps the primary reason, is that "they see these same Catholic Christians going begging by the hundred, and they are angered that they are not better received by their co-religionists and supported in their need, or given work, so that they do not have to seek their living from door to door."7 Four days later in another letter, addressed to the King who had commissioned him, Ziegenbalg expands:
The gospel of the crucified Christ is foolishness to them, the more so the less it agrees with their reason. Therefore it is not to be wondered at, that before now the Papists have drawn many of them to themselves with their impotent ceremonies, which in many ways are not unlike their idolatry, which also appeals to the outward senses and the eyes, but has no power in the heart like the pure word of the cross, death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ which takes hold not of reason but faith. Thus it is also a great hindrance to their conversion, when they have to see that almost no-one will receive those who have entered the Catholic religion, but rather are now turned away by them and, deprived of all their goods, must often beg their bread before the doors of others. To this also must be added the great lovelessness of most Christians, who so often leave the poor to seek their bread, and that often in vain ... Not to mention the unchristian life of those who, although baptized as Christians, live more like heathen.8
Less than a month before writing this letter, Ziegenbalg had reported that he had not yet tried to introduce himself to the Catholic priests in Tranquebar.9 Although on occasion he seems to have cooperated with Catholics in other towns,10 Ziegenbalg's relationships with Catholics in Tranquebar itself were never good11 and were complicated by his difficult relationship with the Danish Commandant of Tranquebar, Johann Siegmund Hassius.12
Although Tranquebar was under the control of the Danish East India Company, and hence was supplied with Lutheran chaplains of the established church in Denmark, Catholic priests in Tranquebar had a similar quasi-official role in the city, and were paid by the Company for their role as chaplains to the Catholic Christians in Tranquebar, many of whom were Indians either in the service of the Company, or private servants and slaves of Danish traders. In his letters Ziegenbalg repeatedly complains that Hassius, despite representing a Protestant nation, favoured the Catholics to the disadvantage of the Royal Danish mission. The Catholic poor received alms from the Company -- in contravention of what Ziegenbalg calls 'Paul's rule' that one's first concern should be one's co-religionists.13 Ziegenbalg attributes the success of the Catholic fathers in a Protestant town to the Commandant's patronage, and argues that it shows what the Protestant mission might have achieved had they had his support instead of his opposition.14 He writes that potential converts from Catholicism to Lutheran Christianity fear the power of the Portuguese fathers,15 and complains that the Commandant not only honoured the Catholic Bishop of Mylapore with a canon salute,16 but invited him to take up residence in Tranquebar, when he was unable to return to Mylapore because of Muslim opposition.17 By contrast, his fellow Protestant and Dutch counterpart in Nagapatnam, not only helped Ziegenbalg but refused to allow the Catholic Bishop of Mylapore even to enter the city.18
Anders Norgaard notes that the mission diary, which is extant only for the years following 1712, records many differences of opinion with the Catholic priests of Tranquebar, and that there is no reason to assume that the same was not true in earlier years.19 We do have evidence of two such incidents from the year 1708. The first involved a dispute over whether the illegitimate child of a Danish soldier and a non-Christian woman should be baptized and brought up as a Catholic or a Protestant, and resulted in Ziegenbalg's colleague, Heinrich Plutschau, being brought before a court.20 Although Plutschau was released, Ziegenbalg wrote that "the Catholics rejoiced, that we were persecuted and they were authorized,"21 and he connected this incident, which he took to have emboldened the Catholics, directly with the second, a fortnight later, which resulted in his imprisonment. This incident arose from Ziegenbalg's intervention on behalf of the widow of a Tamil barber, over a debt between her late husband and a Catholic who was employed by the Company as a translator. Hassius regarded Ziegenbalg's repeated intervention in the case, including his advice that she kneel before him in the Danish church, as inappropriate and sent for Ziegenbalg to appear before him. When Ziegenbalg demurred, requesting a written summons, he was arrested and, because he refused to answer questions imprisoned.22 Although released after a little more than four months' Ziegenbalg's relationship with the Commandant remained difficult, and his letters are full of complaints on this score, and regularly invoke the Catholics' relationship with the Commandant as one reason for his troubles. The most interesting of these is a letter from September 1714 in which he states that one reason, among others, why the Commandant opposes them, and protects the Catholics, is that he and they are engaged in private trade, and fear that the missionaries will expose them in Europe.23 When, finally, after Ziegenbalg's return from Europe in 1716, a new Commandant was appointed, who protected the interests of the mission, Ziegenbalg writes triumphantly that the Catholics were no longer able to pour scorn on the Lutheran mission.24
Catholic Tamil Works
As Ziegenbalg states, the catalyst for the transformation in his view of the Tamils was the learning of their language. Initially he and Plutschau had learned the Tamil script with the help of an old schoolmaster, who later did much to transform Ziegenbalg's view of Hindus:
Indeed, I must confess that my 70 year old tutor often asks such questions as to make me realize that in their philosophy everything is by no means so unreasonable as we in our country usually imagine about such heathen. They are so clever that if they heard the learned men in Europe dispute on the rostrum about logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics, they would laugh scornfully and consider such skill as the greatest stupidity, because they like free, unrestrained and clear speaking with good reasoning and do not indulge in figures of speech.25
This schoolmaster, however, knew no Portuguese, and therefore they had initially no common tongue in which he could explain to them the grammar of the language. The missionaries therefore hired, at considerable expense, a former translator to the Danish Company [Alakappan or Aleppa.]. At the recommendation of the Commandant, they also obtained a copy of "some grammatical precepts [written] in the Portuguese language, drawn up by a missionary of the King of France."26 Rajamanickam notes that in his Grammatica Damulica (1716), Ziegenbalg "follows rather closely. .. the grammatical treatise incorporated in the Introduction" to the Jesuit Antao Proenca's Tamil-Portuguese dictionary.27 Although this introduction is missing from the version of the dictionary printed at Ambalakad in July 1679,28 Gregory James reports that in a manuscript dated 1670 preserved in Goa, the dictionary is preceded by a copy of the Arte Tamulica, a Tamil accidence written by S.J. Balthasar da Costa, and printed at Ambalakad around 1680.29 This is presumably the grammatical treatise referred to by Rajamanickam. Although no copy of the printed work is extant, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Ziegenbalg could have seen a copy, printed or unprinted, of this work, despite his odd attribution of it to a missionary of the King of France. Moreover, in the letter in which he mentions this work, dated 22 September 1707, Ziegenbalg goes on to state that "we also obtained various books written by the Catholics in the Malabarian [i.e. Tamil] language which, although full of dangerous errors, nonetheless contributed a great deal to my learning of this language, so that from them I was able to adopt a proper Christian style. For otherwise previously I did not know which words and expressions I should use in order to express myself in spiritual matters in a way that did not smack of heathenism."30 In a catalogue of Tamil books in his possession, prepared in August of the following year, Ziegenbalg lists twenty-one such Catholic books, noting that they had belonged to a Jesuit in Tanjavur, "who went about among the heathen in the dress of a Brahman."31 During a time of "severe persecution" of Christians in Tanjavur, when all who wanted to save their lives had had to flee to the European coastal settlements, this Jesuit had left his library for safe-keeping in Tranquebar, where it had long remained hidden, until "it was wonderfully arranged" that Ziegenbalg should come upon it.32 Ziegenbalg first used these works as an aid to his own learning of Tamil, beginning with the most useful of them, a collection of translations from the Gospels, and going through them noting words and phrases, which he then sought to use daily.33 The impact on his confidence in Tamil seems to have been profound. On 19 September 1707, three days before the letter in which he announced his discovery of the Catholic books, he had written to the Danish King to say that he still found it a little too difficult to preach in Tamil, and restricted himself to reading passages from the Gospels about the life of Christ, and singing songs.34 Less than a month later, on 7 October, in a letter in which he also records that he is sending the Catholic translation of the Gospels to Europe, he claims that through daily practice he has become almost as fluent in Tamil as in his mother-tongue and adds: "When I go a little inland, I constantly have about me many hundred Malabarians, to whom I can preach. They love me greatly because of their language, in which they love to debate."35
He later returned to the Catholic works more than once. In 1708 he described "looking through them with great diligence to purify them from the horrible errors of papist doctrine and improving them on every page, so that they may be read by we Protestants without any offence."36 He found time to go through ten in this manner, five of which could not be purified of their errors and were worthy of being burnt, but were retained because of their Tamil. In 1710 he wrote that he had gone through the Catholic works again, due to their fine Tamil style, and had found a further five capable of improvement. The best of these was a "Christian Pearl Garland," consisting of 100 "pearls" from the Church Fathers, some of which, however, had to be discarded because they dealt with the "worship of saints, purgatory and erroneous visions of the cross."37 Other works he found admirable neither for their style, nor their content, consisting mainly of "accounts of the saints and miracles, supposed to have happened in their church" and not worth the effort of going through in the same manner. He mentions also still more books, written by "their poets, born in India" which he dismisses as "based on hearsay, so that they could do nothing more than mix up horrible errors and bible stories."38 Ziegenbalg concludes his 1710 account of Tamil books by writing:
Now one does not hear that any books are written by the papist missionaries. There is in any case now no life among these people, for hardly any apply themselves to the language, but almost all are involved in worldly affairs. However, regarding some of their first missionaries, their work and the institutions they established show that they were very diligent and constant in their office, so that not only was there no work that they were not willing to take on, but they did not shrink even from death itself.39
Earlier in the same year Ziegenbalg had described how he had met some French and Portuguese missionaries in Madras who did speak Tamil, but so badly that, he says, they were delighted to hear "pure Tamil from my mouth."40 Ironically, that same year, 1710, saw the arrival in India of Constant Joseph Beschi, later to become not only one of the greatest of all Jesuit writers in Tamil, but one of the harshest critics of Ziegenbalg's own prose style in Tamil.41 Nevertheless, the general picture in Ziegenbalg's reports of the decline of Catholic missions consequent upon the decline of Portuguese power in India seems to be accurate. Stephen Neill reports a drop in the number of Jesuits in the Malabar mission from 190 in the days of de Nobili to 67 in 1717, and to 47 by 1749 with, proportionately, a still greater decline in Goa.42
Zigenbalg's Reports on Catholic Missions
In three long letters dated September 1712, January 1713 and November 1713, Ziegenbalg gives his most detailed accounts of the Catholic missions. The underlying purpose of these letters is to spur the Protestant nations of Europe to support the Danish-Halle and other Protestant missions. In the first of these letters43 he writes that although the Roman church has advanced greatly in India during the last two to three hundred years and that in the coastal cities a large mass of Christians are to be found, the evidence of his own eyes and the testimony of the Catholic fathers with whom he has spoken is that the missions are currently in a miserable condition. He repeats that hardly any learn the language of the 'heathen', and that they rely instead on Indian catechists, who often know as little as those they catechize. There are no proper schools, and in those that do exist no attempt is made to bring the children to a living knowledge of God. The adults know only the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the three articles of faith, and the Ave Maria, along with the sign of the cross. They are rarely in church and when they are, few are able to understand the language of the preaching. The Portuguese fathers rarely preach, instead reading the Mass in Latin. The lives of the congregation are ill-disciplined, so that they are worse than the 'heathen'. Their teachers are for the most part no better, leading a vexatious life and "acquiescing in much heathenish practice among their own, and the sort of ceremonies which are common in idol temples. And because they still have the idolatrous worship of images, and conduct their festivals outside in the heathen manner, little difference is to be seen between them and the heathen."44 They no longer care for the conversion of the 'heathen', but are content to allow their Church to grow by natural increase. He concludes by again contrasting their very first missionaries, among whom were some who, "as can be seen from what they have written in the language of these heathen were truly constant in the conversion of the heathen and worked for Christianity," with those who came later and have allowed "all that which could still have been called good among them to fall into ruin."45 There are still manuscripts and books to be found here and there in the churches and colleges, but mostly in Portuguese. The Portuguese complain that the greater part, and the oldest, of such manuscripts were lost when they were displaced by the Dutch. Ziegenbalg claims he has seen and read most of the books which they wrote in Tamil, which for the most part contain nothing more than miracles supposed to have happened in the Roman church in Europe, and tales of the saints. Evidently in response to a question from his European correspondent, Ziegenbalg reports that hermits (Eremiten) are not to be found among the Indian Christians, although "some of the former Roman missionaries lived as a sort of hermit here and there in places isolated from the towns and villages, and pretended to be Brahmans from the north, or sanyasins, who are highly regarded among these heathen."46 In this letter Zlegenbalg mentions the opportunities that the English and the Dutch have for the propagation of Protestant Christianity in their East Indian territories. The Dutch in particular have an opportunity "to bring the treasure of the Gospel among the heathen and to make them share the spiritual goods, now that they have taken from them by ship physical goods and East-Indian treasure in such rich measure."47 The letter from November 1713 develops this theme in much more detail.
Taken as a whole, the November 1713 letter is a justification of mission in the post-apostolic era, and specifically of Protestant mission. Ziegenbalg begins with the missionary zeal of the early church, which declined once Christians became lukewarm and turned away from true Christianity. Where Christianity was brought to 'heathen' peoples, this was not done in the right manner. After the Reformation, Christians fought among themselves, with the result that the power of the Christians became weaker, and the light of the gospel in the east was darkened by the Mohammedan religion. Although the Roman church has from time to time sought to bring under the Papal yoke both those Christians who have never acknowledged the Papacy or have left it and 'heathen' peoples, their reasons for doing so are in order to assert the power of the Pope over all peoples. "To such people they almost preach more the Pope, than Christ."48 Moreover they have not used the means of the early church and the gospel, but worldly power: "thus it was easy for them, in both the East and the West Indies, to bring many heathen peoples to their religion, because both the Spanish, as well as the Portuguese and the French seized such lands."49 Where they did not have such power, however, Ziegenbalg states, "they resorted to all kinds of trickery and disguise."50 By this he means the method of adaptation or accommodation, for he goes on to note that their primary mission was in the Madurai country where, lacking worldly might, "the missionaries pretended to be Brahmans or also sannyasins ... taking on their habit and lifestyle, and going around the land in this way."51 He writes that only Jesuits, specifically Portuguese, were used in this mission, and allows that
these were more praiseworthy than others because they learnt the language of the heathen and taught in it, also leaving them many books in this language, and introduced few ceremonies of the Roman church among them, rather exerting themselves to debate with the heathen, and by argument to persuade them of their heathenism and to demonstrate by reason the principles of the Christian religion. They thereby used, however, much dissimulation and subtle manipulation, which was eventually exposed with the result that they are now no longer publicly tolerated by the inhabitants of the country, so that now even their church in the capital Madurai stands waste and their Christians go around scattered everywhere.52
He concludes this cautionary tale by noting that "one hears of a few missionaries, who have now learnt this Malabarian language, and go about the land in the manner of the earlier [missionaries]," including Francis Laynes, a Portuguese Jesuit who was "some twenty years as a missionary in the Madurai and Tanjore country and lived throughout that time in the manner of a Malabarian monk"53 before being ordained Bishop of Mylapore in 1708. It was this Bishop who spent time in Tranquebar in 1711 as a result of difficulties with the Nawab which Ziegenbalg says were at the instigation of the other Portuguese priests in Mylapore who were jealous of him. Ziegenbalg attributes the decline of the Catholic missions in part to the rivalry between their orders, and mentions the visit of the Papal legate Charles de Tournon to Pondicherry in 1703-1704,54 and his desire to rid the church of 'heathen' elements introduced by the missionaries, such as "the smearing of ash on the forehead, the shameful difference in the church and in the distribution of holy communion between high and low castes, the play-acting in Brahman habits, etc."55 He reports also what he has heard of Jesuit missions in China and Thailand,56 claiming that everywhere Jesuit cunning and unscrupulousness has eventually led to their ruin.
Twice in this letter Ziegenbalg writes that he reports all this "in no way out of a hostile contempt" for the Jesuits or "to condemn in any way the efforts, the diligence and zeal which the Roman church has always shown in the sending out of many missionaries, nor to fault all that which the missionaries sent here and there have achieved among the heathen" but "simply and solely in order that the Protestant church may be more blessed in the propagation of religion, than the Roman church."57 Although at certain points he commends the Catholics -- notably when in 1710 he notes that much of their progress has been due to ordaining "black Indians to the preaching office," arguing that the Lutheran mission should do the same58 -- for the most part it seems that he protests too much, and that his account has a more urgent intent, namely to use the experience of the Catholics to inspire the Protestants to mission. He notes in this letter that although the Dutch have "begun a Reformation" among the Catholic Christians in the towns they took over from the Portuguese, he is surprised that they have not done more, and cannot believe that this is for the reason he has been given by the Dutch in India -- that the Dutch Company feared this would upset their trade -- but is rather because "there are few in Europe who have demonstrated to this nation the necessity and the possibility [of conversion] but many who regard it all to be in vain, and do not acknowledge such heathen peoples to be worthy of applying so much effort and expense to their conversion."59 His three letters were clearly intended to accomplish the demonstration he thought was lacking. He refers again in this letter to the English, and also here to the Danish. He refers also to the last (chronologically, the second) of these three letters, dated 5 January 1713 and addressed to the whole theological faculty of Copenhagen.60 This letter is only partially extant,61 but it is referred to several times in other letters of Ziegenbalg, including a letter to Anton Wilhelm Bohme, the Chaplain to the Hanoverian Court in London, in which he describes the other, partially lost, letter as "an extensive letter ... reporting how papism has spread in India" and showing "how like heathenism it is in those points where it deviates from the Protestant church."62 The extant portion of the letter begins with the suggestion that, given the opportunity they had had in the East, with God's grace it would well have been possible for the Catholics "to convert the whole of the oriental heathenry to Christ." But because they had relied on human means, had introduced "the Roman horror" (Romische Greuel) among the Indians, and had been so haughty, proud, avaricious and high-handed that under the pretext of religion they practiced much tyranny and injustice, God could not allow such a thing to happen, but rather was thereby moved to punishment and revenge, and allowed the Protestant nations to displace the Portuguese everywhere except in Goa. The letter goes on to describe the parlous state of the Catholic missions in terms very similar to those found in the other two letters. The difference is that here Ziegenbalg explicitly states that it is because of their "heathen horrors here in India" that "God has quite humbled them, and in their stead established the European nations of the Protestant church everywhere among the heathen in the Orient." The letter continues with an appeal to the Protestant nations of Europe to join in responding to this God-given opportunity.
Any extended comparison of 'heathenism' and 'Papism' in the letter to the Copenhagen faculty along the lines suggested in Ziegenbalg's description of it in his letter addressed to B6hme must have been contained in the first part of the letter, for there is nothing more of this nature in the extant section. As will already be evident, there is a paganopapist cast [pagano-papist model-corrupt and deceitful priests responsible for rebirth of paganism; mixing model-adulteration of true religion via commingling, ex. mix christianity with paganism to create catholicism] to Ziegenbalg's writings on Catholics dating back to his earliest letters from India,63 and persisting throughout his time there.64 Nevertheless, in addition to his description of this letter in his later letter to Bohme, there is another reason to think that there may have been much more substantial material along these lines in the letter to the Copenhagen faculty, for this letter is listed among the materials lent to Mathurin Veyssiere de La Croze for his Histoire du christianisme des Indes, published in the Netherlands in 1724.65 La Croze was a former Benedictine who had converted to Protestantism in part, his biographer suggests, because of the Jesuits' domination of the French church.66 I have described elsewhere how Ziegenbalg's account of Hinduism becomes, in the hands of La Croze, material for an elaborate paganopapist assault on the Catholics, and especially the Jesuits, which relies on the claim that both Hinduism and Catholicism have their origin in Egypt.67 La Croze's interest in this particular letter is obviously connected with Ziegenbalg's similar, if much more restrained, comparisons.
Ziegenbalg welcomed La Croze's interest in the mission,68 not least because at one time La Croze planned to translate the mission's published reports into French for publication in the Netherlands.69 Although this, and the zeal for mission it might have aroused, never transpired, La Croze's use of Ziegenbalg's works did indirectly further Ziegenbalg's aims. Although many of Ziegenbalg's letters were published, including those in which he describes Hinduism, his major works on Hinduism were not published until long after his lifetime, and it was in La Croze's work that their contents were first made available to the reading public. Sylvia Murr suggests that it was his extracts from Ziegenbalg -- which for a long time constituted the principal appeal of La Croze's work for his French readership -- which included Voltaire.70 It was in part through La Croze that Ziegenbalg became an important source for John Lockman. In his translation, first published in 1743, of the first ten volumes of the Jesuits' Lettres edifiantes et curieuses, Lockman keeps up a furious footnoted assault on the Jesuits. For his footnotes Lockman draws on a wide range of sources, not only those French anti-Jesuit writings which he shares with La Croze, such as La morale pratique and Pascal's Lettres provinciales, but also La Croze himself, and especially the sections in which he cites 'the Danish missionaries'. As well as using directly the earlier English translations of the letters of the first Protestant Mission, Lockman translates substantial extracts from Ziegenbalg's account of Hinduism as it appears in La Croze. Both La Croze and Lockman regarded the Jesuits as notoriously untrustworthy, and therefore welcomed Ziegenbalg as the first to break the hitherto near-monopoly of Catholic, and especially Jesuit, authors on Hinduism. What they failed to realize, or at least to acknowledge, is just how much Ziegenbalg owed to the Jesuits both in his success as a missionary and in his understanding of Hinduism.
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Notes:
l Arno Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe aus Indien: unveroffenllichte Briefe von Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg 1706-1719, Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1957, pp. 32-33.
2 Ibid, p. 21.
3 Joachim Lange, ed., Merckwurdige Nachricht aus Ost-Jndien Welche Zwey Evangelisch-Lutherische Prediger Nahmentlich Herr Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg Geburtig von Pulsnitz in Meissen Und Herr Heinrich Plutscho Von Wesenberg in Mecklenburg So von Seiner Konigl. Majestat in Dennemarck und Norwegen Den 29. Novemb. 1705. aus Copenhagen nach Dero Ost-Indischen Colonie in Trangebar gesandt: Zum Ioblichen Versuch Ob nicht dasige angrentzende blinde Heyden einiger massen Zum Christenthum mochten konnen angefuhret werden: Erstlich unterwegens den 30. April 1706. aus Africa von dem Vorgebirge der guten Hoffnung bey den so genanten Hottentotten. Und bald darauf aus Trangebar von der Kuste Coromandel, an einige Predige und gute Freunde in Berlin uberschrieben und von diesen zum Druck befordert. Die andere Auflage, Leipzig and Franckfurt am Mayn: Joh. Christoph Papen, 1708, p. 27. [Strange news from East India which two Evangelical Lutheran preachers namely Mr. Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg born of Pulsnitz in Meissen and Mr. Heinrich Plutscho von Wesenberg in Mecklenburg So from his king. Majesty in Dennemarck and Norway November 29th. 1705. Sent from Copenhagen to the East Indian Colony in Trangebar: For the usual test whether the neighboring blind heathens might not be able to do something to Christianity so-called Hottentots. And soon afterwards from Trangebar on the Coromandel coast, signed over to some sermons and good friends in Berlin and encouraged by them to be printed. The other edition, Leipzig and Franckfurt am Mayn: Joh. Christoph Papen, 1708, p. 27.]
4 Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg and Willem Caland, B. Ziegenbalgs Kleinere Schriften, Amsterdam: Uitgave van Koninklijke Akademie, 1930, p. 11.
5 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 44.
6 Lange, ed., Merckwurdige Nachricht, p. 29.
7 Ibid, p. 18.
8 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 47.
9 Christian Gustav Bergen, Herrn Bartholomai Ziegenbalgs und Herrn Heinrich Plutscho, Kon. Danischer Missionariorum, Brieffe, Von ihrem Beruff und Reise nach Tranqvebar, wie auch Bishero gefohrten Lehre und Leben unter den Heyden, Sonderlich aber Von denen uns Europaern nicht allzu bekandten Malabaren, An einige Prediger und gute Freunde in der Marck und Ober-Lausitz [i.e. Pulsnitz} geschickt, Jetzund vermehret, mit etlichen Erinnerungen, und einem Anhange unschadlicher Gedancken von neuem heraus gegeben von Christian Gustav Bergen. Die dritte Aufflage, Pima: Georg Balthasar Ludewig, 1708, p. 50. [Google translate: Christian Gustav Bergen, Mr. Bartholomai Ziegenbalgs and Mr. Heinrich Plutscho, Kon. Danish Missionariorum, Letters, From their profession and journey to Tranqvebar, as well as from their teaching and life under the Heyden, but especially from those Malabars who are not too well known to us Europeans, To some preachers and good friends in the Marck and Ober-Lausitz [i.e. Pulsnitz} sent, now and increased, with a number of memoirs, and an appendix of harmless thoughts re-edited by Christian Gustav Bergen. The third edition, Pima: Georg Balthasar Ludewig, 1708, p. 50.]
10 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 197.
11 On the relationship between the Tranquebar and Catholic missions during and after Ziegenbalg's time see also Hugald Grafe, "The Relation between the Tranquebar Lutherans and the Tanjore Catholics in the First Half of the 18th Century", Indian Church History Review Vol. 1 (1), 1967 and S. Rajamanickam, "Madurai and Tranquebar", in Michael Bergunder, ed. Missionsberichte aus Indien im 18. Jahrhundert: Ihre Bedeutung for die europaische Geistesgeschichte und ihr wissenschaftlicher Quellenwert for Indienkunde, Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 1999. [Google translate: Michael Bergunder, ed. Mission reports from India in the 18th century: their importance for European intellectual history and their scientific source value for Indian studies, Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 1999.]
12 See Anders Norgaard, Mission und Obrigkeit: Die Danisch-hallische Mission in Tranquebar, 1706-1845, Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus/Gerd Mohn, 1988 [Google translate: See Anders Norgaard, Mission and Government: The Danish-Hallian Mission in Tranquebar, 1706-1845, Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus/Gerd Mohn, 1988.]; Ulla Sandgren, The Tamil New Testament and Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg: A Short Study of Some Tamil Translations of the New Testament. The Imprisonment of Ziegenbalg 19.11.1708-26.3.1709, Uppsala: Swedish Institute of Missionary Research/Svenska institutet for missionsforskning, 1991.
13 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 83.
14 Ibid, p. 159.
15 Ibid, p. 83.
16 Ibid, p. 183.
17 Ibid, p. 343.
18 Ibid, p. 183.
19 Norgaard, Mission und Obrigkeit, p. 39.
20 See Sandgren's summary of the incident in Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, p. 95.
21 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 95.
22 For more detailed accounts, see Norgaard, Mission und Obrigkeit, pp. 41-48. and Sandgren, Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, pp. 95-101.
23 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 393.
24 Ibid, p. 486.
25 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 40.
26 Ibid, p. 59.
27 Rajamanickam, "Madurai and Tranquebar", p. 50.
28 Ibid.
29 Gregory James, A History of Tamil Dictionaries, Chennai: Cre-A, 2000, pp. 132, 96. The manuscript is in the State Central Library Panaji, MS M34.
30 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 59.
31 Wilhelm Germann, "Ziegenbalg's Bibliotheca Malabarica", Missionsnachrichten der Ostindischen Missionsanstalt zu Halle, Vol. XXII, 1880, p. 9.
32 Ibid.
33 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 59.
34 Ibid, p. 55.
35 Ibid, p. 64.
36 Germann, "Bibliotheca Malabarica", p. 9.
37 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 172.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid, p. 106. Earlier, in 1708, Ziegenbalg had written scathingly of the Catholic priest in Tranquebar who after seven years did not understand a single word of Tamil, but boasted that he would learn it in six months in order to be able to engage in a public debate with Ziegenbalg on the meaning of scripture (see Germann, "Bibliotheca Malabarica", pp. 10-11).
41 See Rajamanickam, "Madurai and Tranquebar", and Stuart Blackburn, Print, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.
42 Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India, Vol. II, 1707-1858, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 72.
43 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, pp. 233-43.
44 Ibid, p. 239. Grafe notes that this list "can be taken as a summary of the charges which from now onward were frequently made by the Tranquebar Lutherans against the Roman Catholics in their neighbourhood" (Grafe, "Tranquebar Lutherans and Tanjore Catholics", p. 44).
45 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 240.
46 Ibid, p. 242.
47 Ibid, p. 238.
48 Ibid, p. 346.
49 Ibid, p. 348.
50 Ibid, p. 347.
51 Ibid, p. 348.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid, p. 349.
54 Ziegenbalg says the visit took place "six years ago", which would place it in 1707, and he does not name the visitor, saying only that he was "a cardinal sent by the Pope," but from the other details he gives there can be no doubt he is referring to the visit of Tournon, who was created cardinal on 1 August 1707.
55 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 351.
56 Many of the Jesuits in the Carnatic mission had been forced to leave Thailand in 1688.
57 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, pp. 347 and 351.
58 Ibid, p. 178.
59 Ibid, p. 353.
60 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 347.
61 Ziegenbalg sent a copy of this letter to Bohme requesting that he publish it and that he have a copy sent to Francke in Halle. The copy sent to Halle (AFSt/M I C 5: 3ab) appears to be the only one that has survived, and then only in part, for the first half of the letter is missing. It is possible that either the copy sent to Bohme, or that sent to Copenhagen, is extant, but I have found no evidence to suggest that either is. The letter has not been published.
62 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 284.
63 See Ibid, p.47, cited above.
64 E.g. a letter from 7.10.1709 describing the religious scene in Tranquebar where, after mentioning the five main Hindu temples, and the 'Moors' church' he adds that 'The Catholics also have a church in which almost exactly the same ceremonies are in use as in the heathen temples, only that the images are changed'. (Ibid, p. 117).
65 Letter dated 1.12.1717 from C.B. Michaelis to Ziegenbalg and the other missionaries (AFSt/M: 1 C 10: 43). This may be the reason for the partial loss of the letter, as a number of the other works lent to La Croze seem also to have been lost.
66 Friedrich Wiegand, "Mathurin Veyssiere La Croze als Verfasser der ersten deutschen Missionsgeschichte", Beitrage zur Forderung Christlicher Theologie Vol. 6 (3), 1902, pp. 89-90. John Lockman, who used La Croze's Histoire for the footnotes to his translation of parts of the Jesuit Lettres edifiantes et curieuses, drily comments: 'As Mr. la Croze was a Proselyte from the Church of Rome, and had been a Benedictin, who are known not to be Friends to the Jesuits, some may imagine that this might sharpen his Pen against them, or at least bypass his Judgment in some Parts of his excellent History of the Christianity of India.' (John Lockman, Travels of the Jesuits into Various Parts of the World: Compiled from their Letters. Now first attempted in English. Intermix 'd with an account of the Manners, Government, Religion &c. of the several nations visited by those Fathers: With Extracts from other Travellers, and miscellaneous notes, 2 Vols., London: Printed for John Noon, 1743, pp. 297-8).
67 Will Sweetman, "The Curse of the Mummy: Egyptians, Hindus and Christians in the Lettres edifiantes el curieuses and La Croze's Histoire du christianisme des Indes" (paper presented at the 18th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Lund, Sweden, 6-9 July 2004).
68 Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe, p. 487.
69 Letter dated 7.1.1716 from C. B. Michaelis to Anton Wilhelm Bohme (AFSt/M: 1 C 9: 6).
70 Sylvia Murr, "Indianisme et militantisme protestant. Veyssiere de La Croze et son Histoire du Christianisme des Indes, Dix-huitieme siecle", [Google translate: "Indianism and Protestant militancy. Veyssiere de La Croze and his History of Indian Christianity, Eighteenth Century".] Vol. 18, 1986, p. 309.
