How missionary literature sparked reading revolution in coastal Kerala and Tamil Nadu
In the rolling hills and sun-kissed shores of southern India, a revolution was brewing in the 16th century. It was a revolution not of swords or armies, but of words — words that were printed and bound, borne on the wind and etched into the hearts of the people. Missionaries had arrived in the coastal areas of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, bringing with them printed literature in the local...
In the rolling hills and sun-kissed shores of southern India, a revolution was brewing in the 16th century. It was a revolution not of swords or armies, but of words — words that were printed and bound, borne on the wind and etched into the hearts of the people. Missionaries had arrived in the coastal areas of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, bringing with them printed literature in the local vernacular languages. Their goal was simple — to spread their message and convert the people to their faith: Christianity.
However, as the books and pamphlets were distributed, something miraculous happened — people began to read. A new reading culture was born that would help pave the way for increased literacy rates and intellectual development in the region. The power of printed literature was not in its ink or paper, but in its ability to transform lives. It was a quiet revolution, one that would change the region’s cultural and intellectual landscape forever.
The printed literature was a catalyst for change, a force that would help shape the future of southern India for generations to come. As renowned Indologist Christophe A M Vielle notes, the production and circulation of the missionary literature eventually helped foster literacy and reading in the region.
If you look at the missionary literature of the 16th century, you will see that they were printed in foreign as well as in vernacular languages. In 1554, the first Catholic catechism in Tamil was printed in Lisbon by Germain Gaillard (1519-61), one of the early printers in Portugal. The Tamil language in the catechism was written in the Roman script, and it was intermingled with Latin and Portuguese.
A catechism is a manual of religious instruction arranged in the form of questions and answers used to instruct the young, win converts, and testify to the faith. The first printing press in India was brought from Portugal to Goa, and installed at the Jesuit College of St Paul on September 6, 1556. The printing activity extended to works in Indian languages after the Jesuit provincial Congregation of Goa declared in 1575 that various instructional works should be prepared for the native Christians, including catechism, confessionary, Doctrina Christiana and an anthology of the lives of the saints.
“The first printed books in Goa (and in India) appeared in 1557. It was a version of the brief catechism in Portuguese, composed by Francis Xavier in 1542 for teaching purposes and a confessionário (confessionary). Both the prints have been lost,” said Vielle, while speaking on “Print, Performance, Manuscripts: Missionary Propaganda and Changing Strategies in 16th-19th centuries Kerala,” at a function organised by the Kerala Council for Historical Research in Kochi recently.
Pedro Luis, a Brahmin convert from Kollam (Quilon), assisted in the production of metal types in Tamil — the first movable types in an Indian language — in Goa, under the guidance of the Spanish Jesuit Juan Gonsalvez. In 1578, the Catholic catechism Thambiran Vanakkam (Salutation of the Lord), translated by Henrique Henriques, was published in Kollam in Portuguese and Tamil. “It is considered the first printed material in an Indian language,” said Vielle, who currently holds the position of professor extraordinaire at UCLouvain in Belgium.
Henriques (1520-1600) was a Portuguese missionary, who initially resided in Goa before moving to Tamil Nadu. There, he learnt Tamil and started writing books in that language. Historians say that Henriques believed that religious books should be translated into Tamil and other vernacular languages to make them accessible to the local people. “Henrique arrived in Goa on the Pearl Fishery Coast — today’s coastal areas from Tuticorin to Kanyakumari, then ruled by the Paravas, a maritime community — in 1546. In 1547, he was ordered to prepare such works for the Tamil area. This ambitious Jesuit patronised printed propaganda programme in the coastal region for almost two decades,” he said.
The arrival of Roman priest Alessandro Valignano in Goa in 1574 saw an increase in the printing of catechisms from foreign languages to vernacular ones. In 1577, the College of St Paul of Goa used a revised version of Xavier’s original brief catechism, translated into either Portuguese or Tamil, to print the first short Tamil catechism. “This printing was financially supported by the recently converted Parava Christians of the Pearl Fishery Coast and intended to serve this specific area. Unfortunately, no exemplar of this printing has survived,” said Vielle.
However, a new version of the short catechism, printed with improved Tamil types prepared by Joao de Faria, was made in 1578 at the Jesuit College of the Saviour in Quilon. This version was entitled Doctrina Christam or Thambiran Vanakkam in Tamil (meaning ‘Salutation of the Lord’). “The only surviving exemplar of this imprint is currently kept in the Houghton Library of Harvard University,” he added.
In 1579, Pedro Luis was working at the major Jesuit College of the Mother God in Kochi, where the new casts made by Father Joao da Faria in Quilon were used for printing. On October 20, 1578, the first book in an Indian language in India was printed using these types. Vielle notes that the first Tamil book was actually printed in Lisbon in 1554, using Romanized Tamil script. Using the Quilon type, a larger Tamil Doctrina Christam or Kristiyani Vanakkam and a Tamil confessionário were printed respectively in 1579 and 1580.
“An exemplar of these works is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Two other exemplars — which were to be found in the Jesuit seminary of Enghien (Belgium) and in the University of Paris library, respectively, until about the middle of the 20th century — have since disappeared. However, thanks to Georg Schurhammer’s 1930 photography, one of these exemplars has resurfaced,” said Vielle. “The only surviving exemplar of the confessionário was rediscovered by G Shaw in the Bodleian 1982. It includes a long dialogue between a Jesuit confessor and a Parava penitent, composed by Henriques following a Portuguese model,” he added.
In 1586, Henriques’ composition of the monumental Flos Sanctorum (an anthology of the lives of saints) was printed in Tamil titled Punitar Varalaru. It took him many years to compose this work. A first exemplar is preserved in the Vatican Library and was rediscovered in 1954 by father Xavier S Thani Nayakam. A second, incomplete one, was found by Graham Shaw in the Royal Library of Copenhagen in 1900.
The printing of the anthology, however, was done at Punnaikayal, a relatively minor missionary station near Tuticorin. But it is interesting to note that the printing is done with the same de Faria’s Quilon types already used in Kochi. After the initial experiments at Goa, Kochi clearly became the principal centre of vernacular printing in the 16th century and undoubtedly Flos Sanctorum represents its finest achievement,” said Vielle.
After the Jesuits were compelled to leave Kochi due to the Dutch invasion in 1663, they established the college and seminary of Ambalakkad in the safer inner part of central Kerala in Thrissur. A new printing press was installed there for some time, using new Tamil types that were similar but distinctly different from the de Faria fonts. Mathew of St. Joseph, one of the first Carmelite missionaries to arrive in Malabar, testified that during his visit to Tuticorin, he was shown 16 or 17 types of Tamil religious books that were published in Ambalakkad. It was a significant place where missionary literature was printed in the 16th century.
Vielle explained that Jesuit printing activities in Malabar, as well as the entire Roman Catholic missionary printing in India, were definitively halted after the Portuguese authorities in Goa promulgated a decree in 1684, which banned the use of Konkani and subsequently the other vernacular languages. As an Indologist, Christophe Vielle conducted detailed studies of premodern and early modern literature in Kerala. He has conducted extensive research on Arnos Padiri (Johann Ernst Hanxleden), including manuscripts of the latter’s Malayalam-Portuguese dictionary and his Sanskrit grammar.
In the 18th century, the poetry of Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681-1732), also known as Arnos Padiri, was popular in and around Ambalakkad, much like the Tamil religious writings of Italian Jesuit Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi (1680-1744). Hanxleden, born in 1681 in Germany, volunteered for the Jesuit missions and arrived in Goa in 1700. After completing basic training, he was sent to the Jesuit seminary in Ambalakkad and ordained as a priest in 1706.
“He acquired a good command of Tamil in addition to Portuguese (the Western vernacular language of that time), Malayalam, and Syriac (used by the St. Thomas Christians). He then started to learn Sanskrit and improved his Malayalam with the help of two scholars,” wrote Vielle in an introduction to Hanxleden’s Grammatica Grandonica, the oldest Western grammar of Sanskrit, which he co-edited with Toon Van Hal.
“In May 2010, Hanxleden’s Grammatica Grandonica was rediscovered in Monte Compatri (Lazio, Rome) by Toon Van Hal. Although historiographers recognized the importance of this nearly oldest western grammar of Sanskrit, the precious manuscript had been lost for several decades. Hanxleden not only copied, introduced, and annotated several manuscripts of Sanskrit lexical and grammatical works but also authored grammars and dictionaries of Malayalam and Sanskrit,” said Vielle.