Making a mission of understanding Tamil.

Indian Express - Tamil Nadu Notes - 1994, Dec. 12.
An article by Prof. P. Maria Lazar.
Tarangampadi
A STRONG wave of piety was sweeping the Protestant belt in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Catholics and Lutheran Protestants were vying with one another to spread the Gospel in the East Indies. Since Catholic countries like France, Italy and Portugal had already been sending missionaries to the East Indies, countries like Denmark and Germany tried to send Protestant missionaries to the area.

In Denmark, King Frederik IV, an ardent Lutheran Protestant, ascended the throne in 1699. It had been his long-time ambition to spread the faith in his colonies in the East Indies. It should be noted here that as early as 1620. Danish King Christian IV had acquired Tarangampadi (Tranquebar), a hamlet on the Coromandel Coast, and a few villages around it from the then Thanjavur Raja Ragunatha 

Nayak for the Danish East India Trading Company.
Since Danes did not come forward to serve as missionaries in the far-off tropical Tarangampadi, King Frederick IV had to enlist the services of German missionaries from Halle.
Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and his fellow missionary Heinrich Pleutschau, set out with the king's order from Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, on Nov. 29, 1705, and landed at Tarangampadi on July 9, 1706. Though German by birth, they came to be called 'The Royal Danish Missionaries'.

In spite of the hostile attitude of the Danish East India Trading Company, the brave and magnanimous Ziegenbalg was not discouraged. His first move was to learn the language of the people.
During his time, the front halls of temples served as schools and Ziegenbalg had no hesitation in taking a seat with the children to learn the ABC of Tamil from Aleppa, a native who was a polyglot. The new student devoted nearly eight-and-a-half hours a day mastering the language.

Contrary to the shallow understanding of the Europeans about the rich culture and tradition of Tamils, Ziegenbalg came to appreciate them better. He recorded in his diaries all about the Tamils and was responsible for changing wrong notions that had been prevailing in Europe for centuries.
He was also instrumental in collecting the available books in Tamil at the time. He bought a few palm leaf books on different subjects from even Brahmin widows. Within two years he had collected as many as 161 books on the language, Hinduism and Islam. He sent them to the Danish court preacher Francis Julius Luetkens at Copenhagen in 1708.

He engaged a team of Tamil scholars, poets, writers and multi-linguists to translate the New Testament into Tamil and Tamil books like Ulaga Neethi, Kondrai Vendan, Needhi Venba, etc., into European languages. His prose and poetry lexicons were completed in 1712 and the Tamil grammar book in Latin (Grammatica Damulica) was printed in Halle in 1716.

Ziegenbalg and Pluetschau started the classical Tranquebar Mission from where they started preaching in Portuguese in November, 1706 and in Tamil in 1707. The Church of New Jerusalem at Tarangampadi was built during his time.
'The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge', England, sent a printing machine to the Tranquebar Mission. In 1712, books in Portuguese were printed at this press. The first Tamil letters were made at Halle and sent to Tarangampadi and the New Testament by Ziegenbalg was printed with these types. A paper mill (Kaduthasi Pattarai) was also set up at Porayar during his time.

Ziegenbalg and Gruendler (a missionary who jointed him later), established a seminary at Tarangampadi on Oct. 23, 1716, for training teachers and catechists. Ziegenbalg taught geography, arithmetic, botany, Portuguese, German and Latin at the seminary.
As in the lives of all great men, there were people who found fault with Ziegenbalg. Boevingh, a fellow missionary, wrote numerous character-assassination letters against him. Influenced by these letters, the then mission director at Copenhagen, went, wrote to Ziegenbalg in 1717 accusing him of misappropriation of mission funds.

Ziegenbalg, who was already suffering from gastrointestinal disease, became broken-hearted and was pushed to his deathbed. He died at Tarangampadi on Feb. 23, 1719, at the age of 36.
He was buried the next day at the New Jerusalem Church.

Prof. P. Maria Lazar

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